Читать книгу A Scandalous Man - Gavin Esler - Страница 11

The trip to Washington was judged a success. Even better, it really was a success. Reality matched perception, which in British politics is quite unusual. The Lady went out of her way to praise me. She had heard from the Ministry of Defence that naval and intelligence cooperation had never been better. No complaints. GCHQ were delighted with assistance they had received from the US National Security Agency, their electronic eavesdropping and signals intelligence people, and the RAF were pleased with something from the National Reconnaissance Office. I never found out what all this was about, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t need to know. All I needed to know was that it was a triumph and that, apparently, was put down to me.

‘We were sure you were the right man for the job, Robin,’ the Lady told me, clapping her hands together in pleasure late one night over the customary whisky and soda at Number Ten. By this time the Marines had landed on the Falklands and were yomping to victory. The Gurkhas had also landed. Argentine conscripts were falling over themselves to surrender. It had been put about that the Gurkhas liked to cut the ears off the bodies of those they killed. We denied this story at every opportunity. There is nothing which promotes an outrageous story more effectively than a firm government denial. Of course, there had also been setbacks. HMS Sheffield. The terrible damage caused by the Exocet missiles supplied to the Argentines by our good friends, the French. But from that point onwards there was no doubt about the final result, no doubt the Argentine junta would collapse, and no doubt either that the Lady would call an election and we’d be back in power for another five years. Ten, I thought. Fifteen, as it turned out. I called David Hickox to thank him.

‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘I hear it’s gone real well.’

‘Yes. But it would not have gone so well without your personal help. Thank you. I owe you.’

‘Indeed you do. The Lady gonna go for an election?’

‘Next spring,’ I replied. ‘Most likely. And we will win. Thank you for that, too.’

Hickox laughed.

‘You think we wouldn’t bale you out? And let Labour back in? Jeez, Robin, no way.’

Hickox was correct, of course. The Labour party was in one of its self-destructive phases, hijacked by the Impossibilist Left, the ones who preferred keeping their ideological purity to getting elected. They wanted to abandon nuclear weapons. The Falklands victory and their own catalogue of stupidity meant they’d be unelectable for years.

‘We’ll talk,’ Hickox said.

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

Well, well. An accidental Argentinian tango had taken us from defeat to victory in a few easy steps. Almost at the very end of the conflict, a few days after British troops had finally re-taken Port Stanley, I was invited to a Foreign Office drinks party. It was not officially a celebration. That would have been premature and a bit un-British. But the Foreign Office mandarins – with their usual ability to sniff political careers the way dogs sniff each other’s bottoms – had decided – sniff, sniff – that I might – sniff, sniff – make Foreign Secretary one day. My ascent had taken me ahead of Jack Heriot, and he was graceful enough to admit it.

‘Well done, Robin,’ a card from Heriot read. ‘Primus inter pares.’

First among equals, the usual description of the Prime Minister.

Looking back on it, I think that the FCO party was the moment when I was at the very top of my game. My reputation at the Treasury was high. The civil servants there understood what we were doing to liberate the economy. And now at the MoD and the Foreign Office they had begun to treat me with something close to respect. Three of the top four ministries in HMG had something good to say about me. The Lady noticed. The Americans noticed. Everybody noticed.

I made sure my press secretary gave a couple of briefings – off-the-record, of course – outlining the key role I had played with the Reagan administration, without giving away too many details. When the press asked me to confirm my role I was shocked – shocked – that anyone had leaked such a sensitive matter. I thundered that one should never comment on matters affecting national security. Loose lips sink ships. What fun! My conceit and arrogance expanded to fill the available space. I was asked to help draft the manifesto for the 1983 election. I was asked to prepare my plans for selling off state-run industries. I was asked to address party gatherings all over the country. I was applauded in Cardiff and Perth, in Manchester and Leeds. I was offered a top speaking slot at the autumn party conference. I was on Newsnight so often, one of the presenters joked I made more appearances on BBC television than he did. I think that all of this helps explain – though it does not excuse – what happened when I met Leila again, and this time learned her name. I thought I could do no wrong. Or if I did, that no one would ever find out.

