Churchill’s Hour

CHURCHILL’S HOUR

MICHAEL DOBBS

‘One of the most misleading factors in history is the practice of historians to build a story exclusively out of the records which have come down to them.’

WINSTON CHURCHILL

TO WILL.

TO MIKEY.

TO ALEX.

TO HARRY.

MY FOUR MUSKETEERS.

‘We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.

‘And even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.’

WINSTON CHURCHILL, June 1940

‘I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.’

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, October 1940

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE

Christmas Day, 1940.

Winston Churchill sat propped up against the pillows of his bed. The room was cold, a sullen December sky rattling at the mullioned window, but the old man didn’t complain. The foul weather had kept the bombers at bay last night. Peace on earth, at least until tomorrow.

A servant entered the room carrying a pair of freshly ironed trousers on one arm and a silver tray on the other. Frank Sawyers was short, hairless, with piercing blue eyes and two missing teeth. He was no more than forty years in age yet his attitude was timeless.

‘Did you knock?’ Churchill’s brow was split by a crease of irritation.

‘As always, zur,’ Sawyers said, a trifle wearily and with a pronounced lisp and Cumbrian burr.

‘And what’s that disgusting green stuff?’ The Prime Minister took off his reading glasses and used them to indicate the jar on the silver tray. ‘No medicine, do you hear me? I’ll have none of your quackery. I’m not ill.’

‘Chutney. Home-made. By way of me Christmas present to yer, like. With season’s greetings.’

Churchill stared at the jar, his blue eyes alert as though suspecting some plot. Sawyers had a knack of producing exotic and unexpected gifts, even through the constraints of wartime, and Churchill knew that no matter how alarming the sour green pickle might appear, it would taste delicious. He didn’t have the knack himself; he’d given only books for presents, and mostly his own books at that.

As he approached the bed, the servant glared at Nelson, the patch-eyed cat who lay sprawled across the eiderdown at Churchill’s feet. Nelson possessed a foul temper that had grown ever more unreliable from spending too many nights in Downing Street during the air raids, and Sawyers’ loathing for the cat had grown with the number of scratch marks left on the back of his hands. He gave the beast a wide berth as he placed the tray on the bedside table and dealt with the refreshed trousers. Then he took down a vivid red silk bathrobe that was hanging on the back of the door.

‘Not yet,’ Churchill said, ‘I’ve not finished my papers.’

‘You’ll be late,’ the other man insisted. ‘Family’s already gathered round fire, and if you’re not down there soon, Mr Oliver will be on serenading us all with his piano music.’

‘Bloody racket.’

‘Exactly,’ Sawyers agreed, holding up the bathrobe in the manner of a matador tempting a bull.

‘Not now, not now,’ Churchill said, shaking the paper in his hand. ‘D’you know there’s a Nazi battleship on the loose in the southern Atlantic?’

‘I dare say it’ll still be there after luncheon.’ The servant stood resolute. ‘You can sink it then.’

Churchill was contemplating the next phase of this battle for domestic supremacy when, in some distant part of the old house, notes began to cascade from a piano and a baby started to cry. Instantly Nelson sprang from his warming place at the old man’s feet, arching his back in displeasure before strutting from their view. Churchill had been deserted by his last remaining ally. Sawyers barely stirred. Only the rustle of the silk robe and the elevation of the left eyebrow suggested he was claiming victory.

Churchill cursed. His concentration was broken and nothing more would be achieved that morning. He had lost the battle of the bathrobe. He heaved himself from his bed, scattering papers in his wake, and, ignoring his servant, stomped off in the direction of the bathroom.

