bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 26–28
I don’t know what came over my wife, Dot. I had never seen her like that before. Nor have I since. Normally, she is highly attentive to my needs and moods – feeding me what I crave on demand, responding to my wolf cries of pain as if she feels them too, sympathizing when I am down, and up when I am up and she is really down. But it wasn’t like that when Prime Minister Trudeau visited Indonesia in January of 1971.
Beforehand, she was too excited to focus on the tedious details that concerned me. She was busy getting her hair done just right and choosing the dresses she would wear for President Suharto’s dinner in the Prime Minister’s honour and the return one to be hosted by Trudeau at the presidential guest house. And during the visit she was too anxious to see him — maybe have a conversation — to give much thought to what we were up to at the embassy.
When Trudeau and his entourage arrived at the airport and the Prime Minister was introduced to the embassy staff and their spouses, to get his attention, Dot had our three young children in tow. The girls were in white cotton dresses, studded with red maple leaves and our son in white shorts and shirt with the same shower of red. A bit much, maybe. But, in “71, post-centennial nationalism still lingered. The Prime Minister did stop to speak to them, his sharp blue eyes focussing intently, “When you’re back in Ottawa,” he said, “you’ll have to come and see me.”
Dot was ecstatic telling me afterwards. “Can you believe it? He actually invited me to come and see him?”
“Uh, honey…uh, I think he was referring to the kids!”
Dot wasn’t listening. “Those eyes…It’s incredible…They’re so penetrating.”
Me, I saw only the back of his head, hurrying from meeting to meeting, handing him the text of a short address on development that I had drafted, passing him a memorandum of understanding to sign, and blotting his signature afterwards.
Throughout the visit, Dot looked for seemingly natural opportunities to come face to face with the Prime Minister. “You keep popping up from behind every potted palm” he joked at one point. I think it was the only remark he directed exclusively at her.
It was because Dot was so distracted that I couldn’t get her to focus on the seating plan I had drafted for the dinner party Trudeau was to host. And that almost led to a major botch-up for which I would have been entirely to blame.
Much care and planning went into the guest list for the dinner, and, in the usual manner for such occasions, it was sent to the Chief of Protocol at the Foreign Ministry for vetting and for him to provide us with the order of precedence for the Indonesian invitees. It was then my responsibility to work out the precise seating-plan in the dining-room and oversee the preparation of the name cards that would go at everyone’s place as well as the board at the entrance to the dining-room that guests would consult to facilitate finding their way quickly to their seats. This was not a task that came easily to me; diplomatic niceties were not my strong suit. Still, I laboured hard to get the thing right, even remembering to omit several of the embassy staff, including myself, from designated places. Some guests who had accepted their invitations would not, in the end, show up, we anticipated, and this way there would be “spares” to fill what otherwise would be awkward gaps at the tables.
I went over the seating plan again and again looking for possible errors. Then I reviewed it with the ambassador, Tom Delworth. But he was too preoccupied with more important details of the visit to give it much thought. So I showed it to Dot. Her focus, however, was not on the essentials. “So where will I be sitting? Hmmm.. Can’t you get me any closer to Trudeau?”
Despite Dot’s distracted perusal, I was, nevertheless, confident the seating plan was okay and that every detail for the dinner had been attended to. About an hour before the guests were due to arrive, half-dressed, I did a final inspection of the dining-room.
“Oh, no! What’s this?” I shouted to one of the embassy staff. “We’ve got the two middle tables reversed.” I could feel blood surging into my head and my heart racing. “That means all the tables are wrong!.. Oh, my God!”
I grabbed some place cards frantically. “Come on, we’ve got to change everything! Hurry!”
“What do you mean?… We can’t change them, there isn’t time.
“We have to. And the plan at the door. Here! You do that, while I move the place cards.”
“I don’t see it? What the hell is the matter?”
There was a head table across the top of the room, and four long ones running at right angles to it the full length of the hall. One was directly in line with President Suharto’s chair and another with the Prime Minister’s. I had inadvertently reversed their order of precedence. Not that any one in the Prime Minister’s entourage would likely have noticed, but the protocol-conscious diplomatic corps and other local dignitaries would have. Some guests would have been miffed, and my gaffe would have been a delicious source of local gossip — to Canada’s discredit.
Stripped to the waist, except for the suspenders holding up the trousers of my tux, I tore around the room seemingly out of control, snatching place cards from the settings, dropping others in their places, and shouting the changes to my helper at the entrance.
Into this maelstrom 20 minutes before the guests strode the ambassador on his final inspection. When he saw me, Tom blanched and his jaw dropped.
I raised my hand. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be fine. Just don’t talk to me. I’ve got to concentrate. And I’ve got to hurry.”
We had an excellent working relationship. Tom had confidence in me — perhaps mistakenly. So he left without saying anything. But, returning to the guests who had been assembled for drinks in an antechamber, he spoke to Dot, suggesting that it would be a good idea if she checked on me.
“What’s up?” Dot asked me cheerfully as she walking into the dining-room, looking ravishing in a long, silk evening gown.
“A problem with the seating plan.”
“Oh,” She sounded nonchalant. “Is it going to be okay?’
“I hope so.”
“Good… Well, come and have a drink when you’re free. The hors d’oeuvres are yummy.”
She went back to the party and her tracking of the most eligible bachelor in Canada.
Just as the guests were about to file into the dining-room, we finished rearranging the seating plan. Everything was in order once again, but still I glanced anxiously around as people took their seats, fearful there might still be a hitch.
Sure enough, there was one guest who didn’t show, so I plunked myself at his vacant spot – at one of the central tables. The wife of an Indonesian cabinet minister was beside me, and she eyed me suspiciously, concerned that I had seated myself there in error.
I was sweating and panting from the rescue operations and my hands were still shaking so I gulped down the glass of water at my place. And then, when the first of the wines was served – Gewurztraminer — foolishly I drained it in one go, and had to wait impatiently for a refill. My dinner ompanion looked at me aghast convinced ow that there had been a termble mıstak in the seating arrangements.
“And what is your position in the Prime Minister’s party?” she asked, assuming I had come from Ottawa.
“I’m First Secretary at the embassy.” I shot back defiantly. We had had a “Oh!” She put down her soup spoon. labbed delicatelv at her lips with hei serviette, and turned to talk to the person on her other side. Me, I knew, was where they were supposed I couldn’t have cared less. Everyone but to be.
The meal was a little disappointing. Several weeks before, we had had a dry run at the official residence with Tom and his wife, Pamela. We had eaten our way through the entire menu and every course had been a gastronomic delight. But something happens to every recipe when you go from four to 140. And the ambience, too, was entirely different at the state dinner than at the Delworth’s boisterous practice party where we had been at liberty to give close scrutiny to the wines and champagne in particular. However, I didn’t much care about the food at the presidential guest house. For me, the dinner was really over the moment it started successfully. My neck had been saved. By the paper thin slice of a place card.
I’ve just found two of them, in fact, in our souvenir box. They’re three and a half inches long and an inch and a half high and decorated with gold-embossed Canadian coats-of-arms. One says “Mrs. T. A. Keenleyside”. And the other, taken at the end of the evening from the head table, “The Prime Minister of Canada.’
Snatched from behind a potted palm by an infatuated guest.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 2 (1999) — Summer 1999 // Été 1999, pp. 26–28. Read the rest of this issue →
