And Thereby Hangs a Tale (19 page)

'Anyone who wishes to reapply for membership
cannot hope to be elected for at least another fifteen years,' he said, walking
straight past her.

'Are there no exceptions?' asked Diana,
chasing after him.

'Only for the new president,' said Robin, 'who
will be made an honorary life member.

The rules don't seem to apply to him.'

'But that really is so unfair,' said Diana, bursting
into tears. 'I shall personally complain to the new president.'

'I'm sure you will, my dear,' said Robin,
taking his wife in his arms. 'But that doesn't mean I'll take any notice.'

THE

UNDIPLOMATIC

P
ERCIVAL ARTHUR Clarence Forsdykehis mother
called him Percival, while the few friends he had called him Percy -- was born into
a family which had played its part in ensuring that the sun never set on the
British Empire.

Percy's grandfather, Lord Clarence Forsdyke,
had been Governor General of the Sudan, while his father, Sir Arthur Forsdyke
KCMG, had been our man in Mesopotamia. So, naturally, great things were
expected of young Percy.

Within hours of entering this world, he had been
put down for the Dragon prep school, Winchester College and Trinity, Cambridge,
establishments at which four generations of Forsdykes had been educated.

After Cambridge, it was assumed that Percy would
follow his illustrious forebears into the Foreign Office, where he would be expected
at least to equal and possibly even to sur-pass their achievements. All might
have gone to plan had it not been for one small problem: Percy was far too
clever for his own good. He won a scholarship to the Dragon at the age of
eight, an election to Winchester College before his eleventh birthday, and the
Anderson Classics Prize to Trinity while he was still in short trousers. After
leaving Cambridge with a double first in Classics, he sat the Civil Service
exam, and frankly no one was surprised when he came top in his year.

Percy was welcomed into the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office with open arms, but that was when his problems began. Or, to be more
accurate, when the Foreign Office's problems began.

The mandarins at the FCO, who are expected to
identify high flyers worthy of being fasttracked, came to the reluctant conclusion
that, despite Forsdyke's aca-demic achievements, the young man
lacked common sense, possessed few social skills and cared little for the
diplomatic niceties required when representing your country abroad -- something
of a disadvantage if you wish to pursue a career in the Foreign Office.

During his first posting, to Nigeria, Percy told
the Minister of Finance that he had no grasp of economics. The problem was that
the minister didn't have any grasp of economics, so Percy had to be dispatched
back to England on the first available boat.

After a couple of years in administration, Percy
was given a second chance, and sent to Paris as an assistant secretary. He
might have survived this posting had he not told the French President's wife at
a government reception that the world was overpopulated, and she wasn't helping
matters by producing so many children. Percy had a point, as the lady in
question had seven offspring and was pregnant at the time, but he was still to
be found packing his bags before lunch the following day. A further spell in
admin followed before he was given his third, and final, chance.

On this occasion he was dispatched to one of
Her Majesty's smaller colonies in Central Africa as a deputy consul. Within six
months he had managed to cause an altercation between two tribes who had lived
in harmony for over a century. The following morning Percy was escorted on to a
British Airways plane clutching a one-way ticket to London, and was never
offered a foreign posting again.

On returning to London, Percy was appointed
as an archives clerk (no one gets the sack at the FCO), and allocated a small
office in the basement.

As few people at the FCO ever found any reason
to visit the basement, Percy flourished. Within weeks he had instigated a new procedure
for cataloguing statements, speeches, memoranda and treaties, and within months
he could locate any document, however obscure, required by even the most
demanding minister. By the end of the year he could offer an opinion on any FCO
demand, based on historic precedent, often without having to refer to a file.

No one was surprised when Percy was
appointed Senior Archivist after his boss unexpectedly took early retirement.
However, Percy still yearned to follow in his father's footsteps and become our
man in some foreign field, to be addressed by all and sundry as 'Your
Excellency'. Sadly, it was not to be, because Percy was not allowed out of the basement
for the next thirty years, and only then when he retired at the age of sixty.

At Percy's leaving party, held in the India Room
of the FCO, the Foreign Secretary described him in his tribute speech as a man with
an unrivalled encyclopaedic memory who could probably recite every agreement and
treaty Britain had ever entered into. This was followed by laughter and loud
applause.

No one heard Percy mutter under his breath,
'Not every one, Minister.'

Six months after his retirement, the name of
Percival Arthur Clarence Forsdyke appeared on the New Year's Honours List.
Percy had been awarded the CBE for services to the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office.

He read the citation without any
satisfaction.

In fact, he felt he was a failure and had
let the family down. After all, his grandfather had been a
peer of the realm, his father a Knight Commander of St Michael and St George,
whereas he ended up a mere Commander of a lower order.

However, Percy had a plan to rectify the
situation, and to rectify it quickly.

Once he had left the FCO, Percy did not head
straight for the British Library to begin work on his memoirs, as he felt he
had achieved nothing worthy of historic record, nor did he retire to his
country home to tend his roses, possibly because he didn't have a country home,
or any roses. However, he did heed the Foreign Secretary's words, and decided to
make use of his unrivalled encyclopaedic memory.

Deep in the recesses of his remarkable mind,
Percy recalled an ancient British law which had been passed by an Act of
Parliament in 1762, during the reign of King George III. It took Percy some
considerable time to double-check, in fact, triple-check, that the Act had not
been repealed at any time in the past two hundred years. He was delighted to discover
that, far from being repealed, it had been enshrined in the Treaty of Versailles
in 1919, and again in the Charter of the United Nations in 1945. Clearly
neither organization had someone of Percy's calibre tucked away in its
basement. Having read the Act several times, Percy decided to visit the Royal
Geographical Society on Kensington Gore, where he spent hours poring over
charts that detailed the coastal waters surrounding the British Isles.

