Churchill's Hour

by Michael Dobbs

  There was respect and deep affection interwoven with the admonition. They were two old warriors who for so long had ridden together towards the same enemy.

  ‘I am not one—and I should be the last—unduly to resent unfair criticism,’ Churchill told them, ‘or even fair criticism, which is so much more searching. But there is a kind of criticism which is a little irritating. It is like that of a bystander who, when he sees a team of horses dragging a heavy wagon painfully up a hill, cuts a switch from the fence and belabours them lustily.’ His faithful supporters shouted at Lloyd George across the floor; Churchill held up his hand for them to cease. ‘He may well be animated by a benevolent purpose—and who shall say the horses may not benefit from his efforts, and the wagon get quicker to the top of the hill? Still, I think that it would be a pity if this important and critical debate consisted wholly of critical and condemnatory speeches.’

  Yet he had no desire to slash too deeply at Lloyd George; the man was too much of an icon, too much of a friend. The same could not be said of Hore-Belisha.

  ‘He and some others have spoken of the importance in war of full and accurate intelligence of the movements and intentions of the enemy.’ Churchill raised his whip, and brought it thrashing down. ‘That is one of the glimpses of the obvious and of the obsolete with which his powerful speech abounded.’ Churchill’s men laughed and jeered. ‘He is so farseeing, now that we have lost his services, this man who told us at the end of November 1939 that we were comfortably winning the war!’

  The anger was spilling over, but he needed to draw back just a little, and remind them who the real enemy was.

  ‘This vast German war machine, which was so improvidently allowed to build itself up during the last eight years’—he looked around, searching for the guilty men who had fallen asleep on their watch—and wasn’t Hore-Belisha one of them?—‘has now spread from the Arctic to the Aegean, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. Yet that is no source of strength…’ He banged his fist upon the Despatch Box. ‘The German name and the German race have become and are becoming more universally and more intensely hated among all the people in all the lands, than any name or any race of which history bears record.’

  From all sides they growled their approval; he had led them away from the swamp and back onto firmer ground of his own choosing.

  ‘We are no small island gathered in the northern mists, but around us, gathered in proud array, are all the free nations of the British Empire.’ He spread his arms wide in imperial pride, and they shouted their support. ‘And from across the Atlantic there is the mighty Republic of the United States which proclaims itself on our side,’—he glanced at Lloyd George, ‘or at our side, or at any rate, near our side.’ And they cheered that, too.

  He stood before them, defiant, his hands clasping the Despatch Box, that beloved piece of wood and brass where fifty years earlier his father had stood, and as he gave them facts and figures and mixed insult with idealism, his eyes searched around this place with its ornate wood carvings, its soaring roof, its intimate leather benches with their musty smell of powerful men. It had been twelve months since they had summoned him here to be Prime Minister, and although he had not yet found them victory he had at least enabled them to survive. That was his achievement, more than any other man’s, which was why he so resented what they had done in dragging him here to search for loose threads in the tapestry of his war.

  ‘It is a year almost to the day since, in the crash of the disastrous Battle of France, His Majesty’s present Administration was formed. Men of all parties joined hands together to fight this business to the end. That was a dark hour, and little did we know what storms and perils lay before us—and little did Herr Hitler know when, in June 1940, he received the total capitulation of France, and when he expected to be master of Europe in a few weeks and the whole world in a few years, that today he would be appealing to the much-tried German people to prepare themselves for the war of 1942!’

  They were with him now, almost all of them—but for how long?

  ‘When I look back on the perils which have been overcome, upon the great mountain waves through which the gallant ship has driven, when I remember all that has gone wrong, and remember also all that has gone right, I feel sure we have no need to fear the tempest. Let it roar, and let it rage!’ he cried, his voice rising with it. ‘We shall come through!’

  They cheered and stretched to clap him on the back. Even Lloyd George smiled and nodded his appreciation. It had not been one of Churchill’s finest, but it had been enough.

  In the end, only three Members voted against the Government. It was an overwhelming victory, on paper.