It was known as Chequers Court, an age-mellowed manor house constructed of red brick and surrounded by parklands and beech woods in the Chiltern hills, some forty miles to the north-west of London. It was graced by ambitious chimneys, loose windows and a system of heating that, in deference to the ancient timbers, remained totally inadequate. Chequers had once belonged to Mr and Mrs Arthur Lee, who had no children and therefore no lasting use for the property, so in 1921 they had handed it over to the nation complete with all its furniture and fine paintings as a country retreat for whoever was Prime Minister of the day. A year earlier the occupant had been Neville Chamberlain, a proud but inadequate man who remained mercifully unaware that the dogs of misfortune were already on his trail and would soon tear him apart. Calamity had got him first, then cancer, and only six weeks ago they had buried him. Dust to dust. So the keys had been passed to Winston Churchill, who had summoned three generations of his family to spend Christmas with him in his new retreat. It was to be a special occasion, one that everyone present would remember, although, in hindsight, not for all the most comforting reasons.

Sawyers had risen before six that morning to make sure that everything was in proper festive order. The fire in the Great Hall had been lit, the boilers stoked, the baths run, breakfast served in the bedrooms, the great dinner prepared on a scale that was prodigious. Hitler’s U-boat campaign in the Atlantic was supposed to be starving the country into submission, but the German Fuehrer had apparently failed to take into consideration the legendary Mrs Landemare, who was in charge of the Chequers kitchen. She was short, exceedingly stout, and married to a renowned French chef, but her prime loyalty was directed towards the Prime Minister, whose gastronomic demands were notorious. Breakfast was taken in bed and often consisted of chops as well as bacon and a glass of something red, while what followed throughout the day would have left the regulators at the Ministry of Food reeling in horror. There wasn’t supposed to be much food around, but Churchill had a lot of good friends, and so did Mrs Landemare. As a consequence the huge bleached wooden table that ran down the centre of the kitchen was now piled high like that of a medieval court. The first course—an entire smoked salmon, half a dozen lobsters and several pots of duck terrine—had been provided by parliamentary colleagues, all anxious to display their loyalty and show off the extent of their country estates. The dessert that sat at the end of the table was a thick-crusted pie filled with apples from the orchards at Churt, the home of a previous Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. Churchill’s own family home at Chartwell had been the source of most of the fresh vegetables, sent up by train, while as usual Mrs Landemare had made up any shortfall from the contacts she maintained below the stairs of several other country estates. But the pride of place in this year of famine was occupied by the turkey—an enormous beast, sent on the instructions of the dying Viscount Rothermere as one of his last mortal acts, perhaps in repentance for the appalling things his newspapers had often written about Churchill. It had been plucked, stuffed, basted, and was now roasting under the watchful eye and moist brow of the blessed Mrs Landemare.

‘Unusual large, cook,’ Sawyers had said as he’d watched her thrusting chestnut stuffing deep inside the bird.

Mrs Landemare had given a defiant twirl of her white cap to keep the perspiration from dripping into her eyes. ‘What were you expecting me to give him for his Christmas dinner? Toast? Anyhows, Mr S, we might find there’s even a couple of mouthfuls left over for the likes of us.’

‘Wouldn’t want it to go wasting, cook,’ he’d said. ‘I might even be able to find a bottle of something to go with it, like.’

‘You are a man after my own heart, Mr Sawyers, so you are,’ she had exclaimed, smiling. She didn’t mean it, of course. Sawyers was unmarried and always would be—‘a gentleman’s gentleman, one of those who lisps to port,’ as she would explain it to friends, ‘but there’s nobody else on God’s earth who can deal with Mr Winston the way that he can.’

And so long as Mr Winston was happy, he wouldn’t miss an occasional bottle. Ah, but as for Mr Randolph, the son, he was altogether another matter…

