“Welcome home, Sir Julian,” Margaret Thatcher said, so loudly she was afraid it might seem to those who would be watching the news footage at home on television — the BBC had started broadcasting scheduled television programs again ten days ago — or in cinemas, that she had blurted the welcome like a star struck schoolgirl meeting a movie star. But then that was what this man was; a film star in all but name. He was the man who’d masterminded and forced through Operation Manna, and he was the man who’d taken command in Malta in the middle of a devastating surprise air raid. The films and photographs of the tall, handsome Admiral surveying the wreckage and mingling personably with his men and Maltese civilians, added to the praetorian assurance in his voice when he addressed crowds, or spoke to reporters had set his reputation in stone. Nobody could have any doubt that this man was the rock upon which the British presence in the Mediterranean was anchored. She had asked herself if she could still be as infatuated with Julian Christopher as she’d been when she’d bidden him adieu at RAF Cheltenham in December. When she closed her eyes she still felt his lips half-touching her mouth. Now she knew. She was no less in the man’s thrall; if anything she was even more lost.
The Prime Minister was pleased to note that there were no visible traces of the injuries the sixty-three year old Vice-Admiral had sustained at Balmoral Castle in the week before his departure for Malta. He stood easily, unpained and his face was tanned. He looked lean and fit; and his eyes were thoughtful as he returned the her gaze and shook her hand.
“It is good to be home, Prime Minister,” he returned dutifully. “Albeit only for a flying visit, more is the pity.” He half-turned. “May I introduce my flag lieutenant. This is Lieutenant Hannay.”
Margaret Thatcher shook the boy’s hand.
The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir David Luce stepped up and took the Fighting Admiral’s hand next, patting his old friend on the arm.
“You are looking well, Julian,” he declared.
“You know how it is,” the returning hero smiled. “There’s nothing quite like active service to concentrate a man’s mind on the things that really matter.”
Margaret Thatcher tried not to blush too deeply when Julian Christopher glanced to her as he spoke.
The welcoming ceremony completed the participants were whisked out of the cold of the darkening afternoon into the warmth of the hastily re-configured barn-like Officers Mess. Margaret Thatcher hadn’t trusted herself to speak to Julian Christopher in the car transporting the welcoming party back to civilization. She looked around the Spartan, whitewashed building in which a long trestle table around which a dozen hard chairs had been arranged and quirked a smile to nobody in particular.
“I wonder what Mr MacMillan would have made of today’s meeting in such an,” she shrugged, “unconventional locale?”
“It would have reminded him of the good old days when he was attached to General Eisenhower’s staff,” Sir Henry Tomlinson suggested.
“Sir Harold and President Eisenhower were a good team,” Margaret Thatcher declared, looking to her two American interlocutors.
William Fulbright had left his entourage kicking their heels in an adjoining Mess Hall. The British Premier had indicated she wanted to keep this thing sweet and simple. Sir Julian Christopher was flying back to Malta tonight and unless anybody had a problem with it, Sir Henry Tomlinson would act as the ‘conference secretary’.
“Good to meet you at last, Sir Julian,” the Secretary of State said guardedly to the tall British Admiral in whom his countrymen and women — he hadn’t missed the Angry Widow’s untypical distraction now that she was in the great man’s proximity — placed so much faith. “The Navy people back home spit when they hear your name so you must be doing something right!”
The Fighting Admiral appraised the American for moment.
“That’s kind of you to say so, sir.” He was suddenly very serious. “Back in the Second War, I was proud to fight side by side with the United States Navy. If it comes to it, I will be again.”
There was something a little chilling in the steely resolve in the older man’s voice. With or without the US Navy he would be fighting again soon.
The new American Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral, Captain Walter Brenckmann, who had crossed the Atlantic with his Secretary of State stepped forward and introduced himself.
“I gather that your son transferred off the USS Scorpion shortly before she sailed on her last voyage, Mr Ambassador?” Julian Christopher asked immediately.
“Thank God!”
The Commander-in-Chief of all British and Commonwealth Forces in the Mediterranean had heard good reports about Brenckmann. It did no harm to exploit their shared recent terrors.
“My son was onboard HMS Talavera when she was attacked off Cape Finisterre,” he told the other man. “Fortunately, he avoided serious injury. We both had lucky escapes, Captain Brenckmann.”
“Indeed we did, sir.”
Margaret Thatcher called the conference to order and the participants took their places around the table. Orderlies in RAF grey blue appeared out of nowhere bearing tea and coffee.
Nobody even thought of reaching for their cigarettes, pipes or tobacco pouches for it was already known, far and wide, that the Angry Widow detested smoking anywhere in her vicinity.
She fixed the two American guests in her sights.
“Secretary of State Fulbright and Ambassador Brenckmann,” she prefaced, time was pressing and the World was doing its level best to go to Hell in handcart in the meantime. “The purpose of this conference is to inform me so that I can properly brief a full meeting of the Cabinet of the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom in Cheltenham tomorrow morning. Admiral Christopher has been summoned to this place to brief me on the most recent intelligence and developments in the Mediterranean. I have invited you to be present to better enable you to inform your own colleagues at home, and,” she was momentarily a little whimsical, “hopefully, to better understand us.”
The Secretary of State nodded.
Walter Brenckmann said nothing. William Fulbright wasn’t any kind of anglophile it was just that he was an American who understood, instinctively, that the United States was stronger and safer embracing rather than estranging friends old and new. The man was a Southern Democrat to the core, a segregationist who had signed the Southern Manifesto, so he wasn’t ever going to be in the camp of the so-called ‘bleeding heart’ liberals on any issue. However, in everything he had ever said about foreign relations he was a stony cold realist. There was realpolitik and there was cheap talk; there was nothing in between for a man like Fulbright. He had warned the Kennedy Administration in 1961 that the Bay of Pigs Invasion would be a disaster; supported the President’s tough stand over Berlin and against the building of the wall between East and West Germany, he had vigorously promoted the role of the United Nations and NATO since their inception; and vociferously mourned the disintegration of both in the months since the October War. To Fulbright, the renewal of the old alliance with Britain was the first unmistakable sign that sanity was returning to international affairs.
“I would like to think that the Administration that I have recently become a member of,” the man who was still the sitting junior Senator for Arkansas and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs said, “would treat a visiting minister and ambassador from Britain with the same courtesy and trust with which Walter and I have been treated in the last few days, Prime Minister. If I have anything to do with it in future such courtesies will become the default mode of our mutual dealings.”