He dwells on memories of yesterday, perhaps because he dare not dwell on tomorrow. Sometimes, at that vanishing point as wakefulness dips into sleep, Chamberlain has a vision that London is burning after all and he has got the whole thing wrong. The crowds are no longer cheering and both God and the Queen have turned their backs. But it is only a dream. As they pass Queen Eleanor’s memorial at Waltham Cross, finally he falls into a fitful sleep.
Late nights were spreading like a disease in Downing Street. They disrupted the process of calm thought and careful digestion. They were not to be encouraged.
‘I’ll follow you in a minute, my dear,’ Chamberlain promised as his wife set foot on the stairs. They both knew she would be asleep in her own room long before he made it up to the second floor. There came a point where the body was too exhausted to relax, and he had long since passed that point. He would need a drink and to pace a little before he could think of retiring, perhaps refresh himself from a few of the thousands of letters and telegrams waiting for him.
As he wandered in search of distraction through the darkened corridors, he discovered a chink of light shining from beneath the door of the anteroom next to the Cabinet Room. The elfin grove. Muffled laughter. He was drawn to it like a moth.
The merriment ceased as Horace Wilson and Joseph Ball looked up in concern. ‘Everything in order, Neville?’ Ball enquired. They were used to the tides of exhaustion that had swept across their master in recent weeks, but the face at the door was more lugubrious, the moustache more determinedly drooped, than ever.
‘Things in order? Perhaps you should tell me. You two always seem to know so much more about what’s going on than do I.’
The Prime Minister sank into a chair and held out his hand. It was immediately filled with a glass of white wine. Tired eyes lifted in silent thanks. So often he found there was no need to use words with these elves, they had an uncanny ability to understand his needs – and particularly Wilson, whom he had inherited from the previous administration of Baldwin. At times it seemed to be the finest part of his inheritance. Softly spoken, pale eyes, fastidious by habit, understated but extraordinarily determined. From the start Wilson and the new Prime Minister had been natural colleagues, one the Government’s Chief Industrial Adviser, the other a former Birmingham businessman, both seeing virtue in compromise and believing pragmatism to be a guiding principle. Politics were, after all, simply about business, a matter of making deals.
Ball was different. He was a man of fleshy indulgence, which showed beneath the waistcoats of his broad chalk-stripe suits. His fingers were thick, like sausages, and his face was round, an appearance exaggerated by the manner in which his dark hair was slicked close to his skull. His demeanour was often deliberately intimidating – he would take up his position behind his desk, staring inquisitorially through porthole spectacles like the barrister and spy master he once was, stirring only occasionally to wave away the cigarette smoke in which he was half-obscured. Unlike Wilson he was not in the least fastidious, being entirely open about his prejudices, which he promoted through his role as the mastermind of propaganda at Conservative Central Office, and also through a newspaper he published entitled Truth. Truth, for Ball, consisted of destroying the reputations of all opponents – among whom he numbered most Americans and all Jews – and he was liberal only in the means he employed to achieve his ends. He was extremely wealthy and had access to many sources of funds, using them not only to support his own publications but also to place spies inside the headquarters of the Labour Party and amongst opposition newspapers. He was widely loathed and almost universally feared.
Yet he was even closer to the Prime Minister than was Wilson. Ball and Chamberlain shared a passion for country pursuits and particularly fly-fishing that swept them off in each other’s company to the salmon rivers of Scotland at the slightest opportunity, sometimes with unseemly haste. It was widely rumoured that the dates of many parliamentary recesses were set around the fishing calendar. Somehow there always seemed to be time for a little fishing.
‘So, how is our ungrateful world?’ Chamberlain pressed as he sipped the wine. It surprised him. An excellent hock.
The elves looked at each other with an air of conspiratorial mischief. It was Ball who spoke.
‘This will pain you, Neville, I’m sure. But I fear Winston’s got himself into a spot of bother.’
‘Truly?’ A thick eyebrow arched in anticipation.
‘More than a spot. An entire bloody bog.’
‘Drink?’
‘Money.’
‘Will he never learn?’ A pause. The hock was tasting better by the mouthful. ‘How much?’
‘More than forty thousand.’
‘My God!’
‘Forty-three thousand, seven hundred and forty, to be precise. Due by Christmas.’
It was a fortune. More than four times the Prime Minister’s own generous salary.
‘But how?’
‘Been gambling on the New York stock exchange. Losing. Now the banks are calling in his loans.’
‘We have him,’ Wilson added softly, as though announcing the arrival of a tray of tea.
‘Bracken’s been trying to help, find an angel to save him. But the angels don’t seem keen on saving the soul of a man who wants a war that would ruin them.’
‘So what will he do?’
‘Sell what’s left of his shares. Put Chartwell on the market. Pay off his debts with the proceeds.’
‘Chartwell’s been a nest of vipers for too long,’ Wilson added. ‘Time it was cleared out.’
‘No, no …’ Chamberlain was shaking his head, his brow furrowed in concentration. ‘That would be wrong.’
‘Wrong? What’s wrong?’ Ball muttered, as though grappling with a new philosophical concept.
‘He loathes you, Neville,’ Wilson objected. ‘Leads the opposition on all fronts.’
‘And he’ll do so again, given half a chance,’ Ball emphasized.
‘Precisely,’ Chamberlain agreed, steepling his fingers as though in prayer, urging them on.
‘But these debts will crucify him.’
‘What is to be gained by seeing him crucified now?’
‘For the pleasure of it!’ Ball cried.
‘To clean up Westminster,’ Wilson suggested.
‘But he can do us no harm,’ Chamberlain persisted. ‘It would be like stepping on an ant.’
The two elves fell into silence. They hadn’t caught on, not yet, but they knew the Prime Minister tied a mean fly.
‘Winston doesn’t matter, not now, at least. He has lost, we have won. That’s the truth of the matter. And if at this moment he were to fall over the edge, no one would even hear the splash. And how should we gain any benefit from that? Those who stand against us would only regroup, find a new leader and we would have to start all over again. No, there’s a better way. Not today, perhaps, not this month but sometime soon, there will be another crisis. How much better it would be, when that time comes, that their leader is a man who is on the brink. Vulnerable. Unstable as always. Whom we control and with one small nudge can send spinning into the abyss – if that were to prove necessary.’ There was colour in his face again, a spirit that had revived. The tips of his fingers were beating time, pacing his thoughts.
‘By God,’ Wilson breathed. ‘But how?’
‘Bail him out. Extend just sufficient credit for him to survive, for now. Play him on the line. Until he’s exhausted and we can net him whenever