Churchill's Hour by Michael Dobbs Page B

a notoriously sharp tongue, once told me that I was as commonas muck. I was able to tell her that she was entirely wrong, that I was not as common as muck—but as common as brick. And I had a trade union membership card to prove it.’
    He was playing them like an audience at a music hall.
    â€˜Ah, I am forgetting my manners,’ he said when at last he stepped back. ‘I must introduce you men to my very great friend, Mr Gil Winant. He is the new American Ambassador, which makes him your great friend, too.’
    â€˜Last one wasn’t, was he?’ a voice sounded from the back of the huddle.
    â€˜On the contrary, I was very much attached to him,’ Churchill said, smiling. ‘Like my appendix.’
    â€˜But you ‘ad that cut out years ago,’ the voice came back, to general laughter.
    â€˜And you, sir, will get me into a great deal of hot water making baseless accusations like that,’ Churchill replied, grinning broadly.
    They cheered him as he stepped into his garden through the hole in the wall. He turned to wave his stick at them. ‘Londoners—are we downhearted?’
    â€˜No!’ they cried as one.
    It was a piece of theatre, typical Churchill, the sort of thing he’d made sure his other visitors like Hopkins and Willkie had witnessed. Reality wasn’t as simple as that, of course. For every Londoner who could still summon up the spirit of defiance, therewere those who were gradually weakening, being ground down by yet another winter of war. In his heart, Churchill knew they would not go on—couldn’t go on—through another winter unless somehow he could find new hope to sustain them. But he couldn’t even feed them properly. The shipping losses in the Atlantic were enormous and the prospect of starvation still hovered over every meal. He had to give them hope, some taste of victory, not an endless diet of setback and evacuation.
    Every week brought a new nightmare and another battlefield. So far the Balkans had remained undisturbed, but it was about to be turned into a slaughterhouse. Hundreds of thousands of German troops were massing to swallow up Yugoslavia and Greece, taking advantage of feuding local leaders who, rather than taking on the Wehrmacht, seemed more intent on fighting each other—‘Cvetkovic, Markovic, Simovic, Subotic and every other damned sonofabitch,’ as Churchill had complained in frustration. Meanwhile a new commander had arrived to breathe fresh life into the German campaign in the North African deserts. Someone called Rommel.
    And the Japanese, that unfathomable, unknowable race on the far side of the world—what in damnation were they planning?
    His concerns pursued him everywhere, through his days, through his dreams, no matter what he pretended to the bricklayers. By the time he hadcrossed the garden and reached the back door of Downing Street, they were weighing heavily on his heart once more. He threw open the door and kicked off his shoes.
    â€˜Sawyers! Where are you, man?’ he shouted. ‘Stop hiding and help. Some idiot has poured cement all over my shoes.’
    They sat in a small sitting room that was cold and bleak. The curtains were dusty, the windows taped over, some of them cracked, but Churchill still preferred to spend his daylight hours here in 10 Downing Street than entombed in the underground bunker at the nearby Annexe. It was a small reminder of how things used to be.
    The American was beginning to warm up and Sawyers hovered attentively, ready to refill his glass. Shy and uncertain as Winant sometimes looked, he was no fool. He had a long and distinguished public career behind him, much of it in New Hampshire, where he had been elected governor three times. They called it the Granite State; evidently they liked the quiet touch.
    â€˜I welcome you to London, Gil, with all my heart. It’s a pity that the medical condition of the President makes it so difficult for