Winston’s War (66 page)

“What has that club-footed degenerate got to do with me?”

“Winston, Winston,” Wilson sighed, intervening again as patronizingly as he could. “Think about it. Out of Government you were Neville's fiercest critic. In Government you have been his biggest thorn. You are the country's most ambitious and, many would say, most reckless politician. The makings of a dictator—even some of your own Admiralty staff say so. You send a renowned opponent of the Prime Minister abroad to buy German arms—without discussing it with any of your colleagues first.”

“Action! Action this day!”

“Yes. But you can see how it might look. Wouldn't need a master of propaganda like Goebbels to make mischief with that. He'd have you walking in the Führer's footsteps before the first crate had been unwrapped.”

“You cannot believe I could be capable of treachery…” Churchill insisted, his voice cracking with passion.

Wilson paused. Treachery? They would know, very shortly, in a few hours, perhaps. Where he had got his money from. But until then…

“Of course not. But others would, all over Europe. And perhaps quite a few in this country, too. The madness of the Churchills, they would say.” He'd been waiting to use those words, knowing that if ever he could talk of such things in Churchill's presence then the argument was already won. He watched his victim writhe with misery in his chair. Churchill was panting, short of breath as though he'd been kicked in the stomach. He hadn't been prepared for this. Of course he hadn't discussed it, but neither had he made a secret of it, even asked the Treasury to pay for the damned things. But they'd been stalling. Now he thought he understood why.

Ball cut through his misery. “If a word of this gets out, you'll be ruined, Winston.”

Churchill hadn't seen it like this before, hadn't even thought of such possibilities—yes, hadn't thought it through, had rushed ahead, borne along by the excitement and passion of war, like a cavalry charge, only to find himself entirely cut off and surrounded. As a young man in such circumstances he would have let forth a great yell and charged, content to die in the heat of battle. But he was no longer young and he didn't want to die, not yet. And not in this way, not sliced to the meanest of slivers by tongues rather than by swords.

“Who…knows of this?” Churchill asked with difficulty, as though his jaw had been severely broken.

“All of it? Only a handful,” Wilson replied. “And Neville has told them all, face to face, that it must go no further.”

“No one doubts your abilities in fighting and winning this war, Winston,” Ball added, “so long as you remember who the enemy is.”

“The Prime Minister is very mindful of your loyalty to him in recent months.”

“Then I am…”—Churchill was about to say “his hostage,” but the words would not come—“as always, overwhelmed with gratitude.”

Churchill found his way to the Cabinet Room through a mist of confusion and despair. Halifax was already there, the Chief Whip, too.

“Ah, Winston,” he heard Chamberlain greet him as though from a profound distance. He heard more words. About Chamberlain's continuing hopes of reforming his Government as a coalition. But also about inevitable difficulties. Of being prepared for the worst—“the worst” appearing to mean any Government other than his.

“There is one point of considerable relevance,” Chamberlain was saying in his clipped, prissy voice. “As we all know, there are some who have put Edward's name forward as a potential successor…”

Even in despair, Churchill found his brain digesting the red meat that was being thrown to him. So, the idea of a Chamberlain coalition is sinking even as they try to launch it. No surprise there.

“There are also some who suggest that his position in the House of Lords would make this difficult. Remove him from the center of the stage, as it were. It is, after all, nearly forty years since we last had a peer as Prime Minister…”

Chamberlain was playing with his pen, turning it over and over. His fingers seemed stiff, awkward, those of an old man. Or was it simply Churchill's mind that had suddenly grown clumsy?

“Quite irrespective of other names I might put forward, Winston,” the Prime Minister was saying, “I need your thoughts. If events dictate that I must recommend to His Majesty that he
should call upon someone else to form a Government, would a seat in the House of Lords be an automatic bar?”

So, he wants Halifax, but isn't sure he can manage it from the Lords. Wants my approval. Wants Churchill to say it's not a problem, so no one else can say it's a problem. Yet if I say it is a problem, I will be branded the most ungracious of colleagues, the most self-serving of men. A man who would say or stoop to anything to meet his ambition of becoming Prime Minister. A man who would…Suddenly he had an image of Horace Wilson. His thin face with the lizard-like eyes was laughing at him. And as he laughed, as his mouth came open and the teeth were exposed, the face slowly transformed itself into that of Josef Goebbels. The same, soulless mask…And he was waving a brand-new Mauser rifle.

