‘So why did you eventually … ?’
She looked into her lap, her fingers running distractedly along the frayed edges of her cuffs.
‘If only I had a simple answer. There was a madness about our lives that infected us all. How mad can you get, driving into starvation in the back of a taxi? You know, Mr Churchill, in the whole of the last war when I was a young woman, I never heard a single shot fired. But under Weimar, shots were being fired all the time – at each other. Our leaders, our opponents, eventually even at the bread queues. Our streets became a battleground, our schools the headquarters. Children grew more used to the sound of gunfire than they were to their teachers’ voices. Instead of carrying around schoolbooks they began carrying around knives and hammers; their sports teams became nothing more than gangs of thugs. Can you imagine how much I and every other mother in the land begged for it to end? Then Hitler came along and made it all seem so simple. It was the fault of the Jews and the democrats. And we asked ourselves, what good was democracy if the water didn’t run and the lamps went dark? Better that we see by the light of burning torches. Our political leaders had been so weak, so false, but Hitler seemed above all that. Different. Exciting. Almost – what is the word? – spiritual.’
‘And we had Stanley Baldwin,’ Churchill muttered in contempt. ‘So tell me, pray, why you put it all behind you. Why did you choose to resist when so many went along with it?’
‘It crept up on you so slowly, what was really happening. Made it so easy to accept. Of course, there were those that had to be punished, the guilty men. The Marxists, the Social Democrats, the Jews. They almost seemed to prove their guilt when so many of them were shot trying to escape. But slowly it crept closer to us all. Everyone became a suspect. We had to give up our friends, our lovers, our beliefs – even renounce Belief itself. You could trust no one. And suddenly there was no private life at all, no space even to think.’ Her head fell to hide the pain. ‘After my baby died I went back to work – as a teacher in the Grundschule, the primary school, where my other child, my son, was a pupil. One day I was supervising in the library when the Brown Shirts came in. Very polite, apologized for the disturbance. But they had come for the Jews, they announced, and started leading the Jewish children out, one by one. I asked what the children had done, and the Brown Shirt leader just looked at me curiously. “Done? They are Jews.” But they were my pupils, my son’s classmates, my Jews, and I demanded to know why they were being taken. The Brown Shirt’s attitude changed; a rage came over his face. “Are you a Jew?” he asked. And I almost fell over in my rush to deny the charge – of course I wasn’t a Jew. I was furious with him, how dare he accuse … ?’
She was silent for a moment, needing to recover herself. When her head came up once more the eyes were filled with tears. ‘After he had gone I realized what had already become of me. I watched as they dragged them all away. I looked at the empty spaces in the library, the schoolbooks still open on the tables, the satchels on the backs of the chairs, and wondered when the Brown Shirts would be coming back for more.’ She leant forward, bent with feeling. ‘No, I can’t pretend I saw it all at that moment, that I became an opponent. I am not a hero, Mr Churchill, and I had no idea where they were taking them. But I knew the Brown Shirts would be back, and eventually they would come for my son, and either he would join them, or be taken by them. This was the new Germany, my son’s Germany, and I wanted to find out more about the man who had made it. That is when I started reading about Hitler, talking about him, studying him. In the end I decided to write about him. A biography.’
‘You were seeking to know your enemy …’
‘My enemy?’ She shook her head. ‘No, he wasn’t my enemy, not at first. The book wasn’t intended to be an attack upon him, I was doing no more than trying to understand. So I started asking questions about him, but that meant that very soon they began asking questions about me. I had become their enemy without my realizing it.’
‘I am so sorry.’
But she had no desire for his pity. Already she had shared with him far more than she had intended. Once again her life was being invaded. It was time to push him back. ‘Did your father know his enemies?’
‘No, I think not,’ Churchill replied, startled at the sudden change of subject. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Because I’ve noticed that when you talk about him you seem … stiff. Formal. Almost anxious.’
‘I loved my father.’
‘No. You were afraid of him, I think.’
Churchill bridled. ‘My whole life has been dedicated to his memory.’
‘Dominated by his memory, perhaps. A bit like Hitler.’
His hand slapped down on the desktop to demand her silence. It landed with such force that the toothpicks jumped in their pot. ‘I asked you here to talk about the Fuehrer, not to offer crass remarks about my father, a man whom you never met.’
‘I’ve never met Hitler.’
And they were back where they had always been.
‘I have no time for cheap comparisons, Frau Mueller. I thought you might help. Will you?’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘Help you? Why should I? I don’t like you, Mr Churchill. I don’t like any politicians. They’ve done nothing but ruin my life.’ She sprang from her chair, not wishing to be near him any longer. ‘What reason could I have for wanting to help you?’
‘Not me personally. Our crusade.’
‘In which millions will die. To save your old man’s pride.’
‘To save both our countries.’
‘I have no country any more.’
‘Then do it for the simple pleasure of proving yourself right – and for the satisfaction of proving That Man wrong!’ He was shouting, although he hadn’t intended to.
‘You and your ridiculous male vanity. You two men will destroy the world with your war. You are so much alike.’
She was already at the door.
‘You will come again,’ he barked, the intonation halfway between question and command.
She had opened the door and was almost out.
‘Please!’ he called after her. ‘I need you.’
She turned, startled. Then she was gone.
Monday 13 May. Winston Churchill had been Prime Minister for just three days. And on that third day it all began to unravel.
Churchill was striding down Parliament Street, Bracken at his side, distractedly acknowledging the waves and shouted greetings of passers-by as he walked to the House of Commons. His mind was ablaze with doubt. So many thoughts crowded in upon him, so many concerns; in less than an hour he had to address the House of Commons like Brutus in the marketplace with Caesar’s blood still fresh upon the floor. Yet less than four years earlier those same men, in that same place, had inflicted upon him the most profound humiliation any Member could imagine. They had jeered him into silence. It had not been a good speech by any standard; it had been an inappropriate and, if truth be admitted, a slightly inebriated intervention on the delicate matter of the abdication. A foolish speech, but not exceptional for that. Yet it wasn’t the speech so much as the speaker they couldn’t stomach. They didn’t care for Winston Churchill, didn’t trust him, thought that even in the egotistical world of Westminster he rose above all others in being outrageous, unprincipled, unreliable and supremely bloody ungrateful. So they had relished their opportunity to jeer, to wave their papers at him in distraction, to screw up their faces and cause so much noise that he couldn’t go on. He had been forced to leave,