Winston’s War

‘Why, is that Mr Bracken hiding over there?’

The sausage turned into a missile, disappearing into the night, leaving the bun limp in his hands and a trail of grease spreading across the front of his starched white shirt. His bow tie drooped in despair.

‘You told me you’d call, Mr Bracken,’ Anna Fitzgerald said accusingly, ignoring his plight – no, enjoying it! Bracken’s arms were spread in dismay, his hair tumbled over his forehead as though trying to get a look for itself at the devastation. ‘You offered to show me round London, but you never called,’ she continued.

‘I … I … I’ve …’ Words suddenly deserted him as he tried to comprehend the mess of slime that was creeping across his chest. His brain and his tongue, usually so sharp and active, had seemingly dived for cover. All he could do was to gaze at her through pebble-thick glasses with the expression of a chastened child.

‘You don’t like Americans?’

‘No, no, please …’

‘Married or something?’

‘No, of course not …’

‘You’ve got a jealous girlfriend?’

‘Nothing like that.’

Good, she’d got that sorted. She approached much closer; he noticed she had a small dog in tow, a russet-and-white King Charles spaniel trailing from a lead. ‘I know, you’re an important man. Very busy. Lots of distractions …’

She had taken the linen handkerchief from his top pocket and was beginning a clean-up operation on his shirt, gently wiping away the mess, taking control. ‘The truth is, Mr Bracken, you’re just a little clumsy. And rather shy.’

Anna Fitzgerald was petite, slim, almost boyish, dressed in a dark leather airman’s jacket that was a couple of sizes too large for her, and boots up to her knees. She was dressed so much more sensibly than he. The cold, damp grass beneath his feet was turning to mud and already laying siege to his hand-tooled leather town shoes, yet it no longer seemed to matter. She possessed the purest black hair he had ever seen. Her eyes danced and shimmered in the light of a thousand candles. She was different – so very different from other women he had ever met. It had taken her only a few moments to break down the defences of a lifetime and now no one else at this gathering seemed to matter. He wanted the grease stain to last for ever.

‘Busy – yes. I have been busy.’ At last he had regained some measure of composure, his brain in contact once more with his tongue. Other parts of his anatomy seemed to be gaining a life all their own, too. ‘Winston’s been making speeches, keeping me running around …’

‘So no time to show a dumb American around town.’

‘Well, it wasn’t just that – I mean, not that at all …’ Bracken began to stammer; bugger, he was making a mess of this. He was almost relieved when she was distracted by the spaniel – whose name turned out to be Chumpers. He had found something in the grass – Bracken’s sausage – and was giving it his undivided attention. ‘I was worried that your uncle the Ambassador, and Winston, they – how should I put this?’

‘Send smoke signals from opposite sides of the blanket?’

‘Exactly. Both very passionate people. I thought it might be difficult.’

‘You find passion difficult, Mr Bracken?’

‘I meant that it might be awkward – for you – if I were, you know, to invite you out. Mixing with the enemy.’

‘I’m not so sure about English girls but in Massachusetts they raise us with minds all of our own.’

‘Ah.’

‘So is it Mr Churchill who would object if you called me? He owns your social loyalties as well as your political loyalties?’

‘Of course not!’ he protested, before suddenly it dawned on him that this was probably a lie. ‘There was also the thought – well, I am considerably older than you. About fifteen years.’

‘Why, glory be, Mr Bracken, you are a very ol’-fashioned gen’leman,’ she whispered in a voice that reeked of Dixie and seduction on the verandah. She was mocking him, but gently. Her hand was back on his chest, adding improvements to the clean-up operation.

‘Not at all. It’s just that –’ He stopped. Came to a complete halt. No point in continuing. A flush had appeared upon his face that came close to matching the colour of his ridiculous hair and he had an expression that suggested he might be passing kidney stones. ‘I’m making a complete mess of this.’

‘For the first time this evening, Brendan, I’m inclined to agree with you. So let me simplify things for you. Would you like to see me again? Take me to dinner? Show me the sights of London? Play canasta, or whatever it is genteel English folk do?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘And you know how to use a phone?’

He began to laugh.

‘Hey, Brendan, looks like you’re in business.’

