Extracts from the diary of Dr Jones: his meeting with Sheikh Muhammad
12 July
A very strange day.
I had arranged a meeting with Harriet (Chetwode-Talbot) at Fitzharris & Price in St James’s Street first thing this morning. I must admit I was quite looking forward to finding out more about the project, and the client. I can even say I was quite looking forward to meeting Harriet again, as she has impressed me by the intelligent and professional way she has conducted herself thus far. Her people skills are in a different league to those of David Sugden, who by the way is now my new best friend. He and I had a drink in the pub on Friday night after work.
Anyway, I went round to St James’s Street and announced myself at the reception desk. I was somewhat surprised to see Harriet come out of her office, carrying her briefcase and with a raincoat over her arm.
‘Are we going somewhere?’ I asked.
She greeted me good morning and suggested I follow her downstairs. I must note here she is really quite attractive-looking when she smiles, her face being a trifle severe in repose. We went out into the street, where a large black car was waiting. The driver jumped out and opened doors for us. Once in, Harriet turned to me and said, ‘We are going to meet the client.’ I asked her if she could tell me anything about him, but she simply replied, ‘I think I’ll let him speak for himself, if you don’t mind.’
The car purred into Piccadilly and turned right. Harriet dug into her briefcase for some papers. Then she put on spectacles and said, ‘You don’t mind, do you? I need to go over some papers on some other business we are acting on for our client.’
She sat and read. Meanwhile the car was driving across Vauxhall Bridge. I was a little surprised; I had expected we would drive round to somewhere like Belgrave Square or Eaton Place. I sat back in the comfortable, new-smelling white leather seat and enjoyed the unaccustomed luxury. I do not own a car, myself. It’s pointless with these congestion charges. We drove through south London. I began to wonder where on earth we were going. Surely the sheikh did not live in Brixton?
I said, ‘Excuse me, Harriet, but are we going much further?’
She took her spectacles off, raised her head from looking at her papers, and gave me another smile. ‘That’s the first time you have used my Christian name.’
Not knowing how to respond to this I said something like, ‘Oh, really?’
‘Yes, really. And no, we are not going much further. Just as far as Biggin Hill.’
‘Are we meeting your client at Biggin Hill?’
‘No. His plane is meeting us.’
‘We’re not going to the Yemen?’ I asked in alarm. ‘I haven’t got my passport. Or anything.’
‘We’re going to pay the sheikh a brief visit at his place near Inverness. He liked your proposal but he wants to speak about it with you face to face.’
‘It is very kind of him to say he likes it,’ I said.
‘He is very kind, but he liked it because it gave him hope.’ Then she said no more, and would not be drawn into further conversation until we arrived at the airport.
On any other occasion I would have found the experience of flying in a private jet overwhelming in itself; it’s not that often I fly in any sort of plane. But really it was just a flight to somewhere. What was memorable was what happened after we arrived.
When we landed at Inverness airport another black car was there to meet us outside the terminal. This time it was a Range Rover. We drove onto the A9 and headed south for twenty minutes or so and then turned off down a single-track road and over a cattle grid. A sign read, ‘Glen Tulloch Estate. Private’. We drove along the track towards some distant hills, down into a wooded valley and across an enchanting river full of appealing dark pools where fish might lie. We followed the river for another ten minutes until, surrounded by immaculate and damp-looking green lawns, a large red-granite lodge came into sight. There were turrets at each end of the front, and a central portico with pillars surrounding the massive front door, with steps leading down to the gravel.
As the Range Rover pulled up in front of the house, a man in a suit and tie came down the steps. For a moment I wondered if he might be the client, but as we got out of the car I heard him say, ‘Welcome back to Glen Tulloch, Miss Harriet.’
Harriet said, ‘How are you, Malcolm?’
Malcolm bowed his head in answer to this enquiry, made a respectful murmur of welcome in my direction, and then asked us to follow him inside. We entered the house and came into a large square hall panelled in dark wood. A round library table with a bowl of roses occupied the centre. A few dark pictures of stags were hung on the walls, and intimidating and massive casts of salmon mounted on wooden plaques, bearing the weight and date caught, occupied the spaces between the pictures.
‘His Excellency is at prayer,’ said Malcolm to me, ‘and then he will be occupied for an hour or two. Miss Harriet, would you be kind enough to go to his office and he will join you there shortly.’