There was to be no escape, for either of us.

The Foreign Office drinks party was in the Locarno Suite. It’s one of the greatest function rooms in Whitehall, a magnificent old-fashioned barn big enough to stage an opera, or from which to govern an Empire. Some of the performances in the Locarno Suite have been truly operatic. I entered with a peculiar feeling of nervousness, without knowing why. People were falling over each other to talk to me. That old cliché about power being an aphrodisiac, perhaps. More accurately, a pheromone.

‘Hello, Robin … oh, Robin, it’s you … Mr Burnett good to see you … Robin, how delightful …’

Within minutes of entering the Locarno Suite I was surrounded by lobby reporters. They were looking for some kind of high-grade gossip, an insight into what would happen next, now that the war was more or less won. What might monetarism and trade union reform mean in practice, now that the Lady’s administration was not just an historical blip? It was taken for granted that we would win the next election, just as a few months before it had been taken for granted that we would lose. Conventional Wisdom is about as reliable as the hemlines of women’s skirts for predicting the political future. Some of the brighter ones in the Locarno Suite wanted to know whether the cost of re-taking the Falklands might blow public spending and the economy off course. I said it had blown our politics back on course.

‘You do things because they are right,’ I boomed at them. ‘Not because they are cheap. Defending British citizens and British interests against a proto-fascist Argentinian dictatorship was the right thing to do. We will pay for it. But we will do so proudly, because that is the nature of this country.’

There was a lot of harrumphing at this.

‘Despite what now looks like the certainty of the Falklands victory you have to admit that immediately before it, the government was never less popular,’ a blue-stocking type from The Times insisted. She dripped frustration of all kinds. One of the soft lefties from the BBC chimed in.

‘If you win, you have to thank Galtieri. It will be a khaki election, not an endorsement of your economic policies.’

‘Not true,’ I replied. ‘Everyone understands that we won a difficult war after being attacked. Explaining how we are turning the economy around takes more time. But government is a package. It is everything that we stand for, not a few separate bits and pieces, not a la carte. And we are very clear about it.’

‘So you admit you have failed to communicate to the voters how you are managing the economy?’ The Times bluestocking shot back at me.

‘Well, I have obviously failed to communicate it to The Times,’ I said. ‘Though I daresay I have communicated it successfully to your proprietor.’

I could feel her intake of breath. The Times hacks were all shit scared of Rupert Murdoch. We were quite respectful of him too.

‘Please understand me. British governments do NOT manage the economy, though some are deluded enough to think they do. Governments set a few broad conditions and then the economy manages itself. Invisible hands. And while we expect British sailors to manage Exocets, I think the rest of us can manage to turn around the opinion polls.’

There was laughter at this.

‘The unions will never submit to the kind of reforms you are demanding,’ a stout, balding fellow from the Guardian told me. He was swallowing copious amounts of cheap Foreign Office claret, as if desperate to get his share. When he spoke I started to imagine that his tongue was too big for his mouth, like a claret-swilling frog. I remember it was stained purple. I had a glass of red in my hand but looking at him I could not bear to drink from it and put it down on a table. I was desperate for a decent whisky.

‘It’ll be back to Ted Heath and the three-day week with the miners,’ the woman from The Times agreed.

‘Winter of Discontent will be like a sideshow,’ another said.

‘Challenges ahead,’ was all I said. ‘You are all correctly noting that there are definitely big challenges ahead.’

I was growing tired of the sparring, but at that moment Leila entered the Locarno Suite. Heads turned, including mine and – as I could see – that of the Deputy Foreign Secretary Jack Heriot. Leila had the grace of a ballet dancer. Her dress whispered on her body. I swallowed hard.

‘Let me introduce the CBS News correspondent in London.’ An American diplomat, Peter Doberman, steered her into the room. ‘Jack Heriot, Her Majesty’s Deputy Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, please welcome Leila Rajar.’

