Chapter 2

When it comes to convenience, Mechelen really sits in the right place. Just over twenty kilometres from the campus in Antwerp, and a similar distance to the centre of Brussels and the EU headquarters. That was where some of Elaine’s family worked. Her uncle Jules was part of the security detail in the main building, while Juliette, his wife, was a secretary in the office of one of the Belgian Commissioners. There were three children, all who had left home and lived in Brussels.

They had been sent the Elaine Terrey books by Annika, but also had the French issues, purchased locally. We were going to spend the summer with them and explore the area. We had been promised an insider’s tour of the EU headquarters. My task, while we were there, was to perfect my French and to build on the Belgian Dutch that Ellie had been teaching me since we were at her home.

Within a few days, it became more than a holiday to polish my linguistic skills. Juliette had friends in a local literary club that met in Brussels, at the Café Walvis. She took us there on our second evening, to meet some of our readers. It was a heady occasion, far more fan-like than the group in Barking. As we had never been out to signings or book events, we were both surprised by our acceptance as popular authors.

It took a little while to sort out the fact that I was actually Clare Higgins, with several of the ladies there having read my earlier books. Elaine was already known for her stories, but it was also a surprise to them that we co-wrote the Pat Shelley ones, which were only just getting into the book shops. It was at that social evening where we met Madame Francoise Duval. She seemed to be a cut above the rest of the group, and they deferred to her as their natural leader. It may have been the silent man that stood by her side and looked us over with a practiced eye.

Towards the end of the evening, she took us aside and told us that she was Juliette’s boss, and an EU Commissioner. She was involved in the Development and Humanitarian Aid portfolio but had been asked to look into the ramifications of climate change. By this time, everybody had suffered under climate changes. Very hot, or very cold weather was usual, and fierce storms, tornados, twisters, and heavy rain was taking its toll all over the world. There was some speculation that it was also part of the increase in seismic activity, with several volcanos erupting after centuries of inactivity.

She asked us about the reasons that brought us to Belgium, and we explained that we were to spend a year at Antwerp as part of our BA studies. She told Juliette to be certain to bring us to her office the next day when she came to work. That was something we never expected. When we got back to the house, Jules agreed that it was unusual for one of the Commissioners to want to see a couple of students, but that it would certainly put us into a place where we could see how the EU worked.

The next day, we were up, showered, and dressed well to go into Brussels with Juliette. When we approached the EU section, we were amazed at the size of the buildings. Juliette drove down a ramp into an underground carpark of the Berlaymont, an imposing and very modern building. When we left the car, the first stop was at a security office, where we showed our passports, and they checked the list for the day. We had already been listed as visitors to see Commissioner Duval. It took about ten minutes for us to be photographed, entered into a data base, put our phones in a locker, and be issued with photo ID on a lanyard.

The offices for the Commissioners were on the Twelfth and Thirteenth Floor, which my father would have declared was dicing with fate. I suppose that he had been right, considering all the things that they had done which had messed with people’s lives. In the open secretarial office, we were introduced to Juliette’s supervisor, who took us to see Madeline, Madame Duval’s personal assistant. In her office, the gentleman we had met, briefly, last night, verified that we were the ones that Madame Duval had asked to see her. Madeline rang through to her boss, then told us that we would need to wait for a few minutes and asked us if we wanted something to drink while we waited.

It was about twenty minutes when a door opened, and Madame Duval came out to usher us into her office. She sat us by the window where we could see some of the other EU offices and made small talk until Madeline brough in a tray with cake, biscuits, and a coffee pot, along with some cups and saucers. When we had filled our cups and chosen a biscuit, she came to the point straight away.

“Clarence and Elaine, no doubt you’re wondering why I wanted to see you. I want to set you a task which I believe is well within your abilities. I have been instructed to submit a report on Climate Change to a committee of Commissioners, in a few weeks. I need a fresh outlook. Do you think that you can help me?”

We nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“All the advisers on this are old school. They are stuck in the rut which originated with the Paris Accord. I doubt that we can do anything now to reverse climate change, as I think the change is upon us. I would like the two of you to submit a report, unbiassed by the old thinking, with some ideas on what you think we should do. I’ll get Madeline to organise an office, with the proper equipment, so that Juliette can bring you in to work here as temporary employees. What do you think?”

