PIKLE   KIP FENN   CONTACT

KIP FENN - REFLECTIONS  
by Paul K Lyons

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Chapter Seven
Lizette, Bronze and Resignation

The Photograph
I was (said fixedly)

The Clone [an extract]
...
I am (said hesitantly)
I am (said confusedly)
I am (said doubtfully)
I am (said disbelievingly)
I am not
I am not (said hesitantly)
I am not (said confusedly)
I am not (said doubtfully)
I am not (said disbelievingly)
I am
I am (said hesitantly)
...

The Retiree
I am (said tiredly)
I was (said resignedly)
I was (said regretfully)
I was (said questioningly)
I am (said amazedly)

'I AM poems' by Kolin Delvreux (2065)

I have a photograph of Giuseppi Garibaldi on my screen. It was taken in 1860. Two hundred years later, I saw an actual albumen print (made from a glass negative) at an exhibition in Paris. Naturally, I bought the catalogue so that I could copy all the images onto Neil. This particular photo is a three-quarters portrait, set in an oval cameo style. Garibaldi must have been about 50 at the time. His body, posed with left hand on hip and elbow pointing out, is subtly framed by the slight shadow lines of a jamb and window frame behind. He has a beautiful soft face: a large forehead with receding hairline, hooded eyes intently looking towards the camera, and a thick tidy greying beard. He wears light trousers, a dark shirt (which, because he was famous for wearing a red shirt, the imagination sees in colour as much as the orange of the pumpkin in Asser's still life), and a neckerchief. Hanging down across his shirt, there is a simple chain attached to something heavy (presumably a watch) in his shirt pocket. And, in the only acknowledgement of a military or leadership role, the right hand grasps a sword, held by a harness to his belt, which takes a near vertical line down in front of his legs.

When I first glance at this picture, I focus initially on Garibaldi's face, drawn in by the intent gaze (in which I see not only concentration but seriousness, wariness, curiosity), and the warmness of the visage as a whole. After some time (for I want to dawdle and examine his features in detail) my eye eases down the line of shiny buttons on his shirt towards his hand and the hilt of the sword, and then along the edge of the sword to reach the bottom curve of the oval, before moving back up again to take in more detail, the nonchalant elbow, the sagging pocket, the neckerchief, and the exquisite way the whole portrait has been emphasised by the vertical and horizontal lines behind.

But it is not only the aesthetic qualities that make this one of my favourite photographs. Despite leaving any serious interest in history behind in the class and lecture rooms of youth, I have always had a soft spot for Garibaldi. This is thanks to Flip, my school history teacher, who was a devout European. Frustrated by the strictures of a course focused on British history, every now and then he would randomly slip into a lesson information about his favourite continental characters. He had a lot of time for Luther I recall, Peter the Great and El Cid, and for the people who built the European Union, such as Robert Schumann and, a hero of his, Jacques Delors. For some reason, I also remember Portugal's Marquis of Pombal, and the Dutch leaders Lamoraal Count of Egmond and his contemporary William of Orange. Horace and I, though, had a particular reason to take up Flip's attachment to Garibaldi.

Once, and only once in my time at Witley Academic, Flip organised a debating contest between our history department and that of Charterhouse (another eminent public school in west Surrey). It was an important occasion, held in the Great Hall, with hundreds of students in attendance. There were three debates for different age groups. We were in the middle group, but this was before Jeff Zimmerman joined us, and when Horace and I were Hip and Kip. Our particular motion read, 'Garibaldi was a great European', and we were given the task of defending it. We thought we had drawn the lucky straw since it would be far easier to argue that 'he was a great European' than 'he was not a great European', but we soon realised this interpretation of the motion focused too much on the adjective 'great' and not enough on the noun 'European'. The other side would be able to argue he was a great Italian hero, thus putting the onus on us to explain why he mattered beyond the Italian nation state.

I am becoming sidetracked here, reflecting on events that should have been contained in and by the first chapter. And yet, lying here, so many years later, I continue to be startled by how strong, how potent these early memories remain. It is as though I can touch the rapture of those times, especially in the debating victories I shared with Horace, and the volleyball wins I shared with Alfred.

To move on swiftly, we won the debate. I should refresh my patchy knowledge (half-remembered from Flip's teaching and Pacciotti's great Hollywood bio-flick with Vincent Mallow as Garibaldi) from Encyclopaedia Universal. In May 1860, Garibaldi landed in Sicily, then ruled by the king of Naples, with a volunteer force clad in bright red shirts and known as the 'one thousand'. By the end of June, he had conquered the island and set up a provisional government. He then crossed to the Italian mainland and, by taking Naples itself, paved the way for the establishment of a kingdom of Italy with Victor Emmanuel as king. Garibaldi, the encyclopaedia says, was a great patriot, a truly honest man, and one possessed of great political and military skills which he devoted to the nationalist cause. Prior to the debate, I came up with the concept that nationalism had to be an essential precursor to internationalism, or, in this instance, Europeanism (although Flip must surely have helped me with this). Horace delivered the arguments we developed from that idea with stunning panache. Flip's two other teams lost to Charterhouse, but we were victorious and, very properly, the toast of Witley Academic for a day or two.

Chance took Gustave Le Gray, one of the great artistic photographers of the 19th century, to Sicily in 1860. His business in Paris was failing and so he decided to join the author Alexander Dumas on an expedition, aboard his luxurious ship Emma, to Egypt. They stopped in Sicily where Dumas became involved in Garibaldi's cause (to the extent of fetching him arms), and Le Gray took stunning pictures of Palermo in the aftermath of Garibaldi's conquest, including several of barricaded streets. Dumas records in his book, On board the Emma, the following exchange with Garibaldi (as reproduced in the Paris exhibition catalogue, English language edition).

Garibaldi: 'Do you have a photographer with you?'

Dumas: 'The best photographer in Paris ­ Le Gray.'

Garibaldi: 'Well then, let him photograph our ruins. It is only right that Europe should know what is happening here: 2,800 shells rained down in a single day.'

Dumas: 'We shall photograph all this, and you too, in the middle.'

Garibaldi: 'Why do you want to photograph me?'

Dumas: 'Well, I have only seen you as a general; and, really, you do not look like yourself, I would prefer you in your own clothes.'

Garibaldi: 'Do what you like with me. As soon as I saw you, I knew I would be one of your victims.'

And Dumas goes on to record in the same book, how Le Gray spent days making 'magnificent photographs' of the ruins of Palermo and how he (Dumas) planned to send them to Paris 'for exhibition'.

Which leads me back, conveniently, to the spring of 2060, and the exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris where I first saw the portrait of Garibaldi in an original print, and the other magnificent Le Gray originals; and to Lizette.

***

As I have recounted, I met Lizette during a dinner with Pete and Clarity at their cottage in Chapel Chorlton in 53. We did meet again, I can't remember exactly when (I seem to have no email correspondence that would help me pinpoint that second encounter). It was definitely after I had separated from Diana; and Clarity's daughter Joan was six or seven. I remember I was taken for a day trip to the Peak District, which included a walk along Dove Dale (or Eagle Dale in George Elliot's Adam Bede, a favourite of Clarity's), a kitsch well-dressing fair at Youlgreave (the main objective of the journey), and afternoon tea with Lizette at her house near Leek. I recall only that she was very welcoming, served an excellent cake (using figs from a crooked tree that curled round the corner of a stone outhouse) and was curious about my work.

During 59, Lizette changed jobs, moving from Keele University to the European University. She then contacted me to suggest we have dinner the next time I went to Brussels. I was flattered, but faltered in my response, or lack of it. Several months later, in early 60, Clarity wrote to congratulate me on my appointment as director-general and to pass on details about Pete's achievements or Joan's progress, as she did sometimes. She also urged me to get in touch with her friend, Lizette, who was not finding Brussels easy. Thus, one very cold February Tuesday, we met at the famous Fish and Chippy in the St Catherine area of Brussels. The restaurant had been called Jacques in my Euroil days, but, after several name changes, it had became Jacques ­ Fish and Chippy even though the original Jacques was no more. Unusually, the place was half empty; yet it was still surprisingly animated and the windows were all steamed up.

Lizette Sanderson, I learned, was born in 2018, just four years before my oldest son, Arturo. Her father, Mervyn Sanderson, had been a civil engineer, a builder of bridges. Wendy, her mother, like mine, had been a teacher but one who worked mostly with disadvantaged children. She had two brothers, one older (Samuel) and one younger (Mercurio). In response to her father's various jobs, the family had moved about a lot when she was young with stints in Southern India, Cambodia and the Philippines. But, by 28, the scale of social unrest around the world, especially the growth of the First Tuesday Movement, and concerns about the children's education (Samuel was only a year or two away from his 16 exams, and Mercurio was ready to start primary school) led the Sandersons to return permanently to the UK. The family settled down in Bristol. Lizette did well at school, with high grades in her 18 exams, and won a place to study materials science under Professor Jean Hunter at Nottingham University. By this time, Hunter was already a celebrated scientist, although it would be a further decade before she was awarded a Nobel Prize for chemistry. While a postgraduate student, Lizette married a trainee lawyer named Clint Tuohy. They moved to Stoke-on-Trent. She took up a research/teaching post at Keele University, and Clint joined a law firm in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

That first evening together, in the fish restaurant, Lizette looked attractive but slightly older than her 41 years. Dressed all in black, a polo sweater and jeans, she wore light make-up except for an excess of kohl around the eyes which contrasted too strongly with dyed-blond wavy hair. She smiled often but it was a smile constrained by a small mouth and thin lips which tried to keep slanting upper teeth concealed. She was not a beauty (she said so herself on numerous occasions), but she was 20 years younger (and nearly 20 centimetres shorter) than me; she was slim (much slimmer than Diana, who was heavily built and expanded over the years); she talked with the sense of a scientist; and she came across as a practical, down-to-earth woman, with lots of warmth. Most important of all, though, she appeared very interested in me.

At her request, we arranged to meet again the following day, for an early supper, so that I could catch the last train back to Holland. This is when I told her about Diana, and when she told me about Clint. He had disappointed her, she said. Having planned to go far in politics, he had settled for petty squabbling as a councillor on the Stoke City Council and a job dealing with wills and property conveyancing. While at Nottingham they had had similar dreams and ideals, she said, but time and reality had driven a wedge between them. She had other disappointments. The materials science department at Keele University had been impressed by her Jean Hunter association, and been all too willing to allow Lizette to continue the research line taken in her doctorate thesis. But it had proved to be a dead end, she confided. She was unsure whether this was because of the limitations of her tools (having been unable to attract sufficient funding for state-of-the-art equipment), or because Hunter, with many neophytes at Nottingham, had ruthlessly guided her towards a line of investigation she wanted closed rather than one with real potential.

In the first year of the Jihad War, Lizette took stock of her life and found it wanting. She left Clint, and moved to the house near Leek which she shared with another woman, an administrator at Keele University, called Rhoda Jackmann-Ives. To fill up the non-working part of her life, Lizette took to gardening ('a mild antidote to chemistry') and short-term sex affairs (as encouraged by the also recently-divorced Rhoda). And she set about considering how she might escape, perhaps to revisit the exotic places of her childhood. It had taken years to make a move (partly because of her parents' chronic ill health), and then, when she did, it was no further than Brussels. She had proved herself no less lacking in initiative than her ex-husband, she concluded rather dejectedly.

I told her she was talking nonsense, and that she had been very courageous to come to Brussels. Notwithstanding difficult early days at the European University I predicted that her Brussels life would improve. I must have remarked that Guido had toyed with the idea of taking a degree there, and then rambled on about missing him and planning to go to Paris shortly. Which led to Lizette saying how much she wanted to visit Paris again, and to a suggestion (I'm convinced it came from her, though she denied this in the years to come) that she join me for the weekend. So, in March 60, we rendezvoused in the French capital. Arriving late Friday night, we took separate rooms in a high-class pension in the Montmartre area. Part of the Saturday I spent with Guido, while Lizette went sightseeing. She returned with a chalk portrait of herself. That night we slept in the same bed, unmemorably, I'm happy to report, because Lizette did not want to make love.

This was the start of an affair and a friendship that would last, with ups and downs, the rest of our lives. The next morning we caught the metro to Concorde and strolled, arm-in-arm, through the Jardin Des Tuileries, along the Seine, across the Royal Bridge to the Musée d'Orsay to wonder at the photographs of Le Gray, and the Garibaldi portrait in particular.

