WC02 - Never Surrender (4 page)

It troubled him that he couldn't be entirely honest with the Tribunal. He would have liked to tell them that reasons why the world shouldn't set out to slaughter itself were so bloody obvious you didn't need the Bible, but that wasn't the way the Tribunal game was played.

Don had played, and he had won. Noncombatant service. No weapons, no killing. But it troubled him more than he cared to admit that he had won only by leaning on his father's beliefs, and that his father knew it. There was a little of Absalom in everyone.

As he tossed in distraction upon the floor of the abandoned brewery, other thoughts began to chisel away at his sense of well-being. If God moved in mysterious ways, so, it seemed, did the generals. The men of the British Expeditionary Force had spent half a year working flat out to build a defensive line of tank traps and pillboxes. They'd been assured it would be all but impregnable.

So why, at the first sign of trouble, had the generals ordered them to come out from behind its cover and move forward into a field of fire that was totally unprepared?

And let's not turn our back on good fortune but why, during all that long first day of advance, had there been no sign of the enemy? There hadn't been a single air attack.

As Don struggled to find some comfort on the cold concrete, one thought kept nagging at him. It was almost as though the Germans wanted them there.

At last Churchill was alone. Letters written, appointments made, officials dismissed, Bracken on his way home. The path begun.

He felt exhausted. Keeping up the spirits of others had sapped his own, and a mood of darkness clung around him. It had been a day he had dreamed of for so long, yet the reality had proved so very distant from the dream. There had been no cheering crowds at the Palace to greet him, not even curious onlookers, no one but soldiers in war garb who had stood in front of a palace that had retreated behind sandbags and shuttered windows. Then the King's little flash of humour to cover his unease. Faces long, brimming with concerns. No victorious arrival at Downing Street. Only Bracken to lift the gloom.

How he had longed for this day! A Churchill as His Majesty's First Minister, his destiny achieved, his father's memory vindicated. Yet all around he found nothing but sorrows and unspoken fear. Instead of triumph, he had found his way into a tragedy.

He sat slumped in his chair, an old man, clutching his glass of whisky in both hands as if he were afraid it might fall. No one there to see him, to help guide him through the depression that emerged like a mist from a swamp to surround him. He had such a way with words, brave and magnificent outbursts that stirred hearts, but words were for others, while he was left with nothing but his own dark thoughts.

These thoughts carried him to the oil painting that hung in a corner near the bookcase. It was a portrait of his father -not a particularly magnificent piece, one that had been painted long ago in Belfast. It showed Lord Randolph small and slim, with delicate ears and a twirling moustache, his neck surrounded with a huge moleskin collar and a polka-dot bow-tie that Winston himself had adopted. The painting followed the son everywhere, almost haunting him, for it had been completed in 1886, the year of his father's brief triumph, which had turned so quickly to endless disaster. Lord Randolph was a rising star, one of the most powerful men in the country some said the most powerful, and he believed it. He had quit the Government in the expectation of being recalled with ever greater honours, only to find his resignation greeted with ridicule. His reputation had crumbled. So had his mind, relentlessly. Winston had been still a schoolboy, not yet twelve. So long ago, yet the pain still so fresh.

He stared at the portrait. What had his father been thinking when it was painted? Had those bright protruding eyes been able to see any of the misery that lay so close ahead? Had he felt any symptoms had he guessed in any way that he had already set out upon a path that would lead to a slow and wretched death?

No, he could not have known. No man ever knew what lay ahead.

Tiredness gnawed away at the old man and his head sank towards the glass, still clutched tightly in his two hands. Yet as the head fell forward he was once more jerked awake. He opened his eyes to find himself staring at his father. Lord Randolph was sitting in the chair opposite not an oil painting, not an hallucination, but body and blood, so far as Winston could tell. It wasn't possible, of course, but .. .

"Papa?"

"What are you doing, Winston? Where are we?"

"In my office. At the Admiralty."

"So, you've become a clerk in the navy, have you?"

"I followed you, Papa. Into politics."

