‘Let them come.’
He drained his glass and handed it back to Sawyers, who wiped it as carefully as if it were a chalice.
‘Even the Almighty had to watch his only son suffer. Nowt to be done. You jest have to have a belief that it’ll all come out right in the end.’
It took Churchill many moments before he was able to compose himself. His lips struggled as they found the words. ‘I shall be unwise and let you into a state secret. You are a good man, Sawyers.’
‘State secret, you say? Then I think I should forget you ever said that.’
‘Yes. I already have.’
And suddenly the fire had been rekindled. He thrust his walking stick in the ground and hoisted himself to his feet, setting off towards the house. He left Sawyers struggling with the bucket in his wake.
As they drew near to Chequers they could see the Prime Minister’s detective and private secretary scurrying back and forth in search of their lost charge. It was a game Churchill liked to play, slipping his shadows, a game he was able occasionally to win.
‘Beat ‘em,’ he declared with an air of satisfaction. ‘And we may yet beat ‘em all, Sawyers.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ the servant panted, trailing behind, clutching the bucket to his chest.
‘Oh, and what about your maid?’ Churchill continued, coming to an abrupt halt as though tripping over a new thought.
‘Héloise?’ Gratefully the valet caught his breath. ‘Jest what I told yer last. ‘Cept for her brother.’
‘What about her brother?’
‘You remember, the one in navy? Mrs Landemare reckons he’s dead. Earlier in war. On active service, she thinks.’
Churchill’s head was up, like a hare sniffing the breeze and sensing danger.
‘I know nowt else,’ Sawyers concluded.
‘Oh, but I think I do,’ Churchill replied, as the last fractions of the sun slipped beyond the horizon. ‘It’s God’s great bloody plan, you see. To make us all suffer for our sins. And it’s my past. I believe it’s catching up with me.’
Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran in French Algeria. 3 July 1940. Less than two weeks after the armistice with the Germans.
The French fleet lay at anchor behind the harbour wall, in the shadow of the steep cliffs that ran along this section of the North African coast. As dawn broke, a British naval destroyer appeared on the horizon. She was under full steam. As she drew nearer, she signalled to the French: ‘A British Fleet is at sea off Oran waiting to welcome you.’
It proved to be a most imposing welcome. The fleet consisted of the battleships Valiant and Resolution, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, two cruisers, eleven destroyers—and HMS Hood.
They knew each other, the French and the British. The Hood and the French flagship Dunkerque had sailed together as allies against the German fleet, and the British commander sent a message to his French counterpart, Admiral Gensoul, suggesting that they should continue to do so. He proposed that the French fleet should sail to a British port and continue the fight, or if that were not acceptable, the fleet should be handed over to the British so that they could continue the fight alone. Failing that, the British suggested, the fleet should be put out of commission so that it was unable to fight for anyone. But if none of these options were acceptable, the French were told, their fleet would be sunk.
The British fleet steamed to and fro across the bay, waiting for a reply. But it was several hours before Gensoul at last agreed to talk. A British officer arrived by motor boat, yet as he drew near the fleet he could see that tugs were standing by and control positions were being manned. The French were preparing to sail.
At 4.15 in the afternoon, the British officer, Captain Holland, was at last allowed on board the Dunkerque to meet with Gensoul. The French admiral explained, formally, coldly, that he took orders only from the French Government. Holland replied that the terms his own Government had offered were not negotiable.
All these events had been followed by Churchill from the Cabinet Room. He reached the conclusion that Gensoul was interested only in delay, and that French submarines and air reinforcements were on their way. He gave orders that the matter was to be settled quickly.
At 5.15, while Gensoul was still talking with Holland, the British commander on HMS Hood sent a new signal to the French. He said that unless his terms were accepted within fifteen minutes, their fleet would be sunk.
Holland quit the Dunkerque five minutes before the deadline expired. He later wrote that Gensoul had bidden him a most courteous farewell, and that as he sailed past the battleship Bretagne, the officer of the watch had come to attention and honoured him with a stylish salute.
At 5.29, a minute before the deadline, Gensoul signalled that he could not accept the British terms. However, he declared he would be willing to sail his fleet to the USA. He must have known it was a hopeless gesture.
Twenty-three minutes later, the British fleet opened fire. The first salvo fell short, the second hit the harbour wall where some of the French ships were moored, scattering them with a fusillade of concrete that killed several crewmen. At the third attempt, the British shells found their mark. Direct hits. Within moments, the Bretagne disappeared in a sheet of flame.
The action lasted less than ten minutes. By the time the order was given to cease fire, the French fleet lay in substantial ruins. The Bretagne was gone, the Dunkerque run aground, other ships broken and beached. The casualty list was enormous; more than a thousand French sailors died on the Bretagne alone.
One of them was the brother of Héloise.
It was his normal practice to leave them waiting. ‘We shall depart at three,’ he would declare, then get distracted, which meant he wouldn’t rush through the garden of Downing Street to his waiting car until several hours later. Yet today was not as normal. He couldn’t wait to leave.
