Churchill's Hour (25 page)

‘I am so sorry.'

‘Not your fault, my dear friend. And you must know how intensely grateful my country is for everything you are doing.'

‘No need, Winston. Your fight is my fight. Soon it will be America's fight, too.'

‘Ah, but when?'

‘I've got to return to Washington in a few days. I'll do everything I can.'

‘Will you? Will you, indeed?' He began scrabbling amongst the papers in his box. ‘You've been away, so I thought…I dictated a note for you, a brief
appraisal of where I think your country and my country should be heading. Your voice, in support, might count for so much, my friend.'

As Churchill handed across an envelope, Harriman was bent double with a fit of coughing.

‘Are you all right?'

‘It's nothing. Just the travelling.' The fit subsided. ‘I need to rest my boots in one bed for a little while.'

‘Of course,' Churchill said, ignoring the slip of an exhausted tongue. ‘Then I prescribe bed and whisky, in that order!'

‘You never rest.'

‘I have my family about me. You do not. It makes a very great difference.'

Churchill looked intently at the other man and seemed to be on the point of saying more about the subject, but instead changed his mind and slapped the arm of his chair. ‘Anyway, I make sure to take my own prescription. The whisky I take to bed is purely for medicinal purposes, you understand, a preventative measure.' He smiled broadly and tapped his chest. ‘As you can see, taken regularly, it works wonders!'

The note that Churchill had given to Harriman was brief.

PERSONAL AND TOP SECRET

From: W.S.C.

To: W.A.H.

11.10.41.

Subject: UPDATE—FAR EAST.

This note is to be destroyed by fire upon reading.

1. Pressure from Russia for second front requires Britain give priority to land forces in Europe.
   
2. No independent action by ourselves will deter Japan: we are too much tied up elsewhere.
   
3. US and Britain require alternative military presence capable of deterring Jap. intentions, or dealing decisively with any act of aggression.
   

ACTION:

1. Britain forthwith will send a considerable naval battle squadron (carrier, R-class battleships) to show itself in and around Singapore;
   
2. US to follow with own naval task force to Far East. Together with British ships, this most powerful Allied fleet should exert paralysing effect on Japanese naval action;
   
3. US-Britain to announce military alliance to come into effect in event of Jap. attack on forces of either party anywhere in world.
   

Churchill had made a small manuscript correction in the margin, and had initialled the note in his usual scrawl. It was a typical Churchill communication. Tightly argued, double-spaced, on a single page. Ideal for immediate digestion—although, taken out of context, not everyone might understand that it was by way of a proposal, an aspiration, rather than an agreed undertaking.

But that was Churchill's challenge, to ensure that anyone who was to catch sight of the paper, whether by accident or underhand means, would believe it to be the most solemn and binding of obligations. Churchill's task was to transform a scrap of paper into a declaration of war.

‘You're tired, my darling.'

‘Like a dog. A whole pack of them.'

‘You're pushing yourself too hard.'

‘If I don't push, who else will?' He lay back on her pillow, his eyes closed.

‘Was Moscow horrid?'

‘Bloodiest thing was trying to figure out which one was going to throw the biggest tantrum, Joe Stalin or Max.'

‘You don't like Max?'

‘Love him. Don't trust him.'

‘He's always been very kind to me.'

‘I'm also told he cries when he wrings the necks of pheasants.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘He did, of course. You should've seen him with Stalin after a few bottles together. Tears pouring into each other's laps. They sure made an interesting couple.'

‘That's probably what Max says about us.'

‘He suspects?'

‘I believe so. With the baby staying at Cherkley, he pretty much knows where I am all the time. I think he's probably figured it out.'

He fell silent.

‘That bothers you?'

‘Yes, I suppose it does,' he admitted reluctantly, his mood growing bleaker by the moment. ‘Makes me feel he has a hold on me. Max does so love his little games.'

‘Come on, darling, don't let's worry about Max. Let's forget about them all, just for a while. Pretend for one night there's only you and me.'

He sighed. ‘If only I could, but…'

‘But what?'

‘Got to go back home in a few days.'

‘Again?'

‘There are so many things I need to sort out, Pam.'

‘What…sort of things?'

‘The politics in Washington, the supplies for Russia.' Another sigh, deeper, more fractured. ‘My wife.'