She held up his grubby handkerchief and dropped it into the palm of his outstretched hand. ‘Bombs away,’ she whispered. Then she walked off, dragging the reluctant Chumpers behind her.

It was a night not simply of entertainment but also of encounter and intrigue – just as Beaverbrook had required. He couldn’t plan such things, of course, but he understood human nature and knew that the inevitable outcome of mixing alcohol and ego was information. And in his world, information was power.

As he turned to mingle with other guests, he found himself pursued. A woman, tugging in agitation at his sleeve. Lady Maud Hoare, wife of Sir Sam.

‘Maxwell, dear Maxwell …’

Whoa, no one called him Maxwell. The girl was nervous.

‘I’m so sorry. I hope it didn’t cause a scene,’ Maud spluttered.

Of course it caused a scene. A splendid one. As Joe Kennedy had just remarked to him, good parties were like battles. They required casualties.

‘It’s just that Sam is so passionate,’ she continued. ‘You know that, being such good friends …’

Friends? Well, scarcely. Friendship wasn’t the sort of game played between politician and press man.

‘Like you, he’s so loyal to the cause.’

Ah, the cause. The great cause to which he had devoted so many of his front pages in recent weeks. The cause of winning! Winning was everything and Chamberlain had won, for the moment, at least. There was to be peace. It had to be so, the advertisers in the Express insisted on it. They wanted a world in which everyone had a little fun and spent a little money, not a world in which every last penny was buried in war bonds or pots at the end of the garden. So far Chamberlain had proved a good bet.

‘And Sam’s under such a lot of pressure …’

‘Pressure? What sort of pressure?’ Beaverbrook’s news instincts were suddenly alert. He laid a comforting hand on her sleeve.

‘He’d never complain, of course, not the type. But, oh, Maxwell, the poor man’s so torn.’

‘Torn?’

‘He’s a good man, a great man …’

Perhaps one day the main man, too. The man to take over the reins. Beaverbrook had a sharp eye for the runners and riders, and Slippery Sam was a man with prospects. In Beaverbrook’s judgement Hoare was a man to watch, a man to be – well, all right, to be friends with.

‘You know what it’s like, Maxwell, so many demands on your time, your energies, your … money.’

Ah, so there it is. The girl had shown her slip.

‘He’s not a man of inherited wealth like Neville or Edward Halifax. He can’t simply run off on grand lecture tours and sell himself like Winston does.’ She made it sound worse than pimping. ‘Sam has to struggle by on nothing more than his Cabinet salary. And it is a struggle, Maxwell.’

What – five thousand a year? A struggle for him, maybe, but a fortune for most.

‘You know Neville couldn’t have done what he’s done without Sam’s unfailing support – you know that, don’t you, Maxwell?’

‘Most certainly,’ he lied.

‘But it’s slowly wearing him down, and I’ve been crying myself to sleep worrying about him.’

‘We can’t have that, Maudy.’

‘Oh, at times I get quite desperate, watching him sacrifice himself. For others. Always for others.’ Her voice had fallen to a whisper, but it was soon to recover. ‘I scarcely know what to do. These are such terribly difficult times.’

How well she had rehearsed it. How easily the lip quivered, the manicured fingers clutched, how readily the nervous sentiments emerged and presented themselves in regimented line.

‘So I was wondering …’

Here it comes.

‘Maxwell, is there any way you can think of that might just – take the pressure off him? Allow him to get on with that great job of his?’

If you were a few years younger, maybe, Maudy, old dear, and not so hideously ugly …

‘I’m a woman, I barely understand these things, while you, Maxwell, are not only a friend but such a wise man.’

Oh, Maudy, you think flattery is the way past my defences? When I am surrounded every day by lapdogs whom I pay to fawn and fumble at every moment in my presence? But present me with a business proposition, that’s another matter entirely. Show me a man who is Home Secretary – one of the most powerful men in the land, the keeper of secrets, the charmer of snakes, the guardian of reputations high and low, a man who has a reasonable chance one day of being placed in charge of the entire crap game – show this man to me and place him in my debt. How much would that be worth? As a business proposition – and fuck the friendship?

‘Two thousand.’

‘I beg your pardon, Maxwell.’

‘Two thousand a year, Maud. Do you think that might help? We can’t have him being distracted, having to work through his worries.’

‘No, of course not, you’re so right.’