A first 'down' occurred all too soon. Two weeks later Lizette came to The Hague to stay with me for a weekend. After showing her round the city during the day, I had thought we would eat out somewhere special. But with Amsterdam planned for the Sunday, we both decided to stay in on the Saturday evening. In any case, it became apparent, Lizette wanted a serious talk about our relationship, which was better conducted in the privacy of my home than in a restaurant. After our successful weekend in Paris, a series of intimate emails, and a pleasurable day together in The Hague it was clear that something was troubling her. She asked a lot of questions about my children, all of which I had mentioned but, until then, without much explanation. Then she wanted to go to the bedroom and make love, as if to reinforce the bond we had already established without sex. But I was unable to perform. Perhaps I was intimidated by her tales of promiscuity. Lizette thought I simply did not find her attractive. Later, I learned that her affairs had not served to reinforce her self-esteem, which had been the idea, but to undermine it. Thus, in the moment, in the bedroom we (I can use the plural pronoun because we discussed it later) were suddenly caught by a shock wave of alienation, a complete loss of confidence in each other and in our relationship. It was as though a spotlight, that had the power to illuminate self-awareness, had suddenly caught us in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person.

In order to overcome my own feelings of inadequacy, I blundered into various apologies and half explanations. I also tried to reassure Lizette that I found her attractive. She appeared entirely unconcerned by what I had to say. We re-dressed and returned to the main room with its large window and the night cityscape view. And then, standing by that window, with a mug of Ceylon tea in hand she told me she was 14 weeks pregnant and that she could not, would not have an abortion. Sheepishly, hesitantly and anxiously, she looked over towards me to see how I was taking the news. I waited, without thinking about the confession, to hear the rest. I feared the news would get worse, and she would reveal an involvement elsewhere. She turned to look out across the city's lights.

'I don't think I can tell you who the father is.'

'That helps,' I said. 'That's very helpful.' She put the mug down on the coffee table, and returned to the window hugging herself.

'You sod. This isn't easy Kip. I'm here. I'm telling you. I'm trying to tell you.' She continued to face away from me.

'Maybe you could explain why you can't say who the father is?' My tone was sarcastic, edging towards irritable, I suppose, as I began to take in the full meaning of what she had told me. At this, she spun round defiantly.

'I called you four months ago, more than four months ago. You promised to contact me. Why now, why after so long?'

She turned back round to face the darkness of the window and the night beyond. 'Why don't you think you can tell me who the father is?' I asked the question more softly, more genuinely this time round. I waited. I had been standing too, but now I flopped down on the sofa, weary.

'Is it going to matter? I mean do you still want to go to Amsterdam tomorrow? Will you want to see me again?'

'Not if you're involved with someone else, no, I don't believe I could deal with that.' She swivelled round sharply again.

'No, of course not, of course I'm not seeing anyone else, how could you think that? It was a mistake. A stupid mistake.'

I am recalling the dialogue as best I can, condensing maybe, or improvising. But, from Jay's point of view, this is the worst that was said. And knowing how much both Lizette and I have loved and cared for him, he has no hang-up about his conception being 'a stupid mistake'. Indeed, ever since he's known this snippet of family history (which came a dozen years after being old enough to appreciate that I was not his genetic father) he's employed it mercilessly for the sake of argument or humour. So I've no compunction about mentioning it here.

From my point of view, Lizette had eliminated the worst possibility, but there remained two reasons for the enigmatic silence: either she did not know who the father was because, after arriving in Brussels, she had continued to sleep around (making me one of a sequence, and one yet to be consummated); or, she did not want to tell me, which, in a different way, signalled danger.

'You haven't answered my question, is it going to matter to us?'

'I don't know, Lizette. How can I know. I like you. I like you very much. But I don't know. Only time will tell.'

'Thank you.' Then she came over to the sofa and sat down next to me, linking her arm through mine.

'When we walked through that garden in Paris, past the magnolias and the witch-hazels, it felt good. Holding on to your arm, I felt warm and happy and safe ­ though I knew already I was pregnant.' She paused and pressed my arm tighter through her own. 'I went back to England for Christmas, to see Ma and Pa, then to Chapel Chorlton for a few days, and then to Leek for new year's eve. I part own the house and use a tiny bedroom to store stuff. Rhoda had a party, as she does, to which she invited Clint. Oh this is so complicated. You need to know that after Clint and I separated, Clint and Rhoda had an affair. No, even that's not the full truth. They slept together once while we were still married and living together, although we had separate bedrooms by then. I didn't mind, it helped with the decision to split up, and, besides, Rhoda had asked my permission, although Clint never knew that. I rented for a while before moving to Leek, and that's when Rhoda and Clint screwed around some more together. When they gave up, they stayed friends, as I did with both of them. You'd have to know Clint to understand. In public he's professional and competent, but in private he's a child, needy and compulsive, always wanting to be liked and promising to make up for any shortcomings tomorrow. At the same time, he nags for favours, often for company, and especially for sex. He has no self-respect in this regard. But he's lovable. I loved him for years; but I grew tired of it all. We got back together once, in 57. I was very depressed, and he had suddenly been discarded by his second wife. I had Rhoda screaming in one ear about how it had taken me five years to get him out of my system, and I was screaming at myself in the other ear. Yet I let him plead me round to giving it another try. He was so desperate to get back together, he said, and he had changed.' She stopped talking for a few seconds. 'You must know how stupid we women can be. Three months I fooled myself into thinking I might have exaggerated our earlier marriage problems, and that I would never find a man who loved me as well as Clint. And then I woke up, again, and told him enough was enough. I felt guilty, and more depressed than ever, for a year or more. A whisky would be nice. I'm still trying to tell you. I'll get there. But it would help if you could talk a bit, about Harriet and Diana, and, well, how you managed in the bedroom department. I mean four children, it doesn't sound like you had much of a problem to be honest.'

I laughed, poured us some alcohol, and did as she asked. But, as before, I felt as if she were far away, not paying much attention. I wondered if she was using the time to sort out how she was going to tell the rest of her own story.

'I'd like to blame Clint. I'd like to say I had too much to drink on new year's eve, and he seduced me with flattery and neediness. But that's not true. I hope you appreciate this, you sod, I hardly know you, and here I am baring my soul. I decided consciously, early, to let him come on to me. But this wasn't a weak decision, as in the past, but a strong one. You have to know I felt that I'd escaped, that I was a new person, and that there was no danger any more of going backwards. But I'd been nearly six months in Brussels without a fuck, and I wanted it easy. And ... shit ... even that's not the whole truth. I'm trying here Kip. I'm really trying.' She held out her glass for a refill, and waited for me to return to the sofa so as to snuggle into me tighter than before.

'The truth is ... I'd given up hoping for a real relationship. Rhoda hadn't forewarned me Clint was coming. When I saw him there that evening, I decided not only to let him come on to me, but to throw caution to the wind, throw the dice, and see if I could get pregnant. So, you see, it's my ex-husband's child. And, before you ask, no, I haven't told him yet. And, yes, of course I should.'

She felt so tiny, I tightened my embrace around her shoulders, and awkwardly kissed the hair on the side of her head. She was crying, so she didn't turn to kiss me back. Instead she slid down so that she was nearly horizontal across the sofa and her head was in my lap. I used one hand to brush aside her hair slightly, and the other to stroke her cheek with the back of my hand, and then the back of a knuckle to wipe away her mascara-streaked tears. Her eyes were closed. For a few moments we remained very still, suspended in time. I wasn't thinking about her or her story, I was simply enjoying our closeness. Then Lizette slowly wiggled her head slightly, rubbing an ear into my crutch, and, on sensing my arousal, continued. Deftly, she turned over on her stomach, undid my trouser belt and fly, and gave me the kind of lip service I thought only prostitutes performed in cars. Afterwards, I worried, thanks to years with Diana, about Lizette's pleasure, but she did not want to make love as such, and confessed to being glad that we had not had intercourse earlier.

'You'll need some space, Kip, to decide what to do with me. It's not only me, it's me and a child, and, now that I've managed to tell it all to you, I don't want there to be any misapprehensions. If we're right for each other, and I hope we are, there'll be plenty of time for affection, tenderness and other pleasant things.'

Affection, tenderness and other pleasant things. I've always remembered her saying this. I do not know if she invented the phrase spontaneously, or had culled it from a book, but if she hadn't already won me over with her genuineness and honesty, then this idea that a life together could be full of affection, tenderness and other pleasant things won me over completely.

***

Chintz came in a few minutes ago, bringing with her a bowl of fruit sponge-balls (mixed flavours). I was crying. She had never seen me crying before. I told her I was thinking about Lizette, the last love of my life. After all I've gone through in writing these Reflections, revisiting the emotions connected with Melissa, for example, or Harriet or Crystal, it seems so strange that I should be brought to tears by this simple memory. Chintz asked to see some photographs of Lizette, so I promised to search one out, but I'll do it later. For now, I need to press on and record a difficult period professionally.

At the time, I did not consider the Peter Principle (which states that employees tend to be promoted beyond their level of competence) might apply to me and my own promotion to director-general of the International Fund for Sustainable Development (IFSD). In retrospect, though, I came to see, as much as one can, the truth behind my appointment. I read and heard a range of opinions at the time; there are some articles on Neil, but I can't be bothered to seek them out or re-examine them now. Most commentators focused on the fact that, as a career UN official, I was an unexpected choice, and that only two years earlier the previous British government had made a half-hearted effort to oust me. It's true that, by this stage, the director-general of the IFSD did not have as much power over his agency as earlier chiefs had done, nor as much as other agency chief executives (whatever their title, each agency had a different structure). Nevertheless, the IFSD, although it had suffered along with the whole UN system during the Jihad War, had re-emerged at the turn of the decade (in consequence of the Singapore Peace Treaty) as the funnel through which the largest portion of development aid would continue to flow. Many an ex-diplomat, or ex-minister, or even ex-prime minister from a smaller country coveted the job, and there were plenty of secretary generals, presidents, director-generals and executive directors of other agencies that wished for elevation. As with all such high-level appointments, mine followed a huge amount of behind-the-scenes bargaining much of which I never knew about. With all the irrelevant positions and manoeuvres filtered out, it came down to this: there was no consensus on three or four prime candidates, but there was an unholy alliance of IFSD members willing to support Britain's proposal to place me in the position. Why unholy? Because half of them, having witnessed my commitment and achievements as director in the early years of the war, believed I was the man to defend and promote the Fund through thick and thin; and the other half wished to attenuate the Fund's effectiveness by appointing someone they believed would be ineffective in the top job. At Singapore, the Western powers may have been forced to agree to further share their wealth, but that did not stop a number of them employing a range of tactics (including, apparently, supporting my appointment) to slow down implementation of the decisions. How they could predict that I would not manage well in the job is beyond me, yet they were right.

I collected a good team of advisers, that was the easy part. I'll mention three in my cabinet. I took Tommy because he wanted to stay with me, and his insight into the never-ending political problems of India and Central Asia was invaluable. I persuaded the much younger Chidi Naiambana that I could not do without his expertise on sub-Sahara Africa, and that two or three years with me would assist not hinder his own promotion prospects. (It didn't. Many years later he made it director-general himself.). And, thanks to Tommy's ear-to-the-ground, I unearthed Eduardo Villalonga, a brilliant Bolivian lawyer languishing in an IFSD backwater where he'd been closeted after falling out with a vindicative supervisor years earlier. There was MarySue, my English secretary who dealt directly with my other personal staff. I had 'inherited' her from Pravit Krishnamurty when I took over as director of the future policy division, and, apart from three extended breaks to nurture two children and a sick husband, she had stayed with me ever since. What she lacked in humour and tact, she more than made up for in efficiency and loyalty.

As director I had remained in touch, just, with the nuts and bolts of the division's work (the planning, the programming, the projects). I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I could see, albeit dimly, the end result of my negotiations, actions and decisions. But this was not the case as director-general. Consequently ­ I can only say this in retrospect obviously ­ I spent too much effort and time trying to control and influence the directors (about nine in all), who were not so much below me in the hierarchy but to my side. As a director I had not understood this intrinsically, I had simply enjoyed my autonomy and fought, usually with success, against any interference. Mostly, though, the IFSD's earlier director-generals had been of the hands-off variety. I was a hands-on chief. At best, I might have helped guide the weaker or more inexperienced directors, at worst I certainly drew other more experienced directors into unnecessary conflicts, thereby absorbing too much of their valuable time. I do not wish to dwell on these failures, but I will give one example, pared down to its basic components.