Elaine looked at me with a sparkle in her eye.

“Madame Duval, we can only try. Tell me, will we have access to up-to-date statistics?”

“You will have whatever is on our data base. It will need to take about twenty minutes to read out, and diagrams are allowed, but no complicated tables. Thank you for taking it on. Madeline will show you the office and take your IDs to be upgraded. With the new ones, you’ll be allowed to carry your phones on you. Any problems, talk to her.”

We left the office and Madeline took us under her wing. She showed us a small office next to the open plan area, then left us to our own devices.

“Well, we’ve certainly dropped ourselves in it here, Ellie.”

“It’ll be good, Mad. She virtually told us to write something that no-one else had been brave enough to say. It’ll take several days to do the research, especially crunching the statistics, but the actual writing should be easy, once we have the details. Here comes Juliette, to see what’s going on.”

We filled Juliette in on the fact that we had been asked to write a report, and she said that she would take us to the restaurant for lunch. We turned on the equipment and started researching the latest news on the subject. Over the rest of the week, we made notes and realised that the world was in deep trouble. The EU offices were open all weekend, so Juliette loaned us her car pass and we spent some time there on Saturday.

By the middle of the next week, we had what we needed, and it only took a couple of hours to write the report. The basis of it was that no matter what the EU did, it was already too late, and that the total output of the Americas, Russia, India, and China would negate any moves forward. We posed the notion that it was time to stop trying to stem the tide, and that it was now time to spend the money on creating ways to live with what we had been given.

There was a drawing program on the system, and we drew up a sample of the sort of house that should be built. It would be elevated in case of flood, properly insulated to withstand heat and cold, equipped with enough solar cells and battery storage to be self-sufficient, with a turbine-style wind-tunnel that could be positioned to capture wind energy. It would need to be able to withstand high wind and earth tremors. The design could be enlarged into apartment blocks. We signed the report with EFT/POS and rewrote it in French and Belgian Dutch.

When we had finished, we emailed them to Madeline and tidied up the office. She came to see us before we went home with Juliette and asked us if we would come in each day for the rest of the week. She would give us work to do, and it would make it easier when it came to paying us. That was something we hadn’t even asked about.

The next day, when we looked in the office, there was a sheaf of papers on the desk, with a note asking us to write a ten-minute speech on suggestions about Humanitarian Aid, with regard to what we had said in the previous report. I called Madeline and told her that what she had asked for would take longer than the rest of the week. She asked if we minded staying, and I said that we had all the holidays before we started the new school year. I figured that we had all year to sight-see but would be able to put our time working in the EU on our resume when we needed to look for a job.

It did take a long time to do the research, checking out all the projects that the EU was involved in. There were a lot of low-lying islands that would need to be evacuated and homes supplied to the populations. Some would get by with some emergency building of sea walls. Other areas had already succumbed to the ravages of wars and famines, millions dying since the early twenty-twenties.

The speech we wrote was hard-hitting and from the heart as well as the head. Done properly, it would make a lot of people stop and think. Given after the other report had been tabled, it would make even more sense. Whatever came out of this, we had both learned a lot about the state of the world that wasn’t general knowledge, as well as a lot about research into subjects that we had never been involved in before. As before, the three reports were signed EFT/POS and emailed to Madeline.

Before we left for the night, Madeline came and told us that we would be contacted should we be needed, and to keep our ID lanyards. She gave us forms to sign, where we agreed to not say anything about our work with the EU. She also gave Juliette a card. On the Friday evening, Jules and Juliette took us to a posh restaurant for dinner. She told us that it was a present for our work, on top of what we would be paid. What made us both stop when we entered the dining area was the sight of Madame Duval already at a table, along with her husband and the President of the EU Commission with her husband. They all rose to greet us as we were shown to the table.

It was a long table, set away from others, with four seats each side. The others had already taken the four seats that faced the room. I glanced around and saw a table with four young men with watchful eyes not that far away. Madame President gestured for us to sit opposite them, as Madame Duval introduced us, by name, and also introduced the two husbands, both lawyers who worked for the Commission. As we sat, Madame President spoke.

