Winston's War

by Michael Dobbs

  Briefly, the constable set out the case before his sergeant. “Loitering with intent, Sarge, he was. Down at Grosvenor Gardens. Been keeping an eye on the place all evening. I see him go in, I follow 'bout ten minutes later. He's still there, doing nothin', just sort of—staring. At me. So I hang around, wash me hands. He waits. I go into a cubicle, he gets the one beside it. Next I know he's pushing bits of paper through the crack in the wall making lewd suggestions.”

  “What lewd suggestions?” Burgess demanded hotly.

  The constable spread the piece of paper on the desk in front of his sergeant. “Don't matter what it says. Only deviants hand round notes in a public toilet.”

  There was yet another bout of disturbance as the door to the charge room burst open and a man with a thick Irish accent was dragged in protesting and bleeding.

  “You suggesting you aren't a deviant?” the sergeant demanded, returning his attentions to Burgess.

  “This is ridiculous!”

  “Yes, of course, sir. We've made a terrible mistake. We'll try and find an understanding judge for you. We'll also clean up your grubby mackintosh and find some sort of explanation as to why you spend your evenings in a shithouse. But until then, you're nicked. Now—name?”

  So, the time had come—Burgess had to make his choice. Being a queer was a crime, it would mean jail and a criminal record. The rest of his life would hang on what took place over the next few minutes. He grabbed at his balls one final, eyewatering time to stop his world spinning. “You can't charge me. You have no evidence.”

  “We have you setting up shop in a men's toilet. We're halfway there.”

  “And I was halfway home.”

  “From where? To where?” The sergeant had his pencil poised.

  “My name is Burgess. I live in Chester Square, just round the corner. Number 28. I've got nothing to hide. And I was coming”—he drew a deep breath—“from Victoria Station.”

  “What?”

  “I was there. When the bomb went off.” A pause; they were listening. “Knocked me over.”

  “Fell off the Christmas tree, did we?”

  “I was passing by the cloakroom”—he was guessing, a bit of a gamble, but he was in no position to play things totally safe. Anyway, they always left their bombs in the cloakroom. “All I could see was smoke.”

  “And what time was this little tragedy in your life supposed to have happened?”

  It was coming back to him. He'd heard the clanking of bells from emergency vehicles not long before he'd arrived at Grosvenor Gardens. “About half past nine.”

  “OK. So there you were, flat on your back in Victoria Station. How come you ended up in the toilets?”

  “I was shocked. Shaking. Hit my head when I was knocked over.” He pointed to his swollen eye, now red and beginning to bruise. The sergeant looked impressed, while the constable started to writhe like a hooked eel. “And I wanted to get home—Chester Square—but…couldn't quite make it.” Burgess made it sound as though being caught short after such an experience was a matter for shame.

  “You kept staring at me,” the constable insisted, trying to unhook himself.

  “I was dazed. Confused. I wasn't staring at you or anyone else.”

  “But we have this little note, sir. You were so confused, apparently, that you tried to proposition my constable here.”

  “No, Sergeant!” Burgess switched his tone from shame to bravado. “That note has nothing to do with me.”

  “Your word against his. We'll let the magistrate decide in the morning, shall we?” the sergeant offered, licking the end of his pencil.

  “I went into the cubicle—”

  “For what purpose?”

  “What purpose do you bloody think?” Burgess demanded in disbelief.

  The sergeant put down his pencil, looking suitably abashed.

  “I…settle down, and see a piece of paper poking through the gap in the wooden wall. I assume the paper is”—Burgess turned to point an accusing finger at the constable—“from him! I'm disgusted. I don't read it. I simply push it back through the wall.”

  “You claiming this note isn't yours?”

  “I'm stating it as a positive fact. Any handwriting expert in the country will tell you exactly the same thing.” Burgess almost smiled. After the incident in the car Driberg had suggested they swap a dozen or more notes of that sort, just for these circumstances, to give them an edge of deniability. “The paper was there when I went into the cubicle,” Burgess insisted.

