Winston’s War (15 page)

“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.

It was after the ceremony had finished and they had marched stiffly behind the King back into the nearby Old Home Office Building that the conversation was resumed. They were drinking tea, warming themselves, relaxing after the parade. The King in particular seemed to find these official occasions a trial.

“It went well?” he asked. The words came at the stumble and in the form of a question. There had been no speech to make,
nothing more to do than be a figurehead and set down a wreath of poppies, but still the King-Emperor needed reassurance.

“Quite splendidly, sir,” his Prime Minister replied.

“Thank you, Mr. Chamberlain.” He was relaxing, feeling more at ease once he was inside and beyond the public gaze. And among friends. Halifax was his great companion and Chamberlain, too, had grown close. It had been exactly eighteen months since George had been crowned and had asked Chamberlain to assume the highest political office in the land; it had come to seem as if their destinies would be forever intertwined. That was why the King had invited his Prime Minister onto the floodlit balcony of Buckingham Palace immediately on his return from Munich. Some had said the gesture was unwise, even foolish, that it involved the Crown too deeply in politics and too closely with the fate of one Prime Minister, but the King had insisted. Appeasement was the right policy, it was the moral policy, the policy not only of God but also of his wife. He felt no need to compromise.

Around the room other men of matters were gathered, their voices low, respectful, except for one that was raised a shade too loudly, making his point vociferously, not in the manner of a gentle English stream but like a cascade of water running across the carpet. But then Leslie Hore-Belisha was scarcely—well, it wasn't his fault, really, that he hadn't been brought up in the manner of an English gentleman.

Words such as Berlin and Vienna reached out across the room, and the King stiffened within his uniform. “What is to be done about them, Prime Minister?” he asked softly.

Chamberlain followed his gaze. “Ah, you mean the Jews, sir.”

“What can we do? We've already given asylum to thousands. Now it threatens to turn into a flood.”

“Halifax and I were just discussing the matter.”

“I read the newspaper reports with distress, of course, but so often it seems as if these people don't help themselves. Look
at Palestine. We offer them seventy-five thousand places over the next five years, yet hordes of them try to pour in as illegal immigrants and cause chaos.”

“Of course, sir, Palestine can't be the answer. Too small. And too many Arabs. I'm afraid we were a little rash all those years ago to suggest that it might become a Jewish homeland.”

“Wandering tribes, eh?”

“The Foreign Secretary and I have been giving some consideration as to whether other parts of the Empire might be brought in to help.”

“Other parts?”

“Africa, perhaps. Tanganyika, sir,” Halifax intervened, glad of an opportunity to participate. His height made it difficult to converse with the two considerably smaller men. He bent delicately, like a crane attempting to feed. “And perhaps British Guyana. It might be possible to make large tracts of virgin forest available for Jewish refugees to settle.”

“At their expense, of course,” Chamberlain added.

“Wouldn't it be possible simply to insist that they remain in their countries of origin? Prevent them from leaving in the first place?” the King persisted. “After all, it's not just the Jews from Germany trying to invade Palestine but those from places like Poland and Romania. There must be millions of them there. Surely it would be better for everyone if they simply stayed.”

“Quite so,” Chamberlain agreed. “But Herr Hitler isn't helping, not with his latest nonsense.”

“Damnable man, disrupts everything. But all this fuss. The press always sensationalize and exaggerate these things, don't you think?”

“Perhaps. My lieutenants are already pursuing the matter, phoning a few friendly editors, making sure they don't…well, overdo it. Perhaps it will be better by tomorrow.”

“And if any of them decides not to cooperate, you have our full permission to tell them that we won't have it. Won't have it, do
you hear?” The teacup rattled dangerously. “If those editors ever expect to come and kneel before me at the palace, they'd better mind their…"—the King had intended to say p's and q's but the effect of authority was entirely spoiled by a thunderous stutter.

“Distraction, that's what we need, sir. The Foreign Secretary and I were just discussing it. We thought it might be helpful to give them something else to write about, sir. With your permission, I'd like to announce that Edward and I will be going to Rome to visit Signor Mussolini early next year. He's been difficult, I know, invading Abyssinia and sending troops to Spain. But at Munich he was so helpful, so solid. If we show him the hand of friendship, I think we might get him to lean on Herr Hitler a little. Help tie up some of the loose ends of the peace.”

“A little more of your personal diplomacy, Mr. Chamberlain? Another diplomatic triumph?”

