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was . . . let’s say corrupt. So as far as recent ministers are concerned, it’s on the whole best to keep off the subject.”
    â€œPoint taken. But you go way back, of course, so a little idle banter about figures of the past is not out of order?”
    â€œOh yes, I go way, way back,” she said cheerfully. “Isn’t it awful? I’ve been married to the Civil Service. And even before I went up to university I’d been a typist-cum-dogsbody in a government department. What a life! most people would think.Some would say hardly a life at all. Yet something in me right from the start said: ‘This is what you want to do.’ You could say that was me recognizing my own mediocrity.”
    â€œNo one who knew you would think that,” I said, gallantly but truthfully.
    â€œI’m not so sure. But I admit that there have been times when I have looked at the minister or the Secretary of State I’ve been working for and I’ve said to myself: ‘I’ve got a damned sight better brain than you have, you pillock.’ No names, no pack drill.”
    â€œYou’ve worked for practically everyone who’s been anything in politics,” I said guilelessly.
    â€œOh no, that’s an exaggeration,” she said, in that downright, factual way of hers I found endearing. “But lots.”
    I had, I must admit, been leading this conversation in a certain direction.
    â€œOn my first day at the Ministry you came into my office, you saw me at ray desk, and you were startled.”
    She looked embarrassed.
    â€œDid you really see that? You are a deep one! I could have sworn you hadn’t noticed.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy was I startled?” Her elderly face, framed by gray, undyed, and little-cared-for hair, became rapt in thought. “Something in you,” she said at last, “your looks—not your face but your stance, your way of sitting at your desk—reminded me of someone.”
    â€œWho?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œOh, it went as soon as it came. As you say I’ve had an infinite number of men set over me in my time.”
    â€œI expect if you went back over your career in your mind you could pinpoint who it was.”
    I said it easily, but she shot me a glance.
    â€œWho said it was one of the ministers I’ve served that you reminded me of?” she asked.
    â€œI’d have thought it quite likely. I was sitting there at my new desk, the new boy, but I reminded you of someone in the past, sitting at that or a similar desk, and you started.”
    She nodded, reluctantly.
    â€œYes, I suppose it’s quite likely.”
    â€œI’d be interested who it was.”
    â€œGood heavens, it could be anyone.”
    â€œGoing through them would be good preparation for writing your memoirs.”
    â€œThat’s something civil servants never do.”
    â€œNever?”
    â€œNot usually, except in private and for posterity. It’s mainly the more self-important ones who do that. This is getting a bit like a parlor game. . . . Though I said it could be anyone, I think we can be a bit more selective than that, because it must have been one of the memorable ministers you reminded me of. That rules out sixty or seventy percent of them—the ones who sort of coalesce in my mind into an undifferentiated lump.” She paused, swallowed, then began. “Well, I started in 1962, and that was in what was then the Commonwealth Office . . .”
    And so she started through the thirty-five years of her career in Whitehall and her bosses: names that had gone on to distinguished political careers, names that had meant something at the time but had fallen by the wayside through election defeat or sheer ennui, names that were just names.
    â€œNow,” Margaret said, getting to the seventies, “we can rule out the women—”
    â€œWhy?” I asked. “I’ve no