Mrs. Roosevelt's Confidante (17 page)

“The Russian campaign…” Von Bayer resumed his pacing in front of the fireplace, watching the flames twist and flicker. “Well, it makes me sick.”

Kemp poured them all more cognac, the liquid glittering amber in the firelight. “After all, our Führer wrote in
Mein Kampf
—never wage a war on two fronts—”

Von Bayer swung to face Kemp, his good eye bulging. “
Mein Kampf
was written by an ape who's ruined our people and our religion. There is hardly anything we haven't attacked—we've attacked the past, our religion, the Jews, France, England, Russia…And now we declared war on America. We've attacked anyone who doesn't share our same politics—and in a stupid, brutal way.”

Kemp's face paled in shock. “But the Russians are beasts!”

Von Bayer stood, undeterred. “Our Gestapo competes with the Russians in their bestial actions!”

“That's the trouble,” Kemp mused. “All the killing. If only all senior Army leaders had said, ‘We won't participate in that mess! It is dragging the name of Germany in the mud!' ”

Von Bayer slumped into one of the overstuffed chairs. “A few did, and they were never heard from again. The fact that such things were done by Germans will puzzle world historians for centuries,” he continued, but his voice was now subdued. “History will hold the German Generals responsible for not protesting and laying down their arms.”

“Come, it's Christmas,” Clara said, eager to change the subject. “Let us drink a toast to the health of our glorious Führer.”

Von Bayer drained the last of his cognac and threw his cracked teacup into the fireplace. It exploded like a grenade. “I refuse to toast that man. And I will not pretend that there is any hope of our winning this war. Especially now that America is in it.”

Now Kemp was angry. “We Germans have been bled white. Don't forget we were swindled by those miserable Fourteen Points in the first place.”

“That was a long time ago and another war. Now, I regret every bomb, every scrap of materiel, and every human life that is still being wasted in this senseless conflict. The only gain that the war will bring us is the end of the ten years of gangster rule. Every day the war is a crime. The men at the top must realize that. They must put Hitler in a padded cell. A gang of rogues can't rule forever. They ought to be hanged. In my opinion, the collapse of Germany is inevitable.”

Clara's eyes narrowed. “If our homes are at stake, if our Fatherland is at stake, we must fight on. If we capitulate now, Germany will be wiped out once and for all, and we will all find ourselves in Siberia. The German people will be finished forever. Do you truly believe that a people like the English, with their supercilious and uncultured ways, should dominate the German people?” She rose and strode toward von Bayer. “That's a piece of insolence that we simply cannot accept. Our national pride won't allow us to be ruled by such swine.”

She smiled, a sultry smile, and leaned in to him. “Besides, I still believe in the long-distance rocket.”

“You're using the word ‘rocket' now?”

Clara tilted her head. “None of these idiots are spying on us. Look at Lord Abernathy—he's practically one of us.”

Von Bayer grimaced. “Still, you mustn't forget that a war has never yet been decided by a new weapon.”

“And do you believe that such a thing will still come in time?” Kemp's eyes sparked with hope.

The blonde gave a catlike smile. “Yes, in the summer Goebbels told me in private that the rocket program was already in the final stages of completion—in Peenemünde.”

Von Bayer shook his head. “This business about a new weapon—I still don't believe it. You can't just produce a new weapon out of a hat.”

“Not out of a hat,” Clara corrected. “Launched into the sky!”

Kemp's eyes grew large, like a child's. “But will it come in time?”

Von Bayer stared as the former opera diva rose and walked over to Kemp, sitting on his lap, kissing him on the mouth. “Oh, it will,” she vowed, stroking his hair. She whispered, “Lord Abernathy got me the bottle of Chanel Number Five that I asked for.” She extended her slim wrist to him. “What do you think?”

Kemp took her hand and brought it close, closing his eyes and kissing her palm. “Merry Christmas,” he murmured.

