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Never Surrender
The words still rang in his ears. He was a diplomat by trade and an intellectual by training, a man who took pleasure in toying with every side of an argument in the manner that a cat plays with a ball of wool. Yet Churchill was a man stripped of any trace of either sophistication or the values Butler held so dear in public life; his speech had been nothing short of vulgar.
‘You ask, “What is our policy?”’ Churchill had declared. ‘I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy,’ he had told them. ‘You ask, “What is our aim?” I can answer in one word: Victory – victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival …’
Butler was far from certain that he would want to survive in a world of crude simplicities of the sort embraced by Churchill. ‘I feel violated,’ he muttered, his lips wobbling.
His misery was interrupted as Channon returned in the company of the American ambassador, Joseph Kennedy. They were followed by a club steward carrying a tray with three small sherries and an enormous glass of bourbon.
‘So, what are you Three Musketeers up to?’ the American demanded.
If diplomacy was seen by many as a carefully orchestrated minuet, Joe Kennedy could always be relied upon to arrive wearing hobnail boots. He had worn them throughout a career that had carried him through the boardrooms of major banks and into the bedrooms of Hollywood starlets, and he had kept them ever more tightly laced as he had kicked his way into the smoke-filled back rooms of the US Democratic Party where he showed as little loyalty to his President as he did to his wife. He was a man with a roving eye and a slipping tie, and in the two years since his arrival at the Court of St James’s he had come to hate Winston Churchill.
‘Not drinking to Winston and his war, I hope,’ Kennedy continued, waving his bourbon. ‘On the other hand, if all you’ve got is Winston, then I’m not surprised you drink.’ He smiled from behind round tortoiseshell glasses. ‘I’m sure I’m not telling tales out of school with you three when I tell you that even Halifax is complaining,’ he added. ‘Ridiculous working hours, sometimes up till two or three in the morning. This toil and sweat nonsense may sound fine, but what the hell can you achieve in the middle of the night with a man who’s been drinking whisky since breakfast?’
‘Joe, how did you get to be a diplomat?’ Butler enquired provocatively.
‘Funny thing, heard that Winston’s been asking how the hell you got to be a Minister.’
The response brought a flush to Butler’s cheek. He expected to be sacked – his views about Winston and his policies were far from a private indulgence – but he still hadn’t heard, and he found the uncertainty offensive.
‘We live to play another day, Joe.’
‘Not if Winston gets going, you won’t.’
‘You may well be right. But the game isn’t over yet.’
‘So I hear. Fact is, one of the Whips told me that two-thirds of the party would have Neville back like a shot, given half an excuse.’
‘And most of them think that Winston is just the sort of person to provide it,’ Colville added.
‘Not won over by his charms, then, Jock?’ Kennedy enquired.
‘May I put it this way, Mr Ambassador? I’ve never known a Prime Minister to come into office with so many people expecting him to fail – even wanting him to fail.’
‘They don’t want this war. It’s what I’ve been saying all along!’ Kennedy exclaimed. ‘Gentlemen, you go ahead with this fight and you’re gonna get beat. Look what happened in Poland. Look what’s happening in the Low Countries. Just heard from our embassy in Holland that the Luftwaffe is turning Rotterdam into the back side of hell. It’s chaos over there.’
‘Do we have a choice but to go ahead, Joe? I fear Herr Hitler might insist,’ Butler prodded.
‘What are you fighting for, Rab?’ Kennedy barked back. ‘Hitler doesn’t want to touch England, he doesn’t want your empire. Leave him alone in Europe and by Christmas he’ll be sipping tea and chomping through cream cakes with your King, all friends together. Why you ever got involved in this damned war I’ll never understand.’
It was a view that was also close to Butler’s heart. ‘But we are involved, whether we like it or not. What can we do?’
‘Play the Italian card. Hitler listens to Mussolini. Wrap up a couple of your Mediterranean islands as a gift for Il Duce and he’ll whisper whatever you want into Uncle Adolf’s ear. Otherwise you’re gonna end up at war with them both.’
The three Englishmen stood mournfully.
