Churchill's Hour

by Michael Dobbs

‘I shall continue to woo her, try to seduce her. I must have her. No matter how coyly she plays or how harshly she protests. She has no right to stay out of this war!’

  ‘So what will you do?’

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gently, like a chivalrous knight, but she could see the dread in his eyes.

  ‘Everything. Anything. Whatever it takes,’ he whispered.

  Sawyers stood in the sunshine that was flooding across the cobbles of the rear courtyard of Chequers, perspiring gently as he worked. His coat was hanging on the stable door, his shirtsleeves were rolled up and his unbuttoned waistcoat flapped freely across his round stomach as he worked apples into a cider press. He already had a bucket filled with the thick, sweet juice and another was well on its way. Beside him, Héloise sat on a stool, slicing away the worst parts of mould and rot that were already eating into the fruit.

  ‘Not too much,’ Sawyers warned, as her knife dug deep into the pale flesh. ‘Think of ‘em like French cheese. Nowt wrong wi’ a bit o’ character.’

  It was proving a bumper harvest. Cider wasn’t often called for around the Churchill table, but the demand below stairs had proved an enduring tribute to Sawyers’ skills. Behind him stood a row of wooden kegs that were dark with age and reeked of fermentation. Once filled, they would be stored at the back of the stables until next summer.

  ‘Wonder if we’ll still be here then?’ he muttered idly, wiping his brow before giving the press another forceful twist.

  Héloise swiped idly at the flies hovering above her head.

  ‘When is “then”, Mr Sawyers?’

  ‘When this lot’s all ripe and ready. Next year.’

  ‘You think…?’

  ‘I don’t think, missy. Not me job. But he were going on about how yer got to be specially careful wi’ the sheets after guests’ve left. You know what he’s like, always having a bit of a go. But we’re to count ‘em, he says, to mekk sure the Chiefs of Staff aren’t pinching ‘em.’

  ‘He always seems to be shouting at them.’

  More juice flowed into the bucket and Sawyers grunted in satisfaction. ‘Wonder what Jerries drink? Hope they never get a liking fer this stuff. Be such a waste.’

  ‘Is this better?’ She held up an apple for his inspection, licking the stickiness from her fingers.

  He nodded.

  ‘But I don’t understand. Why would the generals take the sheets, Mr Sawyers? Don’t they have sheets of their own?’

  ‘He says they kepp wanting to hang ‘em out o’ ruddy window, like. That they don’t seem to want to fight. I dunno. He keeps going on about how they reckon they can’t fight in Middle East and won’t fight in Far East.’

  ‘But we are not fighting in the Far East.’

  ‘And Heaven help us if we ever do, so he says.’ His face was glowing red in the sun. ‘Come on, lass, bring some more o’ them apples over here. Let’s be getting done wi’ this.’

  ‘I shall count the sheets very carefully,’ she said, tumbling more apples into the press.

  ‘Oh, I don’t suppose he were being serious, like.’ He stuck his finger into the flowing juice in order to taste it. ‘But you never know wi’ him.’

  Even Sawyers hadn’t known if the old man was being serious. ‘Make sure she knows about the sheets,’ he had instructed. He didn’t explain why. Sawyers wondered if perhaps the whispers were right, that the old man was losing it.

  ‘Anyways,’ Sawyers concluded, ‘let’s be finished. We got gooseberry bushes to pluck after this.’

  The first week of September. The anniversary of the day the war began. And a week of gathering storms.

  Two years earlier, Neville Chamberlain had informed the country in a thin, tremulous voice that they were at war with Germany. He had also told them of his certainty that right would prevail. Yet now German radio announced to the world that their troops were within fifteen miles of Leningrad, pissing into Stalin’s cooking pots.

  The following evening Churchill attended a dinner at the Dorchester. It was being given in honour of his youngest daughter, Mary, who was about to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service, but inevitably he would be the star, and as soon as he stepped into the crowded foyer, the hotel guests turned to him and began to offer cries of welcome.

  ‘Look,’ the excited doorman cried, ‘the old dears love you.’

