Winston's War

by Michael Dobbs

  Then he turns and retraces his footsteps back home.

  Chartwell, Kent.

  It was the season of decay, and the leaves of the chestnuts that stood guarding the Weald of Kent were beginning to curl at the edges and turn brown. The young man had found the drive down from London exhilarating. His open-top MG had nearly eighty brake horsepower—not the biggest machine on the road, but he was able to stretch it on the empty weekend roads and he had topped eighty-five past Biggin Hill. The occasional shower of rain had only added to his pleasure, if not to his elegance, but he had never placed much store on elegance. Although he was a radio producer for the BBC, he was more likely to give the impression of being a garage mechanic caught in the middle of an oil change, and if others occasionally looked at him askance, it only served to add to the risks of life. He enjoyed taking risks. Or perhaps he had something inside him that required him to take risks, like others needed to take drink. Like the Great Man.

  As he turned off the road into the short drive that led to the front of the house he found himself scratched by a sense of disappointment. He had imagined a residence that sang of the Great Man's eminence and aristocratic origins, but all he found was a somber Victorian frontage standing in shadow on the side of a hill, squeezed tight up against a bank of rhododendron bushes that, so long after their season of flowering, were dark and sullen. The front aspect of the house was mean and more than a little dull. He hated dullness. Christ, the Victorians had spawned so many great architects—Pugin, Barry, Sloane—but this one seemed to have failed his inspiration exams and been sent into exile in Kent. The BBC man pulled at the bell by the front door and was answered by a forlorn echo. He pulled again. Nothing. Perhaps the trip had been a waste of time. Distractedly he walked around the side of the house and only then did he begin to understand why the Great Man loved this spot so, for if England had a heart it was surely here. The views seemed to tug at the soul. The house was built into the side of the Weald and before him tumbled thousands of acres of trees over a countryside that was dressed in the green-gold colors of autumn, stretching away towards Crockham Hill and disappearing into the mists that clung to the south coast some thirty miles beyond. The ground fell away sharply from the back of the house, and below were stream-fed lakes on which swam black swans and where trout rose to ruffle the surface. There were also several outhouses, a substantial walled garden, and cottages built of red brick. Beside one of these cottages he could see two figures at work—perhaps he hadn't wasted his time after all. He began to make his way down the steep pathway, slippery in its covering of recent rain, and as he approached he could see that one of the men was a young worker. The other figure was disguised in a thick overcoat and hat, yet the curve of the back was unmistakable, as were the shoulders, hunched like a prizefighter's. There was also a haze of cigar smoke.

  “Hello!” the man from the BBC called from a distance.

  Winston Spencer Churchill, a man who had filled the offices of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, and First Lord of the Admiralty and who had served his country as soldier, statesman, and historian, turned from his labors. He had a trowel in one hand and a brick in the other. “What do you want?” he demanded, with no pretense at goodwill. The mouth was clenched tightly around the cigar, giving his chin a stubborn look.

  “My name is Burgess, sir.”

  “So?”

  “I telephoned…”

  The Great Man scowled, trying to recall. “You can see I'm busy,” he snapped. “The world has decided to destroy itself, so I am building a wall.”

  Burgess tried to follow the politician's logic. Perhaps it was a symbolic act of defiance, or nothing more than an outstanding sulk. This wasn't quite the greeting he had expected, or required. “Guy Burgess,” the young man repeated. “From the BBC.”

  Churchill's eyes were swollen and sleepless, red with anxiety. They traveled across the unexpected visitor, taking in the unruly hair, the crumpled suit, the sorely bitten fingernails. “You don't look much like the BBC.”

  Burgess returned the stare. The old man was wearing an ancient and much-soiled overcoat whose middle button had been ripped away. His homburg looked as if it had just taken part in the Eton wall game and the boots were covered with splashes of cement. “You don't look much like a great politician, either,” he replied bluntly.

