Churchill's Hour

  ‘She is a most elegant woman,’ Winant said softly, almost to himself.

  ‘And married,’ Harriman added.

  ‘Of course. No offence intended,’ he said, turning in apology to Pamela. ‘I’ll have to content myself with admiring her from afar.’

  ‘What a completely rotten waste of time,’ Pamela responded, taking both their arms and leading them into dinner.

  The instinct that Churchill had expressed to Winant on the firing range had been right. Yosuke Matsuoka, the bespectacled, bushy-browed Japanese Foreign Minister and a Cavalier of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, First Class, had not gone to Moscow with the intention of declaring war. He was fêted and fussed over by Stalin, plied with praise and considerable quantities of vodka and caviar, and on Easter Day they did a deal.

  It had happened before. Less than two years earlier Stalin had signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany. They were ideological enemies of the most implacable kind, of course, filled with mutual loathing, but necessity brings together the strangest partners on the diplomatic dance floor. The pact had set aside their differences, at least for a while. Hitler would not attack Stalin, leaving them both free to pursue their other interests. Within days, Hitler had begun his war, taking his conquests right up to the Soviet border, but not an inch beyond. While Poland was crushed and Britain and France were reduced to wringing their hands in despair, Stalin’s neat diplomatic sidestep had kept his country out of the war and free from attack in the West.

  Now he staged a repeat performance, signing a five-year peace treaty with the Japanese that recognized their conquests in China and saved himself from attack in the east.

  ‘It is everything I feared,’ Churchill said softly, replacing the telephone in its cradle. It was long after midnight; Harriman and Winant were seated beside him in his study.

  ‘Bad news, Winston?’

  ‘Of the worst kind. Peace has broken out across all the Russias.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ Harriman responded. ‘How can peace be bad news?’

  He turned to his guests. ‘Peace is not a natural state of affairs in Russia. It is not a condition that endures. When Stalin declared to the world that he had made peace with Germany, war erupted before the echo had died. Now he declares peace with Japan.’ He disappeared for a moment inside a haze of blue cigar smoke. ‘The forces of Imperial Nippon can no more be held from aggression than wind can be persuaded not to blow. If they do not turn north, then it must be south. Trying to build the Japanese Empire on the ruins of our own.’

  He turned to stare at both of them, his heavy brow creased, the jaw set firm.

  ‘Soon, gentlemen, Japan will be at war with Britain. But before that day comes, they will find themselves at war with Winston bloody Churchill!’

  FIVE

  The bombers came early that evening. The warning sirens heralded a night of relentless torment, unusual even by the standards of Londoners. Winant was with Churchill in the Cabinet Room of Number Ten. Both men tried to ignore the growing signs of advancing chaos, but eventually a great sigh escaped from Churchill.

  ‘We must go. If I stay, others must stay. And I have promised Mrs Churchill.’

  They both placed helmets on their heads and made their way out of the front door of the soot-streaked building, through the cobbled quadrangle of the India Office, past tangles of barbed wire and sandbag pillboxes, until they came to the doorway that led to the underground complex of the Cabinet War Rooms. Here, buried beneath a three-foot thick concrete slab that had been reinforced with steel rods and tram tracks, the outside world ceased to exist. The air tasted of oil, the artificial light lent skin a pale and corpse-like hue, the noise of the ventilation system was constant and in the corner of the eye there always seemed to be the scurrying of rats. The only indication of the world above them was a sign in the corridor, like a railway signal, that indicated the weather conditions outside, and which was always posted to ‘Windy’ during a bombing raid. A small joke, a gesture of English defiance, but entirely unnecessary. Even down this deep they could hear the bombs beginning to fall.

  ‘You will forgive me, Gil,’ Churchill said as he entered a small, windowless room. It was desperately claustrophobic, with room for little more than a cot and a washstand, and a small fan for ventilation. Churchill sat on the bed. ‘Forgive me, Gil, but I am forced to involve you in a childish deception. In order to calm her, I was forced to promise Mrs Churchill that I would retire here as soon as the bombing started. I have done so. The bargain is honoured, my word is redeemed.’ He forced himself to his feet. ‘And now we can go upstairs.’