In the chilly attic of Chatswell Hall, Owen and Arthur were listening intently. They knew something important was being conveyed, and they had turned on the phonographs to record the conversation.

“There! Now that'll impress Lord Cherwell and the rest of the brass!” Arthur crowed as he watched the needles on the dials rise and fall.

Owen was not as sanguine. “Oh, she's just showing off. A rocket? Come now—that's something for novels and H. G. Wells wireless broadcasts. Not real life. Not real war.”

“Look, she said ‘rocket' and ‘Peenemünde'—and they all seemed to know about it.” Scowling, Arthur rubbed the back of his neck. “I wouldn't put it past those Krauts.”

“Hey,
we're
Krauts!” Owen punched him on the arm.

But Arthur didn't want to joke. “I may be from Germany, but I'm British now.”

“Well, I'm German, but I'm no Nazi. And I'd like to go back someday—when they're gone.”

“Not me. I'm staying here. I'm never going back.” Arthur shook his head. “Look, I'll start the transcription…”

“Then we'll send it to London. Up to Cherwell and Sandys. And Churchill, of course.”

Clara's drafty bedroom on Chatswell's second floor was the former great house's master suite. It consisted of a sitting room, a dressing room, and then the bedchamber itself. The rooms were paneled in dark-stained oak, with built-in bookshelves, now empty, and a massive fireplace. Murky oil paintings of hunt scenes hung on the walls.

Bored, exhausted by ennui, and also quite drunk, Clara flung herself on a moth-eaten velvet fainting sofa, spreading her arms wide and tipping her head back in a dramatic pose, worthy of the dying Violetta in Verdi's
La Traviata.

It was then, looking at the room upside down, that she noticed one of the bookcases wasn't flush with the wall.

Chatswell was old, with the expected cracks in the plaster moldings, water stains, chipping paint, curling wallpaper, but this defect seemed different.

Clara squinted at it, considering, then rose and crossed the room to examine it further. Yes, the bookcase was definitely almost an inch askew. She pushed back on it.

Nothing happened.

Then she realized it wasn't the bookcase that was angled, but the wooden panel next to it.

She pushed on the right of the panel. Nothing. She pushed on the left. Nothing.

Clara wiped her dusty hands on her skirt, about to give up, when she noticed the paneling wasn't flush with the floor, either. She pushed on the top of the panels, just where the plaster started, and the wooden section began to move, opening slowly, on a secret hinge.

The blonde's eyes widened and her breath came faster. She opened the secret door all the way and peered inside.

It was cold and smelled dank. The walls were rough-hewn stone. There was something in the room, in the corner. In the dark, she could just make out a copper water jug and cup, now tarnished and mottled green with verdigris. Both objects were covered in spiderwebs.

Clara was well versed in British history, especially since she had once trained to be and then posed as a well-educated British woman during the Great War. She knew about Elizabeth's Protestantism and how the Queen had persecuted Catholics, especially after the Babington Plot. No priests were allowed to celebrate the sacred rites in private homes on pain of death. And so, in case of a surprise visit, homes owned by Catholics had built secret chambers—sometimes called priest holes—where communion wine, wafers, and vestments could be hidden and even the priests themselves could hide during a search.

She put in a change of clothing, thick-soled shoes, and a flask of water, and then replaced the panel exactly as she'd found it.

“Happy Christmas,” she murmured.

Christmas Day, 1941. Maggie, Edith, and John waited on the wet pavement as the doorman stood in the street, raising one white-gloved hand and whistling for a taxicab. “Well, Margaret,” Edith began, “I hope it's not another four years before…” Then without warning she threw her arms around her niece and squeezed. “Be safe, Margaret,” she managed.

The taxi pulled up, and Edith waved off both Maggie and John. “I don't believe in long good-byes,” she told them as the doorman opened the taxi door and she slid into the backseat. “Not good for the constitution.” With that, she closed the door and started giving directions to the driver. And yet, Maggie was sure, as the sedan pulled away, that she saw Aunt Edith take out a handkerchief and dab at her eyes.

