Churchill's Hour (8 page)

She was by upbringing a straightforward country girl, not simple, but not sophisticated either, and when Randolph had introduced her to a new life she hadn't at first entirely understood its rules. Only now was she beginning to realize that Randolph didn't understand them, either. Idiot. He was still staring from his silver frame. Defiantly she raised her glass to him and uttered something very rude.

She spent another night shivering beneath her blankets, banging her head on bloody Macaulay, before she made up her mind. They had a mountain of wedding presents—crystal decanters, a canteen of exquisite cutlery, an antique carriage clock, fine wines, Lalique figurines, modern pearls and pieces of ancient porcelain, every kind of indulgent trinket that had been given to them by their rich friends—or, more accurately, the rich friends of Randolph's father. She put everything up for auction. Within two weeks they were gone, every last bit and bauble, including her jewellery and his watches. A month later, so was the rectory, rented out for three times the amount they were paying
for it. Arrangements were made for the baby, who was provided with a nursery and nanny at Cherkley, the country home of his wealthy godfather, Lord Beaverbrook, which in turn gave Pamela the freedom to ‘do her bit' and take a job in the Ministry of Supply. It also enabled her to take a top-floor room at the Dorchester Hotel.

Now the Dorchester, at first sight, might have seemed an unconventional choice for a woman trying desperately to save herself from financial delinquency, but it had some surprising advantages. Many of the most powerful people in London had moved into the hotel for the duration, and Pamela knew that while she was there she would never have to pay for another meal. It also happened to be one of the safest locations in London—reinforced with steel and with a deep basement. Above all else, it was close to her father-in-law. Pamela was, after all, a Churchill, and there were benefits to be had from being related to the most powerful man in the land. One of these benefits was the substantial discount that the Dorchester offered her on their standard charges.

As she told her incredulous friends, she was so hard up she couldn't possibly afford to live anywhere else.

There were many visitors that Easter weekend—not just family but generals, aides, the Australian
Prime Minister, the Americans. It was not a season of peace.

The strain had been growing for weeks. Cold winds blew from every corner of the globe and Churchill, as always impatient, interfered in everything. He grew impatient with others, showed anger at delays and was left shouting vainly at the gods who seemed to have turned their back on him.

Every day he would examine the charts that displayed the progress of the convoys as they fought their way across the Atlantic, hurling questions at his Admiralty staff, demanding instant answers, grasping at hope. He followed not only the fate of the convoys but even individual cargoes, insisting that the machine guns, aircraft engines and fourteen million cartridges being carried from America by the
City of Calcutta
be unloaded on the west coast. ‘Why in blazes do they insist on running the additional risk of taking them round to the east coast?' he demanded. ‘Are they incompetent, or simply mad?'

Everywhere the news was bad. Bulgaria had joined the Axis, there were fears that Spain would follow. Yugoslavia stood defiant, but it would not be for long. Germany fell upon her and two days of bombing killed more than seventeen thousand civilians in the capital city, Belgrade. Everyone knew that Greece would be next. Churchill ordered British troops to be moved from Egypt to help in the defence
of Greece, much to the open displeasure of his generals, but Churchill insisted. Yet even as the troops prepared to move, Rommel began a new advance in North Africa and threw the plans into chaos. The British began to retreat, but they couldn't even manage that properly. The new trucks and tanks that had been sent to the desert kept breaking down in the sand. Churchill once again lost his temper, demanding to know whether the War Office wanted him to go and fix the bloody machines himself. ‘The Germans move forward and discover our men playing at sandcastles!' he spat contemptuously. ‘They've taken two thousand British prisoners. We'll just have to find comfort in the fact that they've taken three of our bloody generals as well.'

Further east, Britain's supply problems grew with a pro-Nazi coup in oil-rich Iraq. ‘It is just as happened in the last war,' Churchill sighed. ‘We liberate them, then they turn on us.'

‘Ungrateful Arab swine,' one aide said, but Churchill turned on him. ‘Only a fool expects gratitude in the desert!'

Not for one moment did the light of battle leave his eyes, but it seemed to be devouring him, burning him out. At every point on the map there were new wounds. Britain was bleeding to death.