‘If I can help him, Maud, be a damned privilege. Ease those worries. Make sure my newspapers are behind him, too – hell, make sure Sam and I are working on the same team, for each other.’

‘And the cause.’ She was breathless now, red in cheek, like a young girl who had just been ravished and loved every second of it.

‘An entirely private matter, you understand. No one must know apart from you and me, Maud. And Sam, of course. Wouldn’t want the muck media to get hold of it.’

‘Of course, of course … I scarcely know what to say, Maxwell. “Thank you” sounds so inadequate.’

‘No, I thank you, Maud. Sam’s a great man. I’m glad to be of some service. Send him to me. We’ll sort out the details, man to man.’ Yes, send him on bended knee, Maudy, and get him used to the position.

Others were approaching. The moment was over, the business done. He had bought a Home Secretary for less than the price of his new car.

‘Be in touch, Maud.’

‘Oh, we shall, we shall,’ she breathed as she wafted into the night.

‘And who was that?’ his new companion enquired, staring after the retreating woman. His voice was deep, carefully modulated, like that of a bishop.

‘A Hoare,’ Beaverbrook muttered.

‘Oh.’

‘But a whore on my White List. For now.’

‘Ah.’ Tom Driberg sucked his teeth. A tall, dark-complexioned figure in his mid-thirties with receding hair that wrinkled in the manner of a studious maharajah, Driberg was one of the many paid by Beaverbrook to ‘fawn and fumble’. To the outside world he was known as William Hickey, the highest-paid gossip columnist in the country, and Driberg was very good at gossip – good at both recording and creating it – although the rules by which he was required to document the misadventures and general muck-ups of the society set were far tighter than those by which he himself chose to live. One of the strictest rules governing the way in which he worked was that he should never, never, antagonize his publisher, and the White List contained the names of Beaverbrook’s intimates who were deemed to be beyond bounds and who would never find their way into the William Hickey column without the copy first being scrutinized by the press lord himself. Gossip was a powerful political currency, and both Beaverbrook and Driberg were keepers of the keys.

‘Busy evening?’ Beaverbrook enquired, almost casually, reminding the other man that he was here to work.

‘A Minister who appears to be canvassing for the support of a young lady who – how can one put such things delicately? – won’t be old enough to vote for several years yet.’

‘Looking to the future, eh? Damn fine slogan.’

‘And an actress who has just spent the last twenty minutes rehearsing the role of Cleopatra in the back of her car. A magnificent performance, all moans and misted windows. I damned nearly froze waiting for her to take her bow. Then she steps out with her husband. It beggars belief.’

‘What is the world coming to?’

‘But the night is young.’

‘Yeah. Which reminds me. Keep your hands off the Boy Scouts. None of your nancy nonsense here. My house is off limits. Understand?’

‘I shall protect your honour down to my last item of underwear, Your Lordship.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘With the greatest pleasure.’

‘Oh, and look out for Duffie Cooper. He’s here tonight, I don’t suppose with his wife. He no longer makes the White List.’

‘Good. He was once very rude to me when I asked him about a certain Austrian lady with whom he was seen breakfasting on four consecutive days in Biarritz. It only goes to remind one, sir. Always be nice to them when you’re coming, because you’re bound to meet them again in the morning, that’s what I always say.’

‘You’re full of crap.’

And much, much more. Or would be later. He’d just met this amazing young producer from the BBC.

The climax of the night was drawing near. The guy had been sent in procession around the guests, still with the cigar in its mouth – someone had even sacrificed a homburg to complete the effect – and had now been wheeled to the base of the bonfire, where the groundsman and two young assistants used a ladder to place it at the very top of the pyre. Soon it would be ablaze.

‘Fine, fine party, Max.’ Joseph Ball congratulated his host and took his arm in a manner that gave clear signals to those around them that the two men intended to talk business – alone.

‘You’re not drinking that pond water, are you, Joey?’ Beaverbrook growled, examining Ball’s glass of mulled wine as though expecting to find tadpoles. ‘Here.’ He produced a large hip flask filled with an exceedingly fine single malt. In return, Ball offered him an Havana.

‘Max, old friend, the pleasure of your hospitality never dims. And quite a show you’ve put on for us this evening already.’

