Heart of War (48 page)

‘Whom would you like to see in his place?'

‘Winston Churchill, or Lloyd George,' Johnny said.

‘Thank you, Johnny. I value your opinion all the more because, as an American, you see us from outside ourselves … Pull the bell for Parrish, will you, Laurence.'

Laurence got up and pulled the long velvet rope that hung by the side of the mantelpiece, connected by wire to one of the row of bells on the wall in the servants' hall.

When Parrish came in, Harry said, ‘You three go and join your aunt in the dining room. Take the decanter. I want a word with Parrish.'

When the young men had left, he turned to the old butler – ‘What do you think of the war, Parrish?'

‘Terrible, sir,' the butler said sadly. ‘All those young gentlemen …' His voice trailed away. ‘And thinking that Captain Charles has to go back to it. And Mr Laurence will go too, soon.'

Harry said, ‘Do you think it… that our leaders are running it as well as they should?'

‘I'm sure I don't know, sir.'

‘Do you have confidence in Mr Asquith?'

‘He's the Prime Minister,' Parrish said, ‘and if the people in Parliament don't think he's doing right, they'll have an election and ask the King to make someone else Prime Minister. I'll do whatever they tell me to do … if I can.'

Harry said, ‘Thank you, Parrish.'

‘Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.'

As he entered the drawing room he heard his daughter saying, ‘Well, gentlemen, I have to get up at dawn tomorrow, so I'll be going to bed.'

‘She's going bird watching,' Laurence said. ‘Wish I could go with her, but it's a private club, Auntie says.'

‘Wait a minute,' Harry said. ‘I want to ask you a few questions.' He knew how the work at the shell factory exhausted her during the week and said, ‘It won't be long, and it really is important.'

Alice sat back in her chair, putting down her book. Boy refilled his grandfather's port glass. Johnny sat on a sofa holding Stella's hand: Stella appeared to be asleep. Harry said, ‘I shall have to make some important decisions in the House any day now – important for our survival as a nation – and I am trying to get all the information I need to help me make the right ones. What do
you
think about the conduct of the war?'

Alice fondled the ears of the dachshund lying beside her chair, and said thoughtfully, ‘I don't think it is being run as well as it can be … but who is responsible for that, I don't know.'

Boy said, ‘When a battalion does badly in France, the brigadier general doesn't ask who was at fault – he sacks the C.O.'

Harry said, ‘And Mr Asquith's the C.O. of the country, in that sense?'

Boy said, ‘I think so.'

Alice said, ‘The women in the factory are mostly ready for a change, as far as I can tell. They're all dead determined to win the war, but when they've had a glass or two of port and lemon in the Moon and Bloomers, they …'

‘In the
what?'
Harry cried, scandalized.

Alice blushed, ‘Oh, I am sorry, Father, but that's what all the women call the Star and Garter, and I've just picked it up … well, when they've had a drink they cry, and ask why the winning has to cost so much. If Mr Asquith has to resign, I don't think there will be any public uproar, certainly not among that class.'

Harry drank some port, ‘But it's so … sordid. One gets buttonholed in the corridors of the House … rumours are passed from table to table … insinuations whispered in the bar … And Mr Asquith is an honourable man. How can I desert him for such as Churchill, the self-seeker? Carson, whom many feel is as guilty of treason as Connolly or Casement? Lloyd George, the libertine radical?'

Boy stood up suddenly and took his glass to the fireplace, turning round so that the fire warmed his back – ‘Excuse me, Grandfather,' he said, ‘but this is another thing I dream of in the trenches – of warming myself at a fire.' His face became grim, and suddenly ten years older. The three stars on each shoulder glittered in the overhead light. Like the tunic itself, the white and purple ribbon on its left breast was faded now. He said, ‘I can't tell you how wonderful the men are, Grandfather, Aunt Alice … Oh, they get afraid, we all do … they don't achieve everything even they expect to, let alone what the generals and the bloody brass hats – excuse me – think they ought to. Life out there would be impossible for me without my men …' His voice broke and he half sobbed: ‘… My men … oh, my men …' He drew a big khaki handkerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose – ‘Sorry … What I'm trying to say is that they deserve the best we can give them. They'll take anything, endure anything, do anything, till the end … but it's up to us to lead them as well as we can, from the Prime Minister down to the newest 2nd Lieutenant.'

After a long silence Harry said gently, ‘Well, Boy, what do you think about Mr Asquith? You must understand that I'm as torn as you must be – as you are, we can see – between determination, pride, and sorrow for what you have to order your men to do, and suffer. I am old and … I can't stand it. Please, Boy, please … help me!'

Boy said, ‘I've been home three days now, and I feel that the country is not really engaged to the full in the war. It's like coming to another planet, but it should not be. It should be like going from one part of the nation at war to another … a part where there'll be girls, good food, hot baths, warmfires, rest, quiet … but also the same sort of feeling there is over there … determination, dogged guts, a sense that we're all in it together, and are ready at any moment to give everything we have … the present, the future … our lives.'

The blind soldier came to Harry in the night, tapping into the room with his white cane, clear as though illumined by gas lights in the darkness of the bedroom, this slight figure, stooped in hospital blue, the blackened glasses covering both eyes. He stood at the foot of the bed, and to Harry's frozen horror, did just what he had done in the Town Hall the day of
Harry's election. He took off the glasses, revealing ulcerated blue-white eyeballs and spoke the same words that he had spoken then: ‘Do you know what you're doing? At all?'

Harry woke up screaming, his hands in front of his face. Slowly he lowered them. The blind young soldier had gone. It was a dream. Alice came hurrying into his room. ‘Father! … Are you all right?'