  “You suggesting I pushed it through the wall?” the constable demanded hotly.

  “You saying you didn't?”

  “Course I bloody didn't!”

  “Then the previous occupant must've done. And left it.”

  The constable was floundering, trying to mouth a response for which he had yet to find the words.

  “So you say you found it,” the sergeant rehearsed, “pushed it back through the wall, where the constable finds it and—”

  “And starts assaulting me. Next thing I know, this baboon and his colleague are throwing me around the place and beating five types of hell out of me.”

  “You didn't, did you, Collins? I've warned you about…” The sergeant bit his tongue, but the lash of his eyes was sufficient to make the constable cringe. “So, sir—Mr. Burgess of 28 Chester Square,” the sergeant continued wearily, “you really expecting me to believe all this cock-and-bull you just coughed up?”

  “I swear every word is the truth, Sergeant.”

  “It's ruddy nonsense, Sarge…”

  The sergeant drew a deep breath until the buttons on his tunic strained. At the far end of the room another piece of Irish chaos was erupting—three constables sitting on top of a heaving body in an attempt to subdue it. The charge sheet for tonight was going to end up as long as the grass on his back lawn; it wasn't going to be the sergeant's night. He looked at Burgess—the red, liquid eyes, the trembling hands, the crumpled clothing. A man about the same age as his son, Albert. Albert had recently joined up. The Sappers. Bombs that blew people to bits just as effectively as the one at the station this evening. The sergeant had seen for himself what that meant, in Belgium, twenty-five years before. He'd watched as Sappers had crawled through the mud and tangled wire to defuse unexploded shells. It had been like a music-hall act, one second they had been there, the next—gone. Vanished from the face. Nothing left behind but a stain that'd seeped slowly into the damp, smoking mud of a fresh shell hole. So he and Albert had had a tooth-spitting row. Albert was his only child, the sergeant hadn't wanted him to go, but Albert'd gone anyway, as the sergeant knew he would. He hadn't slept properly since. Now he leaned across the counter until his face was close to that of Burgess, their noses almost touching.

  “I have to tell you, Mr. Burgess, I don't believe a word you've told me. Not a bleedin' word. In my book, you're a stinking little liar and a queer, the sort that ought to be hanging by his bollocks somewhere behind bars. But you're clever, I'll give you that. No doubt you'd get a bath and a clean collar and some expensive poof lawyer before we got you to court. One thing I want you to remember, though. There's going to be a war soon and the likes of you won't be able to hide in any local shithouse. You're going to be dragged out there, whether you like it or not, along with all the good men and the decent men. And I've got an instinct about you. Believe in instinct, I do. And it's very strong where you're concerned. It's telling me you'll be getting a bayonet up your arse and one twisting in your gut before you know it, and you know what? I'll be there to laugh at your bloody funeral. In the meantime, Mr. Bugger-Me-Burgess of Number 28 Sodomy Square, I've got more than enough manure to shovel for one evening. So you get out of my station—and don't you dare play the fairy on my patch again—or, God help me, I'll put the bayonet up you myself!”

  He closed the charge book with a snap that sounded like an exploding grenade.

  It was one of those days when the air itself seemed to have grown heavy and squatted on
the shoulders. The breeze stirred fitfully off a green-bronze sea but it gave up the struggle long before it reached the front door of Sue Graham's post office. This wasn't proving to be one of her better days. Her routine had been shot to hell not simply by the heat but also by the ceaseless flow of people that had presented themselves at her counter. The summer season had started with a vengeance in Bournemouth and every holidaymaker for miles seemed to have crowded into her shop. Some came in search of nothing more than directions, others bought cheeky seaside postcards then lined up for stamps in front of the metal grille of the post office section. Alongside them, harassed women waited patiently in the heat to withdraw holiday money from their meager savings accounts, counting and recounting the coins in their purses as they did so, while their sun-bitten children squabbled in the corner by the sweet shelves or tugged at their sleeves. There was also a steady trade in newspapers—the demand had grown sharply in recent weeks. So had the number of telegrams. The bellboy from the Highcliffe had brought in almost a dozen from the hotel guests that morning, and he was certain to be back before the close of play. Everyone appeared to be in a hurry to finish their business, to get things tied up before…well, before the end of this long, menacing summer. Even Sue's vegetables seemed impatient.

