Julia Miles - The Ambassadors Wifes Tale

Published by
Eye Books Ltd
29 Barrow Street
Much Wenlock
Shropshire
TF13 6EN

www.eye-books.com

Published in Great Britain 2015

2015 Julia Miles
Cover illustrations by Simon Pearsall

The events and opinions in this book originate from the author. The publisher accepts no responsibility for their accuracy.

The moral right of Julia Miles to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or otherwise, except brief extracts for the purposes of review, without prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-903070-90-1

To Oliver and Joe, Tom, Hugh and Lucy

Contents

Diplomatic Debutante

Call for you in the managers office, the office junior announced in her nasal voice. Wondering who might have the temerity to use my manager as a conduit, I followed her to the phone and lifted the receiver.

An urbane voice said, This is the Foreign Office Personnel Department. My heart missed a beat. Oliver was in Aden, where a postcolonial civil war was being fought. Something dreadful must have happened. The caller ignored my gasp and continued laconically, I understand you are engaged to Oliver Miles. We thought you should get married within three months; otherwise you will have to wait three years.

I was flummoxed. Why on earth are you telling me this?

Because, my dear young lady, we have posted him. He should be leaving Aden quite soon.

Where have you posted him to?

Ah well, that I cannot divulge. The point is you might wish to consider handing in your notice. In fact, it might be an idea to do so at once.

It was 1967. I was 22, and in my first proper job in the marketing department of the Daily Mirror newspaper. It wasnt what I wanted to do. From the age of 12, I had wanted to be a social worker, but my father encouraged me to take up a post-graduate research scholarship instead. Sitting in libraries reading about the Legal Aid scheme did not suit my energetic personality and I hardly lasted a year before taking the first job I could find.

Oliver spoke fluent Arabic and had already served in numerous Middle Eastern countries before we met. When he told his parents that we were planning to get married, his fathers expression turned bleak. London School of Economics? Shell do you no good. He turned out to be wrong, because within a month of arriving in Nicosia, our first foreign post together, I was on first-name terms with half the Cyprus Cabinet and together we established one of the original LSE alumni groups that now flourish around the world.

I did as I was told and handed in my notice. In retrospect I regard this as monstrous interference, however well-meaning, but I was still very much in awe of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). That evening I told my mother that we had less than three months to arrange the wedding. She was watching the television news.

Youll be lucky to have a bridegroom, the way things are going out there, she remarked drily.

I started sending Oliver telegrams, asking his opinion on the wedding arrangements. This captured the imagination of the middle-aged Asian man in Farringdon Road post office, who took an active interest in the planning.

You have white wedding?

No. Just a few friends for a drink.

Champagne and cake sort of thing?

Yup, that sort of thing.

Very expensive. I have daughters. He assumed a suitably hangdog expression and reached for the yellow telegram form.

What the general public might never suspect is what goes on, or used to, on the top floor of the Foreign Office building. Six eligible bachelors known as Resident Clerks whose job was to act as duty officers covering all out-of-hours Foreign Office business lived up there. I had been going out with one of them before I met Oliver. There was a certain frisson to be had sitting at the top of the great empty Whitehall edifice on a Saturday afternoon. If there was a crisis the girlfriends would considerately skedaddle, but usually weekends were quiet.

Often when the phone rang the duty clerk would be on the loo, or in the bath, in the big, bathroom papered in dark green. He would emerge, receiver clasped under chin, wire stretched to the limit and towel draped strategically, gesturing urgently for a notebook and pencil.

In summer we would sunbathe on the mansard roof or watch the Trooping of the Colour from the best vantage point in London. And we would drink gallons of Mateus Rose, considered rather smart in the late 60s, while cooking up a meal for whoever was around. One evening I was preparing two chicken breasts for supper with my then-boyfriend. He turned to me and said, I forgot to tell you there are going to be three of us for supper. Theres a new chap joining us Oliver Miles, I think hes called. That is how we met. But Oliver had barely become a Resident Clerk before he was posted, complete with gun, to Aden for two years.

We kept in touch by post. After a year he promised me a love token an Arab rug which I eagerly anticipated. It turned out to be strips of smelly woven goats hair roughly sewn together, nothing like the patterned Persian carpet Id had in mind.

Oliver came back to England a couple of times for official talks and on one visit, very daringly we got engaged, having known each other for a total of about two weeks the previous year.

En route to Heathrow, where he was due to fly back to Aden, and with very little time, as the shops were about to shut at Saturday lunchtime, we stopped off to buy an engagement ring. What stone were you thinking of? asked the proprietor, pausing in the act of pulling down the metal shutters.

A sapphire, perhaps?

Good. I have two right here

He held out two antique rings but I couldnt decide which, or either. Under pressure of time it was agreed that I would return on Monday to collect whichever one I preferred.

But I hope you choose the one I like, said Oliver. And that decided it.

Despite her pessimism, my mother gamely allowed herself to be jollied into arranging my wedding. When Harrods sent notice of their January sale she led me to the posh-frock department and fell upon a cream-coloured silk dress and coat, declaring it perfect. She hadnt reckoned with my hefty frame and there were some horrible splitting noises as I struggled to get the garment either on or off, I didnt mind which.

Next size up, please, my mother commanded the salesgirl, who returned saying, We only have it in shocking pink, madam.

That will do. She turned to me. You werent thinking of a white wedding, were you?

The less fuss the better, I thought.

Oliver came home a week before the wedding with a left-hand-drive Ford saloon and an ancient alabaster head given to him in gratitude by his boss, Sir Humphrey Trevelyan, the High Commissioner in Aden.

Could be valuable or could be the sort of thing hairdressers use to prop their doors open. Ill have to get down to the British Museum someday to see, he commented.

We got married on a freezing February day, though the watery sun managed to make an appearance as we emerged from the London University Catholic Chaplaincy. Oliver was a devout Catholic but I wasnt and had reluctantly attended instruction with the Rev. Bruce Kent, of CND fame. He pointed out the problems of a mixed marriage, especially for any future children, and urged me to convert. It seemed that he may have been the child of a mixed marriage himself and somehow after a couple of sessions I ended up more or less counselling him. As a budding social worker I could never resist taking up a cause.