Liu Xiangjun, a crusty, tallish Chinese man about ten years younger than me, had taken over my job as environment director. He had held a similar high-level position in the World Bank but, earlier in his career, had been an academic (a professor of sustainable development at Harbin University), an environmental policy planner, and, for a short time a deputy ambassador in Hungary. By 61, I had become frustrated at how slowly the IFSD was returning to normal operations. As the chief executive, I should have been able to do something about this. Barely a day went by when I didn't try to devise ways of speeding up our activities. It came to my attention that Liu's department appeared less dynamic than most others. Instead of focusing on the restart of many important projects which had been stalled by the war, using the special streamlined procedures I had instigated, he had decided to revisit and re-evaluate each one. By insisting on fresh contract and approval procedures for every project, he was adding a minimum of one year to their implementation timetables.

Did I pick on Liu because, as his predecessor, I had been in charge of developing these particular programmes and projects? Lizette thought this might be the case; as did Liu who told me as much in private when I was making a last informal attempt to push him along. Then I issued an Information Note to the relevant directors, which everyone knew was targeted at Liu, ordering work to continue with minimum delay on all stalled projects and programmes. Since I had played a formal card, it should have been the end of the matter, but Liu decided to challenge my authority publicly. He wrote an unprecedented Information Note Response and distributed it to the other directors. Foolishly, I would not let the matter drop; and, shamefully, I made use of one his deputies, my ex-assistant, Ninel Horeva, in order to accumulate ammunition for further assaults. Ninel had coveted the environment director job herself and then, having failed to win it, resented her new chief. She helped select and exaggerate various lethargic practices in the environment division which I then used to question Liu's competence. Meanwhile, though, he presented the results of a study, contracted months earlier, presenting the dangers and inefficiencies of restarting projects without a full reassessment. He was right. I had been blind to the extent of the problems caused by, for example, the loss of local staff and expertise, damaged or stolen equipment, and the unavailability of original contractors. The spat only wounded me, but it did for Ninel. Liu got shot of her as soon as he could, and I was in no position to interfere. She chose to leave the UN system altogether (although this was not necessary) and work as a lobbyist, with a huge salary, for a large Russian consultancy organisation.

Instead of interfering downwards, I should have been doing more hobnobbing sideways with other UN agencies, and upwards with the Secretary General's staff and the General Assembly members, and more moving around the globe promoting the public face of the IFSD. And, if I had wanted to make the IFSD more efficient, I should have done it by a careful reorganisation of its structure and determined efforts to make life easier for the directors, not by trying to do their jobs for them.

Would I have been a better director-general if I had taken over at a less demanding time? I like to think that the odds were stacked heavily against anyone managing to guide the IFSD through that particular five year period. The Jihad War was only just over. The Singapore Peace Treaty promised to deliver more worldwide equality than mankind had ever known and a long-lasting peace (though there were many doubters on this latter pledge). It also increased the UN's power, under carefully circumscribed conditions, to pull together an intervention army, and to intervene within sovereign states or to control border conflicts. But the Jihad War had cost many lives, resulting in devastated families; and it had cost many trillions of dollars and euros, which had left most of the developed nations suffering their deepest recession of the century. Recovery was expected. Nevertheless, European and US middle-class citizens, however sympathetic with the plight of those less well off, were resentful about having to pay higher taxes, initially for the war, and then for increased overseas development aid. The UN's authority and position in the world had been preserved and enhanced by the Treaty, but there was a considerable downside in terms of public support and understanding of its work.

This public support did not recover in the short term, and when the UN was torn apart again a few years later by the Second Jihad War, it plummeted further. Today, thirty years later, I am pleased to say, the UN has fully re-established itself. I hope it will go from strength to strength in the 22nd century.

Indeed, I am inclined to believe there is some truth in Zoe Bergmann's simple and powerful theory that we will only ever be able to rid war from the face of the world when the United Nations, or similar, can establish a governing body with the biggest and most powerful army in the world. She says it may take a 100 or 500 years, but history shows a slow, if uneven, progression towards such an objective. Bergmann grew up in Vienna when the First Tuesday Movement, at least in Europe, was at its most idealistic. Her Jewish parents, both artists, brought her up on a diet of pacificism and FTM marches, and had a perfect right to expect her to develop traditional left-of-centre views. But, as a teenager, she rebelled and turned against them. She rejected a place at Linz University to join the then nascent European army at one of its bases near Trieste. For four years she trained as a soldier, and then as an officer, but all the while studying in her spare time. She waited, so her autobiography says, for a taste of combat, which came when the UN asked the army to help resolve a civil war in Jamaica (the Jamaica Skirmish), before leaving military service and winning a place at Heidelberg University to read history contexts and international politics.

It was only in the 60s, during the war, that Bergmann became a darling, as they used to say, of the English media, which often set her up against Gregory. They were both essentially historians, among the best of their generation, and they were both roughly the same age, but the similarities stopped there. She was quiet, controlled and forceful in the way she answered questions or argued in media/public debate; he was often loud, outrageous and long-winded. Whereas Bergmann's theories were the tips of icebergs of her research, it was not unknown for Gregory to make up a theory while on a live broadcast, and then spend six months putting together the research to back it up. Which is not to say that his intellect wasn't razor sharp, or that he wasn't (most of the time) an important social commentator.

In short, Bergmann based her theory on the mechanism known as 'survival of the fittest', initially employed by Charles Darwin to explain the drivers for evolution, but since adapted and used to understand other phenomena. However, although there had been attempts to weave Darwinian ideas and politics together, she was the first to do so coherently and to back it up with such a large amount of evidence, drawn from geo-historical analyses, that Darwin himself would have approved. She argues that for millennia, certainly since before Homo sapiens developed agriculture and civilisations, man, as opposed to woman, has been more disposed genetically to be aggressive. Early on, man needed to be aggressive to survive, to mate and to ensure his genes were passed on to the next generation. If he wasn't aggressive enough, then his genes didn't survive. In other words, and to put the survival of the fittest model the right way round, to be here today, a man's or woman's distant male ancestors are likely to have been aggressive. (This is a gross generalisation ­ the theory at its most rudimentary ­ but I only wish to mention the basic idea.)

In the period leading up to civilisation, to larger societies and to nation states, aggressive genes remained extremely useful for individual survival, wealth accumulation and mate choice. But these same genes meant that certain individual men in these societies accumulated far more power than most others, to the point of becoming rulers; and then, in continuing to express their aggressive genes, these rulers sought to extend their wealth and territory by taking over the wealth and territory of other rulers. Thus, Bergmann's theory goes, the powerful 'survival of the fittest' mechanism explains the tendency for aggressive people to rise into positions of power. But more than that, it explains why only strong societies survived, since weak ones were over-run by strong neighbours. Precisely the same principles have continued to apply up to recent times, she says, noting in one of her books that even in the 100 years after Hitler and Stalin, during the golden age of oil and chips, there were more than 500 wars, whether civil, border or international.

Despite these statistics, Bergmann says, the settlement and security of sovereign states, the integration of regions, the rapid growth of trade and multinational companies, and the growing importance of international organisations all meant that it did become more difficult during the golden era for aggressive out-of-control leaders to maintain their power bases. Moreover, democracy as a political system combined with the widespread use of democratic principles was so successful during recent prosperous times that many (intellectuals, politicians, ordinary citizens) thought it would be able to overcome the aggressive gene effect and man's historical tendency to war. Not so, says Bergmann. It has taken me far too long to arrive at this point, and it would have been quicker to use a summary from Encyclopaedia Universal.

Bergmann's key argument is this. She says the usefulness of the genes which dispose man to be aggressive lose their usefulness within stable democratic social systems based on equality and liberty, while other genes which express themselves in softer more feminine characteristics, and especially through women, tend to become more widely accepted, thereby influencing the society as a whole. This softening of one society as a whole, ultimately makes it vulnerable to another society which has not allowed itself to mature democratically (using Bergmann's terminology). By bunching themselves together for the best part of a century most of the rich mature nations ensured, with artful politics, threats and bribery, that the worst ravages of the immature and aggressive nations and groups were focused on each other. But this strategy was never going to work forever, not while a large proportion of the world remained poor, under-developed and without the influence of strong democratic principles. It was inevitable that some new aggressive empire (i.e. the male-dominated Muslim sphere, as led by Al Zahir) would arise and challenge the developed world for its riches. There can be no end to such a cycle, Bergmann claims, until a world government has sufficient authority to distribute wealth, and until it has a large enough army to act as the world's policeman. Only then can democracy thrive; and only then will the expression and the advantages of man's aggressive gene diminish and fade away.

This was far from a populist theory when presented in the 70s. It attracted considerable opposition from many different quarters, and Bergmann was mercilessly lampooned in the downmarket media (encouraged by Gregory's cheap ridiculing of her). But she marshalled her research so carefully, and her books were so well documented that the historical and political establishments could not vanquish her ideas, however doggedly they tried. While many intellectuals believed the theory reeked of hopelessness, because they could only see into the short term, I was of the opposite view. I believed her when she claimed mankind was moving forwards, albeit very slowly and jerkily, towards a time when a peaceful world could be possible. I suppose I was predisposed to believe in Bergmann's prediction because the United Nations and its evolution was such an important line of evidence in her argument, and I had spent most of my life working for, and believing in, the UN system.

I tried, on many occasions, to persuade Lizette of these ideas. As with others of her sex, though, she got stuck emotionally on the suggestion that, if societies were strongly influenced or dominated by women and women's ideals, they would be weaker than nations dominated by men. For some reason she would not or could not see beyond this basic principle to the more subtle of Bergmann's points that, given a chance, societies choose to 'mature' by becoming more feminine, and that, ultimately, male aggression and blundering will lose out to female gentleness and wiles.

***

As director-general of the IFSD I did do plenty of globetrotting and hobnobbing with power and money brokers, although, as I've said, not as much as I should have done. Half the time, I felt as though my role was little more than chief public relations officer. Not only did I have to present and promote our work around the world but I had to do so to the IFSD boards, the UN's General Assembly and other institutions. Life in this regard was not made easy by the fact that, after much negotiation, the world's leaders had decided that Ojoru should be brought out of retirement to take on the role of Secretary General. He was not, though, appointed for his administrative or management abilities, which had once been formidable: it was widely known that, in the later years of his political career in Nigeria and leading the African Union, he had become increasingly autocratic. No, he was chosen because of his geopolitical colour. Unfortunately, as Secretary General his imperious style had consequences. It led to the upper echelons of many parts of the UN system developing a bloated bureaucracy. Thus, to give one small example, a two-sentence command from one of his many personal advisers calling for a report into the under-representation of Gambians in UN staff and contract positions would lead to excessively burdensome administration tasks and a huge waste of resources. Which is not to say that Ojoru was not the man for the job, if anyone could have avoided the Second Jihad War, it might have been him.

Incidentally, my friend Alfred might have been in Ojoru's cabinet at the UN headquarters (giving me a useful listening post in the higher stratosphere) if he hadn't burnt his bridges with the man. When Alfred thought Ojoru was a spent force, in the 50s, he spoke his mind to the media and to biographers, criticising his former president for behaving 'like a dictator'. Mostly I sensed (largely from letters written in the 40s) that his criticism was kindled out of a disappointment that Ojoru had been corrupted by power, and, as a result, had not achieved as much as many, including Alfred himself, had hoped. Alfred also told me later (in confidence, which I am now breaking) about an unbelievable incident during which Ojoru had demanded Alfred lick his shoes.

Travelling was a pain. I had done relatively little of it as a director, choosing, as often as possible, to use the cam-conference facilities to get business done. But the ceremonial (which is how I thought about them) duties of a director-general included many activities which could not be done via a screen: opening new IFSD premises, launching IFSD programmes, singing the praises of the IFSD to the presidents of donor nations or multinationals, and enthusing staff in all four corners of the globe. Very occasionally I looked forward to a trip, such as the one to Brazil in February 62, but this was only because it would give me a chance to catch up with Arturo, and to revisit Rio.

