Ethical Outcomes Incorporated.
Well, well, he thought: a red-hot evangelist
and ethical to boot. Not a given. Not by any means.
*
For days and nights, Toby agonizes over the
choices before him. Go running to Diana and tell all? – ‘I disobeyed you, Diana. I
know what happened at Defence and now it’s happening all over again to us.’
But what happened at Defence is none of his business, as Diana forcefully informed him.
And the Foreign Office has many hellholes earmarked for discontents and
whistle-blowers.
Meanwhile, the omens around him are daily
multiplying. Whether this is Crispin’s work he can only guess, but how else to
explain the ostentatious cooling of the minister’s attitude towards him? Entering
or leaving his Private Office, Quinn now grants him barely a nod. It’s no longer
Tobe
but
Toby
, a change he would once have welcomed. Not now. Not
since he failed to make his mark and be invited aboard
a certain very secret
ship.
Incoming phone calls from Whitehall’s heavy hitters that were until
now routinely passed through the Private Secretary are rerouted to the minister’s
desk by way of one of several newly installed direct lines. In addition to the heavily
flagged despatchboxes from Downing Street that Quinn alone may handle,
there are the sealed black canisters from the US Embassy. One morning a super-strong
safe mysteriously appears in the Private Office. The minister alone has the combination
to it.
And only last weekend, when Quinn is about
to be driven to his country house in his official car, he does not require Toby to pack
his briefcase for him with essential papers for his attention. He will do it himself,
thank you, Toby, and behind locked doors. And no doubt, when Quinn arrives the other
end, he will embrace the rich Canadian alcoholic wife whom his Party’s spin
doctors have ruled unfit for public presentation, pat his dog and his daughter, and once
more lock himself away, and read them.
It therefore comes like an act of divine
providence when Giles Oakley, now revealed as the closet author of a round-robin letter
to the Foreign Secretary about the insanity of invading Iraq, calls Toby on his
BlackBerry with an invitation to dine that same evening:
‘Schloss Oakley, 7.45. Wear what you
like and stick around afterwards for a Calvados. Is that a yes?’
It is a yes, Giles. It is a yes, even if it
means cancelling another pair of theatre tickets.
*
Senior British diplomats who have been
restored to their motherland have a way of turning their houses into overseas hirings.
Giles and Hermione are no exception. Schloss Oakley, as Giles has determinedly
christened it, is a sprawling twenties villa on the outer fringes of Highgate, but it
could as well be their residence in Grunewald. Outside, the same imposing gates and
immaculate gravel sweep, weed free; inside, the same scratched Chippendale-style
furniture, close carpeting and contract Portuguese caterers.
Toby’s fellow dinner guests include a
counsellor at the German Embassy and his wife, a visiting Swedish ambassador to Ukraine,
and a French woman pianist called Fifi and her lover Jacques. Fifi, who is fixated on
alpacas, holds the table in thrall. Alpacas are the most considerate beasts on earth.
They even produce their young with exquisite tact. She advises Hermione to get herself a
pair. Hermione says she would only be jealous of them.
Dinner over, Hermione commands Toby to the
kitchen, ostensibly to give a hand with coffee. She is fey, willowy and Irish and speaks
in hushed, revelatory gasps while her brown eyes spark to their rhythm.
‘This Isabel you’re
shagging’ – poking a forefinger inside his shirt front and tickling his chest
hairs with the tip of her lacquered fingernail.
‘What about her?’
‘Is she married like that Dutch
floozie you had in Berlin?’
‘Isabel and her husband split up
months
Well, well, he thought: a red-hot evangelist
and ethical to boot. Not a given. Not by any means.
*
For days and nights, Toby agonizes over the
choices before him. Go running to Diana and tell all? – ‘I disobeyed you, Diana. I
know what happened at Defence and now it’s happening all over again to us.’
But what happened at Defence is none of his business, as Diana forcefully informed him.
And the Foreign Office has many hellholes earmarked for discontents and
whistle-blowers.
Meanwhile, the omens around him are daily
multiplying. Whether this is Crispin’s work he can only guess, but how else to
explain the ostentatious cooling of the minister’s attitude towards him? Entering
or leaving his Private Office, Quinn now grants him barely a nod. It’s no longer
Tobe
but
Toby
, a change he would once have welcomed. Not now. Not
since he failed to make his mark and be invited aboard
a certain very secret
ship.
Incoming phone calls from Whitehall’s heavy hitters that were until
now routinely passed through the Private Secretary are rerouted to the minister’s
desk by way of one of several newly installed direct lines. In addition to the heavily
flagged despatchboxes from Downing Street that Quinn alone may handle,
there are the sealed black canisters from the US Embassy. One morning a super-strong
safe mysteriously appears in the Private Office. The minister alone has the combination
to it.
And only last weekend, when Quinn is about
to be driven to his country house in his official car, he does not require Toby to pack
his briefcase for him with essential papers for his attention. He will do it himself,
thank you, Toby, and behind locked doors. And no doubt, when Quinn arrives the other
end, he will embrace the rich Canadian alcoholic wife whom his Party’s spin
doctors have ruled unfit for public presentation, pat his dog and his daughter, and once
more lock himself away, and read them.
It therefore comes like an act of divine
providence when Giles Oakley, now revealed as the closet author of a round-robin letter
to the Foreign Secretary about the insanity of invading Iraq, calls Toby on his
BlackBerry with an invitation to dine that same evening:
‘Schloss Oakley, 7.45. Wear what you
like and stick around afterwards for a Calvados. Is that a yes?’
It is a yes, Giles. It is a yes, even if it
means cancelling another pair of theatre tickets.
*
Senior British diplomats who have been
restored to their motherland have a way of turning their houses into overseas hirings.
Giles and Hermione are no exception. Schloss Oakley, as Giles has determinedly
christened it, is a sprawling twenties villa on the outer fringes of Highgate, but it
could as well be their residence in Grunewald. Outside, the same imposing gates and
immaculate gravel sweep, weed free; inside, the same scratched Chippendale-style
furniture, close carpeting and contract Portuguese caterers.
Toby’s fellow dinner guests include a
counsellor at the German Embassy and his wife, a visiting Swedish ambassador to Ukraine,
and a French woman pianist called Fifi and her lover Jacques. Fifi, who is fixated on
alpacas, holds the table in thrall. Alpacas are the most considerate beasts on earth.
They even produce their young with exquisite tact. She advises Hermione to get herself a
pair. Hermione says she would only be jealous of them.
Dinner over, Hermione commands Toby to the
kitchen, ostensibly to give a hand with coffee. She is fey, willowy and Irish and speaks
in hushed, revelatory gasps while her brown eyes spark to their rhythm.
‘This Isabel you’re
shagging’ – poking a forefinger inside his shirt front and tickling his chest
hairs with the tip of her lacquered fingernail.
‘What about her?’
‘Is she married like that Dutch
floozie you had in Berlin?’
‘Isabel and her husband split up
months
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