Dislocated to Success (30 page)

However, all this changed at the end of November when I was summoned discreetly to Clarence House. I had been aware for some time that Prince Andrew had been seen “about” with Princess Philippine of Prussia; there had even been a couple of comments by the likes of Hickey and Dempster about it. However, despite comments from some close friends, I had disregarded it as mere froth; it seemed an unlikely alliance when all things are considered. Whilst Prince Andrew was known to be considering matrimony more seriously, he had also made approaches about taking a more serious look at his military career. Princess Philippine was supposedly being “finished”, but like several others of similar rank was hunting for a suitable husband - with, of course, the strong and baleful encouragement of her Head of House.

However, over a couple of large Gin and Dubonnets, the reasons were more clearly outlined to me: a trans Princess would have less problems with her husband being away on duty for considerable periods, might cope better with any indiscretions, and could probably be relied on to be fairly unobtrusive. I got the impression that not everyone was entirely happy with the idea at the time, and that some people in the Firm had to be talked around. The matter had been discussed with both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition already - both were, I detected, guardedly in favour. However, there were other questions, which is why I had been called in; the main one was what the reaction would be in Europe.

That wasn’t an easy question to answer. Obviously, those states who knew us well would know that a Brandenburg-Prussia marriage did not mean an alliance; however, there were certainly some states out there who were less enlightened. I could imagine St Petersburg pitching a fit about it, and I suspect that the Poles might be a little on edge - although given the amount of co-operation between the Baltic Tier of states, they might have been consulted. Other than that, I could only see jealousy - the English marriage was much desired for prestige reasons, and at least two Catholic monarchs had suggested that daughters could become Anglo-Catholic. During the first year after the Dislocation there had been a wide range of suggestions from various Powers, ranging from a Danish princess who had very firmly remained unmarried in our history, and who most trans-powers would have regarded as a grass widow, to a couple of princesses who were barely past their tenth year. It had taken a while for this to sink in, as it had taken a while for one or two Eastern potentates to work out that Prince Charles didn’t need a junior wife or concubine.

I said I would take soundings, and speed was of the essence; the Palaces are notoriously leaky and most of the newspapers have people on the payroll. Whilst some papers would just drop hints, if Wendy Henry
[68]
at the Sun got hold of it it would be on the front page the next day - probably with some grotesque headline. However, the European sounding had to be done in a reasonable hurry; I was surprised that the reaction wasn’t actually more negative than it was, as the British Marriage was so coveted. There was a general resignation; no one was going to throw a diplomatic tantrum about it, although there was an overall comment of “why Prussia?” I conveyed the information back to the Palace, carefully editing who the more specific comments were from in most cases, although to no avail; the Queen Mother got most of them right.

Despite the threat of another happy event to play for, there was other more serious work to do - the Chinese had returned to the table in distant Phuket. I sometimes think that the Chinese play diplomatic games for their own amusement; they seem to time new proposals very carefully and in a way to determine maximum disruption. With this proposal, they had also added another string to their bow by appointing an official Qing Empire press attache in London; a somewhat shadowy figure called Mr Gong, who it seems was a former American citizen stranded here in the UK after the Dislocation with roots in the former Taiwan. Mr Gong was accredited in a somewhat odd way by the delegation in Phuket as the press representative of the Qianglong Emperor. How Mr Gong managed to get this accolade, I remain uncertain, even unto this day. The more foolish members of the UK press called him the Chinese Ambassador, of course, but the Qing weren’t that stupid; it had been made clear that he had no real power, except - it seemed - to cause trouble for us.

However, the Qianglong Emperor is a somewhat different kettle of fish to his father; there had been requests for architectural books and a copy of a modern English-Mandarin dictionary, and a promise of a copy of some four-language civil service dictionary that the Qings have. There was a hint that they wanted a western-style palace built for them as, of course, a tribute. The temptation to send them John Madin and have done with it was quite high. However, amongst what looked like an increase in some cultural interests, which we suspected were caused by cross-border leakage from Korea and Vietnam - where we were making slow but steady progress - there were still the signs of what we considered to be barbarity.  A merchant we dealt with in Canton was flayed alive for being found wearing modern fabrics. It was a very capricious system in mainland China, and one where personal favour or dislike counted for rather a lot.

However, having rejected Hainan - and with the Qing authorities not even recognising our proposal for a proper enclave at Canton - I was surprised that the first snow of December also saw the offer of “a ball of mud beyond the pale of civilisation”, although mercifully not all of it. The offer was for the area around the port of Anping, but to include 8 villages of civilised Taiwanese and 8 areas of uncivilised Taiwanese. To be absolutely honest, I don’t think we knew what that meant for a couple of days. Taiwan wasn’t somewhere we had much doings with except through Hong Kong, and it took  a little while to realise that we were being offered around one-tenth of the habitable plains of Taiwan - not all of which was under firm Qing control. There was also the question of the highlands, which were unshaded on the map but we were given to understand we would be expected to “control”; I had a nasty feeling what ‘control’ meant. Of course, the new emperor wanted an answer to his very generous offer as soon as possible, preferably by the New Year - that created a minor frisson until it was pointed out that they almost certainly meant the Chinese New Year. The idea of the FO being able to do an initial study on an important document in two weeks is laughable, even more so when you consider that those are the two weeks before Christmas.

Clearly, we had to also draw up a counter-proposal in case this one was deemed not acceptable; it was quite clear that our suggestions around Canton were not going to be shown anything but the door. We were obviously to be kept at a suitable distance, to avoid the contagion of modernism. Of course, as demand for tea has been fulfilled more and more by other nations, we have seen how that has affected the revenues of China. Most thought that the best thing would be to resurrect the Hong Kong Island scheme again; whilst it had been condemned by Qing officials as an insult, it hadn’t been that strongly condemned. Others considered that perhaps we consider one of the old treaty ports such as Amoy or Foochow, and there were those that suggested perhaps we should let the Chinese come to us - quite a few voices found that unlikely to wash if they didn’t want us in Canton.

