The Complete Yes Minister (76 page)

I could see no reason not to give him that guarantee. ‘Fine,’ I said, throwing caution to the winds. ‘No problem.’

‘Is that a promise?’ Journalists are suspicious bastards.

‘Sure,’ I said with a big reassuring smile.

‘A real promise? Not a manifesto promise?’

Some of these young Fleet Street fellows can be really rather insulting.

‘Your trouble, Alex,’ I said, ‘is that you can’t take yes for an answer.’

‘Because otherwise,’ he continued as if I hadn’t even spoken, ‘we do the feature on Ministers ratting on manifestos.’

Clearly I shall now have to stand by that promise. It’s fortunate that I have every intention of doing so.

[
The following day
The Mail
ran the story, exactly as predicted in Hacker’s diary (see below). That night Sir Humphrey’s diary contains the following entry – Ed
.]

Horrible shock.

A story in today’s
Mail
about the Glenloch Island base.

I read it on the 8.32 from Haslemere to Waterloo. Was seized instantly by what Dr Hindley calls a panic attack. A sort of tight feeling in the chest, I felt I couldn’t breathe, and I had to get up and walk up and down the compartment which struck one or two of the regulars on the 8.32 as a bit strange. Or perhaps I just
think
that because of the panic attack.

Fortunately Valium did the trick as the day wore on, and I’ll take a few Mogadon
³
tonight.

I tell myself that no one will ever connect that incident with me, and that it’s all ancient history anyway, and that that’s the last that anyone will want to know about it.

I tell myself that – but somehow it’s not helping!

Why has this come up now, so many years later, when I thought it was all forgotten?

If only there was someone I could talk to about this.

Oh my God . . .

[
Hacker’s diary continues – Ed
.]

They ran that story in
The Mail
today. Quite amusing.

Today was the happiest day of my ministerial life.

All my prayers were answered.

As Humphrey and I were finishing up our weekly departmental meeting I asked him if he’d seen the story in yesterday’s
Mail
.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

I reminded him. I knew he must have seen it, someone must have drawn his attention to it. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘about that frightful cock-up thirty years ago over the terms of that Scottish island base.’

Now, as I think back, he seemed to flinch a little as I said ‘that frightful cock-up’. Though I must say, I wasn’t really aware of it at the time.

Anyway, he did remember the article, and he said that he believed that he
had
glanced at it, yes.

‘I must say,’ I said, chuckling, ‘I think it’s pretty funny – forty million quid down the tube. Someone really boobed there, didn’t they?’

He nodded and smiled, a little wanly.

‘Still, it couldn’t happen in your Department could it?’

‘No,’ he said with absolute firmness. ‘Oh no. Absolutely.’

I said that I’d been wondering who it was.

‘That, Minister, is something that we shall never know.’

I pointed out that it must be on the files. Everything is always put in writing, as he so constantly reminds me.

Humphrey agreed that it would be on the record somewhere, but it would take ages to find out and it’s obviously not worth anyone’s time.

‘Actually, you’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘
The Mail
are doing a big feature on it when the papers are released under the Thirty-Year Rule. I’ve promised them a free run of all the files.’

Humphrey literally rocked backwards on his feet.

‘Minister!’

I was slightly shaken by his anger. Or was it anger? I couldn’t tell.

‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ I asked anxiously.

Yes, it
was
anger! ‘All right?
All right
? No, it is certainly not all right.’

I asked why not. He told me it was ‘impossible and unthinkable’. That didn’t sound like much of an explanation to me, and I said as much.

‘It . . . it’s . . . top security, Minister.’

‘A few barracks?’

‘But there were secret naval installations, anti-submarine systems, low-level-radar towers.’

I pointed out that he couldn’t possibly know what had been there. He agreed at once, but added – rather lamely, I thought – that that’s the sort of thing those island bases always had.

‘They’ll have been dismantled,’ I said. His objection was clearly quite irrelevant.

‘But the papers will have references.’

‘It’s ancient history.’

‘Anyway,’ he said with evident relief, ‘we’d have to consult. Get clearances.’

A few months ago I would have accepted that sort of remark from Humphrey. Now, I’m just a little older and wiser.

‘Who from?’ I asked.

He looked wildly about, and spoke completely incoherently. ‘Security implications . . . MI5, MI6 . . . the national interest . . . foreign powers . . . consult our allies . . . top brass . . . CIA . . . NATO, SEATO, Moscow!’

‘Humphrey,’ I asked carefully, ‘are you all right?’

‘
Not
Moscow, no, I don’t mean Moscow,’ he corrected himself hastily. I got the impression that he was just saying the first words that came into his head, and that the word Moscow had been uttered simply because it rhymed.

He could see I wasn’t convinced, and added: ‘There could be information that would damage people still alive.’

This seemed to matter to him greatly. But it cut no ice with me.

‘Whoever drafted that contract,’ I insisted, ‘
ought
to be damaged if he’s still alive.’

‘Oh, quite, absolutely, no question of protecting officials. Of course not. But responsible Ministers . . .’

I interrupted him. I wasn’t the least concerned about some Minister who’d been responsible thirty years ago. It couldn’t matter less. Anyway, the other lot were in office then, so it’s fairly amusing.

I simply couldn’t figure out the reason for his intense opposition to releasing these papers. I asked him why he was
so
concerned.

He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs casually. ‘I’m not. Not at all. I mean, not personally. But it’s the principle, the precedent . . . the . . . the . . .’ he was lost for words ‘. . . the policy.’