  Yet it was the last victory Churchill was ever to have in this chamber. He didn’t know it, but as they applauded him out, it was to be the last time he would ever set foot inside this hallowed place, or stand at his beloved Despatch Box, or hear his voice ringing back from these rafters.

  ‘Gimme a cigar,’ Churchill snapped, striding into the room and slamming the door behind him as a warning to all those who hovered outside.

  ‘How was the debate, zur?’ Sawyers asked, holding out a box of small brown torpedoes.

  The Prime Minster threw his formal black jacket at his valet and slumped into a chair by the fire. Soon he was stabbing at the end of a cigar with a toothpick. ‘I never thought—never thought it possible—to hear an Englishman utter such words as I have heard used against me in the House today.’

  ‘Mr Lloyd George is Welsh,’ Sawyers corrected, ‘and though I’ve never met him I strongly suspect Mr McGovern of belonging to some sort of Scottish sect. As for Mr Hore-Belisha…’

  ‘Don’t mention that bloody Hebrew’s name to me! I had him here for lunch.’

  ‘Served him meself.’

  ‘Explained everything to him.’

  ‘Seem to remember yer even hinted he might get a job, like, back in Government.’

  ‘And he turns on me like a gypsy!’ Churchill said bitterly, stabbing through the end of the cigar as though it were his opponent’s heart. Sawyers held out a lighted candle. ‘I should have the bastard conscripted into the RAF and dropped somewhere over Germany.’

  Churchill’s tirade was brought to a halt as he struggled to persuade his cigar to ignite, but the respite was only temporary.

  ‘To listen to the man you’d think that the German military machine was all but invincible—doesn’t he realize that if Hitler wins the bloody war it will be my head on the block first, then Hore-Belisha’s and all his kind?’

  ‘Well, yer won vote.’

  ‘Won’t stop the rats scurrying around in the bilges gnawing at everything in their path.’

  ‘Suppose we all have our days as rats,’ Sawyers said, blowing out the candle.

  Churchill looked at Sawyers warily. Was the man trying to mock? Churchill was, in his own words, the arch ratter and re-ratter, a man who had jumped ship from one party to another, then swum back again. Was his insolent bloody valet trying to make a comparison?

  ‘Nowt wrong wi’ a bit o’ debate. A triumph, really,’ Sawyers continued.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Churchill enquired, drawing impatiently on the cigar. It was not cooperating.

  ‘I were jest wondering, like, if any other place in the whole o’ Europe would let ’em get away wi’ that sort o’ criticism.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘You’d not get that sort o’ nonsense in Germany, now, would you? Not in France, not Spain or Italy, Russia, not—anywheres, really. ‘Cept right here, in Britain. Thought that’s what we was fighting fer. To kepp our Parliament, like, so as grown men can stand up and make fools of the’selves.’

  ‘Lloyd George made a fool of himself,’ Churchill muttered, still struggling with the cigar. ‘He said I was a bully. But I’m not a bloody bully, am I, Sawyers?’

  ‘You need a fresh light, zur.’

  ‘Who can I trust, Sawyers? Not anyone.’ He suddenly sounded tired, the ze
st and energy gone, all given up in the House. ‘I am surrounded by generals whose only expertise lies in the art of evacuation, and politicians who have no higher ambition than to hurl abuse at me.’

  ‘In his own way, mebbe Mr Lloyd George were right. You can’t go doing it all by yerself.’

  ‘But I have to,’ Churchill said, sounding petulant. ‘I can rely on no one.’ He was falling into the pit of corrosive self-pity that was one of his least endearing qualities. Then he glanced at his cigar. It was as cold and dead as could be.

  ‘Bugger!’ he exclaimed, hurling it into the hearth. ‘For God’s sake, Sawyers, why do you bring me such rubbish? Can’t I be allowed a decent smoke once in a while?’

  Sawyers said nothing. The reason the old man didn’t always get the cigars he wanted was because he never paid for them, relying almost entirely on supplies sent to him by well-wishers and supplicants.

