Churchill's Triumph Read online

  Two aching, red-rimmed eyes looked up at him. “Oh, Winston, why did you have to go wreck my dinner party?”

  ***

  Churchill arrived back at the Vorontsov in a somber mood after Roosevelt’s rebuke. He found Sarah waiting with Sawyers to put him to bed. The room was lit by nothing but the flames of a log fire and candlelight. There was no sign of any lamp.

  “Sorry, zur. Clumsy of me. They replaced the light, quick as you like, but somehow I went ’n dropped it again.”

  “Damn fool.”

  The servant poured a measure of whisky into a tumbler and placed it on the bedside table where the lamp had once stood.

  “Have you had a good day, Papa?” Sarah asked.

  “Let me see,” he began, sipping, then counting on his fingers. “I’ve been insulted, abused, offended, ill-treated, ostracized… And yet again I seem to have run out of fingers.”

  But already he was beginning to relax, to reclaim his optimism in the company of the imperturbable Sawyers and his beloved Sarah. Oh, she could be willful, opinionated, passionate, just like him. Even the same blue eyes and flame-red hair—when he had had hair. There was no mistaking the connection. She was in her early thirties, an aspiring actress who, against her father’s firmest wishes, had eloped with a music-hall comedian and thrown herself into a marriage that was already over. And if she was a little reckless, they all knew from which side of the family she had inherited it. Father and daughter never stopped fighting each other, never stopped loving.

  “Get your own bloody drink,” he growled, as she picked up his whisky, but Sawyers was already a step ahead of him. A fresh glass was thrust into his hand.

  He sighed. “So, Mule, what news? What despatches from your front?”

  “I went with the other girls to Sebastopol.” She came and nestled at his feet, as she used to when she was a child in front of the hearth at Chartwell, and told her tale, whispering into her glass. She told of the church with no walls, the square with no sides, the houses with no roofs and no windows, the graves and the faces filled with fear, and what she had found inside the burned-out tank. Her voice faltered. She placed her head on his knee and he stroked her hair gently, trying to brush away her sorrows. “Are there no limits to the suffering of the peoples of Russia?” he whispered. “My poor kitten.”

  “But there was something very strange, Papa. What I couldn’t understand was the fact that so many of the ruined houses, particularly the bigger ones, seemed to have trees and bushes growing from them—from right inside them. Through the walls, even sometimes through the empty windows. How could that be? I asked the guide, but he wouldn’t say, simply shrugged.”

  “And let his silence damn him.”

  “Papa?”

  “The town wasn’t ruined just by this war, Mule. Much of that damage you saw was inflicted by the Russians themselves, during their revolutions, civil wars and bloody, bloody purges. So much violence has visited this place in the last thirty years. It was settled by Tartars—it was they who might have built the church you saw, set out the square. This was their land, until Comrade Stalin decreed otherwise. He had the Tartars moved, torn from their homes. Hundreds of thousands of them, a whole human tribe, condemned to exile and extermination. And now only weeds grow in their hearths.”

  Sawyers threw another log on the fire; the flames glinted in Sarah’s hair. “Will you be all right, kitten?” Churchill asked. She nodded.

  “That’s what he said, the Pole,” Sawyers joined in. “Can’t go trustin’ Russians.”

  “And he was right,” Churchill growled. “What else did he say, this Pole of yours?”

  “What, apart from—” Sawyers jerked his head towards the bedside table where the lamp should have been “—and the fact that I should be an officer?”

  “Get on with it.”

  “Well, he said we had to save his life. He was afraid. Said he could help us if we helped him.”

  “We could do with a little help.”

  “And he said somethin’ about Katyn.”

  “What?”

  “That was it. Katyn. Was there, so he says.”

  It might have been a cause for outrage, that a foolish servant could have forgotten such a matter, but Sawyers was far from foolish and he wasn’t the one to blame. After all, hadn’t the British and American governments themselves done their best to forget about the whole matter? Churchill had wriggled in discomfort at its mention, while Roosevelt, without discomfort of any kind, had dismissed it as Nazi propaganda. At that time the goodwill of their Russian allies had seemed so much more important, but time has a way of playing tricks and turning on a man.

