Winston’s War (24 page)

Chamberlain stood on his peg, a small, gangling figure, narrow shoulders, long arms, his moustache as ever at the droop, his three-piece Harris tweed suit firmly buttoned. His gun was up, his shoulders swiveling. A crack of gunfire, the wooden stock digging into his shoulder. A high angled blast of shot, right and left. It brought down two hen pheasants. They hit the ground with considerable force only yards from his feet. First blood.

And still they kept coming. Reload. Another savage blast of the shotgun. When the smoke had cleared, he looked down at the misshapen and brilliantly colored remains of a cock pheasant.

So it went on. Feet steady, gun up, swing the shoulders. Kill. Reload. Again! Both barrels. One bird missed, another dying in a graceful arc that ended in a ball of feathers bouncing off the frozen soil. New gun, fresh prey, more bloody feathers.

“All in all it's what I'd call a splendid start to the new year. Don't you think so, Neville?” Sam Hoare, the Home Secretary, had the peg next to his Prime Minister. Now he approached, holding out a hip flask which they shared as they walked, guns broken, to the next beat.

“A year of achievement, Sam, which will deliver unto us all those things the people need. New homes, new hospitals. A Government committed to the highest moral standards.” Chamberlain's mood was crisp, like the air.

“Sounds like the first draft of an election manifesto.”

“Confusion to the enemy, eh?”

“You seemed to have your eye in early. Didn't see much get past you.”

“You know how I did it, Sam? Know the secret, do you?”

“Tell me!”

“You imagine that the bird in front, the plump one, is Winston. And the one immediately behind and up his arse is Duffie Cooper. I find it inspirational. Never miss!”

The Prime Minister was warming to his task as they walked across the frozen fen, and soon he had unwrapped the scarf which wound in a double loop around his neck. He took another dive into the proffered hip flask.

“Arms, arms, and more arms, that's all Winston understands. But unemployment's up again this month. Scarcely the time to be throwing away our budget on bullets.”

“I fear the French may take a different view.”

“How so?”

“They'll demand that we build up the army, Neville. So we can support them if they're attacked. And if we refuse, they'll accuse us of being perfidious allies and hiding across the Channel behind our navy and air force.”

“The French, Sam, the French?” Chamberlain's thin voice rose in indignation. “Is His Majesty's Government really to build its strategic policy upon the complaints of a nation which has lost every war it's fought in two centuries?”

“They're first in the firing line, Neville. They won't understand if we don't rearm.”

“No, they may not understand—but the Italians will.” Chamberlain was shaking with passion. “I'll make Mussolini understand, you see if I don't. Look, Sam, if we refuse to rattle the saber, there'll be no need for them to do so, either. I persuade the Duce, he convinces Herr Hitler of the same thing. Result—peace. I can do it, Sam, I know I can. Everyone will be happy.”

“Except Winston, don't you think?”

The eyes turned to steel beneath the dark brows. “I think as little as possible about that man. Sometimes in politics it's a mistake to think too much. Distracts you from guarding your back.” Chamberlain stepped out purposefully, his boots crunching through the frost, as though crushing bugs. “And I will not be distracted by anyone. If that means Winston is left bleating in the wilderness, then it's something I feel I shall be able to tolerate.”

“They're all on your side, Neville, the party, the people, even the King. Prayers are said for you in churches up and down the country. There's no need to worry about Winston.”

Chamberlain ran his fingers down the barrels of his gun, as though stroking a cat. “New Year's resolution, Sam. Time to come out fighting. No more nonsense. Talking of which, I was reading something recently by a scribbler named Waller. One of Max's boys, I believe.”

“Think I know him. Young, irreverent, inquisitive little shit.”

“A piece he'd written about Signor Mussolini. Most unhelpful—would've got him locked up anywhere else in Europe. Abusing his freedom, I'd say.” Suddenly he stopped and turned to face his Home Secretary. “You've got good relations with Max. Have a word with him, will you? Get him to call off young Waller, transfer him to the sports page. Better still, transfer him to Argentina. Permanently.”

“Hell, you've really got your eye in, Neville.”

“And the sooner the buggers realize that, the better.”