Randolph Churchill, the sole, much-excused and overindulged son of the Prime Minister had been expected to arrive at Chequers the previous evening, Christmas Eve, but a hurried phone call had offered some vague excuse about pressing duties—easy enough to concoct, given his status as an officer in No. 8 Commando and a newly elected Member of Parliament. But Sawyers was sceptical. The younger Churchill hardly ever passed through his constituency and his regiment was notorious for its careless habits; the only landmark Randolph and his fellow officers could be relied upon to hit while on exercise was the officers’ mess. That, in Sawyers’ eye, was not enough to condemn him—it seemed little more than aristocratic excess, the pampering of the privileged class—but there were other reasons why Sawyers reserved for ‘his master’s little echo’ the contempt that only servants can manage to keep out of sight of others. The first was the man’s spitefulness. It wasn’t for Sawyers to moralize if Randolph decided to spend the night his son was born in the arms of another man’s wife, but to make it so blatantly obvious was unnecessarily cruel. Like burning beetles. And there was a more personal reason. Even after all the years Sawyers had served his father, after the many times he’d been forced to help the son to his bed, take off his soiled clothes, clean up after his excesses, he knew that Randolph didn’t even know his first name. Didn’t care. Wasn’t important. For the younger Churchill, Sawyers was as insignificant and expendable as old orange peel.

He arrived that morning, shortly before his father came down and while the rest of the family including his young wife Pamela was gathered round the log fire, singing carols. He appeared, dark-eyed, dishevelled, and told them he had spent the night on some railway station platform waiting for his train. That was possible, as a matter of fact, but doubtful as a matter of habit. Hardship wasn’t Randolph’s style. But Sawyers would find out where he’d been sleeping, given a few days. The network that operated below the stairs of all fashionable homes—the same one that made up for any shortages in Mrs Landemare’s kitchen—would also make up for any shortcomings in Randolph’s explanation. The man simply didn’t realize that the servants knew. Could tell whether a bed had been slept in, by how many and to what purpose. The telltale signs on a freshly laundered sheet were as clear to a chambermaid’s eye as an elephant’s rump, and if the chambermaid knew, the news would get round the scullery faster than a mouse.

Yet, for the moment, there was harmony. Sawyers stood guard as the family sang their carols, led by the old man, who had a voice that sounded as if it had been broken on a capstan. It was as close as Churchill got nowadays to his son-in-law, Vic Oliver, who was playing the piano. Oliver had never truly been part of the Churchill family scene; he was a music-hall comedian who had been born an Austrian and who was now a naturalized American citizen. It was difficult to count the number of reasons why Churchill held reservations about him: he was brash, he was so much older than Churchill’s daughter, Sarah, he had been married twice before. He also preferred to crack jokes for a living when in Churchill’s view he should have been cracking German skulls. Oliver used words like ‘cute’ and ‘Britisher’. In retribution, Churchill had given him a copy of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. But mostly Churchill’s antipathy was because of the effect Oliver had on Sarah. She had always been a perfectionist, desperate for applause and approval—it was one of the reasons why she had become an actress—yet she could never persuade herself that she merited any measure of her success. She had rushed into marriage, but it had only caused her sense of inadequacy to grow worse. She was beautiful but fragile, while Oliver was domineering. It had left her limping like a butterfly with a broken wing.

The eldest daughter was Diana. She had the same blue eyes and auburn hair of Sarah, inherited from their father, yet Diana was as reticent as her father was extrovert, as sensitive as he was bullish. When the Churchill family was at play, to most outsiders it seemed as though they were at war, and at such moments Diana would withdraw to the sidelines and wait to tend the casualties. Her husband, Duncan Sandys, was constructed of sterner stuff. He was a Member of Parliament and a colonel on active duty, and she clearly adored him, but marriage was never an easy option in the Churchill family.

Only Mary, the youngest, seemed completely at ease, more down to earth than any of them, her family path beaten flat by the struggles of those who had gone before. As they exchanged presents, they fussed over Pamela’s baby, Churchill’s first grandchild, still only ten weeks old, and when it was time for the King’s radio broadcast they stood for the National Anthem, then sat on the edge of their seats as they waited for one of his terrible stutters to tangle his words—all except Randolph, who relaxed in the folds of his armchair with a whisky. But His Majesty didn’t falter, announcing that his countrymen could look forward to the New Year with sober confidence. Well, some of them, at least.

