The London Times – praises Chamberlain for his ‘indomitable resolution’.
The New York Times – ‘the sense of relief felt around the world’.
The Manchester Guardian – ‘For the first time in weeks we seem to turn towards the light.’
The tone was the same regardless of the political line of the paper. All described the dramatic scene in the House of Commons as Chamberlain read out the Führer’s message. (Within minutes and even seconds the message of hope was being hailed by millions whose lives a moment before seemed to hang upon the pull of a trigger.) The British Prime Minister was the hero of the world.
When he had finished his translations he was directed by the unit commander to an army corporal. Hartmann lit a cigarette, stood behind the corporal’s shoulder and dictated. The machine was a special typewriter reserved for documents that went direct to the Führer, its typeface almost a centimetre high. His digest came out at exactly two pages.
As the corporal wound it out of the typewriter an SS adjutant appeared at the far end of the carriage. He looked harassed. ‘Where is the foreign press summary?’
Hartmann waved the pages. ‘I have it here.’
‘Thank God! Follow me.’ As the adjutant opened the door he pointed to Hartmann’s cigarette. ‘No smoking beyond this point.’
They entered a vestibule. An SS sentry saluted. The adjutant opened the door on to a panelled conference room with a long polished table and seats for twenty. He indicated that Hartmann should go ahead of him. ‘Is this your first time?’
‘Yes.’
‘Salute. Look him in the eye. Don’t speak unless he speaks to you.’ They had reached the end of the carriage and passed through into the vestibule of the next. Another sentry. The adjutant patted Hartmann on the back. ‘You will be fine.’
He knocked lightly on the door and opened it. ‘The foreign press summary, my Führer.’
Hartmann walked into the room and raised his arm. ‘Heil Hitler.’
He was leaning over a table, his hands bunched into fists, looking down at a set of technical drawings. He turned to glance at Hartmann. He was wearing a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He took them off and looked past Hartmann to the adjutant. ‘Tell Keitel to set up the maps in here.’ The familiar metallic voice. It was strange to hear it at a conversational level and not ranting over a loudspeaker.
‘Yes, my Führer.’
He held out his hand for the press summary. ‘And you are?’
‘Hartmann, my Führer.’
He took the two sheets and started reading, rocking gently up and down on the balls of his feet. Hartmann had an impression of great energy barely suppressed. After a while he said, contemptuously, ‘Chamberlain this, Chamberlain that. Chamberlain, Chamberlain …’ When he reached the bottom of the first page he stopped and flexed his head as if he had a crick in his neck, then read aloud in a tone of intense sarcasm: ‘“Mr Chamberlain’s description of his last meeting with Herr Hitler is agreeable proof that his strong candour was rewarded with liking and respect.”’ He turned the page back and forth. ‘Who wrote this shit?’
‘That is an editorial in The Times of London, my Führer.’
He raised his eyebrows as if he expected nothing else and flicked over to the second page. Hartmann looked briefly around the carriage: a saloon car – armchairs, a sofa, watercolours of pastoral scenes hanging on the light-coloured wood-panelled walls. It occurred to him that the two of them had now been entirely alone for more than a minute. He inspected the fragile head – bent oblivious, reading. If he had known, he would have brought his gun. He imagined feeling for it in his inside pocket, quickly withdrawing it, pointing the barrel, a moment of eye contact perhaps before he squeezed the trigger, a final look and then the explosion of blood and tissue. He would have been reviled until the end of time, and he realised he could never have done it. The insight into his own weakness appalled him.
‘So you speak English?’ He was still reading.
‘Yes, my Führer.’
‘You have spent time in England?’
‘I was at Oxford for two years.’
He looked up, stared out of the window. His expression became dreamy. ‘Oxford is the second-oldest university in Europe, founded in the twelfth century. I have often wondered what it would be like to see it. Heidelberg was founded a century later. Of course, Bologna is the oldest of them all.’
The door opened and the adjutant appeared. ‘General Keitel, my Führer.’
Keitel marched in and saluted. Behind him an army officer carried rolled-up charts. ‘You wished to have the maps in here, my Führer?’
