Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs

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СКАЧАТЬ when a claret-coated club steward produced fresh drinks and fussed around the fire, stoking it back to life and propelling a curl of coal smoke into the room. McCrieff was glad of the opportunity to think. He was a laird, a Scottish farmer, not a fool. He had been invited to dine by two men who knew he had considerable influence in a constituency where the MP was one of the most troublesome members on the Government back benches. He’d guessed they wanted to talk about considerably more than fishing. He swirled the caramel liquor in his glass, where it formed a little whirlpool of alcohol. Suddenly it had all become mixed with intrigue. There was a danger he might get sucked down.

      ‘Yes, speaking personally, McCrieff,’ Ball picked up the conversation, ‘privately, just between the three of us – how do you feel about the Duchess?’

      The revived firelight was reflecting from Ball’s circular spectacles. His eyes had become two blazing orbs, making it seem as though a soul-consuming fire were burning inside. This was a dangerous man.

      ‘Gentlemen,’ McCrieff began slowly, stepping out carefully as though walking barefoot through a field of broken glass, ‘one of you is the most powerful man in the party, the other the most significant man in Government next to the Prime Minister himself. And I am a man of some political ambition.’ He paused, holding in his hands both opportunity and extinction. Time to choose. ‘How would you like me to feel about the Duchess?’

      

      The lights burned unusually late on the top floor of the Express building in Fleet Street. It was well past the dining hour. A group of five journalists, all men, mostly young, had already been closeted in the boardroom for three nights that week, and another night beckoned. The work was tiring and the banter with which they had begun had long since passed into a bleak determination to finish the job. They had been provided with all the tools – sheaves of writing paper, envelopes, twenty-seven separate lists of addresses. The lists had arrived by courier marked for the attention of the deputy editor, who had removed the covering letter and any trace of their origins.

      They wrote. Some used typewriters, the others wrote by hand. A total of more than five hundred letters, many purportedly from ex-servicemen, intended for opinion-formers within the twenty-seven constituencies. As the week had passed, any sense of restraint had dimmed, their language had grown ever more colourful, the metaphors more alarming.

       The Bolshies are regicides. Is that what you want? I would hazard the conjecture that the Germans, the most efficient fighting machine on this earth, would go through the rag-bag of Reds like a hot knife through butter. Take care you are not standing in the way when it happens!

      It was the season for mud and muck, it was inevitable that some of it should spread out and stick. And so they toiled, disturbed by nothing more than the chiming of the clock, the drumming of typewriter keys, the scratching of nibs, the occasional flooding of a handkerchief – one of them had been dragged from his sick bed despite the protestations of his wife. Death and misery were much on his mind.

       If you vote for the Duchess there will be war, and your sons will all be killed, like mine were in the last war, butchered by German steel. Can you bear that on your conscience?

      There were alternative strategies in use. One of his colleagues preferred to inspire by adulation:

      Mr Neville Chamberlain is a saint. He has saved us. There is war in China, in Abyssinia, in Spain. Hundreds of thousands have already died. If Britain goes to war, that will surely be our fate. Yet even though the Prime Minister is an elderly man he has thrown himself into his duties, flying three times to Germany though he had never before flown, hurled himself into the breach, unsparing of his time, uncaring of his health and safety. His one ambition has been PEACE. Peace for this time, peace for all time. He is surely amongst the great men of all time. That is why I will do anything to support him. I trust you will, too, by letting your MP know [underlined twice, in squiggly waves] of the strength of feeling of the ordinary people in this country.

      He signed it Mrs Ada Boscombe.

      It was ten minutes or more after the clock had marked nine when the doors of the lift opened. Two butlers emerged, dressed in tails and stiff wing collars, bearing substantial silver trays. On one was heaped a steaming tangle of brick-red lobsters, all claws and alarmed eyes, accompanied by a large dish of clear molten butter and surrounded by a plentiful garnish of sliced cucumber and tomato. The other tray bore three bottles of chilled Pol Roger champagne and five crystal glasses.

      ‘With the compliments of ‘is Lordship,’ the first butler informed them, placing his tray on the sideboard, producing knives, forks and linen napkins like a magician from deep pockets inside his jacket. ‘And ‘e says to make sure you bring the silver trays back.’

      

      They had come, in unprecedented numbers. Every seat was occupied, every corner crowded. The Duchess had remarked on the numbers, and on the fact that many of the faces seemed unfamiliar to her, but her agent assured her that apart from a handful of journalists they were all paid-up members of the association. ‘The times are very political, Your Grace,’ he had explained. What he declined to tell her, and what she was never to know, was how many of those fresh faces had had their membership dues paid in the last few days by William McCrieff. As McCrieff had put it to him, many ordinary voters in the constituency had been galvanized by the events of recent weeks and he had persuaded them to join, urged on by great issues such as war and peace – and, the agent suspected, by an extra pound in their pockets for their trouble in attending a political meeting, not to mention the promise of free hospitality afterwards. Even if many of those gathered together had been members for no more than six days and some for no longer than six hours, there was nothing in the rules to prevent such a show of interest and enthusiasm. In any event it was bound to be a meeting of exceptional significance for it had been convened to decide whom they should choose as a candidate to fight the next election. And the agent, like so many members loyal to the causes of appeasement and a comfortable life, found the Duchess about as comfortable as an ice storm in August. She was always lecturing, hectoring. Not like McCrieff. His methods were different. A quiet word, a dram or two, and the business was done. A good party man, was McCrieff, unlike the Duchess. She not only had her own opinions – so many of them – but insisted on sharing them. A grave fault in a politician, the agent reckoned, perhaps a mortal one. Anyway, the chairman had just called the meeting to order; they were soon to find out.

      

      They had been to see George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman at the Old Vic – a splendid performance, she’d thought, with Valerie Tudor and Anthony Quayle, but he found it a preposterous play, like most of the stuff the old man produced. All those Left-wing ideas tangled up in his bloody beard, which were then scraped off like yesterday’s lunch. He thought Quayle’s role as Tanner had been absurd, and played in the same manner – all this guff about woman being the pursuer and man the pursued. But Anna Maria had warmed to it, said it was splendid and up-to-date, seemed to enjoy wrapping herself in theatrical fantasy. So he indulged her, and for once bit his tongue.

      He hadn’t wanted the evening to end – he thought about inviting her back for a drink at his home in Lord North Street, which was near at hand, but he didn’t know her well enough and was afraid it might sound predatory and she would say no. He didn’t know how to deal with rejection from women – his mother had always treated him as nothing better than an inconvenience, and after he had left the family home he had made it a rule in his carefully constructed life never to put himself into a position where rejection might be possible. Yet he did not want to simply say goodnight. So he had suggested that they not drive all the way home, but stop on the other side of the park from where they could walk the last stretch to her front door. She had accepted with a smile.

      He had deliberately taken the СКАЧАТЬ