Maggie swallowed the lump in her throat, and then she and John began their walk to the White House—no one had Christmas Day off. The weather wasn't cold enough for a white Christmas, and overhead the sky remained leaden. They passed a group of rangy young men, up early, shouting and waving their arms with holiday exuberance. “Americans are so…loud,” John observed.

Maggie knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn't in the mood. “The United States is vast. You haven't seen anything. There are mountains, plains, prairies. It's a big place. People need big voices.” As they walked through Lafayette Park, she asked, “What was it you needed to talk to Mr. Churchill about?”

“Oh, that,” John said, putting up his black Fulton umbrella as the raindrops fell faster. “Washington's weather—not so different from London's.”

Maggie had spent enough time in Britain to know that when weather was invoked, it wasn't time to ask personal questions.

They arrived at the White House, passed through security, took off their wet things, and went upstairs to the map room. Their hands were chilled, their feet were cold, and the news that greeted them was grim. Wake Island had been seized by the Japanese. Even as the noose was tightening around their necks and defeat inevitable, the U.S. soldiers still alive sent out the message “Merry Christmas from Wake Island. Send Us More Japs.” The reports from the Philippines were dire. Hong Kong had fallen.

There was nervous speculation about who in the U.S. Navy might be court-martialed for nodding off behind the wheel at Pearl Harbor. Odds were high on Army General Walter Short and Admiral Husband Kimmel, both in Hawaii.

Still, it was Christmas. “Presents!” David exclaimed after Mr. Fields had served them coffee. He handed Maggie a book:
Total Espionage,
by Curt Riess. When Maggie saw the title, she rolled her eyes.

“Relax,” David said, as if sensing her apprehension, “the woman in the shop said
everyone's
reading it this Christmas. And
Kirkus
—whatever that is—apparently gave it an excellent review.”

David then handed John an enormous box, and he opened it. Inside was another, smaller box. He opened that one. Then another. Then another. Finally, wrapped in a bit of tissue paper, was a pack of spearmint chewing gum.

David beamed.

John looked dour. “Er, thanks, old thing.” He went to some shopping bags he'd hidden under his desk and procured a rum-soaked fruitcake, wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon and a sprig of holly.

“Fantastic”—David laughed—“my favorite. Of course, if anyone else had gotten me a ‘fruitcake,' I'd have knocked his block off.”

John handed Maggie a wrapped package. It was also a fruitcake. “Oh, I simply adore fruitcake!” she said, smiling. But she didn't, really. She hated fruitcake, loathed it. And secretly, she was a bit disappointed.
Fruitcake? Really?

Mrs. Roosevelt came in with Mr. Fields, who was wheeling a cart, to prepare them all a special breakfast, her own scrambled eggs in a chafing dish. As she plated the eggs with salt and pepper, she related, “I used to do this every year for the children, on Christmas morning. Of course, now they're all grown-up and away, so you'll have to permit me to fuss over you young people a bit.” Maggie knew that the four Roosevelt sons were in the military.
What a strain it must be, always checking, always wondering, always worrying,
she thought.

As Mr. Fields set up a special folding table, they listened to a radio address from the King:
“I am glad to think millions of people in all parts of the world are listening to me now….If skies before us are still dark and threatening there are stars to guide us on our way. Never did heroism shine more brightly than it does now, nor fortitude, nor sacrifice, nor sympathy, nor neighborly kindness. And with them, the brightest of all stars is our faith in God. These stars will we follow with his help until light shall shine and darkness shall collapse.”

“A wonderful man, your King,” Mrs. Roosevelt said. “So brave that he and the Queen never left London. They visited us at Hyde Park a few years ago, you know—lovely people.”