  The cigar twisted between the lips as the Great Man sized up this impudent intruder. Then he threw the trowel to one side. “Perhaps we had better discuss our mutual lack of authenticity inside.”

  Churchill led the way back up to the house, stomping impatiently but with remarkable vigor for a man of his age, his balding head bent forward like a battering ram. He threw off his outer garments to reveal a blue boiler suit which strained beneath the thickening waist, then led Burgess up to a study on the first floor. More architectural disappointment. The room was intended to be impressive with a vaulted timber ceiling in the manner of a medieval hall, but Burgess found it unconvincing. And isn't that what they said about Churchill—pretentious, posturing, and unconvincing? Yet the windows offered still more magnificent views across the Weald. From here Churchill could see far beyond the gaze of almost any man in England. Some said that about him, too.

  “Whiskey?” Churchill didn't wait for a reply before pouring. Burgess glanced at his watch. It was barely eleven.

  “You wanted me to perform on some radio program of yours, is that it?” Churchill growled, splashing large amounts of soda into two crystal glasses.

  “Yes, sir. It's called The Week in Westminster.” Burgess was waved into one of the wing chairs near the fireplace. Logs were glowing in the grate.

  “Without fear of contradiction I can tell you, young man, there's not the slightest damned point.”

  “Why?”

  “Because”—Churchill refused to sit but paced impatiently on the other side of the fireplace, stabbing his cigar angrily in the younger man's direction—"you represent the BBC and you have plotted and intrigued to keep me off the airwaves ever since I upset you over India and the Abdication…” “Not me, sir,” Burgess protested, but the other man had no intention of pausing to take prisoners.

  “…but most significantly because our Prime Minister…"—the cigar was trembling, the voice seeming to prickle in despair—"I hesitate to speak so. The families of Mr. Chamberlain and I go back a very long way in politics. His father Joseph was a great statesman, his brother Austen, too. Friends of my own father.” The voice betrayed a sudden catch. Ah, the sins of the father…At Cambridge Burgess had been a brilliant historian and needed no reminding of Churchill's extraordinary father, Lord Randolph—the most prodigious and enticing of men, widely favored as the next Prime Minister, yet who had destroyed himself at the age of thirty-seven by storming out of the Cabinet and into the quicksand of exile, never being allowed to return. He had died suffocated by sorrows, although his doctors diagnosed syphilis. He was regarded as unsound. So was his son. It was an awesome and uncomfortable inheritance.

  “Our Prime Minister lays claim to leading the greatest empire on earth, Burgess, yet he has returned from his meeting with that odious Austrian upstart waving his umbrella and clutching in his hand an agreement that drenches this country in shame.” As he slipped into the grip of his emotions the characteristic sibilance in Churchill's voice—the result of a defect in his palate—became more pronounced. His words seemed to fly around the room in agitation looking for somewhere to perch. “I despair. I feel cast into darkness, yet there is nothing I can do. I am an old man.”

  “Not as old as Chamberlain.” Burgess had meant to encourage, but already he was discovering how difficult it was to interrupt the Churchillian flow.

  “Hitler will give us war whether we want it or not. I have done all I can to warn of the perils, but no one listens. Look!” He grabbed a pile of newspapers from his desk. “They call themselves a free press, but they haven't a free thought amongst them. Chamberlain controls them, you know, all but writes the edi
torials for them.” He threw the newspapers into the corner where they subsided like startled chickens. “What did The Times say this morning? I think I can recall them, words that burn into my heart. 'No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come home adorned with nobler laurels than Mr. Chamberlain from Munich yesterday…'.” Churchill seemed incapable of continuing with the quotation, shaking his head. “He has sacrificed not only little Czechoslovakia but also our honor.”

  “Hitler's only got the German-speaking bits of Czechoslovakia.”

