2007 - Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (8 page)

§

Later

Tonight Mary was back home before me. I am writing this in the spare bedroom. At first she was sweet. When I arrived home there was the smell of something delicious coming from the kitchen. Mary can be quite a good cook when she wants to be, which is not all that often. She was whisking up a sauce and wearing an apron. I kissed her hello and asked her what she was cooking. She told me it was pasta with scallops, and that there was a bottle of white wine in the fridge.

This was unprecedented. As I have noted, Mary never drinks in the week and not often at weekends.

‘I’ll just go and change,’ I said. ‘You must have come home early?’

‘Yes, I’m off to Geneva again in the morning so I thought it would be nice for us to have a proper dinner together before I go.’

Ah, so that was it. When I came downstairs dinner was ready, and two glasses of white wine were misting on the kitchen table.

‘This is really good,’ I said, after a mouthful. And it was. Mary shook her head and said something about being out of practice.

I sipped my wine and asked, ‘Do you still have no idea how long you are in Geneva for?’

‘Well, that’s just it,’ she said, putting her fork down. ‘I told you before that I’m standing in for someone who fell ill and died. They want me to stay there for at least a year, not just on a temporary basis. They’ve been very impressed with my work.’

I said it seemed a bit hard on me that she was the only person in the bank they could find to send out there. Mary frowned and said, ‘Why not me? I’m very good. It’s a great opportunity. It’s promotion, even if the salary isn’t very different.’

It was happening again. Mary could have been one of Napoleon’s generals: for her, attack was not just the best form of defence, but the only form of defence. We began to argue. Despite my intention to keep the conversation at the calm, rational level I prefer I too became annoyed. I remember saying, almost shouting, that I didn’t think she had spent five minutes considering what my feelings might be. So she told me how selfish I was and how little account I took of her career, and how I was always impossible to talk to because I thought of nothing but my bloody, bloody fish.

‘I must have told you a dozen times, if I get offered the job in Geneva as a permanent position, the next step is almost certainly a senior posting to London. I’ve told you a dozen times,’ she repeated.

‘At least a dozen,’ I said. This was not helpful of me, but I couldn’t stop myself.

‘Oh, I’m sorry if I’ve been boring you. Well, here’s a bit of news which I won’t repeat too often because I won’t be here to repeat it. I’m going to Geneva tomorrow. I will be away for at least six months before I am entitled to any leave. I can’t come home at weekends because they work Saturday mornings in the bank. If you want to come and see me, my address and some other notes for you are on my desk in the study.’

She was really angry now. She told me I didn’t care; I was buried in my own career, and now on our last evening I was being sarcastic and self-centred. She pushed her plate away and I heard her run up the stairs and slam the bedroom door.

I haven’t the nerve to go in there tonight. I’ll try and catch her in the morning before she leaves.

§

23 August

This morning I made a last effort. I felt shattered by the evening before. These emotional exchanges take it out of me, and I felt bilious all night long. Despite that I was up at five, and went downstairs in my pyjamas to find Mary’s cases in the hall. Mary herself was sitting drinking a mug of tea at the kitchen table.

She looked at me in a not very friendly way and asked me what I was doing up at that time of day.

‘To say goodbye, of course,’ I said. ‘Darling, don’t let’s part on a sour note. I’m going to miss you.’

‘Well, you should have thought of that before you were so unpleasant to me last night.’

The front door bell buzzed. It was her taxi.

Mary stood up. She allowed me the faintest peck on the cheek by way of a kiss, and then in a few moments she, her cases and the taxi had gone. Gone for how long, I wonder. For a year? For good?

Correspondence between Captain Robert Matthews and Ms Harriet Chetwode-Talbot

10 May

Darling Harriet,

I don’t know how to tell you this. I tried you on your mobile and left a message, but by the time you pick it up I will be out of the country and not contactable by phone or email.