‘Have fun,’ Harriet said to me. ‘See you later.’
‘If you will follow me, Dr Jones,’ said Malcolm, ‘I will show you to your room.’
I was surprised to find I had a room. I thought I was coming for a brief meeting and back to the airport. I had imagined I would spend half an hour, perhaps an hour with the sheikh, and then he would have learned all I could tell him and I would be dismissed. Malcolm took me upstairs to a bedroom on the first floor. It was an enormous but comfortable room with a four-poster bed and a dressing table, and a large bathroom adjoining it. Through tall sash windows I could see heathery moors running up into the mountains. On the bed were laid out a check shirt, a pair of khaki-coloured trousers, thick socks and a pair of chest waders.
Malcolm surprised and delighted me by saying, ‘His Excellency thought you might like to fish for an hour or two before you meet him, to relax for a while after your journey. He hopes these clothes will be comfortable. We had to guess your size.’ He pointed to a bell push beside the bed and told me that, if I rang for him when I was ready, he would take me to meet the gillie, Colin McPherson.
Half an hour later I was walking along the bank of the river we had driven up with Colin beside me. Colin was short, sandy-haired, square-faced and taciturn. He looked gloomily at me when I was introduced to him, wearing the brand new Snowbee waders which had been left out for me and feeling rather foolish.
‘You’ll not have been after a fish before, sir?’ he asked.
‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ I told him. His face brightened fleetingly, then relapsed into its scowl.
‘Most of the gentlemen that comes to see the laird haven’t had a rod in their hand before in their life.’
I said I would do my best, and we walked down to the river, Colin carrying a fifteen-foot rod and a landing net. He told me a little about the river, and about the fishing, as we walked along the bank. The river was about thirty yards wide and there was a good flow of water. ‘We had some rain the night, and a few fish have maybe come up. But I doubt you’ll see a fish today.’
At last we came to a dank pool fifty yards long or so, running out into white water over gravel shoals. Rowan trees and alders overhung the far bank, and I could see a few threads of cast hanging from the branches where over-ambitious fishermen had snagged their lines. ‘You’re no worse off fishing here than anywhere,’ suggested Colin. He looked as if he doubted very much whether I would ever see let alone catch a fish. He handed me the rod he had put up for me. I tried it a few times to get the feel of it. It was beautifully balanced, stiff and powerful. I waded into the water a few feet, as Colin had suggested, and started to put line out.
‘Put some line out, take a step, then put a bit more out and take a step,’ Colin instructed me from the bank.
When I had got a bit of line out I tried a double Spey cast and saw with pleasure how the line shot out like silk, the fly landing on the water as gently as thistledown.
‘I’ve seen worse casts than that,’ said Colin, in a friendlier tone than he had used up until then. Then he sat down on the bank, took out a pipe and started to fiddle around with it. I forgot about him and concentrated on the fishing. A step, cast the line out, watch the fly come round gently on the dark water, strip the line, a step, and cast the line. Mesmerised by the flowing water and the silent beauty of the pool, I fished it down slowly and carefully. Once I saw a swirl and some bubbles just beyond my line, right beneath the opposite bank in the slow water, which I thought might have been a fish moving. But I did not dare lengthen my cast for fear of tangling my line in the overhanging branches. Once there was a flash of blue and bronze and I heard Colin, now some yards upstream, say, ‘Kingfisher.’
At last I reached the end of the run, and the water was too slow to fish down any further, so I waded back to the bank. By that time I had almost forgotten where I was, I was so absorbed by what I was doing, so tranquillised by the absolute silence apart from the music of the water over the gravel as it ran out to the next pool below. Then Colin appeared at my elbow.
‘I’ll change the fly for something with a wee bit more colour. Maybe an Ally Shrimp. There’s a fish showing beneath those alder trees.’
‘I think I moved it,’ I told him.
We walked back up the bank, and while Colin tied on a new fly I looked behind me. The road to the house ran past and beyond was the moor. I heard the shrill shouting of a pair of oystercatchers and, further away, the unmistakable cackle of a grouse. Colin handed me the rod, and I stepped into the head of the pool again. I fished down again as before, and just as I was coming to the place where I thought I had seen something move, I felt that prickling in the back of the neck we sometimes get when someone is watching us. I put the line out, and turned my head to look. About thirty yards behind me and a little bit above me, on the road, stood a small man in a white headdress and white robes. He looked absolutely out of place on that road, with the heather moor behind him. He stood very upright and quite still. He was watching me intently.
