High Jinx (24 page)

Blackford was wide awake. He went back to the pub and dialed a number and was greatly pleased to hear Minerva's voice. ‘Are you busy, Minerva?' he asked.

‘Never too busy for my golden boy. When will you be here?'

‘I should say in twenty minutes. I could use a little champagne.'

‘Is that all you could use, dove?'

‘That's all I can use that you might not have on you,' Blackford said, smiling into the phone. He had, in visiting Rufus, discharged his nervous exhilaration. With Minerva, of whom he had grown passionately fond, he hoped also to discharge his physical exhilaration. And to please her, at which he had become accomplished.

He was back at his desk at James Street at seven in the morning.

26

No, Blackford had said to his mother, no, under
no circumstances
would he be late. Yes, he said to his mother, he
did
realise how very interesting it would be to attend the garden party the Queen was giving for what she termed ‘the academic élite' of Oxford and Cambridge etc., including the trustees and their families, and yes, he was very pleased to have been invited,
ex officio
as the stepson of the chairman of the board of trustees of Cavendish Laboratories. ‘And as your dutiful son, Mother.'

‘You are more than my dutiful son, darling,' Lady Sharkey had said. ‘You are my beautiful, wonderful boy.' Blackford, at the other end of the telephone, closed his eyes in exasperation but let it pass. He would rather suffer than reprimand his gentle mother. His stepfather, Sir Alec Sharkey, was similarly disposed. Not that putting up with Carol was difficult: she was the most obliging, most retiring, devoted, affectionate woman, so unlike Americans Sir Alec had both known and become familiar with in books and movies: the brassy, hard-boiled types. There was nothing hard-boiled about Carol Oakes Sharkey, but after her divorce and remarriage to an Englishman, in 1941, she had made it a point to live as the British did, and a royal garden party was no mere frivolity on her social schedule.

Blackford wondered vaguely whether, given that there would be over a thousand guests there, his path and the Queen's would even cross. He half hoped they would not; half hoped they would, three years having passed since their fleeting, fleeted encounter, first at Buckingham Palace, then at Windsor Castle, including the time spent entirely alone … There had been no communication of any sort since that time, and Blackford had never even been tempted to take the initiative. Indeed he thought twice before accepting his mother's invitation. But curiosity and nostalgia, even a kind of loyalty, prompted him to accept the invitation of the most glamorous woman in the world.

And now they were bound, the three of them, for the palace, in the limousine rented by Sir Alec. As they drove through the park, their limousine, so bright and spectacular when it set out from Portland Place, became just one of many limousines, rented for the bright occasion, in that long convoy headed for Buckingham Palace.

Nature, that day in London, was being fully cooperative with the Queen. It was warm and sunny, there was a light breeze, the children were playing in the park, and the tourists were ogling outside the palace gates. When, still a few hundred yards from the gates, their vehicle almost ceased to move under the constipating press of luxury cars, and promenaders, Sir Alec said abruptly that they should leave the motorcar and walk—‘It is too beautiful outside to sit in the car.' Lady Sharkey said something or other about her new shoes not being very fit for walking, but it was said routinely. Sir Alec exchanged an understanding with the driver on where they should look out for him on leaving the palace a couple of hours later, and soon they were walking, Lady Carol Sharkey with one arm clasping her husband's elbow, the other eased between her son's arm and his side. Blackford suddenly realised that he was quite nervous.

They arrived, their invitations having been examined, in the garden well ahead of the Queen's appearance. They were Served a fruit punch and finger sandwiches and they strolled about the garden here and there, Sir Alec pausing to greet fellow trustees of Cavendish Laboratories. The garden was not exactly full—it would have needed an additional ten thousand guests to fill the garden of Buckingham Palace.

