It was bad news, the worst. Lloyd George who, for all his recent backpedalling, had spent the thirties idolizing Hitler, calling him Germany’s George Washington. And Sam Hoare, the arch-appeaser, Churchill’s old enemy. Attlee was a fighter, for all his diffidence, but the two of them would be in a minority.
‘Lloyd George is seventy-seven,’ Churchill said. ‘Is he up to the weight that must be borne?’
‘I believe so. And he will be good for morale.’ Halifax was sounding more resolute now. ‘Winston,’ he said, ‘I would very much like you beside me at this hour.’
Churchill hesitated. This new War Cabinet would hobble him. He knew that Halifax had decided to take the premiership reluctantly and out of duty. He would do his best, but his heart was not in the struggle that was coming. Like so many, he had fought in the Great War and feared seeing all that bloodshed again.
For a moment Churchill thought of resigning from the Cabinet; but what good would that do? And Margesson was right; public unity was all important now. He would do what he could, while he could. He had thought, earlier that day, that his hour had come at last, but it was not to be after all, not yet. ‘I will serve under you,’ he said, his heart heavy.
Chapter One
November 1952
ALMOST ALL THE PASSENGERS on the tube to Victoria were, like David and his family, on their way to the Remembrance Sunday parade. It was a cold morning and the men and women all wore black winter coats. Scarves and handbags were also black, or muted brown, the only colour the bright red poppies everyone wore in their buttonholes. David ushered Sarah and her mother into a carriage; they found two empty wooden benches and sat facing each other.
As the tube rattled out of Kenton Station David looked round him. Everyone seemed sad and sombre, befitting the day. There were relatively few older men – most of the Great War veterans, like Sarah’s father, would be in central London already, preparing for the march past the Cenotaph. David was himself a veteran of the second war, the brief 1939–40 conflict that people called the Dunkirk campaign or the Jews’ war, according to political taste. But David, who had served in Norway, and the other survivors of that defeated, humiliated army – whose retreat from Europe had been followed so quickly by Britain’s surrender – did not have a place at the Remembrance Day ceremonies. Nor did the British soldiers who had died in the endless conflicts in India, and now Africa, that had begun since the 1940 Peace Treaty. Remembrance Day now had a political overtone: remember the slaughter when Britain and Germany fought in 1914–18; remember that must never happen again. Britain must remain Germany’s ally.
‘It’s very cloudy,’ Sarah’s mother said. ‘I hope it isn’t going to rain.’
‘It’ll be all right, Betty,’ David said reassuringly. ‘The forecast said it would just stay cloudy.’
Betty nodded. A plump little woman in her sixties, her whole life was focused on caring for Sarah’s father, who had had half his face blown off on the Somme in 1916.
‘It gets very uncomfortable for Jim, marching in the rain,’ she said. ‘The water drips behind his prosthesis and of course he can’t take it off.’
Sarah took her mother’s hand. Her square face with its strong round chin – her father’s chin – looked dignified. Her long blonde hair, curled at the ends, was framed by a modest black hat. Betty smiled at her. The tube halted at a station and more people got on. Sarah turned to David. ‘There’s more passengers than usual.’
‘People wanting to get a first look at the Queen, I imagine.’
‘I hope we manage to find Steve and Irene all right,’ Betty said, worrying again.
‘I told them to meet us by the ticket booths at Victoria,’ Sarah told her. ‘They’ll be there, dear, don’t worry.’
David looked out of the window. He was not looking forward to spending the afternoon with his wife’s sister and her husband. Irene was good-natured enough, although she was full of silly ideas and never stopped talking, but David loathed Steve, with his mixture of oily charm and arrogance, his Blackshirt politics. David would have to try to keep his lip buttoned as usual.
The train ground to a jolting halt, just before the mouth of a tunnel. There was a hiss somewhere as brakes engaged. ‘Not today,’ someone said. ‘These delays are getting worse. It’s a disgrace.’ Outside, David saw, the track looked down on rows of back-to-back houses of soot-stained London brick. Grey smoke rose from chimneys, washing was hanging out to dry in the backyards. The streets were empty. A grocer’s window just below them had a prominent sign in the window, Food Stamps Taken Here. There was a sudden jolt and the train moved into the tunnel, only to judder to a halt again a few moments later. David saw his own face reflected back from the dark window, his head framed by his bulky dark coat with its wide lapels. A bowler hat hid his short black hair, a few unruly curls just visible. His unlined, regular features made him look younger than thirty-five; deceptively unmarked. He suddenly recalled a childhood memory, his mother’s constant refrain to women visitors, ‘Isn’t he a good-looking boy, couldn’t you just eat him?’ Delivered in her sharp Dublin brogue, it had made him squirm with embarrassment. Another memory came unbidden, of when he was seventeen and had won the inter-schools Diving Cup. He remembered standing on the high board, a sea of faces far below, the board trembling slightly beneath his feet. Two steps forward and then the dive, down into the great expanse of still water, the moment of fear and then the exhilaration of striking out into silence.
Steve and Irene were waiting at Victoria. Irene, Sarah’s older sister, was also tall and blonde but with a little dimpled chin like her mother’s. Her black coat had a thick brown fur collar. Steve was good-looking in a raffish way, with a thin black moustache that made him look like a poor man’s Errol Flynn. He wore a black fedora on his thickly brilliantined head – David could smell the chemical tang as he shook his brother-in-law’s hand.
‘How’s the Civil Service, old man?’ Steve asked.
‘Surviving.’ David smiled.
‘Still keeping watch over the Empire?’
‘Something like that. How are the boys?’
‘Grand. Getting bigger and noisier every week. We might bring them next year, they’re getting old enough.’ David saw a shadow pass across Sarah’s face and knew she was remembering their own dead son.
‘We ought to hurry, get the tube to Westminster,’ Irene said. ‘Look at all these people.’
They joined the throng heading for the escalator. As the crowd pressed together their pace slowed to a silent shuffle, reminding David for a moment of his time as a soldier, shuffling with the rest of the weary troops onto the ships evacuating British forces from Norway, back in 1940.
They turned into Whitehall. David’s office was just behind the Cenotaph; men walking past would still remove their hats as they passed it, respectfully and unselfconsciously, though fewer and fewer with each passing year – thirty-four now since the Great War ended. The sky was grey-white, the air cold. People’s breath steamed before them as they jostled – quietly and politely – for places behind the low metal barriers opposite the tall white rectangle of the Cenotaph, a line of policemen in heavy coats in front. Some were ordinary constables in their helmets, but many were Special Branch Auxiliaries in their flat peaked caps and slimmer blue uniforms. When they were first created in the 1940s, to deal with growing civil unrest, David’s father had said the Auxiliaries reminded him of the Black and Tans, the violent trench veterans recruited by Lloyd George to augment the police during the Irish Independence War. All were armed.