When the King had finished they were at last released to the dining room. ‘Pour the wine, Sawyers!’ the old man instructed. As the first dribble of golden liquid fell into his glass, he grabbed the bottle, trying to decipher the label. ‘Where are my reading glasses, Sawyers? What have you done with them?’

‘I suspect you’ll find ’em in yer top pocket.’

‘Dammit,’ Churchill said, fumbling for his elusive glasses, ‘so what is this you’re trying to poison us with?’

‘An excellent hock. A gift to yer from Mrs Chamberlain. From the late Prime Minister’s personal cellar.’

‘German, is it?’

‘That’s right. Given him by an admirer.’

‘Ah, one of von Ribbon-top’s bottles, I’ll be bound.’

‘I’ll throw it away, then.’

‘Steady on, it’s a pre-Nazi vintage, I’ll say that much for it,’ Churchill said, peering at the label. ‘A shame to get rid of it before we’ve had a chance to taste it. So damn the Fuehrer and pour, Sawyers. What are you waiting for, man?’

‘Damn the Fuehrer, zur.’ The servant moved along the table, filling glasses and condemning the Fuehrer at every turn, ignoring the scowls of Clementine who, even after so many years of enduring blasphemy at her table, still insisted on showing her displeasure.

‘And God save us from the bloody Bolsheviks,’ Churchill added, pulling apart a lobster.

A considerable quantity of Mr Chamberlain’s hock had been tested by the time Sawyers brought in the turkey, laid out upon a huge wooden carving dish.

‘A fine specimen, Sawyers,’ Churchill pronounced, nodding at the bird.

‘Indeed, zur.’ The servant sharpened the carving knife as Mrs Landemare and a maid carried in dishes of vegetables.

Randolph took the opportunity to raise his glass in mock salute. ‘Meleagris gallopavo. The turkey. About the only useful thing the Americans ever sent us. That and tobacco.’ He swallowed deep. ‘Such a fundamentally useless nation.’

‘Randolph!’ his mother snapped in reproach. ‘You forget. Your grandmother was American.’

‘And we shouldn’t attack those who extend the hand of friendship,’ his father warned, more softly, but the son swirled the green liquid in his glass as though to excite the argument. The rest of them knew what to expect. Sawyers stared in warning at Mrs Landemare and the maid, who vanished like ghosts at dawn.

‘It seems to me a strange sort of friendship, Papa, that ends up with our pockets being picked and our Empire held to ransom.’

‘That is a wholly reprehensible remark.’

‘And holy fact. You know it is. They’ve bled us dry. Filched every last penny from our pockets until we’re practically bankrupt.’

‘Please don’t argue with your father, not today,’ Clementine said, knowing her words would prove entirely useless.

‘Mama, we are penniless. Quite literally. Not a bean.’

‘You always exaggerate, Randolph.’

‘Papa, please tell Mama what happened when you wrote to Roosevelt the other week to tell him our reserves were exhausted.’

Churchill looked in despair at the turkey.

‘Papa, please…’ Randolph insisted.

‘Shall I carve, zur?’ Sawyers said, forcing his way into the conversation. ‘A bit o’ leg, Mr Randolph, or do you prefer breast?’

But the younger Churchill was not to be diverted.

‘Mama, we told the President we had next to nothing left, down to our last fifty million in gold. So what did he do, this so-called friend of ours? He sent one of his own destroyers to South Africa to collect the entire bloody lot. He thinks Papa is Santa Claus!’

‘We owed him the money for war matériel. He was in a most difficult position,’ Churchill began defensively. But already Randolph was rushing past him.

‘No, Papa. We are in the difficult position. And he takes advantage of us.’

‘He is a great friend.’

‘Gossip on the circuit is he doesn’t even like you.’

‘You may deal in gossip, Randolph, but I must deal in hard facts!’ Churchill responded irritably.

‘And the fact is, Papa, that we’ve paid him every last shekel, and he sends us nothing but junk.’

‘Destroyers. He sends us destroyers,’ Clemmie intervened.

