After a buss on the cheek, Winston settles into the chair across from me, and Grace and Jock take the remaining seats. Jock holds his pen and paper, ready to take notes as usual, but he looks visibly uncomfortable, and I wonder if he’s expecting me to reveal the overheard conversation. I do nothing to assuage his unfounded fears.
The maid pours tea and offers the cakes Mrs. Landemare manages to make with rationed wartime ingredients supplemented by our farm at Chartwell. We spend a few quiet moments enjoying these indulgences until Winston interjects, “So what’s this all about, Clemmie?”
“I am delighted you asked, Winston.” I nod to Grace, who distributes the plans we’ve drafted.
Before I speak, I take a page from Winston’s own book on delivering speeches by pausing dramatically. Only then do I begin. “Winston, if we are to win this fight against the abominable Nazis, we will have to enlist all of Britain’s citizens. I am not suggesting that women stand alongside men in the trenches or fly beside them in the air. But we need vast numbers to serve in supportive, administrative, and manufacturing capacities, and there are not enough men to fill the thousands and thousands of roles that will be necessary. But we can meet these numbers if we use women. They can serve in administrative capacities in fighting units, staff armament factories, help build equipment, run farms, and, in limited capacities, could fill military roles such as the operation of antiaircraft batteries.”
I race on to my next point before Winston can mount any objections. “I know that various parts of the government have begun to fill certain roles with women, as they did in the Great War.” I nod to the papers laid before him by Grace. “In those pages, I have laid out the vast gap in the necessary numbers, a gap that will grow wider and wider as this war progresses and we send more and more men into the breach. We can fill that gap if we appeal to women. They are every bit as worried about the war as men, and they have every bit as much to lose. Winston, the wolves are at the door, and the women must help defend us. I want you not only to help plant the seed with the governmental powers that be and approve supplications made to you in this regard, but also to begin the process of inviting the women to join in this war.”
Winston is silent. I know this means that he is either moved by my presentation or about to explode. I take a slow sip of my tea and wait. If he does not detonate in the next minute, then I’ve won the point. He lifts up the papers and skims them as I watch the clock.
The minute passes, and still, he doesn’t speak. He merely studies the pages. “Clemmie, how can you be certain that the women of Britain would react favorably to my invitation?”
“Winston, if you make this call to action, the women will answer. You have promised the people victory, and victory will depend on the involvement and strength of women.” I shoot Jock a pointed glance. “Don’t you agree, Jock?”
This is the decisive moment. Will Jock support me? He knows I have information about him that could damage his relationship with Winston irreparably. And perhaps—a big perhaps—I’ve managed to bring him around to my point of view.
Jock meets my gaze. “Absolutely, Mrs. Churchill.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
October 25 to November 1940
London, England
Dusk settles over the autumn London sky in a bold pink display, and a sense of satisfaction courses through me as I examine the papers spread across my desk. My plans are proceeding apace. As soon as I received Winston’s imprimatur, I began rolling out my assessment of the different departments and then the recruitment and placement of women in these key roles, which had previously been done by men, thus freeing up British men for frontline combat. My plan, executed not directly but through conversations with Winston or well-placed letters, meetings, and lunches with key governmental officials, involves women and girls serving in more traditional capacities such as secretarial, code, clerk, accountant, shorthand-typist, telephone operator, signaling work, and agricultural work, but also in many nontraditional positions such as decryption, radio and air mechanics, maintenance, torpedo and boat crews, radar detection finders, cinema operators, gunnery dome operators, submarine attack teacher operators, meteorologists, bomb range markers, vision testers, and antiaircraft target operators. Even the Special Operations Executive, established in July to engage in the more unorthodox tactics of espionage, has leeway to use women in its corps. Some of the organizations had already conceived of the notion to include women and only needed assistance getting their ideas before the right people, and others had utilized women in the Great War and needed only a gentle prod to begin using women again. I will push them apace to create our very own female home front. I am not alone in this desire, but I am well placed to effectuate the plan.
As I labor to secure these places for women, I realize that the arc of my life mirrors that of many women. With both feet, we leap into life with our spouses, ready to offer whatever skills we have to the marriage and engage with the world, only to face marginalization at some point along the way. In my case, the door to the world of purpose reopened when Winston’s years exiled from power ended, and I believe there is no reason why that door cannot be reopened for all women. It had been flung wide for them during the Great War, and why shouldn’t it be for this war? Once open, I see no reason why it must ever be shut again.
I’m looking for the sheaf of papers describing women in the Special Operations Executive when I hear a loud explosion. I drop the papers and race to Winston’s office. Please, I pray, please let Winston be safe. If he has been injured, not only do I lose my husband, but the people lose their leader. But when I push open his door, his room is empty, as are the halls. I run to the parlor next, where I know he’d been planning to have a drink and a private discussion with Sir Archibald Sinclair, Oliver Lyttelton, and John Moore-Brabazon before we dined with them, but it is barren as well. Where is the bustle that normally infiltrates every corner of Downing Street?
