Winston’s War (8 page)

“Winston, you got whipped 'cause you got nothing to fight with. Face up to it, you're gonna get whipped in any war. That's why you had to run away.”

Two clenched fists banged down on the table, causing every piece of silver to jump. Churchill's wine spilled over the rim of his glass. It spread on the cloth like a dark stain crossing the map of Middle Europe. “Hitler demanded to feast upon poor Czechoslovakia, and instead of resisting his demands we have been content to serve it to him course by course! At the pistol's point he demanded one pound. When that was given, the pistol was produced again and he demanded two pounds. Finally, Mr. Chamberlain waved his umbrella and consented to offer one pound seventeen shillings and sixpence and to make up the rest in promises of goodwill for the future. My country is shriveled with shame.” There were tears in the old man's eyes. He rose in his seat. “I apologize. I am too passionate. But the Ambassador
should not have spoken as he did. We have passed an awful milestone in our history, Europe is held at the pistol's point, and the Western democracies have been found wanting. But this is not the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. The first sip, the foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless we, by a supreme recovery of will and vigor, dash it from the dictator's hand!”

Silence gripped the entire gathering. It was theater, of course; and Winston always overplayed his role. A candle guttered, dripping wax onto the tablecloth where it piled up like a thousand sorrows. Churchill took several moments to recompose himself.

“There is much to be done. And so little time.” His eyes searched around the guests, defiant. “At Munich the Government had to choose between war and shame. They chose shame. I tell you, they shall get war, too.” He nodded curtly in the direction of Kennedy, a gesture trembling on the brink of scorn. “Come, Mr. Bracken. We must set ourselves to our duties.”

Before he knew what he was doing Bracken, too, was on his feet, muttering apologies to Anna and bidding a hurried farewell to the Ambassador, fuming that once again Churchill had taken him for granted. Dammit, he didn't want to leave, not right now. Churchill always treated those around him as barely better than altar boys, waiting to serve him. They said that about Winston, that he was like Moses, except being more modest he made do with only one commandment: “Thou shall have no other god but me.”

“Pity you have to run off so soon, Winston,” Kennedy called after the retreating figures, twisting their pain. “Say hi to Neville for me. And come again. Come for Thanksgiving. That's when we normally stuff turkeys.”

“And don't forget the air-raid shelters,” Anna cried out, innocently unaware.

“Hah! Or your steel helmets. If you can find any…”

Burgess knew it was going to be one of those days when he got drunk, very early, and did something completely appalling. Sometimes he couldn't help it, he found himself driven, in much the same way that his heart was forced to beat and his lungs to inflate. A friend had once called it a form of madness but it was simply that he viewed the world with different eyes—eyes that were more open and saw more than mere convention and correctness required—which at this moment wasn't difficult, since convention required the world to be more unseeing and unknowing than ever.

The point had been made most forcefully to him by the Controller of the BBC Radio Talks Department earlier that morning. Burgess had suspected there would be trouble, had even taken the precaution of arriving at Broadcasting House on time and so removing that bone of contention, but punctuality was never going to drain the ocean of irritation that was waiting for him, and neither was argument.

The issue had been Churchill. Burgess had argued quietly, then with growing force, that the inclusion of the elder statesman would add depth and popular appeal to the program he was preparing on the security problems of the Mediterranean. Admittedly, it wasn't the most grabbing of topics, but all the more reason to include Churchill. The Controller had simply said no, and returned to his copy of
The Times
, leaving Burgess standing in front of his desk like an errant schoolboy. He'd bitten his fingernail and stood his ground.

“Why? Why—no?”

“Executive decision, old chap,” the Controller had responded, affecting boredom.

“But help me. If my suggestion that Churchill be included is an embarrassment, tell me why, so I can understand and make sure I don't make the same mistake again.” The Controller had rustled his newspaper in irritation, but offered no response.

“Is it because he's an expert in foreign affairs?”

No reply.

“Or perhaps that he's one of the best-known historians of our age?”

The rustling grew more impatient.

“I know. It's because he has a lousy speaking voice.”