"Brutal game. Surprised you had the stomach for it. You were such a weakly child, always sickening for something." "Politics have been my life. I entered Parliament at the same age as you, Papa. Twenty-five."

"Ah, all those years, but to what end?" The father managed to sound both envious and dismissive. He began filling his amber cigarette-holder with a little pad of cotton wool to soak up the nicotine. The process seemed to absorb him, to the annoyance of his son. Instinctively the son decided not to reveal all of his hand, to keep something in reserve.

"I have been Home Secretary and, as you were, Chancellor of the Exchequer. For five years."

The father, who had been Chancellor for a mere five months, seemed not to hear, his attention focused on the search for a match from deep within his pockets. "I used your old robes, Papa, the ones you wore." Randolph scowled impatiently as his search continued fruitlessly.

"And until this morning I was First Lord of the Admiralty," the son added.

"Under whose authority? Who as Prime Minister?" "Neville Chamberlain Joe's younger son." "What? A Chamberlain as Prime Minister?" The eyes of the father bulged in displeasure. "Praise be that I never lived to see the day. Nothing but iron mongers Why, in my day you could buy a dozen Chamberlains for a single Churchill and still get change." He stared at Winston as though he were directly responsible for the devaluation of the currency. "So how did this young Chamberlain do?"

"Not well." The son chose the words with care, speaking them slowly. "We are engaged in a horrible war with Germany, Papa, for the second time in my life. With flying machines and other terrible weapons that slaughter millions of men."

"Millions, you say?"

Tens of millions."

"My God, is it possible? Then I'm glad not to have lived to see such terrible days. But we will prevail, of course."

Again the words were chosen with care. "Not necessarily. We may not prevail. And if we don't, we shall lose not only our armies but also our empire, even our independence."

"Takes my breath away to hear it. Not the place it once was, eh, our England? But something always turns up. Like fresh cavalry riding out of the afternoon sun."

"The British cavalry hasn't charged in anger in more than forty years."

The father shook his head in consternation. "So, who is to lead us from the jaws of such adversity?"

"I hope it will be me, Papa."

"You, Winston? My God, but you only just sneaked into Sandhurst by the skin of your breeches. And at the third attempt. With your school record I couldn't even consider you for a career in the law. You, of all people?" He tugged at his moustache in puzzlement. "You are an admiral? Or a general?"

"No, Papa. But I was once a major in the Yeomanry."

The father wrinkled his nose. "You were always getting yourself into scrapes. Getting beyond yourself. Like that time you fell off the bridge in Dorset."

"I didn't fall. I jumped, Papa. To evade capture by my friends. I jumped onto the higher branches of a tree, but they gave way."

"Seem to remember you were in bed for months. And for what? It was a childish game, nothing more. No judgement, that's the thing."

"There are those who would agree with you, I fear."

"Always sickening in bed. Caused your mother no end of inconvenience." The voice trailed away, diverted down a new, more gentle path. "So .. . what of Mama?"

"She lived a long life."

"There were .. . other men?"

(Did he truly want-to hear? But he knew there would have been other men. There were always other men.) "She married twice more." The son pondered telling him that they had been young enough to be her sons, the last even younger than he. But somehow it didn't seem to matter any longer. "Neither of them matched up to you, Papa."

"Two, you say. Always a little careless with her men, your mama." The voice now seemed strained; Winston put it down to his father's need for a smoke. He had still not lit his cigarette.

"But, in the end, loyal enough," the father continued. "Can't fault her loyalty, not through the last years, at least."

The painful years of his father's decline came flooding back to the son, when his brain disease had got hold of him and he had died by fractions in public. Winston himself had died a little as he watched his father being led stumbling and incoherent from the Chamber. Decay of the brain, and of the character. The Churchill legacy.

"You have sons?"

"One. And three daughters."

"Is he up to carrying the Churchill name?"

"A father should never give up hope for his son," Winston responded. It was both reproach to his father and injunction to himself. His son had been named after the grandfather, Randolph, and had inherited so many of his characteristics. Rudeness, inconstancy, infidelity, lack of judgement that's what they said about the younger Randolph, and they had said no less in the grandfather's time.