  Churchill gazed deep into his glass, swirling the whisky, agitating his mind.

  “There was a point when I wanted nothing more than the friendship of Marshal Stalin,” he muttered. “I hoped that matters might change, as he got to know us, but his pattern has always been consistent, and cruel. Whenever we meet, at Tehran, in Moscow, now Yalta, it’s always the same. He starts by feigning anger, threatening to walk out, bullying, so that tomorrow or the next day when he makes some small accommodation, we feel he is being most reasonable and give him what he wants. We have been so eager to make him part of our game, but instead we have been drawn into his. And we go on repeating the folly.”

  “Can’t you stand up to him, Papa?”

  Slowly, sadly, Churchill shook his head. “This conference at Yalta is not a meeting of equals, Mule. Oh, I know, Britain has the highest moral claim, for we alone entered the war as a matter of principle, not bludgeoned into the fight like the Americans and Russians. Yet what does principle matter among the endless piles of corpses? Some reckon more than fifty million dead, the largest slice of them Russian, while the Americans and British between us have lost less than a million.” His voice suddenly dried. “What have we become,” he whispered, “when we talk of a million souls as a mere trifle . . . ?”

  As she looked at her father’s face in the flickering firelight, Sarah expected to see tears, but something seemed to have frozen inside him and locked them away. It was almost as if he didn’t deserve to cry.

  “We have endured so much. Yet set against our own suffering the Russians can place perhaps twenty million. Soldiers, civilians, women, so many innocent children. All slaughtered. But how many by the Marshal’s own hand?” He drained his glass. “May the ghosts of Katyn come back to haunt him.”

  As Sawyers came with more whisky, Churchill waved him away. “Your Pole, he said he was in danger?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “We are already in his debt,” Churchill continued. “And if he was at Katyn, we owe him all the more. I would like to meet this Polish friend of yours, Sawyers.”

  “But… how?”

  Churchill’s jaw jutted forward. “You said he was a plumber.”

  “Yes, zur.”

  “So!” He rose, handed his glass to his servant and picked up a log from the bucket beside the fire. Then he strode into the bathroom. Three well-aimed whacks at the lead pipework beneath the sink left a satisfying puddle of water dripping on to the floor.

  “Sawyers, fetch a bucket. And summon the Pole!”

  MONDAY, 5th OF FEBRUARY, 1945

  THE SECOND DAY

  THREE

  “Terrible party last night, I thought, Alec.” Eden gazed forlornly at the breakfast table that had been set up in his room. It was piled high with meat, fish, cheese, even a bowl of caviar, and a huge plate of mince pies—for breakfast? Try as he might he’d been unable to make any of the Russian servants understand the concept of a soft-boiled egg. “I hate to think what’s going on in the president’s mind—even he didn’t seem to know. And Winston as always being Winston, making his speeches, lighting sticks of dynamite and rejoicing as they explode all around him. Really, he can be so irresponsible.”

  Eden was
in a flap, but Cadogan had always known he was something of a flapper. An elegant flapper, to be sure. His shoulders were narrow and square, ideally suited to his carefully tailored jackets but, in truth, not broad enough for the responsibilities they were supposed to bear. So things slipped, and he flapped. He was nouveau, of course, a half-formed aristocrat who also tried to be a man of the people. It was an untidy compromise, which was where Cadogan came in. He was a full-blown aristocrat, nothing half-cock or semi-common about him: he was the son of an earl and a damned safe pair of hands in the slips, no matter how badly the pitch was playing. A man to clear up the mess that others left behind.

  Well, not every sort of mess. Not the mess that Anthony had made of his private life. All those women creeping in and out, and that over-plucked hen of a wife! Little wonder he flapped.