Trapped. I’d got him. ‘Policy’s up to me, Humphrey, remember?’ I said with a smile. And before he could continue the argument I added, ‘And I’ve promised, so it’s done now, okay?’

He just sat there, sagging slightly, looking at me. Evidently he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Finally he gave up. He stood wearily and, without looking at me, walked silently out of the room and shut the door behind him.

He seemed tired, listless, and quite without his usual energy.

Bernard had been present throughout the meeting. He waited, patiently, as usual, to be either used or dismissed.

I gazed at the door which Humphrey had closed quietly behind him.

‘What’s the matter with Humphrey?’ I asked. There was no reply from Bernard. ‘Have I done something wrong?’ Again there was no reply. ‘There
aren’t
any security aspects, are there?’ This time I waited a while, but answer came there none. ‘So what is the problem?’ I turned to look at Bernard, who appeared to be staring vacantly into space like a contented heifer chewing the cud.

‘Am I talking to myself?’

He turned his gaze in my direction.

‘No Minister, I am listening.’

‘Then why don’t you reply?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought your questions were purely rhetorical. I can see no reason for Sir Humphrey to be so anxious.’

And then the penny dropped.

Suddenly I saw it.

I didn’t know how I could have been so blind. So dumb. And yet, the answer – obvious though it was – seemed scarcely credible.

‘Unless . . .’ I began, and then looked at Bernard. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think so, Minister,’ he replied cautiously, and then added with a flash of cheerful honesty, ‘I’m not thinking anything really.’

‘I
think
,’ I said, uncertain how to broach it, ‘that I smell a rat.’

‘Oh. Shall I fetch an Environmental Health Officer?’

I didn’t like actually to put my suspicions into words. Not yet. I thought I’d go carefully. So I asked Bernard how long Sir Humphrey had been here at the Department of Administrative Affairs.

‘Oh, all his career, hasn’t he? Ever since it was founded.’

‘When was that?’ I asked.

‘1964. Same time that they started the Department of Economic Affairs . . .’ he stopped dead, and stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’

‘Well?’ I asked.

He wanted to be cautious too. ‘You’re thinking: where was he before 1964?’

I nodded slowly.

‘It’ll be in
Who’s Who
.’ He stood, then hurried to the glass-fronted mahogany bookcase near the marble fireplace. He fished out
Who’s Who
, talking as he leafed through the pages. ‘He must have been in some other Department, and been trawled when the DAA started. [
‘Trawled’, i.e. caught in a net, is the standard Civil Service word for ‘head-hunting’ through other departments – Ed
.]

He ran his forefinger down a page, and said in one sentence: ‘Ah here we are oh my God!’

I waited.

Bernard turned to me. ‘From 1950 to 1956 he was an Assistant Principal at the Scottish Office. Not only that. He was on secondment from the War Office. His job was Regional Contracts Officer. Thirty years ago.’

There could be no doubt who the culprit was. The official who had chucked away that forty million pounds of the taxpayers’ money was the current Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, Sir Humphrey Appleby, KCB, MVO, MA (Oxon).

Bernard said, ‘This is awful,’ but his eyes were twinkling.

‘Terrible,’ I agreed, and found myself equally unable to prevent a smile creeping across my face. ‘And the papers are all due for release in a few weeks’ time.’

I suddenly felt awfully happy. And I told Bernard to get Humphrey back into my office at once.

He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hello Graham, it’s Bernard. The Minister wondered if Sir Humphrey could spare some time for a meeting some time in the next couple of days.’

‘At once,’ I said.

‘In fact, some time during the course of today is really what the Minister has in mind.’

‘At once,’ I repeated.

‘Or to be precise, any time within the next sixty seconds really.’

He listened for a moment, then replaced the receiver. ‘He’s coming round now.’

‘Why?’ I was feeling malicious. ‘Did he faint?’

We looked at each other in silence. And we both tried very hard not to laugh.

Bernard’s mouth was twitching from the strain.

‘This is very serious, Bernard.’

‘Yes Minister,’ he squeaked.

I was, by now, crying from the effort not to laugh. I covered my eyes and my face with my handkerchief.

‘No laughing matter,’ I said, in a strangled muffled gasp, and the tears rolled down my cheeks.

‘Absolutely not,’ he wheezed.

We recovered as best we could, shaking silently, but didn’t dare look at each other for a little while. I sat back in my chair and gazed reflectively at the ceiling.

‘The point is,’ I said, ‘how do I best handle this?’

‘Well, in my opinion . . .’

‘The question was purely rhetorical, Bernard.’

Then the door opened, and a desperately worried little face peeped around it.

It was Sir Humphrey Appleby. But not the Humphrey Appleby I knew. This was not a God bestriding the Department of Administrative Affairs like a colossus, this was a guilty ferret with shifty beady eyes.

‘You wanted a word, Minister?’ he said, still half-hidden behind the door.

I greeted him jovially. I invited him in, asked him to sit down and – rather regretfully – dismissed Bernard. Bernard made a hurried and undignified exit, his handkerchief to his mouth, and curious choking noises emanating from it.

Humphrey sat in front of me. I told him that I’d been thinking about this Scottish island scandal, which I found very worrying.

He made some dismissive remark, but I persisted. ‘You see, it probably hasn’t occurred to you but that official could still be in the Civil Service.’

‘Most unlikely,’ said Sir Humphrey, presumably in the hope that this would discourage me from trying to find out.

‘Why? He could have been in his mid-twenties then. He’d be in his mid-fifties now,’ I was enjoying myself thoroughly. ‘Might even be a Permanent Secretary.’