So morning flowed into lunch, then onward into the afternoon. It was as dusk was falling and the first stars appeared dimly in the fading-blue sky that the bag was counted. A total of 818 creatures, and more to come from the pick-up. With five very English and very dead partridges, found near the Home Secretary's peg. They were smuggled into the Prime Minister's personal bag on the grounds that even Turner wouldn't dare tangle with God's personal representative on earth.

Over dinner Chamberlain expressed his complete satisfaction with the day's expedition. It was an excellent omen, he suggested. Not a single thing had fired back.

Her name was Marie-Noëlle, her age was certainly less than twenty, and her naïveté was a delight for him to behold. A featherbrain that had just stepped out into the wind. A country girl, although until recently she'd scratched a precarious living around
the garrets of Montmartre as an artists' model. She wanted to be an actress, she said, had an ambition to be dressed like a diva instead of taking her clothes off for a few francs an hour, so in search of her fortune she had thrown herself at London. That was how she'd met Joe Kennedy, during a party thrown by the French Embassy where her cousin was a lowly
fonctionnaire
.

As a seasoned film magnate, Kennedy had an eye for talent—at least, the sort of talent that got young girls bit-parts in B-movies. The hopeful, hungry eyes brimming with inexperience, the unblemished skin, the firmness of a body that had borne nothing but desire and almost excused her crime of being young, the beguiling curve of lips caught long before the age when they would wither and grow taut. To a man of similar age she would be seen as unique, full of feminine mysteries, an object for adoration or at least worthy of a long-sustained siege, but to one of Kennedy's years and background she was no more than an excuse for dinner at a discreet country hotel near Windsor.

“The problem for France, you see, is that it's surrounded on three sides. Hitler on one side, Franco on the other, and the ice creamers down here.” He arranged the cutlery and the vase of flowers to form an enclosure into which he placed her hand. The first touch. “Where did you tell me your parents lived?”

“Alsace,” she whispered, pointing with a hesitant and totally unwrinkled finger to an imaginary farmhouse somewhere beneath the shadow of her wine glass, the nail circling and leaving a barely visible trace on the linen cloth.

“Pity. No wonder they're concerned.”

“We 'ave the Maginot Line,” she announced, her chin raised, her eyes fluttering in defiance.

“And Hitler has ten thousand brand-new bombers that'll scoot over your Maginot Line like ducks on a frozen pond.” He poured her more champagne, “I shouldn't say this, Marie-Noëlle—hell, I'm supposed to be a diplomat, but at times I have to be a man, too. You understand that?”

Her lips pursed in acknowledgment.

“And I burn up inside when I think about the English, standing in their puddles and looking down their goddamned noses at the rest of us. Get up and fight, they're always telling the French, get at 'em! Meanwhile they're scratching their feet by their fire this side of the Channel knowing it's no risk to them. Hundreds of thousands of French like your own family at risk, while the English hunt foxes and get young boys to warm up their toilet seats. Jesus H. Christ, what a miserable damn country this can be!”

Her eyes flared in concern. “So what will 'appen, Joe?” The words emerged stumbling with emotion, her accent all too obvious—delightful across the crackle of the log fire, but this one had no chance outside the silent movies.

“If we can keep the peace—nothing.” He dismissed it with a wave and went for his glass.

“But what if…”

“If the Brits screw up, if they start a war and fight it on French soil…”—he reached across and wrapped her hand in both of his—“then France will be caught like a bear in a trap and squeezed until the only thing that comes out will be tears.”

Brutal, but it was the only way he knew. He'd never been a great romancer—it wasn't the fashion on the East Side. Anyhow, he'd never needed it. He had wealth beyond normal avarice and powers that made most men tremble at the knee, and seemed to work with most women, too. Yet some women were so young, so foreign, so unfocused, that they never quite understood how lucky they were. They required a little encouragement. To be deprived of their sense of comfort and security, stripped bare until they jumped straight into his bed for fear of freezing. Marie-Noëlle's eyes had already grown wide with despair, and she was beginning to shiver. She was still holding his hand.