‘You mean Sam and Kitty? Sam’s a fine chap, damned fine chap, but Kitty …’

‘Yes, dear Kitty. Not a chap at all. Perhaps that’s the root of her problem. Frayed nerves. Mental feebleness. You know, women of a certain age. You saw her tonight: she’s lost control, a gnat’s wing away from hysterical. Apparently it runs in her family. They say there may be money troubles, too.’

‘That so? I’ll be damned.’ Beaverbrook reclaimed his flask and refreshed himself, all the while never taking his eyes from his guest. Ball was up to his old tricks, putting ferrets down holes and flushing out a few reputations. He’d turned ruination into an art form. ‘So what are you going to do, Joey? You’ve already taken the party whip from her, not much more to threaten her with, is there?’

‘Max, we’d never dream of threatening her. You know me better than that. But as for what others might do …’ – he paused to take a long pull at the cigar and fill the air around them with smoke and mystery – ‘I hear on the grapevine that her constituency party is positively rattling with resentment at her disloyalty. Applies to all the rebels, really. In the next couple of weeks most of them are going to come under a deal of pressure to start toeing the line, or else.’

‘Else what?’

‘There’s the whiff of an election in the air – next year, maybe. Time for the party to wipe its boots clean.’

‘Throw ’em out?’

‘Their constituencies might well decide they’d had enough.’

‘Bent over the old ballot box and buggered? I like it.’

‘Only one small problem …’

‘Tell your Uncle Max.’

‘The constituencies don’t know about this yet.’

‘You sly bastard.’ It was offered, and accepted, as a commendation.

‘Look, you remember that little group of letter-writers you set up at the time of the Abdication nonsense?’

‘The journalists I got to write poison-pen letters to the King’s bitch?’

‘Exactly. It never leaked.’

‘Was never going to leak. I told ’em if one whisper of that got out, none of ’em was ever going to work in Fleet Street again. It’s one of the benefits of being an authentic Canadian bastard like me – I get loyalty, Joey. I always get loyalty.’

‘So what I had in mind was this. Another loyal little group who’ll write letters to the main people in Kitty’s local association. You know, complaints about her unreliability, saying they’ll never vote Conservative again while she’s the candidate, time for the party to move on. Talk about her age, her feebleness, imply she’s been shagging Stalin. That sort of stuff. See if we can’t push her out before the voters do. Have a new candidate in place before the next election.’

‘Same thing for some of the others?’

‘All of the others, Max. Everyone who was against Neville over Munich. It’s not a time for half measures.’

Beaverbrook nodded in the direction of the guy. ‘Winston too?’

‘Everyone. Most will survive, of course, but it’ll shake them. Keep their heads down until after the election. Make them realize there’s no such thing as a free shot at Neville. But Kitty’s a special case, she’s too near the edge. One shove and she’ll be over. A few screams, the flapping of petticoats, a bit of blood. Something that will motivate the others.’

A broad smile almost cut Beaverbrook’s face in two. ‘You want things stirring up a little? My pleasure.’

‘I shall be in your debt.’

‘Hey, don’t you just love democracy?’

As they conferred, other guests kept their distance, the hunched shoulders and conspiratorial tones of the two serving as a warning unmistakable to any but the most insensitive – or young.

‘Let’s go, Maxie, we’re all waiting,’ a young woman called out, stamping her feet impatiently against the cold. ‘Time to set the night on fire.’

The base of the bonfire had been well soaked in paraffin and tar, and the groundsman was standing by with a burning torch.

‘Come on, darling Maxie,’ she complained again, tugging at the fox-fur stole around her neck. It looked new.

‘Time for some action,’ Beaverbrook muttered. He grabbed the torch, raised it high above his head to the applause of his guests, then thrust it deep into the innards of the bonfire. Soon the flames began to conquer the night and Cigar Man from his lofty throne began to cringe in the heat and turn black, squirming as the flames took hold until finally he slumped forward and disappeared in a storm of sparks. The young woman squealed with delight.

‘Bit young even by your standards, isn’t she, Max?’ Ball chided.

‘Hell, Joey, I’m simply growing nostalgic. I once knew her mother.’

Later that week, much of Europe burned, too.

