The Shameful Suicide of Winston Churchill

by Peter Millar

  ‘Can you come back?’ the canon had said. ‘Tomorrow, very early in the morning. Around dawn. There will be others here. There will be a small congregation.’

  ‘For a religious service?’ Stark wondered if the man was inviting him to some sort of requiem for his late lover.

  The canon gave the ghost of a smile: ‘Not exactly. But then again, the Good Book does say, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I”.’ Stark had heard the quotation before. He had never been sure what it meant. He was even less sure now.

  He knew one thing. He had found his – rather the American’s – ‘Underground’. A blind and bitter old man and a grieving homosexual cleric. It was not exactly the stuff of revolution. Stark had no idea how much, if any, belief he could place in the American’s optimism about the ‘wind of change’ wafting in from Moscow, whether or not there really was a growing readiness – in the Kremlin if not yet the Mansion House – to face up to communism’s economic failures and casual cruelties. You didn’t change a way of life overnight. Even if his father had embraced some sort of alternative, where had it got him?

  But that was also the problem: if it really had got him a bullet in the back of the head, his son wanted to know. More than that, he wanted it exposed. He wanted other people to know. The people who venerated the old man’s memory. Most of all, Harry Stark wanted his mother and sister to know. Even if the truth hurt, it was always better to know it. Wasn’t it? He thought about the argument in the pub the other night. The American film about Churchill. The Churchill drawings – no stencils, that’s what they were – in the dead man’s pocket, on Bankside power station. On the Wall itself. Was that about the same thing: truth and lies. Mistakes and mythology? His head hurt.

  He looked at his watch and took stock of where he was. He had walked miles without noticing it, on autopilot. At least it was an autopilot that still had a compass. He was south of the river. Almost home. How much had his mother known? Everything? Nothing? Or something in between. He had no idea. Would the truth – whatever it was – be too little too late or too much too soon? Either way he would be back at St Bride’s before dawn. He had told them he was indeed his father’s son. He had told them they could trust him. And could they? And could he trust them?

  He was still trying to configure the questions, never mind find answers, when out of nowhere a figure appeared in front of him, blocking his way. A tall figure, looming over him. And laughing.

  ‘How’s it going, Harry?’

  The shock on Stark’s face only added to the obvious delight on that of Benjamin T. Fairweather at turning the tables so neatly as he stepped out of the same doorway from which Stark had ambushed him barely twenty-four hours earlier

  Never in his life had Harry Stark been so suddenly seized by two conflicting impulses. The first – and strongest – was to smash his fist into the American’s face; the second, which occurred virtually simultaneously, was to hug him.

  Instead he stood back and took him in with his eyes. He was older than Stark had thought, tall and well built despite a certain ungainliness, as if he had been an American football player and never quite got used to walking without the helmet and body armour. The smile on his face was trying hard to exude friendliness and not just the smugness that clearly his little prank of hiding in the doorway had inspired. But if Stark was any judge, the warmth in his eyes was genuine. He was wearing the thick-framed spectacles from the photograph in his press card. He held out his hand. Stark took it. As he had noticed before, the squeeze was firm, manly but not aggressive.

  It was a strange world, Stark thought; this awkward big Bostonian had been his own unwanted messenger from the gods, an archangel out of nowhere who had delivered a world-altering revelation. The last thing he wanted to feel towards him was gratitude. Nor could he afford to alienate him. Without Ben Fairweather he might have gone on living with a legend that was rapidly turning into a lie.

  ‘Sorry I startled you. My turn to play Injun Ambush, I guess. I’ve brought you this,’ Fairweather said. ‘I thought you might need a bit more convincing that I wasn’t just making things up.’

  Stark began slowly to shake his head. He wasn’t going to be strung along, as if the American alone had pirate gold in his pocket with which he could drip-feed him. Stark had seen the hoard and the curse that lay on it. He stood there in stony silence, while the American delved into his jacket pocket and once again produced the expensive wallet, with yet another newspaper cutting. Or rather another photocopy. He unfolded it and handed it to Stark, who glanced down at it, then took it for a brief moment and handed it back.

