Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs

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СКАЧАТЬ was the point? He didn’t want any points, not now, he was trying to enjoy himself. For pity’s sake, they all had points, all passionately held and honed to a razor’s edge, but surely this wasn’t the time or the place. Not here. So the Duchess was a long-standing opponent of the Prime Minister and appeasement, they all knew that, an opponent so venomous she had earned herself the nickname of ‘Red Kitty’. She paraded her conscience everywhere, rehearsed her arguments a thousand times before breakfast and again over lunch until her intransigence had pushed her to the furthest limits of the party and, in truth, almost beyond. But Sam Hoare was a party man, loyalty first, and wasn’t going to allow her to forget it.

      ‘Kitty,’ he hailed his colleague, ‘didn’t see you there in the darkness. About time you came back into the light and enjoyed yourself with the rest of us, isn’t it?’

      Kitty Atholl bristled. ‘Enjoyment? Is that what it’s supposed to be about, Sam? Is that why we gave Czechoslovakia away? For fun?’

      ‘Let’s not trespass on Max’s hospitality …’

      ‘Don’t mind me, Sam,’ the Beaver interjected. ‘Always encourage a healthy disagreement. Except amongst my employees, of course.’

      And so it had begun. A discussion that became a debate that transformed into a character-ripping confrontation in the middle of a moonlit field and in a manner that had been matched across the land for weeks, and yet still showed no signs of exhausting itself. As they faced up to each other a squad of Boy Scouts ran around with jugs of mulled wine to top up the fuel tanks.

      ‘Hey, how about a toast to the guy?’

      ‘And death to Ribbentrop. May he die in pain.’

      ‘You callous witch.’

      ‘I’m not the one with my head buried in my red box desperately trying to ignore everything that’s happening in Europe.’

      ‘There you go again, fussing about Hitler. Fellow’s only digging over his own back yard.’

      ‘Digging graves.’

      ‘He’s cleaning up Germany, that’s all. He may be a dictator, but he’s also a bit of a Puritan. Like Cromwell.’

      ‘Cromwell didn’t slaughter Jews!’

      ‘For God’s sake, listening to you you’d think that pogroms started yesterday. It’s the history of Europe, woman, centuries old.’

      ‘Where’s your sense of justice, Sam?’

      ‘Kitty, we all have our consciences. But only you dine out on it.’

      ‘Put yours away in the closet, have you? All wrapped up in tissue paper?’

      ‘Any fool can go to war. And right now, only a fool would go to war.’

      ‘Conquest. Bloodshed. That’s what you’ll get with Hitler.’

      ‘Bugger it, Kitty, it’s how we won the Empire.’

      ‘And cowardice is how it’ll be thrown away!’

      Gradually it had just become the two of them. Others fell by the wayside until it was just Sam Hoare and Red Kitty, and he had accused her of being weak-minded and a xenophobe and every other calumny that came to hand. It had gone too far. Neither could find the words to stop it and their host refused to intervene – hell, he was enjoying the game, every minute of it, one arm waving a huge cigar, the other arm linked through that of Joe Kennedy, another spectator who had stepped out of the fight several insults earlier. Beside them, out of the darkness, appeared the rotund form of Joseph Ball. Hoare saw him, and even though he was Home Secretary, feared him a little. It gave him his cue.

      ‘Loyalty. That’s what this is really all about,’ Hoare offered, trying to find a way out of the confrontation with a final jibe. ‘You go sleep with your strange friends but I’m a party man, Kitty. Always been a party man. And I’ll die a party man.’

      Her lip twisted in mockery. ‘Dying for your principles, that I can understand, Sam. But to die for your party?’

      She reached sharply towards him. He swayed back in apprehension, alarm flooding his eyes, afraid she was intent on slapping his face, but she did nothing more than grab the umbrella that was dangling over his arm. With her trophy she walked over to the stuffed guy, stared at it as though it might spring to life, then thrust the umbrella beneath its armpit and with a final glance of dark-eyed derision swept away into the night. Hoare was left standing on his own, suddenly isolated, feeling like an abandoned bicycle.

      A gust of English embarrassment blew around the ankles of the onlookers until Beaverbrook was once again centre-stage, demanding their attention, strutting theatrically over to the guy as though on a tour of inspection. He was ridiculously small with a face that would not have been distinguished even on a gnome, but his money more than made up for it. A Napoleon in newsprint and an astrakhan collar. ‘So – what do we have here?’ he demanded. ‘Munich Man, eh? Not quite what I had in mind.’ He retrieved the umbrella and used it to prod the guy. ‘Whaddya think?’ he addressed the gathering. ‘Who is he? Had him made specially, so don’t disappoint me.’

      ‘A clue, Maxie darling, give us a clue,’ a giggling voice pleaded.

      ‘OK. So he’s a little like Guy Fawkes, maybe. Someone who tries to blow up everything in sight. Over-stuffed. Over-blown. Come on, any ideas?’

      A brief silence from the crowd and then: ‘Mussolini. It’s got to be Mussolini!’

      ‘Signor Mussolini to you,’ Beaverbrook growled. ‘Hell, he hears that and he’ll confiscate my villa in Tuscany. No, not Pasta Man. Another guess.’

      A woman’s voice: ‘With a stomach like that it’s got to be Hermann Goering.’

      ‘No, no, no. And if you’re listening up there, Hoyman’ – Beaverbrook swapped his Canadian brogue for a thick Brooklyn accent and raised his eyes to the dark skies – ‘we loves ya!’

      Amidst the bubbling of laughter other names were thrown in – Hore-Belisha, Herbert Hoover, Generalissimo Franco, even Wallis Simpson (‘It’s got to be her with the mouth open like that …’) – but Beaverbrook continued stubbornly shaking his head until: ‘Give us another clue, Maxie. Don’t be such a tease.’

      The diminutive press baron waved his hands for silence, the gleam of mischief in his eye. ‘One more clue, then,’ he conceded. Taking the large cigar from his own mouth, he inserted it into the slit in the face of the guy, where it remained gently smouldering. ‘I give you …’

      ‘Cigar Man. It’s Cigar Man! Oh, Maxie darling, you’re so wicked!’

      They cheered Beaverbrook from all sides. Only one or two of those present drifted off into the night, declining to be carried along on the tide.

      

      The smell of sausage and singeing onion that wafted on the breezes of that night had proved irresistible, and the canvas awning erected by the Boy Scouts as a hospitality area was crowded. Brendan Bracken had lingered on the edge for some time, fighting the urge to join their number. He was hungry but it was a question of image and image to Bracken was most of what he had. A workman could eat sausages in public, so could an earl or an actress, but an СКАЧАТЬ