by Ken Follett
He had not told his family that Daisy had been at Ty Gwyn. That would have required him to explain to them what his relationship with Daisy was now, and he could not do that, for he did not really understand it himself. Was he in love with a married woman? He did not know. How did she feel about him? He did not know. Most likely, he thought, Daisy and he were two good friends who had missed their chance at love. And somehow he did not want to admit that to anyone, for it seemed unbearably final.
He said to Bernie: "Who will take over, if Chamberlain goes?"
"The betting is on Halifax." Lord Halifax was currently the foreign secretary.
"No!" said Lloyd indignantly. "We can't have an earl for prime minister at a time like this. Anyway, he's an appeaser, just as bad as Chamberlain!"
"I agree," said Bernie. "But who else is there?"
"What about Churchill?"
"You know what Stanley Baldwin said about Churchill?" Baldwin, a Conservative, had been prime minister before Chamberlain. "When Winston was born, lots of fairies swooped down on his cradle with gifts--imagination, eloquence, industry, ability--and then came a fairy who said: 'No person has a right to so many gifts,' picked him up, and gave him such a shake and a twist that he was denied judgment and wisdom."
Lloyd smiled. "Very witty, but is it true?"
"There's something in it. In the last war he was responsible for the Dardanelles campaign, which was a terrible defeat for us. Now he's pushed us into the Norwegian adventure, another failure. He's a fine orator, but the evidence suggests he has a tendency to wishful thinking."
Lloyd said: "He was right about the need to rearm in the thirties--when everyone else was against it, including the Labour Party."
"Churchill will be calling for rearmament in paradise, when the lion lies down with the lamb."
"I think we need someone with an aggressive streak. We want a prime minister who will bark, not whimper."
"Well, you may get your wish. The tellers are coming back."
The votes were announced. The ayes had 280, the noes 200. Chamberlain had won. There was uproar in the chamber. The prime minister's supporters cheered, but others yelled at him to resign.
Lloyd was bitterly disappointed. "How can they want to keep him, after all that?"
"Don't jump to conclusions," said Bernie as the prime minister left and the noise subsided. Bernie was making calculations with a pencil in the margin of the Evening News. "The government usually has a majority of about two hundred and forty. That's dropped to eighty." He scribbled numbers, adding and subtracting. "Taking a rough guess at the number of M.P.s absent, I reckon about forty of the government's supporters voted against Chamberlain, and another sixty abstained. That's a terrible blow to a prime minister--a hundred of his colleagues don't have confidence in him."
"But is it enough to force him to resign?" Lloyd said impatiently.
Bernie spread his arms in a gesture of surrender. "I don't know," he said.
vi
Next day Lloyd, Ethel, Bernie, and Billy went to Bournemouth by train.
The carriage was full of delegates from all over Britain. They all spent the entire journey discussing last night's debate and the future of the prime minister, in accents ranging from the harsh chop of Glasgow to the swerve and swoop of cockney. Once again Lloyd had no chance to raise with his mother the subject that was haunting him.
Like most delegates, they could not afford the swanky hotels on the cliff tops, so they stayed in a boardinghouse on the outskirts. That evening the four of them went to a pub and sat in a quiet corner, and Lloyd saw his chance.
Bernie bought a round of drinks. Ethel wondered aloud what was happening to her friend Maud in Berlin; she no longer got news, for the war had ended the postal service between Germany and Britain.
Lloyd sipped his pint of beer, then said firmly: "I'd like to know more about my real father."
Ethel said sharply: "Bernie is your father."
Evasion again! Lloyd suppressed the anger that immediately rose in him. "You don't need to tell me that," he said. "And I don't need to tell Bernie that I love him like a father, because he already knows."
Bernie patted him on the shoulder, an awkward but genuine gesture of affection.
Lloyd made his voice insistent. "But I'm curious about Teddy Williams."
Billy said: "We need to talk about the future, not the past--we're at war."