Nothing.

“Or are you too pig-ignorant or simply too prejudiced to be able to put an explanation into words?”

“Damn you, Burgess!”

“Oh, I probably shall be, but I'll not be the only one. Because you know what I'm thinking? That the reason you can't tell me why Churchill has been banned is because you don't know—or don't want to know. Those that told you didn't have the courtesy to trust you with an explanation. You've just been told to vaseline your arse and keep him off the air and that's that. Just obeying orders, are we?”

“Rot in hell! What do you know about such things?”

“Enough to know that even you aren't normally this much of a shit.”

“Look, Guy—these are difficult times. Damned difficult. Sometimes we have to do things we don't care for.”

“So not your decision?”

“Not exactly…”

“How far up does this one go?”

“Guy, this one comes from so high up you'd need an oxygen mask to survive.”

“Know what I think?”

“Face it, Guy, right now nobody gives a damn about what you or bloody Winston Churchill thinks.”

It was then that Burgess had thrown himself across the desk, his face only inches from the Controller's. The Controller tried to pull away, partly in surprise but also in disgust. He could smell the raw garlic.

“Seems to me it's about time you lined up for your party cap-badge, isn't it?” Burgess spat.

The Controller was speechless, unable to breathe, assailed by insult and foulness.

“
Sieg
-fucking-
Heil!”
Burgess threw over his shoulder as he turned and stormed out of the door, kicking it so hard that a carpenter had to be summoned to repair the hinge.

That was why Burgess decided to get drunk. He'd get drunk, get obliterated, then he'd see what Chance threw his way. But as yet it was a little too early, even for him. He didn't like to get drunk before noon. He briefly considered going to ease his frustrations in the underground lavatories at Piccadilly Circus, but they'd just stepped up the police patrol so there was no question of his being able to get away with it. Too risky, even for him. So instead he'd kill some time. Get his hair cut. At Trumper's.

Which was how he met McFadden.

“You've got good thick hair, sir”—although in truth it was already beginning to recede and looked as if something was nesting in it. “Nice curl. But you should get it cut more often.”

“There are many things I should do more often,” Burgess snapped.

“How would you like it cut, sir?”

“Preferably in silence.”

Burgess felt suddenly miserable. He'd been unjustifiably rude to the barber, which in itself was no great cause for regret. Burgess had a tongue honed on carborundum and his rudeness was legendary. But McFadden had simply soaked it up, dropped his eyes, shown not a flicker of emotion or resentment. As if he were used to the lash. Which cut through to a very different part of Burgess, for his was a complex soul. Yes, he could be cruel and could find enjoyment in it, particularly when drunk, but there were few men who were more affected by genuine distress. While inflicting wounds freely himself, he
would in equal measure give up time, money, and his inordinate energies to help heal wounds inflicted by others. And the whole pleasure about insulting people was that it should be deliberate and give him a sense of achievement and superiority, a sort of twisted intellectual game. Kicking a crippled barber was way below his usual standards.

He sat silently, guiltily, listening to the snipping of scissors. Then he became aware of a voice from the next booth, a deep, rumbling voice that evidently belonged to a banker in the City who was coming to the end of a troubled week. “I probably shouldn't mention this, but…” the financier began as, layer by layer, he discarded the burdens of his business, any one of which might have helped a sharp investor turn a substantial profit. But there was no danger, of course, because there was only a barber to overhear him, and other gentlemen.

Suddenly Burgess understood how much like a confessional these cubicles were, with their polished wood, the whispered tones, and almost sepulchral atmosphere. You relaxed, closed your eyes, drifted. Yet when you looked up again the face staring back at you from the mirror would not be your own, not the youthful, virile self you knew so well and took for granted. What you saw instead, and more and more with every passing month, was the face of your long-dead father as though from another world, the spirit world. A world of different rules, where there were no secrets, where everything was shared. It sparked his curiosity.

Burgess stirred himself. “Sorry,” he apologized to McFadden. “Bad day.”

