insisted. ‘Beaverbrook is incapable of responsibility. Remember …’ She waved her hand in exasperation. There was so much to remember from Beaverbrook’s long career, not least his unflagging public support for her despicable brother-in-law, the abdicated Edward.
The King, less voluble, was nevertheless shaking his head. ‘No, no, it won’t do. I must write to Winston immediately.’
‘Yes, hobble his horse,’ the Queen insisted.
Halifax swallowed deep, calculating. Should he mention the other matter? But he was exhausted by the events of the last few days and no longer trusted his own judgement. Instead he allowed base instinct to rule and to stir the Prime Minister’s pot.
‘He also wants Bracken as a Privy Councillor.’
‘No!’ Elizabeth once more led the objections, more vehement than ever. ‘Bracken as part of the King’s own private council? That we cannot have.’ Membership of the Council was an exceptional honour reserved for the most senior in the land, not a jumped-up Irish adventurer. She hooked her arm through her husband’s and clasped him tightly, as if they both required an extra measure of support. ‘Those men around Mr Churchill,’ she exclaimed, ‘are not gentlemen.’
‘I fear the government is being given over to gangsters,’ Halifax muttered miserably. He knew that both the King and Queen believed it to be largely his fault.
They wandered on in silence, skirting the lake, passing beyond rhododendrons that were raising flower-drenched branches in seasonal triumph, until Elizabeth turned to her husband, as always wishing to share his burden when he appeared distressed. ‘A penny for those thoughts of yours, my dear.’
The King seemed startled for a moment, dragged back from distant troubles. ‘I was thinking, well … like you, how very much I had wanted Edward for the job. And then worrying – just a little – how can I put it? About us and the Germans. That our gangsters may not be as good as theirs.’
It was beyond midnight when Churchill’s private detective, Inspector Thompson, ushered the woman into Churchill’s study. Churchill was busy writing a letter and didn’t look up. Without being asked, Thompson refilled his master’s glass, then offered a drink to the woman. With a curt shake of the head, she declined. Thompson left, closing the door behind him quietly.
Only then did Churchill raise his eyes.
‘Didn’t know if you would come.’
‘Didn’t want to. But your private policeman waved his warrant card. You know we Germans are helpless in the face of authority.’
Ruth Mueller was around fifty with a thin, elegant face that had worn well and fading blonde hair trimmed severely at the neck. She had probably cut it herself. There were other signs of self-reliance about her, apart from defiant eyes – her tweed suit was frayed at the cuffs and clearly designed for someone several pounds heavier, her shoes were old, her fingers unadorned by any jewellery. She held an ancient handbag protectively in her lap.
‘You look well,’ he offered clumsily.
‘No thanks to you.’ Her vocabulary was precise, her accent stiff.
He cleared his throat in irritation. He could still remember his surprise at their first encounter. He had received a letter from an R. Mueller explaining that the writer was a refugee from Germany, had an academic background as an historian, and wondering whether Churchill might be in need of any researchers for his forthcoming writings. The letter had added in impassioned terms that the threat of events in Europe were so imminent and the lack of understanding about them so immense in everyone but Churchill that he was the only man in Europe the writer wished to work for.
It had been a timely letter, arriving at Chartwell at the moment when Churchill, under severe pressure from both his publishers and his multiple creditors, had turned once more to his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a book commissioned many years previously and repeatedly pushed aside for the distractions of politics. Yet as interested as Churchill was in politics, for the past decade politics had displayed precious little interest in him. He had been a political outcast, lost in the wilderness, out of office and largely ignored. So he had picked up his pen once more, believing that his History would in all likelihood be his last endeavour on this earth, and in a typically impetuous moment had written offering R. Mueller a position on his team of research assistants.
He was shaken when, on the appointed day, a woman had turned up. Churchill was not good with women, not in a professional sense. For him they were creatures of romance, to be admired when the moment was right, then left in their drawing rooms while the menfolk got on with business. He’d had severe doubts about giving them the vote and was aggravated beyond endurance by most of those who had found their way into Parliament. When, with some awkwardness, he had sat R. Mueller down and suggested there had been some confusion but he might have a vacancy on his staff for an additional typist, she had not taken it well. She was a qualified historian, she told him, one who had spent several years researching an authoritative biography of the Fuehrer. Her abilities had been recognized even by the Gestapo. They had visited her several times and suggested several other professional avenues for her to pursue, ranging from a teaching position in almost any other subject than Hitler studies, which she had declined, to a librarianship in Dachau, which she had avoided only by fleeing. But even the Gestapo hadn’t suggested she be a typist. She had waved Churchill’s letter of appointment and insisted that she be given the proper job on his staff.
The engagement had lasted three weeks. She was brilliant, incisive, immensely hard-working, and impossible. When she had discovered that he was spending most of his time working on a history of the English-speaking world, she had asked why he wasn’t writing about the contemporary threat in Europe. He had offered many reasons: he was under considerable contractual obligation to his publishers, he had told her, and people were fed up with him going on about impending war. Anyway, it was necessary for him to think about his financial survival. She had looked him in the eye and told him that survival was about much more than his silk underwear and champagne. It had been the last time they had spoken. Until tonight.
‘Many circumstances have changed since we last met, Frau Mueller,’ he began, smiling.
If he was expecting congratulation, there was no sign of it.
‘I have a war to fight. Against your Herr Hitler. I was wondering if you would like to help.’
‘Help you?’ she enquired, startled.
‘Help Britain. I know it is a lot to ask.’
‘Help? How?’ She stared at him fiercely, across a desk that was cluttered with piles of papers weighed down by gold medals and surrounded by bottles of pills, potions, a magnifying glass, two spectacle cases and a small pot of toothpicks. There were also two cuffs made of card to prevent his sleeves getting dirty.
He was examining her, weighing her up. ‘I take a risk even in having you here. But it is a time when risk arrives with my breakfast and lingers on to tuck me in at night. We face a formidable opponent in Germany and its formidable armies. We also face Hitler.’ He began jabbing his chest with his finger. ‘I face Hitler. I, Winston Churchill. And yet I don’t know him. One of the few significant men in Europe I have never met.’ The room was dark except for the light of his desk lamp, yet she could see the exhaustion that hovered behind his eyes. ‘He refused to meet me, you know. In 1932 when I was motoring in Europe, inspecting the old battlefields. All the rest, Chamberlain, Halifax, Lloyd George, they met him. But not me. He simply refused. Mistook me for a man with no future, apparently.’
‘He
