Fiona’s Story
24-27 June, Pelopponese, Greece
4am, 24 June, I reach gingerly for my mobile on the bedside table in the shuttered pitch dark of our room in Nafplio (narf-plee-o) – trying not to knock over the cold cup of tea. c52/48 Vote Leave!
Now that will upset the teacups.
I think of all the people I’ve just met in the Wychwood villages, till today in EU-alliance with this Pelopponese seaside resort that was once the capital of Greece. How different could two places be! Big fleshy warm brown people, big fleshy warm red tomatoes, rampant bougainvillea, stray cats and dogs that follow us everywhere, graffiti, derelict buildings, and dry biblical landscape. So hot earlier this week that two swallows collapsed in the street. I assumed they were dead but my soft-hearted friend saw that they were still breathing and she and two Greek gentlemen revived them in a bucket of water. I was amazed at their instant revival. By this time we were close to collapsing from the heat ourselves.
The house opposite our pension was once the Gestapo interrogation office. Commonwealth soldiers fought in Nafplio and Tolo, the locals risking death to help those who missed the transport to Crete. No one here was big and fleshy then; they almost starved to death. Many were rounded up and shot for no reason. The Germans kept immaculate records of these spontaneous despatches. Three ANZACs died on the site of today’s football ground in Tolo. The Greek men fought hard with whatever they had to hand. Dimitri, manager of the (excellent) Apollon Hotel in Tolo, proudly reminds me of what Churchill said after the battle for Crete: “Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but that heroes fight like Greeks.”
Our taxi driver is a fighter; to hell with the EU and the banks! He wants Greece to follow Britain’s lead, even if it means living on a diet of olives and oranges. He reckons 90% of his countrymen feel the same – it is less than a majority according to that day’s Times.
Thinking about war and the Greek resistance, and the constant flux of power and people in Europe, I feel inspired to write Fiona’s Story, while the others stay glued to BBC News – we are all now Referendum news addicts. Fiona’s is a hard story to do justice to – a privilege to write.
Back in those incomparably lovely Wychwood villages in the Cotswolds, Fiona will be walking her miniature Schnauser, Pippin, and dead-heading her favourite rose, Peace. Or maybe it’s the day she works at the medical centre.
Have you watched Homeland, or seen the recent film Eye in the Sky? Well Fiona is the closest you will ever get to the roles played by Claire Danes and Helen Mirren. Only she played the part in real life for 25 years. In 2002 she was a very senior British Army Intelligence Officer – certainly the most senior female Army Intelligence Officer – having advanced through the ranks to full Colonel, ultimately commanding her own battalion of intelligence operatives throughout Britain. She is an astonishing discovery. In fact, come to think of it, the Wychwood villages seem to be some fictional space warp where every person you meet turns out to be somebody completely amazing or unexpected – Margaret, the farmer’s wife who studied maths at Cambridge in the late 50s; her relative, Anne, the C of E vicar, who is also a mathematician and a pig-farmer; Stephen, the millionaire (billionaire?) investor from Waitara, NZ, whose farm is next to the manor house where the Mitford girls lived; Henry Waldorf Astor, a landowner who was a documentary maker and New York advertising man and carries the weighty legacy of being Nancy Astor’s great grandson; Ruth, the quintessentially English Librarian who grew up in Owhango, nr Taumaranui; and then there’s Malcolm that I met at the Church fete, who was born in Wellington (1938) while his father was out helping the NZ defence forces prepare for a Japanese invasion, and who then had something important to do with the Dambusters. After the war his father made the atom model pieces for Watson and Crick’s DNA helix! There’s Laurie on the mobility scooter with the Union Jack flying; a tenor who sang Ave Maria solo two weeks ago for the Queen’s 90th.
Fiona started her own unique trajectory at Benenden, a top girls school in Kent her mother had attended. Her father was in the Navy, and quite against women in the forces, she discovered after his death. She was sporty, as her tall athletic build pre-ordained. This lucky young girl had a pony and the chance to try all sorts of different crafts and sports at school. She excelled in many, and though she got an interview for Oxford, she ended up at Bristol University, where she was part of an elite cohort studying chemical physics. There was only one possible future in her imagination then – a career as a science researcher. In her second year at University, fate intervened in the form of an insanity-inducing hormone rush. Like most hormone-crazed 19 year-olds she willingly jumped off the cliff into shark-infested waters. So started a variety of self-harming behaviours – not the modern arm-slashing kind, but the classic ones of our youth – staying up late, not handing in assignments, mistaking quite ordinary young men for Gods, not ringing her mother, who could have told her – having long since climbed out of the hormonal abyss. The result was not the “first” she had been on easy track for. A career as a researcher was now most unlikely. Into the void.
