by James Philip
The Prime Minister nodded stiffly to the erect, stern figure of her Secretary of State for Defence.
Philip Sidney, Viscount De L’Isle and Dudley, VC, half-smiled as if he had guessed exactly why the remarkable lady who had, damned nearly single-handedly, through thick and thin, held the country together practically from the moment she and her children had dragged, cold, hungry and very, very angrily, into the Government Compound at Cheltenham in the unutterably bleak aftermath of the October War, had paused before she took her chair at the head of the round table in the middle of the subterranean Situation Room.
De L’Isle was a regular visitor to Churchill House; he and his premier were both widowers, these day with many friends in common since his return to England in the winter of 1966. Alone, and in the company of close colleagues they had been on ‘Margaret’ and ‘Philip’ terms from day one; and often, as on their last meeting they chatted, invariably smiling, about Australia, Yarralumla and Marija and Peter Christopher.
In telling his friend about the latest ‘adventures’ of his youngest daughter, fifteen-year-old Lucy, who had thrived and positively bloomed under the guardianship of the Governor General and his remarkable wife, De L’Isle had briefly succeeded in bringing a wistful smile not just to Margaret Thatcher’s lips but to her steely cornflower blue eyes.
‘According to Marija, Lucy has acquired something of a teenage ‘crush’ on the eldest son of the American Ambassador. Apparently, John McCain junior, who by all accounts is quite a character, and no mean raconteur, and a holder of the Congressional Medal of Honour and the US Navy Cross, no less, is something of a daredevil aviator, who happens to be thirty-one! Lady Marija has been at pains to assure me that Lieutenant Commander McCain has responded with unblemished correctness. Marija says that this is probably a passing ‘adolescent thing’ and that no harm will come of it. Well, to be more specific, she promised me that she has everything in hand and that I am not to worry about a thing. I think she was a little concerned I might hear of this, um, infatuation by the agency of a third party. I gather that the Ambassador’s son is about to be posted – albeit briefly - to HMAS Melbourne, there to resume his career as a naval aviator as part of the ANZAC-US Mutual Defence Agreement, later this spring. Marija thinks this will greatly assist Lucy in concentrating on her studies. In the meantime, the Governor and his wife are keeping her busy at official functions, and such-like!’
Thereafter their conversation had moved on to a general, exploratory discussion of what exactly to do with ‘the Christophers’ when their time in Canberra came to an end.
‘Peter has requested a return to sea duty,’ De L’Isle had reported. ‘I know there’s a lot of talk in the papers about his skippering an America’s Cup campaign but in that respect, he has communicated to me, privately, that although the notion is not without its attractions, he has informed his would-be sponsor, the financier Eric Stanton, that he should not expect him to be free to pursue that ambition for some years to come.’
‘Obviously,’ the Prime Minister had responded, thoughtfully. ‘It would be entirely improper for me to interfere in the deliberations of the Navy Board, whose responsibility for postings and deployments I would not wish to diminish. However, it seems to me that Peter’s talents ought to be appropriately employed by the Royal Navy?’
Her Secretary of State for Defence had nodded: ‘The sea-going options for a Captain, not to mention the chap who is still the youngest four-ringer in the Navy, are, of course, limited. If he was a submariner that might be different but he’s not. So, that means appointing him to one of the carriers, or the big cruisers, of which there are only two or three in commission at any one time, or to a Squadron Command, Captain (D), perhaps, of which again, there are very few available options these days. Broadly speaking, we are talking about giving him one of the top ten plum jobs in the Service…’
The Prime Minister had mulled this in silence.
De L’Isle had continued: “Peter’s not a naval aviator either, and by the time he comes home he’ll still be only thirty-two, so, to my mind that rules out the big carriers.’
The Prime Minister had pointed out: ‘Her Majesty saw fit to appoint Peter Ambassador to the United States in 1964 when he was only twenty-seven-years-old, Philip. And again, as Governor-General of Australia only two years later.’
It was food for thought.
They had left the discussion there, both with plenty to mull over.
Back in the present: “Philip,” the Prime Minister decreed. “Perhaps, if you’d be so good as to chair this meeting?”
“With pleasure, Prime Minister,” De L’Isle concurred, having anticipated this eventuality and prepared accordingly. Today was a discursive briefing, a chance for everybody to catch up with each other’s thinking and reservations, not a policy forum.
He struggled for a moment to focus on the matter in hand.
Only two days ago, he had discussed the ‘Christopher conundrum’ with the First Sea Lord, tacitly agreeing that leaving the decision as to Peter Christopher’s future employment wholly in the hands of a sub-committee of the Navy Board was, for all sorts of reasons, a ‘complete non-starter’.
Much depended on the outcome of the ongoing Defence Review; but both men saw the inherent wisdom in maintaining a substantial naval presence in the Central Mediterranean based at Malta for the foreseeable future. Perhaps, one of the big carriers and a cruiser, and a squadron of destroyers, at the very least.
Therein, might lie a solution to the ‘Christopher problem.’