A silence. Then: ‘What do you have to sort out with her?'

‘We've scarcely seen each other for months.'

‘I thought you lived—what's the term you used?—separate lives.'

‘We're still married, Pamela. There are formalities to be observed, arrangements to be discussed. Practical things. And family things, too. We don't want gossip, and I don't want to humiliate her.' The words came without hesitation, almost as if he had practised them.

‘Are you beginning to regret all this? Me?'

‘No, but…'

Ah, so there was a ‘but'.

‘You still love her.'

‘Do you still love Randy?'

‘No.' She'd never had to answer that question before, not even to herself. She was surprised how easily it came.

‘But…'—that word again—‘I've been married to her for a long time. Did you expect—'

‘No.'

‘Pam, you haven't fallen—'

‘No!'

‘There can't be any future between us, can there?'

Time for a tear to fall in the darkness before, once again, more softly: ‘No.'

‘Perhaps I should go back to my room.'

‘No.' She reached for him, determined not to let him go. ‘If this has to be our last night, let's not swim in sad thoughts.' She laid a kiss, gently, upon his cheek.

‘I'm sorry, Pam.'

‘Don't be. I'm not. Why should I be? But I've never forgotten what Papa once said: that war is the most ferocious mistress of them all.'

‘He said that?'

‘He also told me that no good would come of our relationship.'

A soft cry of alarm: ‘He knows, too?'

‘Yes.'

‘How?'

‘I told him.'

‘Christ…'

‘Does that bother you?'

‘How can he continue to treat me as a friend?'

‘Because you are his friend.'

Suddenly what had seemed to be their tightly held secret had become a public drama. Soon others would know. Harriman had persuaded himself he could control this relationship; now it was all growing much more complicated. He needed the break back home, to recover his energy, and to think about things.

He turned. The bed creaked. And another sound.

‘Did you hear anything, Averell?'

‘No. What?'

‘I thought…like a squeaking floorboard. Outside.'

‘Old houses always creak.'

‘You, too, I think, you poor goose. Come here.'

The last weeks of October came laden not simply with caviar, but with sorrows.

It wasn't only what had been happening in Russia, although the headlines were lurid enough with their images of German hordes gathering for a final assault on Moscow. The Soviet Government had already moved out of the capital. From the shores of the Black Sea all the way to the frosty Baltic a thousand miles north, hope was fading.

Churchill could always maintain—and did—that by this date in his invasion Napoleon was already stabling his horses in the palaces of Moscow; Hitler was behind schedule, slowed down by the mists and the rivers of blood.

Yet it wasn't so much events in Russia that captured his attention. As Churchill had feared, the Government of Prince Fumimaro Konoye in Tokyo had crumbled in disarray, eaten away by its own uncertainties. The quarrels that had ebbed and flowed behind the gates of the Imperial Palace had
suddenly burst forth onto the public scene in a manner the Japanese found demeaning but weren't able to prevent. The rivalries could no longer be suppressed; the decencies were swept aside, and with them so was the prince. It was, according to the headline that dominated the main page of
The Times
, the nation's ‘Greatest Crisis'.

As he devoured the pages for every glimmering of news, Churchill couldn't fail to notice that the reports from Tokyo contained many words about how the Japanese might extend the hand of compromise towards America, yet about Britain there was barely a mention. For the Japanese, Britain was irrelevant. ‘No, no, you blasted heathens, not irrelevant,' he swore to himself. ‘Impotent, we may be. But never irrelevant!'

Within hours, it had grown much worse. The bald, bespectacled General Tojo had taken over. His Cabinet consisted mostly of military men.

On the same day—was there never any respite?—the announcement came of another attack on a US Navy ship. The destroyer USS
Kearny
had been torpedoed while on patrol to the south-west of Iceland. She was a ship of war bearing the Stars and Stripes, and her outline, nationality, purpose were clear even through the dirtiest periscope. This wasn't a case of mistaken identity but an act of deliberate aggression—and a bloody one, too. The
Kearny
didn't sink, but she crawled into port with eleven bodies
on board, victims of the Reich. The first American servicemen to die in the war.

Deliberate. Deadly. And still it made no difference. Roosevelt would not ask the Congress to declare war. It was the sort of incident that had caused the United States to declare war in 1917, but that was precisely why so many Americans now chose to ignore it.