I delegated most of the research and planning for this mission to Eduardo, since it had been his notion originally and since he would be travelling by my side. The main priority was for me to be seen opening a new IFSD building in Brasilia. Further, I was scheduled to attend a series of meetings with the IFSD staff, two Brazilian ministers, a collective group of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the regional Latin American Community Organisation (LACO). In addition, Eduardo planned for me to fly to La Paz so that I could personally launch a multimillion programme for the Andean countries aimed at reviving traditional craft skills, particularly weaving. The concept for the programme had been tried and tested in other regions of the world, and had proved highly successful in terms of employment, local community integration, and attracting tourism. Eduardo had convinced me that my visit to La Paz would go a long way to reviving the IFSD's reputation in the area, and would serve to persuade the (somewhat reluctant) Bolivian government to promote the schemes. About a week before we were due to leave, I received a communication from Ojoru's office suggesting I cancel the La Paz extension to my trip. When I asked Eduardo for an explanation, he shrugged his shoulders. I requested Chidi, who had the best line into Ojoru's cabinet, to find out more. Later the same day, he came to my office, his fingers wiggling more than usual. There was a human rights issue, he said, which another UN agency was trying to deal with behind the scenes, under much pressure from Amnesty International, and it had caught the ear of one of Ojoru's advisers. Eduardo argued strenuously that it would do more harm than good to cancel the meeting, and went so far as to accuse Ojoru's adviser, a Peruvian, of trying to sabotage my visit simply because my itinerary did not include Lima. I weighed up all the information I had been given, and struck La Paz off the agenda. Unfortunately, this decision seriously undermined my relationship with Eduardo, although, because he chaperoned me on the tour with good humour and professionalism, I did not realise it at the time.

Of all the IFSD offices I ever visited the one in Brasilia, designed by a Petrópolis School architect, was the most striking. South America had been largely untouched by the physical devastation of the Jihad War. It had suffered an economic downturn, caused by the general global economic recession, but not as badly as elsewhere. More IFSD projects had continued uninterrupted in this continent than in any other region of the world, although this was not many given the general disintegration of UN decision-making structures. Brazil's great leader, Neco the Prosperous, had originally planned to redevelop and rebuild the derelict aeroplane of Brasilia (originally, in the 20th century, the capital city had been socially planned and engineered in the shape of an aircraft), but it took another 20 years, through the 50s and early 60s, for the work to be implemented. The new IFSD building formed part of the redevelopment in the Jardim Botanico sector. It was twenty stories tall, slightly concave on all five sides, with lime-green and lemon-yellow glass panelling and IFSD logos etched into each of the wavy solar window-hoods.

My discourse, given on a large raised terrace overlooking the botanical gardens themselves, was well received. Eduardo had culled parts of it from presentations given on similar occasions. Other speeches were given by the mayor of Brasilia, the government's foreign minister, and the LACO executive director. When the speeches were finished, it was my task to smash the magnum of Brazilian champagne against the Harkness Cylinder. I'd done this enough times before to know the form, but I rarely knew in advance exactly what each Cylinder would deliver. On this occasion, it was scores of self-inflating green and yellow balloons, three self-inflating tethered flags (the IFSD, Brazil, and LACO), and remote triggers for day-time fireworks to sparkle above the rising balloons, and for samba music to start up. There were whoops of joy from the crowd of invitees and IFSD employees, and then, as had become customary with the use of Harkness Cylinders, I presented the (unbroken) magnum to one of the (pre-chosen) lower-ranking employees who worked in the building.

There was nothing remarkable about the occasion, except that my son Arturo was in the audience. This was the only time, as far as I can remember, that any of my children saw me perform an official function. Previously, by email, I had suggested to Arturo that we meet in Rio, because I would have more free time there. But he lived and worked in Goiânia, which was much nearer to Brasilia than Rio. So, I had asked Eduardo to organise a special pass for him to be admitted to the IFSD function. Only after the balloons went up did I catch sight of him at the back of the terrace, smiling widely and raising a glass towards me. We did not speak more than a couple of words together through the buffet lunch, such was Eduardo's zeal in introducing me to as many notables as possible. But, for half an hour, between the official end of the building launch event and my first meeting of the afternoon, I was able to sit alone with Arturo in a peaceful library room (used only for meetings, but lined with books that had been placed for wall decoration). For a few minutes I let Arturo flatter me, about my appearance and my IFSD performance. He asked about Lizette and Jay (who was a walking 20 month toddler by this time). And then, without missing a beat, he said it must be odd to be a father and a grandfather at the same time, to have a son almost the same age as a granddaughter.

'What granddaughter?'

'Alicia, naturalmente.' He was smiling. Sometimes with Arturo you could find yourself smiling back without knowing why (even on the camphone) but this was not one of those occasions.

'Arturo, who is she? Who is Alicia?' I began to suspect he must have a newly-discovered daughter from a past relationship. Like father, like son.

'What you think about cloning?' I recall that his English had deteriorated, but his grin was no less supercilious.

'Are you going to tell me about Alicia?'

'You tell me about cloning, your opinion.'

Despite countless questions by email, and shortish conversations by camphone at Christmas or on his birthday or mine, I knew next to nothing about Arturo's life, other than that he had married Edna, a cute black girl from Fortaleza in 55, and that his own success had grown with that of O Futuro, the company that employed him. I should have known about O Futuro, but I didn't.

'No, I'm not.' My free minutes were ticking away. 'Stop playing games and tell me about Alicia.'

'OK, but remember I try to warn you. OK. She is my daughter. She is cloned from me. Edna was infertile. She agreed. She is four years old.' Cloning female daughters from male parents, using two different sperm to gather the X chromosomes, was demonstrated successfully in the 20s, and the technique had gone commercial in the 40s. But, even in the 50s, it was considered a more risky procedure than same sex cloning.

'FOUR!'

'Yes. If you want, we go tonight to Goiânia, to my house, and you meet her. But not Edna. She is gone away. We can go in my plane. It's easy, one hour. I bring you back late tonight or early morning.'

I read (in one of Gregory's books) that there were many similarities between the tone and extent of the political and moral debate about abortion in the 20th century and the debate on cloning in the 21st century. The content, though, was very different. At the international level, the Europe Union, the US and most other Catholic and Muslim nations negotiated, during the 10s and 20s, very basic objectives through a UN Convention on the Limitations of Human Cloning (and, in time, this did lead to the broad-ranging Agency for Genetic and Cloning Techniques). But some very large countries, including Brazil, China and Russia refused to accept the harmonised objectives, and instead nurtured social welfare and commercial cloning industries. The European Union and the US went their own separate, but similar, ways, developing far more detailed rules than those at the UN level. In practice, these outlawed human cloning, except in very exceptional circumstances, until such a time as it could be proved that the techniques led to a risk of infant mortality no greater than under normal birth conditions. As a requirement of the same rules, the policy and the risk rates were to be re-examined once a decade (this point was agreed between Europe and the US).

Experience accumulated in the countries with cloning industries and this helped the pro-cloning lobby elsewhere not only to gather and present real scientific evidence for the decadal reviews, but to put forward scientific, humanitarian and commercial justifications for a legitimate development of their own cloning activities. Nevertheless, by the 50s and 60s, the pro-cloning lobby in Europe and the US had failed to make much headway. One reason for this was the strong link created, by many anti-cloning politicians and religious leaders, between cloning and the suicide epidemic in the 40s. According to Gregory, a statistically higher proportion of suicides in some countries were early clones from the 20s, although, overall, the numbers were comparatively low. Moreover, he pointed out that millions had been affected psychologically by the very idea of cloning, and that while some of these people had harnessed their anxieties into passionate campaigning, others had found it undermined the value of life and their belief systems, whether religious or moral, to the point of mental implosion. It's also worth noting that Pope Maria spoke strongly against cloning in her first Christmas Day address in 52.

Personally, I was completely opposed to cloning, as were the majority of Europeans. I could not be moved by the stories of couples that had lost their only child in the war or as a result of tragic accidents, or of young women who had been unable to conceive because they were victims of crimes. I understood all too well that the world was full of tragedy, but, for me, it was a question of priorities. Even as a young man, I never approved of the billions of dollars and euros that were spent on cloning research or on other medical techniques designed to improve, ever more incrementally, the well-being of rich Western peoples, while poverty, inadequate drainage and water supplies, and impoverished inoculation programmes in many parts of the world meant that the life-expectancy gap between the US and, say, Sudan continued to increase not decrease. In this belief, I was much influenced by Triti Madan, the Indian professor who had delivered such a powerful lecture to us at the London School of Economics.

Arturo was waiting for me with a taxi at around seven. It took less than 30 minutes to drive to the airport, past many colourful and luminescent Petrópolis School buildings, to board Arturo's Amazonia light-jet, a six-seater silvered plane. It was fuelled, I knew, with the aviation biofuel Vivido, one of Brazil's most important export success stories of the previous 30 years or so.

During the flight, I questioned my son, initially about his work, and then about his reasons for cloning himself to create (how horrible that verb sounds in this context, even today) Alicia. He told me that O Futuro manufactured medical equipment, including the sophisticated devices used for animal and human cloning. Moreover, it owned a subsidiary, in Goiânia, which operated at the high end of the human cloning market. It did good business, mostly for rich Americans and Brazilians who had failed to conceive through normal channels or simply wanted to avoid the trauma of childbirth. Since concluding his degree at Imperial College (the degree I had funded), Arturo had worked for O Futuro in developing the commercial human cloning business. He had kept this information from me, he said, because he suspected I would not approve. I did not.

Arturo lived in a large modern villa, complete with a swimming pool, stables and a field for two dappled horses. Several staff were present on our arrival. One showed me to a room so I could shower and put on a new shirt Arturo had provided for me, another brought us caiparinhas, and yet another discussed, with Arturo, the meal we would have later. After rejoining Arturo on the marble terrace overlooking the pool, a woman named Luz, who looked as though she had stepped out of a men's lifestyle magazine, brought Alicia to meet me. There was no doubting she looked like Arturo, in a babyish, girlish sort of way. But, however much Arturo had rigged her genes, she was still my granddaughter, and I was predisposed, if not pre-programmed, to want to love her. This was the awful dilemma about human cloning: an individual (or a nation) could oppose the idea, but once a cloned individual existed nothing other than normal decent human emotions (or laws) could be deemed appropriate in dealing with that individual. Moreover, for most of us, it was hard to keep up any serious level of chastisement against those who had cloned themselves because ultimately this would reflect on the innocent children. Today, there are still those who are violently prejudiced against cloned individuals and their parents, but, thankfully, they are dying out (literally, since most of them are old).

I have a camclip of the two us together taken by Luz and sent to me by Arturo a few days later. Here it is now, the picture is grainy because Luz must have had the cam on the wrong setting. It starts with a view of tiny Alicia, wearing dark jeans, a red tank top and long pink hair, leading giant me by the hand along a broad marble hallway to her bedroom, which is strawberry coloured and servant-tidy. From there, the camera follows us to Alicia's toy room, complete with an English style doll's house, dozens of dolls and a sophisticated console for the wallscreen, and then through a side door to an enclosed paddock where a shiny grey pony is galloping around. Alicia is jumping around shaking her head, her pink hair flying from side to side. She is shouting (in Portuguese): 'He is my Angel. I want to ride. Can I ride?' The camera swings round towards Arturo, as if looking for an answer to Alicia's request. Arturo puts a smile on for the camera, and tells Alicia it is time for bed. I had forgotten, until seeing this clip again, how Arturo looked then: tall, very erect and admirably slim, smartly dressed in perfectly pressed trousers and shirt, both in creamy silk or silkette. On both wrists he wore chunky loose gold bracelets; a large gold medallion hung around his neck. Most striking of all, he had dyed yellowy-golden hair (short and curly), eyebrows and lashes. On the IFSD building terrace he had stood out, as if the sun shone for him alone, which, I guess, is why I had noticed him at the back of the large crowd.

I did ask what had happened to Alicia's mother Edna, suspecting she might never have agreed to the cloning and had left because of that. But Arturo reiterated ­ and I had no reason to disbelieve him ­ that she was unable to have children. So then I asked how they had decided which one of them should be the clone parent, and which procedure they should follow. It was as though I had pulled a gun on him. The warmth in his face was dismissed in an instant, giving way to a powerful vicious look I'd not seen before.

'It was my way, naturalmente; I did not want Alicia to have the same problems. The ones Edna had. And, it was my company, my work. It had to be my way.'

'Then it must have been tough for Edna, being a stepmother.' I struggled to comprehend the implications of Alicia having been cloned. Although friends and colleagues had talked about the cloning experiences of people they knew, I'd never come up against the reality of cloning gene-to-gene as it were.