  ‘Some of the younger dears, too, I trust,’ he said, offering the doorman a mischievous wink.

  His progress through the hotel was accompanied by applause at every step. Men bowed in greeting, women reached out to touch him as though he were a medieval cardinal carrying holy relics. It lifted his spirits to be surrounded by so many people yet not to have a critic in sight.

  The dining room was filled to capacity, as it had been almost every night of the war. So much had happened in the past two years, yet so little in here had changed—except for the absence of Italian waiters, most of whom had been interned. The world outside may have fallen into darkness, but life at the Dorchester went on, with diners competing in their determination to ensure that no oyster remained unshucked and no cork undisturbed. The chandeliers shone, the music was gay, his daughter looked radiant and, for the moment, the world outside was forgotten.

  But only for a few steps more. It was a night when no one would leave him alone.

  The maitre d’ guided him towards his table but it was a slow progress; as they saw him, the diners rose, forcing him to shake hands on all sides and exchange a few words.

  Then, in front of him, was Leslie Hore-Belisha—a man of such misguided ambition that he could carp even while the synagogues burned.

  ‘Good evening, Winston.’ Hore-Belisha smiled courteously, extending his hand.

  ‘Leslie.’

  ‘Pleasure to see you here—although I’m also looking forward to your presence in the House when Parliament returns. We miss you there.’

  Insufferable bastard. What he missed was the chance to mock in public. ‘Wars are not won on the floor of the House, Leslie, but on the field of battle.’

  ‘And in the air.’ Hore-Belisha drew closer, lowered his voice. ‘Yet I understand that the raid last week on Rotterdam was something of a disaster.’

  Damn his eyes! Seventeen Blenheims had flown on the mission, seven hadn’t made it back. How dare he dance on the unmarked graves of brave young men?

  ‘What does that make it—almost a thousand bombers lost this year already?’ Hore-Belisha continued, shaking his head. ‘It’s all very well charging like the Light Brigade every once in a while, but not on a daily basis. We can’t go on like that.’

  Churchill’s good humour had gone. Could he not even spend time with his daughter without being bludgeoned by idiots? ‘If the armchair aviators that I find lurking in every corner showed half as much valour as our pilots,’ he said stiffly, ‘the situation might be very different.’

  ‘The valour of our aircrews is not in question. The competence of their commanders is. I seem to remember you saying much the same thing a few years ago when you were an armchair aviator.’

  Churchill had neither time nor temper for this. He turned to move on. ‘I am flattered that you should wish to follow in my footsteps, Leslie, but don’t let ambition spoil your dinner.’

  ‘You never run away from Hitler, Winston,’ his colleague called after him. ‘So why do you run away from the House?’

  Why? Because he had a bloody war to run. Because he couldn’t win that war if he was forced to reveal every card in his hand. And because—because, in his heart, he was no longer certain he could win the war at all, and it might show. So in recent months he had seen them little and told them less, and many had begun to resent it. They wouldn’t follow Hore-Belisha through the voting lobbies against Churchill, but neither did they shun him any more.

  The barbs in his back stuck firm throughout the meal and soured every mouthful. The pleasure he showed in the celebration was little more than pretence and by ten thirty he was back at Downing S
treet, seeking solace with his boxes of secrets. Yet as the car drew up he saw a figure pacing up and down outside. It was the unmistakable outline of Maisky, the diminutive Soviet Ambassador.

  ‘Forgive me, Prime Minister,’ Maisky began, waylaying the Prime Minister, ‘but it is a message of the highest importance.’

  They stood in the moonlight, puffing cigar smoke at each other from beneath the brims of their hats. Maisky was short and swarthy, but personable and exceptionally hard-working, which perhaps had as much to do with his dull and awesomely ugly wife as with the ever-present prospect of being summoned home and purged. Churchill respected and might even have grown to like him, if he hadn’t been a Bolshevik.

  ‘I have been instructed to inform you from the highest levels of my Government’—in other words, this came straight from Uncle Joe himself—‘that the rapid deterioration of the situation within the Soviet Union has given rise to a new environment.’