Kennedy finished off his drink in one huge swallow. ‘Still, can’t stand around here all evening. Got other diplomatic duties to perform, strengthening the Entente Cordiale with the assistance of a little French lady I know.’ He smiled and tried to straighten his tie. ‘Musketeers, it’s been a pleasure.’ He waved and was gone.
‘I know I’m a bit of a snob,’ Channon began, ‘but I can’t help feeling he’s right.’
‘Of course he’s right,’ Butler snapped irritably.
‘And what do you think, Jock?’
‘You see this suit I’m wearing?’ It was offensively blue and exceptionally bright. ‘From the fifty-shilling department of Monty Burton’s. Rather cheap and sensational, I’m afraid, but entirely suitable for this administration.’ He plucked a loose thread from his lapel. ‘I don’t expect it will prove to be much of an investment.’
The public library in Pimlico was open until seven that evening. It had a ground-in, sweet-and-sour aroma of beeswax and half-burnt coke, but it suited Ruth Mueller. She did not want to get back to her rented room before eight. By that time the family who lived below would have finished their dinner; it was bad enough having to go hungry without smelling the rest of the world at the trough.
Unlike her room, the Pimlico library was warm and quiet, but it was the books, of course, that had first drawn her here, particularly the Hitler books. Sadly, they had long since been banished from the shelves, and none of them had been very good, either Marxist tracts or hagiography. So she was left to wonder and to grapple with her half-formed impressions of the man. What about his childhood? What about his early days as a vagrant on the streets of Vienna? What about his early friendships with Jews, his devotion to his mother, his inability to form any other close relationship with a woman, his vegetarianism and his fondness for cream cakes? Who was he, why was he? He was physically brave, a man of courage. Like Churchill, so she had been told, and perhaps more so, for the young Hitler had received many wounds and war decorations. Yet he was childish. In 1918, Hitler had been invalided to a military hospital. When he heard that an armistice had been signed and that Germany had surrendered, he’d put his head beneath his pillow and sobbed. Bawled like a baby. And he’d been shouting like a petulant child ever since. Some said that was like Churchill, too …
She’d been trying to forget about Churchill but he had an irritating habit of wheedling his way back into her thoughts. She picked up a newspaper and tried to shake him away once more.
Hah! Civil servants, The Times announced, were to get a war bonus. The guilty men cosseting themselves at the very moment they were putting up the price of coal yet again. Outside the library the sun was shining brightly, but she couldn’t prevent a shiver of apprehension running through her body. She had frozen in her garret through the last winter, and dreaded what the next one might bring. On the following page there were tips for ‘cooking through the war without fear of rationing’. Dishes such as eggs with anchovy, bean and liver casserole, coconut rounds (a concoction based on bread soaked in evaporated milk) and macaroni and rabbit pie. She imagined every rabbit in the country dashing for cover.
Not that he would be eating anchovies or rabbit pie. At Chartwell it had been salmon, venison, pheasant and beef, washed down with the finest wines. The cost of a single bottle would have got her through an entire week, rent and all, yet he had the impertinence to lecture her about his sacrifices! What did he know about sacrifice?
Her mind wandered back to that summer of 1914, August, the last time she could remember being happy. There was sun, and the sound of children’s laughter. Then the summons had come. War. And the men had left with the horses, leaving behind the women with their young ones and their unspoken fears. So it had begun. The war was fought a million worlds away in France and Russia, but it had come rapping at their doors, gently at first. Strange shortages appeared. Suddenly there was no paper. She had begun to write letters not only across the page but up its length, too, in writing so minuscule her husband had required a glass to find his way through the kaleidoscope of scribbles. Worn-out shoes had to be repaired with card or resoled in wood; the children were asked to bring all their old bones and even cherry stones to school, to be turned into fertilizer. And they brought illness with them, everyone got sick, not least in their souls. Children were taught to hate, to kill even before they had become men, and were told by their teachers and priests that this was good and right. Hatred and intolerance were taught alongside geography and the Lord’s Prayer, and was so much simpler to learn. Hatred had become a great patriotic game, honed by hunger, and it had been played so long that it would never be stopped, not while Germany, this Germany, survived.
