Stuart Slade: A Mighty Endeavor

Churchill ran out of breath and took another swallow of brandy. He would have preferred a whisky-soda, but he’d taken what was available. It had been a long, hard drive up here from Oxford. The first instinct had been to head south to the Channel ports and escape to France, but the German armies were closing in on the French coast and the final result there would be worse than in England. So, he had turned north, heading for the one refuge he knew would be open to him and secure beyond doubt. The family home of the Duke of St Albans was the eye of the hurricane, somewhere he could pause and take stock of a situation that had gone so badly awry.

“Can we put this matter right? Halifax holds his position by a thread. What he has done can be undone, surely?”

The clinical depression, what Churchill called his black dog, overwhelmed his mind with its full force of blanketing despair. It had plagued his life; this time he could see no way it could be relieved. “Your Grace….”

“Osborne, please. We are in league against a powerful and ruthless enemy now; formality ill becomes such desperate straits.”

“Osborne, I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don’t like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation is all that it takes. Today, I have never felt closer to the edge of that platform or looked down into water more inviting. If it hadn’t been for Cadogan’s call, I would be in a police cell now. Oh, I have no doubt it would be called protective custody and I have equally little doubt that I would not live to see the morning.

“Yes, Osborne, there are things that we could do, but against the forces arrayed that have been set into motion, they will be little enough. The party committee will not remove Halifax from the Prime Ministry now. To do so would be to admit they are wrong and that they will not do. If they were to do that, then their whole claim to power and authority would be fatally undercut. We could stage a no-confidence motion in Parliament, but the House is disinclined to stage such votes except under the most trying of circumstances. We have already had one this year and most members will think that is enough. Even if we were to stage such a vote, I question whether we would win. That Man represents a strong body of opinion within the Conservative Party and the party will split in the face of the vote. The Labour Party will oppose him, but they are split also and many of their members decry this war. Never forget, Osborne, that Herr Hitler and Stalin have signed an alliance and the minions of the Comintern do Stalin’s bidding. Even the Liberals are split. How those factions would combine is anybody’s guess and the outcome yet more uncertain than that. No, a vote of no confidence will not get off the ground. This was a constitutional act, Osborne, one entirely legal and we have no practical means of reversing it.”

The Duke saw its effect in Churchill’s eyes and bearing; he made a private note to himself to have this man discretely but carefully watched tonight. “Winston, why not sleep on this problem? In the dawn, things may come to us that will not be clear tonight. Evans will show you to your room.”

Churchill nodded, his eyes swimming with misery and despair. Then he followed the butler out of the room. As he did so, he glanced at the Duke. Beauclerk raised one finger and touched it lightly to his eye. In a relationship between families that had been handed down, father to son, for generations, that was all it took. There would be a suicide watch on their guest tonight. After they had gone, the Duke remained sitting, staring into the fireplace much as Churchill had done. Quietly, he believed that Lord Halifax had done far more damage to the fabric of the realm with this day’s work than even Churchill had realized. Beauclerk looked out of the great windows towards the lights of Nottingham. It seemed to him that the darkness was already closing in.

“Nell, there’s a telegram for you. From Switzerland.” It was a convention in this most unconventional of all households that telegrams from Geneva should be passed to Eleanor Gwynne first. She would take a quick look at the contents and decide whether it would cause an explosion or not. Usually, the answer was that it would; then some hasty diplomacy would be needed to prevent another row breaking out between Phillip Stuyvesant and Loki.

“Thank you, ducks.”

Dido Carthagina grinned conspiratorially and handed the envelope over. “Oh, it really is for me.” There was a pause and then a resigned sigh. “It’s relayed from Osborne in England. I’d better see Phillip about this right away.”

“They’re all in the living room. Whatever is going on has caused some serious angst in there.”

“Europe, probably. Phillip spent hours sitting, staring out the window, when he got back from Washington. Heading in?”

“Of course, ducks.” Eleanor flashed a smile at Dido and turned to the door of the living room. Quietly, she felt a little sorry for her friend. Once, a long time ago, Dido had made a bad decision, one that had catastrophic consequences for a lot of people. She’d never trusted her own judgment since and found making even simple decisions difficult. Like whether to disturb a meeting with an important message or what to order in a restaurant. Generally, she waited for other people to make the decisions for her. It was a passive way of living and one that the gregarious and social Eleanor found hard to understand. Mentally, she shrugged the reflection off and opened the door.

“Hi, Nell. Welcome to the plotter’s cabal.” Igrat was sprawled out on a couch, one leg hooked over the arm. The lighting in the room was dimmed right down. With Igrat’s pose and the number of empty glasses around, the place looked like a seedy night club after a very busy evening.

Across the room, Phillip Stuyvesant was looking through a stack of papers. He glanced up and saw the envelope in Eleanor’s hand. “Message from Britain?”

“In a way, ducks. It’s from Osborne via Geneva. In code. He says there’s trouble over there and he has something we want. That’s rare. Usually when I get a message from the family, it’s because they’ve done something foolish and need me to bail them out. I assume it came through Geneva because the lines from Britain are down. What’s going on?”

“Halifax took over from Churchill and he’s signed an armistice with Germany.”

Eleanor went white. “You are joking, ducks? How did that happen?”

“We don’t know, I need a constitutional expert to explain it to me. But, the outcome is clear. The war’s over, for a while at least. This so-called armistice won’t last long. The whole situation will break out again and we’ll be right in the middle of it. I’ve just been asked to work out how Germany plans to fight the whole world single-handed.”

“Guess what? I’m going to be the bosses secretary in a new Washington Department, the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Section.”

Lillith also had a file and had reeled the name of her new appointment off without a hitch. “We’re all going to be in it, I guess.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “We’ll be staffing the section from us. I need people there who know how I work. Igrat’s going to be our courier again. Achillea and Henry, enforcement as usual. No sneaking off into the Navy this time, Achillea.”

“You want Mike for anything?” Mike Collins was the closest thing Igrat ever had to a long-term partner.