  Churchill sniffed. That meant new demands. He’d already sent tanks and Hurricanes to the Soviets and had promised more—weapons that the British desperately needed themselves. Yet Churchill had insisted, even in the face of outright opposition from the Chiefs of Staff. He needed Russia in this war and almost any material price was worth paying. There had been a moral price to pay, too. Only a week earlier British forces had shot their way into neutral Iran, invading the country in order to grab a supply corridor that stretched five hundred miles from the Gulf to the borders of Russia. Churchill needed it as a lifeline that might keep Stalin going, and so he’d kicked his way in before the Germans got there first. It was an act of shameless aggression that made a mockery of the high-minded principles of the Atlantic Charter, so wasn’t that enough? What more could any reasonable man expect? Yet Stalin, as Churchill had once suggested to Beaverbrook, was a man who would bite through his own mother’s nipple. Reason had nothing to do with it. Now he wanted more.

  ‘Our country faces mortal menace,’ Maisky went on.

  ‘As does ours. Your Excellency, forgive me but it’s late, and we’ve known each other long enough. Tell me directly, what is it you want?’

  ‘Four hundred planes—’

  ‘We’ve already promised you.’

  ‘A month.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘And five hundred tanks. Every month for the next year.’

  ‘Impossible! We don’t have that number ourselves.’

  ‘Prime Minister, the reason for the growing disaster in my country is very simple. Hitler has been able to invade the Soviet Union solely because he has no other opposition on the mainland of Europe. He can throw everything at us because he has come to the conclusion that the British are content to sit at home. There is no danger from the west, so he attacks us in the east.’

  Churchill snorted with impatience, sending cigar smoke swirling high into the night sky. ‘May I remind you, Mr Maisky, that no one, not any nation on this globe, has risked more than the British to fight that bloody man.’

  ‘Then it is vital that he is reminded of that.’

  ‘I strive ceaselessly…’

  ‘I make no personal criticism, I assure you.’

  ‘And Britain is doing her best.’

  ‘I’m afraid it does not seem that way in my country.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have been given a specific instruction, Prime Minister, to pass on to you a message from the highest levels of my Government. The message is simply this. You must establish a second front in Europe by the end of the year. To draw Hitler’s men away from the east.’ Maisky paused while the enormity of the demand had time to settle in. ‘Otherwise, I fear that the Soviet Union may be placed in a position where it is unable to continue with the armed struggle, and will have to look to other means to pursue its interests.’

  It was as though Churchill’s had been physically assaulted. His whole frame began to shake. He gripped the railings that ran along the front of Number Ten as he struggled to keep his incredulity and growing outrage from bursting forth. ‘You mean…’ He seemed barely able to spit the words out. ‘You mean you’d do another deal with Hitler? Sign another one of your wretched pacts?’

  Maisky refused to respond to the accusation. It wasn’t the job of a diplomat to tell the full truth when the doubts stirred by a half-truth could be so much more effective. Anyway, he didn’t know the truth himself, he only knew what he had been told to say.

  ‘We are at a turning point in history,’ he replied. ‘But consider. If the Soviet Union does not survive, then neither will you.’

  ‘How dare you?’ the Englishman shouted. ‘How dare you have the gall to stand on my doorstep with the rubble of our defiance lying all about us and lecture me, Winston bloody Churchill, about the fight against Hitler?’

  ‘More calm, please, my dear Mr Churchill,’ Maisky said, surprised by the vehemence.

  But Churchill was not to be appeased. ‘Two years ago you signed a pact with Hitler. It allowed him to hurl himself upon Poland and start this war. You began to supply him with every sort of raw material. Thousands of my people have died beneath bombs that you had helped him manufacture. And only three months ago we had no idea whether you might not even come into this war on the German side.’

  Maisky was trying to interrupt but Churchill would have none of it.