  It was from the Telegraph, marked ‘final West London edition’, the same date as the piece the American had shown him from the New York Times, the same subject. From what Stark could tell the two pieces might as well have been written by the same reporter – so much for the vaunted variety to be found in the so-called ‘free’ media. There were a few minor differences in wording, but the story was the same: the alleged execution by the Department of Social Security of a ‘rogue’ major in the Metropolitan People’s Police. A Major by the name of John Stark.

  ‘It just occurred to me,’ the American said, ‘that the record might not be complete over here.’

  Stark handed the piece of paper back to him with a grudging admission: ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘I thought not.’

  ‘So, here we are then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here. We’re still here. Both of us. Me more than you.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be that way.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? I rather think it does. What do you want me to say? Thank you? For fucking up my world?’

  ‘You know, Harry, if there’s a God in heaven and perhaps more importantly, a new mood in the Kremlin, and you’re the man I think you are, well, then we’ll carry this off.’

  Those were big ‘ifs’, Stark thought. Even if he had any idea what it was they might ‘carry off’. Or whether he wanted to.

  ‘Don’t think you can do this alone, Harry. I’m here to help you. It makes sense for both of us. I’ve moved over here, this side of the Wall. I checked into the Savoy for a few days. Here are the numbers.’

  He wrote on a card and handed it across. Stark took it, saw the embossed New York Times crest, the name Benjamin T. Fairweather, and a list of telephone and fax numbers. Across them the American had scrawled another, the number for The Savoy Hotel, and ‘Room 405’.

  Stark looked at him sceptically but slipped the card into his inside jacket pocket. The American held out his hand. Stark looked down at it for a second, then walked off.

  ‘Harry?’

  He turned.

  ‘Fucking up your world wasn’t my intention, you know.’

  Stark gave him a lopsided grin.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. The world happened to be fucked up. I just made you look at it. Shake?’

  Stark met Fairweather in the eye and for a moment what he saw there was a genuine desire to please, to be liked. He took two steps towards him and stretched out his own hand. The American took it and squeezed it with a grip that was only slightly too strong, and said: ‘Keep me in the loop, Harry. This means a lot to me.’

  ‘It means a lot to me too.’

  Chapter 35

  ‘I hate him.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I hate him and everything he stands for. I hate the whole fucking sanctimonious set-up.’

  ‘You don’t mean that. Not really.’

  A pause. A sulk. Kate Stark bit her lower lip and pouted. The two of them were standing on a street corner in Ber-mondsey, shivering. There was a cold wind blowing in from the Thames.

  ‘How would you know? You don’t have to live with him.’

  A moment of hesitation. As if it were something Lizzie Goldsmith had actually thought about.

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Or her. Or the fucking framed photographs. The medals wrap
ped in tissue paper. The middle-aged prats who smile at me in the street, who pop round to pay their respects to “Widow Stark” and treat me like some twelve-year-old kid and still cop a feel of my arse on the way out.’

  ‘Now, that I do understand.’

  ‘And I bet you don’t like it either.’

  ‘It comes with the territory, darling, and believe me that’s something that isn’t going to change overnight.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘The world isn’t fair. That’s what it’s all about: us, them; men, women; communism, capitalism. In the end everything’s a trade-off. One man’s freedom ends where another’s begins.’

  ‘Or woman’s.’

  ‘Yeah. Right. In theory.’

  ‘You don’t believe that. In women’s equality?’

  ‘Of course I believe in it. I just don’t see it happening any time soon. Remember, we were the first to declare it. Over here. On our side of the Wall. And what good did that do? Ever seen a woman in the Mansion House? Or the Kremlin, come to that.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s what you’d expect. They put it into practice first, though, didn’t they? Over there, in Britain, or whatever they call it, I mean, they’ve had a woman prime minister.’