‘Yes, Keitel. Good morning. Set them up on the table. I want to show them to the Duce.’
He threw the press summary on to the desk and watched as the maps were unrolled. One was of Czechoslovakia, the other of Germany. On both, the positions of military units were drawn in red. He folded his arms and stared down at them. ‘Forty divisions to destroy the Czechs – we would have done it in a week. Ten divisions to hold the conquered territory, the remaining thirty transferred to the west to hold the frontier.’ He rocked up and down again on the balls of his feet. ‘It would have worked. It could still work. “Liking and respect”! That old arsehole! This train is heading in the wrong direction, Keitel!’
‘Yes, my Führer.’
The adjutant touched Hartmann on the arm and gestured to the door.
As he left the compartment he looked back for a moment. But all attention was now focused on the maps and he saw that his existence had already been forgotten.
2
Legat had spent the night at his club.
He had arrived to discover a backgammon evening in progress. Much strong drink had been taken. Until long after midnight the muffled noises of heavy male conversation and stupid laughter permeated the floorboards of his room. Even so, he preferred it to the silence of North Street where he would only have lain awake listening for the sound of Pamela’s key in the latch – assuming, that is, she bothered to come home at all. On previous form it was just as likely she would slink back a day or two later, offering some alibi which they both knew he would never endure the humiliation of checking.
As the hours passed he stared at the pattern of the street lights on the ceiling and thought about Oxford and Munich and his marriage, trying to disentangle the three. But however much he tried, the images remained entwined and his methodical mind became disordered with fatigue. By morning the skin beneath his eyes was puffy like black crêpe, and in his tiredness he had shaved too closely, so that his cheeks and chin were raw, pricked with tiny pinpoints of blood.
He was too early for breakfast: the tables were still being laid. Outside, the muggy weather had broken and it was drizzling. The air was a moist cool gauze on his face, the traffic just beginning to build from St James’s Street. Wearing his homburg and his Crombie, his suitcase in his hand, he trudged the shiny wet pavements down the slope towards Downing Street. Against the battleship-grey sky the barrage balloons were barely visible, like tiny silvery fish.
There was a small bedraggled crowd in Downing Street. The workmen had finished the wall of sandbags around the Foreign Office entrance. Six black cars were drawn up from Number 10 all the way back beyond Number 11, pointing towards Whitehall, ready to take the Prime Minister’s party to Heston Aerodrome.
The policeman saluted.
Inside the lobby, three senior Foreign Office officials stood with their suitcases at their feet, like guests waiting to check out of a hotel. He took them in at a glance: William Strang, the tall, dehydrated, broomstick-like figure who had taken over from Wigram as Head of the Central Department and had already been twice with the Prime Minister to visit Hitler; Sir William Malkin, the Foreign Office’s senior Legal Adviser, who had also met Hitler and who looked like a reassuring family solicitor; and the bulky, slope-shouldered Frank Ashton-Gwatkin, Head of Economic Relations, who had spent much of the summer in Czechoslovakia listening to the gri
evances of the Sudeten Germans, and who was known behind his back, on account of his drooping moustache and lugubrious manner, as the Walrus. Legat thought it a curious trio to send into battle against the Nazis. What must they make of us?
Strang said, ‘I didn’t know you were coming to Munich, Legat.’
‘Neither did I, sir, until late last night.’ He heard the deference in his tone and felt a flicker of self-contempt – the youthful Third Secretary; the promising high-flyer, always careful never to seem too full of himself.
‘Well, I hope you’ve taken something for travel sickness – in my experience, and I’m beginning to acquire a lot of it, flying can be as rough as a Channel crossing.’
‘Oh dear, I’m afraid I haven’t. Will you excuse me for a moment?’
He walked quickly towards the back of the building and found Syers in his office reading The Times. His suitcase was by his desk. He said in a dull voice, ‘Hello, Hugh.’
Legat said, ‘I really am most awfully sorry, Cecil. I didn’t ask to go – I’d honestly prefer to stay behind in London.’