  Churchill turned on Burgess with fury. “He has got everything he wanted. He demanded to feast upon a free and democratic country, and instead of resisting we have offered to carve it up for him course by course. Some today, the rest tomorrow. It won't even give him indigestion. You know the Czechs had thirty divisions of fine fighting men? Thirty divisions—imagine! Protected behind great bastions of concrete and steel. Enough to give Hitler endless agonies, but instead of fighting they are reduced to raising their frontier posts and waving the Wehrmacht through. The Nazis have been able to occupy half of Czechoslovakia with nothing more threatening than a marching band.”

  The cigar had gone out, exhausted, but Churchill seemed not to have noticed. He was standing by the window, looking out over his beloved countryside towards the Channel and the turbulent continent that lay beyond. “I love this spot. It was once so quiet, so peaceful here, Burgess, yet now there is nothing but the howling of wolves from every corner of Europe. They are growing louder, more insistent, yet there is nothing I can do about it. I am alone.” The old man sank into silence, his body seeming to deflate as Burgess watched. The shoulders that had belonged to a prizefighter now seemed merely hunched and cowering before the blow that was to come.

  “Mr. Churchill, you are not alone. There are many of us who share your fears.” “Are there? Are there truly?” Churchill turned. “Not according to those harlots who infest Fleet Street.” He lashed out with his foot at the pile of newspapers.

  It was odd, Burgess thought, for a politician like Churchill who took the shilling of Fleet Street as regularly as anyone in the land to describe them as harlots. Odd, but not incorrect.

  “What can I do? I have no armies to command, no powers to turn against the enemy.”

  “You have a voice.”

  “One voice lost in the midst of the storm.”

  “When a man is drowning even one voice can represent hope. Encourage him not to give up, to continue the struggle. And you have the most eloquent voice of our time, Mr. Churchill.”

  “No one listens.” The head had dropped.

  “Fine,” Burgess spat, “give up if you want to, but you may just as well fall in behind Chamberlain and start practicing the bloody goose-step. That's not good enough for me. I'm only twenty-seven and if there's war then I'll be one of the first sent out to get my bollocks shot away while the old men sit around their fires and pretend that this god-awful war was really someone else's fault. Just like they did last time.” He paused, not bothering to hide the contempt in his voice. “So how old are you, Mr. Churchill?”

  Churchill's eyes were ablaze, ignited by the insolence. It took many moments of inner turmoil before he found himself able to reply. “I'm sixty-three, Mr. Burgess. But my dear wife often remarks that I am remarkably immature for my age. Would you by any chance have time for lunch?”

  They lunched in the dining room at the circular oak table. Churchill muttered apologies—his wife was away in France and there was only one house servant on duty; they would have to make do with cold cuts. They reinforced themselves with a second large whiskey and a bottle of claret. Burgess found the atmosphere inside the house stretched, almost painfully quiet. The world outside was on the verge of Armageddon yet at Chartwell time seemed to be standing still. There was no insistent jangling of the telephone, no scribes rushing back and forth with messages and documents of state, no grand visitors at the door requesting an urgent audience, nothing but two lonely men, one old, the other young, both crumpled.

  “You see, Burgess, the greatest threats to our island have always arisen in Europe. Our Empire spans the globe, we have helped civilize half the world, yet every time we embark upon an adventure on the continent, instead of grasping glory we end up covered in regret.” Churchill, who was carving, slapped a thick chunk of ham onto his guest's plate. “At the time, of course, it always seems so different. Europe is like a fine broad stairway of hope, but after a bit the carpet comes to an end. A little further on we discover only flagstones, and a little further on still these break beneath our feet. Now they have crumbled completely and we are supported by nothing more substantial than Mr. Chamberlain's aspirations.”

  “But we have friends in Europe. Friends who still have great armies.”

  “Like the Poles? They have very fine cavalry, Burgess, and as you may know I have a particular love of cavalry. Why, I myself had a part in the last great cavalry charge ever made by the British Army. At Omdurman. Oh, that was a splendid piece. But there we faced an opponent armed with spears, not artillery and machine guns.”

  “I was thinking more of the French.”

