Authors: David Roberts
‘I’m sure you are exaggerating. Put a steak on it.’
‘One is clasped to my eye as we speak and dripping blood on to the floor.’
‘Brave boy! Sorry I couldn’t make it. Did you notice I wasn’t there?’
‘Of course I did, but it didn’t matter.’ He added nastily, ‘Gerda looked after me.’
There was a silence but when Verity spoke she was, to his chagrin, sweet and reasonable.
‘There’s a story going the rounds – the
Daily Mail
is pushing it – that our people are shooting anyone in the International Brigade who won’t take orders from Moscow. Ridiculous, of course, but Joe wants me to investigate.’ Joe was Lord Weaver, the proprietor of the
New Gazette
and Verity’s employer. ‘I’ve got to go back to Spain earlier than I had planned.’
‘When?’ Edward demanded.
‘In about half an hour.’
‘I won’t see you then?’
‘Not unless you come with me,’ she said, with an effort at humour.
‘I can’t see myself doing that. Well, I’ll miss you. When will you be back?’
‘Not for a bit. Apparently, there’s a big effort coming to raise the siege of Madrid. Perhaps the tide is turning.’
Edward thought that unlikely. It had been obvious to him for months that without decisive intervention from France or Britain, the Republic was doomed. The Republicans – or rather the Communists – were getting aid from the Soviet Union but that was just enough to keep the war going, not to give them a chance of winning.
‘Thanks for telephoning. I suppose it’s no good asking you to be careful.’
‘I’ll be careful, silly. I’m not out to commit suicide. I was quite surprised, Joe said what you said – a dead correspondent was useless to his newspaper. He recommended whisky in the water to kill the bugs.’
‘It wasn’t bugs I was thinking about. It was bullets.’
‘I don’t intend getting shot. I’m an observer not a participant.’
‘I hope you remember that.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘You’ve got Gerda.’
‘She’s just to make you jealous,’ he retorted.
‘Well, I am, so that’s all right, isn’t it?’
‘Anyway, she and André are going back to Spain next week.’
‘I know. I must go now.’
‘Take care then,’ he said. ‘Wear your solar topi if things hot up. That’s a joke.’ He risked, ‘I love you,’ knowing how much she hated sentimentality. To his surprise, she answered in a small, rather scared voice, ‘I love you, too.’ Edward could hear the tremor in her voice but, before he could say anything more, the line went dead.
The telephone rang again almost immediately. It was Marcus Fern with whom he had recently been closeted on the
Queen Mary
. Fern had accompanied Lord Benyon on what, Edward had since learned, had been a largely unsuccessful trip to America. Benyon had gone with the object of convincing President Roosevelt that it would make sense to bankroll Britain’s rearmament. The President had been courteous but had ruled out any such thing and Benyon had returned with his tail between his legs. Edward had been acting as Benyon’s ‘protector’ on the ship. Major Ferguson had feared there might be some Nazi-inspired attempt to prevent him carrying out his mission. There
was
such an attempt and Edward counted himself fortunate that it had not been successful. A policeman guarding Benyon had been killed and altogether the voyage had not been one he ever wished to repeat.
When the ‘how-are-you’s’ and the ‘isn’t-it-good-to-be-back-on-dry-land?’ polite generalities had been exchanged, there was a silence and Edward waited to discover why Fern had rung him. They had got on well enough on the
Queen Mary
but they were acquaintances rather than friends and he knew Fern was a busy man with interests in the City and elsewhere.
‘I gather our friend was not pleased with his meeting . . .’ Edward said at last. He mentioned no names because Ferguson had warned him not to speak freely on the telephone in case someone else was listening. Edward had pooh-poohed the idea that anyone would bother to interfere with his telephone but had, in practice, taken Ferguson’s advice to heart.
‘Our friend? Oh, you mean the President,’ Fern said, making Edward feel silly for being so cautious. ‘Yes, it was always going to be a long shot. The PM’s only comment was “I knew you’d get nothing out of America, Benyon, except words . . . big words but only words.” Rather good, don’t you think?’ Without waiting for Edward to respond, he went on, ‘The reason I am telephoning is to ask – at rather short notice, I am afraid – whether you would be free tomorrow to meet a friend of mine. It’s an awful cheek, I know, and you are probably otherwise engaged but I think you ought to meet him . . . sooner rather than later. Might save wires getting crossed.’