  She hadn't wanted to be here, not this week. She'd been planning to go away with Jerry, a walking holiday on Dartmoor. They'd both been devouring the Baedeker guidebook in preparation and had already mapped out every day's program—Sue was good with plans and maps, as good as anyone in Jerry's unit—but then a telegram had arrived. The TA had called him up for a week's training. Their holiday week. Nothing to be done, he had to go, of course, but it had come as a considerable blow. Time was short, they both knew that, and they shared a compelling desire to be alone, to escape the confines of Bournemouth in order to explore each other, to take advantage of each other, while they still could. An opportunity lost. “Harry Hitler owes us,” she had whispered, kissing him goodbye.

  Jerry was sent to a camp near Beaulieu in the New Forest. He kept in touch as best he could. He telephoned from a local pub to confirm that he had been awarded his sergeant's stripes and had been taught how to drop a field radio in the fashion prescribed by Army regulations. The plan was to spend the next few days familiarizing themselves with the operation of the Bren gun, but there was only one of these in the entire camp so the waiting list for training sessions was long, and about to get longer on account of the fact that they'd been sent no ammunition.

  So while they waited for supplies, they prepared for war. They sat in fields in front of officers who instructed them on how to fight the last war, then spent hours perfecting the art of digging field latrines and filling sandbags. They also brushed up on their saluting, and finally towards the end of the afternoon lit fires of green twigs and straw in order to brew their tea and inform any enemy for miles around of their precise location. But they never got their tea. It began to rain. Proper pelted. Thunderstorms of quite enthralling proportions struck all across the southern part of the country and seemed to mass directly above Jerry's camp, which was soon awash. At first they scurried to ensure that the side sheets of their tents were weighed down with bricks and stones so that the rain wouldn't seep in, and when that failed they hurriedly wrapped their bedding in groundsheets and began to dig drainage channels to lead away the surface water. When these overflowed they tried to dig still deeper and use sandbags to intimidate the sullen brown puddles that now stretched across the entire camp site, but all in vain. Their bedding was ruined, their command and control structure was soon bogged down and their enthusiasm swept utterly away. At this point the lorry with their missing ammunition arrived, and promptly toppled into one of the drainage ditches that were now invisible beneath the universal covering of water.

  Twenty-five miles away, Bournemouth missed all the fun and simply squirmed and stifled in the thick heat. The day had grown ever busier as they came demanding lemonade to quench their thirst and calamine lotion to soothe their burnt skin. The telegraph equipment had been spitting out messages all afternoon with replies for the guests up at the Highcliffe and fresh call-up instructions for those in the TA, so by the time it began to shudder into action once more shortly before she closed the post office, Sue was distracted. It took her severalmoments to realize the telegram she had just taken down was for her, from Jerry—drenched, devoted, determined Jerry—after which she spent several more moments chastising him. There was a nine-word minimum charge on telegrams yet he had used only two. Typical male extravagance. It was only then that the words began to squeeze their way through the heat and the collective harassment of her long day. The telegram read simply: “MARRY ME.”

  Proposals by telegram, love on the run, the world in turmoil, every head in a spin. There seemed so little time for anything that mattered. Hitler had the whole of Europe by the balls, soon he would be reaching for its throat.

  Bracken had seen so little of Anna in recent weeks—indeed, almost months, but time seemed to step out faster with every passing day—and it only inflamed his desires. He idolized her. She seemed such a perfect partner for him, showed such interest in his work, fanned his ambitions, and in particular understood how important was his role in everything Churchill thought and planned. She knew him so well.