A tug on my line made me snap my attention back to the river. There was a swirl, then splashing, and suddenly line started screaming off the reel at a prodigious rate as the fish took the fly and ran. My heart beating, I lifted the rod tip and started to play my fish. It did not take long: after ten minutes I had brought a medium-sized silver sea trout to the water’s edge, which Colin deftly landed in his net.
‘Five pound,’ he said. ‘No bad.’ He seemed pleased.
‘We’ll put it back,’ I said. Colin did not approve of this idea, but he did as I asked and then we set out back towards the house.
♦
Later
In the end it was not until this evening that I met the client. When I returned to the house I was handed over to Malcolm, who turned out to be the butler. I always imagined butlers wore black coats and striped trousers, looked like Sir John Gielgud and went everywhere with a glass of sherry balanced on a silver tray. Malcolm wore a dark suit, a white shirt and a dark tie. He looked sombre and discreet and moved noiselessly about the house. He showed me back to my room, where I changed back into the clothes I had flown up in. Then I was given tea in the library, with cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and the day’s papers to read—all of them, from TheTimes through to the Sun.
From time to time Malcolm would put his head round the door and apologise for keeping me waiting. His Excellency was engaged in a conference call that was taking longer than expected. His Excellency was at prayer again. His Excellency was in a meeting but would be free at any moment. Finally I asked, ‘What time is our flight back to London?’
‘Tomorrow morning, sir, after breakfast.’
‘But I didn’t pack anything—I didn’t know we were expected to stay.’
‘Don’t worry, sir; you’ll find everything is ready in your room.’
Malcolm’s pager went off and he excused himself and left. A little while later he came back and said, ‘I’ve taken the liberty of running your bath, sir. If you care to go upstairs and have a bath and change, His Excellency will meet you here in the library for drinks at seven o’clock.’ I shook my head in disbelief and followed Malcolm upstairs again. He showed me to my room. By then I was beginning to know my way. I went in and had my bath, stretched out full length in steaming water infused with something that smelt of pine, wondering at the strangeness of the day.
As I lay gazing at the ceiling of the bathroom I felt a profound sense of peace steal over me. It was as if I was on holiday. I was away from the office, away from home, and I had had the wholly unexpected pleasure of catching a fish, something that happened to me about once every other year (Mary is not keen on fishing holidays; she says they are barbaric, a waste of money, boring for non-participants and therefore a self-indulgence on my part). I stepped out of the bath and dried myself with a huge white towel, and wandered back into the bedroom. Although it was high summer, a fire had been lit and table lamps switched on. The bedroom was warm and softly lit, encouraging me to lie on the bed for twenty minutes’ sleep. But I thought I might not wake up in time for dinner so I sat and wrote down a few words in my diary about the journey here, and the sea trout I caught.
When I had finished I inspected the clothes laid out for me on the bed. There were evening clothes, shirt and black tie, clean underwear, socks, which all fitted as if they had been made for me. On the rug beside the bed was a pair of black loafers, gleaming with polish. These also fitted like gloves. Somehow I was not surprised. I left my room and, as I came to the landing at the head of the stairs, I saw Harriet coming towards me from the other wing of the house. She was wearing a stunning black evening dress, with a gold belt around her waist. I have to admit she looked surprisingly glamorous. She saw me, smiled and said, ‘I’m so sorry you have been kept waiting. His Excellency has many duties and unfortunately had to take time to deal with them this afternoon.’
I bent my head in acknowledgement. I no longer minded having been kept waiting all day. I felt curious and expectant, as if some important secret was about to be revealed to me. I was looking forward to meeting Harriet’s client.
We went downstairs together. Harriet was wearing a perfume which, although faint, reminded me of the smell in a garden on a summer evening after rain. I found myself inhaling it as I walked down the stairs behind her. Mary says expensive perfumes are a form of feminine exploitation and no substitute for the frequent application of soap and water. We entered the library, and there standing in the centre of the rug in front of a log fire was the small man in white robes I had seen on the road earlier that afternoon. Now I noticed that the robes, and his headdress, were edged with gold. His face was dark-skinned with a grey moustache and beard beneath a hook nose and small, deep-set brown eyes. He had an air of stillness about him and stood very upright so that one forgot his height.
