set out before him on the table. ‘But I am a diplomat. That is a different game and perhaps we might play it with rather better fortune.’ He looked around the room, bringing the other Ministers and military men into the discussion. ‘At this point the impetus appears to be with Herr Hitler, but he is isolated, alone. If we can prevent other nations from siding with him we can perhaps help stem his progress. We all know that Italy is threatening to come into the war on his side. That would be a disaster which would threaten our Mediterranean possessions and make the situation of the French impossible. I suggest, with all the powers of persuasion I command’ – they all noted the implicit words of warning – ‘that the Prime Minister write immediately to Signor Mussolini and make it clear to him that we bear Italy no ill will, that the dialogue between us remains open, and that if the Italians have any cause for grievance with us it can be settled without turning the Mediterranean red with each other’s blood.’
‘Ah, play the Roman card,’ Attlee muttered.
‘You think it a sensible suggestion, Lord Privy Seal?’ Churchill enquired.
‘I do,’ Attlee replied. ‘Nothing to be lost from it.’
‘But what if he says he wants Gibraltar, or Malta, as prizes for his co-operation?’ Which he would, damn him, like any jackal.
‘Better that such issues be resolved across the table than across a battlefield,’ Halifax insisted.
Churchill stared at him; Halifax stared straight back. He had given his advice ‘with all the powers of persuasion I command’. In the muted language of Halifax’s world, the Foreign Secretary was announcing that he would not tolerate rejection. And Churchill could not withstand rebellion. He had no choice. Anyway, it was only a bloody letter.
‘An excellent idea,’ Churchill announced. ‘You have a draft for my consideration, Foreign Secretary?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then it shall be done.’
Halifax nodded his gratitude. For a moment he tried to convince himself that perhaps it would work after all, this ill-conceived administration led by the charging bull that was Churchill, with himself to guard the gate of the corral. And suddenly Anthony Eden, the Secretary of State for War, was speaking. A fragile man, in Halifax’s view, and his predecessor as Foreign Secretary until he had fallen out with Chamberlain over appeasement and flounced out of the Cabinet. Now they were all back together around the Cabinet table, as uneasy as ever. Halifax sat back as Eden reported on his attempts to raise an army of local volunteers to defend the homeland.
‘From all corners they have come forward,’ he said in his precise, over-trimmed voice. ‘In every town and every village, bands of determined men are gathering together for duties on the home front, arming themselves with shotguns, sporting rifles, clubs and spears …’
Dear God, thought Halifax, is this what it has come to? The greatest empire in the world defended with clubs and spears? And by fools?
He looked around the table, from man to man, from failed politicians to failing military commanders, and knew he had been wrong. This ill-conceived and misconstructed machine could not be made to work. It was written on all their brows. Britain had already lost the war.
Don was confused. The BBC announcer had told them that Allied forces were counterattacking all along the front. Germans were being repelled at the Sedan salient, he claimed defiantly. So why were the 6th moving back once more?
A few hours earlier there had been a trickle of refugees on the road in front of them, but now it had swelled to a stream that meandered as far as his eye could see, like a tangle of fishing net caught at the edge of the surf. It slowed the 6th’s progress to a crawl. The radiators that had frozen throughout winter began to overheat, and just after noon the convoy pulled into a farmyard for water and a little rest. Don hadn’t slept in thirty hours.
They were only miles from the border, almost back where they had started. Bizarrely, as they drew into the farmyard, they found a huge tent festooned with coloured banners in the neighbouring field. The circus was in town. Around the tent, the people of the circus were practising their arts, balancing on tightropes, juggling, tumbling, even washing down an elephant.
‘What am I to do?’ the circus owner explained. He was short, like a Toby jug, sad, with a huge moustache. ‘I have three elephants, several lions, my wife’s mother and eighteen other relatives. Where could we possibly go?’
No one else had an answer, either. As they rested, Don noticed a young girl, the owner’s daughter, riding around a makeshift ring balancing on the backs of two white horses. She waved. He waved back. The show must go on.
And so did the 6th, more slowly than ever as they approached the border. A mile beyond the farmhouse they had to manoeuvre around two British Matilda tanks that had broken down. Don had heard there was a lot of that. He’d heard many things about the BEF – that equipment was in short supply, badly packed and often sent to the wrong units; that the tanks had no wireless sets, that they were no match for the German panzers; that the twenty-five-pounders had arrived in France untested and unfired; that … well, there came a point when you didn’t want to hear any more.
He didn’t hear the Luftwaffe, either. He was aching from lack of sleep and the constant grinding of low gears had left his ears ringing. Up ahead he could see that the column had come to a complete halt. Civilians were looking up into the sky and pointing; a few soldiers began firing their rifles. Then, from behind, came the dull crump of explosions, and suddenly the refugees were on the move again, scattering to the sides of the road and throwing themselves behind every available tree and piece of cover. When he saw tracer fire ripping the trees to shreds, Don decided to join them, head down in a ditch.
And so the 6th survived their first encounter with hostile fire. Little damage was done on that occasion; most of the attention of the Luftwaffe appeared to be back down the road, from where Don could see a column of smoke rising, the only mark upon a cloudless sky. The circus tent must have seemed like a military bivouac from the air.
As Don and the others began to emerge from their hiding places, they became aware of the sounds of a commotion. Screams. Shouts of dismay. Hooves clattering on the metalled road. Drawing ever nearer. Suddenly two white horses, their eyes red with fear, flew past. They were dragging something behind them, tangled in the reins, bouncing off the tarmac.
Don ducked behind a tree and was sick.
In Joe Kennedy’s view, it had been a splendid evening. Dinner at the Italian embassy, theatre, a new flirtation, then back to Beaverbrook’s for a drink. Beaverbrook’s door just along from the Ritz Hotel was always open and awash with good company and gossip. The two men were excellent companions and Kennedy was a frequent house guest at Beaverbrook’s country home at Cherkley, where he had fallen into the most pleasurable habit of sleeping with one of Beaverbrook’s research assistants. All in the line of business, of course; she would whisper in his ear all through the night, then write him a weekly letter full of her own endearments and the press man’s private news. Keeping abreast, as the ambassador put it.
What he couldn’t know was that the research assistant sent her letters through the Express office, where the manager would steam them open and copy the contents before posting them on. So everything got back to Beaverbrook – keeping the American ambassador on his back, where he belonged, as His Lordship put it. No hard feelings. They were both businessmen, and information was a commodity from which they both made a handsome profit.
It was around midnight. Kennedy was just tucking into a fresh bottle of the Beaverbrook bourbon when the telephone