"Exactly," said Lloyd. "So I want answers to my questions now. I'm not willing to wait, because I will be going into battle soon, and I don't want to die in ignorance." He did not see how they could deny that argument.
Ethel said: "You know all there is to know," but she was not meeting his eye.
"No, I don't," he said, forcing himself to be patient. "Where are my other grandparents? Do I have uncles and aunts and cousins?"
"Teddy Williams was an orphan," Ethel said.
"Raised in what orphanage?"
She said irritably: "Why are you so stubborn?"
Lloyd allowed his voice to rise in reciprocal annoyance. "Because I'm like you!"
Bernie could not repress a grin. "That's true, anyway."
Lloyd was not amused. "What orphanage?"
"He might have told me, but I don't remember. In Cardiff, I think."
Billy intervened. "You're touching a sore place, now, Lloyd, boy. Drink your beer and drop the subject."
Lloyd said angrily: "I've got a bloody sore place, too, Uncle Billy, thank you very much, and I'm fed up with lies."
"Now, now," said Bernie. "Let's not have talk of lies."
"I'm sorry, Dad, but it's got to be said." Lloyd held up a hand to stave off interruption. "Last time I asked, Mam told me Teddy Williams's family came from Swansea but they moved around a lot because of his father's job. Now she says he was raised in an orphanage in Cardiff. One of those stories is a lie--if not both."
At last Ethel looked him in the eye. "Me and Bernie fed you and clothed you and sent you to school and university," she said indignantly. "You've got nothing to complain about."
"And I'll always be grateful to you, and I'll always love you," Lloyd said.
Billy said: "Why have this come up now, anyhow?"
"Because of something somebody said to me in Aberowen."
His mother did not respond, but there was a flash of fear in her eyes. Someone in Wales knows the truth, Lloyd thought.
He went on relentlessly: "I was told that perhaps Maud Fitzherbert fell pregnant in 1914, and her baby was passed off as yours, for which you were rewarded with the house in Nutley Street."
Ethel made a scornful noise.
Lloyd held up a hand. "That would explain two things," he said. "One, the unlikely friendship between you and Lady Maud." He reached into his jacket pocket. "Two, this picture of me in side-whiskers." He showed them the photograph.
Ethel stared at the picture without speaking.
Lloyd said: "It could be me, couldn't it?"
Billy said testily: "Yes, Lloyd, it could. But obviously it's not, so stop mucking about and tell us who it is."
"It's Earl Fitzherbert's father. Now you stop mucking about, Uncle Billy, and you, Mam. Am I Maud's son?"
Ethel said: "The friendship between me and Maud was a political alliance, foremost. It was broken off when we disagreed about strategy for suffragettes, then resumed later. I like her a lot, and she gave me important chances in life, but there is no secret bond. She doesn't know who your father is."
"All right, Mam," said Lloyd. "I could believe that. But this photo . . ."
"The explanation of that resemblance . . ." She choked up.
Lloyd was not going to let her escape. "Come on," he said remorselessly. "Tell me the truth."
Billy intervened again. "You're barking up the wrong tree, boyo," he said.
"Am I? Well, then, set me straight, why don't you?"
"It's not for me to do that."
That was as good as an admission. "So you were lying before."
Bernie loo
ked gobsmacked. He said to Billy: "Are you saying the Teddy Williams story isn't true?" Clearly he had believed it all these years, just as Lloyd had.
Billy did not reply.
They all looked at Ethel.
"Oh, bugger it," she said. "My father would say: 'Be sure your sins will find you out.' Well, you've asked for the truth, so you shall have it, though you won't like it."
"Try me," Lloyd said recklessly.
"You're not Maud's child," she said. "You're Fitz's."
vii
Next day, Friday, May 10, Germany invaded Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Lloyd heard the news on the radio as he sat down to breakfast with his parents and Uncle Billy in the boardinghouse. He was not surprised: everyone in the army had believed the invasion was imminent.
