The mousy-haired Miss Hall appears nervous and browbeaten, undoubtedly from the yelling and berating Winston unleashes on all his staff members. The more pressure he’s under, the more he rebukes them. And we have had nothing but pressure in the month he’s been in office, beginning with the German offensive in western Europe and continuing with the success of the Germans in the Netherlands, Belgium, and now France. As prime minister and minister of defense, Winston holds the future of Britain in his hands, and he is not handling it with grace. Not that he has ever handled anything with grace exactly.
The girl clearly needs to settle her nerves before she returns to my husband or risk a total dressing-down. Winston loathes reticence and nervousness, even if he is its cause. “Miss Hall, why don’t you join me for a cup of tea? It will calm you.” I simultaneously gesture to the chair opposite me and smooth the skirt of my charcoal-gray dress. Since Winston assumed office and our days became unimaginably hectic and unpredictable, I decided upon a uniform for my days—a well-cut dress in a serious, but not funereal, shade with my double strand of pearls—but I settled upon a splashier coat to top it off when we go out to give the people a lift and a smile when we are among them. A leopard-skin coat has become a particular favorite.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, ma’am. The prime minister might need me. He wants to finish his review of the day’s confidential documents before making any final changes to the speech.” Her hands are visibly shaking at the thought of disappointing Winston. But I know that Winston and I will go around and around with the speech before we conclude, so there is time. He will not be delivering it until tomorrow after all, and not until we are both satisfied with it. I edit and review all Winston’s speeches and rehearse them with him; they must unify and inspire the British people, especially now that we stand alone. It is a role I’ve undertaken many times, but never has it been more crucial.
“Isn’t Miss Watson there?” Winston keeps a stable of typists on constant rotation. He has announced that no orders emanating from Downing Street are to be followed unless typewritten and signed by him personally. This step, necessary to maintain the sort of absolute control he believes necessary in wartime, has increased the typists’ work multifold.
“Yes, ma’am,” she answers warily.
“The state of your nerves is critical to us, Miss Hall. We are all doing the crucial work of protecting our country. You are ensuring that the prime minister’s important speeches are ready for their delivery.”
She gives me a cautious smile and perches on the chair opposite me. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You mustn’t let the prime minister rattle you.” In a ritual that I’ve repeated with several other staff members exhibiting stress over Winston’s treatment, I pour her tea. These key individuals deserve appreciation for their efforts and a listening ear, rather than the screaming mouth they usually encounter. I know what my husband demands of these staff members, but I also know how critical they are to Winston’s success and, consequently, to the success of our country’s war efforts. I make a mental note to speak with Winston about his treatment of staff, particularly since Jock Colville, Winston’s private secretary, recently told me that Winston was in danger of losing the best results from those with whom he works because of his behavior. My husband, so perceptive when it comes to the broader swath of political developments, has long had a blind spot for those in close proximity and his impact on them. I must reassure them they are supported.
Not that I begrudge the staff, but my task would be easier if they had the thick skin of Grace Hamblin, who I have invited to join us from Chartwell to serve as my secretary. When Grace first arrived, the more experienced, urbane Downing Street staff underestimated the modest, unassuming woman from the countryside, and I occasionally heard sniggers about her. After only a brief stint in which they’d observed her efficiency and doggedness, she’d earned their respect, and they now came to her for advice. I’d delighted in watching this pale country rose bloom in the murky London air, much to everyone’s astonishment—except me.
“Sometimes, ma’am”—Miss Hall’s voice is quavering—“it isn’t what he says but where he says it from.”
She doesn’t need to elucidate. I know that sometimes he dictates letters to his typists from behind the closed door of his long afternoon bath, a ritual he has not altered since he returned from the wilderness of Chartwell to the center of power.
“I will speak with him about that. But please remember this. No matter what he says in the heat of the moment, he appreciates you. As do I,” I continue, realizing that I must have one-on-one conversations like this with each member of his staff if we are to avoid a mutiny.
Her blue eyes glisten. I watch as she squares her shoulders and stiffens her resolve, ready to face whatever dressing-down Winston might give her. In her now stalwart expression, I see the eyes of all Britons, who are in need of inspiration for the battles ahead but who will rise when they are called.
* * *
“Winston, you must use simpler words.” I hand him back the papers when he arrives in the White Drawing Room two hours later instead of the threatened one hour. Although he holds everyone else to a high standard of absolute punctuality, he has never been on time himself. The difference now is that he is literally shouldering the fate of our nation, so how can I complain? How can any of us?
When he took office, we discussed the power of his speeches, one of the few ways he could reach and empower every Briton. But Winston often becomes enamored of his own oratorial skills and “forgets” our conversation.
“What’s wrong with my words?” His voice is rising, and I remind myself to stand firm. He becomes wedded to his own language and must be shaken from his attachment to it.
I stand up to face him. “You must keep in mind your audience.”
“Whatever do you mean?” His tone becomes quizzical, an affectation of course.