  “You forget! The surrender at Munich was signed not only by Chamberlain but also by Daladier.” He slurped vigorously at his glass of claret. Burgess followed him. It was a fine vintage, better than any Burgess could afford. A little of it dribbled from the glass onto the front of Churchill's boiler suit, which Burgess noted bore the stains of similar encounters. Churchill was not elegant when he ate. There was too much energy bottled up within him, too much impatience to give much heed to manners. “The French have vast armies,” he continued, “but that's been true since the time of Napoleon, and yet they have gone down to one miserable defeat after another, as if the habit of losing has become an infection.”

  “Do you discount Russia?”

  “Ah, the Bolshevists! How I hate them. They are butchers.” A forkful of ham waved in Burgess's direction. “But I dare not discount them. They exist and by God they put the fear of damnation into all those around them, Hitler and his Huns, too. Stalin's capacity for slaughter knows no bounds, but he's been too busy slaughtering his own to have time or temper for turning against Berlin.”

  “They could never coexist, Russia and the Fascists.”

  “Perhaps you are right. Maybe Russia is the answer, but if so it only shows us the terrible nature of the questions we are facing.” Suddenly Churchill's eyes darted across the table like arrows. “You one of those Communistic types, Burgess? I hear there's a whole nest of 'em inside the BBC.”

  “At Cambridge, like so many others. There seemed no other choice if one wanted to stand up to Fascism. But that was a long time ago. People change. I seem to think you were still a member of the Liberal Party in those days.”

  “No. I had switched back to the Conservative cause by then. But I take your point.”

  “There is nothing worse than a fixed mind and closed eyes. While I was up at Trinity our esteemed Mr. Chamberlain came as the guest of honor to our Founder's Feast. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer then, of course, and we put on the full works—college silver, six courses, including the fatted calf. He was exceedingly reassuring. As the port circulated he told us that we need not worry, there was no hunger about, not even amongst the unemployed. Those were his exact words—not even amongst the unemployed. You'll remember the times. Two million in the dole queues and hunger marches the length of the nation. Yet Chamberlain couldn't see them. I almost threw up.”

  “Yet you didn't. You look like a man with a strong stomach.” Churchill almost smiled, recognizing a man whose capacity in those quarters might even be a match for his own.

  “No, I didn't throw up. Instead I stood up. Started shouting. Called him an ignorant provincial iron-monger. The dining hall at Trinity has an amazing echo. Caused one hell of a scene.”

  “Ah, but now the crowd gathers to cheer him.”

  “Should've been a lynch mob!”

  The
y had both consumed too much claret for subtle jibes and there was no hiding the vehemence of the younger man's words. Churchill remained silent for a moment, staring intently, and Burgess thought he might have gone too far.

  “We have much in common, Burgess, you and I.”

  When next the younger man spoke, his voice betrayed a tremble, not of sycophancy but of a passion that sprang from deep within. “I fear for my country, and I fear for the entire civilized world. There is nothing I wouldn't do to stop the spread of Fascism. And with all my heart I can tell you, sir, that at a time such as this there is no one in whose company I would rather be.”

  Churchill's voice crumpled with emotion. “Then, as you say, I am not alone.”

  He was up from the table now, a fresh cigar between his lips, and gazing out through the windows that stretched from floor to ceiling.

  “I had always thought I should retire here, Burgess. Spend my final days gazing out over these fields.”

  “I hope you shall. When the time comes.”

  “Whenever the time comes, I fear it will not be here.” Churchill sounded as if he were saying goodbye to an old friend. “It seems that Clemmie and I shall have to leave.”

  “For safety?” It didn't take a military genius to recognize that Chartwell sat directly beneath the bombing path to London.

  Churchill shook his head sadly. “It is one of the many ironies littering my life that it is the very lack of war that may force me to leave my home, Burgess. It's no state secret that I have been neglecting my financial affairs in recent times—I have been devoting myself to politics, even though politics have so steadfastly declined to devote themselves to me. The vast majority of my income is generated by my writings, but the books and articles that should have been written have remained locked up in my mind.”