From somewhere in the distance, Churchill could hear a voice talking about a cardinal constitutional issue. Asking to know whether he could think of any reasons why a peer's name should not be considered. Putting him to the test. With the Chief Whip as witness. But all he could think of was guns, hundreds of thousands of them. And why a man as grotesquely incompetent as Chamberlain could have presided for so long over so much folly. Why ineptitude had flourished while a Churchill was once again to be denied the role for which he had been born, for no better reason than the jealousies and intrigues of lesser men. The Churchills' fatal flaw. To be too good for the job.

He couldn't give an answer. Then he found himself in the garden, with Halifax. Drinking tea. Being civil. So terribly English.

Thank God it was a quiet day for war. There were endless meetings. The front door of Downing Street swung on its hinges so many times that the doorman told his wife it was like running a brothel in Marrakesh. And everything at the rush. No sooner had their tea begun to cool than Halifax and Churchill
were summoned back to the Cabinet Room, where they found Attlee and another senior Labour figure, Greenwood, sitting opposite the Prime Minister. Few formalities, no small-talk. Chamberlain stiffened. “Will you serve in coalition under me?”

“No,” came the blunt reply.

“Why not?” Chamberlain was hurt, unaccustomed to the lack of subtlety.

“Because we don't like you, Mr. Chamberlain. We detest your leadership, think it's been evil,” they said.

In other circumstances, Churchill might have enjoyed this joust, but not now. There could be only one winner of this tumble. Halifax.

The Labour Party was a beast burdened by its own overdeveloped sense of fair play. Revolution had to be pursued strictly by the rule book; after all, if you were going to ransack the pockets of the rich, it was only fair that it be carried out in a systematic and orderly fashion. So the Labour leaders informed Chamberlain that they were only giving their personal opinions, and they would have to consult their party executive for a formal decision. By chance, the executive was gathering in Bournemouth for the start of the party's annual conference. “But take it from me,” Attlee said, “Hell will freeze before they agree to serve under you.”

“Then someone else, perhaps,” Chamberlain had offered mournfully.

It was gone seven before Churchill and Chamberlain found themselves alone. How rarely, Churchill thought, that they had ever been alone, man to man. “Neville, we must speak. This nonsense about the rifles,” he began, but Chamberlain's hand waved him into silence—no need to explain, no desire for an explanation, either.

The Prime Minister expressed his sorrow for the confusion: “You must see how this might be made to look, Winston. But I for my part have never had cause to doubt where your loyalties lie.”

“Neville, something I must ask. All this has been a rude shock. Such an unexpected blow. But still…If events were to conspire to propel my name to the fore once more as your successor, would you stand in my way—refuse to recommend my name to His Majesty?”

“Why, of course not,” Chamberlain lied. “But I'm afraid the control of events is now out of my hands. The general view is that the Labour Party must be brought in around the Cabinet table and they have already made it clear they will not tolerate me. I fear they will say much the same about you. You gave them such a terrible pasting in the House last night, your mockery is still ringing in their ears.”

“All that I did, I did in your name, Neville.”

“And for that you have my undying gratitude. But tonight, Winston, it seems that we shall both be sitting alongside our fathers. Men of broken dreams.”

In every corner, in every crevice of political life that night, there was conspiracy. At the Carlton Club, at the Beefsteak and Travelers, in both Houses of Parliament, in all the salons and saloons of Westminster, they plotted and argued until it became clear that Chamberlain was already as good as gone. Yet who was to replace him?

The name of Lloyd George was mentioned in some quarters, but only to be quickly dismissed as too absurdly romantic. In any event he was too old. Some talked, too, of Leo Amery, but only his friends. The clear popular choice was Churchill, the man of the people whose pugnacity had persuaded a nation to fight the war and whose words had given them the will to win it. Yes, Churchill was undoubtedly the people's choice, but it was not the people who would decide. At the end of the matter it would be the voices of no more than a hundred men that would be decisive, men of authority and power—and all of whom, it seemed, had at one time or another been crossed by Winston Churchill.