  Restless. Winant had never seen him in any other guise. Always on the move, unless he slept. Now they began to climb again, Churchill leading the way in his one-piece siren suit, his shoes pounding on concrete steps, up ladders, along a long circular stairway that led them ever higher until they came to a small manhole. They emerged onto the roof of the Air Ministry. An observation post had been built out of sandbags and here they took shelter, gazing in awe at the power of the events unfolding around them.

  Great pillars of fire stretched up from the searchlights, punching holes in the roof of the night sky, while every moment new stars blazed into life, then died, as the guns went about their business. In the distance a single glowing ball was trailing smoke across the horizon, like a comet come to earth. Winant barely had time to wonder whether the crew had made it out before his eye was dragged away by the sights of other men dying out there, and women and children, too. He had never known flame in so many forms—amber, burning like a cruel sun; deep indigoes; purples; malevolent greens; crimson, like blood. And the purest mocking white where the magnesium flares fell and the fires were most fierce. It made him think of the Day of Judgement, and it also made him afraid.

  People were being buried, and burnt, beneath it all. He could hear them screaming, but only in his imagination, for in his ears there was room only for the pounding of the guns and the dull crunching of the bombs, the droning of the planes overhead and the desperate ringing of the bells of the fire engines below. His nostrils filled with the acrid stench of a city being reduced to ash; it was a memory that clung to him every day for the rest for his life.

  Winant couldn’t know it at the time, but the Germans dropped more than a hundred thousand bombs that night, the majority of them incendiaries. They devoured St Peter’s in Belgravia and the Old Church in Chelsea, they reduced Jermyn Street to cinders and ruined much of the rest of Mayfair, tore great gashes across the heart of London. In the morning, those who were left would emerge from their shelters and their hiding holes, crawl out from beneath their tables and stairs and from the dark underground places where they had made their beds, and they would try to reassemble the pieces that had been left behind. They would pick amongst the rubble, digging out their neighbours who were still alive, burying those who were not. Then they would begin the search for food, and for what was left of their lives.

  The American was watching London being tortured to death. And he knew this had happened most nights for months.

  Churchill said something, but Winant couldn’t hear; he moved closer. He could see tears trickling down his cheeks. Then he made out the words.

  ‘When will it all end?’

  For a moment, the old man’s strength seemed to fail him and he slumped onto the chimneystack that stood nearby. Winant waited, his eyes smarting from the heat of the tormented wind that came from the fires.

  Slowly Churchill’s chin came up and he began reciting a favourite poem. ‘ “And not by eastern windows only/ When daylight comes, comes in the light/ In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!/ But westward—look!—the land is bright.”’ He turned to the ambassador. ‘Always a favourite verse of mine. Never more apt.’ He indicated that Winant should sit on the stack beside him. ‘My dear Gil, we owe you so much.’

  ‘But I have been able to give so little.’

  ‘I shall never find words that will properly express my gratitu
de for what you have just done with the convoys.’

  ‘It was the President, not I,’ Winant began. Roosevelt had decided that the US Navy would accept responsibility for security in the whole of the western half of the Atlantic. It meant that for two thousand miles of their perilous journey back home, the British convoys might have some hope of safe passage.

  ‘But I know you supported it, encouraged it. I have watched you as the weeks have passed. You came knowing so little of our land, and you have become its great friend.’ Churchill reached out to squeeze the other man’s hand. ‘But I must ask for more. Must have more! You see about you what is happening. We shall carry on the fight, of course, if necessary until there is nothing left but cinders, yet by then it will be too late.’

  ‘What are you saying, Winston?’