Of course, what we didn’t expect was Mr Gong. Within a couple of days of the documents arriving in London from Phuket, Mr Gong had also had his brief from whoever was backing him within the Forbidden City. His complicated mix of imperial terms, denunciations Red Guard-style and American marketing phrases made him extremely quotable and very popular with the tabloids - who extracted the Michael from him immensely once they had worked out he was just a hireling. However, it did get the message out that we were trying to do a deal with China on a trading base, and that in itself was something that inflamed a wide range of views; what had previously been something we had been able to keep, unintentionally of course, in the background now had a spotlight on it. It raised the profile, but I don’t believe to this day that it helped the process one iota.

There are certain departments within the Foreign Office from which the arrival of a messenger is always the cause of some palpitations; in the case of Department “I” it is more a furrowed brow of annoyance and wondering what scheme someone has come up with now. Italy looks more complex on a map than it actually is; around half the Peninsula is officially Austria - Milan, Naples etc. I say officially because the amount of control Austria has over Naples in particular is
de minimis
; certainly only the larger towns and their immediate hinterlands, and in Sicily not even that. To be fair to them, they have been working on this - but, with rather more stick than carrot and with fairly minimal resources, the results at that point had not been too good.

The other biggish boys in the playground are Savoy, Tuscany and the Papal States - we have decent relations with all of those, although it may not seem so on the surface in some cases. The Papal States can seem quite frosty at the official level, but they are decent at the personal level. The Tuscans are more pleasant at the official level and trade is developing nicely, but at the personal level the Grand Duchess’ court is rather ultramontane and therefore there is a certain frost from many courtiers. Savoy, of course, dislikes our friendship with Genoa, on which it has some long-held designs which it now sees as being halted, and unfortunately blames us for the enviable Parmesan succession of Charles of Spain, although we had nothing to do with it.

The rest are but minnows, either economically or territorially, although some trade on the legacy of a great name. We have warm relations with Genoa, and certainly that city-state is doing very well, having levered its financial skills and knowledge very carefully. Doge Spinola was easily re-elected until he stood down with ill-health in 1988, his pioneering use of radio and establishing a small payments and transfer system has done a lot for Genoa. Over 90% of our trade with Italy goes through that city, and that trade is increasing at a decent rate.

Then there is Venice, faded glorious Venice; secure in its lagoon until our arrival, still a player in the Adriatic trade but no longer the naval power that it was. The Dislocation has brought little change to Venice; there were at the time a handful of hardy tourists each year, and there was a small trade in art and glass, and in the years of shortages there was a ridiculous amount of smuggling through everyone’s favourite subsidiary - the Republic of Ragusa, a statelet that would claim Hapsburg, Venetian or Ottoman vassalage depending on who had their war galleys parked outside its magnificent fortifications. The main thing we sold at the time to Venice was insecticide and anti-malarials, but they did allow us good access without any rancour and in the summer, when the snow has gone from the Alps, Venice was the quickest route to Vienna. Venice was a little old-fashioned even for trans-times in some ways, a little bit fond of harping on its old glories and quite suspicious of any innovation - in some corners of the FO it was referred to, somewhat naughtily, as the Most Senile Republic.

Of course the news was that the Doge had died; he was a medicine refuser, although not to the extent of banning it for all - unlike a handful of states. Nor did he have what the doctors call Doom Syndrome; he just believed that when his time was up, his time was up. In actual fact, he died a little earlier, which always gets the researchers excited; we were informed and condolences were sent, but the Most Serene Republic does not rate anything more than the Ambassador at the funeral and a nice letter from the Queen. The latter is an aspect of the Queen’s duties which has increased massively since the Dislocation; there are a lot more people whom she feels she has to write a hatched, matched or despatched letter to, and she has always insisted on doing it personally.

There would, of course, be an election for a new Doge. These things can happen quite speedily or very slowly. Department “I” were supposed to be doing a paper on the contenders but were being fairly dilatory about it. Of course, you can expect that if they are being dilatory then the subjects of the paper will react quickly. We understood that there were three main candidates for the Dogeship, and to be perfectly honest we really weren’t concerned about any of them. The usual ennui meant that we hoped that the would-have-been Doge would win, because we had more information about him than any other candidate. We were not expecting the election of Carlo Badoero.

The Badoeros of course were known to us; indeed, the would-have-been Doge was married to a cousin german of the newly elected Doge. They were not one of the great families of the Most Serene Republic, but they were an important one; their names were scattered around the lists of the various councils and cabals, but they had not featured in the Council of Ten for some years. However, all we had on Carlo - assuming that it was this Carlo, because it wasn’t an uncommon name - was that he was very young to be a Doge, at 41, and that he had spent two weeks in 1982 in London as part of a delegation and the summer of 1984 in the Kingdom of Ireland. The KoI had become the place to visit for those who were either too impecunious for a full London season or who found London a little too modern. Dublin, which had many of the benefits of London but in a more trans-atmosphere, was actually quite chic amongst a certain set. If this was that Carlo, that in itself was very interesting .

Anyway, my reaction was to do nothing but wait for the Ambassador to find out if he was that Carlo and present the Government’s congratulations. We did not have to wait long; the morning after his election, the new Doge was at the British Embassy and asking to use the radio-telephone for a chat. So a chat was arranged post-haste, which avoided one of the interminable meetings about the meeting to form an international commission to deal with the internationalisation of the the navigation of the Rhine. An important subject, but one best tackled at 5pm on an evening when you needed Morpheus to call early.