‘No, I’m not particularly busy. In any case, I am intrigued. Who is this friend?’
‘It may be too embarrassing for you and, if it is, you must say so but Mr Churchill would very much like to meet you.’
‘Good heavens! Why should I be embarrassed to meet Mr Churchill?’
‘Well, rumour has it that you are investigating certain of his sources of information. We had better say no more on the telephone.’ Fern suddenly seemed to remember security.
‘How does he know that?’ Edward said, before he had time to think. He mentally kicked himself. He ought to have denied having undertaken any such inquiry.
‘Oh, well, as I say, he has his sources.’
‘Where does he want to meet me?’
‘It’s rather an imposition but he wondered if you would come down to Chartwell and have lunch with him. It’s possible to talk quietly there but, if that’s impossible, he will be in London next week.’
Edward hesitated. It seemed rather feeble to have such an empty diary that he could spend a day in Kent without inconvenience. However, his investigation, if it could even be called that, could go no further without talking to Churchill so it would be absurd to refuse the invitation because he did not wish to lose face.
‘Yes, I can make it.’
‘Good man! There’s a train at eleven ten which will get you to Westerham . . .’
‘I think the Lagonda would enjoy a spin so, if you don’t mind, I’ll drive.’
‘Certainly! Do you know the way?’
‘More or less . . .’
‘Have you got a pencil?’ Fern gave him details of how to find the house and then rang off.
Fenton appeared asking, ‘Will you be eating in tonight, my lord?’
‘Yes. Just a chop and a glass of claret. I think I’ll turn in early. Tomorrow I’m going into Kent to meet Mr Churchill so I want to have all my wits about me.’
‘Indeed, my lord. From what I read in the newspapers, Mr Churchill is a . . . remarkable gentleman.’
‘But, apparently, not to be trusted, Fenton. Not to be trusted.’
He thoroughly enjoyed his drive, the first of many he was to make to Chartwell, though he could not know it. It was exciting to be going to visit a man who had been at the centre of events since Edward was a child. The Lagonda went like a bird and there was very little traffic once he was out of London and Croydon Aerodrome was behind him. In not much over an hour he was crunching over a gravel drive and drawing to a halt in front of an elegant eighteenth-century door. This had once belonged to another house and looked rather fraudulent in its new home, as if it had come down in the world and knew it.
Chartwell was different from what he had imagined. It sat in a green valley with glorious views over the Weald.The grounds had been improved with a lake and a sickle-shaped ridge of wood on the opposite side. Terraces, covered in sweet-smelling rhododendrons, made the best of the view towards the South Downs. The house itself was Victorian red brick and he had expected it to be ugly but he should have remembered that Churchill was a painter.
Churchill had bought it in the 1920s and enlarged it but there was no feeling of being in a grand house. The hall and the passages running out of it were narrow and the ceilings low. The light came grudgingly through small, cottage-type windows. But it was alive – Churchill’s presence had the same effect as that of a queen bee and people buzzed from room to room with the air of having important business to transact even if it were only replacing the garden flowers which Mrs Churchill liked to have in every room.
The butler ushered Edward into the drawing-room where he perched on an uncomfortable sofa and looked about him with great curiosity. Windows on three sides made the room light and airy and he rose to stare out over the garden and, beyond it, the heads of green trees marching inexorably towards the horizon, as Birnam Wood had marched to Dunsinane. The butler reappeared and he was taken up a narrow flight of stairs and along a corridor to the study. Before the butler knocked on the door, Edward could hear that slurred yet booming voice which could only be Churchill’s – Edward had heard him speak in the House of Commons – dictating, Edward assumed, an orotund passage concerning the the battle of Blenheim. The butler did not hesitate, however, and Edward was ushered into Churchill’s presence, mumbling apologies for interrupting. He was standing at a wooden lectern – of his own design, he was proudly to inform Edward later – a sheaf of papers in his hand, spectacles perched insecurely on the end of his nose, arrested in mid-sentence. He made no objection to being interrupted and nodded to a man taking dictation who left quietly, closing the door behind him.