  ‘What about those Havanas—you know, man, the cabinet full of ’em that came through the other week? You remember. Had a little brass plaque: “A tribute of admiration from the President and People of Cuba.”’

  ‘Gone away, they have. Like pheasants in firing line.’

  ‘What? I want a cigar, not a bloody riddle.’

  ‘Your security service was concerned they might’ve been interfered with, like. Poisoned, mebbe. So they’ve took ’em away fer testing.’

  ‘What in Hell’s name do they think they’re doing?’ Churchill shouted, jumping to his feet, all lethargy forgotten.

  ‘Mebbe they’re thinking along same lines as Lloyd George.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That you can’t go doing the whole lot by yerself.’ He stared directly at his master, daring him to contradict. ‘But wi’out yer, job simply won’t get done.’

  Sawyers closed the door behind him. Even before he reached the end of the corridor, he could hear Churchill back on form, energies restored, bellowing for his staff.

  10 May 1941. The night of the full moon. In brilliant moonlight, they tried to bomb the heart out of London. They almost succeeded.

  More than 1,400 Londoners were killed that night, including the mayors of Westminster and Bermondsey. Five thousand houses were destroyed and twelve thousand Londoners made homeless. It was the worst single night of the Blitz. The Luftwaffe’s bombers made nearly six hundred sorties, using the shimmering waters of the Thames as their unmistakable route to the heart of the city. Only fourteen German bombers failed to return.

  It was to change the face of London. St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey were hit, as were many other churches. Whole swathes of Westminster were flattened, and across the bridge St Thomas’ Hospital was left burning, along with the British Museum, Bond Street, five docks and more than thirty factories.

  The Parliament building was hit, too. A bomb passed clean through the structure of Big Ben, although the clock continued to strike. Incendiaries fell on the debating chambers of both the Commons and the Lords, and also upon the towering medieval oak-beamed roof of Westminster Hall that stood beside them. Fires broke out and grew in every corner; it was a hopeless task for the volunteer firefighters. Soon it became clear that if they were to save anything, they would have to make a choice. They could save the home of the politicians, or they could save the royal hall, but not both. The chamber of the Commons was a modern construction, less than a hundred years old, while Westminster Hall had stood for almost a thousand. It was a place where crowds had cheered King Henry playing tennis and mocked as King Charles faced the axe; it was a place that had survived riot and revolution, and had struggled through every kind of iniquity concocted in the chamber next door. So, for Englishmen, it turned out to be not much of a choice at all.

  They hacked through the locks on the vast oak doors of the Hall and began playing their hoses upon the timbers of the roof. Soon the tenders and water pipes had run dry, so while the bombs were still falling around them they manhandled a trailer pump down the steps of Westminster Pier to draw water from the river. In the flagstoned belly of the hall they found themselves up to their waists in water, even as smouldering chunks of the roof fell about them, making the water seem as if it would boil. But, in the end, they won. The Great Hall was saved.

  While this was happening, the chamber of the House of Commons, the home of the politicians, was left to burn to the ground.

  It was the night that would change everything.

  A little earlier on the evening of the tenth of May, the main dining room of the Dorchester Hotel was thronged with guests. Pamela sat at one of the best tables in a quiet corner with Harriman, wondering at this strange man who had come all the way across the Atlantic to become a warrior. He was a most unlikely man of war. It seemed he had everything: a railway, many houses, the ear of the President, two doting daughters—although only the most passing mention of a wife—and even a ski resort in Idaho. He seemed to want for nothing, and yet he had an air of sadness about him that made his eyes unnaturally dark. As she listened more closely to his patrician mid-Atlantic accent, she thought she could detect the hint of a childhood stammer.

  They were well into the first bottle of wine before he started to relax, the creases around his eyes slowly dissolving and reforming at the corners of his mouth. He talked about his father, excessively—were there ghosts?—and about his parent’s ability to make both money and enemies. A rigid upbringing, she guessed, that had left something unbending in him.