The nighttime bombing raids on London and the British countryside began in earnest last month after the Nazis failed to defeat us in the Battle of Britain. Winston tells me that the goal of this Blitz, as people are starting to call it, is to disrupt military production and terrorize our citizens, and after a few weeks of the relentless noise and destruction, I see that the Germans might achieve their goal if we do not maintain the people’s spirits. We are aware, of course, that Number 10 is a target of these raids and have taken the necessary precautions of steel shutters, strengthening beams, and an air-raid shelter on the garden level, but neither Winston nor myself thought it would benefit the country’s morale to abandon Downing Street. Not yet anyway.
“Winston!” I cry out, but no one answers. Does the silence mean that no one is left to respond? Terror takes hold, and for a moment, I am utterly unable to move. I will myself to scream my husband’s name again, and the spell of immobility breaks.
I run from room to room, searching for someone, anyone, to tell me what has happened. Time moves strangely, as if both painfully slow and incomprehensibly fast. I pass by typically chockablock workrooms now completely bare, with papers scattered about as if dropped in a hurry, and as I race past more formal spaces and the family’s quarters, I see no one. All the offices and hallways and anterooms are empty. Not even the heavily pregnant Pamela is visible, and she’s usually omnipresent since she began living with us once Randolph’s military duties—of a low-risk sort, as per Winston’s insistence—required him to be in and out of London. Aloud, I thank God that Mary is safe in the countryside visiting family and friends.
Then suddenly, I hear the sound of shattered glass. Running toward the noise, I descend to the kitchen level where the sound grows cacophonous and the crowd grows large. Threading through the serving staff and governmental personnel standing at the periphery of the kitchen, I see Winston staring around the room. All around him are heaping piles of splintered glass that used to be the twenty-five-foot-high plate-glass kitchen window,
great white mounds of fallen plaster, doors torn from their hinges, and shards of broken wood from smashed furniture.
“Winston, are you all right?” I scan the staff lining the hallway to the kitchen. “Is anyone hurt?”
“No, no, Clemmie, not to worry.” He puffs heavily on his cigar, which I know sometimes serves to mask his nerves. “I was having a few drinks in the parlor with our guests when a bomb fell quite close, out on Horse Guards Parade, and a compulsion overtook me to check the kitchen and have the staff evacuate. I’d just ushered them out when another bomb fell even closer, causing the impact and damage you see here.” He gestured to the debris. “But no one was hurt. At least not here.”
I hug him and whisper, “Thank God for your foresight.”
* * *
The call was too close, killing three civil servants who were on Horse Guard duty, and we decamp to the Central War Rooms, a secure underground complex for the chiefs of staff of the army, navy, and air force and their deputies as well as the war cabinet that had been prepared in 1938 in anticipation of the aerial bombardment we are just now experiencing. This extensive warren of hallways and tiny offices and slightly larger conference rooms—underneath the strong, modern concrete New Public Offices and close to Downing Street and Parliament—had, until quite recently, been the building’s basement, overrun with rats, dust, and forgotten government files. The War Rooms are accessible only from within the building; after entering through the building’s main door, one climbs a few more steps to a guarded, internal door opening to “Staircase 15,” wide, spiral stairs that lead to the basement and, from there, the War Rooms. The space works well for war cabinet and planning committee meetings, and for a time, we continue to entertain and conduct work in the fortified Garden Rooms in Number 10 Downing Street by day and, by night, sleep in the basic bedrooms in the War Rooms.
But as the months progress and assassination reports pour in, this situation proves untenable. Among other problems, sleeping in my appointed subterranean concrete bedroom—thoughtfully decorated with a flowered bedspread and upholstered chair—is an impossibility with the din of round-the-clock meetings, alarms, and the echoing clap of footsteps, as well as the fug of cigarette smoke, and Winston refuses outright to retire to his assigned bed during the air raids, preferring to watch the bombing from the rooftops. We identify a set of offices in the New Public Offices building directly above the War Rooms—and linked to them with an internal staircase—that we transform into living and working apartments with further structural support and steel shutters over the windows and leave Number 10 behind, for now. This Number 10 Annexe, as it is known, becomes our office and home for as long as necessary, and I do my utmost to make the space a welcoming refuge, painting it cheerful colors and arranging for the delivery of our own furniture, carpets, and paintings for the space.
But I worry that the British citizens will not be able to bear up under the strain of nightly bombings. I insist that we stay in the public eye so that the citizens can see us. In between meetings, we constantly travel around the country, visiting ammunition factories, shipyards, and the troops and, increasingly, those affected by the Blitz. The people need to know that we are among them.
But this proximity to the suffering people is not enough for Winston. As soon as the bombing ceases on any given night, he begins to roam through the destruction, regardless of the fact that the bombs may still be coming. Over the years, I’d grown accustomed to Winston’s disregard for his own safety; after all, I’d literally saved his life before when he was oblivious to the danger around him, certainly once in Bristol and possibly two other times, in Belfast and Cairo. But this new behavior—sneaking out after a raid with a torch to inspect the damage personally—is too much. His private secretaries, ministers, and military officials share my alarm, but he will listen to no one, not even me, in this regard. When I object, he points to the people’s immediate needs, to which I respond with the people’s long-term need for him.
