Churchill's Hour

by Michael Dobbs

  The blue eyes were staring up at the taller Winant, boiling with emotion, willing the ambassador and all his countrymen to draw alongside. But it was a passion that Winant knew was so often misdirected. For the best part of a year Churchill had been bombarding Roosevelt with messages that overflowed with obsession and excess. In the old man’s eyes, every hour was the moment of destiny, the hour when civilization would collapse unless Roosevelt sent more destroyers, offered more credits, built more planes, declared war. The bombardment had been conducted without respite and it had reached the point where Roosevelt often didn’t respond to Churchill’s telegrams, simply ducked them, left the moment to grow cold. Not every hour could be Churchill’s hour. The American President had his own battles to fight—against the isolationists who didn’t want to touch the war, against the leaders of organized labour who didn’t want to touch it either, not unless they got paid a whole lot more, and against Congress where good will was flowing about as slowly as treacle on a frosty day. So Roosevelt had taken to ignoring Churchill’s incessant words of doom. ‘I close my eyes,’ the President said, ‘and wake up in the morning to discover that, somehow, the world has survived.’

  Winant, too, hoped for a brighter outcome. ‘If Hitler attacks Russia, so might the Japs,’ he suggested. ‘Turn north. Into Siberia. Away from your colonies to the south.’

  ‘No. I fear not. Siberia has no oil, no rubber, no resources. Nothing for the Japanese war machine to feast upon.’

  ‘You mustn’t always look on the dark side, Winston,’ Winant said in gentle warning. ‘The American people are optimists. It unsettles them if they can see no light in the gloom.’

  ‘And what if there is no light? Do you simply sit back and pray you will find your way through the darkness? Or do you pick up a box of matches and start a bloody good fire?’

  ‘And burn your house down in the process?’

  ‘Perhaps you are right,’ he muttered, unconvinced. ‘But the Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka is prowling through the corridors of the Kremlin even as we speak. What the hell’s he up to? Lost his way in the dark, has he?’

  ‘He’s just come from Berlin. Our intelligence suggests it’s possible he’s in Moscow preparing the ground.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For a declaration of war.’

  ‘Against whom?’

  ‘Why…Russia, I mean.’

  ‘Then let it be war! War! War!’ he shouted histrionically, to the alarm of the following group. Then he shook his head. ‘But once again your optimistic American intelligence has got it utterly wrong’

  ‘How can you be certain?’

  ‘Because intelligence needs to be dipped in a bucket of common sense before it’s laid on the table. And common sense suggests the Japanese haven’t gone to Moscow with bunches of flowers in their hands in order to declare war, any more than they arrived in China with fixed bayonets for the purpose of setting up a wood-whittling business.’

  ‘You don’t think much of American Intelligence, then?’

  ‘They got it half right. There will be war. And not all the optimists in America will be able to stop it,’ the old man growled, before stomping off in the direction of the house.

  Sawyers sat with Héloise at the long central table in the kitchen polishing silver, while Mrs Landemare prepared lunch.

  ‘But I do not understand,’ Héloise protested.

  ‘Yer too young to understand such things,’ Sawyers responded.

  ‘Oh, you don’t ‘alf talk a lot of tommy-rot at times, Mr Sawyers,’ Mrs Landemare said, peering into a bubbling pot.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The girl needs to know these things, otherwise she’s going to be dropping breakfast trays from here until the gates of Heaven.’

  ‘Well, she’s your relative…’

  ‘My hubby’s relative.’

  ‘Your responsibility, then,’ Sawyers said, reaching for a fresh buffing rag.

  Mrs Landemare’s face came up from the pot, her ruddy cheeks and remarkably broad forehead covered in little droplets of steam. Sawyers was opting out. Typical man.

  ‘It’s war what does it mostly,’ Mrs Landemare began, turning to Héloise, ‘although it goes on just as much when there ain’t any war, I suppose.’ Her awkwardness was stretching almost to the point of contradiction. ‘It’s just that…Well, you haven’t got no mother and father, poor thing, so it’s not surprising this is all a bit new. So, how can I put it?’ She sipped from a ladle, then threw a little more salt in the pot. ‘Great country houses are like little worlds all of their own. The ladies and gentlemen get dropped at the door, and for the time that they’re here the rules of the outside world get put to one side. So Mr C wanders around without a towel at times. Don’t mean nothing by it, it’s just his way. So you make a bit of noise when you get near his bathroom, just so he knows you’re coming.’