I was rung by the adjutant and given about five minutes’ notice to get packed and out to the airport. We flew commercial to Frankfurt, which is where I am now. I’m writing this in a little coffee place in the departure lounge. We have a few minutes before our connecting flight out to Basra.

Yes, I’m afraid I’m going to Iraq and that means our week together is in ruins. Darling, I feel as sick about this as you will do when you read this. One thing I have already decided: I’ll do my tour here, which is meant to be about twelve weeks, but when I come back I’m going to put in my papers. I’m going to leave the forces. I’m not especially ambitious for promotion—I can’t be bothered to go to staff college. I only joined up because Dad wanted me to, and I was never going to get to university. I just wanted a few years of fun. Well,

I’ve had lots of fun and they’ve looked after me very well, so I suppose when they tap me on the shoulder and send me somewhere slightly unpleasant, I can’t object.

But now I’ve met you, as a way of life the marines are no longer for me. It’s just as you say. It would be so good to settle down and become part of somewhere again, instead of constantly passing through.

That’s small consolation for a bust holiday, but I hope you will understand. Don’t worry about Iraq, it’s just a routine rotation of people. I wasn’t on the list but someone had a slight accident so I was pulled in to replace him. We won’t be doing any dangerous stuff. The place has calmed down a lot over the years. It’s more public relations than anything else. I’d almost prefer it if we saw some action, because otherwise it can be a very dull place to be stuck, particularly at this time of year when it’s almost too hot to go outside.

Anyway, I’ll be thinking of you. We’ll go away the minute I get back. That’s a promise.

Write to me as soon as you can c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace, Basra, and it should reach me pretty quickly. Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. If I’m on the base at Basra I should get letters almost straight away, but if I’m in-country there might be some delay before I have a chance to see them.

So don’t ever worry about me. I’ll be all right.

Love,

Robert

Captain Robert Matthews

c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace

Basra

Iraq

12 May

Darling Robert,

You can imagine my first reaction when I picked up your message on my voicemail. I went in a rage to my desk and pulled out the file with all the copies of the hotel and car hire reservations and tore them up. Then I burst into tears.

In other words, I behaved just as badly as you might have expected, but I think you will admit I had some excuse. I was looking forward to our holiday in France together
so much
. Now I’ve got over that I spend all my time imagining something ghastly might happen to you, but I know that’s just me being stupid again, plus a hyperactive imagination. I don’t think you have any imagination at all, and never worry about anything. Or at least that’s what you always tell me, and of course you will be perfectly all right with your friends around you, and because you’ve done it all before.

Now I sort of accept it, and I just want you to know I’m thinking of you every minute, and when I’m asleep I dream about you. You can’t ask for more than that, can you?

Don’t leave the marines just because your girlfriend whines at you every time you have to go away. If that’s really what you want to do, then of course it’s right. But don’t do it for me if it’s a sacrifice, because then you’d blame me when you got bored and restless and then we’d end up divorced five minutes later. I don’t want to divorce you; I want to marry you. Anyway, what would you do instead?

We’ll talk about it when you come back. Don’t do anything until then.

Masses of love,

Harriet

Captain Robert Matthews

c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace

Basra

Iraq

15 May

Darling Robert,

I wish I knew where you were and what you were doing. It would mean I could worry a bit less. I hope, wherever it is, you are not too uncomfortable and it is not too dangerous. I tried to look your unit up on the Internet but, of course, I found nothing.

Isn’t it strange, writing letters to each other? Because I’m not allowed to email you and I can’t speak to you by phone, I am left with no choice. Apart from a few thank you letters and one or two to you I haven’t written any letters to anyone since I used to write to my mother when I was away at school. Even then it was mostly to ask her to send me more money. And because I haven’t the least idea what you are doing in Iraq, thank God, we can’t talk about that. So I suppose I’ll have to bore you to death, and tell you about me.