I cultivate a few of my own spies, who share these nightly excursions with me. My duty, first and foremost as I see it, is to keep my husband alive. After a failed scheme to have Winston’s valet hide his boots to stop him from venturing out after a raid, I develop another plan.
Despite the sounds of far-off explosions, my sleep is unusually deep, so the hand on my shoulder becomes intertwined with my dream at first. As the hand begins to more vigorously shake me, I awaken with a start. Sitting upright and more than a little disoriented, I stare at the interloper, only to realize that it’s Grace.
“I have been informed that the prime minister is getting ready to inspect the raid damage,” Grace whispers.
I know this means that, as usual, Winston has waited out the raid upstairs in the Annexe—he refuses to sleep in the protective bedrooms in the War Rooms, preferring to sleep in the flat when the bombing stops—and the poor valet has been enlisted to dress him for his nightly excursion.
I rub my eyes and answer, “Thank you, Grace.”
She hands me the coat, headscarf, and boots that I’ve set out precisely for this occasion. I slip them on over my pale-blue nightgown and rub some red lipstick over my lips. When I walk toward Staircase 15, I bump into Winston as he’s exiting from the internal staircase into the Annexe flat. I greet him with a hearty, “I’m all set, Pug.”
He whips around to face me. His eyes are wide with shock. “What on earth are you doing here, Clemmie? Post-raid London at night is no place for you.”
I arch an eyebrow and pull myself up to my full height. “If it’s a place for you, then it’s a place for me.” I link my arm with his and say, “Let’s go.”
He hesitates, and I sense that he’s torn between the compulsion to investigate the bombing and my safety. I’ve counted upon this conflict. Finally, he follows.
We step out onto the night street, and an armored car awaits us. “What’s this?” he asks his bodyguard, Lieutenant Commander Tommy Thompson, with whom I’d planned this in advance. “I won’t ride in this metal box. I’ll ride in your police car.”
“I apologize, sir, but there are no other cars available,” Thompson answers, and I suppress a smile. I’d ensured that no other automobiles would be in the vicinity at this time.
Winston’s mouth opens, and I surmise that he’s about to order poor Thompson to find another car for him. I intervene and say, “Winston, you wouldn’t want me to drive about the city in an unarmored vehicle, would you? After all, we don’t know when the bombs will stop coming down, and there could be firing and shrapnel. I could be struck by metal flying about in the air.”
Without waiting for him to answer, I step into the car and climb under one of the plaid rugs I’ve arranged to be in the back seat. I sit alone for a moment, then call out to him, “Aren’t you coming?”
Grumbling, he settles into the back seat beside me. When I tuck a striped rug around him, he shoves it aside, but I place it back on his lap. “The country will not thrive if you’re unable to work because you’ve gotten ill. The night is cold. You must take precautions.”
“The soldiers don’t have the luxury of precautions, Clemmie. Why should I?”
I ignore his comment, as any protest on my part will only make him dig in his heels. Instead, I ask, “I understand the bombs landed near Richmond Park. Shall I instruct the driver or will you?”
He looks at me in astonishment that I mean to carry this out. But what he doesn’t understand is that I mean to accompany him every night going forward. Because I know he will not expose himself to unnecessary danger if I’m with him, I intend to use his concern for my safety as a means of constraining his dangerous activity and keeping him secure. We can appear among the people and buoy their spirits without stepping directly into the path of bombs, I tell him.
As the car proceeds and, as I’d predicted, shrapnel rains down on the roof, I restrain myself from commenting on the good fortune of traveling in an
armored car. In fact, we do not speak until we reach Richmond Park, and I step out of the car ahead of him. My mouth drops open when I observe that the entire side of a smoking building bordering the park has been sheared off; I can no longer suppress myself. “Oh, Winston, our poor people.”
He reaches for my hand. “That’s why I come out here, Clemmie. To help the people and show them they’re not alone.”
Holding hands, we follow Thompson as he weaves through heaps of bricks, ragged strips of wood, and irregular gray stone blocks the size of horses. We grip our torches in our free hands, and the beam cast from mine lands upon a small stuffed tan teddy bear, smeared with dirt. Releasing Winston’s hand, I reach down for the toy, wondering about the child who dropped it.
“Winston, I’d like to see a bomb shelter. Is there one nearby?” I know that he often speaks with and helps Londoners who’ve just lost their homes or people stranded in the rubble, but I don’t recall any conversations about the visits to the ever-multiplying brick, concrete, and metal shelters used in addition to tube stations. The little boy or girl who’d lost this bear would likely be ensconced within one.
“Yes, but I don’t know why you’d want to do that.”
Lady Clementine Page 21