The Conservative Party were traditionalists, men who put form before substance. They would not forget that as a young man Churchill had deserted them and joined Lloyd George and his Liberals, and even in his old age he still hadn't lost his passion for showering them in mud.

Many in the Labour Party, too, remembered the long and tortuous route of Churchill's career. The Home Secretary who had sent in troops to break the General Strike. The Chancellor of the Exchequer who had returned the country to the gold standard and so helped bring hunger to the doorstep of millions. The imperialist, the instinctive parliamentary pugilist. The man who couldn't meet a Socialist without raising his kneecap in welcome. The man they feared. There were those in the Labour Party who loathed the thought of an hereditary aristocrat like Halifax taking the reins, yet on reflection—not all of it sober—many of them concluded it would perhaps be excellent if the Tories had a Prime Minister locked up in the Lords. Yes, let the Tories leap back a hundred years, and leave the future to Socialism.

Joe Kennedy, too, was part of the piece. He could be seen in his chauffeur-driven car circling Fleet Street with a bottle of iced champagne under his arm, muttering the name of Halifax in every editorial ear. Don't risk Winston, he warned, and don't expect America to pull your fingers out of the fire…

All these voices were raised for only one purpose—to recommend to His Majesty, King George, someone whom at his pleasure he might ask to become Prime Minister. But, when it came to it, George wasn't very interested in their recommendation. He'd already made up his mind. If his good friend Chamberlain had to lay down the seals of office, then he knew who he wanted to pick them up. His still greater friend, Edward Halifax.

The King and noble courtier met, by arrangement, that evening in the gardens of Buckingham Palace as Halifax walked
on his way back home. No one else to see, entirely private. One friend to another.

“Edward, I think the time has come.”

“In all honesty, sir, I seem to be less certain about the matter than almost anyone I speak to.”

“You are too modest.”

“You know me better than that.”

“Then what?”

“It's simply…I'm not sure I'm up to the task.”

“What? Of being Prime Minister? A man of your experience?”

“Oh, being Prime Minister would be a joy, an honor, a task I would embrace with relish, but we are talking of something quite different.”

“Different?”

“Being a war leader, sir. I hate war. I don't understand its means and I'm confused by its morality. For all his faults, I believe Winston might be the man.”

“Because he has no morality whatsoever!”

“Perhaps. But morally these are the most mean of times. And Winston has a burning desire inside to do the job while I… I burn inside with uncertainty.”

“Good grief, Edward, you're a man who ruled India as Viceroy. Who's become one of the greatest Foreign Secretaries of all time. Who has my trust and the trust of all decent men. I can think of no one better to lead us through these times.”

“But even so…”

“Duty, Edward. We cannot shrug off our duty, no matter how at times we might wish otherwise. Your duty, Edward, is much like mine…” A pause. “Anyway, there are other considerations.”

“Such as?”

“How the devil could you tolerate serving under that man?”

Burgess was beginning to panic. Ever since he had left Mac's chair, he'd spent the hours scurrying around Westminster,
lurking in its many corners and listening to the sounds of history being rearranged. Even a deaf man could hear the pieces beginning to fall off the Chamberlain Government, but you needed a keener ear to detect the stirrings of what might replace it. The Whip in Mac's chair had evidently meant it—over his dead body—and everywhere bodies were being piled into the breach to prevent the advance of Winston Churchill. His unsound judgment, his undeniable failures, and above all the fact that he was not “one of us.” Churchill owed most of them nothing. And that's precisely what they feared they would get.

As the day lengthened and the speculation was reinforced by alcohol and uncertainty, so their insecurities grew more lurid. By early evening, Burgess found himself in the Strangers' Bar listening to a journalist who was proclaiming to all around that Churchill's father hadn't died of syphilis at all but from some inherited condition of madness that had been handed down to his son. It was why all his appetites were indulged to excess—why he drank, why he gambled, why he prowled the Admiralty late at night, dragging the Chiefs of Staff behind him, why his notorious temper was growing ever more corrosive, and why Clemmie had left him. Yes, at this decisive juncture in Churchill's life, even his loyal wife had fled. Where she was, no one seemed to know, and if anyone had heard that her brother-in-law was dying and she had gone to sit by his deathbed, then none cared to say so. They believed such nonsense largely because they wanted to. And because in so much of it there was an acorn of truth. Churchill had never been an easy bedfellow.