Winston’s War (70 page)

“How do you know about Anna?”

“Because I know about Svensson.”

“He's a spy?”

Burgess clambered gingerly to his feet, still rubbing his chin. “They'll have difficulty proving it. After all, he's done nothing you haven't done—done no more than repeat gossip. Except you knew it wasn't gossip, you knew they were state secrets. Yet still you passed them on. Anna Fitzgerald whispered sweet nothings in your ear and you—well, you whispered everything in hers. They'll have a much easier time making the case stick against you.”

“But, but…”

“Know what they'll do, Bracken? They'll conclude that you're either a fool or a traitor. They'll go digging about, looking for something in your background that might have made you turn against us, turn anti-English. Something you've hidden away and buried all these years.”

Bracken's Irish cheeks, which had been burning with torment, turned to ice.

“If they find you've been holding out on them, fabricating, hiding your tracks, then you'll go down as a traitor. If not, you're simply another infatuated fool who got led on by a much younger woman and just happened to be responsible for the military disaster in Norway. Oh, wouldn't Chamberlain just love to pin that on someone else? Someone so close to Mr. Churchill?”

“You cannot be serious.”

“Deadly.”

“I don't believe you,” Bracken whispered.

“Then why are you still standing here? Or maybe you want me to tell you when Miss Fitzgerald and Svensson last met? Hyde Park Hotel less than a week ago. They spent the night there, and much of the next morning. Big 'Do Not Disturb' notice swinging from the door knob.”

The lips moved, but no sound emerged.

Burgess pushed home his advantage yet again, but this time there was an edge of pity in his voice. “That was the night after you last saw her, wasn't it?”

Slowly, the words formed. “You mean to destroy me.”

“Funnily enough, Bracken, I intend to save you. Because that's the only way I can save Mr. Churchill. You go down, he goes down for being such a monumental bloody fool as to have you as a friend. That's why I need to see him. Must see him. Immediately.”

“But you can't. He's in Cabinet.”

“Oh, my God,” Burgess gasped, as though he'd just been hit again. “Then it's probably too late. But we have to try.”

They began running down the street in the direction of the park and Downing Street which lay beyond. Until Bracken came sliding to a halt.

“Wait!” he insisted.

“No time.”

“Then make some.” Bracken was staring angrily at him, all signs of wretchedness gone. “How the hell do you know all this? Who are you, Burgess?
What
are you?”

Burgess simply stared, still panting from the chase.

“A traitor or a fool, you said. And you're no bloody fool, Burgess, I'll grant you that.”

They stood eye to eye, of similar height, with hair seemingly ruled by the same laws of chaos.

“A traitor trying to save Mr. Churchill?” Burgess demanded. “Bizarre definition of treachery.”

“How would you know about Svensson? About Anna? About me? Unless…”

His bluff had been called, and Burgess had run out of excuses and explanations. He was also desperately afraid he might have run out of time.

“Christ, you're not just a queer, you're the same sort of creature as Svensson, aren't you, Burgess? But for which side?” And slowly, as memories of late-night conversations about the qualities of Russia began to tumble through his jarred brain, a smile began to form a slow path across Bracken's face, twisting as it went. “Oh, I think I can figure out which side. Can't I, Commissar?”

“I'm English, Bracken. As English as any man on this earth.”

“You're a Communist.”

“I'm not the one who betrayed thousands of British troops. Let's remember that, shall we?”

And the smile was gone. “You can prove nothing.”

Suddenly Burgess began to laugh, mocking.

“You can prove nothing!” Bracken repeated, trying to bluster, but Burgess's eyes were colder and more sober than Bracken had ever known.

“Can't you see, Bracken, how ludicrous all of this is? Neither of us can prove a damned thing. We can kill each other off with accusation—but we can't prove a bloody thing. I admit I've got friends in some pretty low places—you've got that much on me and I suppose you might use it to make my life distinctly uncomfortable. But nowhere near as bloody uncomfortable as I promise I will make things for you, if I have to. Because what have you got against me? Russia? We're not at war with bloody Russia! We want Russia as an ally, on our side—Winston Churchill's been making broadcasts about it for months. No, they'll not care much about me—hell, if I'm half as good a friend of the Russians as you suppose, they might even find me useful. Whereas you…You have blood on your hands, Mr. Bracken. British blood. They might find many uses for you, too, but none which will allow you to sleep at night.” Bracken shook his head.