Ruth Mueller was a German. But she was also an intellectual, a free thinker with a mind of her own, for what it was worth. And above all, she was a mother with memories of a starving child whose cries still woke her in the darkest moments of the night. She had fled, but she had not escaped, and whatever she did now, in the end some part of her soul would be shredded. She was a German in a foreign land, an intellectual reduced to scraping through on scraps of translation and proofreading, a mother with no child. But doing nothing would not be an option, not in this war.
Then she remembered that Winston Churchill had said please. It was a cry of vulnerability, like a child’s plea for help. It had been a long time since anyone had said please.
She put aside the newspaper and went to the enquiries desk.
‘May I help you?’ The assistant was formal, unfriendly – she disapproved of Ruth Mueller’s strange reading habits, and of Ruth Mueller even more.
‘I would like some books. Something written by Mr Churchill, please. Perhaps something he has written about his father?’
They had expressed their collective concerns and reservations about the new Prime Minister, after which, politics being politics, they had trooped through the Division Lobby to give him a unanimous vote of confidence. Afterwards it had taken Churchill some while to leave the Chamber for, politicians being politicians, many had paused to congratulate him – but not for too long. Even Chips Channon had joined the throng.
‘Not one of us,’ Bracken had warned, whispering in Churchill’s ear.
‘Chips? Of course he is. Chips is everyone’s,’ Churchill had replied gaily. ‘Don’t worry about him. It’s the other buggers we have to watch out for.’ And Churchill had forced his way through to the side of Neville Chamberlain, taking his arm, smiling, ensuring that they were seen together and offering him an ostentatious display of gratitude and warmth.
Afterwards he had noted Bracken’s quizzical eye. ‘That’s the way it shall be, Brendan, both publicly and in private, for as long as is required. I’m haunted by enough damned ghosts, I’ve no need of more.’
They strode away, out of earshot and hidden behind a fog of cigar smoke. ‘Brendan, I have a task of some delicacy for you. I am being forced to fight on too many fronts. I have nominated the most senior Ministers in my Government, now I want your help in selecting the great mass of the remainder. I need to get on with the other war.’
‘Magnificent. I always enjoy a little vengeance.’
‘You will start this evening. You will do it with David Margesson.’
‘Margesson? Winston, you’ve gone mad …’
David Margesson was a name no one took lightly. He had been Neville Chamberlain’s Chief Whip, his immensely powerful organizer of the parliamentary party. He had known the details of every plot and piece of parliamentary wickedness during the last decade, largely because he had initiated most of them, and none of his plots had been more vicious than that against Churchill himself.
‘Winston, barely twelve months ago Margesson was on the point of getting you deselected. Thrown out of the party. He tried to destroy your whole life – he hates you! The only reason you’re here today is because the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia the night before the deselection meeting. God knows, but Adolf Hitler’s done more for your career than bloody Margesson! He’s a comprehensive bastard!’
‘Ah, but a most effective one. Which is why you will sit down with him and reshuffle the rest of my government, allowing as many as possible of the other bastards to remain.’
‘I am lost,’ Bracken gasped, his mind exhausted.
‘Come on, Brendan, it’s your own idea: Mark Antony, embracing the conspirators in order to give himself enough time.’
‘For what?’
Churchill stopped, grabbed the other man’s sleeve and spun him round until he was staring directly into his eyes.
‘To survive! If we rock this boat too violently, it will sink. It may be overloaded with men not to our hearts, but if we are to let them go, slip them over the side, it had best be done as quietly as possible and at night. So mark out the troublemakers. Give them new jobs, different jobs, impossible jobs, but always some job; never forget that their love of office – any office – is stronger than their loathing for me. Keep them busy with the war against Hitler; give them not a moment for their war against me.’ Churchill was panting with emotion, struggling to keep his breath. ‘And if we are to go down in flames, then they too shall shed tears, share the toil, be drowned in sweat. But if we are to survive, it can only be together.’
So they had gathered in the Admiralty later that evening, Bracken and Margesson in one room while Churchill buried himself with his papers and maps in the inner sanctum. Bracken and the Chief Whip had bickered and debated, weighing dubious merits against more certain sins, moving from one to the next, pricking a few names, moving others to more minor posts, getting Colville to telephone the news through to the victims while they themselves congratulated the victors. In the end two-thirds of the existing members of the Government were reappointed, only twelve senior offices went to newcomers. Chamberlain remained prominent on the poop deck while Margesson continued in service as the master-at-arms.