After completing his research at the RGS,

Percy was satisfied that everything was in place
for him to comply with clause 7, addendum 3, of the Territories Settlement Act
of 1762.

He returned to his home in Pimlico and locked
himself away in his study for three weeks -- with only Horatio, his
three-legged, one-eyed cat, for company -- while he put the final touches to a
detailed memorandum that would reveal the real significance of the Territories
Settlement Act of 1762, and its relevance for Great Britain in the year 2009.

Once he'd completed his task, he placed the nineteen-page
handwritten document, along with a copy of the 1762 Act showing one particular
clause highlighted, in a large white envelope which he addressed to Sir Nigel Henderson
KCMG, Permanent Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, King Charles
Street, Whitehall, London SW1A

2AH. He then put the unsealed envelope in the
top drawer of his desk, where it would remain for the next three months while
he disappeared off the face of the earth. Horatio purred.

On 22 June 2009, Percy took a taxi to Euston
station, where he boarded the overnight sleeper for Inverness. His luggage consisted
of an overnight bag and his old school trunk, while inside his jacket pocket
was a wallet containing two thousand pounds in cash.

On arrival in Inverness, Percy changed
platforms and, an hour later, boarded a train that would take him even further
north. The five-carriage shuttle stopped at every station on its long and
relentless journey up the north-east coast of Scotland, until it finally came
to a halt at the remote harbour town of Wick.

When Percy left the station, he commandeered
the only taxi, which took him to the only hotel, where he booked into the only available
room. After a one-course meal -- the menu being
fairly limited, and the kitchen staff having all left at nine o'clock -- Percy
retired to his room and read Robinson Crusoe before falling asleep.

The following morning he rose before the sun,
as do most of the natives of the outer reaches of Scotland. He feasted on a
large bowl of porridge oats and a pair of kippers that would have graced the
Savoy, but rejected an offer of the Scotsman in favour of studying a long list
of the items that would have to be acquired before the sun had set that
afternoon.

Percy spent the first hour after breakfast walking
up and down the high street, trying to identify the shops he would have to
patronize if his trunk was to be filled by the time he left the following
morning.

The first establishment he entered was MacPherson's
Camping Store. 'Everything a hiker needs when trekking in the Highlands' was
stencilled boldly on the window. After much bending over, lying down and
crawling in and out, Percy purchased an easy-to-erect, all-weather tent that
the proprietor assured him would still be standing after a desert storm or a
mountain gale.

By the time Percy had left the store he had filled
four large brown carrier bags with his tent, a primus stove, a kettle, a
goose-down sleeping bag with an inflatable pillow, a Swiss army knife (he had
checked that it had a tin opener), a pair of Wellington boots, a fishing rod, a
camera, a compass and a portable telescope.

Mr MacPherson directed Percy towards the MacPherson
General Store on the other side of the road, assuring him that his brother Sandy
would be happy to fulfil any other requirements he might still have.

The second Mr MacPherson supplied Percy with
a shovel, a plastic mug, plate, knife, fork and spoon, a dozen boxes of matches
(Swan Vesta), a Roberts radio, three dozen Eveready batteries, four dozen
candles and a first-aid kit, which filled three more carrier bags. Once Percy had
established that there wasn't a third MacPherson brother to assist him, he
settled for Menzies, where he was able to place several more ticks against
items on his long list -- a copy of the Radio Times, the Complete Works of
Shakespeare (paper-back), a day-to-day 2009 diary (half price) and an Ordnance
Survey map showing the outlying islands in the North Sea.

Percy took a taxi back to his hotel,
accompanied by nine carrier bags, which he dragged in relays up to his room on
the second floor. After a light lunch of fish pie and peas, he set off
once again for the high street.

He spent most of the afternoon pushing a trolley
up and down the aisles of the local supermarket, stocking up with enough
provisions to ensure he could survive for ninety days. Once he was back in his
hotel room, he sat on the end of the bed and checked his list once again. He
still required one essential item; in fact, he couldn't leave Wick without it.

Although Percy had failed to find what he wanted
in any of the shops in town, he had spotted a perfect second-hand example on the
roof of the hotel. He approached the proprietor, who was surprised by the guest's
request but, noticing his desperation, drove a hard bargain, insisting on
seventy pounds for the family heirloom.

'But it's old,
battered and torn,' said Percy.

'If it's nae guid enough fur ye, sur,' said
the owner loftily, 'ah feel sure y'll bi able tae find a superior wan in
Inverness.' Percy gave in, having discovered the true meaning of the word
canny, and handed over seven tenpound notes. The proprietor promised that he
would have it taken down from the roof before Percy left the following morning.

After such an exhausting day, Percy felt he had
earned a rest, but he still had one more task to fulfil before he could retire
to bed.

At supper in the three-table dining room,
the head waiter (the only waiter) told Percy the name of the man who could
solve his final problem, and exactly where he would be located at that time of
night. After cleaning his teeth (he always cleaned his teeth after a meal),
Percy made his way down to the harbour in search of the Fisherman's Arms.

He tapped his jacket pocket to check he hadn't
forgotten his wallet and the all-important map.

When Percy entered the pub he received some
curious stares from the locals, who didn't approve of stray Englishmen invading
their territory. He spotted the man he was looking for seated in a far corner,
playing dominoes with three younger men, and made his way slowly across the
room, every eye following him, until he came to a halt in front of a squat,
bearded man dressed in a thick blue sweater and salt-encrusted jeans.