'The truth is she died of a drug overdose, the day before Alicia's first birthday.'

'Poor her. Poor Alicia. You've kept a lot from me.' It was a stupid thing to say in the circumstances.

Arturo apologised for not flying back with me to Brasilia. We embraced stiffly next to his jet on the runway of a private airstrip not far from his villa. He promised he would send a copy of the camclip and that he would contact me the next time he was in Europe. I thought about Arturo and Alicia on the journey back to Brasilia. Arturo's villa had been fitted out with expensive decor and furbishings but it was all superficial allure, reeking only of money and vanity. I had always thought, or hoped, there was more to my son than had appeared on the surface. As a younger man, his charm had seemed to give him substance, but in middle-age it hung on him like the loose gold bracelets around his arms. I realised that I had come to despise him. It was not solely because of what he did for a job, or what he had done, because, in the context of a life spent working for a company such as O Futuro, a desire to clone his own child did not seem so outrageous. It was because of who he had become.

But, as for the sweet lively Alicia, I had the pleasant memory of her miniature hand in mine, leading me confidently through the house, eager to show off her doll's house and pony. Yet it was impossible not to wonder what would become of the child, so motherless and spoilt.

It was not until I was back in the hotel (the Corazon) at about one in the morning that I checked through the day's messages. A whole 12 hours earlier, Anna Mastepanov had requested I call her immediately. She answered on the first ring as if she had been holding the receiver in her hand. I tried to apologise for not having replied earlier, but she was distraught and speaking fast. Alan had suffered a massive coronary the previous night, gone into a coma, and had died during the late morning. There was nothing that could be done for him. I offered to switch on the cam, to allow us to be more personal, more intimate, but she declined. Instead, she talked without stopping for several minutes, faster and with a more pronounced accent than I remember. She told me how he had been so well in recent weeks, how they had spent a month over Christmas on Corfu (from where, I realised, I had received my last ever communication from him) with some friends, and how the 'damn bloody cold' had killed him on their return. She said that he had talked so often about me, it was as though I were a regular visitor to their home. But this was too much for me to bear. I had to stop her flow and apologise for never having visited in person, and, bizarrely, I found myself trying to make excuses for this, as if there could be any. My outburst had the effect of calming Anna down. She tried to explain that this was not my fault at all, but hers because she should have persuaded Alan not to be so shy of pressing me to come.

'He loved you, like his own son.'

'Did he? I loved him like a father too. I only wish ... I only wish ...'

'It's fine. He lived well. He did good things. He was a precious, precious man. Now we must warm ourselves with his memory.'

It was Anna who eventually brought the conversation round to practicalities. She told me when the funeral would be, and insisted, knowing where I was, that I should not interrupt my important mission nor fly halfway round the world for the funeral. I considered what she had said for a few seconds, and then agreed. It would feel so wrong, I told her, to make such an effort to go there now he's dead, when I never made a tenth of the effort when he was alive. I said I would write and asked that a few of my words be read at the funeral.

I slept fitfully that night, disturbed less by his death (he was, after all, in his 90s) than by my own self-pity and self-anger at never having made the journey to St Petersburg. The next morning, over breakfast, I told Eduardo the news. He offered me his condolences, but was anxious to know whether he would need to cancel or re-arrange any of our forthcoming meetings. When I reassured him that I had no plans to cancel any appointments, a sharp memory suddenly shot into my consciousness. It was of the email I had received, in 21 during my student holiday to Brazil, which informed me about the death of my grandmother, Alan's mother, Eileen. What I recalled so vividly was how the news of her death had struck me with fear: fear that I would be summoned home and my Brazilian adventure would be curtailed before it had begun.

***

Jay and Vince took me out to the garden yesterday, Saturday, the first time for many weeks. Not to the rose garden, for it was busy with too many children visitors, but to what Flora refers to as the 'twut' (as in two hut) garden. It has been such a wet summer, but the fuchsias, which remind me of Lizette, are in good colour ('dripping crimsons, purples, violets', she would say). The hibiscus plants are also doing well. There are so many scattered through the gardens, I suspect there must have been a gardener in generations past who had a passion for them. Vince is walking again, and full of praise for something called the Alexander Technique which he is employing as a way of restoring order to his body. He wanted to explain in detail but Jay, who has been following the evolution of this chapter with some concern, had another agenda. To begin with, he told me that Guido and Mireille would be making a rare return visit to Holland from Ecuador in late October (no news could have brought me more joy), and that, therefore, Vince and he had decided to take a two week holiday overlapping the same period. Then, using Vince as an unwitting adjudicator, he asked why, in my Reflections, I had fast forwarded to 62 skipping entirely over his own birth. Even though he knows full well I'm not following a strict chronology, I can understand why he jumped to that conclusion: in our discussions of the last few days, I've been preparing myself to press even further ahead and tackle the events of 64.

I reassured Jay he was not being left out (to murmurings of approval from Vince: 'Better not, or you'll have me to deal with.' I do like Vince, but where was this loyalty six months ago?) How could I leave Jay out? He's my anchor. Without him I would have drifted away many moons ago, leaving not a whit, not a jot, not a single reflection.

While I struggled with the elevated role at the IFSD, my relationship with Lizette flowered. We met most weekends, when I was not away, mostly in The Hague, since she had more time for the travel. Occasionally I trained to Brussels and we went from there to a high-class hotel in Ghent or Leuven to pamper ourselves during an overnight stay. We spoke every night on the camphone. At Lizette's suggestion, we both installed camphone facilities in the bedroom so we could chat from our beds. As we became more relaxed with this system, so we began to natter while preparing for bed. Thus, by accident (or Lizette's wiliness) we developed a pattern of pleasuring ourselves voyeuristically. To an outsider, this might seem a one-sided arrangement, to my advantage, but Lizette enjoyed pleasing me and watching my pleasure. Moreover, she had her own ways of achieving sexual satisfaction while on the camphone. Best of all, though, our virtual sex enhanced the real thing at weekends. Now that I am in the late afternoon chapters of this book (misconstruing the old cliche), I may not stray again to matters intimate, but this is one happy ending: sex in my sixties and early seventies was the best I ever had. Thank you Lizette (with apologies to Jay for saying a little more than he called for).

In July 60, when the European University semester finished, Lizette came to live in my apartment on Van Hogenhouckstraat for six weeks before returning to England. Then she went to the Midlands to see her friends and undertake some emotional negotiations with Clint, and from there to her Ma and Pa in Weston-super-Mare. She gave birth to Jay in a local hospital, and, having taken maternity leave, remained for the rest of the year at her parent's spacious bungalow. It was during that winter, when baby Jay was first taking in the bright lights of the world, that the lights went dark for his GrandPa. Having suffered from a form of muscular dystrophy for many years, Mervyn Sanderson finally expired from pneumonia. (Only later did I learn that Lizette had, many years earlier, organised a genetic profile for herself and Clint so as to ensure any children they bore would not inherit her father's disease or any other testable genetic weakness. This knowledge, it transpired, was another factor in Lizette's semi-conscious decision to have a pot-luck fuck with Clint.) Because of various complications, not least the baby and the dying father, I only met up with Lizette twice during this period. Once when I flew to Bristol and we stayed in a hotel there for two nights, and once in Brussels when she needed to check on her apartment and carry out some administrative duties. She was distraught on this occasion, because, despite special payment, the building concierge had let her tub fuchsias, which decorated the glassed-in balcony overlooking Parc de Cinquantenaire, dry out and die. Soon after settling in at the bungalow in Weston-super-Mare, though, she had a private camphone installed in her room, so we were able to talk as regularly as before; and I was able to monitor the baby's progress. In January 61, she returned to Brussels, found an excellent creche for Jay, and resumed her life, and pattern with me, albeit one more constrained than previously.

The three-way relationship worked surprisingly well. Lizette was eager to put my paternal experience to good use, and to balance it against her own maternal (and, to my mind, overprotective) instincts. I adored Jay as if he were my own child, which was fortunate because Lizette had decided that it would be better for him if Clint played no part in his life. We had many discussions about this, especially in the context of my suggestion that we form a co-op for Jay. I proposed that we should find some way of including Clint. Lizette could not be persuaded. She knew, she said, he did not want a child, and that he would make a lousy father. We thought about Lizette's brothers and Rhoda for the co-op and rejected them too. Mercurio was, apparently, feckless, and had embedded himself with the Notek movement, and Samuel was too caught up in his own family and work. Rhoda, Lizette argued, would only be a bad influence. In the end, we agreed to form the Jay co-op ourselves, just the two of us, and we went so far as to use the Dutch legal framework for co-ops, which had proved itself relatively stable. This required us getting Clint's written approval, but Lizette had no trouble in obtaining it.

During 62, Lizette made regular weekend trips to Weston-super-Mare because of her mother's deteriorating health, and, whenever I was available, she would come first to The Hague to drop Jay off before flying to Bristol. I have very fond memories of wheeling him in his chair through Westbroek Park to the playground, and reading the Sunday papers while watching his antics on the clambering frames and tussle-jumpers. Towards the end of that year, Lizette's mother stepped over the edge, deliberately, to follow her husband to a better place.

It was not until 63 that Lizette, Jay and I, in our personal life together, had a trouble-free year. We took a substantial joint holiday during the summer, to a gîte near Poitiers in France; but little stands out from those weeks, except a feeling of relief at leaving work behind, and an equally strong sentiment that serendipity had brought me Lizette. Two events that same year, though, are worth recording.

In the spring, Anna Mastepanov came to visit for three days. She was on her way to Brussels, Paris and London to commune (I can't think what other word to use) with people important to Alan. The week before her arrival, a large trunk of Alan's things were delivered to my apartment. There were all the papers, storage disks and personal items he had specified for me in his will, plus a number of mementoes that Anna wanted me to have. She was a lovely lady, older than me in years, but younger in spirit, full of bright but controlled enthusiasms. We spent most of one day going through the papers and items. Inspired by these, Anna talked at length about his passions, achievements and friendships, and about their life together. And, on the second day, we looked at the many photos and camclips on her personal digital memory store, accessed through the net. There were surprises.

For more than 30 years, Alan had donated a minimum of 10% of his income to a health clinic in a small town in Bangladesh. He had visited it often, and knew many of the people there. Anna, too, had been on three visits and was full of stories about the lives of the characters in the camclips and about how the clinic had served not only the town's health but its economic well-being.

At one moment, Anna saw me drifting away in my thoughts, looking wistful, and asked me why. This was the difference between Alan and me, I said. He had helped on the ground, with people, real people, getting his hands dirty, spending his own money, risking his own life, sacrificing his own time. And I thought, but did not say, that he had done and lived while I had only done and lived by proxy. Anna cut short my maudlin self-pity to tell me that Alan's view was the complete reverse.

'It's easy to help, he used to say, but few can help ­ like Kip does ­ when it comes to the big picture. He was very proud of you,' she said. 'I would hate for you to forget that for one minute.'

Another surprise was that Alan had an adopted son, a Czech man called Karel. There were photographs, but no camclips, of Alan together with a woman called Tamara (who I had met once in Brussels) and Karel as a child, and of Karel alone at different ages through to adulthood. Anna knew little of Karel's history. Tamara, it seems, had been very keen on adopting a deprived child, but then, soon after the adoption, she had fallen out with Alan and run away. He had never had any contact with either of them since then, except that occasionally a photograph would arrive by email. Subsequently, I searched all through Alan's records and his few personal jottings but there was no correspondence to or from Tamara (which shows he must have carefully edited his files in good time before dying) and no explanation of why he had never told me or my mother about Karel. On our third day together, Anna and I strolled around the city. We talked about Diana, Guido and Lizette; and then, tearfully, she left to continue her pilgrimage of sorts. She was heading for Paris next, to see Monique.

If I were to trawl through my own papers, I might find other events that year more worth recording that the short trip I made to the world volleyball finals in Munich. Fortunately, these are only my Reflections, and I've long since demonstrated that I have no intention of documenting my life or the world around in any rigorous way. One morning, in autumn 62, MarySue called through to tell me that she had a very strange person on the line. He insisted on talking to me personally, MarySue said, but refused to say what about. He said his name was Sanfry and that it was personal and important. There was something about the name Sanfry which rang a bell, and so, against my better judgement, I told MarySue to put him through. As soon as I heard the word volleyball, I remembered who he was. Alfred had kept me informed of his progress over the years: starting with the Nigerian team aged 17, he had become its captain at 20 and led it to a world championship triumph in the early 40s. Now, as president of the World Volleyball Association (WVA), he was calling to ask if I would present the trophy to the winning team at the world cup finals in May 63. Because such an event was beyond my usual public appearance portfolio, I hesitated slightly. But then, when Sanfry explained the details of another duty I was to perform at the same time, I accepted the invitation with alacrity.