Harriman wrote to Churchill within days of his return to Washington: ‘The news on Saturday of the torpedoing of the
Kearny
did not cause even a ripple. It seemed that the public had expected—and were thoroughly prepared for—such occurrences…It is not at all clear what or when something will happen to kick us into it. As to opinion regarding Britain,' he continued, ‘people are wondering why you don't do something offensively.'

Soon after dictating his note, Harriman fell sick, and went back to his wife.

Days later, a U-boat torpedoed the USS
Reuben James
. She wasn't so very different from the
Kearny
, another destroyer escorting a convoy in a similar part of the Atlantic. Except the
Reuben James
wasn't simply attacked, she sank, and took with her one hundred and fifteen American sailors.

And still they refused to declare war.

On the second day of the new month of November the Domei, the official Japanese news agency, issued a statement. It stated bluntly that Japan was completing her war structure in expectation of an armed clash in the Pacific. The Domei reported that the armed clash was ‘inevitable', and attributed the remark to well-informed sources within the Government.

Such an outcome could only be averted, the Domei went on to say, if the United States eased the economic pressures on Japan, ‘otherwise Japan will be compelled to seek her essential supplies elsewhere, whatever the consequences.'

The agency went on to emphasize that on no account was it possible for Japan to maintain her relations with America on the present basis. Things would have to change. It predicted that the Prime Minister, General Tojo, would announce in his speech to the Diet that he would impose a strict time limit to any negotiations with America. It seemed
that whoever had supplied the story to the Domei clearly knew the Prime Minister's mind.

And it was also emphasized that Tojo had again been received by the Emperor. This made it clear that whatever the Prime Minister said, whatever was to happen, had already been given the imperial seal of approval.

The Domei concluded by stating that if the American economic blockade against Japan continued, Japan would have to dare to seek supplies of materials from elsewhere. Such an action would be a vital measure of self-defence.

It outlined precisely what this ‘daring-to-seek' policy would involve. It meant ‘breaking through the encirclement of hostile nations.'

It meant war. But against whom? The Domei did not say.

He was alone on the roof of the Annexe, dressed in his overcoat. His shoulders were hunched and he was at the parapet, looking westward into the setting sun.

He held a sheaf of papers in his hand. They were the text of the President's latest speech.

‘What more do I have to do? What in the name of all the gods do I have to do?' Churchill whispered, gripping the papers so malevolently that it seemed as if he was trying to throttle the life from them.

‘Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead!' the President had announced to his people. Oh, the man sat in front of his fire and wrapped himself in such fine phrases—phrases that Churchill would be proud to call his own. But then he sat back in his wheelchair, and watched the flames die and the hearth grow cold.

Slowly, Churchill let the President's words slip from his fingers. They drifted lazily away in the still evening air.

He was watching them disappear when there was an interruption from behind. A breathless duty clerk arrived bearing an anxious smile and a note.

‘Well?' Churchill snapped.

‘Report from Tokyo, sir.' The fellow beamed. He was young, new, keen, from the Foreign Office, and had welcomed the suggestion from the Downing Street private secretary that he take the note up to the rooftop himself. ‘The Japs,' the clerk said enthusiastically, ‘they want to negotiate.'

Instantly the note was snatched from his hand and Churchill fumbled for his reading glasses in various pockets, but they proved suddenly elusive. Irritated, he thrust the note back at him. ‘Read!'

‘It's a news agency report,' he began, quoting. “‘Hopes of maintaining peace in the Pacific have risen with a bound with the announcement that the Japanese Government have decided to send
Mr Saburo Kurusu, one of the country's most experienced diplomatists…to Washington. To assist the Ambassador, Admiral Nomura. In crucial talks. Seen in Japan as holding out high hopes of positive results.”' The clerk lifted his head from the paper. ‘The American State Department has welcomed the move, sir.'

‘You are from the Foreign Office, are you not?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You embrace diplomacy, do you not?'

‘I try, sir.'

‘You are taught the virtues of conciliation and compromise, are you not?'

‘Most certainly, sir.'

‘Do you know that in a long and diverse career I have held most of the high offices of state?'

‘Absolutely, Mr Churchill!'