Not least because there was another, very important aspect to this: the question of what to do with the Christophers was not just a Navy issue. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office had already suggested to De L’Isle that there were ‘advantages in so arranging matters that Lady Marija might return to her native archipelago, where it was not inconceivable that she might have a significant impact on the local political scene, ahead of the independence conference provisionally pencilled-in to commence sometime in the spring of 1970.’
Wheels within wheels…
The Secretary of State for Defence sighed and looked to Sir Dennis Spotswood.
The Air Marshall had been preening his marvellous old-fashioned handle-bar moustache.
“If you could bring us up to date with the latest developments with the US Air Force and Marine Corps vis-à-vis the TSR2 pre-production program, and then move on to the headlines of your Staff’s provisional report to the Joint Treasury-Defence Ministry Sub-Committee on Future Defence Requirements, please Denis?”
Chapter 9
Sunday 31st March, 1968
Cambridge, Massachusetts
‘You’ve got a lot to learn about politics, son,’ His Honour Chief Justice Earl Warren had remarked to Dan Brenckmann when the two men had sat down to review the final draft of the Report of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Causes and Conduct of the Cuban Missiles War, before adding, ruefully and with a hint of resignation, ‘we’ve come this far, so, let’s tell it the way it was and leave it for the people on the Hill to fight over!’
Later they had had a conversation about how Dan saw his career developing in the years to come. By then, his father’s name was on the ballot for the Democrat primaries in March and April 1968, and the Chief Justice was intent on returning full-time to his ‘day job’ in the Supreme Court, where the first tranche of appeals from subordinate courts relating to the jaw-dropping revelations about Operation Chaos were starting to pile up. Much in the fashion of a multiple auto wreck on a foggy interstate.
Earl Warren had told Dan that ‘in normal circumstances I’d take you with me but politics is politics, and you and I both know that your wife’s next move will be to run for Congress or maybe even the Senate.’
The former Governor of California, who had come to speak to and to generally treat his clerk and the man he had personally appointed as lead draft writer of ‘the report’, like a protégé, a son in many ways, had spoken with a mixture of re
gret and pride.
‘I’m not telling you anything you haven’t already worked out for yourself. Heck, Gretchen may not know it yet but from time to time she’s going to need you to catch her when she falls. And, in any event, you’ve already made your name in this city,’ they had been in Earl Warren’s office in the Supreme Court Building in Washington DC at the time, ‘so, maybe the time has come for you to start publishing under your own name. The report you’ve written for me might not be Hemmingway but then, I can’t think of a better preparation for writing histories than the work you’ve done for me the last two or three years.’
Everybody in DC knew that Dan was the man who had actually written the report that would be published the day after Election Day in November; but Earl Warren had made sure nobody on the Hill would be able to get past him, the Chief Justice of the United States, to take their revenge.
Dan was a free man and had been for the last five weeks.
It took a bit of getting used to.
Like his and Gretchen’s and their kids sudden move back into his parents’ old house in Cambridge, a stone’s throw from the nearest fence marking the latest extension to the boundary of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Campus. The neighbourhood had taken a knock in the couple of years after the October War; and bounced back with a rush since, as droves new students lined up to pass through MIT’s doors.
Ma and Pa had rented out the old wood-frame house to students for a few cents a month, and the place had looked a little knocked about and neglected when Dan checked it out last month.
Gretchen had taken the New Hampshire result – and being fired - badly; although only for a day or two because that was the way she was, bless her. Dan reckoned she had missed being around the little ones, and having a short interlude in which they could be a family again in their rented Georgetown town house, before they moved to Boston had been a joy.
Claude Walter, was a rambunctious two-and-a-half-year-old now, and Louisa Tabatha, eighteen months old, was already relentlessly, fearlessly inquisitive.
Gretchen had missed Dan, too. That was not a thing he had taken for granted: he had married the girl of his dreams and even in fairy tales it paid to keep one’s fingers tightly crossed behind one’s back!
They had promised each other never to be so separated – as they had been sometimes – ever again.
It went without saying that Dan had been struck dumb by the bombshell that Gretchen was running for the 4th Congressional District of Massachusetts. Apparently, a proxy had been holding the district following the death of Congressman Harry Donoghue, who had been the incumbent since as long ago as 1947, having defended the district for the Democrats nine times in the intervening years.
As it happened, Gretchen had been out when the fateful call had come through. Sherry, the couple’s large, cheerfully opinionated and completely irrepressible live-in nanny had been busy with the kids, so Dan had called through his open study door to say that he would take the call.
The voice of the man on the other end of the line had sounded very, very familiar.
‘Dan?’ It chuckled, not in any way unkindly. ‘You and I ought to meet one day. They say you aced the Cuban Missiles report.’
‘Why, I…’
The other man decided to put him out of his misery.
‘This is Jack Kennedy.’
In retrospect Dan was amazed the telephone handset had not fallen from his nerveless hand in that moment.
‘Why… Mister President, this is an…honour.’
‘Oh, I’m not sure about that,’ the man at the other end of the line had drawled, clearly amused. ‘I called to speak to Gretchen. You can ask her to call me back. But it’s fine if you tell her why I’m calling…’
The message had been short and sweet, and very much to the point with little or no room for surplus ambiguity.
