Michael Dobbs - Winston’s War

Then he turns and retraces his footsteps back home.

Chartwell, Kent.

It was the season of decay and the leaves of the chestnuts that stood guarding the Weald of Kent were beginning to curl at the edges and turn brown. The young man had found the drive down from London exhilarating. His open-top MG had nearly eighty brake horsepower – not the biggest machine on the road, but he was able to stretch it on the empty weekend roads and he had topped eighty-five past Biggin Hill. The occasional shower of rain had only added to his pleasure, if not to his elegance, but he had never placed much store on elegance. Although he was a radio producer for the BBC he was more likely to give the impression of being a garage mechanic caught in the middle of an oil change, and if others occasionally looked at him askance it only served to add to the risks of life. He enjoyed taking risks. Or perhaps he had something inside him that required him to take risks, like others needed to take drink. Like the Great Man.

As he turned off the road into the short drive that led to the front of the house he found himself scratched by a sense of disappointment. He had imagined a residence that sang of the Great Man’s eminence and aristocratic origins, but all he found was a sombre Victorian frontage standing in shadow on the side of a hill, squeezed tight up against a bank of rhododendron bushes that, so long after their season of flowering, were dark and sullen. The front aspect of the house was mean and more than a little dull. He hated dullness. Christ, the Victorians had spawned so many great architects – Pugin, Barry, Sloane – but this one seemed to have failed his inspiration exams and been sent into exile in Kent. The BBC man pulled at the bell by the front door and was answered by a forlorn echo. He pulled again. Nothing. Perhaps the trip had been a waste of time. Distractedly he walked around the side of the house and only then did he begin to understand why the Great Man loved this spot so, for if England had a heart it was surely here. The views seemed to tug at the soul. The house was built into the side of the Weald and before him tumbled thousands of acres of trees over a countryside that was dressed in the green-gold colours of autumn, stretching away towards Crockham Hill and disappearing into the mists that clung to the south coast some thirty miles beyond. The ground fell away sharply from the back of the house, and below were stream-fed lakes on which swam black swans and where trout rose to ruffle the surface. There were also several outhouses, a substantial walled garden and cottages built of red brick. Beside one of these cottages he could see two figures at work – perhaps he hadn’t wasted his time after all. He began to make his way down the steep pathway, slippery in its covering of recent rain, and as he approached he could see that one of the men was a young worker. The other figure was disguised in a thick overcoat and hat, yet the curve of the back was unmistakable, as were the shoulders, hunched like a prizefighter’s. There was also a haze of cigar smoke.

‘Hello!’ the man from the BBC called from a distance.

Winston Spencer Churchill, a man who had filled the offices of Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and First Lord of the Admiralty and who had served his country as soldier, statesman and historian, turned from his labours. He had a trowel in one hand and a brick in the other. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded, with no pretence at goodwill. The mouth was clenched tightly around the cigar, giving his chin a stubborn look.

‘My name is Burgess, sir.’

‘So?’

‘I telephoned …’

The Great Man scowled, trying to recall. ‘You can see I’m busy,’ he snapped. ‘The world has decided to destroy itself, so I am building a wall.’

Burgess tried to follow the politician’s logic. Perhaps it was a symbolic act of defiance, or nothing more than an outstanding sulk. This wasn’t quite the greeting he had expected, or required. ‘Guy Burgess,’ the young man repeated. ‘From the BBC.’

Churchill’s eyes were swollen and sleepless, red with anxiety. They travelled across the unexpected visitor, taking in the unruly hair, the crumpled suit, the sorely bitten fingernails. ‘You don’t look much like the BBC.’

Burgess returned the stare. The old man was wearing an ancient and much-soiled overcoat whose middle button had been ripped away. His homburg looked as if it had just taken part in the Eton wall game and the boots were covered with splashes of cement. ‘You don’t look much like a great politician, either,’ he replied bluntly.

The cigar twisted between the lips as the Great Man sized up this impudent intruder. Then he threw the trowel to one side. ‘Perhaps we had better discuss our mutual lack of authenticity inside.’

Churchill led the way back up to the house, stomping impatiently but with remarkable vigour for a man of his age, his balding head bent forward like a battering ram. He threw off his outer garments to reveal a blue boiler suit which strained beneath the thickening waist, then led Burgess up to a study on the first floor. More architectural disappointment. The room was intended to be impressive with a vaulted timber ceiling in the manner of a mediaeval hall, but Burgess found it unconvincing. And isn’t that what they said about Churchill – pretentious, posturing, and unconvincing? Yet the windows offered still more magnificent views across the Weald. From here Churchill could see far beyond the gaze of almost any man in England. Some said that about him, too.

‘Whisky?’ Churchill didn’t wait for a reply before pouring.

Burgess glanced at his watch. It was barely eleven.

‘You wanted me to perform on some radio programme of yours, is that it?’ Churchill growled, splashing large amounts of soda into two crystal glasses.

‘Yes, sir. It’s called The Week in Westminster. ’ Burgess was waved into one of the wing chairs near the fireplace. Logs were glowing in the grate.

‘Without fear of contradiction I can tell you, young man, there’s not the slightest damned point.’

‘Why?’

‘Because –’ Churchill refused to sit but paced impatiently on the other side of the fireplace, stabbing his cigar angrily in the younger man’s direction – ‘you represent the BBC and you have plotted and intrigued to keep me off the airwaves ever since I upset you over India and the Abdication …’

‘Not me, sir,’ Burgess protested, but the other man had no intention of pausing to take prisoners.

‘ … but most significantly because our Prime Minister …’ – the cigar was trembling, the voice seeming to prickle in despair – ‘I hesitate to speak so. The families of Mr Chamberlain and I go back a very long way in politics. His father Joseph was a great statesman, his brother Austen, too. Friends of my own father.’ The voice betrayed a sudden catch. Ah, the sins of the father … At Cambridge Burgess had been a brilliant historian and needed no reminding of Churchill’s extraordinary father, Lord Randolph – the most prodigious and enticing of men, widely favoured as the next Prime Minister, yet who had destroyed himself at the age of thirty-seven by storming out of the Cabinet and into the quicksand of exile, never being allowed to return. He had died suffocated by sorrows, although his doctors diagnosed syphilis. He was regarded as unsound. So was his son. It was an awesome and uncomfortable inheritance.

‘Our Prime Minister lays claim to leading the greatest empire on earth, Burgess, yet he has returned from his meeting with that odious Austrian upstart waving his umbrella and clutching in his hand an agreement that drenches this country in shame. ’ As he slipped into the grip of his emotions the characteristic sibilance in Churchill’s voice – the result of a defect in his palate – became more pronounced. His words seemed to fly around the room in agitation looking for somewhere to perch. ‘I despair. I feel cast into darkness, yet there is nothing I can do. I am an old man.’