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.’
‘Then why doesn’t he come clean?’
‘In public? Come now, Winston, that would be an abuse of honesty. If he admitted he had dallied with the Führer just to give Britain the chance to re-arm, Hitler would march into the rest of Czechoslovakia tomorrow. But he has expressed his doubts to his confidants; and I don’t have to remind you, Winston, that you aren’t one of them.’
Churchill grunted and lit a cigar from a fresh consignment from John Rushbrook in New York.
Bracken, Irish-born newspaper publisher and M.P., regarded Churchill fondly from the depths of a sighing leather armchair. He had known him for years, from the time Churchill had moved to the Admiralty after his tempestuous reign at the Home Office. Like Churchill, Bracken enjoyed talking and liked to educate people. His favourite topic was Churchill, youthful adoration was behind him, mature understanding in its place.
He understood the melanchola, veiled from the public, that frequently afflicted Churchill, a legacy handed down from the Dukes of Marlborough but tempered, thanked God, by his mother’s American blood; he understood the flamboyance summoned to smother doubt, the bravado employed to mask fear. ‘You can’t be a hero without being a coward,’ Churchill had once told him.
He believed he knew Churchill better than anyone except Clementine. Not that he wasn’t bombastic, arrogant and impetuous; far from it; but what people didn’t comprehend was his sensitivity – Churchill made damn sure of that.
But what you could never quite cope with was his unpredictability. It erupted now as Churchill, thumbs in the waistcoat of his crumpled grey pinstripe, stared at a portrait of his grandfather, the 7th Duke.
‘What about Joe?’ he said.
‘Joe? Joe who?’ Bracken asked, bewildered.
‘Joe Stalin. I wonder how he views this grovelling policy of ours – if he’s got time to think in between his purges.’
‘I shouldn’t think he’s very pleased. He would like to see the capitalist powers fight each other to a standstill.’
Silence.
Somewhere a clock chimed. Bracken could hear the crackle of Churchill’s cigar as he rolled it between his fingers.
The silence continued. Nervously, Bracken cleared his throat.
Finally Churchill said: ‘That’s a very interesting remark, Brendan.’
But hardly an original one, Bracken thought.
‘Let’s put it to one side for a moment,’ Churchill said. ‘But we may return to it,’ as though they were in for a long session which, Bracken knew to his cost, could last until four am. ‘Don’t think for one second that Stalin, that wily old Georgian, is hoodwinked by Neville’s scrap of paper. He knows that Corporal Hitler is going to wage war and he’s got to decide whom to support. To put it more bluntly, who’s going to win, Germany or us. Who do you think he’ll put his money on, Brendan?’
Bracken thought about it. ‘Well,’ he said, giving his spectacles a polish, ‘he’s been chasing an anti-Hitler coalition for three years.’
‘As indeed he might,’ Churchill said, returning to his perusal of the 7th Duke. ‘In 1936 Hitler was bellowing that the Ukraine and even Siberia should be part of the lebensraum, Germany’s living space. But pray continue, Brendan.’
‘But then again he thinks that we’ve deliberately allowed Germany to re-arm so that she can fight Russia. He must interpret Munich as an inducement to the Nazis to further that aim. On one side he’s got the aggressor, on the other the betrayer. An unenviable choice, Winston.’
Churchill wheeled round, waving his cigar so vigorously that Bracken feared his suspect shoulder might pop out. ‘I’ll tell you what he’ll do first: he’ll sit on the barbed-wire fence and wait to see who looks like winning the war in Spain. It is, after all, a dress rehearsal for the next world war.’
‘Suppose the Fascists win – and that seems likely. It would be very strange to see a Bolshevik going over to the other side.’
Churchill gave a fleeting smile which reassured Bracken who had feared that he was on the brink of a deep depression. ‘I did it once,’ he said.
‘But this is a bit different. Communists siding with Fascists. It’s ridculous.’
‘History is littered with strange bedfellows.’
‘Not strange, grotesque. If Franco wins he’ll be expected to throw in his lot with Hitler. You seem to be suggesting that Stalin of all people will join him. A preposterous notion, if you don’t mind me saying so, Winston.’
‘I don’t mind in the slightest, my dear Brendan, because you are giving rein to assumption. I merely said that Stalin would observe which way the winds of war blow in Spain. If Franco wins – and I have little doubt that he will – then Hitler will be that much stronger. Another prospective Fascist ally instead of a Bolshevik foe in western Europe. Another Italy – although if you’ve got allies like Mussolini you don’t need enemies.’
Bracken said: ‘I’ve reined in my assumption and I still don’t understand. You don’t appear to have contradicted the proposition that Stalin would side with Hitler and Franco.’
‘Ah, then you haven’t reined hard enough. There will be no question of such an unholy triumvirate because Franco, another wily bird, won’t actively side with Hitler, he’ll sit on the barbed-wire fence, too. Do you know what I would do if I were Chamberlain?’
Bracken shook his head.