“Hell, after the last time you'd have thought the Brits might have learned their lesson. All those battles, all that blood…” She gripped his hand ever more tightly. “But no need for you to worry, Marie-Noëlle. I can help you, if you want to stay in London. Maybe fix you up with a film part.”

“But I do worry.” She spoke in short sentences, rarely more than a handful of words, often not finishing the thought. Perhaps because she had no thoughts, at least none more complicated than could be contained in a few simple words.

“You care for your family a great deal. That's good. Family's
good
,” he offered, staring at her breasts. “You must be lonely, so far away from them.”

“You are very understanding, Joe.”

“Because I know what it's like. I get lonely, too.”

“You?”

“Sure. Sometimes feels like I 'm the only one fighting the fight. For peace, that is. I care very deeply about peace, Marie-Noëlle. I want the ordinary people of Europe to have the chance to live, be at peace with each other. To put aside the old divisions. One family, just like the US of A, not forever at each other's throats. Nothing wrong with pouring a little new wine into the old bottles, if you know what I mean.” The delivery was faultless—and why not? It was exactly the same script he had delivered to the Foreign Press Association lunch the previous week.

“Oh, Joe, that would be so wonderful…”

“That's why I'm always telling Mr. Chamberlain. Jump in a plane, not down their throats. That's why I told him—go to Munich, go to Mussolini.”

“You told him that?”

“Make yourself a hero, I said. But make sure we get peace.”

He leaned forward, his voice rising, as did her breasts beneath the cotton dress, as though in admiration.

“But it sure does get lonely at times.”

“You cannot be lonely. You are a great diplomat, you 'ave so many friends…”

“Not friends I can talk to. They're always looking for the angle, wanting me to talk the Prime Minister into this or that, or telling me I should become President after Roosevelt.”

Breathless—“You would be a magnificent President.”

“I agree.” He flashed a smile and an expensive Swiss wristwatch as he pushed his glasses back up his nose. “But sometimes all I want to do is to run away and hide, like here, where nobody knows me.”

“I am lonely, too. So far away from my family.”

“I guessed that. Why else would you come out to dine with an old crock like me?”

“But you are so fit…”

“I work out a little.”

“You are so active and virile for an ambassador.”

“Well…”

“I think you are—wonderful.” The last syllable was carried on a rush of sweet Latin air, the youthful lips puckered to force out the sound, reaching to him. Oh, Mother Mary, he was in, he was in!

He gazed once more, transfixed by the imprint of nipple under cotton, rosebuds on a dewy morning in spring. She smiled back, ran her tongue gently around her lips, nothing excessively provocative, just enough to drag his eyes back from the molestation of her body. She had him—or soon would. She'd almost starved since she'd arrived in this wet and wretched country, living in a borrowed room at her cousin's, down to her last respectable dress. Now she was about to give a man of power and wealth the most cock-cracking night of his life. Another two hours teasing and, judging by the man, about two minutes copulating. If she played this right, she'd end up with an entire new wardrobe hung up in her own apartment in a discreet central area of London not too far from the American
Embassy, and have access to the sort of bubbling social circle that her pathetic little cousin could never provide. Yes, as far as she was concerned, the New World could come and rescue the Old any time it wanted.

The trip was a masterpiece of public relations. A Roman triumph. Everywhere they went, Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary were greeted with acclaim and waving handkerchiefs. The crowds gathered everywhere, in streets, at country level crossings, roosting in trees and at open windows. They besieged Chamberlain as he went into the Vatican, where the Pope praised him for his efforts to secure peace. Mussolini echoed that praise and on every side the people sang the chorus.

Yet Chamberlain did not understand dictatorships. He did not appreciate that crowds gather only with the Party's permission, and usually at the Party's insistence, that they were well paid for their work and would proceed directly from an outpouring of orchestrated adulation to the nearest bar. Neither did the traveling British press unlock the mystery. They were spun and spiraled until they became giddy and could see nothing other than what was presented to them. They were corralled in the same luxury hotel, provided with cars, ferried through an itinerary so laden with hospitality that it kept them either occupied or inebriated, offered visits to the opera, to the Palazzo Venezia, to any number of archeological excavations, and all in the company of youthful interpreters who quickly became known as the “teeth and tits” brigade on account of their readiness to flash both.