‘Except for the Foreign Office.' Churchill paused. ‘Why do you think that is?'

Suddenly the eager expression had vanished from the clerk's face. He felt as though the rooftop had melted beneath his feet and he was tumbling, a little like Alice, into a bottomless pit.

‘Young man, you are an ass. This war won't be won through the virtues of compromise and conciliation, or by splitting the difference or even dividing your sister in two and offering half of her up to our enemies. It'll only encourage them to come back for the other half soon as dammit. Their appetite is insatiable.
Didn't your father teach you the simplest facts of life?'

‘Sir?'

‘It's not by splitting the difference that we shall win this war but by hacking our enemies in two and roasting the separate bits in the flames of eternal hell. The only good news that can come out of Japan is that all their Government and military chiefs have committed ritual bloody suicide. That includes Mr…'

‘Kurusu, sir.'

‘May his blade be sharp.'

‘But what if he can agree peace?' the young diplomatist persisted. ‘Wouldn't that make it worthwhile?'

‘The only means by which his trip can achieve peace is if his plane is shot from the skies as soon as it reaches American airspace. Then, perhaps, they might be deterred. By force, by strength, by a sign that at last America intends to hurl back any insult or aggression with a hundred times its force. Then we might have peace.'

‘The Americans have welcomed…'

‘Ah, Rip van Winkle rolls over in his bed to make room for the Wop of the Pacific!'

‘Sir?'

‘Now you know why they never asked me to be Foreign Secretary.'

‘Yes, sir. I mean…'

‘Bugger off, young man.'

‘Th…thank you, sir.'

As the young man disappeared, a huge fist of starlings rose from the park and lunged into the air, wheeling and sweeping across the darkening sky as they prepared to abandon London. Churchill, alone once more, continued his vigil, a lonely helmsman, staring westward until the sun had gone down.

Every year, by invitation, the Prime Minister came to the City of London to join in the ceremonies to honour the newly appointed Lord Mayor. In normal times it was a colourful pageant, but these were not normal times and there was little colour in the affair, only remorseless shades of grey and shining, rainlicked pavements that glistened like fish skin.

He drove with Pamela through streets that were unrecognizable from a year earlier. One third of the entire City of London lay in ruins more profound than those of Pompeii. Much that had once stood was now waste, and everything that still stood was broken and smeared with soot and scorchmarks.

The crowds were sparse; there was no heart to the City any more. They had cleared up most of the wreckage caused by the bombers, but it had left many acres razed and empty. Sir Christopher Wren
had built sixteen splendid churches within the Square Mile, now only six were left. The rest were nothing but heaps of charred stone. Bow Bells had been destroyed, the Tower of London hit fifteen times, so much had gone.

There were family groups amongst the onlookers; the parents managed to wave, but the children stared in curiosity, their heads hanging like waifs from a charcoal sketch by Lowry. They looked thin.

‘These are my people, Pamela,' he said. ‘Will they ever forgive me?'

‘Papa?'

‘I cannot win this war on my own.'

‘You're not alone.' She took his arm, but he did not hear.

‘And if I do not win the war, what has all this been for?' He stared at the devastation around him. ‘A whole world betrayed.'

‘Not by you.'

‘The Japanese threaten, and Roosevelt turns his back. The Germans lash out, and he runs away.'

‘Averell thinks he'll never ask Congress to declare war. He's afraid that if he does, they'll refuse, and the consequences then would be appalling. So better as we are.'

‘A leader who runs not only from the enemy, but from his own people!' He did not try to hide his contempt.

‘Averell sent me a clipping of an opinion poll. So
few Americans support their getting involved in a shooting war that they'd have trouble raising a baseball team.'

‘You had a letter from Averell?'

‘Yes, Papa. And one from Randolph.'

‘Ah, I see. Then I suspect I'm not the only one carrying their troubles this evening.'

‘Randolph says he's very happy with his promotion. A full colonel.'

‘And perhaps the additional pay will assist him to clear his wretched debts.' Roosevelt. Randolph. All sympathy appeared to have been squeezed from the old man's heart. There was room in his life for nothing but the winning of this war. Looking out of the window, it was not difficult to understand why.