"And Jack? What of him?"

"My brother is happy. Married. A stockbroker."

"A stock Randolph bit off the thought, but there was no hiding the disappointment. "Went too soon, I did. Before my time. Always wanted more sons, but your mama .. . There was so much more still to do, to make the Churchill name stand out above the crowd. So, you have a role to play in this war."

I was with the King this evening."

"Which King is that?"

"George. The Sixth."

"What? Two more Georges?"

"And two Edwards."

"Hah! I knew the first, of course, royal rogue that he was. Once challenged me to a duel, he did. Couldn't accept, of course, not a contest with the Prince of Wales. A pickle over some damned woman. Can't remember her name."

The name had been Edith, Countess of Aylesford, a woman to whom passion spoke more loudly than discretion. It had caused her to become entangled not only with the Prince of Wales but also with the Churchill family in an affair that grew into one of the most sensational causes de scan dale of the time. It had pushed Randolph's legendary lack of judgement to new and intolerable extremes, and he threatened the heir to the throne with public exposure. As a result, Randolph and his young family had been condemned to exile in Ireland and many years of royal ostracism. Winston's first memories had been not of his beloved England, but of Dublin.

"In my life there was but one monarch, Victoria. It gave us all a sense of continuity, of stability. But four since then?" the father muttered in astonishment.

"In less than forty years. And scarcely any great kings left. No Habsburgs, no Romanovs, not even a Kaiser."

The father's jaw sagged in disbelief.

"There has been war and revolution in every corner of Europe."

"And in England?"

"We still live as a democracy."

"Then there is hope," the father concluded. "I always said: "Trust the people." Built my reputation on it. It's only a democracy that can weather the storms of political fortune, link the past with the future."

"Tempests have struck with remarkable ferocity since democracy took charge, Papa. We may yet be swept away."

"But still a kingdom, you say? And you are friendly, are you, with the King?"

"No, not friends. In truth, I don't think he cares for me very much. I was too close to his elder brother, the second Edward. He abdicated."

"Oh, misery. A realm in which kings abdicate and enemies prevail? My poor, wretched England .. ."

"Papa, these times are harder than any I have known. But perhaps you can help me."

The sharp eyes bulged in alarm. "What? Not money again, Winston? Always begging for money."

If it were so, it was another trait inherited directly from the father, but there seemed little point in saying so.

"No, Papa, not money. Advice. I fear our country faces nothing but disaster for a very long time. What would you do, in such hard times?"

The father's head was raised again, his impatience washing away in satisfaction that the son had acknowledged the greater wisdom of the father. "Well, only one thing for it, Winston. Know your enemies. I didn't, you see, underestimated them, and so ... Know your enemy. In that way you will discover how to beat him. That's it, and all of it. So if you have the ear of the government .. ." He had at last discovered a match and bent his head to light it.

"Papa, I should tell you'

But it was too late. As the match was struck there was a flash of considerable brilliance, and Lord Randolph was gone, the chair empty. The son was once more alone.

"Know mine enemies, Papa? But all I ever truly wanted to know was you .. ."

TWO

Whit Sunday. The first Sunday of the real war.

The Reverend Henry Chichester climbed into the pulpit of his ancient parish church of St. Ignatius-without-the-Walls, which stood above the port of Dover, and confronted pews that were crowded with parishioners. There was no denying it: war had been good for business. The flock grew larger with every passing month. What did it matter that these people had grabbed their gas masks and ration books before they'd given a thought to embracing religion, so long as they had ended up here?

I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance .. .

Time, he thought, was man's greatest enemy. Time passes, and time destroys. There was a time when he had been a young man brimming with self-belief and optimism, before the trenches of Flanders. There was, too, a later time when he had gathered the pieces of that lost happiness through his love for Jennie, yet God seemed unshakable in His plan that Henry Chichester's days were not to be spent in a state of contentment. Jennie had died giving birth, and had taken with her the last flakes of colour in his life. He had found many other things to fill the void duty, obligation, ritual, the son yet still it was a void. And it felt timeless, without end, a life surrounded by so many people, yet spent so much alone.