  ‘Not too much noise, mark you,’ Sawyers added, polishing furiously. ‘Hates too much noise, he does. And make sure he never finds you whistling.’

  ‘He has his breakfast in bed and gets up late, he has his liking for cigars and the brandy,’ Mrs L continued. ‘Loses his temper a lot. Well, he’s got so much on his plate.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Héloise whispered.

  ‘No, no, I mean he has a lot on his mind. So he don’t stick by ordinary rules all the time. And neither do his guests.’

  ‘But what does that have to do with breakfast?’ Héloise pressed.

  ‘Well, often times his guests—all very important gentlemen, as you know—can’t bring their wives. Don’t want to bring their wives. In fact, truth be told, sometimes they have very little to do with their wives, not only here but when they’re at home. You get my drift?’

  Héloise wasn’t sure.

  ‘The guests are all rich folk, important people, well-to-do. They don’t live like the rest of us. They may have…’—she stretched hesitantly for the appropriate phrase—‘arrangements. Understandings. Now they’re all decent and respectable folk, mind, every one of them, but sometimes…well, you French understand these things. Life gets complicated. Particularly during times of war. The men think they’ve not got long to live, the womenfolk get swept up in the passion of the times, never knowing what tomorrow will bring, and so they…live a little for the moment. After lights out. No harm done, so long as no one knows and none tell.’

  ‘You mean, while the lady guests are in their rooms…’

  ‘…the gentlemen visit.’

  ‘The Walk o’ Many Wonders,’ Sawyers said, mostly to himself.

  ‘Don’t surprise you, do it? You being French, an’ all.’

  ‘And Mr Churchill, he knows what is going on?’

  ‘Mr C? Good Lord, no. He’s as blind as ruddy old Nelson, he is. Don’t know—and I suspect don’t much care, either. He’s got far more important things on his plate—er, mind. So, if two guests have what we might call an understanding, we make sure their rooms are suitable. Close by. Rules of the English country house.’

  ‘But how do you know this? About strangers?’

  ‘Bless me, they’re not strangers. We know their servants. There ain’t no secrets below stairs.’

  Suddenly Héloise began to laugh. ‘So that is why Mr Sawyers goes through the guest wing banging the breakfast gong so very early in the morning. It is not for breakfast at all. It is…’

  “Cos gentlemen need to know when time’s come to be back in their own beds,’ Sawyers said, completing the thought.

  Héloise began to giggle into her polishing cloth.

  ‘Now don’t you go telling me this don’t happen in France,’ Sawyers said, determined to defend English honour.

  ‘’Course it does,’ the cook responded softly, gazing once more into the steaming pot. ‘And not just above stairs. How d’you think I got my hubby?’

  ‘Cook!’ Sawyers protested.

  ‘Well, in them days, of course, you could rely on a Frenchman to do the honourable thing,’ she said, wipin
g her hands on her apron and smiling.

  The impressive thing about Churchill’s Black Dog of depression was not simply how savagely it would attack him but also how suddenly it would stop. One moment it was there, the next it had fled, run away into the darkness. When he joined his guests for drinks in the Great Hall before dinner that evening, his spirits seemed to have been entirely restored. He walked in with cigar ash tumbling down the front of his dinner jacket and Nelson the cat in his free hand, demanding that something loud be played on the gramophone. He chose Noel Coward, tripping round the room from guest to guest, singing along with the music in a voice that was loud and out of tune, but word-perfect. ’In a jungle town where the sun beats down to the rage of man and beast the English garb of the English sahib merely gets a bit more creased. In Bangkok at twelve o’clock they foam at the mouth and run, but mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun…’

  ‘Mr Coward is a close personal friend,’ he told the Americans. This seemed to startle them since they assumed Coward was, as Harriman put it, ‘one of those actors who never knew which way round to button his trousers.’

