35 years ago, on 4 January, 1983, I started my first job in the private sector. I was greeted by the chairman and owner of the company, whom I shall call Nathan, a wonderful, warm-hearted bear of a man, tall and broad, effusive and generous. He had appointed me after telling me, at my interview, that I was ‘ideally unqualified’ for the position. That was enough to predispose me to like him.
I was, at that time, facing a bit of an emergency, part biological, part political. The politics were down to Maggie Thatcher, then Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. Giving expression to the widespread xenophobia which would grow over 33 years to its full toxicity in the 2016 Brexit vote, she had brought in new legislation which made it more difficult to obtain British nationality.
What about the biology? Danielle, now my wife of 35 years – as you’ll discover, there is no coincidence behind that figure – was by then getting close to bursting with what would turn into the young man, today 35 – again, no coincidence – who is my son Michael. If he emerged before we were married, he would have no guarantee of British nationality, thanks to the iron lady: Danielle was (and is) French and Maggie wasn’t prepared to extend the precious gift of Britishness to the illegitimate child of a foreigner, even if born on British soil.
You may feel that being British didn’t really matter that much, since he would be French anyway. That’s true enough. But I have the Jew’s enthusiasm for multiple nationalities – you never know when you might need a bolthole – and I thought it would be good for the child to have two. Besides, there was a chance it would be a boy – we didn’t actually discover until he was born – and at that time young Frenchmen were still liable to military service at 18. The British bolthole would spare him that particularly useless experience.
Anyway, I quite liked the idea of my child inheriting my nationality.
‘I have to say this,’ I told Nathan, ‘and I hope it won’t give you a terrible impression of me, starting work one Tuesday and asking for leave on the next…’
I saw his face fall.
‘But I have to get married and our registry office doesn’t do weekend weddings.’
He threw himself back in his chair and roared with laughter.
‘David,’ he said when he’d got his breath back, ‘there are few excuses I could have accepted, but that’s one of them.’
He went on to tell me his definition of a bachelor, as a man who refuses to make the same mistake once, and returned later in the day with a cheque as a (generous) wedding present.
He was easy to like. Though something of a lovable rogue: the kind of man who spent money as though it was going out of fashion, even though the company was selling next to nothing. He was a maverick who tried to live by his own rules, even when they directly conflicted with economic law – or simply financial good sense.
Those days all came back to me recently when Danielle and I caught up with an old friend from back then. Naturally, we did some reminiscing though none of us had any news of Nathan, which is a pity. I wonder what he’s up to?
He was South African and (naturally, with a name like that) Jewish. Indeed, he would tell me later that the Apartheid regime in South Africa had put him under some pressure to become an officer in the army.
‘Well, they felt a Jewish officer might help them tone down the accusations of racism,’ he told me.
He refused. He saw no reason to provide the regime with a figleaf. He got out of the army as soon as his compulsory service was over, and went into publishing, ultimately in the company where I joined him.
That didn’t mean, however, that he did nothing for the regime. It wasn’t until after I left the company, just before it went under, that I learned how much he’d done.
It turns out that South African intelligence services – the Department of Information and the Bureau of State Security, infamous as BOSS – had a great need for a publisher or two. One of them was Nathan. Huge funds were put at his disposal and his partner’s to start buying into British publishing groups. The aim, ultimately, was to influence the editorial line of their magazines or newspapers into something more sympathetic to South Africa.
Enough money was spent to buy a large stake in a British publishing group, but never enough to take it over completely. The problem? The money was all clandestine and no one was keeping close enough tabs on how it was spent. Inevitably, it all ended in a corruption scandal.
 |
| The scandal breaks |
Which I was pleased about. He was, after all, highly likeable. But, as the Muldergate story revealed, even more of a rogue than I’d guessed.
It was fun, in any case, remembering those times. After all, they brought me closer than I’ve ever been to a major spy scandal and the toppling of the head of a racist state. It was fun to reminisce about it all again.
No comments:
Post a Comment