But even as they worked, the boat was to be rocked far more brutally than ever they imagined.
Churchill heard it first, on the radio, from an American, a respected CBS correspondent named William Shirer who was based in Berlin. His broadcasts were inevitably filtered through the coarse gauze of the German Propaganda Ministry, but what squeezed past the censors was often useful, helping to know the enemy.
Good evening. This is Berlin …
The voice was flat, reedy, its tones stripped of emotional emphasis as it wowed and fluttered its way through the ether. Churchill tapped a dial; it made little difference. But the message did.
Liège fallen! German land forces break through and establish contact with air-force troops near Rotterdam! Those were the astounding headlines in extra editions of the Berlin papers that came out about five, our time, this afternoon.
‘Colville. Mr Colville!’ Churchill first muttered, then roared. There was a sudden scrabbling in the outer office.
Today was a holiday in the capital – Whit Monday – and there were large crowds strolling in the streets. They bought up the extras like hot cakes. The announcement by the German High Command on the fourth day of the big drive that the citadel of Liège had been captured, and that German – well, the Germans call them ‘speed troops’ – had broken through the whole southern part of Holland and made contact with the air-force troops who’ve been fighting since the first day in and around Rotterdam on the west coast, caught almost everyone by surprise. Even German military circles seemed a bit surprised. They admitted that the breakthrough to Rotterdam, as one put it, came somewhat sooner than expected …
Colville was standing aghast on the other side of the desk. None of this had been mentioned in the night’s situation briefing. To be sure, the Dutch had been talking of ‘modifications’ and ‘confusion’ in the military position, but this …
‘Get the Chiefs of Staff back here. Every man jack of ’em. And find out whether m’Lord Halifax is in the land of the living. If he’s not, drag him out of bed. Tell him there’s a war on!’
FOUR
Tuesday 14 May. The Reverend Chichester rose before dawn, turning his back on his bed. Sleep had been elusive and, when at last it had come, a river of troubles had run through his dreams, destroying his peace and reminding him of so many unanswered prayers. It had been his birthday on the previous day, his fifty-second, a time for reflection, although it had passed unnoticed by anybody else, apart from a card from his sister. Nothing from Donald.
Everything in his mind kept moving in circles and coming back to the same point. Donald. Even Jennie stared back at him in reproach from the mantelpiece, as if to say there should have been another photograph of their son alongside her. But he hadn’t any recent photos of Don.
The vicarage seemed empty, the hallway too tidy; the kitchen had an unaccustomed echo; even the driveway taunted him. Not so long ago Don’s motorbike, an AJS, had stood there on the gravel, leaning drunkenly and leaking oil. It was an ancient machine and Don had spent many hours repairing it, not always successfully. The Reverend Chichester hated motorbikes. As a young man he’d almost killed himself on one and he was afraid that Don would do the same. So he had objected to the bike. He was trying to protect his son, but instead of a discussion about caring it had been reduced to a shouting match about filthy sinks and oily clothes. Ridiculous. Pointless. Splinters in the eye, for in spite of Don’s offensive language, he knew it was his fault. It seemed he would say anything rather than admit to his son that he loved him.
The previous evening he had returned to the vicarage to discover that his occasional gardener had cleaned up the soiled gravel. It was in pristine condition, no trace of the bike. Every fragment of Don’s memory was being leached from his life, leaving them to stumble around his dreams.
He began to prepare another solitary breakfast, his newspaper propped up above the sink. Across the Channel that lay beyond his kitchen window, a new war was raging. He could see and hear nothing of it, there was little to witness apart from the calm of the sea and the outline of Calais beginning to emerge from its morning veil, but the headlines gave him the story of a ‘Total War’ in which the ‘RAF had triumphed’. One hundred and fifty enemy machines shot down. Good news, great news, God’s work. Set out in The Times.
Yet, as seemed increasingly to be His habit, God moved in ways that left mysteries in their wake. As the vicar pushed aside his breakfast plate, the same newspaper announced that the Belgian army was falling back, the Dutch, too. Yet only yesterday it had announced that the BEF was sweeping forward. Backwards, forwards – this was unlike any war the Reverend Chichester knew.