  ‘He is a great Englishman,’ Churchill responded, which scarcely seemed to answer the Americans’ doubts. ‘When the war started he asked me what he should do. I told him to get on a warship and go to sing where the guns are blazing. Cheer ’em up!’

  He waved his cigar in the manner of a conductor’s baton, causing a fresh avalanche of ash to fall down his front and onto Nelson.

  ‘Coward told me that the composition came to him during a two-thousand-mile car journey from the city of Hanoi to the borders of Thailand,’ Churchill continued. ‘Funny thing was, he said he didn’t see a single Englishman on the trip. Nothing but Frenchies!’ The admission of this patent fraud seemed to upset Nelson, who dug his claws deep into Churchill’s sleeve and leapt for his freedom. ‘Ungrateful beast. Brought him here to keep him away from the Blitz. Think I’ll ship him off to Randolph in the bloody desert.’

  In the wings, Sawyers rubbed his latest scar and growled his approval.

  It was as though Churchill hadn’t a care in the world. He serenaded, he smiled, he kept them all entertained. But Sawyers, circulating with the whisky and soda, watched him carefully. He knew the signs. The old man never truly relaxed. He was always on the foredeck, cutlass in hand, scanning the horizon for bad weather or enemy sails. He wasn’t simply ready for action but insistent on it, straining at every seam and with the echoes of every past battle from Borodino to Blenheim ringing in his ears.

  ‘Something of an actor, your Prime Minister,’ Harriman said, accepting another tumbler of whisky.

  ‘No, zur, not really,’ Sawyers responded. ‘Not much of an actor by any stretch. Particular when he’s pretending to be happy.’ The servant passed on.

  Just as Sawyers had expected, the mood changed. By the time the music had finished, Churchill had corralled his senior military men against the piano.

  ‘A splendid way to celebrate Easter, Prime Minister,’ a general began, seeking to open the campaign on favourable terms. His hopes were immediately dashed.

  ‘Celebrate? What the hell are we supposed to be celebrating? Just the latest defeat, or is there some new disaster I haven’t heard about?’

  The level of conversation dropped in every corner of the room.

  ‘What the hell’s going on in the desert, General?’ Churchill continued. ‘You sweep aside the Italians and advance all the way into Libya, then at the first sign of real resistance turn around and run.’

  ‘As I think you know, Prime Minister, that is something of an oversimplification—’

  ‘I prefer simplification to obfuscation. All I’ve been getting is excuses as to why we seem unable to stand and fight. One bloody German arrives, General Rommel, and the whole applecart goes tumbling.’

  ‘Not just one German, Prime Minister. Rommel did bring thirty thousand other Germans with him.’

  ‘We have more! Yet we practise only the manoeuvres of retreat! Can’t you understand what a devastating message such failure sends around the world? The British Army can whip a few damned icecreamers, but as soon as they set against any Huns they turn and run!’

  ‘I must protest—’

  ‘I’m the one who’s doing the bloody protesting, General! We are on our knees imploring the Greeks and Yugoslavs to stand up to the Germans, we ask the Turks to come in, too, yet we can’t even do the simplest job ourselves. We ran from them in Norway, we ran from them in France, now we can’t even manage a little rough and tumble in the desert.’

  The general was beginning to wilt before the repeated broadsides, but found no means of retreat. The grand piano was digging into his back. ‘The fact of the matter is, Prime Minister, that the Germans have better-equipped divisions. Better aircraft, better tanks, better guns—’

  ‘And better generals, perhaps. Ever thought of that? If this were any other army we’d be organizing a firing squad for a couple of ’em.’

  ‘Sir, really!’

  ‘D’you know what’s happened?’ Churchill was jabbing at him with a finger. ‘D’you know the cost of your failure in the desert? Almost overnight we’ve not only undermined our position in North Africa but in the Balkans, too—and in Washington. Every day I have to go cap in hand to the Americans to beg for more aid, but how hard are they going to listen if they think that everything they send is going to end up disappearing down a sand hole—or worse, being turned over to the Afrika Korps?’

  ‘The terrain is very difficult, Prime Minster, flat and dry. Nowhere to establish a good defensive position.’