“Your job is to deliver the truth, even when the news is dire, while inspiring all the people of Britain, not just the ones who benefited from a public school education like your usual parliamentarian audience. If you use complicated language instead of plainer words, you will alienate the regular people who don’t use that sort of parlance.” I pause to be sure he’s still listening. “Do you remember how the people responded to your first two speeches? The stirring speech you gave in May, three days after you took office, just after the start of the German offensive—”
He interrupts. “Yes, I recall that speech.”
“What sort of reaction did you get from the people?”
“Rousing,” he answers, his eyes shining. He’d reveled in those moments.
“And what about the speech on June 4? When you had to rally the people at the same time you had to deliver the news that the Germans had overtaken the Netherlands, Belgium, and France north of the Somme? When you urged them to stay strong and patient while we evacuated thousands of men from Dunkirk?”
I had spent nearly a day listening to versions of the June 4 speech and vetting the language with Winston. I’d believed then, and believe now, that the simple recitation of all the places the British forces would continue to fight created a powerful image in the minds of the people, strengthened their resolve to go forward.
“The people seemed emboldened.”
“Exactly. And what was the common denominator of all those speeches?”
“The simple, inspirational quality of the language. I see your point, Clemmie. No need to hammer it home.” Papers in hand, he wanders around the room, taking a distracted puff on his cigar. He returns to the speech at hand, suggesting one word in place of a few.
Hadn’t I just suggested that change? No matter. I recite the sentence with the new phrase. “That is powerful, Winston. That is precisely the sort of rhetoric that will rally the people to your cause.”
“The people will be despondent at the news that France has fallen to the
Nazis, but this must inspire them to not surrender their will.” Winston and I had been devastated at the fall of France, and not just because Britain was left to fight the Nazis alone. We did not want the British people’s dejection over France’s fall to impact their will to prevail.
Winston reaches for a pen from his jacket pocket. His papers are already covered with changes in blue pen, but now he inks the alterations in red, a signal that we are nearing closure.
He squares his shoulders, an indicator that he’s about to recite the speech from the beginning. This has become our ritual before every public speech and every radio broadcast. I prepare to listen. Again and again.
* * *
When Winston stands up in the House of Commons to give this speech the next day, I stare down at him from the Strangers’ Gallery as I have many times before. I fix my gaze not on Winston but on the ranks of members of Parliament surrounding him, perched on the edges of their green benches. My task is to watch his listeners intently to assess whether we’ve hit our mark, to operate as a weather vane of sorts. As the cadence of his speech rises and falls dramatically, I note that he’s swapped out certain words but that the speech is otherwise delivered as practiced.
He reaches the climax, his volume surging and his words ringing out over the House of Commons. Even though I’ve heard these sentences countless times over the past few days, I feel uplifted as Winston utters them so powerfully in this setting. I see from the faces of the men around him that they are galvanized as well. I pray that the citizens of our country feel the same.
Chapter Thirty-One
July 2–6, 1940
London, England
“She isn’t very tractable, is she?”
I hear the low voice of one man talking as I walk down the overly warm corridor of Downing Street’s first floor. I am looking for Grace, but I stop and strain to hear the reply from behind the nearly closed door of an antechamber that branches off the hallway. Who on earth is speaking, and, I wonder, who are they discussing? I pity the poor girl being gossiped about so unpleasantly; I can only imagine the sort of tractability about which they speak. I hope no one ever talks about my daughters in such a revolting manner.
“No, she’s not at all like Chamberlain’s wife,” a second man replies in a low voice.
“That was a PM’s wife as she should be—rarely seen and even more rarely heard,” the first man comments.
The unseen men chuckle, and the first man continues, “We’ve got an entirely different sort of breed now.”
These men are speaking about me. I know that the public-school men who populate Downing Street and serve as my husband’s staff and advisers don’t care for me, but I never fathomed that they’d be so audacious in their criticism. They don’t have to like me, but they should respect my role and the virtue of my goals for the British people. How dare they be so petty at such a time. How dare they speak of women like this, any woman, at any time.
The men’s voices drop to an undetectable level, and I am tempted to barge into that anteroom and give them a good dressing-down, then turn them over to Winston, who’d likely dismiss them. Nowhere does Winston’s rage flame more wildly than in the matter of my treatment, unless it is at his hand, of course. I reach for the door handle, and as I’m about to push the door open, one of the men laughs loudly. In that moment, I realize that I recognize the voice of the second speaker. It is Jock Colville, Winston’s trusted private secretary. Despite his youthful age of twenty-five, the ambitious, sharp-dressed man—the younger son of a younger son—sets the tone for the rest of the staff. If Winston learned of Colville’s comments—even though not as negative as the other speaker—it would crush him, and given the precarious state of the war, neither I nor the country can take the risk.
But another idea takes shape in my mind. Perhaps I can use this overheard conversation and Jock as leverage in my plan to involve women in the war in a meaningful way.
