Churchill's Hour (23 page)

‘Truly?'

‘No, he was nursed back to health—by a woman. You men can be so useless on your own.' She held him tight, trying to squeeze some warmth back into him. ‘Book of Saints. Read under the covers on cold winter nights in Dorset. Sebastian didn't die until later, when the Emperor had him beaten to death.'

‘Sorry. I guess at times I underestimate you.'

His guard
was
down; it was as close as he had ever come to a compliment. It would have to do.

He sighed. ‘You know, Pam, if I were a cowboy, I'd be on my horse and riding into the sunset right now. Damn them all!'

She snuggled into his armpit as they walked slowly beneath the trees.

‘I used to ride a lot when I was a young girl in Dorset,' she said, trying to lead him away from his cares.

‘Yeah?' he muttered, not listening.

‘Near our home there's a huge giant that's been cut into the chalk. A mystical place called Cerne Abbas. Our giant is very famous, more than two thousand years old. He has a huge club and…' She laughed gently.

‘And what?'

‘A huge phallus.'

‘How huge?' he asked, stopping to face her, inevitably intrigued.

‘When I was ten, it was almost three times my length when I lay down beside it.'

‘Did you, now?'

‘And on May Day it points directly to where the sun rises.'

‘Oh, it's an astronomical instrument, then.'

They were holding each other tightly once more. Harriman had his back against a tree. She could tell from the pressure of her body on him, and his on her, that he had begun to put aside both the war and his weariness.

‘You've been away a very long time, my love.'

‘Seems like for ever.'

Her fingers had begun to edge their way down his shirtfront and behind his belt.

‘Pamela…' His voice was torn between desire and discretion. ‘What if someone…'

‘It's dark. And you can always plead diplomatic immunity.'

‘But you're the Prime Minister's daughter-in-law, for Heaven's sake.'

‘And who would believe that,' she whispered, as her hand began searching deep within his trousers.

More American ships were attacked that September. A freighter, the
Steel Seafarer
, was sunk by a German
plane in the Red Sea the day after the
Greer
had been attacked, and a week later the
Arkansan
was damaged. No one was killed in these attacks, but then the merchantman
Montana
was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic, and twenty-six of its crew drowned. She was flying the flag of Panama, a US protectorate, rather than the Stars and Stripes itself. A few days later the
Pink Star
, laden with food and heading for Iceland, was torpedoed, leaving thirteen dead, and a week after that the oil tanker
I. C. White
en route to South Africa was lost along with three of its crew. But, like the
Montana
, they were both flying the Panamanian flag, and they were merchantmen. It seemed to make a difference. Still the United States would not go to war.

There was too much confusion. Too many Americans who wanted Communist Russia to lose. Too many who thought Britain couldn't win. Too many with burning memories of the last war, when American sons had died to save Europe—and what a waste of sons that had been. And too many who believed Roosevelt when he had promised again and again and again that their sons were not going to be sent to die in another foreign war.

The clash between the
Greer
and the U-boat had been a game of no hits, no strikes, no runs, while the tangles with the other boats were no more than the inevitable fallout from someone else's war.

And that's the way the majority of Americans wanted it to stay. Someone else's war.

‘The leaves are turning, Winston. Time for birds like me to fly.'

Churchill cast an eye at the beeches. ‘They will be magnificent while they last, Max.'

It was still stiflingly hot for the time of year. There had been croquet on the lawn for Clementine and other members of the family, followed by afternoon tea served with much laughter at the antics of Mary's new dog, with everything accompanied by the scraping tones of the gramophone, but the old man hadn't been part of it. He had sought the shelter of the woods, and Beaverbrook, his old friend, had dragged behind him.

‘Sarah seems out of sorts,' the Canadian said.

‘Locked herself away in her room. Says she has a headache.' They both knew that wasn't true. ‘She's leaving the comedian. Wants a divorce.'

‘I know.'

‘Why can't…?' Churchill trailed off, knowing the futility of his protest.

‘Is it Gil Winant?'