  They had grabbed a few precious hours and were resting beneath a great elm in Hyde Park, seeking shade from the heat that had become so searing that even Bracken, who was fastidious about his appearance, was forced to take off his jacket and unfasten his waistcoat. He had his back to the gnarled trunk while she lay stretched out at his feet. He was sweating, and not simply from the heat.

  “Something I want to say,” he started diffidently, “been wanting to say for some time. I'd like to see more of you, Anna. Much more.”

  “Will you be busy this summer, Brendan?”

  “Lashed to the mast—but I'd still like to see more of you.”

  “Me, too. See more of you, I mean. But lashed to that same mast.” She was playing with a long stalk of grass, stroking it with her fingers. He so much wanted to be that stalk of grass. He wriggled and repositioned his jacket across his lap.

  “I've got to take Aunt Rose to the South of France next week,” she continued. “To join Uncle Joe.”

  “Ah, pity.” Suddenly he sounded hurt, defensive. “I knew he'd gone. Assumed your aunt would be with him already.”

  “Uncle Joe's spending a little time on diplomatic work—”

  “I was hoping you might be free…”

  “—before my aunt joins him for their holiday.”

  “Ah, I see.” Ever since his arrival in London Kennedy had dedicated himself to the re-establishment of the Entente Cordiale, a diplomatic policy fed by a seemingly inexhaustible supply of young French actresses which led him not to the Elysée in Paris but to a variety of yachts moored off Cannes and Monte Carlo. “He's not on his own, is he?”

  Anna gave him a stare flushed with disapproval—of her uncle, perhaps, or simply the naïveté of his question.

  “I really want to see more of you,” Bracken insisted.

  “You could come to France for a few days, perhaps—but of course you can't, not with everything going on here,” she said, making the suggestion and reaching the conclusion all in the same breath. It was one of the things he admired so much in her, the intensely practical side of her nature, so unlike the silly English debutantes who couldn't find their way out of a powder room without the help of at least three friends. But on this occasion her practicality seemed to raise his hopes, only to dash them down again.

  “Anna, we've been going out—seeing each other—for eight months now, since December”—how strange he was, she thought, to remember precisely how long they'd known each other. It was almost a feminine trait in Bracken; most men kept their memory in their underwear and always seemed to be losing it.

  He gazed at her, on her back, looking sightless towards the skies, caressing the stalk of grass that lay betw
een her breasts, the print of her cotton frock pressed thinly along her body. He imagined himself as a Zulu king looking down from a high mountain across veldt that stretched and undulated into distant magical mists, and he wanted to possess it all.

  “Anna, we'd be able to see so much more of each other if we were married.”

  She seemed not to react. Not to breathe, even.

  “You'd make such a splendid hostess. A grand house. The finest dinner parties. The social and political center of London, you and me…” His words came in a rush, carried on a breath that seemed to exhaust him. She opened her eyes slowly, rolling over onto an elbow to look at him.

  “Was that a proposal?”

  “I think so.”

  A long silence. She studied the stalk of grass intently.

  “Well, will you?” he demanded.

  “No, Brendan dear.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you have a war to fight. And you're not the marrying kind. Anyway, it would spoil our friendship. And your friendship is so very important to me, Brendan. More important than I can say. So it must be no, don't you see? At least for the moment…”

  Rejection wrapped up in a tissue of hope. But she underestimated Bracken—he was Irish, accustomed to refusal and rejection, which only served to make him more stubborn, more than ever determined to succeed. He wasn't going to take no for an answer. She was young, impressionable, so he would make the appropriate impression and bring her round. Leave her no option but to change her mind.

  Although later he was to suspect that, all along, she had known precisely what she was doing.

  Downing Street garden. Brilliant sunshine. A bench beneath the shelter of the shade of the silver birch. Teacups on a picnic table.

  “Masterstroke, Neville. Complete masterstroke.”