He saw it for himself. On Good Friday he had left for a tour of the West Country in the company of
the American Ambassador. They arrived in Bristol not long after the Luftwaffe had left. Churchill had walked through streets that were no longer recognizable, had watched as inhabitants with bewildered faces emerged from their hidey-holes to find their world destroyed, had spent all morning outside without once seeing the sun through the clouds of swirling smoke. The Mayor of Bristol, soot streaked upon his face, had likened his city to ancient Rome. And so it was. Ruins.

In one corner of the city they stumbled across the remnants of a wall that had once been a row of houses. On it someone had scribbled: ‘There Will Always Be An England!' but the message had been all but obliterated by scorch marks from the flames. From somewhere Winant found a piece of chalk and, kneeling in the dust, carefully restored the message to its original form.

Later that day, the old man returned to Chequers deeply affected, his jaw locked in uncharacteristic silence. He seemed unable to settle. He paced relentlessly, then instructed the Coldstream Guards who were stationed in the grounds of the house to set up a firing range a little way from the house. A few sandbags, a couple of makeshift wooden targets. He wanted to do something violent. Most of the men joined him—not Vic Oliver, he hadn't been invited—and they stood around in a light drizzle, although none seemed keen to join him as he took aim and
emptied the magazine of his pistol, a Colt .45, into the target. A bullet for every fresh catastrophe of the last few days. The Atlantic, the Balkans, the deserts, the West Country. Bullet after bullet smacked home, sending splinters spitting across the lawn, and still he continued firing. A bullet for the pain of his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, who had just been terribly injured in a car crash. Another for Sarah, who had arrived at Chequers to tell him that her marriage to Vic Oliver was falling apart.

And the very last bullet he saved for those thoughts of failure that had begun to intrude upon him at night. He was a man who throughout his life had taken pride in his ability to sleep soundly and wake refreshed, but now devils pursued him through his dreams as well as his waking hours. A whispering campaign had begun in the darker corners of the House of Commons; mutterings about ‘midnight follies', ‘cigar stump diplomacy', ‘too much meddling and too many yes-men'. Things were all going hell-ward. And suddenly his aim failed and the bullet sped wide.

‘Anyone gonna join me?' he demanded, his voice taut as a bowstring. No one stepped forward. They all knew better than to get within snapping distance of the Black Dog. So he thrust his empty weapon at his detective, Thompson, and began striding back towards the house, his hands deep in the pockets and head bent low. Only Winant seemed willing to
fall in step beside him, bending his tall frame to get nearer to the old man's words, causing his unkempt hair to fall across his face.

‘So tell me, Gil, my Intelligence people suggests the
Herrenvolk
are lengthening the runways on many of their airfields in Poland. You heard anything about that?'

‘Can't say I have,' the American said. It made Churchill feel a little happier. It seemed he was ahead in one game, at least.

‘What the hell do you think they're up to?'

‘I've no idea. Not for our benefit, I guess.'

‘Our' benefit. Churchill liked that. He was beginning to warm to this diffident, angular American. His shirts were habitually crumpled and his blue overcoat a diplomatic disgrace, but the man had heart.

‘And it's not for the benefit of bloody Lufthansa, either,' the old man continued. ‘It can only be for the bombers.'

‘What bombers?'

‘The bombers they will use when they fall upon Russia.'

‘But Russia and Germany have a friendship pact…'

‘So did Cain and Abel.'

‘What do you think it means?'

‘It means the Germans are looking east, in search of bigger game. Perhaps our tiny British islands have become an irrelevance in Hitler's eyes, a sideshow
—perhaps he thinks that Winston Churchill is no longer worth the bother.'

‘You make it sound personal.'

‘Of course it's bloody personal! He's leaving us to die from starvation, imprisoned in our own impotence. But there might be salvation in the insult, Gil. If Germany attacked Russia, they would not dare invade these islands until they were done. It gives us time—time which we both must use.' He stopped abruptly and grabbed the ambassador's sleeves. ‘Don't you see? It will change the whole nature of the war. Make it stretch around the world. Surely America must realize that it could never stay out of such a conflagration.'

