Winston’s War (65 page)

But not yet. And, extraordinarily, Churchill seemed to agree. The previous night, after the vote and hot on the heels of Ball and Wilson, Churchill had stormed into the Prime Minister's office, wafting cigar smoke and excitement, to insist that Chamberlain should carry on. Full speed ahead. No turning back. And why had he done that? What was his real motivation? You always wondered that about Winston. Was it just the passion of the moment, Churchill's unquenchable thirst for battle—any battle? Or was he, perhaps, trying to force Chamberlain out on a limb? So far out that he would drop? Yes, with Winston you always wondered.

Chamberlain listened to others, and plotted his own course. By the time Edward Halifax and Churchill presented themselves in the Cabinet Room the following morning, Chamberlain was able to tell them that he had determined to form a coalition Government which he would lead. Bring in others to help shoulder the responsibility—and the blame.

“Embrace Attlee and his cohorts?” Churchill muttered, his brow creased in concern. “Rather share my bed with fleas.”

“It's my bed we are talking about,” the Prime Minister reminded him.

“Have they indicated they would be willing?”

“Not yet.”

“And what if they won't?” he pressed.

“Then I suppose it must be someone else. You or Edward,” Chamberlain replied.

Somehow the creases of concern seemed to disappear, and in Chamberlain's eye there was no mistaking how much brighter Churchill's brow seemed to grow with the news.

Damn him.

Burgess hadn't made it to bed that night. He'd been trying to drown his anxiety by celebrating “The Downfall” with Driberg. After a series of increasingly lurid toasts he had made it only as far as his overstuffed armchair. Now he woke with the bells of Armageddon thundering in his ear, a shirt that stared back at him in disbelief, and a bladder that threatened to relieve him of the last vestiges of his dignity. The bells were still ringing even after he had relieved himself. Someone must want him very badly.

He picked up the insistent telephone and shouted something very rude, hoping it might be his stepfather, who was a steadfast Chamberlain man.

But it was Mac, who told him he needed a shave—insisted on it. And there was something in his tone which told Burgess that his morning of celebration was finished before it had even begun.

Everyone knew Leo Amery had been made bitter by disappointment, explained Wilson. Relieve him of his disappointment and suddenly he would remember that Cromwell was nothing more than a passing demagogue, a tyrant whose body had been dragged from its grave and its head stuck on a pike until it rotted, warts and all.

“Let's raise his sights,” Wilson encouraged.

“How far?” his Prime Minister inquired.

“As high as is necessary. If we can get Amery to climb on board the others might follow.”

“And if not?”

Wilson had no answer for that. And it was unusual, Chamberlain reflected, for Wilson to have no answer.

So Amery was summoned. He appeared disgruntled to find Wilson present, and discomfited to be facing his leader so soon after his mighty words had come between them.

“I meant what I said, Neville,” he began, almost before he had set foot inside the door, “about old friends and associates. I realize it will be of little comfort to you in present circumstances, but I have never been more distressed in my parliamentary life than having to speak against you.”

Chamberlain steepled his fingers. “Old friends and associates,” he repeated softly. “Leo, I firmly hope that we are. And it's in that sense that I wanted to speak with you.”

He looked through the window—it was a perfect spring day. A day of renewal. As it should be. “We have had our differences, genuine on both our parts, and nothing would please me more than if we could resolve them.”

“Certainly. But how?”

“Not with glib words, not with any sudden discarding of principle—we have both been too long at the front for that. But perhaps by working together, in the common cause, we might yet gain a better understanding of each other's point of view.”

Amery looked sharply at Wilson. These were his words, not Chamberlain's. Wilson smiled through thin lips—he was standing by the window, his back to the daylight, in silhouette, a little bent. A dark figure from a children's fairy tale, Amery thought.

“I hope to construct a new Government, Leo, in the common cause. A Government of all the parties and all the talents.” A pause while it sank in, waiting for a reaction. “I would like it to include your talents, too.”

“In what capacity?”

“What capacity would you like?”

“Depends what's available.”

Chamberlain looked at Wilson before replying.

“Everything is available.”

“Everything?”