“That's what we're here to help with, sir,” Mac responded, bringing out the words slowly in a voice that was evidently of foreign origin but not immediately traceable, one more accent in a city which in recent years had become flooded with refugees. “It is a privilege to be able to serve gentlemen such as yourself. This may be the only time in a hectic month you get to relax. A chance to put aside all those worries.”

“People often shout at you?”

“We have all sorts of busy gentlemen—businessmen, politicians. Sometimes they shout, sometimes it's nothing but whispers. We don't take offence. And neither do we take liberties, of course. We help them relax. Then we forget.”

“You get politicians here?”

“Had Mr. Duff Cooper in here the other day, when he resigned. Not a surprise, it wasn't, sir. He'd been complaining to me about the state of things for months. Rehearsed bits of his speech with me, so he did, while he was sitting in this chair. But you get all sides,” Mac hastened to add, anxious not to offend. “Even the Prime Minister has to have his hair cut sometimes, sir. Foreign Secretary, too, and members of the Royal Family.”

“They all have their stories.”

“Indeed they do.”

“And your story, McFadden. What's that?”

“My story, sir?”

“Where d'you get the gammy leg?”

“No story at all, really. A crushed pelvis. Unfortunate, but…” He shrugged his shoulders.

“An accident?”

Mac continued cutting, concentrating in silence as though he'd found a particularly stubborn tuft, shifting uncomfortably on his damaged leg. But the eyes told the story.

“So, let me guess. If it wasn't an accident you must have been attacked. Beaten up in some way. Maybe injured in the war?”

“A little while after the war, sir.”

“Where?”

Mac didn't wish to appear impolite or evasive, but neither did he want to lay himself open. This wasn't how the game was played. It was the customer who kvetched and prattled, and the barber who listened, not the other way round. Still, English gentlemen were so extraordinarily anxious about
displaying their ignorance in front of the lower classes that Mac felt confident he knew how to put an end to the conversation. “Somewhere you'll never have heard of, sir. Abroad. A little place called Solovetsky.”

“Fuck,” Burgess breathed slowly.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“The gulags.”

Mac started in alarm and dropped his scissors. “Please, sir.” He glanced around nervously, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. “It is a thing I don't care to talk about. And in an establishment such as this…”

“You poor sod.”

Mac was flustered. He fumbled to retrieve his scissors from the floor and almost forgot to exchange them for a fresh pair from the antiseptic tray. He stared at Burgess, his face over-flowing with pain and a defiance that even half a lifetime of subservience hadn't been able to extinguish. Burgess stared straight back.

“Don't worry, McFadden, I've no wish to embarrass you. I'm sorry for your troubles.”

Mac saw something in Burgess's eye—a flicker, a door that opened for only an instant and was quickly closed, yet in that moment Mac glimpsed another man's suffering and perhaps even private terror. This man in his chair understood. Which was why, when Burgess suggested it, he agreed to do what no barber who knew his proper rank would dare do. He agreed to meet for a drink.

The entrance to Shepherd Market stood just across from Trumper's. It was a maze of alleyways and small courtyards hidden in the heart of Mayfair. Here a hungry man could stumble upon a startling variety of pubs and restaurants, mostly of foreign origin, and if he stumbled on a little further he could find narrow staircases that led to rooms where he might satisfy many of his other cravings, too.

When Mac arrived Burgess was standing at the bar of the Grapes, as he had said he would be. He was smoking, cupping the cigarette in the palm of his hand, and drinking a large Irish whiskey. The barber levered himself up onto a bar stool. Mac was short, wiry, his shoulders unevenly sloped as though to compensate for his crooked leg, with a back that was already bent, perhaps through stooping over his customers. The graying hair was scraped neatly but thinly across the skull, the skin beneath his mouth was wrinkled, as though the chin had tried to withdraw and seek refuge from the blows. He was not yet forty but looked considerably older.

“I thought maybe you wouldn't come,” Burgess offered, but didn't extend a hand. The English never did.

“I thought so too. Particularly when I saw you drinking in the saloon bar. Bit rich for me.”

“It's on me. What's your poison?”