by Ken Follett
A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. ‘No!’ Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far away to hear her.
He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.
She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.
Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of Tŷ Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.
After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.
(v)
On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London; and that evening, Wednesday 8 May, he was in the visitors’ gallery of the House of Commons, watching the debate that would decide the fate of the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain.
It was like being in the gods at the theatre: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his Uncle Billy among the Labour MPs down in the packed chamber.
Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.
The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour MPs but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at him: ‘You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!’ It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague, and it was made more wounding by the chorus of ‘Hear, hear!’ that arose from both sides of the chamber.
Lloyd’s mother and the other female MPs had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge, and – in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness – appealed to his friends to stand by him.
The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce ‘non-intervention’ by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultra-conservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.
‘And yet,’ said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, ‘Chamberlain isn’t really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty, and your mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done – Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia – it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something that isn’t really his fault.’
‘Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.’
Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was thinking that young people saw everything too simply; but, to his credit, Bernie did not say it.
It was a noisy debate, but the House went quiet when the former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.
He was merciless. ‘It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister’s friends,’ he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. ‘It is a far bigger issue.’
Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.
‘He has appealed for sacrifices,’ Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. ‘There is nothing which can contribute more to victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.’
The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.
Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering, sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamour.
He sat down at 11 p.m. and the vote was taken.
The voting system was cumbersome. Instead of raising their hands, or ticking slips of paper, MPs had to leave the chamber and be counted as they walked through one of two lobbies, for Ayes or Noes. The process took fifteen or twenty minutes. It could have been devised only by men who did not have enough to do, Ethel said. She felt sure it would be modernized soon.
Lloyd waited on tenterhooks. The fall of Chamberlain would give him profound satisfaction, but it was by no means certain.
To distract himself he thought about Daisy, always a pleasant occupation. How strange his last twenty-four hours at Tŷ Gwyn had been: first the one-word note ‘Library’; then the rushed conversation, with her tantalizing summons to the Gardenia Suite; then a whole night of waiting, cold and bored and bewildered, for a woman who did not show up. He had stayed there until six o’clock in the morning, miserable but unwilling to give up hope until the moment when he was obliged to wash and shave and change his clothes and pack his suitcase for the trip.
Clearly something had gone wrong, or she had changed her mind; but what had she intended in the first place? She had said she wanted to tell him something. Had she planned to say something earth-shaking, to merit all that drama? Or something so trivial that she had forgotten all about it and the rendezvous? He would have to wait until next Tuesday to ask her.
He had not told his family that Daisy had been at Tŷ Gwyn. That would have required him to explain to them what his relationship with Daisy was now, and he could not do that, for he did not really understand it himself. Was he in love with a married woman? He did not know. How did she feel about him? He did not know. Most likely, he thought, Daisy and he were two good friends who had missed their chance at love. And somehow he did not want to admit that to anyone, for it seemed unbearably final.
He said to Bernie: ‘Who will take over, if Chamberlain goes?’
‘The betting is on Halifax.’ Lord Halifax was currently the Foreign Secretary.
‘No!’ said Lloyd indignantly. ‘We can’t have an earl for Prime Minister at a time like this. Anyway, he’s an appeaser, just as bad as Chamberlain!’
‘I agree,’ said Bernie. ‘But who else is there?’
‘What about Churchill?’
‘You know what Stanley Baldwin said about Churchill?’ Baldwin, a Conservative, had been Prime Minister before Chamberlain. ‘When Winston was born, lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle with gifts – imagination, eloquence, industry, ability – and then came a fairy who said: ‘No person has a right to so many gifts,’ picked him up, and gave him such a shake and a twist that he was denied judgement and wisdom.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘Very witty, but is it true?’
‘There’s something in it. In the last war he was responsible for the Dardanelles campaign, which was a terrible defeat for us. Now he’s pushed us into the Norwegian adventure, another failure. He’s a fine orator, but the evidence suggests he has a tendency to wishful thinking.’
Lloyd said: ‘He was right about the need to rearm in the thirties – when everyone else was against it, including the Labour Party.’
‘Churchill will be calling for rearmament in Paradise, when the lion lies down with the lamb.’
‘I think we need someone with an aggressive streak. We want a prime minister who will bark, not whimper.’
‘Well, you may get your wish. The tellers are coming back.’
The votes were a
nnounced. The Ayes had 280, the Noes 200. Chamberlain had won. There was uproar in the chamber. The Prime Minister’s supporters cheered, but others yelled at him to resign.