‘Now, now! We’re off!’ he cried, grabbing his hat and stick and diving for the door, leaving his servants and assistants clutching frantically for coats, papers, luggage and all the other paraphernalia required of a weekend at Chequers. The heat remained blistering, yet they knew they wouldn’t be given a moment to relax.
Their route led them up through Notting Hill and past White City as they headed west. He wasted no time; beside him sat a secretary, notebook balanced precariously on her knee, scribbling hard, clutching the case for his reading glasses in her spare hand, her foot perched on his precious box to keep it from slamming shut as the car sped round every corner. All the while the bell of the police escort rang out, demanding more haste.
The convoy did not proceed directly to Chequers but swung into the entrance of the airfield at Northolt. The ensign hung limply from the flagpole yet everything else seemed as crisp as starched linen—so different from three weeks earlier when Churchill had arrived unannounced. It had been a shambles. ‘We weren’t expecting you, sir,’ the hapless station commander had wailed. ‘You didn’t tell us you were coming.’
‘Neither will Hitler!’
It seemed to have had its effect. Today the security barrier was down, the cars forced to halt, the sentry demanding sight of the Prime Minister. Even the grass verges were freshly trimmed. A plume of blue cigar smoke swirled into the afternoon air as Churchill wound down his window. The guard bent low to peer inside.
‘Welcome back, sir,’ he said, snapping to attention. ‘And good luck.’
‘With what, Corporal?’
‘Bloody everything, sir.’
‘You and I, we’ll beat the buggers yet, eh?’ he cried, waving as the car sped on.
His mood was irrepressible. The last few weeks had brought him little but dejection, yet it was his special gift that from somewhere deep inside he always seemed able to find the spark to re-ignite his energies. Some said it was simple stubbornness, others overweening ambition, friends said it derived from a sense of destiny, and certainly there was more than a touch of arrogance; he often left behind him the impression that he was the only man in the room—
and perhaps the entire kingdom—who was fighting this war. His reactions were predictable only in the fact that no one could ever take him for granted. Forty minutes later, when Harriman’s plane landed on the tarmac, the Prime Minister was nowhere to be seen.
They found him in the sergeants’ mess, surrounded by eager faces and fragments of Messerschmitt, drinking coffee laced with whisky and telling a vulgar joke.
When he saw Harriman he bounced immediately to his feet. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘this is my friend, Mr Harriman. He is American. He has just returned from a mission to the Middle East—the first of many of his countrymen who will soon be at the sharp end of our war.’
“Bout bloomin’ time, too,’ a voice spoke up from the pack.
‘You might well say that, sergeant. And I shall let you into a little secret,’ Churchill declared, banging the table with the palm of his hand. ‘Your views entirely coincide with my own.’
They stamped on the floor as he left, shouting out their approval until the whole hut shook. He turned as he reached the door, and there were tears in his eyes.
‘Gentlemen, when I think of what we have achieved over the last year—and what, alongside our American allies, we shall achieve in the next—I know that we shall win. We’re going to beat the bastards, the whole bloody lot of ‘em!’ he told them, waving his stick. And he could still hear their cheers when he was many yards away.
‘You’re in spirited form, Winston,’ Harriman said.
‘Never better.’ He took the other man’s arm as they walked, heads bent, almost conspiratorially, towards the waiting cars. ‘I have news, Averell, most profound news. The President has invited me to meet with him. I sail in two weeks’ time. I hope you will accompany me.’
‘That’s fantastic. Face to face. Things’ll move so much more quickly.’
‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers!’
‘But what’s all that about Americans being at the sharp end?’
‘Joined in battle. One cause, one crusade!’
Harriman was silent for a moment. ‘Things must’ve moved fast while I was away.’
‘Germany has hurled itself upon Russia, and the dogs of Japan snarl ever more savagely, creeping behind our backs. Half of all mankind is now engaged in this struggle, Averell, and the President knows that America cannot stand aside.’
‘No one would be happier than I about that, but…War? You seriously think he intends to declare war?’
‘Why else would he invite me to travel so far?’
Harriman knew Roosevelt. He knew the President had an extraordinary ability to leave all those in his company with the impression that he was entirely at one with them and that their cause had his full enthusiasm. But Roosevelt was not a man of enthusiasms. He was a man who played his cards so close to his chest that he had trouble changing his shirt, yet now he was offering a summit meeting. Churchill might have to travel a great distance, but if it implied war, then the President had already travelled much further.
‘Hell, things have moved fast,’ Harriman repeated. Over their heads thundered a Flying Fortress—a B-17, fresh from the factories of Boeing in North America, its four radial piston engines straining and making the ground shudder beneath their feet. To one side stood several brand new Liberators—B-24s. They looked ungainly without their camouflage, but soon they would be painted up, and thirty thousand feet above Berlin. At last, it seemed, things were on the move.
‘There’s so much to do, so little time to do it, Averell. I’ll need every moment of your time if we are to maximize the benefits of my meeting with the President.’ From the inside pocket of his jacket the Prime Minister withdrew an envelope. It wasn’t sealed. ‘I dictated a memorandum for you this morning about the summit. It’s entirely current and, of course, in the highest degree confidential. We shall discuss it this weekend at Chequers.’ He stopped as they reached the door of their car and took the American by the sleeve. ‘Averell, you’ll forgive a little pedantry, I trust, but I must ask you to take the greatest care of such personal notes. Before you return to London, destroy it. By fire.’