‘Welcome to my house, Dr Alfred,’ he said, extending a hand.
I went forward to take it and as I did so Harriet said, ‘May I present His Excellency Sheikh Muhammad ibn Zaidi bani Tihama.’
I shook hands and we all stood and looked at each other, and then Malcolm arrived with a silver tray with a tumbler of whisky and soda and two flutes of champagne. Sheikh Muhammad took the whisky, and Malcolm asked me if I wanted something else, or would the champagne be acceptable?
‘You are surprised,’ said Sheikh Muhammad, in his clearly very good English, ‘that I drink alcohol. In my homes in the Yemen, of course, I never do; there is none in any of my houses. But when I discovered that whisky was called the water of life, I felt that God would understand and forgive me a little, if I drank it in Scotland from time to time.’ His voice was deep and sonorous, with few of the guttural sounds that Arabic speakers sometimes have.
He sipped his tumbler of whisky and made an appreciative, soundless ‘Ah’ shape with his lips. I took a sip of my champagne. It was cold, and delicious.
‘You are drinking the Krug ‘85,’ said Sheikh Muhammad. ‘I do not drink it myself, but friends are kind enough to say it is palatable.’ He motioned us to sit down, and Harriet and I settled side by side on one large sofa, whilst he sat opposite us. Then we began to speak about the salmon project. Although it is late now, I remember very clearly the sheikh’s words. He is a man, I think, whose presence and words would not be quickly forgotten by anyone who met him.
‘Dr Alfred,’ said Sheikh Muhammad, ‘I greatly appreciate the work you have done so far on the proposal to bring salmon to the Yemen. I read your proposal and I thought it most excellent. But of course you think we are all quite mad.’
I muttered something along the lines of ‘Not at all’ but he waved away my denials.
‘Of course you do. You are a scientist—a very good one, I am informed. A leading light in the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. Now come some Arab people who say they want salmon! In the Yemen! To fish! Of course you think we are quite mad.’
He sipped at his glass and then looked around. Malcolm appeared from nowhere with small tables for us to put our drinks on, then faded away to some corner of the room out of the light.
‘I have observed,’ said His Excellency, ‘over the many years I have been coming to this country, a curious thing. Will you forgive me if I speak frankly about your countrymen?’ I nodded, but he had taken my forgiveness for granted because he continued almost without a pause. ‘In this country you still have a great deal of snobbery. In our country we too have many different ranks but everyone accepts these ranks without question. I am a sheikh from the sayyid class. My advisers are cadis. My estate workers at home are nukkas or even akhdam. But each knows his place and each talks to the other without restraint or fear of ridicule. Here in the UK this is not the case. No one seems to know what class they belong to. Whatever class they do belong to, they are ashamed of and want to appear as if they are from another. Your sayyid class put on the speech of the nukkas in order not to stand out, and speak like taxi drivers and not lords because they are afraid of being thought ill of. The reverse is also true. A butcher, a jazr, might make a great deal of money and adopt the speech of the sayyid class. He too is uneasy in case he pronounces a word wrongly or wears the wrong sort of tie. Your country is ridden with class prejudices. Is this not the case, Harriet Chetwode-Talbot?’
Harriet smiled and inclined her head ambiguously, but did not say anything.
‘But I have for a long time observed,’ said His Excellency, ‘that there is one group of people who in their passion for their sport ignore all things to do with class. The sayyid and the nukka are united and stand together on the riverbank and speak freely and without restraint or self-consciousness. Of course I speak about salmon fishermen, indeed fishermen of all descriptions. High and low, rich and poor, they forget themselves in the contemplation of one of God’s mysteries: the salmon, and why sometimes it will take the fly in its mouth and sometimes it will not.’
He sipped at his whisky again, and Malcolm was there at his elbow with a decanter and a soda siphon.