Alfred. Alfred. Alfred. To my shame, I had forgotten about him recently. I spoke to Chidi as soon as I had finished the conversation with Sanfry. He had no recent news either, so I asked MarySue to track him down. On the phone, I heard the voice of a resigned man. I learned how resentful he was of Ojoru, how his wife Fayola had left him for a richer man, and how his son, Fela, had become a banker, 'a greedy man'. I discovered that he was working in public relations for an agricultural exporter, biding his time until he could afford to retire and go to live on Zanzibar. He had bought a plot of land there many years previously, and wanted to build a house. Later the same day I talked to Chidi again. Within a month, we had created a place for him as a special adviser in the IFSD's Abuja office, not I hasten to add out of charity, but because we knew he could be an excellent interface between The Hague and Abuja offices, and between the IFSD and the Nigerian administration.

I did not see Alfred in person until the Munich volleyball finals. I sent him a return plane ticket, with an option to travel on from Munich to The Hague for a few extra days (which he did not use). I persuaded another of my old volleyball buds, Peter de Roo, into accompanying me for the weekend. It turned out to be a fantastic trip. Alfred knew many of the people there, but even Peter and I (long-since aliens to the volleyball scene) found several long-forgotten buds from the summer contests of our student days. We watched four matches, two semi-finals on the Saturday, and, on the Sunday, a youth cup final (the US versus Brazil) and the world cup final (Nigeria versus Russia). I sat with Sanfry and all the high officials of the volleyball association, while Peter and Alfred sat a few rows behind in seats that Sanfry had secured for them. During the youth match, Sanfry talked throughout; he wanted to explain his personal debt to Alfred, and then to reaffirm how much he had done for Nigerian volleyball over the years. After I had awarded the trophy to the winning youth team, and its members had left the arena, I was due to deliver a short speech and hand over a WVA annual award for services to volleyball. Earlier, I had arranged with a technician to use the big overhead screens to show a camclip I'd given him access to. I began by asking the 10,000 audience to humour me for a minute. The technician launched the clip, and I spoke over the top of it.

'Fifty years ago, Italy beat Croatia in a European cup quarter-final that was held in Guildford near my home town in England. It was universally acknowledged to be one of most exciting games of volleyball you could ever wish to see. Italy went on beat Spain in the final, and then to reach the finals of the world championship two years later.'

The camclip froze, and my 13 year old (grainy) self filled the screens. I paused for effect. My heart was thumping so loud I feared the microphone would pick it up. I had grown used to public speaking, but this was personal, not work, and I had not adequately discounted for the difference.

'This is me, ladies and gentlemen. And you can see, by my showing it today, how proud I am of my appearance as a ball-boy at that famous match. It was the day that volleyball entered my soul.' (Chidi thought 'soul' was more appropriate than my suggestion of 'heart'. I should say that Chidi assisted me in drafting the speech, which was kind of him for it was not official business. He had a gift for speech-writing, and knew how to enliven my dull drafts, to spice them up, while keeping to a style that suited my way of speaking.)

'I was so fired up by those European championships that, not many weeks later, while waiting in the queue in the school canteen, I waylaid a boy I didn't know.' I stopped to turn and look at Alfred to see if he had understood where this was going. It had been Sanfry's decision to keep the award a secret.

'Perhaps things have changed but, in my day, talking to someone you didn't know, from a different year was taboo. And the only reason I spoke to this boy was his height. I knew he would be perfect for our volleyball team. We soon became good friends. He went on to captain our team and lead our school to its greatest sporting triumphs. I may be exaggerating, but then who cares about football or athletics.' I was worried about this line, but Chidi, who knew nothing about volleyball, understood what specialist audiences enjoy. It drew a great applause, and I was glad we kept it in. I went on to list Alfred's achievements in Nigeria, and Nigeria's achievements in the world, not only in terms of success on court, but in terms of encouraging other developing nations to nurture their sporting talent. I then closed with the following words.

'Forgive me if I have drawn a straight line from my recruiting efforts in the school canteen to the presentation of this award today, but you all know the achievements are his, and that I have been but a bedazzled bystander. And I cannot end without saying, in all honesty, that I would not be here today, presenting this award, were it not for a lifetime of this man's friendship and support. So you can understand why I am overjoyed to present the 2063 WVA award for services to volleyball to my great and dear friend Alfred Ajose.'

Alfred made his way down from behind us and manoeuvred himself onto the walkway in front of where I was standing. I didn't shake his hand as I had done with the captains of the youth teams. Instead, we instinctively slapped palms in our accustomed manner, to the delight of the crowd; and only then did I pick up the trophy and present him with it. He turned and bowed elegantly to the crowd receiving a huge ovation, and returned to his seat. No sooner had I sat down, emotionally drained, than the presenter came on the loudspeakers to introduce the teams for the world cup final. Sanfry chattered throughout the game, probably to divert himself from the pain of seeing Russia defeat Nigeria by three sets to none. I didn't mind the dull match because it left Alfred's award as the climax of the day.

***

Now I should move on from this high point to a very low one. In September 64, during a routine visit to Belfast, I was kidnapped. It was the second most physically dramatic episode of my life, second only to Cyclone Kip. Though it concluded as no more than melodrama, it was to lead to my resignation from the IFSD. The timing could not have been worse (to mimic one of the media's most beloved expressions) as I was due to be in Paris a few days later for the wedding of Guido and Mireille. I arrived by jet without any delays in Ireland's second city, installed myself at the O'Hilton, and completed two separate meetings with ministers and their officials, one of which included lunch. My schedule then allowed me a free half an hour in the hotel room to make calls. From there I was due to find my way alone (my assistant having gone on ahead) to the adjacent O'Hilton Conference Centre to deliver a keynote speech to an important gathering of international environmental NGOs, many of whom worked with the IFSD all over the world. While on the phone to MarySue, there was a knock on my door. A waiter presented me with a tray containing a teapot, cup, milk and biscuits. I protested mildly that I hadn't ordered tea, but, while trying to concentrate on MarySue's messages, he walked in and deposited the tray on a table. I thanked him as he left. I know I finished my call, drank the tea, and looked at the text of my speech. After that I recall nothing, nothing at all. I learned later, from the police, that I had been given an illegal mental anaesthesia drug, and that two captors had walked me out through the back staircase and the hotel's rear entrance, while successfully using beaked caps to hide their faces from the surveillance cams. Apart from the rest, which I am about to record as succinctly as possible, it was terrifying to experience one of these hypnosis drugs for myself: to realise that I could have been persuaded to do anything, while appearing compos mentis, and yet remember nothing.

I recall waking, feeling very groggy, and finding myself in a shoddily furnished basement room with one high window of frosted wired glass, a table, chairs and a heater. I didn't know if it was the same day or the next morning. My watch, phonepad, identicard and cashcards had all been removed from my suit pockets. I was lying on a threadbare sofa with one hand cuffed to a metal backplate. My head hurt. Water and biscuits were in reach on a rectangular plastic-wood table. I desperately needed the toilet. I assumed I had been taken hostage, but had no idea why or by whom. Why would anyone kidnap me, and in Ireland, such an unturbulent place? I shouted out for help. No-one came. I drank some water, and the ache in my head eased. I thought about my conference speech and felt sure I must have been missed; then I thought about Guido and his wedding on Saturday; then I debated whether to urinate through a gap in the cushions onto the floor behind the sofa (I was desperate); and then I remembered the tracer in my ear.

Whoever had kidnapped me, they were not top-notch professionals or else they would have made allowances for the possibility of a tracer. They could have put me in a deep bunker, or dressed me in a metal fabric jump suit with metallic ear pads (earlobes being the most common location for tracers), or questioned me and cut the tracer out without causing a serious wound. Being taken hostage was a chronic risk for all those travelling into the less stable parts of the world. Mostly rich businessmen and politicians were snatched and ransomed, but there had been two top UN officials abducted in the 50s. As a consequence around 300 key UN staff were offered tracer implants. I became one of the chosen when I took over as the IFSD's director-general. Each tracer had a unique code and could be identified through special equipment, controlled by a carefully vetted commercial company, based on the Galileo satellite system. (Such tracers were widely used for other purposes, by police and prison services, for example, to keep track of undesirables, and by ethologists to monitor animal migrations.)

I tried to calculate what should have happened. When I failed to show for the conference presentation, my assistant would have returned to the hotel, checked with the management, checked my room, and then called MarySue. Not finding any note or message as to my whereabouts, the Irish police would have been contacted, and they would have begun an enquiry within, I calculated, two hours of my disappearance. That would have been at about 4pm. Meantime MarySue would have gone to my desk to find an envelope she knew was there to be opened in such an emergency. She would then have called the special UN elite security group, which in turn would have contacted the upper echelon of the Irish police. That would have taken at most another 90 minutes, say two hours. I was, therefore, fairly sure that by 6pm somebody somewhere should have known where I was.

I shouted again. This time the door opened and a tallish man came in. He was carrying a gun, and wearing a black hood with large eyes holes, a bomber jacket and scruffy jeans. A youthful male voice asked me what I wanted, and I said I was desperate for the toilet. He went out of the room for a few moments, and, when he returned, unlocked the cuff, and led me a few steps through the door to a filthy smelly bathroom, where I was able to relieve myself. He then escorted me back. I tried asking questions but was told to 'shut up'. I was re-shackled to the sofa, this time by both wrists. The youth left the room, but two minutes later was back again. He put a blindfold around my head, and then another person entered. This new person, another man but with a croaky false voice, told me the plan. I was to make the calls necessary to ensure that one million euros were transferred from the IFSD bank account to a given private account ­ by midnight. I laughed. I laughed, and was slapped vigorously across the face. It was shocking. The second man shouted angrily 'leave him'. My face stung. I could not remember being hit since I was a child. I felt very, very vulnerable. I decided to measure my words, and my laughter.

'I laughed because I can no more get one million euros from the IFSD than I can one hundred,' I said with a controlled voice having filtered out the anger and the fear. 'It doesn't work that way. We have 200 financial staff, a financial director, a budget committee, an oversight committee, an auditor, bankers, financial control procedures etc, I never see a cent.'

'You could if you had to. Call the financial director. Tell him it's an emergency. Do it. Do it now.'

'I can't. The financial director would laugh at me. He'd say it was a joke, and if I insisted he would call security. He would know something was wrong.'

'What the fuck now?' the young man asked the other. It was a farce I realised.

'Shut up, I'm thinking.' This time the second voice was less strange, less disguised. I recognised it. Bronze!

'I can get you an absolute maximum of 10,000 euros of my own money, now, on the phone. I can transfer it wherever you want, but you have to promise to let me go immediately and get out of here now.' But it was not enough for my stupid, idiot son.

'One hundred thousand euros and it's a deal. You go free and unharmed. No negotiating. If you refuse, we hurt you, until you agree.'

'I can't do it. The bank has rules and I'm limited to how much I can withdraw by phone in any one day.'

'Fuck you, you're lying.' This was the first man again. They questioned and threatened me several more times, and then I lost patience.

'Look Bronze, I know it's you. This is ridiculous ...'

The youth interrupted.

'Fuck me, how does he know who you are?'

I told him.

'Fuck. This is weird.' I could feel him trying to come to terms with this. Bronze too was stunned to realise that I'd twigged his identity. The two of them then engaged in a loud argument. When, after a few minutes, I heard a very loud knocking from the floor above, I shouted over the top of them.

'This is ridiculous. The police know where I am. I have a tracer.'

'What's that?' the youth screeched. I explained. This sent him into an excess of fury and expletives, until he crashed an ornament to the ground, and raced out of the room. He was caught, I was informed later, exiting from the back of the house. Bronze left the room too for a few minutes, and I heard that he was communicating with someone far off, but not what was being said. He came back, and took my blindfold off. I barely recognised my son. I had only seen him three or four times in the last ten years (his choice not mine), and since the last occasion, he had put on much weight, clearly evident through his heavy overcoat, and let his hair grow long and unkempt. He looked ill, with a yellow tint to the skin on his face, and dark rings around his eyes.

