Target Churchill

by Warren Adler

  Churchill felt a brief flash of anger at the imagined conversation.

  Well, I’ll have a message for him to take back to dear Alex.

  He could not abide pity. His countrymen had rejected him and the Conservative Party after the stunning victory over Hitler. As leader of the opposition, he was merely a voice now, powerless, whining, and ineffective. So much for gratitude! But hadn’t he been rejected many times before?

  For some reason, the image of that old bull at that Royal Agricultural Show that he had opened at Kelso years ago when he was an MP for Dundee flashed into his mind; this huge Aberdeen-Angus bull called Canute had been paraded in front of the assemblage. His career as stud was over. He was a spent force now, a relic, just another old bull to be sent out to pasture.

  Odd, these memories…. Not old Winston! he thought, pugnaciously.

  But then, Churchill reminded himself, he couldn’t take it out on dear Alex who had gone to great lengths to find this vacation villa in Italy. Besides, it was better than being in London, where every street or square seemed to remind him of some critical moment in the recent war.

  When he had moved out of 10 Downing Street in July, the head of the Savoy Group of Hotels had graciously let him use his personal suite at Claridge’s when he was in London. Unfortunately, the suite had a balcony. One night, when he was unable to sleep, he had walked out on that balcony. For a brief moment, he felt the urge to jump. He could not believe that his depression had reached that point, and it frightened him. He vacated the suite the next day, switching to one that did not have a balcony.

  He called these fits of melancholy his “black dog”—oppressive, deep depression that filled him with ennui and self-loathing. Any attempt by Clementine or anyone else to lift him from his morass was resented and met with hostility. His aide, Brendan Bracken, once asked him why he called it his “black dog.” He had answered that dog spelled backward is God—it is the opposite of God, it is hell, a black hell.

  He had said, “Brendan, if death is black velvet, depression is a prickly black.”

  It wasn’t simply the Labour victory, which was bad enough, but it was the size of their victory that was so humiliating and appalling. He was entitled to his black dog. Besides, he had had a premonition. It had come to him in a dream and he had awakened with his pajamas soaked with perspiration.

  In the dream, he was lying in a hospital bed. He could not move. Suddenly, a white-coated attendant slowly pulled a white sheet over his head. He had little trouble interpreting the dream.

  When the early returns were broadcast on BBC, Clementine had tried her best to console him.

  “Winston, perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.”

  “If so,” he had shot back, “it’s certainly well disguised.”

  Attlee of all people! It gnawed at him. Actually, he liked the man. He had been a loyal lieutenant in the wartime coalition. The problem was deeper than just a lost election. The fate of Great Britain was in the balance. Men like Ernest Bevin and Herbert Morrison and their fellow trade union Marxists did not understand the true depth of Stalin’s ambition. He had personally taken the measure of the man and his cohorts. Soon the Soviet Union would own Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the entire Eastern Europe. Perhaps even Germany would fall into its orbit as well, and Greece and Italy, and more—perhaps the world. Shades of Adolph.

  Didn’t they understand that socialism in Moscow was a different beast from socialism in London? It was predatory, not some utopian dream of social engineering but tyranny imposed by brutality. Russian Marxists believed in revolution by tyranny. They had contempt for free elections or any other freedoms—like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion. He knew in his gut what Stalin wanted: a Soviet Union that embraced the world.

  He had been appalled with the Herald and The Guardian characterizing Stalin as some warm and cuddly teddy bear. Roosevelt, too, was certain he had charmed Stalin into a true friend. Did the Labour stalwarts and Franklin really believe that?

  There, he told himself.

  There was the seed of his discontent. There were the thoughts that stole his sleep. There was the origin of his black dog. It was neither disappointment nor rejection nor the futile expectation of his countrymen’s gratitude but fear, not merely for his country, for the world. With that epiphany, he fell, at last, into a deep slumber.

  It was not the cold dawn light that awakened him but the “old man’s alarm”—the clock in his bladder. For him to sleep for eight-and-a-half hours straight was a kind of sexagenarian record. The bathroom bowl reminded him of the lake. Instead of going back to sleep, Churchill decided to take a swim. For the first time in weeks, he felt the first tremulous signs of recovery and, with them, the courage and energy to brave the morning chill.

