Winston’s War (50 page)

Oh, but what a convenient target Leslie Hore-Belisha would prove to be. Ebullient, unorthodox, obnoxious, frequently insensitive, openly ambitious, and inexcusably innovative. Innovative—the Secretary of State for War! And always with a smile for the cameras.

And, of course, he was Jewish. Not that Chamberlain particularly held that against him, or even disliked him for it. The Prime Minister's anti-Semitism was not of a vigorous kind, he really didn't care too much about the whole issue, it was rather like his antipathy for twentieth-century symphonies—except you could never switch Leslie Hore-Belisha off, or even turn down the volume. Yet for others, the Minister of War was a white nigger. An undesirable, a man of different orientation, an outsider who had forced his way past the palace guards and had erected his cooking pots in the marble hallways of the mighty. In the words of
Truth
(proprietor: Sir Joseph Ball), he was “a minor man whose most conspicuous talent is for getting his photograph into the newspapers"—and particularly those newspapers run by his co-religionists which operated in the “Jew-owned gutters of Fleet Street.”

He had made other uncomfortable enemies, particularly amongst the Army General Staff. They had spent weeks bickering more and more venomously about the concrete pillboxes necessary to extend the defenses of the Maginot Line across the unfortunate gap behind Belgium which the British Army had to defend. Hore-Belisha said that a pill-box could be constructed in three days; the General Staff said it took three weeks and were incandescent when he refused to believe them. So around the mess tables of the British Expeditionary Force in France, the name of Hore-Belisha was spat out like pips in the pudding. And many of the pips landed on the table of the King. He was, after all, the most senior military figurehead in the land. He had a role, a right to intervene—a duty, even. And the King
would not tolerate a War Secretary who had sided openly with his brother Edward during the Abdication crisis, and who had added error to that insult by being the first to visit the Windsors in exile. Damn him. George wasn't anti-Semitic, of course not. He just didn't like the man. Anyway, George was fed up with the muttering suggesting he was colorless and weak.

So the King summoned the Prime Minister. He complained, and suggested that a man like Hore-Belisha was not appropriate for his office. In doing so, he was out of order—the monarch's job was to be seen but rarely heard—yet what was the point in being King if he couldn't take a view about His Own Ministers? And there were plenty of other voices nagging Chamberlain. So, in turn, and just before Christmas, the Prime Minister summoned Leslie Hore-Belisha.

“How are things, Leslie?”

“Magnificent.”

“Any problems? Worries?”

“Nothing that a few more millions for my Army couldn't sort, Prime Minister.”

So, he didn't know, hadn't caught on. Poor sap. But Chamberlain was not a man to be bullied or hectored into any action he thought unworthy; he liked to take his own good time for such things.

“Just wanted you to know how grateful I am, Leslie. Difficult—almost impossible task you've got. Admire your dedication, truly I do.”

“Why, that's…extraordinarily kind of you, Prime Minister.”

“Yes. Just wanted to let you know. Before you disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“To celebrate Christmas. You do celebrate Christmas, don't you, Leslie?”

The boiler was called Beelzebub. Covered in soot, he carried on in life largely unappreciated, squeezed into the airless basement of
the old school and surrounded by a puddle of coke. Beelzebub had been one of West Bromwich's finest, circa 1890, but those days were long since past. He had a personality all his own. He stood no nonsense. He grumbled, groaned, strained, he indisputably did his best, yet still he was asked to do more. That happened when there were ten degrees of frost outside. He began to feel unappreciated. He had a pressure gauge at the very top, like a Cyclopic eye that watched all the comings and goings in the basement of the old school, and when the caretaker approached for the fourth time that day with a frown and a large spanner, Beelzebub shuddered. The caretaker poked him in the eye, then poked him again and still didn't seem to care for what he saw, so in frustration took his large spanner and hacked at Beelzebub's main steam pipe—at which point Beelzebub decided he had finally had enough. A large slug of calcium that had been clinging for years to the inside of his pipework broke loose and fell into the main regulator valve. Beelzebub shuddered, and then he died.

Which was great news for Jerry. The old school—near the main Royal Signals depot at Blandford Forum—had been requisitioned as a temporary home for Jerry's battalion, and with the passing away of Beelzebub and the lack of immediate alternatives amongst the crowded but frozen camps in the Dorset countryside, his entire company was given two days' leave, the first in more than two months. Five hours later, still in his army fatigues with his new sergeant's stripes fresh upon his sleeve, he was sitting with Sue at a table in the Royal Gardens restaurant in Bournemouth. He'd called to make the reservation as soon as he had heard of the leave, and his timing had proved immaculate—it was Friday, three days before Christmas, and the entire community of Bournemouth seemed to want to celebrate its survival in the Phoney War. He'd got the last table.

