Paul Torday: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

David immediately took it from me and told me he would send it by messenger himself. He said he had cancelled all my diary appointments by email for the next month. I had one priority, and one priority only, if I wanted to keep my job. I had to meet Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, persuade her that the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence was the only organisation that had any chance of coming up with a proposal for her salmon project, and I had to persuade her that I was the right man for that job.

I nodded. David stood up. He looked for a moment as if he was going to say something by way of apology or explanation. Then he checked his watch again and said, ‘I mustn’t keep the minister waiting.’

I left without saying anything further, I hope with some dignity.

Now, as I record these unpleasant events, I reflect that it would have been nice if Mary had been at home tonight. Sometimes one wants to talk things over with one’s partner. Mary doesn’t like long phone calls. She says phone calls are for information. The trouble is, she isn’t often at home to have the conversations that she doesn’t feel we should have on the phone. But I’m so proud of the way she is getting on.

I hope she will be proud of me when I tell her of the dignified way I stood up to David Sugden’s bully-boy tactics.

15 June

I am writing this in the office.

Mary comes home tonight. I find I have been missing her. There is nothing to eat in the entire house. I must remember to call in at Marks & Spencer on the way home. I will buy some ready-to-eat meals. I must remember to get a new pair of pyjamas, as the elastic has gone in my present (Tesco) pair. I have kept a note of the mean time between failure (MTBF) of various things like socks-hole in the heel; pyjamas-elastic cord failure. I am afraid that I can detect a clear downward trend, almost a planned obsolescence, in some of these products. I am hoping Marks & Spencer will be more reliable.

No bowel movement this morning. A sure sign of stress. I did go for a run, however, and burned off some of the anger that has been churning inside me like bile.

This morning I received a phone call. Sally buzzed through to me and said there was a Harriet Someone on the line from Fitzharris & Price, and would I take the call? For a moment, glorious rebellion: I so nearly said, ‘No, tell her I’m busy.’ But instead I told Sally to put the call through-a girl’s voice with what I would call a cut-glass accent asked if she was speaking to Dr Jones.

She was very polite. She apologised for disturbing me, told me she understood I had been very busy with some major projects and said she would not have disturbed me at present except that her client was being very pressing. Then she asked if I recalled her original letter about introducing salmon to the Yemen?

I made an assenting sound at the back of my throat. I did not trust myself to speak. She took this to mean yes and asked when we could meet. For a moment I was tempted to shout, ‘Never!’ but instead I found myself agreeing to go and visit her at her office in St James’s Street the following morning.

‘Will your client be there?’ I asked.

‘No, he is in the Yemen. But he is anxious to meet you on one of his future trips over here. That is, if you agree to take this any further after our meeting tomorrow.’ We agreed on a time to meet at her office in St James’s Street.

Later

Mary has just come home. She arrived at Heathrow this morning about seven and went straight to her office, and of course she has overdone it. She looked at the Marks & Spencer Italian Selection I had purchased and said, ‘I’m sorry, Alfred, I’ve just got no appetite.’

Naturally I didn’t want to bore her with my problems when she was so exhausted. However, she revived over a glass of wine and talked for a while about US banking regulations. Most interesting. She has gone to bed now, and so will I in a moment.

It would have been nice if we could have talked a bit about my problems at work, but I must not be self-centred.

16 June

My meeting at Fitzharris & Price was not quite what I expected.

I cannot help but feel resentful towards these people who have disturbed the relative tranquillity of my life with their absurd ideas. My intention was to be damning without being rude, discouraging without being negative. I still feel, as I write this, that their proposal is so stupid that it will soon wither and die.

When I arrived at the F &P offices I found an elegant reception area, with an elegant receptionist commanding it from behind a large partners’ desk. Opposite the desk were a pair of comfortable-looking leather sofas and a low glass table with Country Life and The Field laid out on it. Before I could sample any of these luxuries Ms Harriet Chetwode-Talbot came out to meet me.

She thanked me for sparing the time to come and see her. She was courteous, elegant, tall and slender. She appeared to me to be dressed as if she was about to go out to lunch at a smart restaurant rather than for a day’s hard work in the office. Mary always says it is demeaning for working women to dress themselves up like that. She herself is a strong believer in sensible, practical working clothes which do not accentuate the wearer’s femininity.

We went into Ms Chetwode-Talbot’s office, which looked out over St James’s Street. The windows were double-glazed and the room was quiet and full of light. Instead of going behind her desk she guided me to two armchairs facing each other across a low mahogany table on which were set out a white china coffee pot and two cups on a tray. We sat down, and she pulled the tray towards her and poured out two cups of coffee. Then she said, and I remember her exact words, ‘I expect you think we are all absolute idiots.’

This was unexpected. I began to trot out some long-winded comments about the unusual nature of the project, how it was outside the mainstream of the centre’s work, and how I felt a degree of concern that we might all waste quite a lot of time and achieve nothing.

She listened patiently and then said, ‘Please call me Harriet. My surname is such a mouthful it really is too much to ask anyone to use it.’

I blushed. Perhaps Chetwode-Talbot has metamorphosed in pronunciation in the way Cholmondely has become Chumly, or Delwes Dales-one of those trick pronunciations invented by the English to confuse one other.

Then she suggested it might help if I understood some of the background.

I nodded; I needed to know who or what I was dealing with. Harriet-I don’t think it is appropriate for us to be on Christian-name terms, but it is quicker to write just her first name in this diary-began to explain. I crossed my legs and clasped my hands over my knees and generally tried to assume the expression my tutor at university used to adopt when I had put in a particularly bad piece of work which he was about to tear to shreds.

Harriet gave me a faint smile and explained that I had probably gathered by now that Fitzharris & Price were chartered surveyors and property consultants, not fisheries scientists.

I told her I appreciated the point.

She bowed her head in acknowledgement and explained that for many years the business of her office had been acquiring agricultural or sporting estates in the UK on behalf of overseas clients-in particular, Middle Eastern buyers. Fitzharris had discovered quite quickly that its clients didn’t just want it to buy the estates but also manage them in their absence.

That had led Fitzharris into providing technical expertise on a whole range of subjects, such as land agents’ services and help with recruiting estate employees through to advice on farming practice, sporting lets, obtaining planning permission for building new country houses, and so on.