Suddenly the band stopped its afternoon music. There was a pause, and then ‘God Save the Queen' as, at a distance, from the garden entrance to the palace, the Queen emerged, followed by Prince Richard and half a dozen brightly attired ladies-in-waiting and aides. She wore a pale yellow pleated chiffon dress and a perky little veiled hat of the same material, perched on her blonde hair at an angle. She looked directly ahead and smiled, rather absently, but after a few steps she stopped suddenly, stooped over, and lifted up from the lawn a little boy—evidently an old affection, because even at a distance one could hear his giggles at being kissed so resoundingly. She let him down with a gentle pat on his silk-clad bottom and was quickly surrounded by his parents and other adoring subjects. And from that moment on, what had begun as a procession relaxed into the informality of another garden party, though it was plain that guests at the party attempted, without ostentation, so to manoeuvre as to be in the way of the casual circle the Queen was engaged in describing.

It was while she was addressing the rector of St. Andrews, Sir John Appleton, that she caught his eye. Blackford was chatting with one of his stepfather's elderly friends. The Queen, on seeing him, began to fan herself briskly with the antique yellow ivory instrument she carried sometimes as if a sceptre, sometimes as a ferrule, sometimes as an adornment. She continued her conversation, and there was a little pause, pending which Blackford might have taken the initiative in approaching her, but did not. Queen Caroline smiled at Sir John and walked, followed by two aides—Prince Richard had left the Queen to make his own, counterclockwise circuit toward Blackford.

‘Why, Mr. Oakes! How very nice to see you again,' nodding her head ever so slightly and smiling warmly, but also warily, though there was no disguising the brightness of her eyes.

‘Ma'am, may I present my mother, Lady Sharkey, and my stepfather, Sir Alec Sharkey?'

The lady curtsied, the gentleman bowed deeply, the Queen acknowledged them. ‘I am very pleased to meet you.' And, to Lady Sharkey, ‘Your son was engaged in some architectural research several years ago that led him to Windsor Castle, where along with a few other guests he stayed for a day or two.' And to Blackford, ‘Did you complete your project, Mr. Oakes? Did you find the secret to the Great Wall of China? Do we know why it survives, while so many other structures do not? This is the sort of thing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specialises in, is it not?'

‘It was Yale I came from, ma'am.'

‘Indeed. Yale. It is in California, isn't it? Yes, of course. San Francisco. Silly of me to forget.'

Blackford smiled. She had not changed. ‘Yes ma'am. But don't be embarrassed. I know some Californians who don't realise that Yale is in San Francisco.'

Queen Caroline looked Blackford directly in the eyes, and there was a trace of an amused wink, an amusement at the play. There was a brief pause, after which nothing the Queen might have said would have surprised Blackford. What she said was:

‘Good afternoon, Mr. Oakes. Lady Sharkey. Sir Alec.' She smiled and, her entourage alongside, resumed her casual round.

Lady Sharkey was ecstatic. ‘How nice, darling, that she remembers your visit. But you know, dear, she is quite wrong about Yale. Evidently she confused you. I couldn't quite understand your reply …' But Blackford had been accosted by a meteorologist who had worked side by side with Rufus during the war. If he heard his mother's question, he did not heed it. And she did not repeat it, her mind wandering to other of the visual delights, that sunny afternoon at Buckingham Palace.

27

It was a year and a half before Nikita Khrushchev, addressing the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, would coin the phrase ‘the cult of personality' to describe one of the lesser sins of Josef Stalin. But well before the phrase was formulated, its coils embraced the minds of Soviet leaders even though they went to extravagant lengths to conceal this. More time was given to the factor of precedence than at the court of the Sun King, and almost as much time to concealing this concern. So that when the regular Thursday morning meeting of the Politburo convened early in October, Georgi Malenkov, whose post was that of First Secretary and who was therefore the senior member of the body, didn't stride into the chamber like Stalin, approaching the chairman's seat as if he had grown up sitting on it. Rather he approached it, so to speak, sideways, as if always in need of orientation in the matter of which was his seat. And his companion members of the Politburo crowded at either side, not noticeably behind him, confirming, if by no means as stridently as they had with Stalin, their acceptance of their subordination.

He approached the chair, which an aide drew back to permit him comfortably to sit, and found himself facing the nine other members of the Praesidium of the Party Central Committee, generally referred to as the Politburo.