  ‘America must join this war. Not simply through its words and the output of its factories but with its men-at-arms and its entire might. Together the British Empire and the United States have more wealth, more aircraft, more steel, more technical resources, than the whole of the rest of the world. We can put an end to this incineration of our dreams. The President must declare war.’

  ‘You know he cannot do that. Only Congress can declare war. And it is the President’s view that they will not do so—not yet at least. And for what it’s worth, I agree with him.’

  Churchill thrust an arm at the red sky that glowed like an Egyptian dawn, his voice filled with reproach. ‘What more will it take to convince them?’

  ‘Winston, for every American who shouts in your support, there’s another who says it’s not his war, that Britain may yet be defeated, that there is no point.’

  ‘And we shall be defeated if you will not join us! Will you inherit a world filled with nothing but suffering and slaves?’

  ‘There are those in Washington who would do anything to help you. You must be patient. The job will be done.’

  ‘There is no patience to war,’ Churchill exclaimed heatedly, ‘except in the grave.’

  ‘If it were up to me, with all my heart I would throw our lot in with yours. But it is not up to me. Nor is it up to the President. It is up to the Congress. And they will not.’

  ‘No! No more procrastination. No more delay. I shall telegraph the President. I shall demand—or beg, if that’s what it takes. America must join us in this war.’

  ‘You know as much about the American Constitution as any man. You know it was drawn up with the specific intention of avoiding foreign entanglements.’

  ‘Oh, and how well it has stood the test of time!’ Churchill did nothing to hide his contempt.

  ‘Winston,’ the ambassador replied, embarrassed by the confrontation, ‘the President cannot.’

  ‘He’ll never know if he doesn’t try.’

  ‘He’s doing everything he can.’

  ‘Waging war to the last Briton!’

  They sat, two friends divided by adversity and neither man daring to say more.

  The moment was broken by a shout from the manhole that led to the roof. It was a Fire Guard. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you two are up to?’ he shouted, half choking.

  They turned, silhouettes against the burning sky.

  ‘I said what the…’ His words died on his lips as he saw the glow of a cigar in the night.

  ‘You have a point to make?’ a familiar voice growled.

  ‘I didn’t recognize…Couldn’t see…It’s just that…I’m sorry, sir, but you’re sitting on the chimney. Blocking it. We’ve had to evacuate everyone from the floor below. Thought you were a ruddy German incendiary. Didn’t realize you were…Oh, hell.’ He disappeared like a rabbit down his hole.

  The two men clasped each other, struggling to control their laughter.

  ‘It seems I am ever at fault,’ Churchill said, growing serious once more. ‘I hope that you will forgive me, my friend. Both my temper and my tongue were misplaced. Nevertheless, I shall send my telegram to the President. And you will understand, I hope, if I ask you to strain every sinew to ensure there is a reply. Mr Roosevelt is a busy man. Sometimes I know he finds my communications difficult to deal with. But this is not a message that can be allowed to die of neglect.’

  ‘I shall do my utmost.’

  ‘I know it.’

  Then: more shrieks and tearing explosions, the rattle of shrapnel falling on rooftops near at hand. Winant was pointing. ‘Look, Winston, they’ve hit the Admiralty.’

  As the smoke cleared, they could see the cupola above the clock tower had gone, and much of the rest of the building’s superstructure.

  The Prime Minister stared intently. ‘The Admiralty. My old offices.’

  ‘What a pity.’

  ‘Not entirely. It opens up a new line of sight. Now I shall be able to see Nelson on his Column more clearly.’

  The bombers had been elsewhere. Liverpool, Swansea, Southampton, Bristol, Coventry. Harriman had gone to see for himself the effect the raids had had. He found tears. Defiance. Death. When he returned to his suite in the Dorchester after two days without sleep, his shoes were ripped and his clothes were sour with smoke. He kicked open the door to his rooms and sighed as he saw the accumulation of clutter that had been pushed beneath it: letters, telegrams, bills, invitations. On a single sheet of crested notepaper he discovered a long list of messages. The receptionist had tried to assemble them in what she thought was an appropriate order of priority. Downing Street had called; the Prime Minister wanted to see him that afternoon. The Foreign Secretary also requested a meeting, as did the Minister of Supply. He needed to contact his embassy, his daughter, his broker. A message from his shirt maker, regretting that the new shirts he had been expecting to collect from the shop in Jermyn Street were no longer there, and neither was the shop.