Churchill’s place of work was a room quite unlike any other in the house. The architect he had employed when he bought the house had removed the ceiling to reveal beams and rafters of the older house and, rather oddly Edward thought, introduced a Tudor doorway with a moulded architrave. The windows looked west across the front lawn to Crockham Hill and east across the garden to the lake.
‘Lord Edward! How good of you to come. You find me correcting the proofs of my biography of my ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough. I drive the printer mad by adding new paragraphs when I should leave well alone but I can’t seem to get a feel for the shape of a book until I see it in proof. You seem to have damaged your eye. Have you been in a fight?’
Edward was unable to resist Churchill’s wicked smile. Here was a man who would always enjoy a fight.
‘I was playing football, sir, Old Etonians against a team from the East End. I’m afraid it degenerated into a brawl but the odd thing was that seemed to unlock a kind of comradeship and, by the time we got to the pub, we were all great friends.’
‘I understand. I have always held that the nation is bound together by an invisible chain. Ordinary people take it for granted that the aristocracy will exploit them and rob them. But, on the whole, they don’t think of them as the enemy in the same way the French peasant thought about the aristocracy before the Revolution. There’s a bond that we must call patriotism which binds us class to class and which will, I pray, see us through the next conflict.’
‘I must tell you, sir, that your account of the Great War did more to make me understand why we had to fight than anything else I have ever read.’
‘It is kind of you to say so.’ Churchill was suddenly solemn. ‘Am I right in saying you lost an elder brother in the war?’
Edward was taken aback. Busy as he quite clearly was, Churchill had taken the trouble to brief himself about his family before their meeting.
‘Yes, indeed, sir. My elder brother died in the first weeks of the war. I was too young at the time to feel the loss as much as I should have but my father was devastated. Franklyn was his heir.’
‘A terrible tragedy suffered by so many families across the land. I would like to think we could avoid repeating it but, as the months and years go by, I am less and less sanguine. Friends of mine – good men like the Duke of Westminster, Lord Rothermere and my cousin Lord Londonderry – try to make me see Germany from, as Londonderry put it to me yesterday, a “different angle”. They tell me Germany cannot risk war for at least four years. They discount the possibility of an invasion from the air. What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’ Edward could see no possible reason why Churchill should be interested in his views. ‘Surely, sir, with all your friends in government there is nothing I could say which would be of any conceivable interest?’
‘May I be allowed to be a judge of that, Lord Edward.’
‘Well, sir, if you insist. I have no doubt that we shall be at war with Germany within four years and, more probably, within two. I hope you will tell me I am wrong.’
‘You must be right,’ Churchill replied fiercely. ‘But are we prepared for war, do you think?’
‘We are rearming but, I would guess, not fast enough.’
‘You are right again. German aerial rearmament is the real danger. This cursed, hellish invention and development of war from the air has revolutionized our position. We are not the same kind of country we used to be when we were an island, only twenty-five years ago. In a week or ten days of unimpeded aerial bombardment much of London could be reduced to rubble and we can expect thirty or forty thousand people to be killed or maimed. In such a dreadful act of power and terror, in which bombs go through a series of floors igniting each one simultaneously, grave panic would infect the civilian population. I won’t bore you with a mass of figures but I have information, which I have reason to believe is accurate, that the German first-line strength is between nine hundred and a thousand planes – that is military aircraft complete with machine-guns and bomb racks, plus civil aircraft capable of conversion to military use in a few hours. By the autumn of 1939 the German air force will have a total of three thousand aircraft. These are not secret figures, Lord Edward. They are known to the government.’
Churchill spoke with such sombre deliberation that it was impossible to doubt him.
‘And the Royal Air Force?’ Edward asked with a heavy heart.
Churchill ceased pacing the room and turned to him, his eyes brilliant with anger. ‘The Royal Air Force is just one third the size.’
‘But Lord Benyon says we do not have the money to rearm more rapidly.’
‘If we have to borrow or raise through taxation fifty or a hundred million pounds, what can that matter when the alternative is to leave our country defenceless? The Rhine, not the white cliffs of Dover, is now our frontier.’