‘It’ll go straight into my case, Winston. I never leave it unlocked.’ He tapped the stiff leather bag that swung at his side.
‘And—forgive me—the key?’
‘On a chain—and on my belt.’ Harriman produced a small bunch of keys from his pocket. ‘Don’t worry, Winston, they’d have to rip my clothes from my body before they could get to it.’
‘Then I am deeply reassured.’ He ushered his guest into the back of the car. ‘Come. Chequers calls. As does the family. They are all gathered, waiting to kill the fatted calf in your honour…’
‘You didn’t write,’ she whispered.
‘I thought we were…going to let things cool off. Anyway, I was with your husband. It didn’t seem right.’
‘It feels so very strange, you being with Randolph.’
‘I kept worrying that I would get drunk and say something.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. I let him do most of the drinking—and talking. I don’t think he suspects.’
‘He wrote to me. About you.’
‘What?’
‘Sang your praises. Said you were charming, that you spoke delightfully of me.’
‘You have no idea how miserable that makes me feel.’
‘He even said he thought he had a serious rival in you.’
‘He knows…?’
‘Nothing. I think he genuinely likes you.’
‘Damn. That doesn’t make for a simple life.’
‘I genuinely like you, too.’
‘Which makes life about as unsimple as it gets.’
For a moment she wondered whether she should tell him about her conversation with Winston, but the idea quickly evaporated. He was having enough difficulty with his scruples; if he had to face Winston in a state of anything other than blithe ignorance it would only make his conscience toll all the louder.
‘What should we do?’ she asked.
‘Do?’
‘Yes, do.’
‘What do you think, Pam?’
She considered the options for a while. The night was dark, sultry. An owl called from somewhere in the distance. In another part of the house the hinges of an ancient window complained as it was closed. A clock chimed three.
‘Averell, it took a lot of gentle persuasion for Sawyers to put me in this room.’
‘Why did you want to change?’
‘I told him I preferred the view. Truth is, this bed makes so much less noise.’
‘Ah.’
‘So, you silly goose,’ she whispered in his ear, ‘I’ll let you decide.’
The old house creaked as it settled down for the night. It gave the maid a little cover. For the rest, she would have to rely on the lateness of the hour and the alcohol they had all consumed on their way to bed. She crept in stockinged feet down the corridor, avoiding floorboards she knew to be loose, until she had come to the room assigned to Harriman. She paused outside the room, listening carefully for many moments before she pulled at the handle. The door gave way silently on hinges that she had recently and most meticulously oiled.
She was gone some time. When at last she reappeared, she retraced her footsteps and vanished up the staircase that led to the servants’ quarters on the floor above. She was as silent as a moonbeam, offering nothing more than the briefest passing shadow.
At the far end of the corridor, from behind a door that had been no more than an inch ajar, there crept the subdued glow of a cigar. Then, with the gentle click of the latch, it was gone.
NINE
In late July the Japanese moved south, just as Churchill had feared. Unopposed, they marched into Saigon, the capital of French Indo-China. They were now a thousand miles nearer the heart of Britain’s Far Eastern Empire.
There were still those who thought the Japanese might turn and declare war on Russia, but with every pace the armies of Nippon took down the spine of Indo-
China, that possibility grew more feeble.
There was another factor compelling them south. Roosevelt had wanted to punish the Japanese for moving their troops into Indo-China and warn them to advance no further. So he had decided to freeze all Japanese assets in the United States. Churchill, ever eager to encourage the American President, did the same. It seemed an initiative that was tough, unambiguous and above all united, bringing the two English-speaking nations together.
Yet it was a policy that contained a terrible sting in its tail. ‘Do as we demand.’ It was in effect a claim to racial superiority and Anglo-Saxon ascendancy, a point which Churchill knew would not be lost on refined Japanese sensibilities. It would throw them into a fury. It would also cut them off from the materials they required to wage war—most importantly oil. It would force them to decide.
Either she could back off, withdraw from Indo-China, lose face, renounce her own claim to empire and humiliate herself before the white man. Or she would have to assert herself and grab the resources she needed—in other words, make more war.
No one knew what they would do—the Japanese didn’t seem to know themselves, and Roosevelt thought this uncertainty was an excellent sign. It suggested that the Japanese were being forced to think again, to find another way. But if they didn’t, it threatened disaster. The armies of the Rising Sun stationed in Indo-China formed a great claw around the kingdom of Thailand. It would be their next target. And once they were in Thailand, they only had to fall out of bed and they would land upon the British territories of Malaya, Burma and Singapore—territories which, Churchill knew, he could not defend, not alone. The United States had to come into the war, whether they liked it or not.
When she found him he was looking at the North Star, like a lone traveller trying to find his bearings. Churchill had been avoiding her—not ignoring her completely, but always finding someone else to talk with and something else to concentrate on whenever she came near. It wasn’t difficult for him to find an excuse—the summit occupied all their minds and waking moments.