‘My own people have their faults, too,’ continued the sheikh. ‘We are an impatient people, and sometimes violent, very quick to pick up a gun to finish an argument. Although our society is in many ways an ancient and well-organised one, we are first members of our tribe, and only second members of our nation. After all, my family and my tribe have lived in the mountains of Heraz for over one thousand years, but my country has existed for only a few decades. There are still many divisions in our country, which not long ago was two countries and much longer ago was many kingdoms: Saba, Najran, Qa’taban, Hadramawt. I have noticed in this country that although there is violence and aggression—your football hooligans, for instance—there is one group for whom patience and tolerance are the only virtues. I speak of salmon fishermen in particular, and all fishermen in general.’
Sheikh Muhammad’s voice was gentle and quiet, but he had the gift of compelling attention and respect with every word he spoke. I said nothing, not daring or wishing to break his chain of thought.
‘I have formed the view that the creation of a salmon river in the Yemen would in every way be a blessing for my country, and my countrymen. It would be a miracle of God if it happened. I know it. My money and your science, Dr Alfred, would not alone achieve any such thing. But just as Moses found water in the wilderness, if God wills it, we will enable salmon to swim in the waters of Wadi Aleyn. If God wills it, the summer rains will fill the wadis, and we will pump out water from the aquifer, and the salmon will run the river. And then my countrymen—sayyid, nuqqa and jazr and all classes and manner of men—will stand on the banks side by side and fish for the salmon. And their natures, too, will be changed. They will feel the enchantment of this silver fish, and the overwhelming love that you know, and I know, Dr Alfred, for the fish and the river it swims in. And then when talk turns to what this tribe said or that tribe did, or what to do with the Israelis or the Americans, and voices grow heated, then someone will say, ‘Let us arise, and go fishing.’’
He sipped the last of his whisky and said, ‘Malcolm, have they dinner for us?’
I am tired now and cannot remember much of the rest of the evening, but I remember those words of his exactly as he spoke them. I know that he is, as he says he is, mad, but it is a gentle even a noble form of madness, and one that cannot be resisted. What we ate and drank I cannot say, except that it was all delicious. I think we had lamb. The sheikh drank no wine with dinner, only water, and he ate little and spoke only enough to encourage Harriet and me to talk of this and that.
One other thing he said, as we drank small cups of cardamom-flavoured coffee in the library after dinner: ‘If this project succeeds, then it will be God who has succeeded and God who should be thanked. If it fails, then you, Dr Alfred, can say that a poor, foolish, deluded man insisted that you tried to achieve the impossible. And no doubt some good will come from the work you do whatever happens. Some new thing will be known that was not known before, and you will be rightly praised for it and all else will be forgotten. And if it fails, the fault will be mine, because my heart was not pure enough, my vision not clear enough, my strength not great enough. But all things can be done if God wills it so.’
He put his cup of coffee down and smiled at us, preparing to bid us goodnight. Something made me say, ‘But nothing bad will happen, Your Excellency, if this project does not work.’
‘I have spoken to many scholars and imams about my dream of salmon fishing. I have told them how I believe this magical creature brings us all nearer to God—by the mystery of its life, by the long journey that it makes through the oceans until it finds the waters of its home streams, which is so like our own journey towards God. And they have told me that a Muslim may fish as well as a Jew or a Christian, without any offence to God. But that is not what the jihadis will say. They will say I am bringing the ways of the crusader to the land of Islam. If I fail, then at best they will ridicule me. If they think I might succeed, then they will certainly try to kill me.’
It is dark night now and the heavy curtains are drawn in my bedroom but I can still hear the owls shrieking in the woods. In a minute I will put down my pen but I must write these words: I feel at peace.
♦
19 July
David Sugden called me into his office this morning. He waved me to a chair. He was beaming. ‘You seem to have worked your charms on your Arab friend.’
‘Sheikh Muhammad, I suppose you mean?’
He nodded and pushed a thick sheaf of documents across the desk. ‘This arrived from Freshwaters this morning. They are the sheikh’s legal advisers. Very expensive I should think they are, too.’ He tapped the documents with his forefinger. ‘Five million quid. Right there.’
It turned out that Freshwaters had sent us a draft contract to provide a legal and commercial framework for the Yemen salmon project.
‘It’s all there,’ said David. ‘Our legal people are looking at it, but it has everything we would want. No-fault clauses if it doesn’t work, payment no matter what happens, bank guarantees to support it, milestone payments to keep the cash rolling in. It is,’ he said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, ‘manna from heaven. If I can’t get some of that five million into some of my underfunded budgets, then I’ve lost my touch.’