‘I do believe we have met once before,’ Heriot said smoothly, shaking her hand and looking into her eyes. ‘Perhaps at one of the news conferences here during the conflict?’

‘I do believe we have,’ Leila responded, her voice measured and firm. ‘I’ve been here a few months – since the start of the Falklands crisis. And it’s certainly a pleasure to see you again, Mr Deputy Secretary.’

Mr Deputy Secretary. Oh, how Heriot loved that.

‘The pleasure is mine, Ms Rajar,’ he beamed. Creep. I walked towards them.

‘We are always ready to improve on the Special Relationship,’ Heriot was saying with a smile that contained within it a leer.

You are too old for her, Jack, I remember thinking. But she is not too young for you.

Leila’s eyes flickered towards me. I could see that she thought Heriot was being a creep as well. I smiled inwardly at her good judgement.

‘Let me also introduce –’ the American diplomat began, nodding towards me, but Leila interrupted him.

‘Oh, I know who this is, Peter,’ she said, turning her smile towards me. ‘Professor Burnett, you wowed us all at the Kennedy School summer lectures a few years ago.’

Did I?

‘Robin did what?’ Jack Heriot said in disbelief. ‘He … wowed you?’

‘Oh, yes, he wowed everybody. It was the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard. Do you remember, Professor Burnett?’

‘Yes,’ I answered. I remembered Harvard. But I did not remember her. ‘I was …’

Leila interrupted.

‘… a visiting lecturer in – I’d guess – summer of 1978 or thereabouts. During the worst of the Carter Days, and just after the worst for you folks here in Britain too. Strikes. Oil shocks. Stag-flation. I remember you gave a lecture as part of the supply-side economics forum called Defeating Defeatism – how to beat inflation and other ills of the modern economy. Something like that.’

‘You remember it?’ I beamed inwardly.

‘Remember it? I still have the notes,’ she laughed, and the laughter danced in my heart. ‘I was with the New York Times, writing a piece about world economic prospects. I was scheduled for an interview with John Kenneth Galbraith. While I was waiting for the great man I thought I’d catch this new Brit performer who offered entirely the opposite view to that of Galbraith …’

‘I think the word you are looking for is “professor”, rather than performer,’ Heriot said unhelpfully. ‘Though “performer” probably works for Robin too.’

‘Performer, professor, whatever …’ she laughed again, but refused to be deflected. ‘Anyway, there was this new Brit who was saying the impossible, that inflation could be tamed, the unions could be controlled, and the Soviet Union could be outspent into economic disaster if we only had the wit, nerve and optimism to do it.’

I blushed.

‘I may have said all that, but I didn’t exactly invent it. Hayek and Friedman … ’

‘Whoever invented it, it came across as so … so very American,’ she added slyly. ‘Optimistic. Positive. Problem solving. Not the kind of pessimism we associate with the British.’

‘One out of three isn’t so bad,’ Jack Heriot said.

‘One out of three?’ Peter Doberman the American diplomat asked.

‘Bearing down on inflation,’ Heriot explained. ‘At least we are doing that. The rest of Robin’s crystal ball seems a bit fuzzy. The Soviet Union will be with us for many years to come. And what’s worse, so will the unions …’

I wanted to kick Heriot in the balls, crystal or otherwise.

‘You see, that’s the difference between the two sides of the Atlantic,’ Leila Rajar suggested, as if Heriot had just proved her point. ‘Typically, you guys always see the glass half empty. We always see it half full. That’s why I thought Professor Burnett was more like an American. He believed things were possible, which is maybe why he’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury now, and why he was such a big hit on his recent visit to Washington.’

Briefly she laid a hand on my arm as she talked about me. No more than half a second, but it contained a jolt of pleasure that I wanted to repeat. I could sense her perfume. Her eyes washed over me. Silk and lace on tanned skin. I was lost, but I did not yet know how completely.

‘They say that you, single-handedly, got the Reagan administration on-side,’ she smiled at me. ‘That you wowed Hickox and the neo-cons, and that they all love you. They say that you are “One of Us”.’