After thrashing around in disappointment and self-loathing for a while, her seen-it-all-before, eye-rolling mother was, fortunately for Fiona, the one to receive a phone call from the Army offering her a place – she accepted on Fiona’s behalf.
If it was excitement she wanted, it was excitement she got. That other hormone, adrenalin, kicked in. Instead of being sidelined in a lab, writing tedious funding applications and losing the will to live, she found herself investigating the murders of soldiers by the IRA in Germany, teaching nuclear, biological and chemical warfare at the military college of science, heading up the intelligence effort in Northern Ireland, attending the nation’s top course in security and international relations, and writing Defence doctrine for Peacekeeping Operations. She also worked undercover in Northern Ireland, experiencing a great deal of physical and mental stress. This gave her “street cred” with the men and a lot of kudos in society generally, including an OBE from the Queen. Her father alone remained unimpressed.
She was posted twice to her beloved United States (she was born in Washington DC) – first as an exchange officer at the US Army Chemical School and later as the personal representative for the Chief of UK Defence Intelligence, a 3-star admiral, in the whole of North America including Canada – an “incredibly exciting role”. She has lived.
But for some reason, all this living on her nerve, and the toll of “imposter syndrome”, manifested in an absolute obsession with her weight. She endured a 22 year-long struggle with bulimia and the added stress of hiding a weakness that was completely at odds with being a successful senior Army officer.
So here’s this tall, take-no-prisoners action woman in uniform, managing hundreds of men and women – a champion shooter, who can drive at high speeds, instantly recognise and memorise car models, makes and number plates, lecture on nuclear war, talk international defence strategy with CIA top dogs and diplomats from all over the world, and hold her nerve undercover – a helpless victim of the enemy within. In hindsight she thinks she was on mission impossible to impress her father.
In 2002, Fiona left the Army, when it seemed she had come to the end of her golden run. She might have made Brigadier or General, and in a future time undoubtedly would have.
She had two more high status jobs after leaving the Army: Chief Executive of quite a large charity in London, and a member of a Government Committee looking at what the UK should do with its radioactive waste. Both of these were difficult in their own ways.
The bulimia ended when Fiona found out she had ovarian cancer. She feels the pressure of always trying to prove she was better than her male colleagues in order to compete with them may have been to blame for her cancer. This was another very hard time in her life with confusing diagnoses from different medics. It took a whole year to recover physically. She came through it but had to re-think everything, and try to identify who she really was.
Essentially this led to a change of focus from self to others. Her high-powered jobs had been challenging and exciting, but the drive to be someone important and gain respect was largely self-centred she realised, and self-destructive in the end.
She started her transformation with an admirable exercise in humility – working in the village shop behind the counter, stocking shelves and delivering the newspapers on her bicycle.
At the beginning, Fiona took on rather too many charity/volunteer roles and was in danger of burning out – chairperson, committee member, secretary, of this, that and the other thing. Villages have plenty of opportunities for unpaid work.
Working for Citizens Advice Bureau, in both a voluntary and paid capacity, taught her to be non-judgemental, impartial, and empathetic and engendered a passion for helping people whatever their problem might be. She also visits elderly people in the local area, managing their mail/financial affairs/practical matters as needed.
Giving up work meant Fiona could have a dog – other dog owners will understand just how much unconditional (well, food maybe) love they can bring. (One of our companion stray dogs in Nafplio rested his head in on my shoulder and licked my face when we reached the top of the 999 steps to the castle – I decided then and there I was going to get one too – some day).
Fiona says she is no longer “a driven, anxious, stressed person in charge of things.” Instead, “a kinder, more relaxed, bottom of the rung worker” who feels “completely self fulfilled and content, with no need to strive for recognition or power.”
“Cancer can be life ending, but it can also be life transforming.”
Footnote: Fiona agrees with what Germaine Greer has to say about women in the armed forces