I said that I hoped we were not going to take Sheikh Muhammad’s money under false pretences.
This must have sounded rather prim because David flapped his hands at me and replied, ‘Don’t be such an old woman, Alfred. You know what I mean. I meant every department in NCFE can charge time to this project for one reason or another. He’ll get his salmon river in the desert—or not, as the case may be. We get five million pounds whatever happens. Now, let’s talk about details. I’m going to head the project and take responsibility for communications with other departments…’
‘The Foreign Office, you mean?’
David tapped the side of his nose with his forefinger in a stagey gesture. ‘The prime minister’s office has become involved now; Peter Maxwell is keeping himself in touch with this. But you should forget I said that. In fact I must ask you to be very discreet about all this. The sheikh, the Foreign Office and indeed everyone wants to keep the lid on this project until we are certain we know what will come out of it. So, please remember, keep your mouth buttoned up.’ He laughed to show he had intended a joke. ‘Now then. Where were we? Yes. You are to be in charge of operations: I mean the research team and then project management. You will report to me.’
He turned his computer screen round so I could see it and led me through a project plan. What a bureaucrat! He has organised it so that I will do all the work and he will take all the credit (but not the blame, if there is to be blame). He really doesn’t know what this is all about. He has no conception of how difficult it is going to be, how much scientific research has to be done, the ecosystem models that will have to be built, the environmental impact assessments, modelling the dissolved oxygen levels in Yemeni watercourses, bacterial sampling. My head feels as if it might explode when I think about the complexity of it all. And here is this idiot talking about ‘milestones’ and ‘deliverables’ and ‘resource allocation’.
♦
23 July
Mary came back from Geneva this afternoon. She’s in the spare room asleep. Home for two hours, and we had a row.
First of all, when I tried to tell her about Sheikh Muhammad and his wonderful vision of salmon running the waters of the Yemeni wadis, she dismissed it by saying, ‘The old boy must be insane. Are you sure you want to be associated with something quite as bonkers as that?’
‘But you told me to,’ I said.
‘I told you not to throw over your job in a tantrum; I didn’t tell you to attach your name to something that sounds like professional suicide. Still, I expect you know your own business best.’
‘I hope I do,’ I said stiffly.
There was a long silence and then she said she was sorry, it had been a long day.
Mary often says it has been a long day. She seems to think she is the only one who gets stuck late in the office, who has to sit through tedious meetings resisting the urge to drum one’s fingers or doodle all over the agenda. We all get tired. I had a bubble of excitement inside me, a picture captured within that bubble of the sheikh in his white robes speaking of visions of shining salmon rivers in his quiet voice, of the black waters of his own river in the Highlands, of the sea trout that lurked there. I wanted to talk about the private jet that flew us there, of the grave and immaculate butler Malcolm, of the bubbles in the champagne. Somewhere in this picture, seen through the wrong end of a telescope, was Harriet, beautiful in her evening gown, head on one side, leaning forward to listen to the sheikh saying something. I wanted to share all this with Mary. I wanted to share my scientific excitement with her, the thought that with Sheikh Muhammad’s money I could do something different, something that had never been done before; change the rules of the game.
But she wasn’t interested, and the picture in the bubble darkened and went out, and I buried it deep within me. It’s the first time I haven’t shared something important with her. She just didn’t want to know.
Later over supper I found out what was on her mind.
‘They want me to move to Geneva,’ she said. She didn’t look at me when she spoke, but concentrated on getting her pasta round her fork.
‘Move?’ I asked, putting my own fork down.
‘Move, yes, as in relocate.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the man who went absent on sick leave won’t be coming back.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because he’s dead.’
I considered this; it seemed conclusive. So I asked, ‘For how long?’
‘I don’t know. At least for six months.’
‘Well, obviously that is impossible,’ I said, and then wished I hadn’t.
‘Why is it impossible?’ asked Mary quietly, fixing me with a level stare and sitting upright.
‘Well, I mean, how can you? We’ve got a life here. My work is here. Our home is here.’
Mary was silent and ate some more pasta. Finally she said, ‘I’ve sort of told them I’ll do it.’
Well of course, after that I spoke my mind, and then Mary spoke hers. Now she is asleep in the spare room and I am sitting here writing my diary, and in a minute I will put down my pen and lie on our bed with my eyes open, grinding my teeth.