‘Then they say wrong,’ I replied firmly. ‘I have many friends in the Reagan administration and I can tell you that your President is a proud defender of democracy against military dictatorship. He needed no prompting from me. Supporting Argentina was never a realistic option.’

She laughed.

‘You say that with a straight face?’

Not any more. I burst out laughing too. She got to me with her wit, as well as with her beauty.

‘Let me just repeat the wisdom of Winston Churchill,’ I said. ‘That the American people always do the right thing – usually after having exhausted every conceivable alternative.’

Doberman and Heriot began arguing cheerfully about European pessimism and American optimism. It was standard diplomatic party talk, and a silence fell between me and Leila. I drank in her beauty. Her eyes were big and dark brown, her hair long and thick. I felt a strange apprehension strike me. I wanted her, but I did not want to be at that party any more, not in the Locarno Suite, not with any of these people. It was almost my last attempt at sanity, before what was to become the madness of falling in love with her. It was as if I was to make a last attempt to break free, before Leila overwhelmed me.

‘Very nice meeting you, Ms Rajar.’ I put out my hand suddenly, to shake farewell. Her hand felt small and soft in mine and the touch of her fingers moved me again like an electric charge. ‘I’d better circulate a bit.’

I tried to read her expression, hoping it might be one of disappointment. I don’t think many men said goodbye to Leila Rajar, but if she was surprised then she did not show it. She merely smiled. It was a diplomatic cocktail party kind of smile, with no meaning or warmth.

‘Very nice to meet you too,’ she said. ‘I hope our paths cross again.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Well, if you are not prepared to admit to your secret diplomacy – which is not so much a secret anyway thanks to some well-orchestrated leaks – then perhaps you could give me an interview about the future health of the British economy?’ she suggested cheekily.

I nodded.

‘It would be a pleasure, Miss Rajar. Call my office and arrange it. Tell them I have definitely agreed to it.’

And we parted. My heart was thumping. I was nervous, and I was almost never nervous. I felt my hands tremble and my legs go weak as I moved towards the door through the journalists who launched another fusillade about the economy. Remorseless. Relentless. Feed the beasts. Feed the beasts.

My heart was beating curiously and I wanted to get away, far, far away. I answered questions for a few more minutes. I told the woman from The Times that it was not simply up to the government to manage the unions, it was up to employers.

‘Like The Times?’ she suggested mischievously. Clearly mentioning Rupert Murdoch had hit a chord with her.

‘Fleet Street is home to some of the worst abominations in British industry,’ I told her. ‘Over-manning. Restrictive practices. Buying off trouble rather than confronting it. One of these days some proprietor will have the courage to take on the print unions. Perhaps it will be your proprietor. We in government admire Mr Murdoch’s robust leadership.’

‘Take on the unions with government support?’

‘With enthusiastic government support. Perhaps you should mention that to Mr Murdoch, if the opportunity arises. Or perhaps I will.’

She could not have mistaken what I was suggesting. As I left I looked back to see Leila smiling at some remark from Jack Heriot. I closed the door and ran down the stairs. When I reached King Charles Street I sucked in the cool night air, and hurried off to my desk at the Treasury for the therapy of some late night work on the monetary supply figures. They never failed to calm me down.

Leila fixed up a meeting almost immediately. I was impressed, though I should have guessed that she would not wait. She called my office after a day or so, although it took another forty-eight hours for a slot to be found in my diary. Since Leila worked for CBS News at the time, it would have been reasonable to assume she might want a television interview. Reasonable, but wrong. She asked for an off-the-record chat. I felt a shiver of pleasure. I suggested lunch. Lunch is the best meal in London. It can have the air of business. It can be innocent. Dinner or breakfast with a woman as strikingly pretty as Leila carried an entirely different connotation. And yet I’d bet that more careers and more love affairs are made or broken over lunch than any other meal or meeting. My staff booked a quiet sushi place in St James’s, and I walked over through the park. They have private booths in the sushi place. I go there when I want to plot something. It occurs to me now that perhaps I was plotting my own downfall.