  Cadogan returned to the moment. “Speaking frankly, neither Winston nor Franklin is good material for these occasions, in my view,” he said, searching for a piece of bread soft enough to give his teeth a chance. “Winston’s too emotional, gets wrapped up in himself, throws all his toys out of the pram, while the President…” He paused to consider both his words and the goo that passed for jam. “Sometimes I think he’s jealous. Wants to keep all his toys to himself, doesn’t want to share. We’ll have to sort things out with his staff, as usual.”

  “You want me to have a word with Stettinius?”

  “Oh, I think not. You know Ed, he’s constitutionally incapable of taking the initiative, simply waits for instruction from above yet…” a subdued sigh “…instruction comes there none. No, I suggest we go through Averell—he’s the best of the bunch. We can do business with him. Lot of common sense.”

  “He had the damned fine sense to get himself posted from London to Moscow as soon as Randolph returned.”

  “The diplomatic solution.”

  “Couldn’t you have seen it, though, Alec? The presidential envoy and the prime ministerial son, drawing pistols at dawn.”

  “Randolph would never make it from his bed in time.”

  “Even so, Averill’s safer in Moscow with only Uncle Joe to worry about.”

  “Now, there’s a leader,” Cadogan began with enthusiasm, raising his glass. “Knows what he wants and how to get it. In my view, he’s by far the most impressive of the Trinity. If only—”

  Suddenly he began to splutter, then to choke most violently. His complexion turned the color of a plum and the glass he was holding banged down so hard upon the table that much of its contents spilled across the starched white cloth. It was some time before he rediscovered the gift of speech. “God’s teeth!” he gasped, staring at the offending glass with eyes that might have been borrowed from a rag doll. “Thought it was fruit juice. But it’s neat bloody brandy!”

  Eden struggled to contain his mirth. He squeezed the smile, tried to tuck it back beneath his moustache, but it was no good. Eventually, it broke forth in spectacular fashion, and he laughed like a man possessed. And, as he regained the ability to breathe, Cadogan did so, too.

  “Never again,” the civil servant vowed, still spluttering. “From now on I’m sticking to my gin and tonic.”

  “Even without the lemon? You complained bitterly about it yesterday.”

  “Anthony, this is Russia. We can’t expect everything.”

  And that was where, for the moment, Cadogan left it. He was still mocking himself mildly as he left Eden’s room. He tripped lightly down the staircase, humming distractedly, when he was greeted by a sight that rendered him breathless for the second time that morning. Standing in the hallway, encased in a large ceramic pot, stood a lemon tree. Its branches were heavy with fruit. He was certain there were no fruiting lemon trees in the Crimea, not at that time of year. They must have flown it in overnight. For his gin and tonic.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” whispered the Englishman, lost in admiration for the Russians’ hospitality and efficiency. Would they stop at nothing?

  It was much later that day when Cadogan paused to reflect. The only place were he had mentioned his craving for a slice of lemon was the night before, in the privacy of the foreign secretary’s room. Suddenly his enthusiasm waned. Once more, and in a less chivalrous frame of mind, he was left wondering whether the Russians would stop at nothing.

  ***

  The Pole arrived midway through the morning. Churchill was still in bed, wearing reading glasses and dressed in brilliant pink pajamas made of silk. Papers lay scattered about him. He was smoking a cigar and tobacco ash crawled across his belly like an army of ants. A breakfast tray of substantial proportions lay beside him. It included, as usual, a glass of something red. The young Pole, dressed in the shabbiest workman’s garb, stood at the foot of the bed.

  “You are?” the old man growled.

  Immediately, the Pole set down his bag of tools and stiffened to attention, offering the closed two-fingered salute of the Polish armed forces. “Corporal Marian Nowak, Sir!”

  “Then if half of what I’ve heard of you is true, Corporal, I am very pleased to meet you.”

  “It is honor to be with you, Mr. Winston Churchill.” He spoke slowly, taking care over his words. Unlike most Poles, he didn’t murder the w sound.