So they sat and held hands by candlelight, exchanging lives. Jerry talked of how in the morning he was being trained to be a
radio operator, and how every afternoon he was being instructed to yell and stick his bayonet into bales of straw lying motionless on the ground. He said this greatly heartened him. During the last war he had never known a German to lie still on the ground while a British soldier stuck a bayonet in his guts, but perhaps Army Intelligence had discovered a new way of simply terrifying German soldiers to death. It was a considerably more comforting thought than the alternative—that the War Office still couldn't tell a bayonet from a butter knife. Then Sue began to talk of what she termed her stay-behind plans, of how, in the event of an invasion, she wanted to organize a group that would continue the fight behind the lines. Ordinary folk, with everyday jobs and duties, who would spot the opportunity for a little havoc in the event of an occupation. The Cock-up Club, she called it with a coy smile. Jerry was concerned, but she explained how she had already identified several possible resisters. Harold, the postman, a veteran of the Boer War as well as the last, who could carry messages without suspicion. The lady doctor, who knew not only how to cure but many different ways to cause acute discomfort, even to kill—she claimed to be able to put an entire regiment out of action for forty-eight hours if she could get near their water supply. The garage mechanic who reckoned he could make a working rifle out of a rusted bike.

“People get shot for that,” Jerry whispered.

“I'm told that in Poland and Czechoslovakia people are getting shot for doing nothing at all.”

“It won't come to that.”

“It will if your Army can't tell the difference between a bayonet and a butter knife,” she retorted. “If there's an invasion, Jerry, this place will be one of the first to be occupied. And if that happens"—she squeezed his hand—"well, I suspect it means you probably won't be around any more. That's what goes on in war, isn't it? There aren't any simple or safe options. We all have our different battles to fight.”

“But even so, my love—”

“It's too late, Jerry. I've already got Mr. Woolton—you know, the local builder? He's putting up a new clubhouse at the football ground. I've already persuaded him to build a little hiding hole between the changing rooms—a sort of store room cum safe house. The football crowd would give us excellent cover. He's done all the work himself, poor fellow, and he's over sixty with bad lumbago, so I can't go and tell him it's all been a waste of time and blisters, can I?”

“You are a remarkable lady.”

“You forget, I'm a postmistress. I see them all. They come to my counter and talk. Those who gossip and complain about rationing or the blackout and the fact that Harold was an hour late with the post the other day in the middle of a blizzard. And those who simply get on with things. Who get ready.” Jerry sucked at his pipe, but it was dead, had died as he had listened, fascinated and not a little frightened. “You know, Sue, I love you very much. But you shouldn't be telling me this. Need-to-know, and all that.”

“And it's the last time I'll ever mention it to you, Jerry. But you do need to know. Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

“Well…just in case.”

She squeezed his hand once more, very tightly.

Suddenly, the head waiter was at their elbow, hopping distractedly from one foot to the next, crouching low. “Ah, the menu. Time to order, darling,” Jerry announced.

“No, sir. I'm sorry, sir, but…” the waiter began, in an accent that suggested something south of Rome. Behind his shoulder hovered two officers, a captain and a colonel. Ordnance Corps. Backroom boys. Waste-bin wallahs. “This is the last table, sir, and these two gentlemen—two officers…I'm afraid I must ask you to let them have it.”

“Why?”

“Rank, dear chap,” the colonel barked. “One of the perils of war.” He smiled beneath a thin moustache.

“But I booked. Made a reservation. Did you make a reservation?”

“Don't be insolent, Sergeant.” The smile had disappeared, the moustache shot out like a sharpened pencil. The officer turned to Sue. “I beg your pardon, miss, but we're on war duty—I assume your companion is on leave? We've got to be back in the office in an hour, very little time to eat, hate to do it, but war is damnable. Have to hurry. Perhaps we might buy you a drink to sort of…smooth the passage?”

“I don't think so, Colonel.”

“Well, as you will.” The waiter was bent almost double in humiliation. “I'm so sorry—miss—sir.” Jerry rose from his chair, fire in his eyes. “If you think—” Sue cut him short. “Other battles to fight, darling. Eh?”