‘Tell me about the Lady,’ Leila whispered, almost immediately as she sat down opposite me. She touched me gently on the arm as she spoke. Again it was for less than a second, the merest brush of her hand, but I felt my body stir. ‘She’s such a superstar now in the United States. You must tell me everything.’

‘Everything?’ I laughed. ‘That would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act.’

‘Oooh,’ she giggled, ‘how exciting.’

‘Then perhaps I will tell you everything,’ I replied. ‘After all, you’re a journalist. I can obviously trust you. It will go no further.’

When she laughed she threw back her head and I watched her dark brown hair fall on her shoulders. My life until that point had been full of rational choices and decisions, some hard and some easy, but falling in love with Leila was not like that. It was not a choice or a decision. It was as involuntary as breathing, and I sometimes think that perhaps it was as necessary. I had always thought there was a rational world, which was where I lived, a world of graphs and statistics and economic theories, of university departments and Treasury meetings. There was also an irrational world, which I despised – a world of horoscopes and beliefs, of hatreds based on race or bigotry or religion. Falling in love with Leila made me realize there was also something else. I called it a meta-rational world, a world which was beyond explanation, but which also, somehow, made sense even if I could not say exactly why.

That was Leila. Meta-rational. I looked at her, straight in the eyes. It was a long time before either of us blinked. I handed her the sushi menu and for the briefest of moments our hands touched, and I thought again of silk and lace. We ordered. I chose the set sushi menu because it did not involve any thought. I didn’t care what I ate. In the years with her that followed, I was rarely hungry for food. I was hungry for her, and it showed.

And so that very first day I did tell her about the Lady. Not everything, of course. No real secrets. I am loyal and discreet. But I did tell her a lot about the mechanics of how government worked, about how the Lady was so very meticulous, so very neat, how she had her own dresser whom she relied upon, how she really responded to men in uniform, how – there is no other word for it – she flirted with those she liked, and demolished those she did not. Leila listened and played with her food, pushing a stray hair behind her ear and sometimes cocking her head to the side as she lifted a tuna roll or a slice of sashimi. I had a sudden desire to touch her cheek gently with my fingers. The thought made me gasp.

‘Do you mind if I take notes?’

Do you mind if I make love to you, I thought.

‘This is off the record.’

‘Yes, but … deep background? Who knows, I may one day write a book about all this.’

‘So might I,’ I joked. ‘I keep a diary and one day it might keep me. Go ahead. Take notes if you wish.’ She had a frank way of holding my gaze that I have never seen in a woman before or since. ‘Curiously, I trust you,’ I said slowly. I thought I was about to die. After a minute or so getting out a suitable pen and notebook, she plugged the silence.

‘You clearly think the Lady is wonderful.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘I have heard she is also bossy, intolerant of dissent, that she doesn’t listen to her Cabinet and …’

I stopped her.

‘But that is precisely why she is so wonderful. These are compliments.’

‘It is a compliment to say she’s bossy and won’t listen?’

I sighed.

‘The British Cabinet is full of people who think they should be Prime Minister. They all think they are in with a chance to succeed her, eventually. In the meantime, most of them do what they are told. Some of them – like Michael Armstrong – in their hearts despise her because she has the capacity for greatness, whereas they do not and they know it. She is intolerant of dissent. But she loves argument. That’s not the same thing. She listens and she argues back, then she takes a decision and you fall in line or you get out. In government you need to be bossy when you’re right. That’s why she fired Armstrong.’

‘And what if you’re wrong?’

‘She’s not wrong.’

‘But what if you are?’

‘Then to be bossy in pursuit of error is the classic political tragedy. Read Macbeth. Or Caesar. Or Lear.’

‘I have. And I have also acted in Macbeth.’

‘Let me guess which part.’

Leila laughed again. I watched her hair fall on her shoulders and her tiny teeth flash white. God, how I wanted her. Waiting was the most delicious pain.

‘Don’t change the subject. They say that she listens to you?’

