What was certain was that he was already contemplating an awesome concept. What was equally certain was that he was enjoying a hearty meal – partridge, bacon, hot-buttered toast and marmalade.
He ate rapidly but fastidiously – his hands were remarkably small for such a bulky body – and as he put away the food he read the newspapers, his features a mixture of petulance and pugnacity, unrelieved by the boyish smile that so often disarmed his critics.
The only item that gave him any pleasure was the news, prominently displayed, that the Royal Navy had been mobilised. He considered it to be a halting step in the right direction; unfortunately it was belied by most of the other items.
The previous evening the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had broadcast to the nation: ‘How horrible, fantastic, incredible, it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country’ – bracketing Czechoslovakia with the Arctic! – ‘between people of whom we know nothing …’
Dear God, the glib insularity of the man!
‘… I would not hesitate to pay even a third visit to Germany if I thought it would do any good … I am a man of peace to the depths of my soul.’
After making the broadcast, Chamberlain had received a letter from Hitler and there was no doubt that it was an invitation to appeasement. Would they never learn, these men of lofty resolve, that idealism could only survive on strong shoulders?
With a sigh Winston Churchill pushed aside his tray, climbed out of bed, put on a dressing gown and sauntered on to the lawns of Chartwell, his country manor, near the village of Westerham in Kent, to which he had escaped from his flat at Morpeth Mansions in London for a brief respite from the crisis.
War clouds were gathering over London, Berlin, Paris and Prague; but they weren’t in evidence in rural Kent. Bonfire smoke wreathed the seventy-nine acres of grounds; the trees were autumn red and gold; chrysanthemums still insisted it was summer despite the first frost on the grass.
He lit a cigar. The sole hint of war – and that only apparent to himself – was the foundations of the cottage he was building in which Clemmie and his four grown-up children could find tranquillity when it came.
As come it undoubtedly would. But not as most people seemed to think when the present negotiations over Czechoslovakia broke down. No, Chamberlain would return to Germany, a grovelling pact would be struck with Hitler, Mussolini and Daladier, and the Czechs would be sacrificed on the altar of compromise. It was ironic that those who had failed to heed his warnings about the Nazi threat now expected war immediately whereas he still gave twelve months or so.
But if Chamberlain does return with peace in his bag then watch out, Winston, because there’ll be no place in Britain for a warmonger.
He made his way to the foundations of the cottage and with a mason’s trowel scraped a few crusts of cement from the first row of bricks. Warmonger! His cross, unjustly borne, ever since … He supposed it went back to those dashing days in Cuba, India, the Sudan and South Africa when, as warrior or reporter, he had always breathed gunsmoke.
Then it hadn’t mattered too much; in fact his escape from captivity during the Boer War had helped him to gain his first seat in the Commons. In 1900. In two months he would be sixty-four. But age didn’t bother him because he didn’t heed it.
Stretching for a crumb of dried cement just out of his reach, he felt a warning nudge of pain in the shoulder he had dislocated when embarking from a troopship in Bombay in those young, fire-eating days. He dropped the trowel, threw away six inches of cigar and started back towards the red-bricked old mansion that he had bought in 1922 when the roofs leaked and weeds had occupied the grounds.
Like one of those weeds the warmonger epithet had taken root during the Great War when, as First Lord of the Admiralty, he had extended hostilities to Turkey. But despite the catastrophic Gallipoli Campaign, he still believed that his instincts had been correct; the back-door assault on the enemy should have shortened the war by a couple of years. What he had lacked had been support and loyalty.
And what no one realised, then or now, was that he only revelled in battle, as indeed he did, when his sights were set on peace. Did a true warmonger lay bricks? Or paint landscapes? Or build his own swimming pool?
When the second world war finally broke out, when he was recalled to the helm as he had no doubt he would be, then he would pursue peace more vigorously than ever. But this time his quarry wouldn’t be a butterfly that flitted capriciously between conflicts: it would be a lasting peace.
And to achieve that he would have to indulge in manoeuvres that would dwarf Gallipoli by comparison. He had no idea what those manoeuvres would entail – there had as yet been neither birth nor conception of any concrete plan. But he did know that if he divulged even a glimmering of his wondrous, horrendous vision then it would be stillborn. And he would be finished.
The public must never know.
At least not in his lifetime.
*
For several years Chartwell had been a Foreign Office in exile.
There, Churchill had conferred with his closest henchmen, Bob Boothby and two red-haired stalwarts, his son-in-law Duncan Sandys and Brendan Bracken.
There, energetically but impotently, he had drawn up the policies he would have pursued had Stanley Baldwin or his successor, Neville Chamberlain, given him office in the Government.
There, he had furiously denounced Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland, Austria and now the Sudetenland territory of Czechoslovakia.
There, he had sounded the trumpets for King Edward VIII when he was forced to abdicate the throne because he was determined to wed the American-born divorcée Mrs. Wallis Simpson. Not only was he a warmonger, he was a defender of lost causes.
And it was to Chartwell that he repaired with Bracken when the Munich crisis was over. Chamberlain, fresh from his betrayal of Czechoslovakia, had waved his meaningless agreement with Hitler at the crowds outside Downing Street and told them: ‘I believe it is peace for our time.’
The First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper, had resigned in protest. Churchill had passionately mourned Munich in the Commons: ‘All is over. Silent, mournful, abandoned, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness … Do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.’
As he had feared, his sentiments had been anathema in the euphoria that followed Chamberlain’s homecoming.
‘I wouldn’t mind so much,’ he told Bracken as he restlessly paced one of Chartwell’s reception rooms, ‘if Neville believed any of this eyewash himself. But he doesn’t. Even when he was waving at the crowds on his way back from Heston he told Halifax, “All this will be over in three months.”’
‘He believed it once,’ Bracken remarked. ‘Even you must give Chamberlain credit for that.’
‘This is the first time I have disputed his sincerity,’ Churchill said. ‘In the past I’ve always respected his idealism – however unwisely it was dispatched. He was the conscience of a nation still recovering from the haemorrhage of the war. Twenty years, that’s all it’s been, Brendan, twenty wasted years.’
Despite Churchill’s sombre mood Bracken grinned, running his hand through his crinkly, ginger hair, because it was typical of his mentor that he couldn’t resist salting a compliment. Wasted years. Perhaps so. But a little misplaced in the context.
Churchill poured himself a whisky and soda and continued to patrol the book-lined room littered with newspapers. ‘And I’ve never doubted his strength. He’s a tough old bird is Neville, and a wily one too, despite outward appearances.’ Bracken grinned again. ‘The toughness, stringiness if you like’ – Churchill permitted himself a smile – ‘is still there but the sincerity … I’m afraid it’s been dissipated, Brendan.’
‘I assume he’s only buying time.’