“With the help of the Foreign Secretary, sir.” Chamberlain shuffled. He wasn't very good at playing the unassuming hero, least of all would anyone be convinced that he owed anything to the Foreign Office. He ran his own foreign policy, and so blatantly that the last Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, had felt forced to resign earlier that year.

“And Ciano's an excellent Foreign Minister, isn't he, Edward?” Halifax bowed in approval. “Not like that strange man Wibbentrop. You know, when he came to the Palace to present his credentials, he gave me one of those ridiculous straight-arm salutes and shouted 'Heil Hitler.' Think of it. It was all I could do to stop myself returning the salute and shouting 'Heil George!'”

They shared their amusement and drank their tea, while from outside came the muffled sounds of the last of the old soldiers marching past the Cenotaph and fading into the shadows. A final bark of instruction from an NCO and they were gone, taking their memories with them.

“It's no good shouting at the Germans,” Chamberlain continued, “they simply shout back. So we think Herr Hitler needs a little encouragement, and the Italians could play a vital role in making sure he remains reasonable.”

“Sound man, is he, Mussolini?”

“A necessary man, at least.”

“And the Italians have always been so much more sophisticated than Hitler's type of German. Discussing diplomacy with Herr Hitler and his henchmen is like casting pearls before the swine. But the Italians—their art, their culture, their great history—that must make a difference.”

“They've had a great empire.”

“They understand the advantages of compromise.”

“And so long as he doesn't want to rebuild the entire Roman empire…”

“Then let us toast him, this great Italian.” The King raised his teacup, pinky on alert. “To Signor Mussolini.”

“And to Italian culture.”

(The Times, Saturday, November 19, 1938)

MICKEY MOUSE REPRIEVED

EXEMPT FROM ITALIAN BAN

From our own Correspondent.
ROME, November 18

The productions of Mr. Walt Disney are to be exempted from a general decree of the Ministry of Popular Culture that everything of foreign inspiration is to disappear from juvenile periodicals in
Italy by the end of the year.

The decree was prompted by the feeling that an excellent opportunity of inculcating Fascist ideals in the youthful Italian mind was being neglected by allowing pure fancy to run riot in the pictures and “comic strips” of the colored juvenile weeklies which are as common in Italy as in any other country. Publishers and editors were accordingly informed that these periodicals must in the future be used to exalt the military and heroic virtues of the Italian race. The foreign stuff was to go.

But an exception has now been made in favor of Mr. Walt Disney on account of the acknowledged artistic merit of his work…

Mac had just come out of the Odeon cinema in Notting Hill Gate. A Noël Coward comedy. He'd laughed and rocked until the tears poured down his face, the first time he'd laughed in ever so long. And he'd not cried since the camps. Good to forget your troubles, to have things touch you. He had stayed on to watch it all over again, hiding for a while in the toilets, dodging the beam of the usherette's flashlight that swept like a searchlight across the rows of seats, happy to be lost in a world of make-believe. Anyway, it was warmer here than in his small flat. He was economizing, saving on coal, uncertain of what might lie ahead. He might laugh, but still he couldn't trust. And he was beginning to feel the insidious dampness of an English autumn seeping into his bones, even though it was as warm as any summer's day in the camp. He must be getting old.

When finally he left the cinema, he began walking up the hill in Ladbroke Grove towards the church that stood guard at the top. It was a clear night, bright moon, autumn breezes tugging the last of the leaves from the trees. Hard times to come. Barely a light to be seen, but for the moon that hung above St. John's, casting long shadows all around, stretching out, pursuing him, like his memories. He buried his hands in his thin overcoat, counting the few pennies of change in his pocket for comfort,
and hurried on. He had a coat, and boots, money in his pocket, a bed to sleep on, and coal in his scuttle, if he needed it. Why, he'd even treated himself to chocolate ice cream at the cinema. A life of ease. But not at ease, never at ease. As he pushed on up the hill he found he was growing breathless—perhaps the unaccustomed laughter had been too much for him—and when he reached the purple-dark outlines of the church he sat down on the edge of a leaning gravestone to catch his wind. His breath was beginning to condense, like mists of ice powder that he remembered would settle round your beard and freeze your lips together, tearing the flesh if you tried to eat, if you had anything to eat. Then you could feel your eyeballs beginning to turn to frost so that they would not close, and your brain began to freeze so hard that you wondered if this was going to be the last moon you would ever see, but you knew that the ground was already too hard for them to bury you, so they would leave you under a thin scattering of rocks, for the foxes.