  He remembered the code flashed on every Royal Navy ship in the sea when he became First Lord of the Admiralty for the second time in 1939: Winston is Back!

  Perhaps, he thought, perhaps.

  He donned his old-fashioned, navy, striped bathing suit that covered his chest and made him look like a bloated balloon. Actually, he preferred no suit at all, but chuckling at the thought, decided to avoid alarming the neighbors who might think some odd blimp-like sea monster had polluted the lake.

  He cautiously descended the steps of the escarpment that bordered the lake. At the lapping edge of Como’s waters, he offered a toe, then a foot. He shivered. Then, shouting lines from Macbeth—“Let me screw my courage to the sticking place!”—in he plunged.

  Soon the cold became bearable, and he lay on his back to capture the visual joy of the early-morning sunrise. He knew it was a day of decision, and this brief respite in the lake would, he was certain, clear his mind of the cobwebs of depression.

  As he was about to finish his swim, Churchill stopped floating and submerged himself, walking along the pebbly and sandy bottom, then rising to the top. It reminded him of the time he had explained to an acquaintance about the disaster at Gallipoli, his resignation from public life, and the trauma he suffered afterwards.

  He had likened it to the experience of a deep-sea diver who has the shakes when he returns to dry land. As he climbed up the cliff steps, he felt no shakes or shivers. Exhilaration was fast replacing ennui and discouragement.

  He was reminded, too, of what he had read about those river baptisms they have in the American South. The preacher dunks you and you come to the surface hearing hallelujahs from the congregation. He wanted to cry out his own version of hallelujah and a rousing Hip, Hip Hooray.

  As he mounted the slope to the villa, he thought of Solomon’s words in Proverbs, “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”

  When he got back to his room, he dried himself and quickly fell into a sound sleep. At ten thirty, Churchill heard a soft persistent knock on the door.

  “Signore Churchill.”

  It was the voice of the maid.

  Churchill quickly donned his green dressing gown adorned with gold dragons. The Italian maid carried in an aquamarine tray, the color of the lake, decorated with his favorite flower, the Marigold, the name that he had bestowed on his beloved dead child. Oddly, it reminded him of his dear friend Dwight Eisenhower who had led the Allies to their military victory. Aside from their roles in the war, they had bonded deeply because of this strange coincidence of their children’s deaths. Eisenhower had lost his first son, Dwight, within three months of Churchill’s daughter’s death.

  The maid placed the breakfast tray on a table in front of the window. On the tray were two pitchers, one of hot coffee and another of hot milk, two croissants, and a little plate of plum preserves.

  He looked at the tray with resignation. He had not been able to get the maid to understand that an English breakfast consisted of eggs, fried tomatoes, bacon, and fried bread; it was futile. But his mood became brighter when he
suddenly remembered what Somerset Maugham once told him, “Winston, the only way to dine well in England is to have three breakfasts a day.”

  Smiling at the recollection, he recalled another breakfast comment when Field Marshall Montgomery came in to find him tucking into bacon and eggs in Number 10. At the sight of what he was eating, Monty fumed.

  “That is an unhealthy breakfast. Look at me. I don’t eat meat, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, and I’m 100 percent fit.”

  Churchill had growled back, “I eat meat three times a day, I smoke ten cigars a day, I drink, and I’m 200 percent fit.”

  Sipping his café au lait and missing the morning English newspapers, Churchill was determined to keep his black dog at bay. Later, he decided, he would spend part of the sunny morning hours painting, a passion that he found wonderfully therapeutic.

  Painting at the lakeside, Churchill wore the zippered, blue siren suit, which he had designed for himself during the war to allow him to leap from nude to some presentable garb in the case of an air raid or a sudden emergency meeting in the middle of the night. On most occasions, cabinet ministers and generals had found the prime minister in his siren suit when they met with him in the underground war room.