  ‘And a fat lot of good she did. Spent half her time up Ronnie Reagan’s arse and the rest giving reactionary speeches about the supposed benefits to civilisation of the British empire, about her devotion to her “oppressed fellow subjects” – that’s you and me, kid, and by the way don’t you love that “subjects” word, as if anybody anywhere still owed jackshit loyalty to some old gaggle of German aristocrats wasting away their days on the Bahamas?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  ‘It’s not what I mean either. But it’s what it is. It’s what happened. You might not want to live with the status quo, but you at least have to start by acknowledging it.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean you have to stick up for my stupid brother who’s spent half a lifetime at least trying to live up to the legend of a father who died when he was barely out of his teens.’

  ‘He was your father too.’

  ‘Yeah, but I never knew him, did I? I’m just told to worship the graven images.’

  ‘I know. It can’t be easy.’

  ‘It’s not. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.’

  ‘And you’re doing a good job. A great job. You know, you could end up making the difference.’

  ‘I could?’

  ‘You could.’

  ‘He had a Yank in the other night.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  ‘Me mum couldn’t believe it. Thought he’d turned traitor. Consorting with the enemy an’ all that.’

  ‘I can imagine. What’d you do?’

  ‘Me? I wasn’t there. I suppose I’d have thought he’d nicked him. Probably was something like that in the end. Mum said he’d taken him back to the frontier. At midnight like. Some visa thing, probably.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Don’t explain why he brought him home in the first place though, does it?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘I sort of wish I’d got in earlier. I mean, it’s just that … I’ve never met one, like. A real live American.’

  ‘I have. Believe me, kid. They’re not all they’re cracked up to be. Ask my gran.’

  ‘Yeah, I did. She’s been helping me. With my project. For the parade.’

  ‘You’re going ahead with that? With all it entails?’

  ‘I am. And nothing anyone could say will stop me.’

  ‘I know. I wish I could think of something that would. But I can’t. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d want to.’

  ‘Thanks, that means a lot.’

  ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’

  Chapter 36

  Harry Stark breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Lizzie behind the bar. She smiled and nodded to indicate she would be right with him. Harry held up his hand as if holding a pint glass and she smiled again to show that she understood what was required was a pint of the usual.

  The usual customers were at the bar, in their usual places. And from what Harry could hear their conversation hadn’t moved on from the last time he was here, and with no Del in sight this time to shut them up.

  ‘It can hardly be a coincidence, can it? The Yanks bring out a film trying to change history, trying to make old Winnie the Pooh smell of roses. And then somebody goes and paints a picture of him on Bankside!’

  So it had got out. How could it not have? Was there anyone who didn’t watch the BBC for the news? Even in the upper echelons of the Socialist Labour Party itself, Harry wondered. After all, if they didn’t watch ‘the other side’, how would they know what to censor out, the old popular saw went.

  He found himself trying to recollect what if anything his father had said about Churchill. He always said he had no time for the ‘Tories’, but did he ever mention Churchill specifically? Stark couldn’t remember him doing so. But then he wouldn’t have done, would he? In those days particularly it was a name used to frighten children. The ‘recent past’ was something best not talked about. Even now, it was hard enough: you could see it in old people’s faces. Old faces with ancient worry lines etched into them. Best to let the past take care of itself. Thinking too hard gave you headaches. Sometimes literally.

  It didn’t appear to be stopping young Ken Atkinson who seemed to have taken the new whispered message of glasnost from Moscow more literally than anyone else Stark had come across, at least on this side of the channel.

  ‘All I know,’ he was saying, ‘is that it’s a new take on the story. Artistic licence maybe, and maybe there is politics in it, but it makes for a good finale. After all, they never did find the remains, did they? Not for sure.’