“Anything beyond this desk.”

“Air Secretary. Home Secretary,” Wilson added for clarification, trying to pitch it right.

“Chancellor? Foreign Secretary?” Amery pressed, raising the stakes.

A long silence. Chamberlain looked once more towards Wilson.

“Do I take it that the Foreign Secretary's post might be available?”

“If needs be.”

“And Halifax?”

“He repeated to me less than two hours ago that I have his complete support.”

“And less than two hours later you offer up his job…”

“These are hard times, Leo.”

“And how hard will the times have to get before in turn you offer up my job?”

“I'm sure it would never come to that…”

Amery remained silent for a while, until the silence began to hurt. Indecision? Calculation? Amery's face revealed nothing.

“What are you thinking, Leo?”

“I was wondering, Prime Minister, how you could so misjudge a man. And so misjudge a country.”

Then he turned and left, dragging Chamberlain's dreams behind him.

Burgess examined himself in the mirror. He looked awful. “Mac, I'm sorry.”

“So, I suspect, is your liver.”

“We can't all survive on half a pint of bloody mild, you know.”

“So long as we survive, sir.”

Survival. It had come down to that, hadn't it? All the idealism and nobility had at last been shoved aside as the world focused on only one thing. Survival. And Mac was giving him a hard time about his bloody shirt.

“Look, I was up all night wandering around Westminster, watching history being made.”

“Bit like a bed, is history. One minute it's made, next minute it's an awful mess.”

“What are you going on about? Why the hell am I here?”

So Mac told him of his morning's work on two customers. One had said he'd been offered the job of Secretary of State for Air, and promptly fallen asleep. So a reshuffle was in the offing, a last desperate throw of the dice.

“Won't work,” Burgess concluded defiantly. “Chamberlain's got to go.”

“Which is what made the other customer so interesting. A senior Whip, he was, hadn't slept. Like you, in desperate need of a bit of smartening up. So how is our Mr. Chamberlain? I asked him. Been up all night trying to save him, he replied. Then he said: 'A complete bloody waste of time. Party's full of incomparable cretins.'”

“Told you so. Chamberlain's for the taxidermy department.”

“So I told him how sorry I was to hear that, and asked if we might be seeing more of Mr. Churchill. Hold your chin up, please, Mr. Burgess.”

Mac tilted the chin up with a finger in order to expose the neck, and started scraping.

“So what did he say?” Burgess demanded through gritted teeth.

“Not a lot, sir. But thought it was interesting. That's why I had to call you. For which I apologize.”

“Don't apologize, just bloody explain.”

“He sat just where you're sitting. Neck up in the air like a Christmas turkey. Had a bit of trouble making out what he was saying, to be honest. But I think I got it.”

Burgess could do little more than grunt in frustration.

“But I think he said Mr. Churchill would become Prime Minister over his dead body.”

Churchill was taking his regular afternoon nap at the Admiralty when the phone rang. Had to be something important, his staff had strict instructions otherwise. Wanted at Downing Street, he was told. The pace was heating up. He dressed quickly and strode across the parade ground at Horse Guards, the gravel crunching beneath his feet, his silver-topped stick flying out in front of him. Marching towards the sound of gunfire.

He still felt the effects of his amusing lunch. Carlton Grill. A splendid occasion full of dark humor and outrage, entirely worthy of such a day. Kingsley Wood had been insistent that Churchill should give him a little time, and such had been his passion that Churchill found himself feeling not so much imposed upon as intrigued. Wood was normally a man of endeavor rather than outrage, the type who formed the backbone of the party, an unimaginative loyalist who as Secretary of State for Air held one of the key posts in the Government—at least, so Wood himself had thought until he had discovered that his prized Cabinet post had been offered to others on at least three separate occasions since ten o'clock that morning. Through mouthfuls of bloodied beef and horseradish he had grown incandescent, the veins on his temple matching the color of the wine. Churchill found himself in the unusual position of being reduced to the role of spectator, so he sat, ate, and watched the Prime Minister's support being carried away on a tide of injury and excellent claret. He couldn't deny that he had rather enjoyed the experience.