  He was proud of his fashion statement, which he called his “rompers,” although Clementine had a contrary view. His recollection of her critique always brought a smile to his face.

  Once, he had called her from the war room: “Clemmie,” he excitedly exclaimed, “how long do you think it took me to get dressed for my meeting with Pug?”

  Harold “Pug” Ismay was a General in charge of military strategy.

  “At least fifteen minutes,” was Clementine’s guess, “from taking off your pajamas to getting into your suit.”

  “Thirty-two seconds—I timed it with my new siren outfit,” Churchill boasted.

  “But, Winston, you look so ridiculous in it—like a fat penguin who couldn’t fit into his usual dinner clothes.”

  Churchill observed the sun as it began to hide itself in a nest of billowy clouds framed by a blue sky. He daubed some azure tincture from the palette and concentrated on the landscape, taking his mind further and further from the black dog that had plagued him.

  Painting, he had learned, offered a different kind of challenge, one that used a different part of his mind. He likened it to a farmer who rotated the fields for the planting of his crops. Painting rested that part of the brain he used in writing by employing another part. While using his hands to paint, his subconscious was working on a speech or chapter he was writing. He knew that while he was creating with his paints, the writing side of his mind was percolating.

  He had his daughter Sarah to thank for his taking up painting. Years ago, just after Gallipoli and his being fired as the youngest First Lord of the Admiralty, he had thrashed around for something to keep his mind off his terrible disgrace. The family had gone to the South of France. On the beach, he had spied Sarah’s little coloring box. She gave him his first lessons, for which he was eternally grateful.

  But painting was only one of his exercises in extending his creative brainpower. At Chartwell, he laid long walls of bricks and would often find other chores to use his hands, especially when his brain needed relief from his intense long hours of concentrating on his creative work. But his most ardent secret personal weapon was his discovery of the benefits of midday napping.

  After a short doze in the mid-afternoon, his eyes covered by a black-silk band, he would awake completely refreshed. He likened it to erasing the blackboard in the classroom at Harrow. It was one thing to use the eraser and wipe away what you had written and try to write again, but after sleep, it was as if the blackboard had been washed down clean. Thus, he had discovered, his mind scrubbed clean after a nap. Previous attempts were erased, and he could start afresh. He had kept to this schedule religiously every day of his adult life.

  Hours later, he heard Sarah’s voice, “Father, your guests have arrived.”

  His daughter Sarah wore white slacks that clung neatly to her figure. Her chartreuse blouse was a striking contrast to her chestnut hair. Sarah was a part-time actress in her early thirties. She had inherited her father’s flair for the dramatic—both in her acting and painting, where she relished the vibrant tones that her father liked also.

  His children were all different: Randolph was a journalist like his father had been; Diana and Mary, like their mother, had married politicians; and Sarah had inherited her father’s artistic side. He was grateful for her comforting presence.

  Clementine had urged her husband to accept Alex’s offer of a villa. She thought the sun and painting might break through and wash away his melancholy. When Churchill had agreed, she had declined to accompany him, sending Sarah in her place to act as hostess. Although she had begged off on the grounds that there were still moving chores at Number 10, Churchill suspected that, she, too, needed some time alone.

  Dear Clemmie, he thought, missing her terribly.

  She had invested her entire life in his career. His pain was her pain, and the loss of the Prime Minister’s office had hit her equally as hard, perhaps harder.

  Sarah took her father’s hand and gently guided him up the slight slope back to the villa. These days, the media characterized him as an old man past his prime, which galled him, but her father didn’t look old to Sarah. Sure, his gait may have been a bit shambling and, at times, unsteady. But the pink face was still that of a cherub, with blue eyes that could still twinkle merrily. She adored him.

  The villa commanded the top of the hill, yet its stark fascist architecture clashed with the soft curves of the Mediterranean hills and the Nile blue of Como’s waters, as if a modern rail station had been erected in marble and then nailed to the top of the hill. Churchill likened it to an alien invader stamping its tyranny on an inhospitable landscape. The villa had once been the headquarters of the British Army in Italy. Before that, it was rumored to be a place where rich playboys took their girlfriends. To know that his large bed had been put to good use amused Churchill.