“No matter how much you might loathe me, Bracken, we're in this together. Oh, yes. Sort of a team, we are, you and me. Tied to each other like the Devil to his tail. And we both might burn in Hell—but if we do, it'll be
together
. Because if I go down I shall have to insist on taking you with me.”

“You threaten me like some cheap bully.”

“Wake up, Bracken! This isn't about you and me. It's about a world that's grown insane and wants to destroy itself, a world in which you and I count for nothing more than a piss in the park. We have a choice, you and I, to make right now. We can stand here and pick over our mutual lack of merit while the world annihilates itself—or we can take the only chance we've got of doing something about it.”

“Which is?”

“Saving Mr. Churchill. When we've done that we can sit down over a crate of champagne and talk about our shortcomings until we are both old men. But in the meantime—unless you have some unnatural desire to form a queue for the nearest scaffold—may I suggest we get on with it?”

And they were both running, hurling themselves across Pall Mall, into the park and towards Downing Street.

Four-twenty p.m. Ten minutes before Cabinet.

“You say Mr. Attlee's on a train?” Wilson was demanding into a bakelite telephone.

At the other end, a secretary struggled to explain.

“Telegram? But we haven't received any telegram,” Wilson insisted. “For heaven's sake, what sort of operation are you running down there?”

The secretary was tempted to explain that she wasn't running any sort of operation and the Labour Party in conference was both constitutionally and temperamentally incapable of “being run,” as he put it, no matter how hard the leadership tried, but she sensed he wasn't interested in the democratic niceties.

“Is there anyone there I can talk to?” Wilson demanded, as if she were no one.

They'd all gone off to the Winter Gardens where the conference was being held. She offered to run there herself and get back to him.

“How long will that take?”

Thirty minutes, if she hurried.

“But we only have ten! What am I to tell the Prime Minister? Have you no idea what was in Mr. Attlee's telegram?”

There was hesitation at the other end of the line.

“If you know, for the sake of sanity, you have to tell me,” he insisted. “There's a war on out there, you know.”

Silence.

“Please…”

Ah, the magic word. At last. Well, not the telegram, that was up to Mr. Attlee. But she had typed out a press release and stenciled a hundred copies for distribution later that evening. They were sitting in a pile beside her. She supposed it could do no harm to let Wilson have the gist of it. About the unanimous National Executive decision to be a full partner in a new Government.

“Yes…”

Under a new Prime Minister.

Ah, so there it was. To the first question—no. But to the second they had responded in the affirmative. Wilson replaced the phone without thanks or formalities.

Chamberlain was standing at his shoulder. Wilson looked up.

“It's as we expected, Neville.”

Chamberlain nodded slowly.

“Would it have made any difference? If they'd had other thoughts?” Wilson pressed.

Chamberlain seemed lost in another world. He stood tall for a moment, his shoulders braced. “We shall never know,” he replied. Then he picked up his slim folder and marched into the Cabinet Room.

“Sorry, sir. Cabinet's already started. Five minutes ago. No one's allowed in.”

“Heavens, man, I'm Mr. Churchill's Parliamentary Private Secretary.”

“I know full well who you are, Mr. Bracken. But you are not a member of the Cabinet and no matter how loud you shout at me and wave your arms about, I can't let you in.” The Downing Street doorman stood firm, doggedly obstructing their path down the corridor to the Cabinet Room.

“I—we—have to get a message to Mr. Churchill,” Burgess interrupted, his tone deliberately more conciliatory but the
effect disrupted by a split and freshly swelling lip. “The message is vital to what they are discussing. Surely you can—”

“You'll forgive me, sir,” the doorman replied, looking askance at the disheveled and panting stranger with a rip in the leg of his trousers, “but I doubt that very much. I happen to know there's only one item on the agenda for this meeting, and that's by way of being a personal matter. Anyhow, I'm still not allowed to pass in papers.”