And now a summons. The policeman at the door offered a crisp salute and—was it Churchill's imagination?—an extra broad smile. The staff always seemed to be the first to know. Churchill continued his march down the long corridor that led from the front hall to the Cabinet Room. He was just about to reach for the polished brass handle when, as if from nowhere, Horace Wilson appeared at his elbow. “My dear Winston, a moment of your time?” Wilson had a disagreeable habit of making his requests sound like papal edicts. Churchill was about to pull rank and excuse himself on the grounds that the Prime Minister came first and in any event Wilson was an irritating office junior, but it would have been a pointless gesture. Downing Street was a magical fortress, a castle of intrigue, and Wilson was its ferocious gatekeeper. Not even one of Goering's thousand-pounders could get to Chamberlain without first obtaining clearance from Wilson, so it was said, and today was not the day for Churchill to kick over the established order, not when so many others were doing it for him. Puffing smoke, he followed Wilson into his gatekeeper's lodge. He found Ball already there.

“Problem, Winston,” Wilson began after Churchill had taken a seat in one of the low armchairs. Wilson leant against the mantelpiece, ensuring that he towered over the other man. Churchill, encased in the leather arms, suddenly felt stuck. He offered no more than a grunt in reply.

“Guns,” continued Wilson.

“Guns?”

“Yes, you know, the things you shoot people with?”

Churchill had never cared for Wilson. He liked men of passion, of exuberance, even men of occasional folly, but Wilson was altogether much too self-contained, a civil servant to the core. Cut him and you'd find nothing but ink. “Don't bugger around with me, Horace, I'm not in the mood for it and I've got a lot to do. What bloody guns?”

“Four hundred thousand rifles.”

“Ah, those. Been waiting to be collected for a week or more.”

“Mausers.”

“When are you going to pay for them?”

“German Mausers.”

“Snatched from under the nose of the enemy.”

“Did you ever pause to think, Winston?”

“Think? About what?”

“Why the Germans would let you have four hundred thousand of their newest rifles?” Churchill glowered from his seat. “What are you trying to say?”

“It's not what I want to say, it's what others will say if ever they hear of this…”—he searched for the words—“extraordinary affair.” He paused to light a cigarette, chasing the smoke away with a slowly flapping hand. “Did you ever consider that the enemy might know about it—must know about it? And why they would let you continue with it? The whole of the Western Front is buzzing with agents and spies, and into that cauldron you sent—who? Boothby? Not a trained agent or negotiator, merely a—well, in all honesty, merely a parliamentary crony of yours. A notorious drunk. And, incidentally, a sworn opponent of the Prime Minister. Voted in the Opposition Lobby last night. Nothing clearer than that. And you expect people to believe he went to Europe to help Neville's cause?”

“Some very fine men voted in that Lobby last night.”

“So you say. So we would expect you to say. After all, it's only a matter of office that kept you out of it yourself.”

Churchill's clenched fists pounded the arms of his chair. “How dare you! What in blazes are you trying to suggest?”

“I dare,” said Wilson softly, “because others will dare.”

“What—others?”

“Berlin, for God's sake!” Ball snapped, joining in at last, reminding Churchill that he was outnumbered. “Anyone who
wants to do the British cause harm. Boothby trampled around the German border like a hog through bamboo. Everybody heard him, all the way to Amsterdam. They were waiting for him.”

“With four hundred thousand brand-new Mausers? I scarcely think so.”

“You don't think for one moment we'll get them, do you? We might pay for them, of course, get a few crates as a first shipment. Then Goebbels will release his dogs. Announce that he's made fools of the British yet again. Duped them into a desperate bid to buy Nazi rifles—and why? Because Nazi rifles are the best—even Winston Churchill says so. And because the British are weak, haven't got enough weapons of their own. He'll play it like a fiddle in every neutral country in Europe.”

“You can't be certain—”

“Certain enough to give you Boothby's itinerary for every hour he spent on the continent,” Ball spat back. “Every place he visited. Every seedy little railway room and hotel corridor he prowled doing your business. Your business, Winston. Which is something else Dr. Goebbels is likely to pick up on.”