Syers made an effort to look unconcerned. ‘My dear fellow, don’t give it a second’s thought. I always said it ought to be you not me. And Yvonne will be relieved.’
‘Well, it’s very decent of you. When did you hear?’
‘Cleverly told me ten minutes ago.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He simply said he’d changed his mind. Is there anything more to it than that?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’ The lie came easily.
Syers took a step closer and peered at him with concern. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but are you all right? You look a little rough.’
‘I didn’t sleep much last night.’
‘Nervous about flying?’
‘Not really.’
‘Ever been up in a plane before?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, as I said to Yvonne this morning, being on the same flight as the Prime Minister must be about as safe as one can get.’
‘That’s what I keep telling myself.’ From the corridor came the sound of voices. Legat smiled and shook hands with Syers. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’
The Prime Minister had descended from his flat and was walking towards the entrance hall along with Mrs Chamberlain, Horace Wilson, Lord Dunglass and Oscar Cleverly. A pair of detectives followed, carrying the PM’s luggage, including the red dispatch boxes containing his official papers. Behind them trailed two Garden Room secretaries – one a middle-aged woman Legat didn’t recognise, the other Joan. Cleverly noticed him and waited for him to catch up. They walked together. His mouth was clenched, his voice low and angry. ‘I’ve no idea what’s going on but I have acceded – with considerable reservations, I might add – to Colonel Menzies’s request to allow you to accompany the PM. You’ll be in charge of his boxes, as well as dealing with anything else that comes up.’ He gave him the keys to the dispatch cases. ‘Make contact with the office as soon as you reach Munich.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I trust I don’t need to emphasise the absolute necessity that you do nothing whatsoever that might imperil the success of this conference?’
‘Of course not, sir.’
‘And when this is all over, you and I will need to have a talk about the future.’
‘I understand.’
They had reached the lobby. The Prime Minister was embracing his wife. The Downing Street staff gave him a discreet round of applause. He broke away, smiled shyly, and raised his hat to them. His complexion was ruddy, his eye bright. There was no hint of tiredness. He looked as if he had just come back from the river for breakfast after landing a good salmon. The porter opened the door and he strode out into the rain. He paused to allow his photograph to be taken and then stepped across the pavement and into the first car where Horace Wilson was already waiting. His entourage filed out after him. Unconsciously, they had arranged themselves in order of seniority. Legat was the last to leave, carrying the two red boxes and his own suitcase. He gave them to the driver and climbed into the fourth car, next to Alec Dunglass. The doors slammed and the convoy pulled away – out of Downing Street, into Whitehall, around Parliament Square and south along the river.
It was not at all clear to anyone, including Legat, why Dunglass had been included in the party, except that he was a friendly face with a country house in Scotland, extensive fishing rights on the Tweed, and therefore good for the Prime Minister’s morale. Miss Watson insisted that beneath his diffident manner lurked one of the cleverest politicians she had ever encountered: ‘He will be Prime Minister one day, Mr Legat, mark my words, and you will remember that I was the first to say it.’ But as Dunglass would in due course inherit his father’s title and become the 14th Earl of Home, and as it was inconceivable that in the modern age a premier could sit in the House of Lords, her prediction was dismissed in the Private Office as a folie d’amour. He had a very thin, straight smile and a curious, tight-lipped way of speaking, as if he were practising to be a ventriloquist. After a few desultory exchanges about the rain and what the weather might be like in Munich, they lapsed into silence. Then, as they were passing through Hammersmith, he said abruptly, ‘Did you hear about Winston’s remark to the PM at the end of his speech yesterday?’
‘No. What was that?’
‘He came up to him at the Dispatch Box, while everyone was still cheering, and said, “I congratulate you on your good fortune. You were very lucky.”’ Dunglass shook his head. ‘I mean, really! One can level many charges against Neville – one can argue his policy is entirely wrong – but one can hardly maintain this conference in Munich is a matter of luck: he has worked himself half to death to achieve it.’ He gave Legat a sidelong look. ‘I noticed you were joining in the applause yourself.’