It was called Kristallnacht – Crystal Night – named after the millions of shards of glass that were left shattered in the street after Jewish shops throughout Germany and Austria were ransacked. Businesses and homes were plundered, the synagogues put to the flame. Ninety-three Jews were killed that night. In the ensuing weeks thousands more were to take their own lives. It was to be but a small down-payment on what was to come.

SIX

The eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month. The moment when the guns had fallen silent on the Western Front and the slaughter had ceased, exactly twenty years before. Armistice Day. Bludgeoned by the ever-lengthening shadow of circumstance, the crowds had gathered in exceptional numbers around Lutyens’ stone Cenotaph in Whitehall to take part in the nation’s tribute to the dead. Nearly a million of them. Wasted in war. A war that some would have all over again.

It was a sunny day, mild for the time of year, and he had only to walk a few yards from Downing Street, but nevertheless the Prime Minister felt in need of his overcoat. He was feeling every one of his sixty-nine years. His physical resources were not what they once were. He found these ceremonies an ordeal, stirring emotions that he found hard to deal with, particularly the remembrance of his cousin, Norman, who had been killed in France. They had been devoted. Chamberlain had described Norman as ‘the most intimate friend I ever had’ and still grieved for him, most of all on days like this. Perhaps, too, there was that nagging memory inside Chamberlain that he hadn’t fought in that war, that even all those years ago he had already been too old. Past it. Unfit for Duty. Norman and the others paying a debt which he should have shared. Churchill had fought in the war, of course, seen action at the front and never ceased to remind people of the fact. The Warrior. Hero of the Boer War. And of the Great War. Almost as though Churchill were trying to torment him – no, nothing conditional about it, of course Churchill was trying to torment him. Trouble was, so often he succeeded.

They were all there, in formation around the white memorial of Portland stone, to his left the King and the other male members of the Royal Family, opposite him the Bishop of London, beside and behind him the other political leaders. And on all sides old soldiers, those who knew what it was like to bear the guilt of living while they watched their brothers die, all the time wondering why they had been spared the slaughter. There were young soldiers, too, who knew nothing of war – and who would never know, so long as he was Prime Minister.

At nights recently he had often woken, shivering with cold, feeling as though a cold grey hand were clawing at him deep inside. Sometimes he thought he was surrounded by ghosts. Men he had known, like Norman, and who had died, in his place. He heard their voices, whispering, but could never quite make out their words. They would not let him rest.

The band of the Brigade of Guards played their mournful music, then a lone piper took a single pace forward, pulling from his soul the notes of Purcell’s ‘Lament’. Chamberlain stood, head bowed. No other noise but the champing of a horse at its bit, the crowd fallen silent. At his right shoulder stood Edward Halifax, tall, gaunt, his large feet splayed out, towering above those around him, casting Chamberlain in shadow and making him feel almost insignificant. He felt the Foreign Secretary bend slightly, like a reed, and whisper in his ear.

‘Neville, did you see the papers this morning?’

‘The Jews?’ Chamberlain nodded his assent, still looking straight ahead.

The piper had finished and there was a short pause as the Bishop prepared to offer the prayers that led up to the two-minute silence. Soon they would be called upon to step forward and lay their wreaths of blood-poppies.

‘My God, but Hitler doesn’t make it easy for us, Edward.’

‘They’ll say it makes a mockery of our agreement with him.’

‘No! It mocks nothing. It illustrates the dangers. Makes our agreement all the more necessary.’ Chamberlain shivered in spite of the sun. ‘He gave me his word, Edward.’

‘Not on the Jews, he didn’t. We didn’t ask for it.’

‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘Do?’

‘Yes, get some balance back into the reporting, make it less lurid. Perhaps give the papers another story to get their teeth into.’

‘We’ve given them peace. What more can we do?’

‘We need a distraction.’

‘So, I suspect, do the Jews.’

‘I think Horace and Joe have something in mind. For distraction. Setting up a bit of a fox hunt.’ He seemed unwilling – or unable – to continue. He sighed, a long, pained rattle of breath. ‘Anyway, Christmas soon. Peace on earth …’

Chamberlain shivered once again; this time Halifax couldn’t fail to notice. It was almost time. As the clock of Big Ben began to strike the hour, the crash of artillery was heard from Horse Guards. Deep inside, Chamberlain cringed, wondering yet again how he would have withstood the deluge of death, had he fought.