The people in the 4th District are looking for a younger representative. Somebody with connections, somebody feisty with a reputation for fighting for what’s right.
Gretchen had thought Dan was teasing her when she got home after, it transpired, she had had discreet off the record conversations with ‘people from the Washington Post and the New York Times’ to counter the latest false rumours about rifts in ‘Ambassador Brenckmann’s campaign team’.
Dan had given her the number the former President had left him, presumably, because he anticipated exactly this situation.
Gretchen had been almost timid.
Done a lot of listening which really was not her style.
The conversation had concluded: ‘Thank you, Mister President…’
And then she had gazed wordlessly at her husband for some moments.
‘Maybe, my career in politics isn’t quite as messed up as I thought it was a couple of weeks ago, honey,’ she had confessed, a little sheepishly.
That evening Gretchen had rung Dan’s mother, who, in retrospect, had probably suggested the move into the house in Cambridge in anticipation of ‘future developments’ and in a long, quiet chat, this time with Gretchen doing at least two-thirds of the talking – showing she had got over her initial shock – the air had been well and truly cleared over the New Hampshire fiasco.
Dan knew his Pa did not blame Gretchen but she had needed to hear it from his Ma – several times - before she actually believed it.
‘Your Pa’s talked to Ted Sorensen about joining the campaign,’ she had explained later that evening as they put Claude and Louisa to bed and the events of the day began to sink in.
JFK had once described Sorensen, the thirty-nine-year-old son of a former Attorney General of Nebraska, as his ‘intellectual blood bank’. Sorensen was the man credited with penning the immortal epithet: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’
‘Sorensen. I thought he was back in the Dakotas somewhere, a semi-recluse?’
‘Not any more. He doesn’t want to get involved in the Party in-fighting, which is fair enough. But he’s happy to advise, from outside the ring, if you see what I mean until the fog of battle clears after the last primaries in June.’
Dan had learned that a lot of the old Kennedy, and even a few of the LBJ stalwarts had come out of the wilderness to tentatively, at least, entertain feelers from his father’s campaign. If one pricked the soul of America it seemed that there were still a lot of people who believed in old-fashioned values like respect for the constitution, giving everybody a fair chance, standing up for the little guy against bullies, and not getting your phone tapped or your family put under surveillance just because you dare to speak out against the Administration’s missteps.
One way and another the last month had been a real doozy!
Possibly, the oddest thing was discovering, belatedly, that he was married to a Catholic. The house in Cambridge becoming an ad hoc campaign headquarters had had nothing on that…revelation.
‘We were married under Protestant rites,” he had reminded his better half, ‘why didn’t you say something?’
‘I’m lapsed. It didn’t matter at the time.’
Only now, it did.
So, that morning, as they had the previous Sunday, they had driven south across the University of Boston Bridge over the Charles River, down into the city, parked up off Washington Street in the predominantly Irish South End District, and attended Mass at the largest Roman Catholic church in New England, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
‘I need Kennedy people to vote for me,’ Dan’s wife had said, to which he had replied with a question.
‘How much do you know about the Irish-American community of Boston?’
Answer: very little.
Which was where being married to a would-be historian began to be really, really important to a candidate who had been born with a French surname and married into a family with a Germanic patrilineal bloodline and heritage.
Dan had talked about the generations of migration from the Old Country, the great famine and the ongoing ‘troubl
es’ of the six northern counties of Ireland; and then he had spoken about Catholicism being a keystone of the Irish immigrants’ life but in New England, not their sole preserve.
‘Boston, like New York was a great port of entry into North America from Europe but,’ and it was a big but, ‘Germans, Italians, Sicilians, French, Dutch, Danish and other Scandinavians, Spanish and Portuguese, and don’t forget, a very large number of English, Scottish and Welsh folk also came through its doors and not all of them were remotely Catholic. The Pilgrim fathers were Puritans, then there were Huguenots, Lutherans, and Presbyterians of the most fundamentalist Protestant hues, many of whom were exiled from their homelands by regimes adhering to either intolerant Catholic, or Protestant theocracies.’
His wife had listened, very thoughtfully.
‘You need to write me note sheets on this stuff, honey.’ Another thought. ‘Bullet points?’
‘I can do that!’
Dan had prepared her exactly such ‘cheat sheets’ or ‘prompters’ about the Catholic hierarchy in Boston and the Cathedral of the Holy Cross itself.
Planning for the cathedral had commenced in 1860 during the episcopacy of John Bernard Fitzpatrick, stalled during the Civil War and been picked up in the latter 1860s under the auspices of his successor Bishop John Williams, later, from February 1875, the first Archbishop of the rapidly growing Archdiocese of Boston, who was to hold that post until his death in 1907. The cathedral took over eleven years to build, its dedication occurring in December 1875.
One of Dan’s bullet points confirmed that the cathedral was in fact so named, because the church owned what was allegedly a fragment of the cross upon which Christ was crucified.
This item is on display in the cathedral.
Other notes detailed that the building was designed by the famous, Tipperary-born ecclesiastical architect Patrick Keely, based at the time in Brooklyn, New York.