After they'd eaten the meal, complete with toast, butter, strawberry jam, and hot coffee, Mrs. Roosevelt blotted her lips with a napkin and stood. “I'll leave you now,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

The two men stood when the First Lady did. David looked up at the clock and nodded when she left, then went to rap on the Prime Minister's door. “Sir? Sir, it's time to leave for the service.”

“Come in!” Churchill's voice boomed. “Gimme—”

As David went into the Rose Bedroom to help the P.M., Maggie shrugged into her coat. “Aren't you coming?” she asked John, who was still sitting at the desk.

“Afraid not. I'm off in a bit.”

“Where?”

His face was shuttered. “I prefer not to say at this point in time.”

Really? First fruitcake and now obscurity?
“Why, thank you, Bartleby the Scrivener.”

“No, no, it's not that. It's just that…nothing is definite.” He rubbed both hands through his hair until it stood on end. “I don't want to jinx anything,” he implored. “Please understand.”

“Well, tell me this, at least—are you going by car? Ship? Train?”

“Plane, actually.”

“Airplane?” Maggie thought she'd heard wrong.

“Yes, airplane, with a series of jump flights—not anything direct, of course. I feel a bit like the narrator in
The Last Tycoon
. What was it she said? ‘The world from an airplane I knew.' ”

Maggie was impressed. “You read the Fitzgerald already?”

“Well, I made an exception for Fitzgerald, since it came from you. I'm about a third of the way through it. Since last night was rather free,” he said with emphasis.

Maggie avoided his pointed look by buttoning her coat, then pinning on her hat. Yes, she probably could have sneaked off once Aunt Edith had begun to snore. But she still felt…conflicted. “How long will you be gone?” she asked.

“Just a bit. I—”

“Let me guess—you can't say.” Maggie felt her heart crack just a little.

He rose and walked to her. “I'll see you soon,” he said, standing close enough for her to smell the citrus scent of his shaving soap.

The door banged open. Churchill wore a dark blue topcoat and had a sprig of holly in his lapel. “Come!” he roared, striding through the office to the corridor, brandishing his cane like a saber with David at his heels. “Church! Mustn't be late!”

“I've got to go,” Maggie told John.

“I know. I do, too.”

They clasped hands. It was war; no one took for granted they would see each other again. “Well, bon voyage,” Maggie murmured. “Please do let us know when you've arrived safely at your secret destination.”

“I will,” he promised, kissing her cheek.

The President and First Lady had decided to celebrate Christmas Day at Foundry Methodist Church. The First Couple rode in the first long black sedan with Harry Hopkins, while the Prime Minister, David, and Maggie followed in another just behind. Together, they formed a queue of shiny automobiles driving past Lafayette and Farragut Squares to Foundry, a rusticated dove-gray granite church on the corner of Sixteenth and P Streets.

The mood in Churchill's limousine was grim. Maggie knew the news from Hong Kong wasn't unexpected, but the P.M. was still taking it hard.

As raindrops tapped on the car's roof, Maggie cleared her throat. “Mr. Churchill, I was wondering if you'd heard of the case of Wendell Cotton—” she began.

“Yes, yes, I've heard of it. Our Mrs. R seems to be quite involved.”

“He's going to be executed.”

“Yes,” replied the P.M., staring out the window at people struggling through the rain.

“He didn't have a fair trial or sentencing. And so, I was wondering—”

David put a hand on her arm to still her, but Maggie shook him off. “Mr. Churchill, I was wondering if you might have a word with the President? To convince him to ask the Governor of Virginia for a stay of execution?”

Churchill shook his head without looking at her. “No.” He pulled out a cigar to chew.

“No?” Maggie was shocked. “Why not? It's the right thing to do!”

The Prime Minister's eyes met hers. “Miss Hope, do I need to remind you that we are at war? I must triage what is the ‘right thing to do,' as you so naïvely put it, with ‘what must be done.' As must the President.”