  At the villa, Sarah took command of the military guests and supervised the introductions.

  “I’m Derek Luddington, Mr. Churchill,” the officer intoned, shaking hands with Churchill.

  Luddington was wearing the tan uniform of the British Army. He was coatless in the hot sun, but his shirt was topped with the red epaulets of a Brigadier General. He was slender and of medium height with a neatly trimmed brown moustache.

  He introduced his aide, “And this is Major Cope.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Churchill.”

  Churchill nodded. Cope was a small, dapper man with black hair slicked into two matching halves.

  “General,” boomed Churchill, “I hope you will convey to Field Marshall Alexander my thanks for arranging this vacation idyll.”

  “Father,” interrupted Sarah, “look what the General has brought you, compliments of Sir Alexander. Some smoked salmon and a bottle of champagne.”

  Churchill observed that the champagne was not Pol Roger, his favorite, but Veuve Clicquot. He silently admonished Alex, thinking he would have to make do. The gift was hardly mouthwash and would serve well for lunch.

  Sarah offered drinks, and the men both ordered gin and tonics. She gave her father his usual brandy and poured herself a healthy straight scotch.

  He knew, of course, the purpose of the visit. Churchill’s views had weight in the general’s circles. He was an avowed Churchill believer and a good and loyal friend. He had been heartbroken at Churchill’s defeat.

  For Harold Alexander, only Churchill understood the big picture, and these men were part of the periodic assessment of his friend’s insight into the fast-moving events of the postwar era.

  They took their seats in the white metal chairs around a circular metal table on the veranda under a yellow umbrella that advertised Martini & Ros
si, the Italian vermouth.

  The conversation mostly dwelled on the ending of the war in Japan and the ceremonies of surrender to the Americans and British on the battleship Missouri. Churchill remarked how gallant and fitting for MacArthur to let the frail and haggard General Wainwright, who had been imprisoned by the Japanese on the Philippines, receive the sword from the Japanese.

  “It wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the atomic bomb, would it?” offered Luddington.

  “Truman showed some spine on that,” Churchill muttered. “I thought he might be dissuaded by those lily-livered intellectuals around him.”

  Churchill paused and shook his head.

  “Beastly weapon! Lucky Hitler didn’t get it first. Now the Russians are trying to get it. Can you imagine? Roosevelt was on the verge of giving Stalin those secrets. If the war had lasted, he might have. I hope Truman has the good sense to keep it out of his hands.”

  “Do you think he has?” Luddington asked.

  “Has what?”

  “The good sense,” Luddington explained.

  Churchill chuckled.

  “He looks like a Manchester shopkeeper, but his looks are deceiving. He’s a lot tougher than he appears—as he has demonstrated.”

  The men waited through a long pause, then he nodded as if he had given himself permission to expound further.

  “I talked to him at length in Potsdam. The only time we were alone was just after we met. He whispered in my ear, ‘Mr. Churchill, I must have a chance to speak to you privately.’ That night he came to my bedroom, and I turned up the volume of the radio and told him to whisper because I was sure the Soviets had listening devices planted everywhere.

  “It was the matter of the super bomb Truman told me. They would drop it only three weeks later in Hiroshima. Then he said, ‘Mr. Churchill, I’m going to tell Premier Stalin tomorrow that the bomb is operational. I’m sure he knows what we were up to, but I doubt that he knows it’s ready for use.’ ‘Then don’t tell him,’ I said. ‘Why even corroborate any information about the bomb?’ ‘Because,’ he said, running a chill down my spine, ‘those were President Roosevelt’s instructions.’ He went further. He said that he had uncovered a memorandum suggesting that he offered the Russians the formula for making the bomb. ‘And will you obey these instructions?’ I asked. ‘We shall see,’ he said. Imagine that! We shall see. I also told him that if he felt honor bound to tell Stalin that it was operational, then slip it in as nonessential information between other items like MacArthur’s Pacific strategy, the Kuril Islands, the Nuremberg trials, the refugee problem.”