Our client, a sheikh from Yemen (I’m not supposed to tell anyone his name—I would tell you, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyway) has come to see us with the most extraordinary idea. He wants us to commission the best UK fisheries scientists to introduce salmon into the Yemen. He has an estate up near Inverness we helped him buy a few years ago, with a few miles of river which are apparently quite good fishing in June and July. You would know about all that sort of thing. The sheikh has become rather good at it, and enjoys going up there to fish more than almost anything. He also takes beats on other rivers whenever he can. He is almost obsessive about his fishing, much more so than his shooting or stalking. I’ve seen him at it, and he seems to know what he is doing.

He is a very impressive character. He is quite small, but stands very upright and communicates a sense of power which you cannot ignore. I don’t mean I fancy him, and he certainly doesn’t fancy me—tall, thin European women are not his type. He is happily married, anyway, with wife number four being the current favourite.

I don’t know what we are going to do about his request. He has clearly got a bee in his bonnet about fishing and the Yemen salmon project in particular. It seems almost wrong to take any money from him for something as dotty as this, which is bound to fail, but it is a
lot
of cash and our project management fees would be serious money just on their own.

Anyway, darling, I just wanted to write to let you know I was thinking about you and missing you.

Love you lots.

Harriet

5 Scarsdale Road London

15 May

Darling Harriet,

So good to hear from you. I’m sure this letter will take ages to get to you but where we are now is about a
                           
from anywhere
Under Security Regulations Chapter XII Section 83 all references which might indicate the location, intention or capability of a unit must be deleted from correspondence. Security Office, BFPO Basra
and the heat is at least
        
degrees in the shade
See above. Security Office, BFPO Basra
. I am not allowed to tell you what we are doing but it is not a whole lot of fun, and conditions are
             
             
. The Iraqis are either very friendly or absolutely murderously
                  
    
             
                  
. So a letter from home is a chance to escape and forget all this for a few minutes. Keep writing. Each letter you send me is like a long cool drink of water.

I’ll stop now. The
                           
censor at Basra will probably delete most of this anyway.
Sir or Madam, as noted earlier, under Chapter XII Section 83 we are required by military regulations to delete references in private correspondence which might compromise the unit concerned or otherwise act against the interests of British forces. Security Office, BFPQ Basra

Loads of love,

Robert

XXXXX

Captain Robert Matthews

c⁄o BFPO Basra Palace

Basra

Iraq

10 June

Darling Robert,

Your letter took
weeks
to reach me, and some awful man in the censor’s office in Basra had crossed out lots of what you wrote, and then scribbled over the letter. Awful to think someone else is reading everything we both write. Otherwise, there are all sorts of things I would like to say to you but won’t or can’t, because nothing is private any more.

The papers are full of stuff about Iraq again. It seems to have got worse again after years of relative calm: children being shot, people being blown up by car bombs or shot at from helicopter gunships. I shudder when I think you are in the middle of all that. Why does it all have to start up again just as you arrive there?

I don’t suppose you will ever tell me what it is really like, even when you come home. I can’t wait for you to come home.

We had a meeting in the office a few days ago, and decided we would try and help our sheikh with his salmon fishing project. Everyone was saying things like ‘It’s not our job to tell the client what he can or can’t do—our job is to help him do it.’ The fact is it is ages since we had a really big deal. Things have been slow for a while. So I was deputed to write to some man that our contacts in DEFRA tell us is one of the top fisheries scientists. The pompous little man did not even bother to reply himself—he got his secretary to write a short note containing ten good reasons why the whole idea was a waste of time. Naturally I wasn’t going to stand for that so I rang up an old friend of mine who works in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and told him what was going on. I said, ‘Look, with all this bad news coming out of the rest of the Middle East, isn’t this a potential good news story? Shouldn’t we be encouraging our client to spend his money, however mad it may seem? Isn’t this a good news story about Anglo–Yemeni cooperation?’ I thought it was rather clever of me to think of that angle, don’t you? It only occurred to me because you had just been sent out there.