The Times assured him that the Belgians and Dutch were withdrawing ‘without heavy casualties’.
Which puzzled the Reverend Chichester. For why, in God’s name, if they had suffered no heavy casualties, were they moving back?
Where had they gone, those people who only days before had been smiling, blowing kisses and shouting their encouragement as the 6th had made its way to the front? Now, on the way back, there was no greeting, no warmth, nothing but tired eyes that spoke of concern and even contempt.
Don’s unit were withdrawing to a suburb of Brussels called Boitsfort in a tight convoy consisting of fifty ambulances, water trucks, troop-carriers and other vehicles. A few refugees had begun to appear on the road in front of them with their cars and overladen carts. Progress began to slow, and a sense of fading order crept up on them. The 6th had seen no direct combat yet, but planes had begun to appear overhead, high in the clear sky, and they came from the east. They must have seen the convoy; you couldn’t hide an entire field unit, not with all their bright red crosses painted on the roofs.
They passed a single bomb crater at the side of the road. A dead horse lay beside it, the carcass still smouldering, its stench sweet: the first casualty of Don’s war. And moments later there were others, Belgian soldiers, a group of them at the side of the road, abandoned and bleeding. Some were badly injured from shrapnel wounds. They kept gesticulating towards the sky, but otherwise there was little sense to be had from them in their strange language, and no one seemed inclined to delay in order to discover more. The wounded were loaded into the back of the ambulances and other vehicles. First blood. Belgian blood.
Yet, that evening, Boitsfort displayed the air of a prosperous suburb whose mind was fixed on moving gently into the embrace of nothing more threatening than a glorious summer. The gardens were full of flowers, the restaurants and cafés crowded, the young women gay, even while in the back of Don’s vehicle a soldier was bleeding silently upon the floor. Someone mentioned they were passing near the battlefield of Waterloo.
The 6th drew up in front of an imposing building, the Hôtel Haute Maison. Inside the hotel a dinner-dance was in progress. Most of the male dancers were Belgian officers in freshly pressed uniforms, with women on their arms and champagne at their tables. As the British marched in bearing the bloodied casualties, a woman screamed, but in a moment the surprise was overtaken by a hurried calm. A Belgian officer began issuing orders to the hotel staff, the tables were cleared, the women ushered out, the band dismissed. The maître d’ passed calmly from table to table, extinguishing candles, removing bottles, everything else being swept up in the starched linen tablecloths so that it took only moments for the tables to be laid bare. The two largest of these were then positioned beneath the chandeliers, their tops scrubbed with disinfectant and transformed into operating tables. The walking wounded slumped into the dining chairs to wait their turn, while those who were beyond helping themselves were carried in on stretchers that were already stained beyond cleansing. The maître d’ brought in armfuls of clean towels and napkins to use as bandages, tears pouring silently down his cheeks. A priest arrived.
There was little time, often not enough time for the anaesthetic to take effect. More casualties arrived throughout the night, some civilian, all Belgian. The surgeons did whatever they could; often it was not enough. The dead were laid out in the ballroom.
War had at last caught up with Don.
Then, as the sun rose, the 6th were given fresh instructions. New orders. Fall back. Again.
‘How is it possible? How can it be that three armies have fallen back because of the approach of a mere handful of Nar-zi tanks?’
Churchill hunched over the map spread before him on the Cabinet table and held it down with his clenched fists. For many long moments he stood like stone as he studied what lay before him, refusing to believe. All day long he had been pacing up and down as reports flooded in of ever-spreading disaster, his head bent forward as though he intended to butt his way towards victory, but no matter how furiously he paced he couldn’t prevent disaster from catching up with him. The Dutch had surrendered, laid down their arms, given up. The Maginot Line was broken: the French were falling back, the Belgians with them, while the Germans had pushed beyond Sedan and were now halfway to the Channel. Luftwaffe bombers were now at airfields no more than thirty minutes’ flying time from the English coast. That morning he had been shaken awake by a telephone call from the French Prime Minister Reynaud. ‘All is lost,’ he had said in English. ‘The road to Paris is open. We have been defeated.’