Winston’s War. Michael Dobbs
was for him a matter of complete inconsequence. Another man’s rations, his blanket, his work detail, sometimes even another man’s name, had on more than one occasion been the difference between death and tomorrow. It had all grown to be so simple, a world in which he would gladly exchange a man’s life for an hour of sunshine.
Yet now tears fell, uncontrollably. Tears for the life he had lost. And the lives that he knew would now be lost. The lives of those who had stared at him with those gaunt, awful eyes from the frames of the Pathé News film he had just seen, the fear in their faces made bright by the burning of the synagogues around them. He knew those faces, for he could see himself in every one. He wept, hoping the tears might douse the flames.
‘Another brandy, McCrieff.’ The proposal was placed with all the subtlety of a German ultimatum to a minor Middle-European enclave.
‘That’s most obliging of you. Just a wee one, if you insist, Sir Joseph. It’s been a splendid dinner.’
‘The first of many, we hope.’ Horace Wilson reappeared from behind the glow of his cigar.
‘That would indeed be pleasant. My club – the Caledonian – next time, if I may insist?’ An edge of uncertainty had slipped into the Scotsman’s voice – wouldn’t these great men find the Caledonian too gruesomely provincial for their tastes? He was uncertain of the tastes of fashionable Westminster; he felt the need to strengthen his hand. ‘Their kitchens may lack a little subtlety, of course, but the cellars are filled with some particularly fine single malts that I think might tempt you. Not that I’ve got anything against the French, you understand,’ he reassured them, draining his balloon, wishing alcohol hadn’t dulled his wits, ‘but I know where my loyalties lie.’
‘You fish, McCrieff?’
‘I could tie a fly before I could fasten my own shoelaces.’
‘Then I think we should arrange for you to join the Prime Minister and me when we next come up to the Dee. Probably at Easter. You could spare a day, could you?’
‘I’d be honoured, Sir Joseph, truly. But I’m aware that you’re all such busy men, I’d hate to think I might become a distraction.’
‘Ah, distractions, McCrieff, distractions. Life is so full of distractions. Wars, revolutions, scandal, strikes, floods – not to mention being forced to follow on behind the Australians. There are so many distractions in politics, so many things that are thrust upon you. Ah, but then there are the distractions you create.’
The Smoking Room of the Reform Club creaked with ancient red leather and history. It was a club created a century before for the singular purpose of celebrating emancipation. One Man, One Vote – or rather, one property, one vote, a twist of the rudder designed to steer a course between the distractions of revolution and repression that were bringing chaos to the rest of Europe.
‘But don’t you know, McCrieff, I’ve always regarded the greatest distraction in political life as being women. Don’t you agree, Horace?’
‘Women? Certainly. Did for Charles Stewart Parnell. Damn nearly did for Lloyd George, too. Should’ve done for him, if you ask my opinion.’
‘Might even do for this Government, if we let ’em.’
McCrieff’s brow puckered; he’d lost the thread. He readjusted his position in his armchair by the fire, sitting well back, listening to the leather creak, trying to convey to the others the illusion that he was entirely comfortable inside the maze of high politics. But women? Had Chamberlain got himself into difficulties on account of – no, ridiculous thought. Not Chamberlain, of all people. More likely the Archbishop than the Undertaker. Chamberlain just wasn’t the type. So where did women come into it?
‘Forgive me, gentlemen, but I’m not sure I entirely follow your –’
Ball cut him off ruthlessly. ‘What do you think of your local MP, McCrieff? The Duchess?’
McCrieff retreated from Ball’s stare and gazed into the fire. Their invitation had been so unexpected, so urgent in tone – was this what it was about? The Duchess of Atholl? And if so, which way did loyalty lean? Towards her? Or away? No matter how hard he stared he could find no answer in the fire, yet some edge in Ball’s tone told him that his answer mattered. He would have to tread with considerably more caution than he had dined. ‘As you are well aware, gentlemen, I am what I think it’s fair to describe as an influential member of the Kinross and West Perthshire constituency association. I also wish to become a Member of Parliament myself. I’m not sure it would be wise for me to go round criticizing those who I’d like to become my colleagues.’
‘You’d sit with Socialists?’
‘Of course not.’
‘But you’d sit with the Duchess? Support her causes?’
‘Well, she has a fair few of those, to be sure. Not all of them to my taste.’
‘Nor to the taste of others, McCrieff. Including the Prime Minister.’
‘Strange, so strange the causes she adopts,’ Wilson added. ‘Once heard her make a speech about female circumcision amongst the Kikuyu in Africa. Took up hours of parliamentary time on it, refused to give way. Quite extraordinary performance.’ He was shaking his head but not taking his eyes for a moment off McCrieff. ‘Not, of course, that as a civil servant I have any views on these matters, but personally and entirely privately …’
They were interrupted 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