The Complete Yes Minister

It was shortly after the day that Hacker threatened a real inquiry into the Qumran deal that I went to Hacker’s London flat to collect him en route for an official visit to the Vehicle Licensing Centre in Swansea. Some morale-boosting was urgently called for down there, because the installation of the labour-saving computers had caused such delays that thousands more staff had been taken on to sort out the chaos. It looked as though larger computers would now be necessary, at some considerable public expense, partly in order to handle the situation and partly in order to avoid our having to lay off all the extra employees now working there. As job-creation was central to our strategy in the depressed or Special Development Areas [i.e. Marginal Constituencies – Ed.] it was important to find something for these chaps to do. Clearly Hacker was not able to make any useful contribution in that area, but Sir Humphrey felt that a goodwill visit from the Minister would keep things friendlier for the time being and would make it look as though something was being done while we all racked our brains and tried to think what!

In any event, to cut a long story short [too late – Ed.] I was standing in the Minister’s front hall chatting to Mrs Hacker, waiting for the Minister to finish dressing, when I saw the rosewater jar from Qumran, and commented that it looked awfully nice.

Mrs Hacker agreed enthusiastically, and added that a friend of hers had dropped in that day and had been frightfully interested.

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ And then she dropped the bombshell. ‘Her name’s Jenny Goodwin – from The Guardian.’

‘The Guardian,’ I said, quietly stunned.

‘Yes. She asked me where it came from.’

‘A journalist,’ I muttered, aghast.

‘Yes. Well . . . The Guardian, anyway. She asked what it was worth, and I said about fifty quid.’

‘You said about fifty quid.’ My bowels had turned to water. I felt hot and cold simultaneously. I could hardly speak. I just tried to keep the conversation going somehow.

‘Yes. Fifty quid.’ She was looking at me strangely now. ‘Funnily enough, she thought it was genuine.’

‘She thought it was genuine,’ I repeated.

‘Yes, Bernard, you sound like an answering machine.’

I apologised.

Mrs Hacker then told me that the journalist, one Jenny Goodwin, had asked if she could ring up the Qumrani Embassy to ask what it was worth.

‘To ask what it was worth,’ I mumbled, hopelessly.

She looked at me keenly. ‘It is only a copy, isn’t it Bernard?’ she asked.

I managed to say that so far as I knew, and so I was led to believe, and so forth, and then the Minister hurried downstairs and my bacon was saved. For the time being. But I knew that the jig was up and that my career was on the line, my neck was on the block, and my next appointment was likely to be at the Jobcentre in the Horseferry Road.

My only hope was that the Minister would come to my defence when the facts came out. After all, I’d always done my best for him. I didn’t think I could expect much sympathy or help from Sir Humphrey. But I had no choice but to tell him the whole story as soon as I could.

[The following morning Bernard Woolley made a special request for an urgent meeting with Sir Humphrey Appleby. Sir Humphrey made a note about it, which we found in the Departmental files at Walthamstow – Ed.]

BW requested an urgent meeting. He asked for a word with me. I said yes, and waited, but he did not speak. So I told him that I’d said yes.

Again he did not speak. I noticed that he was sweating, but it was a cool day. He seemed to be in a state of considerable mental anguish, such as I had never observed in him before.

I asked the standard questions. I thought perhaps that Woolley had sent the Minister to the wrong dinner, given him the wrong speech, or – worst of all – shown him some papers that we didn’t mean him to see.

He shook his head silently, and I divined that the situation was even worse than that. So I told him to sit down, which he did gratefully. I waited.

It slowly emerged that the exquisite rosewater jar, given to the Minister in Qumran, was the root of the problem. Apparently the Minister’s wife liked it. Not surprising. BW had explained the rules to her, and she had looked terribly sad. They always do. Then she had asked if it was really worth more than fifty pounds, and said how marvellous it would be if it wasn’t. And BW, it seems, had agreed to ‘help’.

I understand his motives, but a seventeenth-century vase – well, really!

BW then explained that there was a ‘terribly nice Qumrani businessman’. And this fellow had apparently valued it as a copy and not as an original. For £49.95. A most convenient sum.