“Welcome to this little celebration. I was shown the report that the two of you wrote and it has put a bomb under a lot of conservative thinkers who still want us to maintain the hope that we can reduce the pollution of the air. Madame Duval stunned the Commission with that speech that you wrote, which built on the report. Those who have digested both are now talking about a way forward. I thank you for helping to clear a logjam in our administration.”

“Thank you, Madame President. We only looked at the statistics and drew a different conclusion, based on our obvious ignorance of the politics. When we saw the numbers, there was no other result.”

We were quiet when the waiters came to take the orders for food and drink. Nothing more was said about the EU as we ate our meal. Instead, Madame Duval brought up our books, with a lively discussion between us and the ladies about the plots and romantic affairs, while the two lawyers looked on with slight smiles and said nothing. Madame President admitted that she liked to relax in the evening with a glass of wine and a romantic novel. It was an escape from her serious life. I had never thought that I would be talking so openly to such a well-known person, and I realised that I really liked her down-to-earth manner.

As we were drinking coffee, she looked at the two of us.

“Clarence and Elaine. The two submissions that you gave Madame Duval were well thought out and have made an impact that will become clearer as we move on. I ask that you make yourselves available to write other projects and speeches, for both her and me. I know that you will have to return to Essex when your time in Antwerp is finished, but we can give you remote access to our data base so you can do the research. There will be permanent jobs for you here when you graduate if you want careers with the EU.”

“Madame President. We appreciate the offer but can’t commit to a lifetime with the EU until we have more experience here. We have written plays that have been presented by a drama company in Colchester, and that may be a future that also beckons. I can’t see us as being authors of the sort of books that we have written for very long. They have been fun and lucrative. We may want to write something more serious. I really don’t know what lies in our future for Elaine and me, but we will put your offer on the top of our list, and we thank you for it.”

“Well said, young man. You may find that Antwerp gives you projects that give you more experience in speech writing, once you start there. The Chancellor is a friend, and I will be mentioning your abilities to her. The world is open to you both, but I think that you may take the track which allows you to make a difference in your world, rather than just entertaining the masses. You can be sure that, if you join us, the money will be enough to live well on.”

On the drive home, Juliette remarked that the evening had been very different, even if she and Jules hadn’t said a lot. She looked back at us in the back seat.

“You should really look hard at careers with the EU. I don’t know what was in the things you wrote for Francoise Duval, but it is obvious that they made an impact if the President had read them. In all my time in that office, I’ve never been aware of the President taking a couple of University students to an expensive dinner. It was a first for us, as well, and something we’ll remember for ever.”

I sat there thinking about that. As far as we were concerned, we had done a couple of projects and had been given a bonus meal. Now, I had to consider the political ramifications of what had happened tonight. The President of the EU was a very powerful person, feted wherever she went, hosted by kings and dictators, looked up to as a strong person doing an important job.

“You’re right, Juliette. Tonight was far more important that I thought it was. Being a speechwriter to the Commission would give us access to a lot of knowledge about the world and may not have us locked into living in Brussels. I think that we’ll need to give her offer some serious thought.”

Ellie gripped my hand and nodded.

On Sunday evening, we had a phone call to be with Juliette in the morning, as there would be a project for us on our desk. When we looked at it, I had to sit down and take it in. We had been asked to write a major speech for the President, based on our two previous submissions, where she explained that the EU was changing tack and moving towards living with the change, rather than trying to fight it.

We would need to supply the answers to questions that may be asked afterwards. It would be vetted by her other speechwriters so to expect some resistance. We would be able to expand of our housing ideas and an architect would be available. We were given six weeks to polish it, which would give us a couple of weeks before the next term. There was a note saying that we could refuse to go further, and we wouldn’t be thought bad of if we did. All that was needed was a voice-over telling us that the papers would ignite in five seconds.

We sat at the desks and read the papers through, more than once, and then started talking.

“Mad, this is serious. If we take this on, we’ll be writing words that will change Europe. Can we just walk away?”

“I don’t think that walking away is an option anymore, Ellie. We wrote what we thought was the truth, and it’s found a willing believer. This isn’t writing as entertainment; it’s writing to direct a change of fundamental policy. Think of it as a play. We have something that is the hook – the U-turn on climate change. This would be the second act, where the cast move things forward towards act three, where there is the great victory. The only difference will be that there’s no great victory, just everybody getting by instead of fighting an unwinnable battle.”