He was much more stunned by the revelations of the previous evening. Last night he had lain awake for hours, angry that he had been misled so long, dismayed that he was the son of a right-wing aristocratic appeaser who was also, weirdly, the father-in-law of the enchanting Daisy.
"How could you fall for him?" he had said to his mother in the pub.
Her reply had been sharp. "Don't be a hypocrite. You used to be crazy about your rich American girl, and she was so right-wing she married a Fascist."
Lloyd had wanted to argue that that was different, but quickly realized it was the same. Whatever his relationship with Daisy now, there was no doubt he had once felt in love with her. Love was not logical. If he could succumb to an irrational passion, so could his mother; indeed, they had been the same age, twenty-one, when it had happened.
He had said she should have told him the truth from the start, but she had an argument for that, too. "How would you have reacted, as a little boy, if I had told you that you were the son of a rich man, an earl? How long would it have been before you boasted to the other boys at school? Think how they would have mocked your childish fantasy. Think how they would have hated you for being superior to them."
"But later . . ."
"I don't know," she had said wearily. "There never seemed to be a good time."
Bernie had at first gone white with shock, but soon recovered and became his usual phlegmatic self. He said he understood why Ethel had not told him the truth. "A secret shared is a secret no more."
Lloyd wondered about his mother's relationship with the earl now. "I suppose you must see him all the time, in Westminster."
"Just occasionally. Peers have a separate section of the palace, with their own restaurants and bars, and when we see them it's usually by arrangement."
That night Lloyd was too shocked and bewildered to know how he felt. His father was Fitz--the aristocrat, the Tory, the father of Boy, the father-in-law of Daisy. Should he be sad about it, angry, suicidal? The revelation was so devastating that he felt numbed. It was like an injury so grave that at first there was no pain.
The morning news gave him something else to think about.
In the early hours the German army had made a lightning westward strike. Although it was anticipated, Lloyd knew that the best efforts of Allied intelligence had been unable to discover the date in advance, and the armies of those small states had been taken by surprise. Nevertheless, they were fighting back bravely.
"That's probably true," said Uncle Billy, "but the BBC would say it anyway."
Prime Minister Chamberlain had called a cabinet meeting that was going on at that very moment. However, the French army, reinforced by ten British divisions already in France, had long ago agreed on a plan for dealing with such an invasion, and that plan had automatically gone into operation. Allied troops had crossed the French border into Holland and Belgium from the west and were rushing to meet the Germans.
With the momentous news heavy on their hearts, the Williams family caught the bus into the town center and made their way to Bournemouth Pavilion, where the party conference was being held.
There they heard the news from Westminster. Chamberlain was clinging to power. Billy learned that the prime minister had asked Labour Party leader Clement Attlee to become a cabinet minister, making the government a coalition of the three main parties.
All three of them were aghast at this prospect. Chamberlain the appeaser would remain prime minister, and the Labour Party would be obliged to support him in a coalition government. It did not bear thinking about.
"What did Attlee say?" asked Lloyd.
"That he would have to consult his National Executive Committee," Billy replied.
"That's us." Both Lloyd and Billy were members of the committee, which had a meeting scheduled for four o'clock that afternoon.
"Right," said Ethel. "Let's start canvassing, and find out how much support Chamberlain's plan might have on our executive."
"None, I should think," said Lloyd.
"Don't be so sure," said his mother. "There will be some who want to keep Churchill out at any price."
Lloyd spent the next few hours in constant political activity, talking to members of the committee and their friends and assistants, in cafes and bars in the pavilion and along the sea front. He ate no lunch, but drank so much tea he felt he might have floated.
He was disappointed to find that not everyone shared his view of Chamberlain and Churchill. There were a few pacifists left over from the last war, who wanted peace at any price, and approved of Chamberlain's appeasement. On the other side, Welsh M.P.s still thought of Churchill as the home secretary who sent the troops in to break a strike in Tonypandy. That had been thirty years ago, but Lloyd was learning that memories could be long in politics.