‘Sometimes. Mostly. Yes, I think so. That’s why she is so rarely wrong.’

I laughed at my own arrogance, though I knew Leila was impressed. Then I changed the subject.

‘Now Miss Leila Rajar, I have a number of questions for you.’

‘Oh,’ she said, putting her hand to her breast in mock shock. ‘You do? Questions for me? On deep background?’

‘Yes. I am a great friend of the United States of America but I have watched American TV news and I do not think that anything an obscure finance minister in the government of the United Kingdom has to say will be of any interest to your viewers. Neither do you, otherwise you would want an on-camera interview rather than a very pleasant lunch.’

She looked down at her food and picked at a piece of salmon.

‘Hmmm. Let’s suppose you are correct,’ she admitted. ‘But let me also admit that what you say is of great interest to me personally.’

‘Why?’

She put down her fork and put her hands together on the table.

‘Because you are of great interest to me, Robin. Ever since Harvard. I like the way you think. I … I want to get inside your head.’

I should have been less surprised had she slapped me across the face. There was that look from her again. The look of a hungry lioness. I was uncharacteristically lost for something to say.

‘I … well … are you flirting with me, by any chance?’

‘Of course. You are … you have something against flirting during the hours of daylight?’

I took a deep breath. Lace and silk and the touch of her hand.

‘You realize that if we ever get together no one will ever get us apart?’ I blurted out. Leila said nothing. She stared at me, slightly taken aback.

‘That might not be so good for your career,’ she said.

‘Or yours,’ I replied. She coughed. We both looked away.

‘Perhaps we should have some coffee,’ I suggested. ‘In my case a very large espresso. I have to meet some spending ministers this afternoon and apply a vice to their ambitions. Or their testicles. Which are mostly the same things.’

We sat in silence until the coffee arrived. By the end of the lunch I had discovered a number of things about Leila Rajar.

She had a PhD in international relations from Georgetown and a first degree in economics from Pepperdine in California – facts that she kept hidden from the viewers of CBS News.

‘American viewers like pretty,’ she said. ‘But they get suspicious of smart. Especially smart women. I don’t play dumb, but I don’t emphasize any of my qualifications either. It’s survival.’

I also found out where the name Rajar came from.

‘It’s Persian,’ she said. ‘Iranian, though I prefer the word “Persian” since it pre-dates the religious gangsters who are now destroying my country. It’s really spelled Qajar, but some-how it was botched when it was trans-literated from Farsi when my father fled to LA.’

‘Fled?’

‘When I was seven, I guess. The Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, had it in for him. I grew up in Los Angeles – Los Irangeles as they call it. There are so many Iranian exiles in LA. The rest of the Qajars have been forced out by the Islamic Revolution. They are scattered around France, England and the US.’

‘Why were they forced out?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘Stupid question,’ I admitted.

‘Politics,’ she answered anyway. ‘Just like under the Shah only worse.’

‘What kind of politics?’

‘The only type that matter in Iran. Dirty politics. Violent politics. In which people lose everything their family has had for hundreds of years, and sometimes lose their lives.’

‘Animal Farm,’ I said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Animal Farm. George Orwell. The Pigs overthrow the Humans in a farmyard revolution but by the end of the book the Pigs behave exactly as the Humans do, or worse. Orwell thought all politics was like that. He’s wrong. But Khomeini and his followers are certainly in the mould, persecuting the same people that the Shah persecuted.’

‘Animal Farm then,’ she agreed. ‘Pigs, certainly.’

Another silence fell over the table.

‘I really should go,’ she began.

‘Can I see you again?’ I blurted out. ‘Despite the potential dangers to our careers?’

Her eyes washed over me. There was a delay of a few seconds. Excruciating. Yes or no?

‘Yes,’ she said, and then she stood up and kissed me gently with her full lips on my cheek. It was the most sexual thing that had ever happened to me in my life. Just a kiss, but hotter and more passionate than any kind of sex. I felt the blood pound in my neck and face as if during an orgasm.

‘Of course,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Call me.’

Then she was gone. I called her a few hours later.