Maggie remembered this was the same man who was willing to use chemical and biological weapons if he determined it necessary to guard Britain's coast. Still, she pressed on. “But an innocent man is going to die.”

The Prime Minister's eyes blazed. “Miss Hope! Innocent men are dying all over this planet—a great number today, in fact—on Wake Island, in Hong Kong, in Russia. But from what I understand about this America of yours, we need both the North and the South—Dixie—fighting for us. We can't have the Southerners distracted by the President meddling in their business.”

“But—”

“No, Miss Hope. The President would tell you the same thing. And I do
not
advise you ask him. Is that clear?”

In a small voice, she repeated, “A man is going to die.”

“Yes. He will most probably die. Many men, and women—even children—will die before this war is over. But his death is not part of our battle, Miss Hope. Is that clear?”

India, Africa, China, the colonies. All those so-called brown people. And now Wendell Cotton, too.
Maggie twisted her hands in her lap, pressing them together so tight that her knuckles turned white. Now she knew how Dorothy felt when she realized the Great and Powerful Oz was really just a little man behind a curtain.

“I said, Miss Hope, is that clear?”

Maggie stared out at the raindrops sliding down the window. “Yes, sir.”

The Foundry Methodist Church was surrounded by government agents, armed with tommy guns and revolvers. As the parties emerged from the sedans into the rain, aides held large black umbrellas over their heads. Ron Kantor from
The
New York Times
called out from a throng of journalists, “Mr. President! Why are you at Foundry? Why aren't you at an Episcopal church on Christmas morning?”

Roosevelt, pushed in his chair by his naval aide, caught his eye. “What's the matter with the Methodys, Mr. Kantor? I like to sing hymns with the Methodys,” he called back cheerfully from underneath the tilt of his hat. “And it will be good for Winston to sing hymns with the Methodys, too. Just you wait and see.”

Inside the thick stone walls of Foundry, there were lilies everywhere, in memory of the President's mother and the First Lady's brother, as well as evergreen boughs on the altar. The pungent scent was hypnotic. Roosevelt and Churchill sat in the fourth pew, as the minister prayed for “those who are dying on land and sea this Christmas morning” and for the P.M., who was leading “his valiant people even through blood and sweat and tears to a new world where men may dwell together, none daring to molest or make afraid.”

As the service went on, Maggie struggled to make sense of balancing the deaths of many and the death of one. She came up with nothing.

While they were inside, the rain had tapered off. And when the service was over and they were stepping down the slick flagstone steps, she spotted Thomas O'Brian taking photographs. She hung back. “Go on without me,” she told David. “I want to chat with my old college chum.”

David shot Tom a dark look but replied, “Take the day off if you must,” before he climbed into the car with the P.M.

“Merry Christmas, Maggie,” Tom greeted her, camera in hand. “May I take your picture?”

Despite the beauty of the service, Maggie's mood hadn't lifted. “I must confess, I'm not particularly jolly today.” She glanced up at the tarnished silver clouds. “Not exactly classic Christmas weather.”

“I don't think anyone's jolly these days,” he replied. “So soon after Pearl Harbor, and with the news coming in from Wake. You don't have to smile if you don't feel like it.” He took a few snaps, then asked, “Did you know Blanche Balfour, the woman who was working for the First Lady?”

“No, we never met,” Maggie said.
Well, not while she was alive, anyway.
“I heard about her death. How horrible—she was so young, too.”

Scattered drops began to fall. “I just wrote her obituary for the
Buffalo Evening News.
”

“Really?” Maggie's mind was clicking into high gear as she led the way to an overhang on the church's steps where they would be protected from the rain.

“Originally, we were told it was a suicide, but I had orders from my editor not to include that in the obit—to say ‘death from natural causes.' ”

“Is that typical?”

“With families from her social class, yes. Any mention of suicide is considered tawdry. But then, at the tree lighting last night, Blanche's former fiancé approached me. He thinks she was murdered.”