'I told them I'd kill you if they came in.' He showed me a gun, presumably the one the youth had brandished earlier, now in the pocket of his coat.

'Why did you do that?'

'Shut up.'

'Let me walk out freely now before this gets out of hand.'

'It's too late. We stole a car, and the gun, and we injured a hotel porter who tried to stop us.'

'Nevertheless, it'll go much better for you, if you let me loose now.'

'I can't do that.'

'Why?'

'Shut up.'

He did let me go, but not for half an hour, during which time he bared his soul, in a quite extraordinary way, as if he were in a priest's confessional. Initially, he remained silent. I asked him to remove the cuffs so that I could sit comfortably. I promised I wouldn't leave until he said I could.

'Bronze, why are you doing this?' I asked. The question caused him pain, visibly so, and led, a few seconds later, to a wheezing fit, followed by a confession. I cannot pretend to remember his words sufficiently well, all jumbled up as they were, to reconstruct the monologue, as I have for the dialogue above. But the gist of what he told me in a nebulous way was this. He was tired of serving the New Crusaders, giving his all and getting nothing back any more. The organisation repeatedly promised he would be sent out on a crusade, a mission to set up a Christian church in Iran or Tunisia or Tajikistan (he very much wanted to go to Tajikistan). Whenever he questioned the duration of his self-paid training or asked the leadership about the schedule for his mission, he was told there were no funds at present. And yet he had witnessed hundreds of crusades, planned and implemented, many of them by recruits who had joined the New Crusaders years later than him. Tired of being passed over (and, presumably, exploited, but that's my word), he decided to raise his own funds for his own crusade. He acquired sketchy details of my trip to Dublin from an exchange of emails which had begun with my invitation to Guido's wedding. The kidnap plan was hatched with a young friend he had recently recruited to the church, and who had underworld connections. (I discovered later these 'connections' were his father, from whom the gun had been stolen.)

As his soliloquy continued, punctuated by frequent bouts of wheezing and half choking on his medical throat spray, I came to understand how much Bronze was burning up with bitterness. He felt bitter towards god for not dealing him a better hand; towards the church and his work colleagues for not acknowledging his self-sacrifice; and towards his mother, whom he saw as infrequently as me, for never having loved him. He even savaged himself for messing up friendships. I thought I was being left off the list. I could hear the police loudspeakers penetrating the basement room asking for a response. There was frequent rapping on the outside of the room's one window. Telephones chimed in the distance. In his last few minutes alone with me, he admitted, finally, to hating me. He cited my having left Crystal and him alone with their mother, and my failure, like Harriet's, to love him properly. I came to realise that for most of his life he had dismissed the relationship with his father as unimportant and irrelevant, but that recent developments had steered his psyche towards identifying me as being at the root of his problems. One of these developments, no doubt, was my involvement with Jay, about whom I'd written often. More immediately, my obvious delight at Guido's forthcoming wedding may have sent Bronze over the edge.

I feared the police would make an inappropriate armed break-in, so I walked over to Bronze, put my arm around his shoulder, took the gun, shepherded him out of the room, and up a set of stairs. At the same time, I shouted, as loud as I could, that we were coming out. Outside, a street of sad-looking terraced houses (in a town called Birr, central Ireland) was full of police vehicles, ambulances, and armed police wearing protective suits. Bronze was arrested and taken away in a police van. I was driven to Dublin, with a high-ranking policeman called Tyrone Lopping, in an un-marked police car. On the way, I called my assistant and MarySue.

There were so many varied ramifications of this ridiculous episode, I will not try to pin them all down, nor do I wish to dwell on them.

As it was in my interests and those of the security services to avoid any publicity, I discussed with Lopping how this could be done. But it couldn't. He could vouch for the police under his command, he said, but not for the ambulance crews, other sundry officers or the bystanders. Furthermore, there were reporters at the NGO conference that would be making enquiries. Then I asked another question: would it be possible to keep it quiet about Bronze being my son, since he had taken Harriet's name, Tilson, not mine?

By midnight, having been subject to two hours of close questioning, and having called everyone I needed to, including Harriet and Lizette, I was back in my hotel room watching the breaking news on the kidnap and release of a UN high official. Because the whole ghastly event only lasted a few hours, it was already old news by the next day, and the story was confined to the newspapers' inside pages. For about 24 hours I lived in hope that the relationship between Bronze and me would not become public. It broke on the second day, I don't know how or why. My office and private phones were inundated with calls. I gave my journalist friend Bobby Jespersen a detailed exclusive and asked her to make clear that I would never be talking about the matter again in public. She was most comfortable with political reporting, and usually steered clear of human interest stories, so I hoped she would not delve too deeply into my personal history. Accepting the interpretation I gave her, and in sympathy with it, she was happy to portray Bronze as a cult victim rather than someone with criminal intent.

Neither Bronze nor his partner in crime were given bail by the Irish authorities, even though I employed an expensive lawyer. I did not attend the trial six months later. They both pleaded guilty and were sentenced to ten years incarceration. After a year at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, Bronze was trans-ferred to Highdown Prison in south London, which made life a lot simpler for Harriet who, surprisingly, visited often and acted like a caring mother. I visited rarely, once every two or three months. It was a trial of duty. Bronze and I never re-established, or should I say established, any worthwhile relationship. During my hour-long stays we talked of trivial things, about prison life, about Harriet, and about his efforts to convert fellow inmates. He never asked about Guido or Jay, and I never mentioned them. He died in 66 from a punctured lung sustained during a vicious fight. His assailant, a convicted killer, was later found guilty of Bronze's murder.

Until he took me hostage, Bronze had been so distant, so minor a part of my life, that I had successfully shunted him beyond my emotional horizons. I had stopped thinking about him, except for occasional emails and very intermittent encounters, and I had almost stopped caring for him. So, in one way, his desperate ploy worked, for afterwards, barely a day went by when I didn't wonder about him, when I didn't have to cope with feelings of guilt and inadequacy. I would think of him when I was in the lift, or on the toilet, or waiting at the station for Lizette and Jay to arrive, or in the middle of a meeting.

And, without doubt, he not only wiped the shine off my happiness the following Saturday, but stripped the veneer too.

***

I had no involvement in the preparations for the wedding. Didier and Helene Rocard, a wealthy couple long since, insisted on paying for everything; and any parental involvement on Guido's side was handled by Diana. My only job was to liaise with Guido's half-brothers. With Bronze I must have tried too hard, but with Arturo I did not try at all. Guido had no particular interest in Arturo, especially after I'd informed him about the Alicia situation, and so I took responsibility for not sending him an invitation.

There was a huge row between Mireille and her parents over the shape and style of the wedding. I know this because Guido kept me fully informed thinking he might need me to intervene. Guido, obviously, sided with his wife-to-be, but Diana aligned herself with the Rocard parents. The problem arose because Didier wanted to 'produce' a wedding, a theatrical event, which Diana would design. I've no doubt it was a generous, loving offer from both of them. Mireille was as plugged into the theatre world as her parents and Guido, and, at first, the idea did tempt her. But when Didier began talking about possible themes and ideas, Mireille's toes caught a chill. Guido advised her to talk to her father immediately, but she prevaricated, unsure of what was right, and afraid of disappointing him. To cut a complicated story short, Mireille left it far too long before deciding. By which time, Diana and Didier had launched various initiatives, not least negotiations for a venue. They were not prepared, therefore, to drop the whole thing because of Mireille's cold feet. They tried to talk her round, to bribe her, to threaten her. The more they argued, the more Mireille realised, to Guido's relief, that all she wanted was a simple quiet church wedding. It was only later that I discovered how close Guido and Mireille came to running off to marry in Corsica. According to Guido, their decision, a year or so later, to go to live and work in Ecuador had much to do with Mireille needing distance from her father.

The Rocards may have called it a simple quiet church wedding, but few others would have done. The church ­ scouted and bought for the day by Didier ­ was opulent with gold and silver ornamentation. Diana had ensured it was further adorned with the wildest, most exotic flowers you could imagine. And then, as if that was not already enough colour and splendour, there were 100 or more friends and family most of them theatrical and dressed up to the hat. Rudy, Peter's son and Guido's best man, and Guido stood at the head of the aisles on one side, with a portly cleric (heavily made-up as if more concerned about the camrecording than his appearance in the flesh). Guido wore a brushed silver knee-length jacket, and silver-white trousers. He looked like a prince; but an image of fat Bronze with unkempt hair and a wheezing cough would not let me go.

While we waited for Mireille and Didier to enter the church and walk down the aisle together, a choir sang quietly, and an elaborate organ was played by someone I could not see. Lizette, Jay and I all sat in the same pew as Diana and Karl (various introductions having been made earlier outside the church). Opposite, on the other side of the aisle, sat Helene and Mireille's sister Veronique with her partner Yves Lafont (the then famous footballer-poet). Behind us, the other two members of the Guido co-op, Peter and Dominique sat with their respective partners Livia and Waltar and various very adult-looking offspring. There was also Arnout, a fidgety five year old, Rudy's son (and Peter and Livia's first grandson) who later, at the reception, linked up with Jay for mischievous expeditions. If these had been Guido's Reflections, Rudy, a gifted saxophonist, would have been a major character. He and Guido had played a lot together as children, on and around Peter's barge; and, as students, they had employed our barge Ginquin to take their girlfriends (Mireille in Guido's case) on holidays through the Dutch and German waterway systems.

I might have been thinking about Karl, having never met him before that day, or wondering what Diana and Lizette were making of each other, but I wasn't. I was thinking of Bronze. Mireille, when she arrived, looked ravishing, in a tight cat-suit made of the same brushed silver as Guido's jacket and a long flowing white muslin train. Together, Mireille and Guido belonged in some yet to-be-written futuristic fairy tale with an enchanting beginning and, I hoped, a happy ending. Bronze, for his sins and mine, belonged in a prison.

Didier had apparently compromised with Mireille over the wedding service. In return, Mireille and Guido had let Didier and Helene have their wish with respect to the reception. It was the biggest social function the Rocards had hosted since the ball in 49 which had been given to celebrate a milestone in the fortunes of their puppet artwork company. I thought ­ ungenerously and unkindly ­ the wedding reception was no more than another Rocard promotion. Guido confessed to knowing only a fraction of the people present, and not being interested in any of them. I tried to remain at a dining table, quietly talking with Lizette, Peter and Livia, or catching up with Dominique's news. Yet we were constantly interrupted. I was the father of the bridegroom, which meant Mireille and Diana kept trying to drag me off to be introduced to every Tom, Dick and Hamlet. More than that, though, I had become something of a celebratory in the last few days, first with the kidnap, then with the revelation that it was my 'other son' who had done the kidnapping. People were naturally curious, and, given the world in which they inhabited, their curiosity was not tempered by any care or respect for my feelings. I am being unfair. Both Didier and Helene were very likable characters, and they had produced two very eligible daughters. I was glad for Guido. He had made an excellent match. But, by then, I had become easily irritated by those in the theatre and art world. Thinking back, I believe this was a consequence of my relationship with Lizette. We talked often about my work, and more generally about politics, science, culture. Life had been different with Diana. Yes, she was brilliant, but she had only been able to maintain that brilliance, like many artists, by focusing exclusively on her own world. I had followed her there, onto the stage, as it were, as an observer, a friend, a patron, but by the time of our son's wedding I had already drawn far away, and was no longer so easily taken in by the scenery and spotlights. Not then, but now, I wonder whether I resented in some way Guido's decision to follow Diana into her world.

***

That year, 64, was 'one helluva year' for me (as Betty Arklington famously said of 51 before losing the US Presidency to Steve Tarbuck). Not only did I lose Bronze and Guido, in different ways, but I lost my job too.

As I have tried to indicate, I neither enjoyed being director-general nor was I very good at it. I had unintentionally alienated several of the directors, I had shirked my duties as an ambassador, and, worst of all, in response to the Singapore Peace Treaty and subsequent agreements, I was failing to make the institution respond effectively and efficiently to its renewed and extended responsibilities. Personally, I do not think this latter failure was even half my fault. The UN's General Assembly had been much inflated (puffed-up in fact) by the terms of the Peace Treaty, but elsewhere in the UN system, which included many agencies large and small, problems of policy, politics, diplomacy had been hindering actual operations. The world and its nations and their disputes were taking a long time to recover from the Jihad War. Some thought this was natural, others that the underlying tensions had not gone away and were ready to resurface at any time. Our experience in the IFSD gave weight to the second opinion. We blamed our problems on the distrust between nations, between Muslim and Christian, African and Asian, southern and northern Europe, and Europe and the US. And the difficulties did not ease. Unfortunately for me personally, some smaller UN agencies recovered more quickly than the IFSD, and thus our apparent stagnancy began to attract close scrutiny. Then came the incident in Dublin, and a fiftyfold increase in requests for interviews with, and profiles of, me personally, every rejected one of which was a potential nail in my professional coffin.