The blue eyes were staring up at the taller Winant, boiling with emotion, willing the ambassador and all his countrymen to draw alongside. But it was a passion that Winant knew was so often misdirected. For the best part of a year Churchill had been bombarding Roosevelt with messages that overflowed with obsession and excess. In the old man's eyes, every hour was the moment of destiny, the hour when civilization would collapse unless Roosevelt sent more destroyers, offered more credits, built more planes, declared war. The bombardment had been conducted without respite and it had reached the point where Roosevelt often didn't respond to Churchill's telegrams, simply ducked them, left the moment to grow cold. Not every hour could be Churchill's hour.
The American President had his own battles to fight—against the isolationists who didn't want to touch the war, against the leaders of organized labour who didn't want to touch it either, not unless they got paid a whole lot more, and against Congress where good will was flowing about as slowly as treacle on a frosty day. So Roosevelt had taken to ignoring Churchill's incessant words of doom. ‘I close my eyes,' the President said, ‘and wake up in the morning to discover that, somehow, the world has survived.'

Winant, too, hoped for a brighter outcome. ‘If Hitler attacks Russia, so might the Japs,' he suggested. ‘Turn north. Into Siberia. Away from your colonies to the south.'

‘No. I fear not. Siberia has no oil, no rubber, no resources. Nothing for the Japanese war machine to feast upon.'

‘You mustn't always look on the dark side, Winston,' Winant said in gentle warning. ‘The American people are optimists. It unsettles them if they can see no light in the gloom.'

‘And what if there is no light? Do you simply sit back and pray you will find your way through the darkness? Or do you pick up a box of matches and start a bloody good fire?'

‘And burn your house down in the process?'

‘Perhaps you are right,' he muttered, unconvinced. ‘But the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka is prowling through the corridors of the Kremlin even
as we speak. What the hell's he up to? Lost his way in the dark, has he?'

‘He's just come from Berlin. Our intelligence suggests it's possible he's in Moscow preparing the ground.'

‘For what?'

‘For a declaration of war.'

‘Against whom?'

‘Why…Russia, I mean.'

‘Then let it be war! War! War!' he shouted histrionically, to the alarm of the following group. Then he shook his head. ‘But once again your optimistic American intelligence has got it utterly wrong'

‘How can you be certain?'

‘Because intelligence needs to be dipped in a bucket of common sense before it's laid on the table. And common sense suggests the Japanese haven't gone to Moscow with bunches of flowers in their hands in order to declare war, any more than they arrived in China with fixed bayonets for the purpose of setting up a wood-whittling business.'

‘You don't think much of American Intelligence, then?'

‘They got it half right. There will be war. And not all the optimists in America will be able to stop it,' the old man growled, before stomping off in the direction of the house.

Sawyers sat with Héloise at the long central table in the kitchen polishing silver, while Mrs Landemare prepared lunch.

‘But I do not understand,' Héloise protested.

‘Yer too young to understand such things,' Sawyers responded.

‘Oh, you don't ‘alf talk a lot of tommy-rot at times, Mr Sawyers,' Mrs Landemare said, peering into a bubbling pot.

‘How so?'

‘The girl needs to know these things, otherwise she's going to be dropping breakfast trays from here until the gates of Heaven.'

‘Well, she's your relative…'

‘My hubby's relative.'

‘Your responsibility, then,' Sawyers said, reaching for a fresh buffing rag.

Mrs Landemare's face came up from the pot, her ruddy cheeks and remarkably broad forehead covered in little droplets of steam. Sawyers was opting out. Typical man.

‘It's war what does it mostly,' Mrs Landemare began, turning to Héloise, ‘although it goes on just as much when there ain't any war, I suppose.' Her awkwardness was stretching almost to the point of contradiction. ‘It's just that…Well, you haven't got no mother and father, poor thing, so it's not surprising this is all a bit new. So, how can I put it?' She sipped from a ladle, then threw a little more
salt in the pot. ‘Great country houses are like little worlds all of their own. The ladies and gentlemen get dropped at the door, and for the time that they're here the rules of the outside world get put to one side. So Mr C wanders around without a towel at times. Don't mean nothing by it, it's just his way. So you make a bit of noise when you get near his bathroom, just so he knows you're coming.'