He greeted them amiably, fraternally, and told them they all knew that there was one major question on the agenda—namely, how should the Soviet Union react in the matter of the scheduled recognition by the Western powers of the sovereignty of the state of West Germany? As they all knew, he said, looking away from Lavrenti Beria who was seated directly opposite, he had issued invitations to the principal Western powers to a summit meeting to consider the implications of the planned diplomatic step, but although there were encouraging signs, he could not now report that his diplomatic initiative had worked—had worked, that is, in such a way as to give the Soviet Union the opportunity to use its great resources to stall the German demarche planned by the Western powers—

He was interrupted. It was Beria. ‘My dear Georgi Maximilianovich, you must understand that there is only a single way in which to deal with the West in this matter, and moreover we have the advantage here of its being singularly plausible. If they exercise the power to declare West Germany a sovereign state, we quickly and instantly retaliate by declaring East Germany a sovereign state. We then declare that it is up to East Germany to decide the status of Berlin. Ulbricht instantly announces that immediately on the formal recognition of East Germany, his government will incorporate Berlin as a part of its territory.

‘And that means'—Beria leaned back, triumphant—‘that means, gentlemen, that the same day President Eisenhower signs the diplomatic instrument recognising the sovereign state of the German Federal Republic, we shall sign a complementary instrument declaring the Democratic Republic of Germany an independent state. And that same afternoon, Herr Ulbricht will sign an instrument declaring that Berlin, as a part of East Germany, is hereinafter under the political domination of the government of the Democratic Republic of Germany!'

Beria all but stood at this moment, as though promulgating his great geopolitical coup to a huge admiring throng. Instead he got from Malenkov:

‘But Lavrenti Pavlovich, you are aware that the West has frequently reiterated rights of conquest in the matter of Berlin, denying to any single co-liberator the right to dispose of the area without the agreement of the others—'

Beria laughed. His laugh was a blend of truculence and condescension. ‘I am aware, Georgi Maximilianovich, of the legal wiles by which the imperialist powers further their designs. We paid no attention to those when the time came to face up to
their
objections over
our
understanding of the Yalta treaty, at which point our great Comrade Josef Stalin'—he paused here, as if invoking a moment's reverence in memory of his mentor—‘waived the little legal points and kept his eye on the main business. Our main business in Germany, gentlemen, is to incorporate Berlin, which is a seedbed of bourgeois poison in our system.'

Nikita Khrushchev intervened. ‘But listen, Lavrenti Pavlovich, even if it is true that you are correct about what should ultimately be done on the Berlin question, it is not a position we can take now unless we are prepared to counter the probable response of the West, which would be military.'

There was whispering about the long table, much of it animated. Beria broke in: ‘I answer you in this way, Nikita Sergeyevich. In the first place, it is doubtful that the West would mobilise the will to fight for Berlin. In the second place, it is totally unlikely that they would resort to nuclear force. And in the third place, if they do not, our own tactical preponderance on the ground is more than sufficient to deal with the puny NATO forces.'

Marshal Voroshilov at this point intervened. He said: ‘Comrade Beria, I would not dispute that the Soviet forces would triumph. But surely it is wrong to designate as “puny” a NATO ground force west of Berlin that consists of forty-eight active divisions, over five hundred tanks, and one half again as many bombers as we command. To overcome such a force would require a major, protracted effort.”

‘So who is against a major effort on behalf of socialism?' Beria asked. He snapped his fingers at an aide sitting behind him. The aide rose, presented him with a cigar, and lit a match under it. Beria puffed. ‘The point is, surely,' he addressed himself to Malenkov, ‘that if we permit the West to get away with this—this—rape of West Germany, there is no knowing where they will stop. I say
stop them now!
' There was muted applause from three or four members of the assembly.

Malenkov looked pleadingly to Bulganin. The marshal rose and spoke. He said that these were difficult times, that the paramount need was for unity, that nothing could so greatly jeopardise the great Soviet endeavour as to get into a war at a moment when the Soviet Union was not really prepared for war. Under the circumstances, he concluded, sitting down, ‘as a marshal of the Soviet Union, whose patriotism has been extensively tested, I would vote in favour of Comrade Malenkov's plan, and resist the temptation to use force over Berlin.'