Lloyd was bitterly disappointed. ‘How can they want to keep him, after all that?’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ said Bernie as the Prime Minister left and the noise subsided. Bernie was making calculations with a pencil in the margin of the Evening News. ‘The government usually has a majority of about two hundred and forty. That’s dropped to eighty.’ He scribbled numbers, adding and subtracting. ‘Taking a rough guess at the number of MPs absent, I reckon about forty of the government’s supporters voted against Chamberlain, and another sixty abstained. That’s a terrible blow to a prime minister – a hundred of his colleagues don’t have confidence in him.’
‘But is it enough to force him to resign?’ Lloyd said impatiently.
Bernie spread his arms in a gesture of surrender. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
(vi)
Next day Lloyd, Ethel, Bernie and Billy went to Bournemouth by train.
The carriage was full of delegates from all over Britain. They all spent the entire journey discussing last night’s debate and the future of the Prime Minister, in accents ranging from the harsh chop of Glasgow to the swerve and swoop of Cockney. Once again Lloyd had no chance to raise with his mother the subject that was haunting him.
Like most delegates, they could not afford the swanky hotels on the clifftops, so they stayed in a boarding house on the outskirts. That evening the four of them went to a pub and sat in a quiet corner, and Lloyd saw his chance.
Bernie bought a round of drinks. Ethel wondered aloud what was happening to her friend Maud in Berlin: she no longer got news, for the war had ended the postal service between Germany and Britain.
Lloyd sipped his pint of beer then said firmly: ‘I’d like to know more about my real father.’
Ethel said sharply: ‘Bernie is your father.’
Evasion again! Lloyd suppressed the anger that immediately rose in him. ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need to tell Bernie that I love him like a father, because he already knows.’
Bernie patted him on the shoulder, an awkward but genuine gesture of affection.
Lloyd made his voice insistent. ‘But I’m curious about Teddy Williams.’
Billy said: ‘We need to talk about the future, not the past – we’re at war.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lloyd. ‘So I want answers to my questions now. I’m not willing to wait, because I will be going into battle soon, and I don’t want to die in ignorance.’ He did not see how they could deny that argument.
Ethel said: ‘You know all there is to know,’ but she was not meeting his eye.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, forcing himself to be patient. ‘Where are my other grandparents? Do I have uncles and aunts and cousins?’
‘Teddy Williams was an orphan,’ Ethel said.
‘Raised in what orphanage?’
She said irritably: ‘Why are you so stubborn?’
Lloyd allowed his voice to rise in reciprocal annoyance. ‘Because I’m like you!’
Bernie could not repress a grin. ‘That’s true, anyway.’
Lloyd was not amused. ‘What orphanage?’
‘He might have told me, but I don’t remember. In Cardiff, I think.’
Billy intervened. ‘You’re touching a sore place, now, Lloyd, boy. Drink your beer and drop the subject.’
Lloyd said angrily: ‘I’ve got a bloody sore place, too, Uncle Billy, thank you very much, and I’m fed up with lies.’
‘Now, now,’ said Bernie. ‘Let’s not have talk of lies.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s got to be said.’ Lloyd held up a hand to stave off interruption. ‘Last time I asked, Mam told me Teddy Williams’s family came from Swansea but they moved around a lot because of his father’s job. Now she says he was raised in an orphanage in Cardiff. One of those stories is a lie – if not both.’
At last Ethel looked him in the eye. ‘Me and Bernie fed you and clothed you and sent you to school and university,’ she said indignantly. ‘You’ve got nothing to complain about.’
‘And I’ll always be grateful to you, and I’ll always love you,’ Lloyd said.
Billy said: ‘Why have this come up now, anyhow?’
‘Because of something somebody said to me in Aberowen.’
His mother did not respond, but there was a flash of fear in her eyes. Someone in Wales knows the truth, Lloyd thought.
He went on relentlessly: ‘I was told that perhaps Maud Fitzherbert fell pregnant in 1914, and her baby was passed off as yours, for which you were rewarded with the house in Nutley Street.’
Ethel made a scornful noise.
Lloyd held up a hand. ‘That would explain two things,’ he said. ‘One, the unlikely friendship between you and Lady Maud.’ He reached into his jacket pocket. ‘Two, this picture of me in side-whiskers.’ He showed them the photograph.
Ethel stared at the picture without speaking.