In early November, Eduardo Villalonga asked for a private interview. Since the Brasilia trip, our professional relationship had stalled, I would say. I had no reason to fault his work or his advice, but it only ever went so far, he never put himself out for me, nor did he inspire me with confidence. In short, I expected more from the members of my cabinet than he gave. This said, it was a shock to hear him threaten me with resignation. He had followed the media as closely as I had. He had taken his own soundings, and read his own runes. If I did not resign within two weeks, he said, he would. Eduardo, himself, could not have brought me down, but his private threat was clear evidence of my soon-to-be untenable position.

I took Tommy for lunch at the Lake Toba restaurant. I wanted to break it to him gently that I was not prepared to fight this time round. I had no more to offer, and it would not be fair to start a battle I did not think I could win. The very fact that my own son had caused a major security alert for the Irish authorities and for the UN system was sufficient reason in itself to resign. I tried to explain how I had hoped the media frenzy would die down quickly, or that there would have been some measure of support for my position forthcoming, at the very least, from British heavyweights. Now that it was obvious that such backing would not come voluntarily, it was time to go. Tommy tried to hide the relief that showed on his face. Faithful Tommy. He never was any good at hiding his feelings. He had, it transpired, spared me the worst of his bush telegraph intelligence.

Although the UN's chroniclers have judged my last years harshly, thankfully none have gone so far as to blame me personally for the Second Jihad War. This may sound like a fanciful notion yet there are radical historians who believe the second conflict was caused, not by the rich-poor divide, or the Muslim-Christian divide or by Al Zahir's power-crazy ambitions to become Islam's second most important prophet after Mohammed, but by the United Nations and its leaders, not least Ojoru. A better organised, a better functioning, a better led UN, they say, could have averted the war. Dreamers, every last one of them.

There was another reason for my deciding to resign which I did not reveal to Tommy. I can be certain I am not inventing this now, in retrospect, because, at the time, I had an argument with Lizette over the matter. The simple truth is that I saw (and feared) war coming again, and I did not want to be there when it arrived. Lizette refused to believe I could act so selfishly, or that I would capitulate simply because I saw a tough road ahead. Perhaps she sensed echoes of her stamina-less husband Clint, or perhaps ­ this is another ungenerous thought ­ she did not want to lose status (she certainly enjoyed being taken to official functions). Because she had not witnessed the full extent of my commitment to the IFSD and its objectives during the early 50s I searched out a few favourable press clippings. I also recounted the story of how Tommy and I had campaigned to preserve my position when I was still only a director. Above all, I stressed, I would not have considered resigning then but for the daggers that were already unsheathed and being sharpened.

Officially, I cited old age and ill-health as the reasons for my resignation. I was granted a grand retirement party, at which several long-standing colleagues delivered kind words about my contribution to the IFSD. I have a vivid recollection (which unfortunately has tainted my memory of that party) of Eduardo being unctuous, a side of him I had never observed before. I received many cards and messages of goodwill, including one from Pravit Krishnamurty (who was to die within the year): 'It is not so bad in the grandstand, my friend, you can twiddle your thumbs, shake your fists, and shout "bloody fools" out loud.'

Lizette's flat was too cramped to accommodate me for more than a few days at a time. I tried to think about my future, but I refused to discuss this with colleagues and well-wishers who contacted me with offers and half offers and rumours of offers. I told them I needed time. Neither the thought of staying put in The Hague, or moving to a place in Brussels appealed much to me.

I spent some time with my antique photograph collection, then, after ensuring I had high quality prints of my favourites and copies of them all on Neil, I put the whole lot up for sale at Swann's. The auction did not take place until the late spring in 65, months after I had left the Netherlands. I cajoled Lizette into taking a day off, arranging a friend to collect Jay from school, and travelling to Amsterdam so that I would not be alone when my treasured possessions went under the hammer. My photographs, quaintly sub-titled in the catalogue 'The collection of a gentleman', took less than 20 minutes to sell. Lizette, who had only seen individual items, was humorously outraged to discover that a good third of the collection was erotica.

Over Christmas/new year the three of us floated around England. We stayed with Samuel and his family, then we opted to use a London hotel for two nights so that I could catch up with Horace, the Turnbulls and others, and visit Bronze, and then we ended up at Rhoda's house for my birthday, with a new year's eve celebration at the Sampsons in Chapel Chorlton. It was during these travels, feeling very rootless, that I decided I would return to England and buy a house somewhere near where I had grown up, in Surrey. This caused friction with Lizette, who was troubled by my decision to move further away from, not closer to, her. I sold the eco-roof apartment on Van Hogenhouckstraat, and shipped a small volume of furniture and a large number of books and papers into storage at Guildford. By the spring I was spending several days a fortnight being shown around a bewildering array of Surrey properties. I had no real idea of what I wanted, and so I would store up a handful of possibilities and wait for when Lizette could join me to trail round them again.

In-between times at Lizette's flat and in Guildford, I visited friends. Oddly, I saw more of Peter and Livia after having left the Netherlands than I had in my last years living there. Both of them had done well in their respective, and unusually straight-lined, careers, allowing them to take early retirement. Livia, after extended maternity breaks and several unpaid sabbaticals, had eventually become a director of the company she joined not long after arriving in the Netherlands as Peter's partner. Peter himself had served his country well, choosing to remain an energy research and policy analyst, focusing for many years on the development of the hydrogen economy. He was one of the key scientists who had helped the Netherlands remain one of the greenest and pollution-leanest nations in the world. Since retirement, Peter and Livia had moved out of Amsterdam to a rural retreat, not far from Leiden or Alphen aan de Rijn, near where they still moored a barge. Livia was finally fulfilling a lifetime ambition by designing clothes for her old company; while Peter was opting to take on the occasional freelance consultancy work for commercial firms to bolster their retirement funds. Guido and Mireille had moved into a pad near Pigalle, characterful but tiny (bought outright by Didier as a wedding present), and, although they were both always very busy, I was invariably made welcome. Horace's house in Southampton was too far from the Godalming/

Guildford area to be a good base for my house hunting, but, nevertheless, I went there often to talk politics, politics and more politics. Nothing much else interested my old friend. Once politics had been his only mistress in the search for power, now, past his prime, he was one of her many vassals.

In June, I found a property in Tilford, a pretty village with a slanting cricket green, east of Farnham. Built of brick in the 1930s with part hung tile elevations, and a mature vine pinned to a solid trellis across one half, Taunton House was one of the prettiest properties I'd been shown. It had a huge lounge with sunlight streaming in on one side in the morning and the other in the afternoon, four bedrooms (one in the attic), and a refurbished kitchen. The energy and waste systems were all ultra-modern. The electrics and electronics had been recently upgraded, and the decorations were first class. Even the half acre garden, with its two oaks, had been loved, with shrubs a plenty, fruit trees, and a vegetable plot behind a low stone wall. This was it. I had been looking and prevaricating too long. In order to win Lizette over, I employed old negotiating tricks: I under-promoted the house so as to let her find its charms for herself; and, I set it up against other (admittedly cheaper) properties which had no charms. The strategy worked better than I had hoped. Having long since resigned herself to my resolve to buy in England, Lizette approved the house with undisguised enthusiasm; and then, during the three months it took to buy, she decided to terminate her contract with the European University and, until such time as she found her next job, to live with me in Tilford.

EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE

Alan Hapgood to Kip Fenn

January 2062

We've escaped the bitter cold of St Petersburg for a rare holiday. Anna has a cousin called Akilina here in Kerkira, in the north near a village called Velonades. The name Akilina means eagle, and the lady does have a broad generous wingspan, but there's nothing remotely predatory about her. She owns an estate villa, and runs a large olive tree plantation. They are beautiful trees, the olives. Have you ever been here? I mean with time for yourself, not with your IFSD collar on; I remember you going to Rhodes once ...

When you first see the ancient gnarled trees ­ single-trunked but also, so unusually, double and triple-trunked ­ layered down the hillside, they draw you in, into a darker and darker stillness, into an Escher-like maze; it's as though they are woods that might be haunted with Tarquinade's ghouls or Narnia's evil spirits. They say that old men become children again, and I wonder if that is true. If we could but return to the simple world of our childhood imaginations, where truth and courage and loyalty could see us through the darkness to the peace and truth beyond.

Akilina is busy now, at this time of year, with her workers collecting up olives from the ground nets. They use the olives primarily for local power generators, but about 10% go to a restored traditional mill run by (not very hardline) Noteks to produce eating oil. And very flavoursome it is too. But Akilina gets less than half her income from the olives, the rest comes in subsidy from the island government to maintain the groves. Officially, the subsidies are payments for farmers to be ready and willing to providing emergency irrigation when necessary, so as to preserve the island's environmental heritage. Unofficially, as everyone knows and Akilina certainly acknowledges, the olive groves are subsidised because they draw tourists to the island.

Anna (whose love I do not deserve ­ I confess this to you only) is out sightseeing, and I am meant to be writing a few letters. Yet I am caught with the image of the forest, as the poet Robert Frost said, 'mysterious, dark and deep', and I find myself thinking back to my early days, childhood days playing hide-and-seek with Julie (and always winning), and to your childhood (reading you the Realm of Tarquinade ­ do you remember it?) and to your teenage years in Godalming, those special times we spent together.

I'll be back in St Petersburg by the middle of January. It would be good to see you this year or next!

Keep in touch.

Kip Fenn to Anna Mastepanov

February 2062

No news could have saddened or touched me more profoundly than that of Alan's death. He was not only an uncle to me, but a brother and, at times, a father. And more than that, a wonderful friend.

Your sorrow must be great also ­ to lose such a friend, such a partner in life ­ but I've no doubt he's left you with a store of memories which will sustain you through this difficult time.

When I was but a toddler, Alan gave me a cuddly toy panda. I called it Karshula. I was about 15 when Alan asked me ­ I've no idea why ­ what had happened to it. I didn't know and didn't care. I relived this exchange in a dream 40 years later. I saw Alan's face, as it was then impressively open and optimistic, stonily refusing to laugh at my natural adolescent insouciance for all things childish. The dream came after a post-conference day trip from Hong Kong to Chengdu to visit the panda research and cloning centre. During our walk through the Panda Park, Karshula had come to mind, and, absurdly (for I was with other high officials talking about some big funding project or other), I caught myself thinking back, trying to remember what had become of it. That same day after the visit but before the dream, I emailed my mother Julie to ask if she could remember. The next morning, after the dream, she emailed me back ­ I was in a transfer lounge at Hong Kong airport ­ to say Karshula had gone to a kindergarten in St Albans, before our move to Guildford. I had thrown it out of the window once and left it to rot in the garden, and my mother had rescued it. Yet more absurdly, I recall being thankful that I had asked this question while my mother was alive (she died later that same year). Alan would want to know ­ I never bothered to tell him while he was alive ­ that Karshula had found a good home.

I tell this silly story only because it gives an idea of how firmly Alan is embedded in my life, in me. Although he was often overseas, I always felt he was there, round the corner, at every stage of my life, ready with a kind word, generous with advice and contacts, regularly sending me books, and, best of all letters, richly embroidered with stories of his friends and his environmental endeavours. One period stands out, though, when I was in my young teens. He lived in England, then, near my mother and me. My own father, Tom, had gone away ­ or so it seemed ­ and Alan had come in his stead, to spend hours chatting about politics, and history, and religion, world events and, inevitably, green issues. At the time, I considered there was nothing unusual about this, but, knowing more about teenagers now than I did then, I realise how very patient he must have been. And kind, and wise, and generous ...

In his last letter to me, only a few weeks ago, he said this: 'If we could but return to the simple world of our childhood imaginations, where truth and courage and loyalty could see us through the darkness to the peace and truth beyond.' I am sure that Alan is there now, somewhere, basking in peace and truth, for no man other deserves to be there if not him.

With love and sorrow.

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Paul K. Lyons

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