* * *
Wearing an uncharacteristically somber dark-blue coat, I keep a steady clip as I stride toward the makeshift stage that the navy hastily constructed at the harbor for this occasion. As Winston cannot attend the christening of this vessel, he’d asked that I serve in his stead. Instead of checking my schedule to see if I had availability, I seized the opportunity when he mentioned it and then suggested to Winston over a private dinner that Jock might be the perfect person to serve as my escort for public appearances when he was otherwise engaged. Winston agreed.
Jock, nattily dressed as always in a charcoal-gray pin-striped suit, scrambles to match my pace, as I’d hoped. I am aware this makes him appear strained in his ability to move at my speed, and I enjoy listening to his labored breath. As I mount the stairs to the stage, the naval officers and their men cheer, cries that grow almost deafening as I break the champagne bottle on the ship’s prow. I glance back to make sure Jock is listening to the crowds.
In the ride back to Downing Street, Jock seethes at the task he’s been asked to do today. His expression alone tells me what I suspected—that he believes chaperoning the prime minister’s wife is beneath a senior aide such as himself. I orchestrated his attendance not to punish him for his words about me, although I was sorely tempted, but to extract valuable support, which I will need in the days to come.
“Winston and I have decided that you will accompany me to these sorts of events when he is unavailable,” I say, although it is not precisely true. And then I patiently wait for the reaction I know will come.
The young man almost snorts in derision and then, after a pause, announces, “I believe that it is a job more suited to your own secretary, ma’am, as she may be able to provide you with the sort of conversations you might like, focused upon more appropriate topics, like the arts.” He squares his shoulders and says, as if my gender has caused me to forget, “I am, in fact, the prime minister’s private secretary, and my focus is war. I don’t have the time to keep abreast of the cultural events about which you might be more familiar.”
This is the reaction I expected. In fact, it is the precise reaction upon which I’d depended. “You give yourself airs if you object to assisting the prime minister’s wife, Jock. We are all doing the important work of our country,” I say calmly and then add, “And, in case you haven’t noticed, I prefer to discuss politics and the intricacies of our wartime challenges above all else.”
“You are an unusual woman in that regard. I suppose, ma’am, that is because your husband is the prime minister,” he concedes dismissively.
The serene facade I’d been carefully maintaining begins to shatter, and my voice rises as if rebelling against my will. I must keep it under control if I am to be successful. “You would be mistaken if you believe that the only reason I am well versed in politics and military developments is because of my husband’s position. Every single citizen of this country—women included—has necessarily become immersed in this war. And winning this war will require every single citizen of this country, women included.”
“Excuse me for questioning you, ma’am, but won’t it be our soldiers who win this war for us, along with the leaders, like your husband, who direct those soldiers in battle?”
“Oh really, Jock? Who will do all the necessary work of war while all the men are fighting as soldiers?” I am so furious that I could slap this arrogant, cocksure young man, but that simply wouldn’t do for the prime minister’s wife, even though it is fully justified. And it would undermine my plan. “Who will manufacture the weaponry that these soldiers will need for the battles? Who will plow the fields to make the food that the soldiers will need to sustain them? Who will build the ships, the tanks, and the airplanes while the men are fighting? Who will care for the wounded so that they might return to the war?”
He grows quiet, and his arrogant expression fades. As his gaze moves from my face to the floor of the automobile, he looks unbearably young. And he does not speak.
/> “You don’t have any answer to my questions, Jock? How unlike you not to be ready with a quip. I’ll help you with the answer. It is, of course, the women.” I inhale deeply to maintain my composure. “But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by your perspective, Jock. After all, I heard your opinion of me and your views on women generally when I overheard your conversation three days ago.”
I hear a sharp intake of breath as he realizes what I know. “Ma’am, it wasn’t me that made those remarks.”
I refuse to look at him as I reply. “No, but I didn’t hear you defend me either.”
Peering out the window, I’m surprised to see that we have already arrived at Downing Street. The driver races to open my door, and without a glance back at Jock, I step out of the car. I don’t need to see his face to envision his expression, undoubtedly a blend of shock and fear. A wide smile spreads across my face as I step into Number 10; I have laid the foundation of my plan.
* * *
Later that afternoon, I wait for Winston and Jock to arrive. Our meeting was set for two o’clock, and in anticipation and perhaps as a lure, I have asked our cook to prepare a sumptuous afternoon tea. Because I understand well the importance of food to Winston’s well-being, I’d lured the indomitable Mrs. Landemare to Downing Street and its Annexe; she had been trained by her husband, the former French chef at the Ritz, and her cooking for us at house parties at Chartwell had been exquisite. Grace sits alongside me, and as we check the clock, we review the documents we’ve prepared. In order for this endeavor to be successful, it is imperative that I paint a clear and compelling picture of my vision for Winston, complete with supporting documentation. From our early years in which suffragette issues divided us, I know I may face resistance, so I must present him with a thoroughly supported position that he has no choice but to accept.
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