  ‘No! You will listen to this. Throughout that time, and without a breath of help from you, this country has stood alone and defiant. We have starved, we have suffered, we have sacrificed almost everything we have—except our unflinching belief in victory. So damn your diplomatic dances, Maisky. The British need no lectures from you about how to fight for our lives!’

  Maisky was taken aback by the unexpected brutality of Churchill’s tone, but the Soviet diplomat was nothing if not a survivor. He hadn’t made it through the purges that had left thousands of his colleagues in gulags or graveyards by losing his nerve in the face of a little shouting.

  ‘I can tell that you are much affected, Mr Churchill,’ he said in a tone that was far more conciliatory. ‘And it is also very late. Perhaps it would be sensible to put what has been said to one side and return to this subject at a more appropriate time. But I fear my masters are impatient for a response. Is there anything that I may tell them by way of a preliminary reply?’

  ‘Tell them to go down on their knees and pray for winter!’

  Churchill turned his back on the Russian, anxious that he had already said too much and might yet say more. He slammed the great door of Number Ten behind him with unusual vehemence, but he couldn’t shut out the pain that dragged along behind him. Maisky was a duplicitous bastard whose demands were outrageous, but the Bolshevik echoed a central truth that had been screaming at Churchill through every waking moment and pursued him into his dreams.

  Alone, Britain hadn’t a hope.

  That night he didn’t call for his usual retinue of advisers. He’d had enough rows for one evening. He took his whisky and his boxes to bed and allowed Sawyers to undress him in silence. The valet sensed the mood, poured in a little less soda than usual, and departed as soon as the final cigar of the night was alight.

  Churchill was exhausted. He seemed to be losing his powers. Once, and not so long ago, his words had found an energy that carried his ideas around the world, but now it seemed that no one wanted to listen—not the Americans, not his new Russian allies, not even circumcised little pricks like Hore-Belisha. He’d always known that leadership was a friendless place, yet it seemed as if he alone was able to see the terrors that lay ahead, while others closed their eyes and hid from them like children afraid of the dark.

  Churchill was hovering between wakefulness and sleep, immersed in that state where conscious thought is pushed aside by half-formed dreams and images, and anxieties swirl through the mind. His anxieties were built on a predictable tangle of fears of war, of defeat, of ill-formed loyalties and unhappy alliances, and no matter how much he shouted at them they refused to return to the dark corners from where th
ey had come. Yet, as he lay there in the early hours, from this unruly combination of dark concerns emerged something fresh and very different. Suddenly he was awake, sitting bolt upright, snatching at his eyeshades. When he switched on the light he discovered it was twenty to three. He reached for the phone.

  ‘See if Lord Beaverbrook is still in the land of the living,’ he instructed the duty clerk. ‘If he’s not, return him to it.’

  It took only a couple of minutes to make the connection.

  ‘Winston?’ the gruff Canadian voice growled, heavy with sleep. ‘What the hell’s up? You still on Placentia time or something?’

  ‘Max, before you fly off to see Joe Stalin, I want you to go and have a talk with our German guest, Herr Hess.’

  ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Oh, to see whether he has anything new to tell us.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘We won’t know unless someone goes and talks with him, will we?’

  ‘Christ, Winston, this is a strange bloody game to play in the middle of the night.’

  ‘When I appointed you, Max, you said you would never rest. I took you at your word.’

  ‘First goddamned time.’

  ‘It would please me if you were able to help in this matter.’

  ‘You want me to take him roses or something?’

  ‘No, Max. Just take yourself. Goodnight.’

  But where Max Beaverbrook went, gossip was sure to follow. Max insisted on it. Soon speculation and exaggeration about the meeting would be halfway around London, and it would take only a few days more before it reached Berlin.

  The essence of leadership, Churchill had always found, wasn’t in coping with success but in the ability to hop around the pitfalls of failure. To KBO. He was surrounded by a chaos of uncertainty, and if he couldn’t find his way out of it in a hurry, he could at least share it a little, with Adolf Hitler.

  Churchill put down the phone. He had just thrown a little raw meat to the dogs of confusion that lurked around every campfire. It made him feel very much better. Within moments, he was sound asleep.