lips drooped in distaste. He had extraordinary lips, weak, as though constructed of wax that had strayed too near the flame and been melted. His eyes also drooped. It gave him an air of ingrained disapproval.
‘But Churchill’s a man with experience of war,’ Colville reminded them.
‘There is nothing to be gained either from war or from Winston Churchill,’ the Minister all but spat. ‘The fate of our country has been placed in the hands of the greatest political adventurer of modern times. A half-breed American whose entire life has been littered with failures for which other people have paid.’
‘And now poor Neville.’
A pause.
‘What will you do, Jock?’ Channon asked the younger man.
‘I think I might apply for a transfer to the armed services. The RAF, perhaps.’ He seemed unaware of his implied rebuke to Butler. If war was not an answer, what was to be the point of fighting it? But the Minister had more advice to offer.
‘No. Wait, Jock. Don’t draw stumps just yet. This game isn’t over. Let Winston have his day dabbling at war. And when he falters, and then fails, as he always has, the country will need men like us. More than ever.’
‘And after Winston?’
‘Pray that it will be an Englishman. Perhaps Neville once more. And if not him, then Halifax. But better Neville.’
The sun was almost set, its embers sprinkled wide across the spires and cupolas around them. The end of more than just another day. Chips raised his glass.
‘Then, to the King over the Water.’
‘To Neville,’ Butler agreed.
‘And may God send us victorious,’ Colville whispered, finishing the last of his warm champagne.
‘So how was he?’
Winston Churchill looked up from the letter he was writing to inspect the man who had just burst in upon him. A pall of cigar smoke hovered across the room in the Admiralty.
‘His Majesty was as ever charming. A little awkward, perhaps. Dressed in his uniform as Admiral of the Fleet.’
Unbidden, his visitor helped himself to a large whisky from the tray that sat beside the Prime Minister. The splash of soda was brief, no more than a gesture.
‘You know,’ Churchill continued, ‘I do believe His Majesty would willingly give up all the splendours and circumstances of his role in order to return to the duties of his career in the navy.’
‘He’s out of his depth.’
‘No, I think more out of his experience,’ Churchill growled. ‘Rather like us all at this moment.’ He thrust his own empty glass in the direction of his visitor, silently demanding it be refilled. As on almost every occasion in the seventeen years since they had met, Brendan Bracken complied with his older friend’s wishes. Bracken was a man often derided as an outrageous fantasist by those who knew him slightly, and no one could claim to know him well, not even Churchill. But for all his faults and legendary confrontations with the truth, he had remained loyal to Churchill when more respectable political colleagues had deserted him. All his life Churchill had been a man of few friends, and this friend he valued more than most.
‘Still, must have been awkward for you. For both of you, given the past,’ Bracken continued.
Ah, the past … Churchill wanted to believe that all his past life had been but a preparation for the trial that lay ahead, yet in truth it had been a lifetime of uneasy adventures thrown together with outright failures. During the last war, for instance, he had been hurled from office – not simply resigned as his father had done before him, but thrown out by those who thought him inadequate for the job. Many of them had still not changed their minds, the King included. No, it wasn’t success that had brought him here, only the still more monumental failures of others. Churchill looked up once more from his blotter. ‘He covered it with a little joke. Asked me if I knew why he had summoned me. I replied that I simply couldn’t imagine. So he offered me a cigar and asked me to form a government. Of which, I suppose, you expect to be a member. Along with many others.’
‘The joy of it!’ Bracken threw his arms around in excitement. ‘After all these years, the chance to even the score. To do unto others …’ He clapped his hands. ‘You know, I’ve just been over to Downing Street. Thought I’d take a look. Went by the back gate into the secretaries’ rooms. Rushing around bundling everything into sacks and waste-paper baskets, they were, even had a fire roaring in one of the grates. Several in tears. It was as though the enemy had arrived.’
‘You don’t understand, Brendan: in their eyes, he has.’
Bracken lit himself a cigar using a petrol lighter that threw an immense flame, adding to the aerial confusion. ‘So – who is to be in this government of ours?’
‘My War Cabinet,’ Churchill responded, ‘will consist of four men, apart from myself.’ He cleared his throat as if making an official proclamation. ‘There will be Mr Attlee and Mr Greenwood from the Labour Party.’
Bracken shifted uneasily in his chair.
‘Lord Halifax.’
An eyebrow arched in disapproval.
‘And Mr Neville Chamberlain.’
Bracken gasped, momentarily brought to silence. ‘You cannot be serious.’
‘In most deadly earnest. Our lives may depend upon it.’
‘But …’ Suddenly the energy was upon him once more, his body contorting in exasperation. ‘They’re the four most bloody-minded men in the country. Two socialists with whom you’ve got nothing in common, the former Prime Minister who’s devoted most of his limited talents to keeping you at the outer edge of the universe, and …’ He wondered for a moment how best to sum up Edward Halifax, Churchill’s chief rival for the post. ‘And an Old Etonian.’
‘You’re right.’ Churchill smiled. Throughout all the years of drought Bracken had had an unquenchable talent for making him smile. ‘You are absolutely right. We need more Harrovians.’
‘Seriously, Winston, how can you include Chamberlain after everything that’s happened?’
‘Can’t you see, Brendan, it’s because of everything that has happened that I must embrace him? He is still the leader of the majority party in the House of Commons, and if I am to build a truly national government I must include him as well as the socialists.’ He picked up his pen and resumed his work. ‘That is what I have had to insist to Mr Attlee, who, I’m afraid, rather shares your opinion about Mr Chamberlain.’
‘But you’ve nothing in common with any of them.’
‘I can count on the claws of a chicken’s foot the number of men you and I can trust. It’s not enough. We need more.’ He finished off the letter with a flourish. ‘Which is why I have just written to the Kaiser enquiring whether, before the Wehrmacht arrives, he would wish to exchange his exile in Holland for a suitable small establishment in this country.’
Bracken choked on his drink, spluttering, when at