“Double up, Sergeant. Time's wasting,” the officer barked.

Jerry was going to hit him, Sue knew that, so before he could react she had taken his hand and squeezed it once again, still harder, digging in her nails until they hurt. “We're going, Colonel, but one question first, if I may?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know the difference between a butter knife and a bayonet?”

“A butter knife and a b…? Not sure I understand the question.”

“No, that's what I thought.” She gathered up her handbag. “Oh, and by the way, Colonel, one final, very feminine thought.” She drew herself close to him, so close he could feel her breath on his face. “Real men don't pull rank. They pull magnificent women. Like me.”

“Well, I never…”

“Doesn't surprise me. Too busy, I suppose. With all those battles in the office?” She offered the most coquettish of smiles
before turning to Jerry and rubbing her fingertips over his new stripes. “Come on, darling. Your night still has a very long way to go.”

Mac trudged back through the park, his footsteps breaking unevenly through the new frost. It had been dark for several hours, and London had an eerie, desolate look in the blackout with only the half-moon to guide him on his way. He should have been heading home, but instead it was back towards Trumper's. He had just finished an evening shift at Kensington Palace, giving some Duke or other a seasonal trim. Not his usual beat, the Palace, but the young man who generally did for the Duke was off to the war and Mac had been drafted in at the last minute to take his place. Mac hadn't taken to the Duke—His Royal Hairnet, as Mac had quickly dubbed him—largely because HRH seemed to be blissfully unaware of Mac's presence, even while he was at his work. At one point he had taken a phone call from a general during which he had talked about “our favorite Jew” and “HM putting on the pressure.” Must have thought Mac was stupid as well as deaf. And it was selfish, Mac thought, summoning a barber on the Friday evening before Christmas, although the Duke's secretary had proffered a generous tip in compensation. It meant Mac could take some fresh fruit to Carol's for the kids. But in the rush to answer the summons to the Palace, Mac had forgotten to bring with him the small can of paint he needed to finish off Lindy's rocking horse, so now he was trudging his way back to Trumper's. It wasn't a new horse, of course, nothing more than a rescue case from the church jumble sale with a busted leg, a scratched saddle and no reins. So, in the evenings of the last few weeks, slowly he had been whittling away at a new leg, repairing, polishing, varnishing, gluing on a new mane—a lick of paint across the saddle this evening and Lindy would never notice the difference. Tricks of the trade, learnt during his
service in the camps of the great proletarian industrial revolution. He'd take the rocking horse with him when he went to Carol's on Sunday. And a jigsaw puzzle for Peter—of the Flying Scotsman pulling through clouds of steam, a new one. You couldn't repair old jigsaw puzzles.

He'd been thinking about a special present for Carol. Jewelry, perhaps a bracelet, but it was time to be practical, needs not niceties—her phrase, which she repeated more frequently with every passing week of war—so he'd found several yards of fine satin in her favorite eggshell blue for her to run up into whatever she wanted. And a modest pair of earrings in imitation turquoise to match. The pair she already had he found too large, almost vulgar, like candle wax dripping off her ear. Funny how, a year ago, when they first met, he didn't give a damn what she looked like or dressed in, yet now…

A funny old year. Of digging inside, unearthing things, of rediscovery. And his year was about to get much stranger still.

As he approached Park Lane he put a white armband around his sleeve and another thick white band around his hat. Park Lane was in almost complete darkness but it was also wide and busy, while Mac hobbled only slowly, and the white bands might give him a sporting chance of being seen in the dribble of light that the single car headlamps were allowed to produce. He waited for his chance then scuttled across like a crab being pursued by gulls, and soon he was wandering through Shepherd Market towards his place of work. Everything was dark, a world of shadows, but he could hear the hum of conversation and chinking glasses from behind the blacked-out windows of restaurants and even a piano playing somewhere inside the Grapes. As he cut through the tiny square between the Victorian alleyways he saw the glow of a cigarette in a distant doorway. A man, conversing with a woman—no, haggling with her. He was
wearing a raincoat and carried a briefcase, constantly swapping it from one hand to the next. Nervous. A new recruit, perhaps. But he was making progress and soon the deal was done. The girl took him by the arm and began to lead him upstairs to where Mac knew the rooms were. And as she opened the door, a brief crack of light fell across the side of her head. In that light, Mac saw the glint of a garish, candle wax earring.