Роберт Харрис - Munich

On the landing, Mrs Chamberlain was waiting. She looked as if she had already dressed for dinner in some sort of velvety gown. She was a decade younger than the Prime Minister: kind, vague, bosomy, softly stout, she reminded Legat of his mother-in-law, another Anglo-Irish county girl said to have been a beauty in her youth. Legat hung back. She said something quietly to her husband and to his amazement he saw the Prime Minister briefly take her hand and kiss her on the lips. ‘I can’t stop now, Annie. We’ll talk later.’ As Legat passed her it looked to him as if she had been crying.

He followed Chamberlain down the stairs, noticing the narrow sloping shoulders, the silvery hair curling slightly where it was cut short at the back, the surprisingly powerful hand brushing lightly along the banister rail with the half-smoked cigar still wedged between the second and third fingers. He was a Victorian figure. His portrait on the staircase ought to be halfway up rather than at the top. When they reached the Private Office corridor, the Prime Minister said, ‘Please bring me the speech as soon as you can.’ He walked on past Legat’s office, patting his pockets until he found his box of matches. At the entrance to the Cabinet Room he stopped and re-lit his cigar, then opened the doors and disappeared inside.

Legat sat at his desk. The Prime Minister’s handwriting was unexpectedly flowery, theatrical even. It hinted at a more passionate persona beneath the carapace of rectitude. As for the speech itself, he did not care for it. There was too much of the first person singular for his taste: I was flying backwards and forwards across Europe... I have done all that one man can do... I shall not give up the hope of a peaceful solution... I am a man of peace to the depths of my soul... In his ostentatiously modest way, he thought, Chamberlain was as egocentric as Hitler: he always conflated the national interest with himself.

He made a few changes here and there, corrected some of the grammar, added a line announcing the mobilisation of the Navy which the PM seemed to have forgotten, and took the text downstairs.

As he descended to the Garden Room the atmosphere of the house changed again. Now it was like going below decks on a luxury liner. Oil paintings and bookcases and calm gave way to low ceilings, bare walls, stale air, heat and the incessant racket of more than a dozen Imperial typewriters clattering away at a rate of eighty words per minute. Even with the doors open to the garden it felt oppressive. Thousands of letters a day had been pouring into Number 10 from members of the public ever since the crisis began. Sacks of unopened mail were piled in the narrow passage. It was getting close to seven o’clock. Legat explained to the supervisor the urgency of his mission and was led over to a young woman seated at a desk in the corner.

‘Joan here is our fastest. Joan, dear, you’ll have to stop whatever it is you’re doing, and type up the Prime Minister’s broadcast for Mr Legat.’

Joan pressed a lever on the end of her typewriter carriage and pulled out the half-finished document. ‘How many copies?’ Her voice was ‘smart’, cut-glass. She might have been a friend of Pamela’s.

He perched on the edge of her desk. ‘Three. Can you decipher his writing?’

‘Yes, but it’ll be quicker if you dictate it.’ She wound the paper and carbons into place and waited for him to start.

‘“Tomorrow, Parliament is going to meet and I shall be making a full statement of the events that have led up to the present anxious and critical situation...”’

He took out his fountain pen. ‘Sorry: it ought to be “the events which have led...”’ He marked the change on the original and carried on. ‘“How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing...”’

He frowned. She stopped typing and looked up at him. She was sweating slightly beneath her make-up. There was a tiny line of moisture above her upper lip, and a patch of dampness on the back of her blouse. He noticed for the first time that she was pretty.

She said irritably, ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Only that phrase — I’m not sure about it.’

‘Why?’

‘It sounds perhaps rather dismissive.’

‘He’s right though, isn’t he? That’s what most people think. What’s it got to do with us if one lot of Germans wants to join another lot of Germans?’ She rattled her fingers impatiently on the keys. ‘Come on, Mr Legat — you’re not the Prime Minister, you know.’

He laughed, despite himself. ‘That’s true — thank God! All right, let’s carry on.’

It took her about fifteen minutes. When they reached the end she unwound the final page, arranged the three copies in order and fixed them together with paperclips. He inspected the top copy. It was flawless. ‘How many words is that, would you say?’

‘About a thousand.’

‘So it should take him about eight minutes to deliver.’ He stood. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ As he moved away she called after him, ‘I’ll be listening.’

By the time he reached the door she was already typing something else.

Legat hurried back upstairs and along the Private Office corridor. As he approached the Cabinet Room, Cleverly appeared. He seemed to have been lurking outside the nearby lavatory. ‘What happened to your minute of the PM’s meeting with the Chiefs of Staff?’

Legat felt his face colour slightly. ‘The PM decided he didn’t want the meeting recorded.’

‘Then what are you carrying there?’

‘The speech for his broadcast tonight. He asked me to bring it to him as soon as it was typed.’

‘All right. Good.’ Cleverly held out his hand. ‘I’ll take it from here.’ Reluctantly Legat handed over the pages. ‘Why don’t you go and see what the BBC are up to?’

Cleverly let himself into the Cabinet Room. The door closed. Legat stared at the painted white panels. Power depended on being in the room when the decisions were taken. Few understood that rule better than the Principal Private Secretary. Legat felt obscurely humiliated.

Suddenly the door reopened. The bottom part of Cleverly’s face was twisted into a ghastly rictus-smile. ‘Apparently he wants you.’

A dozen men, including the Prime Minister, were seated around the table. Legat took them in at a glance: the service chiefs, the Big Three, the Dominions Secretary and the Minister for Defence Co-ordination, plus Horace Wilson and the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, Sir Alexander Cadogan. They were listening to the military attaché, Colonel Mason-MacFarlane.

‘So the very strong impression I received from my visit to Prague yesterday is that Czech military morale is poor...’ His delivery was clipped but fluent. He seemed to be enjoying his moment on stage.

The Prime Minister noticed Legat standing in the doorway and gestured with a nod of his head that he should come and sit next to him, in the seat to his right usually reserved for the Cabinet Secretary. He was already reading through the speech, running his pen down the page, occasionally underlining a word. He gave the impression that he was only half-listening to the colonel.

‘... Until last year, the Czech General Staff had planned on countering a German attack from two directions — from the north via Silesia, and from the west via Bavaria. But the incorporation of Austria into the Reich has extended their border with Germany to the south by almost two hundred miles, and that threatens to turn their defences. The Czechs may fight, but will the Slovaks? Also, Prague itself is hopelessly under-defended against bombing by the Luftwaffe.’