  ‘You fall back on your supplies, while Rommel’s getting ever farther away from his. Why can’t you just turn and chop him off?’ Churchill’s hand came down with considerable violence, again and again. The general sighed. Churchill still seemed to assume that warfare was conducted with bows and arrows; he had no idea about the complexity of modern mechanical warfare.

  ‘We need to draw everything together, make preparations before we can mount a counter-attack.’

  ‘Make sure all the tunics are buttoned properly, eh?’

  The general bristled with indignation, but Churchill paid no heed. His fists were clenched, his head bent forward like a battering ram, as though he wanted to fight the campaign in the desert himself across the rugs and wooden floor of Chequers.

  ‘General, let me offer you another simplification. Two weeks ago, I was told that we’d won a great victory in the desert and that our position was secure. Today the road to Cairo and Suez lies wide open awaiting the German boot. Once again we are in disarray and I have nothing to report to the people but failure. I promised them victory, I was told we had it—and now this! Everything we have invested in the North African campaign is in danger of being swept into the sea. You send me charts and statistics and requests for more supplies, but I’ve sent my own son there and thousands more like him. British soldiers, the best we have, ready and keen to fight. Yet they can’t fight if those in command won’t ask them to. One victory, one victory against the Germans, that’s all I look for. Is that too much to ask? If it is, tell me, then either we can find a new Prime Minister who is content to run up the flag of surrender—or I shall find new generals who understand what England expects!’

  The overflowing emotion was partly for show, of course—but only partly.

  ‘An old man in a hurry,’ Winant whispered to Harriman in a far corner of the room. ‘But what a magnificent sight.’

  ‘What was that?’ a voice demanded. They were no longer alone. Fingers plucked at their sleeves and their nostrils filled with a fresh, unmasculine fragrance.

  ‘Are you two gentlemen conspiring?’ the voice continued. It was Sarah; Pamela was at her side.

  ‘Not at all,’ Winant protested.

  ‘Then you are being remarkably unsociable, sticking to yourselves in the corner like this. Almost everyone else here is so dull and military. You’re not allowed to hide away.’ Sarah forced her
way between them, almost flirtatiously.

  ‘We were simply remarking on how much energy your father has,’ Harriman offered in defence, smiling down at her.

  ‘He’s instructed us to make sure you feel at home. Part of the family. Overwhelm you with admiration and alcohol; weren’t those his precise words, Pam?’

  Sarah raised her own glass and drank, a little too eagerly. The mistiness in her eyes suggested she hadn’t the same tolerance for the stuff as her father. Winant looked around the room, but her husband was nowhere to be seen; he hadn’t made an appearance all evening.

  ‘We are diplomats, madam,’ Harriman said, amused. ‘We are above temptation.’

  ‘Mr Harriman—’

  ‘Averell. Please call me Averell.’

  ‘Averell, I’m going to let you in on a little secret,’ Sarah replied in a stage whisper that encouraged him to draw closer still. ‘Diplomats are like women. Only ever to be trusted when they’re on their own.’

  Their laughter was interrupted by Sawyers, who had reappeared with a gong. He gave it a gentle rap and announced that dinner was served.

  ‘What will it be tonight, I wonder? Rissoles? Or Blitz Broth?’

  ‘What on earth…?’

  ‘Rissoles. An English delicacy. Sausage skin stuffed with vegetables. They’re all the rage, apparently. And Blitz Broth is something the Government has just suggested is the answer to all our problems. God knows what’s in it. Bones, mostly. No wonder Pam’s been able to lose so much weight since the baby.’

  Harriman turned to the other woman. ‘I’m distressed to hear that you’re suffering so much, Pamela. As the coordinator of the Lend-Lease programme, I guess it’s my duty to do something about it. Will you let me invite you to dinner sometime? I think the President would insist.’

  Pamela’s smile of encouragement was nudged aside by an overstated sigh that escaped from Sarah. Her eyes had fixed upon her husband, who had appeared in response to the summons of the gong. ‘Enjoy your dinner, gentlemen,’ she said. A cloak of unhappiness seemed to descend on her shoulders as she detached herself from their company. They watched her go.