They were drawing near to their destination. Ordinarily they would have gathered at the Guildhall, a splendid medieval structure that served as the City's Parliament and was exceeded in magnificence only by the Great Hall at Westminster. But now it had burnt to a shell. So instead they would use the Mansion House, the residence of the Lord Mayor. It was a mere newcomer on the City scene, less than two hundred years old, and it lacked the soul of the Guildhall. But at least it still had its roof.

‘When the whole world insists that you are wrong, Pamela, isn't there at least the smallest chance they are right?' he asked as the car drew to a halt.

‘I remember what the world said at the time of
Dunkirk, Papa, when they said Britain couldn't fight on alone, that you should stop the fight and do a deal.'

‘We may soon be on our own again, and this time it will be so very much worse.'

‘There comes a point where the arguments have to be put aside and you reach down deep within yourself to rely on instinct.'

‘What, put aside all reason, all morality—and rely on instinct?' He turned on her, troubled, wanting to test his own feelings through hers.

‘I'm not sure I'm the one to lecture you about morality. All I know is that you must be true to yourself, Papa. Above all, reach down within yourself and be true to what you find.'

‘And what do I do if, when I burrow down so deep, I meet the Devil halfway?'

Then he was out of the car and gone.

Many men had gathered to listen to his words in the Mansion House—not just the City men of money but twenty members of Churchill's own Government, the three Chiefs of Staff and even the Archbishop of Canterbury—God, State and Mammon, all come to judge. As Churchill rose to address them, his eye caught upon the gaping cracks that ran through the plasterwork and the naked brickwork that disfigured many of the walls. There
were ragged holes and patched windows, and beneath him rows of worn faces. These people needed reassurance, yet he had so little to give.

‘Alike in times of peace and war, the annual civic festival we have observed today has been, by long custom, the occasion for a speech at the Guildhall by the Prime Minister upon foreign affairs,' he began. ‘This year our ancient Guildhall lies in ruins. Our foreign affairs are shrunken, and almost the whole of Europe is prostrate under the Nazi tyranny.'

This was not what they wanted to hear, but those seated in front of him today were not his main audience. They couldn't know it, but they were no more than his supporting cast. They had been brought together to give his message a little weight, but his message would have wings, too—radio technicians had erected a bank of microphones in front of him, and pressmen sat at a table to one side. His words would reach every corner of the planet.

‘The condition of Europe is terrible in the last degree,' he continued. ‘Hitler's firing parties are busy every day in a dozen countries. Norwegians, Belgians, Frenchmen, Dutch, Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Greeks'—his voice lifted up the names like the tolling of a great bell—‘and above all in scale Russians, are being butchered by thousands—and by tens of thousands—after they have surrendered, while individual and mass
executions have become part of the regular German routine.'

As he spoke, a cloud of dust broke away from the cracked plaster ceiling and settled upon the dark varnish of the rostrum and the table around him. The Lord Mayor's wife pulled out a handkerchief and began to wipe it away.

‘A river of blood has flowed and is flowing between the German race and the peoples of nearly all Europe. It is not the hot blood of battle, where good blows are given and returned. It is the cold blood of the execution yard and the scaffold, which leaves a stain indelible for generations and for centuries.'

They were beginning to warm up, slowly, nodding their heads. His voice rose in anger at the enemy.

‘Here, then, are the foundations upon which the “new order” of Europe is to be inaugurated. Here, then, is the house-warming festival of the
Herrenvolk
. Here, then, is the system of terrorism by which the Nazi criminals and their quisling accomplices seek to rule a dozen ancient, famous states of Europe, and if possible all the free nations of the world.'

His hand slapped the rostrum, more dust rose. And he promised them that never—
never
—would the future of Europe be confided to such bloodstained, accursed hands.

Now they applauded, but he cared little for it, for
he was soon to come to the most critical part of his speech. He recounted to them the stories of some of their naval successes in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. Then he told them that he intended to go still further.

‘Owing to the effective help we are getting from the United States, owing to the sinking of the
Bismarck
, owing to the completion of our splendid new battleships and aircraft carriers of the largest size, I am able to announce to you…'—his eyes lifted; they waited on his words—‘that we now feel ourselves strong enough to provide a powerful naval force of heavy ships, with the necessary auxiliary vessels, for service if needed in the Indian and Pacific Oceans.'