  As he talked, she began comparing him with her own father, who was dull where Harriman was dynamic, whose vision stretched no further than the gates of his estate while this man had flown across an ocean to help build something new. Harriman was also older than her father, yet was centuries more youthful.

  It was as though he could read her mind, for suddenly he was asking about her family.

  ‘My father? Oh, just another country lord. Horses, foxhunting, cold bedrooms and crumbling plaster. Usual thing. My family are all either black sheep or desperately boring.’

  ‘Black sheep?’

  ‘One tried to blow up the King and the whole of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘A traditional little ceremony we call hanging, drawing and quartering.’

  ‘Christ,’ he said, almost choking on his beef. She had his attention now. ‘A real villain, eh?’

  ‘A real Digby. Insisted on having the last word. Apparently, as they plucked out his still-beating heart and held it up to the howling mob, his lips moved and he said: “Veniam, vincam.” Which loosely translated means “Next time I win.”’

  ‘Seriously?’

  She smiled. Americans were so wonderfully gullible.

  The moment passed as the wine waiter returned to pour the last of their wine.

  ‘Another bottle, Pam?’

  Before she could respond, the wine waiter interrupted. ‘Sir, it’s such a splendid choice, but I’m sorry to tell you we’ve only got one more bottle in the cellar. It may be the only bottle left in the entire country,’ he added mournfully. ‘Heaven knows when we’ll get more. The Germans are drinking it all now.’

  ‘Then we’d better have the last bottle before they get here,’ Harriman said.

  The waiter stiffened. The moment froze. ‘Being an American, sir, perhaps you don’t understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘Even if, as you say, the Germans do get here, I can assure you that we shall hold out.’

  Harriman went pale with humiliation. ‘Yes. Of course. I’m so sorry,’ he muttered as the waiter withdrew.

  ‘Please forgive me, Pam. Foolish of me. I meant nothing by it,’ he continued.

  ‘Averell, you still have a lot to learn about the war.’

  ‘And, it seems, about British waiters. And wicked relatives. Teach me?’

  At around the same time as Pamela and her dinner companion were finishing their dessert, operators in the radar station at Ottercops Moss on the Northumberland coast began arguing amo
ngst themselves about the nature of a signal they had been tracking for the best part of an hour. It didn’t make much sense. A single unidentified blip on their scanners had been spotted flying westward out of the North Sea. There was so much other action in the skies that a solitary plane didn’t raise many eyebrows, but as it drew closer to the coast, two Spitfires from RAF Acklington were ordered to intercept. It was a night filled with confusion; the Spitfires failed to make contact with the intruder, and at one point were even instructed to intercept each other.

  Fighter Command Headquarters in Middlesex were also plotting the action on their map table, but they responded with nothing more than a shrug of their shoulders. Those bumpkins in the radar station at Ottercops Moss had a reputation for false alarms. Anyway, the solitary marker was one amongst literally hundreds that were flooding across their maps; it would have to take its place in the RAF’s long queue of concerns.

  The signal continued to advance, and crossed the north-east coast of England at 22.12 hours. Then it altered direction, swinging north towards the Scottish border, which it crossed some twenty minutes later, before resuming a westerly course and heading in the direction of Glasgow. It had the characteristic speed of a Messerschmitt 110, a twin engine long-range fighter, but this tentative identification was treated with derision. The track of the aircraft was way beyond the range of an Me-110; it could never make it back to base.

  What they didn’t know was that the pilot had no intention of returning to his base.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock, the signal disappeared from radar screens, and an explosion was seen near Floors Farm on Bonnyton Moor, south of Glasgow. An underwhelmed newspaper reporter later wrote that the crash had resulted in one casualty, a young hare.

  But the pilot was not killed. He had already baled out.

  When the sirens kicked in, Pamela and Harriman were halfway through the second bottle of wine and the life of Jane Digby, sister of the ninth Baron Digby and Pamela’s ancestor. Another black sheep.