‘Junk!’ Randolph spat. ‘The only ships he sends us are rust buckets from the last war which are so old they’re already obsolete. Do you know, Mama, that before we get them they have to be officially certified by the US Navy as being useless? And they bloody are.’

‘The President has to operate within the laws of his country and under the eye of a sceptical Congress,’ Churchill responded. ‘His hands are tied.’

‘Papa, Papa.’ The son raised his own hands in operatic despair. ‘The time for excuses is gone. That might have washed while he was running for re-election, but now he’s won. Back in the White House for another four years. Roosevelt is tied by nothing but his own timidity.’

‘His people do not want war.’

‘Our own people don’t want war!’ Randolph banged the table in anger. ‘We seem to have got it nonetheless.’

Churchill chewed on his unlit cigar. As so often, buried in the midst of his son’s excess lay an unwholesome chunk of truth, like gristle running through meat. Roosevelt had promised his people peace, had told the mothers of America again and again—and then again—that their boys were not going to be sent to any foreign war. It was politics, of course, democracy at its most base, the lowest common denominator, but there came a point where you judged a man not simply by his words but by his habits. And it worried Churchill more deeply than he cared to admit how the US President had fallen into the habit of ignoring his messages. His silences could no longer be explained away as electoral distraction, that was now gone, the barrier surmounted, yet since the election a few weeks earlier there had been a remarkable chill in the wind that had blown from Washington. Roosevelt hadn’t even replied to Churchill’s telegram of congratulation, and his debt-collecting methods had come to resemble those of an Irish landlord rather than a Christian friend. And that was the point, for Churchill clung to his view that he was fighting not just for the narrow interests of Britain but on behalf of a shared cultural tradition that crossed the Atlantic and stretched back two thousand years and more. Yet Roosevelt would have none of it. It seemed America wanted only to be paid.

‘Carve the bloody turkey, Sawyers,’ Churchill said. ‘And let’s pretend it’s Christmas.’

Arguments over lunch were nothing new and Christmas still had many hours to go in the Churchill household, yet it was never fully to recover its spirit. Indeed, the day was eventually to founder completely, ruined by events that had taken place some weeks beforehand and in another part of the world.

The SS Automedon had set sail from Liverpool on 24 September 1940, bound for Singapore and Shanghai with a beggar’s muddle of a cargo consisting of crated aircraft, motor cars, machine parts, cigarettes and many cases of whisky. It seemed likely to be an unexceptional voyage.

She wasn’t a ship of much note in anybody’s logbook, a twenty-year-old ocean workhorse with a tall funnel, a single screw and a crew of English officers helped out by mostly Chinese deckhands. By mid-November the Automedon was some two hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Sumatra when, late one night, her radio operator picked up a distress call from a Norwegian merchant vessel. The signal said that she was being followed by an unknown ship; a little later the Norwegian reported that she had been stopped, after which—nothing. Total silence. It was a strange incident, but these were strange times and the affair caused more curiosity than concern to the Automedon’s Captain Ewan. However, it was enough to ensure that when an unidentified ship appeared at first light some distance off the port bow, Ewan spent a considerable time peering through his binoculars at the vessel. The stranger was flying a Dutch flag, innocent enough, and Ewan could see what looked like women hanging out washing on lines stretched across the foredeck. She was drawing slowly closer. McEwan concluded that the vessel was a friendly merchantman, much like dozens of others the Automedon had passed since leaving Liverpool.

They were on parallel courses and only a couple of thousand yards apart when the new vessel suddenly increased speed and identified herself as the German raider Atlantis. At the same moment, she fired a warning shot across Ewan’s bow. He had been duped. He immediately ordered his radio operator to send a distress signal, so the Atlantis began to pour round after round into the Automedon in a desperate attempt to prevent the signal being completed and her location discovered. The German assault was totally successful. After being hit twenty-eight times in less than three minutes, the Automedon lay listing and defenceless, her radio silenced, her captain killed on his bridge and her fate entirely unknown to the wider world. The Kriegsmarine had claimed one more victim.