He let out his breath in a long sigh. ‘I had a nightmare.'

He lay back. Did he know? At all? He repeated to himself the blind soldier's last words, that time, when the Mayor was blustering at him for his intrusion – ‘I'm only asking them what they must have been asking themselves, if they cared.' Then he had turned again to Harry and repeated that dreadful question,
‘Do you?'

On Monday Harry went up to London early, worked on committees till one and then repaired to the House dining room for lunch. Again Churchill came past his table, stopped, sat down without invitation, and said, ‘Have you heard the news?'

‘About Mr Asquith? Yes.'

Just as Northcliffe had promised at that dinner, there had been a leader in
The Times
strongly supporting the proposal of a War Committee to run the war – without interference from the Prime Minister.

‘He will resign today or tomorrow,' Churchill said.

‘It's what you wanted,' Harry said, a little coldly.

Churchill cried, ‘My dear Rowland, some of us, who can regard ourselves as friends of both the Prime Minister and Mr Lloyd George, have spent the best part of the last forty-eight hours trying to persuade Mr Asquith that the War Committee would work, with Lloyd George at its head and himself staying on as Prime Minister – they have different strengths – different, but complementary … wheel horse, lead horse.'

Harry was not fully appeased. He said sullenly, ‘What post will you be awarded in any new cabinet?'

Churchill puffed on his cigar, looking at him quizzically through the blue smoke. He said at last, ‘You are a loyal man, Rowland, and it does you credit.'

Harry said, ‘I have thought – and suffered a great deal in the past few days, and I have made up my mind to support
any move to bring Mr Lloyd George to the head of our affairs. But I do not like the way the present position has been brought about.'

‘Ah, politics is not always played in clean fresh water, especially when one has to swim with such as my Lord Northcliffe … but you are wrong about one thing. I shall have no responsibilities in any new government. It will have to rely heavily on the support of certain key conservative figures, in both Houses. Those figures have prepared a manifesto, declaring that a new government can count on their full support… on one condition.'

He waited, a half smile on his curved plump lips, his expression cherubic. Harry had to ask – ‘What's that?'

‘That neither Lord Northcliffe nor myself shall have any position in it!' Churchill crowed triumphantly. ‘Au revoir, my friend.'

Harry watched him go, still wondering – genius, or charlatan?

Andrew Bonar Law, leader of the Conservative Party, sometime First Lord of the Exchequer and Prime Minister of Great Britain, stood in morning coat before his sovereign, who was wearing the uniform of a Field Marshal. The King said, ‘I suppose you know why I've sent for you?'

‘It is rumoured that Mr Asquith has been to the Palace to tender his resignation.'

The King said, ‘He has. Because, he told me, the public interpretation put on the War Committee proposal made his position as Prime Minister untenable. So he turned it down – the War Committee idea … and that led to Mr Lloyd George's resignation, as the War Committee was his brainchild.

‘That is so, sir.'

The King stroked his beard and looked at Bonar Law. He's worried, Bonar Law thought. This is a constitutional crisis, of a sort. In peace time, His Majesty could prorogue parliament and call an election, but that was not to be thought of now, except in the direst emergency, when events might in any case forestall the process.

The King said, ‘Will you form a Ministry?'

Bonar Law said, ‘I am sorry, sir, but there is only one possible Prime Minister at this juncture in our affairs.'

The King said, ‘I don't like him … a howling demagogue … terrible reputation with the ladies … well earned, I am assured … gloated over the way I had to knuckle down, and promise to create Peers so his damned tax bill could pass …'

Bonar Law said slowly, and with all the earnestness he could muster, ‘Sir, he has boundless energy. He can see affairs in large, even so huge a monster as this war. Alone among us, the people believe that he can control events by sheer force of personality, rather than the other way round. If I may say so, sir, it would be a disaster for the monarchy if, at this moment, you sent for anyone else.'

‘And for the country, as you see it?' the King said.

‘Yes, sir.'

The King turned away and up the room, came back. He said, ‘I'll send for him.'

Bonar Law inclined his head an inch in the formal bow given to royalty on such occasions, said, ‘Thank you, Your Majesty,' and backed out of the room. A Private Secretary who had remained silent throughout the interview held the door open for him at the last minute.

The moment the secretary closed the door behind Bonar Law, another door at the opposite end of the room opened, and Queen Mary sailed in, her pale violet gown sweeping the floor, a tall silk-veiled hat of the same colour on her piled hair, an umbrella also of violet in her hand. A Lady-in-Waiting followed. The Queen said, ‘Who is it to be, George? Mr Bonar Law or that man?'

‘That man,' the King said.

The Queen said, ‘Thank heaven for that. He is the only one possible, now.' She turned on the young woman beside her ‘Make sure that you never find yourself alone in any room with Mr Lloyd George, Maud. And tell all the other Ladies-in-Waiting.'

Maud said, ‘I think they already know that they must be … alert, ma'am, in those circumstances.'

The Private Secretary bowed, the Lady-in-Waiting curtsied, and both left the room. The Queen went to the fireplace and hoisted high the back of her skirt to warm her behind through her petticoat, at the fire. The King cried, ‘Good heavens, Mary, that's … indecent!'

‘It's freezing in here,' his wife snapped. ‘The whole Palace is freezing.'

‘I don't think it's too bad,' the King said defensively, ‘and we have to save fuel.'

The Queen said, ‘It's all very well for you men in thick serge, but we women freeze unless we wrap up like mummies, and then you complain because we look like German frumps.'

There was a knock at the door. The King waited until the Queen had dropped her skirt back into place, then called, ‘Come in.'