  ‘Pah, humbug.’ Davy Hindsmith had obviously not changed his point of view either. ‘Revisionism. That’s what it is. They try to make out he didn’t kill himself at all, show him sitting down writing a last will and testament handing over the “mantle of civilisation” to the Yanks, all that guff about “Greece to Rome” and the “destiny of the English-speaking peoples”, an’ then going out and taking on a Stalin tank single-handed, crushed beneath the treads – as you might be, mind – with just ’is fingers clutching a smoking gun at the end. Balderdash, the lot of it!’

  ‘A powerful image, though, you have to admit.’

  ‘Powerful propaganda, I’ll admit that,’ said Hindsmith, his voice rising, ‘powerful and bloody dangerous.’

  It was, Stark admitted too, a potent image. The only thing he couldn’t see was the point of it. Particularly now, with a new leadership in the Kremlin, all the talk was of a return to the age of détente, a thaw in the cold war. Surely this was not time to raise the ghosts of old ogres, let alone attempt to cast them in a new, more favourable light.

  It turned out Hindsmith had an answer to that too:

  ‘You know why they’re doing it too, don’t you. All this bloody nonsense coming out of Moscow about glasnost and so forth. It’s a sign of weakness, that’s what it is. At least that’s as sure as hell what the Americans’ll see it as. Open the door a chink and they’ll blow it off its hinges. You can bet your bottom Yankee dollar they’ll be encouraging all sorts of trouble in Warsaw, Prague and Paris, and this is their attempt to do it here. Get people over here to see Churchill as some sort of betrayed hero. Next thing you know they’ll be claiming they “won the cold war”. That’s what glasnost’ll get you.’

  Stark decided he was best out of it. He lifted his pint and moved to one of the corner seats in the snug bar, the little alcove for regular quiet drinkers. It was empty but that was what he wanted. Under the circumstances, the words ‘Mind if I join you?’ were the last he wanted to hear, until he looked up from his pint and realised it was Lizzie who was speaking:

  ‘Del’s come in. Shut that lot at the bar up again. Said I could go early. And I thought you might be in need of a bit of company. You’re not
half looking under the weather.’

  ‘Am I?’ he hadn’t meant to smile, but it was amazing how she provoked the reaction. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to.’ She sat down beside him, plonking a large gin and tonic alongside his pint.

  ‘Don’t be sorry. I just meant you look like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.’

  ‘Do I? Sorry.’

  ‘Tut, tut, sorry again. Is it work?’

  ‘Hmm? I suppose. Sometimes one thing leads to another. As if a case has come looking for you. You have to get to the bottom of it. No matter how deep you have to dig.’

  ‘Can you talk about it? I mean, only if it would help.’

  ‘You heard about the body? The one found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge.’

  Lizzie froze. ‘Yes. Of course. It was on the BBC. Nearly had his head cut off. You want to stay out of things like that.’ Stark gave her a sideways look. ‘No, I don’t suppose you can, can you. Not in your job. Have you got a lead of some sort? Do you know who did it?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Really? You’re getting close?’ There was an edge to her voice that caused Stark to wonder, just for a second, if she might care for him.

  ‘You might say that. Then again, you might not want to. Not in public anyhow.’

  ‘You’re not suggesting …’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything at the minute. Anyway I’ve got other stuff on my mind.’

  ‘Another case?’

  Stark gave a bitter little laugh. ‘You might say that too. More like a cold case.’ He paused for a moment, and then said: ‘How well did you know your father? Really, I mean.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘What?’

  Lizzie took a deep breath. By the time she finished speaking, in a low, muttered voice, her eyes scarcely looking up from the table, Stark learned Lizzie Goldsmith had been fourteen before she discovered that the father she idolised dealt in drugs and pimped prostitutes for the Soviet base down at Woolwich. She only found out when he propositioned one of her schoolmates. She had made a scene and the old man had hit her, hit her little sister, little more than a toddler at the time and stomped out, never to be seen again. Her mother had never forgiven her.