  And a note from Mrs Pamela Churchill, just to let him know she was still hungry.

  The Prime Minister didn’t get his answer. The President wasn’t ready, and the last thing the American President intended was to be pushed around by an ageing imperialist. He still had many doubts about Churchill. At the start of the war he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that Churchill was the best man Britain had for the job, even if he was drunk half the time. Little had happened to change his mind. According to the reports reaching Roosevelt, Churchill was still drinking, but was still the best man for the job.

  Half drunk. And wholly ungrateful. Roosevelt had done everything he could. He’d stretched the Constitution to its breaking point, had sold warships to the British, had twisted the Neutrality Acts beyond recognition, and was about to send across so much weaponry under Lend-Lease that if it all arrived at once the British islands might sink beneath their own seas. And still the bloody man demanded more.

  ‘Mr President, I am sure that you will not misunderstand me if I speak to you exactly what is in my mind. The one decisive counterweight I can see to balance the growing pessimism,’ Churchill had written, ‘would be if the United States were immediately to range herself with us as a belligerent power.’

  A belligerent power? Declare war? Madness. Roosevelt had grown accustomed to ignoring the messages that overflowed with alcohol and emotion and that called for all sorts of impossibilities—even though he had learnt never entirely to dismiss impossibilities. It was a lesson picked up the hard way. Roosevelt had been paralysed by polio in middle age, couldn’t walk, had lost the use of his legs, might’ve died. He was a cripple in a wheelchair—and, yet, he was the most powerful man in the world. The only impossibilities lay in the limitations of a man’s mind, and Roosevelt was coming to learn that Winston Churchill had very few limits. He might yet get those things he demanded.

  But not today. The Englishman would get no response to his call, no matter how hard he pushed. Roosevelt wasn’t going to sacrifice his career and reputation as Wilson had twenty years earlier by getting dragged too deep into the troubles of Europe. Anyway, the Congress was split, the American public at odds, the country not even close to the degree of unity needed to p
ursue a war. Lindbergh, the star of the America First movement and the archproponent of appeasement with Germany, had just spoken at a rally in New York City. Thirty-five thousand people had jammed the streets to hear him. That was one hell of a political hand to play.

  And there was the depressing but inescapable possibility that the Brits were about to get their butts whipped. They might be kicked out of the Middle East, and then out of the entire war. So what would be the point of joining them?

  No, he’d gone about as far as he could. The arguments would go on, he would listen to them, then he’d ignore them—just as he had ignored those advisers who wanted most of the US Pacific Fleet to sail to the Atlantic, and the others who’d argued that it should sail to Singapore. If ever they could get their acts together, he’d pay heed, but in the meantime the Pacific Fleet could stay just where it was, in Hawaii, at the port of Pearl Harbor.

  And that old English imperialist could be left to swing in the wind a little longer.

  After their dinner he had taken her for champagne at the Four Hundred Club, but neither of them was much in the mood.

  ‘It’s changed,’ Pamela said.

  ‘What has?’ Harriman asked.

  ‘London. It’s a different place, somehow sadder. More drab. Last year we would have sat here surrounded by laughter and with all the women parading in their finest frocks. But now…’

  Even a middle-aged man like Harriman could feel it. Everything seemed subdued—the conversations, the colours, the humour of the waiters, the teasing gaiety of the girls. Even the champagne seemed flat. In that distant first year of war the party-goers had taken delight in thumbing their noses at Hitler by partying with abandon and usually to excess, but the mood had changed, ground down by the bombing. Death wasn’t playing on some distant battlefield any more. Some of the couples were even carrying their gas masks.