Icelight
Page 34
I don’t, of course, know how far you want to take this, but I’d say Mrs Douglas needs to have her varicose veins stripped. It is a fairly simple, certainly well-tried procedure – I have done some myself – and the results can be the nearest we humans ever get to magical. I’m not entirely sure how much the procedure costs these days, but I imagine somewhere in the region of forty pounds at a good clinic. Should you wish to pursue this course of action, I will, of course, be happy to provide further assistance.
Cotton shrugged and refolded the letter. The rain was dripping from the eaves. He grunted. He was aware that, pre-winter, he would have smiled at the doctor’s letter. What was it the old fraud had said? The nearest we humans ever get to magical.
He was interrupted by his father. ‘Do you know what? The bloody roof is leaking.’
Afterword
HISTORIANS SOMETIMES complain of historical fiction that accuracy takes second place to drama or market.
As usual, however, I have tried to fit the fiction into the historical background and be accurate in that.
For example, Miss Ellen Wilkinson was indeed Minister of Education. Responsible for introducing free milk to schoolchildren, she was reportedly depressed at the time of her death, possibly, according to some sources, because of her failure to get the increase in the school-leaving age to 16 through Cabinet. She did indeed have an affair with Herbert Morrison. Incidentally, I see that in 1932 she also published a crime novel, The Division Bell Mystery.
Likewise, Sir Percy Sillitoe was head of MI5 and Sir Stewart Menzies head of MI6, and the details, particularly of the first, stick pretty much to the records.
The organization Common Wealth existed and survived until 1993 as a political pressure group. Sir Richard Acland himself, however, won the Gravesend seat for Labour in November 1947 in a by-election caused by the expulsion of the also Labour MP Garry Allighan for making allegations of corruption.
Christopher Mayhew MP (1915–97) is the source for the conversation between Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and the US Ambassador Lewis W. Douglas on aid, Palestine and Jewish immigration. He was Bevin’s PPS at the time.
In A. A. Watson’s case, the method of suicide, but not the character nor the place, is very much Alan Turing’s in 1954.
Of course, Cotton works without the benefit of hindsight or information that would later become available. The man in Istanbul Ayrtoun mentions is Kim Philby. Likewise, ‘Homer’ would turn out to be Donald Maclean. The ‘valuable source of information in the German Embassy’ mentioned by Robert Starmer-Smith was Wolfgang zu Potlitz.
Those interested in Sydney Stanley should look up the Lynskey tribunal.
The biggest difference with my previous novels is this. Alfred Perlman and Major Albert Briggs MP should not be confused with or thought of as referring to Arnold (later Lord) Goodman or Colonel George (later Lord) Wigg MP, the latter being Manny Shinwell’s PPS during the coal crisis.
Finally, the winter in early 1947 was every bit as bad as is described. Most reports mention the stoicism of those who suffered through it. Some mention the lack of an enemy to fight against. Almost everyone remarks on the depressing shabbiness and threadbare quality of life available postwar. The winter is also credited with a loss of popularity for the Labour government and a very steep rise in emigration.
Acknowledgements
THANKS TO my agent Maggie McKernan for her support in this next stage of Peter Cotton’s career, and to my editor Kate Parkin for helping me through a longer book with her usual perspicacity and encouragement.
And once again, thanks to my family – patient as always and decidedly supportive.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Afterword
Acknowledgements