At half past three Lloyd and Billy walked along the sea front in a fresh breeze and entered the Highcliff Hotel, where the meeting was to be held. They thought that a majority of the committee were against accepting Chamberlain's offer, but they could not be completely sure, and Lloyd was still worried about the result.
They went into the room and sat at the long table with the other committee members. Promptly at four the party leader came in.
Clem Attlee was a slim, quiet, unassuming man, neatly dressed, with a bald head and a mustache. He looked like a solicitor--which his father was--and people tended to underestimate him. In his dry, unemotional way he summarized, for the committee, the events of the last twenty-four hours, including Chamberlain's offer of a coalition with Labour.
Then he said: "I have two questions to ask you. The first is: Would you serve in a coalition government with Neville Chamberlain as prime minister?"
There was a resounding "No!" from the people around the table, more vehement than Lloyd had expected. He was thrilled. Chamberlain, friend of the Fascists, the betrayer of Spain, was finished. There was some justice in the world.
Lloyd also noted how subtly the unassertive Attlee had controlled the meeting. He had not opened the subject for general discussion. His question had not been: What shall we do? He had not given people the chance to express uncertainty or dither. In his understated way he had put them all up against the wall and made them choose. And Lloyd felt sure the answer he got was the one he had wanted.
Attlee said: "Then the second question is: Would you serve in a coalition under a different prime minister?"
The answer was not so vocal, but it was yes. As Lloyd looked around the table it was clear to him that almost everyone was in favor. If there were any against, they did not bother to ask for a vote.
"In that case," said Attlee, "I shall tell Chamberlain that our party will serve in a coalition but only if he resigns and a new prime minister is appointed."
There was a murmur of agreement around the table.
Lloyd noted how cleverly Attlee had avoided asking who they thought the new prime minister should be.
Attlee said: "I shall now go and telephone Number Ten Downing Street."
He left the room.
viii
That evening Winston Churchill was summoned to Buckingham Palace, in accordance with tradition, and the king asked him to become prime minister.
Lloyd had high hopes for Churchill, even if the man was a Conservative. Over the weekend Churchill made his dispositions. He formed a five-man War Cabinet including Clem Attlee and Arthur Greenwood, respectively leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party. Union leader Ernie Bevin became minister of labor. Clearly, Lloyd thought, Churchill intended to have a genuine cross-party government.
Lloyd packed his case ready to catch the train back to Aberowen. Once there, he expected to be quickly redeployed, probably to France. But he only needed an hour or two. He was desperate to learn the explanation of Daisy's behavior last Tuesday. Knowing he was going to see her soon increased his impatience to understand.
Meanwhile, the German army rolled across Holland and Belgium, overcoming spirited opposition with a speed that shocked Lloyd. On Sunday evening Billy spoke on the phone to a contact in the War Office, and afterward he and Lloyd borrowed an old school atlas from the boardinghouse proprietress and studied the map of northwest Europe.
Billy's forefinger drew an east-west line from Dusseldorf through Brussels to Lille. "The Germans are thrusting at the softest part of the French defenses, the northern section of the border with Belgium." His finger moved down the page. "Southern Belgium is bordered by the Ardennes forest, a huge strip of hilly, wooded terrain virtually impassable to modern motorized armies. So my friend in the War Office says." His finger moved on. "Yet farther south, the French-German border is defended by a series of heavy fortifications called the Maginot Line, stretching all the way to Switzerland." His finger returned up the page. "But there are no fortifications between Belgium and northern France."
Lloyd was puzzled. "Did no one think of this until now?"
"Of course we did. And we have a strategy to deal with it." Billy lowered his voice. "Called Plan D. It can't be a secret anymore, since we're already implementing it. The best part of the French army, plus all of the British Expeditionary Force already over there, are pouring across the border into Belgium. They will form a solid line of defense at the Dyle River. That will stop the German advance."