  “Come—sit,” Churchill insisted, beckoning Sawyers to bring up a chair. “Tell me a little about yourself, and how you managed to make the extraordinary journey from—wherever it is you come from.”

  “If I do, Mr. Churchill, I trust you with my life.”

  “You doubt my goodwill?”

  “Of course. I am Pole.”

  And already there was tension. Churchill’s eyes narrowed, not leaving the young man for a moment. “If you were any man other than a Pole I’d have you flung from this room for that.” He produced a great cloud of blue smoke. “But I dare say you and your countrymen have good reasons for mistrust. I can only assure you that I bear you the very best of intentions.”

  “Then it is matter of honor.”

  “If you care to put it that way.”

  “And if you please, I will stand.” The young Pole seemed to be setting terms, and his stubborn resilience wore away at Churchill’s mood. He waved a paw for the other man to continue, but the Pole was staring cautiously at the spot beside the bed where the lamp should have been.

  “It’s gone,” Churchill said. “Everything is in order.” But he couldn’t help lowering his voice to what was little more than a whisper.

  “Then first thing I must tell you, sir, is that I am not Marian Nowak. I am—or I was—Count Tadeusz Raczynski, lieutenant in Fourteenth Uhlans.”

  “The Uhlans?”

  “Uhlans are cavalry regiment. Finest in Poland.”

  “But… you’re a plumber.”

  The Pole shook his head and smiled ruefully. “As you already know, Mr. Churchill, not good one. Not even with all my fingers. My father is—was”—the Pole hesitated as he wrestled with his tenses—“he was aristocrat, but third son of third son. So, no money. That happens in English families, too, yes?”

  “It seems to have happened in my own family with compelling regularity.”

  “My father was professor, taught at Conservatory. In Warsaw.” And he told his story. Of the growing tension throughout the months of ’39, of being called up as a reservist, of the fighting before the capital and the struggle to hold the bridges, of the relentless attacks of the Stukas and other bombers and of the futile attempts to throw back the panzers with cavalry lances—yes, in one instance, with cavalry lances—and rifles. Of the discovery of a terrible new form of warfare called blitzkrieg. And of the weeks spent fighting for every yard, every house and street, and in the end for every cellar and sewer, holding on, in hope.

  “We were waiting for you, Mr. Churchill, for your soldiers and your airmen, and army from France. As you promised.”

  The old man said nothing.

  Then
the Pole spoke of the despair, the snatched encounters, the hurried partings, and the flight of the army to the east, only to fall into the hands of the advancing Russians, intent on sharing in the plunder that was Poland.

  “That winter they forced us into camps. Mine was Kozielsk. Only officers. Nothing there for us, no shelter, no medicines, nothing but guards and barbed wire and beatings. But in spring, just as snows melt and world comes back to life, they took us, sixty, eighty, sometimes two hundred at a time. We asked where we go. They said we go home and pushed us into trucks. And every day, more trucks. Then it was my turn. I don’t believe they take us home, I think perhaps a labor camp. But they took us to forest.”

  “Katyn.”

  The Pole nodded slowly. “As we climb down from trucks, guards surround us. All NKVD. They shout, start to tie our hands behind backs. And we hear noises from forest, time after time, like axe falling on woodcutter’s block. Those who arrived in earlier truck are being taken away into forest. And other trucks are already leaving, but they are empty. ‘You said you take us home!’ one of us shouts. Guard hits him, laughs. ‘This is your home,’ he says, ‘for rest of eternity.’ So then we know.”

  Churchill struggled for words. Then: “It is said there were thousands of them. Of you.”

  “Many thousands. All officers, leaders.” He made a slicing gesture with his hand. “Cut off head of Poland, no need to bother with rest of body.” His voice was calm, precise, but his breathing had grown more labored, his chest pumping. “We see—saw—what was happening. Some of us jumped from back of truck, before our hands were tied, and we ran. Blindly. Better to die in escape than on our knees waiting for bullet. And leaves had come to forest, it was spring, it gave us cover. They shoot, we scattered. And. . . I survived. God was running with me that day.”