Lloyd said: ‘It could be me, couldn’t it?’
Billy said testily: ‘Yes, Lloyd, it could. But obviously it’s not, so stop mucking about and tell us who it is.’
‘It’s Earl Fitzherbert’s father. Now you stop mucking about, Uncle Billy, and you, Mam. Am I Maud’s son?’
Ethel said: ‘The friendship between me and Maud was a political alliance, foremost. It was broken off when we disagreed about strategy for suffragettes, then resumed later. I like her a lot, and she gave me important chances in life, but there is no secret bond. She doesn’t know who your father is.’
‘All right, Mam,’ said Lloyd. ‘I could believe that. But this photo . . .’
‘The explanation of that resemblance . . .’ She choked up.
Lloyd was not going to let her escape. ‘Come on,’ he said remorselessly. ‘Tell me the truth.’
Billy intervened again. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, boyo,’ he said.
‘Am I? Well, then, set me straight, why don’t you?’
‘It’s not for me to do that.’
That was as good as an admission. ‘So you were lying before.’
Bernie looked gobsmacked. He said to Billy: ‘Are you saying the Teddy Williams story isn’t true?’ Clearly he had believed it all these years, just as Lloyd had.
Billy did not reply.
They all looked at Ethel.
‘Oh, bugger it,’ she said. ‘My father would say: “Be sure your sins will find you out.” Well, you’ve asked for the truth, so you shall have it, though you won’t like it.’
‘Try me,’ Lloyd said recklessly.
‘You’re not Maud’s child,’ she said. ‘You’re Fitz’s.’
(vii)
Next day, Friday 10 May, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Lloyd heard the news on the radio as he sat down to breakfast with his parents and Uncle Billy in the boarding house. He was not surprised: everyone in the army had believed the invasion was imminent.
He was much more stunned by the revelations of the previous evening. Last night he had lain awake for hours, angry that he had been misled so long, dismayed that he was the son of a right-wing aristocratic appeaser who was also, weirdly, the father-in-law of the enchanting Daisy.
‘How could you fall for him?’ he had said to his mother in the pub.
Her reply had been sharp. ‘Don’t be a hypocrite. You used to be crazy about your rich American girl, and she was so right-wing she married a Fascist.’
Lloyd had wanted to argue that that was different, but quickly realized it was the same. Whatever his relationship with Daisy now, there was no doubt that he had once felt in love with her. Love was not logical. If he could succumb to an irrational passion, so could his mother; indeed, they had been the same age, twenty-one, when it had happened.
He had said she should have told him the truth from the start, but she had an argument for that,
too. ‘How would you have reacted, as a little boy, if I had told you that you were the son of a rich man, an earl? How long would it have been before you boasted to the other boys at school? Think how they would have mocked your childish fantasy. Think how they would have hated you for being superior to them.’
‘But later . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ she had said wearily. ‘There never seemed to be a good time.’
Bernie had at first gone white with shock, but soon recovered and became his usual phlegmatic self. He said he understood why Ethel had not told him the truth. ‘A secret shared is a secret no more.’
Lloyd wondered about his mother’s relationship with the earl now. ‘I suppose you must see him all the time, in Westminster.’
‘Just occasionally. Peers have a separate section of the Palace, with their own restaurants and bars, and when we see them it’s usually by arrangement.’
That night Lloyd was too shocked and bewildered to know how he felt. His father was Fitz – the aristocrat, the Tory, the father of Boy, the father-in-law of Daisy. Should he be sad about it, angry, suicidal? The revelation was so devastating that he felt numbed. It was like an injury so grave that at first there was no pain.
The morning news gave him something else to think about.
In the early hours the German army had made a lightning westward strike. Although it was anticipated, Lloyd knew that the best efforts of Allied intelligence had been unable to discover the date in advance, and the armies of those small states had been taken by surprise. Nevertheless, they were fighting back bravely.
‘That’s probably true,’ said Uncle Billy, ‘but the BBC would say it anyway.’
Prime Minister Chamberlain had called a Cabinet meeting that was going on at that very moment. However, the French army, reinforced by ten British divisions already in France, had long ago agreed a plan for dealing with such an invasion, and that plan had automatically gone into operation. Allied troops had crossed the French border into Holland and Belgium from the west and were rushing to meet the Germans.
With the momentous news heavy on their hearts, the Williams family caught the bus into the town centre and made their way to Bournemouth Pavilion, where the party conference was being held.