‘I shouldn’t have done that. I’m supposed to be neutral. But one rather got carried away by the mood. I should think nine-tenths of the country were relieved.’
The thin smile came again. ‘Yes, even the socialists were on their feet. It seems we are all appeasers now.’
They had left central London and were motoring into the suburbs. The dual carriageway was wide and modern, lined by pebbledashed semis with small front gardens and privet hedges, interspersed with light industrial factories. Household names gleamed with grim cheerfulness through the pouring rain – Gillette, Beecham’s Powders, Firestone Tyre & Rubber. Chamberlain must have been responsible for a lot of this development, thought Legat, when he was Minister of Housing and then Chancellor of the Exchequer. The country had come through the Depression and was prosperous again. As they drove through Osterley he noticed that people were starting to wave as they passed – a few at first, mostly mothers taking their children to school, but gradually they became more numerous until, when the convoy slowed to turn off right towards Heston, he saw that drivers had pulled over on both sides of the Great West Road and were standing beside their cars.
‘Neville’s people,’ murmured Dunglass without moving his lips.
At the entrance to the aerodrome they came to a halt. Spectators blocked the road. Beyond the chain-link fence and white buildings Legat could see a pair of large planes drawn up on the grass at the edge of the concrete apron, lit by the lights of the newsreel crews, surrounded by a tightly packed crowd of several hundred. Their umbrellas were up. From a distance they looked like a bulbous black fungus. The car moved forwards again, past saluting policemen, through the gate, and then in a wide sweep around the back of the terminal and hangar and on to the airfield where the convoy halted. A policeman opened the rear passenger door of the lead car and the Prime Minister emerged, to cheers.
Dunglass sighed. ‘Well, I suppose this is it.’
He and Legat climbed out. They collected their suitcases and the red boxes – Legat carried one, Dunglass insisted on taking the other – and set off towards the planes. The rain had stopped. The umbrellas were being furled. As they
came closer Legat recognised the tall figure of Lord Halifax in his bowler hat and then, to his amazement, Sir John Simon, Sam Hoare and the rest of the Cabinet. He said to Dunglass, ‘Was this in the schedule?’
‘No, it’s a surprise. It was the Chancellor’s idea. I was sworn to secrecy. It seems that suddenly they all want to share his limelight – even Duff.’
The Prime Minister went around shaking hands with his colleagues. The crowd jostled forwards, pressing against the line of policemen for a better view – reporters, airport workers in blue and brown overalls, local people, schoolboys, a mother with a baby in her arms. The newsreel cameras swung to follow Chamberlain’s progress. He was grinning broadly, waving his hat, childish in his delight. Finally, he stood in front of the cluster of microphones.
‘When I was a little boy,’ he began, and paused as those who were still talking were shushed into silence, ‘I used to repeat, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. That’s what I am doing.’ He had a small piece of paper in his hand and glanced down at it briefly, reminding himself of the line he had prepared, then looked up again. ‘When I come back, I hope I may be able to say, as Hotspur says in Henry IV: “Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”’ He nodded emphatically. The crowd cheered. He smiled and waved his hat again, milking every last drop of acclaim, then turned towards his plane.
Legat moved forward with Dunglass. They gave their suitcases to the aircrew who were loading the luggage into the belly of the aircraft. Legat kept possession of the red boxes. The Prime Minister shook hands with Halifax and mounted the three metal steps into the back of the plane. He ducked out of sight, then re-emerged for one last round of cheering before vanishing for good. Wilson scuttled up next, followed by Strang, Malkin and Ashton-Gwatkin. Legat stood aside to let Dunglass go ahead of him. Close up, the plane seemed smaller and more fragile than it had at a distance. It was only about forty feet long. He thought one had to admire the Prime Minister’s nerve: when he had first flown to see Hitler he hadn’t even wanted to tell him he was coming until he was in the air, so that the dictator couldn’t refuse to meet him. Standing on the bottom step, looking out at the enthusiastic faces, he felt suddenly intrepid himself, a pioneer.