‘This is me playing hard to get,’ I said. I could hear her giggling. ‘I really do want to see you again.’

‘Good,’ she responded. ‘Because I really do want to see you again too.’

It took a couple of days for us to fix a date because I was – as I told her – busy with the spending review. It meant I had to call in ministers from various departments to tell them why they could not have any money. The newspapers called the process the Star Chamber, after the medieval torture.

‘That’s illogical,’ Michael Armstrong’s replacement as Home Secretary, Lewis Jones, challenged me on the cuts I was forcing him to make. In the political pecking order he was senior to me. But the Lady had offered me his job, and I had turned it down because I wanted to complete my work at the Treasury. Plus, I did not want the Home Office. Who’d want to be responsible for law and order? Kiss of death to any political career. I had Lewis Jones’ budget in my hand and I squeezed hard. He squealed.

‘You want more effective policing, more spending on new prisons, and yet you want to give me less money overall …’

‘Correct, Lewis. I do.’

He looked astonished.

‘You want more for less?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s …’

I stared at him the way you do at something on your shoe. Lewis Jones was a fool, but clever enough to realize I thought he was one. He carried some weight among the backbenchers in the 1922 Committee. I had made an enemy, and I didn’t care. I chose my enemies carefully. He harrumphed.

‘… it’s illogical.’

‘Illogical?’ I replied.

‘It doesn’t add up.’

‘I’ll tell you what doesn’t add up, Lewis.’ I pointed my finger at him like a stick. ‘What doesn’t add up is the idea that a Conservative Home Secretary cannot shake up the worst bureaucracy in Britain, which you happen to be presiding over, Lewis, without spraying more money on it like petrol on a fire. I can think of at least three different ways of dividing up the Home Office to make it less unwieldy and far more efficient. If you would like me to outline in Cabinet my plans to reduce your department from underneath you, then I will gladly do so, Lewis, but you might find it more convenient to come up with your own savings.’

He was reeling from this verbal assault. I could see it in his face.

‘Three little words, Lewis: cut the fat.’

Before my second date with Leila, I wanted to do some research. I got the senior Treasury press officer to do it for me. It turned out that ‘Qajar’ was not just a Persian name like Smith or Jones, it was the dynastic name of the Persian royal family before the Pahlavi dynasty. If there was ever to be a restoration of the Iranian monarchy, it might not be a Pahlavi after all. It might be a Qajar. Leila’s father did indeed have to leave Tehran, but mostly because he was a potential rival to the Pahlavis and had demanded democratic reforms. The Shah had refused to take his advice and thought he was potentially a traitor, hence the attentions of SAVAK, the secret police. I called Leila again.

‘Good morning, princess.’

‘What?’

‘I checked you out. You are a princess.’

‘No,’ she said. Can people blush on the telephone? I think she blushed. ‘Not really.’

‘So, I’m more or less clear of the Star Chamber. Can we meet?’

‘Yes.’

I paused, but only for a second or two.

‘Listen, Leila, I very much want to see you. But we must be careful. If I am seen with you, it will get into the papers. There is no way round it.’

Without missing a beat she said, ‘There is, if you come to my apartment.’

And so there it was. My fate was settled. Our fate was settled. Fate, Destiny, Providence, or something like it. I sensed again that it would end in disaster, but I did not care. I embraced the possibility of catastrophe with both hands. I did it with both eyes open, and I hugged my fate like an old friend. A few months later, Leila confided in me that at first she thought it was just a bit of fun.

‘Alone, in Britain, an attractive, powerful Englishman,’ she said. ‘What’s not to like? I wanted a little adventure.’

‘And then?’ I said.

I remember she looked at me with her wet eyes.

‘And then, I fell in love, which was a terrible personal and professional mistake. A catastrophic error of judgement.’

I loved her from the first moment I saw her, and I told her so. She giggled.

‘Don’t be silly. There’s no such thing as love at first sight.’

I was not being silly. It was the truth. I remember it now so well because after that moment, the truth and I became strangers.