‘No!' Churchill said, but too quickly. Beaverbrook would know, Max always knew! ‘I don't think so,' Churchill continued, knowing absolute denial was
futile. ‘I think she is simply desperately unhappy. I feel so wretched for her.'

‘Not your fault.'

‘Oh, but somehow I always feel it is.'

And, in a way, it was. He had set an Olympian example for his daughters that no other man could match. It had gone a long way to ruining his son, too, but there was little point in telling him so. Deep down, he already knew it.

They walked in silence for a while, Churchill striking forward with the gold-topped cane that had been given to him as a wedding present by the late King Edward. He was wearing one of his romper suits, a rich, vivid purple that clashed dramatically with the wood around them, and a broad-brimmed soft hat to keep the sun from his eyes.

‘You've upset the War Office, Max.'

‘Good.'

‘Yes, you're probably right.'

‘You've made me Minister for Supply. So, dammit, I want to supply,' he growled. ‘But most of those guys don't know their bollocks from their backsides. Keep complaining that we haven't sent them the right colour tent pegs or haven't recycled their envelopes, or some such bloody nonsense.'

‘But did you really have to write to the War Secretary offering to supply string for his bows and arrows?'

‘Hell, I even said I'd send him flints from my own
backyard at Cherkley in case he wanted to get his flintlocks ready. What's the problem? Did I use the wrong form or something?'

He was going to get nowhere with Max on this one. Beaverbrook was irascible, irrepressible, irreverent, and at the moment irreplaceable. And he knew it. Supplies to the factories, supplies to the army, supplies from America, supplies to Russia, they all came under his remit and he used it to push his way ruthlessly around Whitehall. ‘I'm just your delivery boy, Winston,' he had joked when appointed. ‘My bike is always at your service.' Which is why Churchill had told him to get on it and go to Moscow.

‘Keep them in the war, Max,' he had said. ‘Give them whatever it takes. Help them. But don't bleed us dry in the process.'

Yet Beaverbrook, as always, had followed his own instructions. In preparation for his trip he had tried to bully the Chiefs of Staff into giving up all sorts of vital supplies so that he could promise them to Stalin; it had led to endless rows, with Churchill stuck in the middle.

Typically, as soon as the Chiefs turned hostile, Beaverbrook raised the stakes. He proposed an immediate raid on the mainland of France, using tanks, in the knowledge that it was what Churchill and the Russians also wanted, and in the certainty that the Chiefs would object yet again. And he would
go on raising issues, wearing the bastards down, argument by argument; they couldn't carry on objecting to everything. Easier to give in to Max right at the start, everyone knew that.

‘I need more, Winston,' Beaverbrook barked gruffly, bustling along beside Churchill.

‘That's what Maisky said. I told him to bugger off.'

‘You can't send me to Moscow empty-handed.'

‘And neither can I strip the entire British Army naked in order to satisfy your enthusiasm for Comrade Stalin.'

‘You wanna help him or not?'

‘Of course I do but…There are limits, Max.' Churchill knew it was a wasted argument; Max Beaverbrook had no understanding of limits. They were a lot alike. That was why they had been friends for so long, and why Churchill could never fully trust him.

‘For Pete's sake, Winston, if you're determined to send me to Moscow with nothing, then I will have nothing to give ‘em. Dammit, doesn't seem much point my going. Send Eden instead. He can talk them into stupefaction; maybe they'll never notice he's brought bugger all but words.'

‘No, Max.'

‘I tell you honestly, Winston, maybe I've been around too long. I'm not getting any younger. My eyes are going, my bloody asthma cripples me.
Perhaps it's time I found something a little less adventurous to do.'

God, not that again. Another of Max's temperamental threats to resign. One day he would go too far.

‘Like what, Max?' Churchill asked wearily, playing along. ‘What do you have in mind?'

‘Ambassador to Washington. You know Edward Halifax is about as useless as yesterday's newspaper. He's not one of us. But I know everyone there. It'd be a great way to wrap up my career. So let's make it Washington. Not Moscow. I'm getting too old to be sent sledging through a Russian winter.'

