Churchill’s Hour. Michael Dobbs
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exterior there were occasions when he betrayed the inner tension that left him thin and always anxious.
‘Try hanging it on the other wall, will you?’ he instructed tersely.
The two workmen cast a disdainful eye at the politician. ‘Not the only thing that could do with a little hanging,’ one of them muttered darkly, but out of earshot. ‘This wall, that wall, whichever wall he wants, it’s still only a ruddy painting.’
Eden turned from his examination of the panelling. ‘You have a problem?’
‘Not really.’
‘Speak up, man. Better in than out.’
‘Well, sir, I don’t understand why we have to move the blessed thing at all. Been there long enough. Why do we have to move it just ’cos some Americans are coming?’
‘Because it’s George the Third.’
The explanation was met with a blank stare.
‘He was mad,’ Eden continued.
‘But still a king,’ the workman countered doggedly. ‘Our king.’
‘I take your point. But kings aren’t particularly popular with Americans. Particularly this one.’
The towering portrait of George III with its ornate gilt frame had dominated the meeting room of the Foreign Office since, well, ever since anyone could remember, but now it was to be moved. Eden had instructed that all appropriate arrangements were to be made for welcoming the forthcoming American delegation and had clearly come to the conclusion that a portrait of the mad king who had helped ignite the American Revolution would cast an inappropriate shadow over proceedings. It had to be moved somewhere less prominent.
‘Let’s try it on the other wall,’ he suggested, waving an elegant cuff but without much sign of conviction.
The workman and his partner didn’t move a muscle.
‘What?’
‘Not going to work. Not there. Not anywhere,’ the workman said.
‘Why on earth not?’ Eden enquired, stuffing his thumbs deep into the pockets of his waistcoat.
‘Look at it, sir.’ The workman took a step forward. ‘It’s just too big. Turn his face to the wall and you’re still going to see his ermine slippers sticking out underneath. It’s enormous.’ Then, less loudly: ‘And we should know. Been moving it all morning.’
Eden cast a dark eye at the workman. He had thought him a monarchist, but now he suspected him of being simply a troublemaker. ‘Are you a Communist?’
‘What?’
‘Oh, never mind.’
The Foreign Secretary went back to examining his dilemma while the workman picked at the fragment of his cigarette with a broken orange fingernail. ‘Why the hell we have to be so nice to the bloody Yanks is beyond me,’ he said, turning to his colleague. ‘Late for the last war, they was. Run away from this war. Doing nothing but sitting on their backsides in Wall Street and soaking us dry.’
Suddenly Eden turned, furious. He’d heard. ‘We need them because right now we have no one else.’ He strode up to the man who he was now certain was a Bolshevik. ‘Where else do you think we’ll get the destroyers and other weapons we need to win this war?’
But the workman was not to be cowed. He was no revolutionary, but in his eyes it was Eden and his kind who had got them into this bloody war in the first place. If he was to be asked for his opinion, he was going to give it.
‘I hear we can’t afford it. Can’t afford the Americans as friends.’
Eden snorted in exasperation. That was the difficulty with men such as this who wandered into every corner and crevice of the Foreign Office. They heard too much, yet understood so little. ‘Of course we can’t afford it, but that’s no longer the point. The Americans have suggested they lend us the matériel instead, for the duration of the war. We borrow everything—the bombers, fighters, ships, guns, tanks, vehicles—then afterwards give them back. It’s called Lend-Lease.’
‘But not fighting…’
‘Not fighting, exactly. But assisting. Making it possible for us to win the war. A partnership.’ He clapped his hands. ‘But that’s it!’ he cried. ‘We could get another picture. Put it alongside. Something…well…American. Don’t we have something down in the basement?’
‘We’ve got a George Washington somewhere,’ the workman’s colleague began.
‘Splendid! Fetch it up. Put it alongside. It’ll balance the whole thing out.’
The workman was less enthused. ‘Stupid pillock,’ he said softly and very slowly to his colleague. ‘We’ll be shifting pictures all ruddy afternoon.’
Which is precisely what happened. They hauled and sweated their way up from the basement with the new portrait, a remnant from the State Visit of President Woodrow Wilson in 1918. The basement was three floors down. Which meant three floors back up. But no matter how much they shifted the paintings around the room, still it would not work. The portrait of the first American President was only a fraction the size of the umpteenth English king, and in whatever position they were tried, the result looked more like deliberate insult than diplomatic master stroke. Eden eventually threw up his hands in despair.
‘You’ll have to take them both down to the basement,’ he said.
‘What? Take down the King?’ the workman asked in bewilderment. ‘To the basement?’
‘We can’t afford to offend the Americans. There’s no other way,’ the Foreign Secretary announced before examining his pocket watch and rushing from the room. He left the workman squatting on his haunches, trying to manufacture another spindly cigarette.
‘Take down the King? To the basement?’ he kept saying over and over, as if through repetition he would come to understanding. ‘Makes you wonder, don’t it?’
‘What’s that?’ his colleague asked.
‘Who the bloody hell’s in charge here.’
The bathroom was small, narrow and hopelessly impractical. It had no windows and only the most rudimentary of ventilation systems, and was buried behind several feet of concrete. The planners who had built the fortified Annexe around the corner from Downing Street had wanted to ensure that, whatever else happened to him, Churchill wasn’t going—in his own words—‘to be blown out of his own bloody bath’. It was no idle threat; bath time was one of his set rituals. He would throw himself into the water, submerging completely, then surface once more, blowing like a whale. In between dives he would reflect, dictate, compose and shout orders, all the while cheating outrageously on the maximum level of bath water recommended by his own scrimping Government.
A flustered assistant came stumbling from the room, brow beaded in sweat, his glasses steamed, his notebook crumpled, the ink running down the page, nearly knocking into Randolph as he fled. Another male secretary was hovering, waiting his turn to go in, and Sawyers was fussing away near at hand, but both of them drew back as the Prime Minister’s son appeared, clad in the service dress of a captain, No. 8 Commando.
‘Papa?’ Randolph said, standing in the doorway. He took a step forward and was immediately enveloped in a fog of condensation, through which the outline of his father began to emerge, pink, perspiring, standing in front of the sink, shaving, completely naked.
‘Don’t shut that door,’ Winston snapped, wiping away at the mirror. ‘Not unless you want me to cut my own damned throat.’
‘Why don’t you bathe in St James’s Park,’ Randolph said. ‘It could scarcely be more public.’
‘Whaddya mean?’
‘You think Hitler wanders around the Reichs Chancellery waving his baubles about? It’s so bloody undignified.’