“But that's…” Impossible. Disastrous. An end to it all. Burgess turned away in despair, only to be confronted by another exasperated figure shuffling across the threshold. It was Kingsley Wood.

“Can't stop, can't stop, late for Cabinet,” he insisted as Bracken tried to wave him to a halt, but Burgess stood resolutely in his path and was clearly not intending to let him past.

“You must, please, give this to Mr. Churchill,” Burgess insisted. From out of his bulging jacket pocket he produced a book.

“What the hell is this?”

“It's one of Mr. Churchill's own, some of his old speeches,” Burgess responded, flashing the cover. “It has words in here which he thought might be very important for your meeting. He left it behind, asked if we could fetch it for him…”

“
If ever you should need me, send me this book and I shall remember our conversation…”

It had been intended merely to get Burgess past the porter's lodge at the club and to summon Churchill from his lunch table, yet now it might serve another purpose. Bewildered, Wood shook his head in impatience, offended at being asked to be bloody Winston's messenger boy. Yet, on an instant's reflection, it was perhaps a better fate than being Neville's sacrificial lamb. He grabbed the book and bustled towards the door.

Chamberlain sits down in his chair—the only one around the Cabinet table with arms—and begins his meticulous
preparations. Moves the silver inkwell that once was Gladstone's no more than half an inch, straightens the folder in front of him, runs the damp palms of his hands across the baize tablecloth. One last inspection of the room, one lingering glance. Everything is ready, even if he is not and could never be. He nods to the Cabinet Secretary standing by the door.

They file in, subdued, none of the normal pleasantries, glancing at him, scurrying to find their seats. Winston is sitting second on his left—strict order of seniority should place him immediately by his side, but Chamberlain could never endure him so close and from the start has contrived some constitutional excuse to have at least one man's body between himself and the First Lord. One other seat is still empty—Kingsley Wood hasn't arrived, damn him, no doubt detained by the blasts of war coming from across the Channel. The others assemble in silence, waiting for Chamberlain's cue. On the mantel behind him, the clock strikes half past the hour.

“Gentlemen, thank you for attending. My apologies if I have disturbed…”—he is going to say lunch, he knows that Winston has been at lunch, can see it in those watery eyes—“your duties. But it is my duties, those as Prime Minister, which I'm afraid this afternoon must come first.”

Shuffles of discomfort around the table.

He starts again, but suddenly the door bursts open and in rushes Kingsley Wood distributing apologies. “Your pardon, Prime Minister. I am so sorry. Unavoidable duties…

”Chamberlain nods in condescension and Wood takes his place. He is carrying something in his hand—a book—which he slides down the brown baize tablecloth to Churchill. The First Lord sits up sharply, as though woken from slumber, but says nothing.

“Gentlemen!” Chamberlain once again calls them to order, irritated by the interruption. “As soon as this meeting of the Cabinet finishes, I shall be going to the Palace to tender my resignation to His Majesty the King.”

Ritual murmurs of regret, but no surprise. They all know what's been going on. Churchill, meanwhile, has opened the book. Damn his eyes! What the hell does he think he's doing?

“You all know that this is not what I would have wanted,” Chamberlain continues, “but events dictate that the present uncertainties about the future direction of Government must be brought to an end. My energies, my enthusiasm for the tasks of being His Majesty's First Minister remain undiminished…”—(or will be, after a little rest, a chance to deal with this damned ulcer that's been bothering me so)—“and I would like to think that my service to the country has not yet come to an end…”—(why, give you gentlemen a little time, a few months to mess things up without me, and I might yet be back sitting in this chair)—“But I have a responsibility to you, and through you, to the country at large. I have been Prime Minister for very nearly three years, and during that time we have been through many trials and tribulations. The responsibilities of this office are awesome, as you all know—”