“That sounds morbid.”

“The whole thing is morbid. You saw the figures. If nothing is done, a lot of people die, are displaced, become refugees. If what we proposed is taken up, the world can try to get ahead of the problems before we’re overwhelmed. What do you want to do?”

“What I want to do is to graduate from University with a good job that makes a difference. We will never find one like this in a million years. I think that we should do what has been asked and see where it goes. At the very least, we’ll get paid for what could be considered a summer job.”

I went to her and kissed her.

“That’s fighting talk when we put it in a novel. Who knows, this may give us plenty of background for a book or a play.”

We turned the equipment on and started formulating a plan. Thinking of the things that we needed further research on. Before we joined Juliette for lunch, we were visited by a gentleman who introduced himself as from the finance section. He wanted our banking and personal details so that we would be paid for our time, with the payments made monthly and tax taken as Belgian residents. There were ways, he explained, where we could clear things with the British taxation office, which he would help with, should it be needed.

Now, speechwriting is very much like writing dialogue in a book, or an actors lines in a play. I think it may have been our skills with those that had attracted us to Madame Duval. There has to be strong words, periods of explanation, some lighter moments where hope is offered, and should leave the listener believing that what they’ve just heard is the only way to go. It’s been the mainstay of politicians since pre-history.

One of the first things we did was email Madeline if she could give us any indication of who the immediate audience would be, as that would set the initial tone of the speech. When it was shown on the TV news, there would be only short grabs with the salient facts, rather than any background, which would be then provided by talking heads dissecting the words. She replied that it would be given at a televised news release. We had it in some sort of form after two weeks.

The architect had been to see us and had the basic house plan we had devised and had enlarged on it with his own knowledge. We had been in meetings with other speechwriters where we had to defend our position from attacks by some stuck in the ‘lower greenhouse gases’ mindset. It was the hardest that the two of us had worked on such a short piece, but it was interesting, and it broadened our horizons like nothing else we could have done.

We had both been paid as employees at the end of the month, and it was considerably more than any summer job I had worked before. The day we emailed the three versions to Madeline, we sat back and smiled.

“Ellie, my darling. That was the most exciting thing we’ve written. We won’t know how much of it gets used, unless we’re at the event. There may be bits on the TV that we recognise. I think we thought of all the questions. The only question we have no answer for is if someone asks if Madame President has lost her mind. I think she may have a standard answer to that one already.”

“It’s made me think about a new book. It would be a romantic adventure story, set in real life on one of the low-lying islands. Our heroine, Marie Concorde, is working for an NGO and has to save the population from inundation as the waters rise. There can be resistance to change, some violence, and trials to overcome. On the way she finds love with the leader of the resistance group, bringing him around to her way of thinking, and being the last couple to board a plane as a tsunami approaches the island.”

“That’s a great idea. Let’s see if we can make a start on it during our placement. We still have to find out what they have in store for us.”

We tidied up the office, for what we thought would be the last time, and went home with Juliette, that evening, starting to think about our future studies. A few days later, we had an email from the University, telling us that we had a meeting to attend on the following Wednesday, in the week before the term started.

We relaxed until the day, just looking around Mechelen and going to Antwerp to check out the University. When we arrived at the reception and told the girl on duty who we were, she gave us a map of the campus with a route to the Chancellor’s office marked. When I knocked on the door, it opened, and we saw a smiling lady who ushered us in and sat us on easy chairs.

“Welcome to Antwerp, you two. I had good reports about you from Essex, but I never thought that I would have my old friend from the Commission telling me how you’ve helped her. We have been advised that you are to be available to the Commission during your time here. Is that all right with you?”

We both agreed that it had been spoken about.

“Right. I will give you some projects to do here, but you don’t have to do them on campus. I’ve been told that you have an office available to you in Brussels, so you can work on them there and email your assignments in. I will be advised about your work with the Commission, which will go towards your assessment. You will be given the usual student ID should you need to visit us, but you’ll also get remote access to our data base, although I believe you already have access to the Commission data base, so you should have everything at your fingertips.”

She went to her desk and came back with a shopping bag.

“Now, before you go, can I please have your autographs on these books?”

Marianne Gregory © 2024