Perhaps he meant it. But Churchill doubted it. Max was, after all, five years younger than him. He still had ambition. That was why, along with his new job at Supply, he'd insisted on moving into Downing Street. At Number Twelve, just two doors down. He was camping on the doorstep.

Churchill knew that events were slipping out of his control—even here, at home. Everyone getting a touch too uppity. Not just those plodders in Parliament like Hore-Belisha but also the fornicators in Fleet Street. Always carping, finding fault. The
Daily Mail
reshuffled his Cabinet for him almost every week, and
The Times
had just had a spasm of ill temper and pronounced that he should be preparing for his successor! Max would have read it and laughed—knowing Max, he might even have written it.

They trudged on through the woods until they came to a glade. Sunlight dappled across the clearing. In the middle had once stood a huge, overpowering tree, but now it had been reduced to nothing but a rotting, moss-covered stump. Churchill poked the tip of his cane into the bowels of the stump; it splintered and fell apart at their feet.

‘As all great things eventually do,' he whispered. Beaverbrook ignored it.

‘So, do I get the job?'

‘What?' Churchill said, startled, dragged back from his thoughts.

‘Ambassador. Do I get to be Ambassador?'

It was a game. Beaverbrook didn't want it, but he wanted to be offered it. He was like a boy in a sweet shop, damn him. But what did it matter? In a few weeks the whole world might have turned on its head. Hitler might have him shot.

‘Yes, if you want, Max. After Moscow. Do the job there and the post in Washington might make a lot of sense.'

Beaverbrook nodded in silent contentment.

‘So you go to Moscow, Max. Pay the Soviets whatever they need to continue the fight, like the bloody-handed mercenaries they are, because their fight is our fight, too. I hate what Russia represents, its system of malevolence and murder, and I detest its leader above all. But I need him. So we must pass a sponge across the past and promise them treasures
and arms in abundance. Stalin will be duly ungrateful for what he is about to receive, even while our own sailors die in large numbers trying to deliver it.'

He started slashing at a huge fern with his cane.

‘And when he complains about a second front, remind him that there might even now be a second front, in his own backyard, if Japan hadn't been left so short of raw materials by our sanctions. Tell him we shall tighten the blockade on the Japanese, screw it so tight that their babies will scream with hunger and their war machine will be starved until it is driven ever further south, towards the oilfields and rubber plantations of our own Empire. And remind him that with every step the Japanese take away from the borders of Russia, they march closer to their war with us.'

The fern lay in pieces at his feet.

‘Tell him all that, Max. Give him what he wants. Just make sure you leave us with enough to give ourselves a chance of surviving, there's a good chap.'

The maid Héloise had a weekend off. It was inconvenient, but she hadn't spent a weekend away from Chequers since her arrival, and it seemed only fair. She had a cousin who was passing through London, she told Mrs Landemare, and he might have news from home.

Soon after she arrived in the capital, she could be seen perched on a park bench by the Serpentine in Hyde Park, throwing crumbs to the ducks. A man came to sit at the opposite end of the bench, but he was not her cousin. He was the same young Japanese she had bumped into on her last trip. They appeared to ignore each other; he read a newspaper while she concentrated on the insistent ducks.

Within a few minutes she had exhausted her supply of bread. She shook out the last remnants of crumbs from the paper bag in which they had been carried, then screwed it up and placed it on the bench beside her. She stood, brushed down the front of her coat and left. A few seconds afterwards, the Japanese gentleman disappeared in the opposite direction. The paper bag was nowhere to be seen.

The temperature had dropped sharply with the setting of the sun. The clear skies that had brought warmth and pleasure during the afternoon now threatened an early frost. Chequers was always a cold house, its bricks imbued with chill and its mullioned windows and ancient doors never a good fit in their frames. Churchill put his head around the office next to the front door in which the secretaries sat, to discover them rubbing their hands for warmth.

At times he could be unutterably rude and
impatient with his staff but on other occasions also innately kind, and, for the moment, the welfare of his helper-women became his greatest priority—or was it merely a quest to find distraction, something other than the war to focus on? In any event, he became determined that their comfort should be taken care of.