In the morning Alex shaved and dressed in a black suit with waistcoat. It must be his age. At seventy-nine, even in summer a trip out seemed to require more layers than it had a year ago. He rang for Polly the housemaid. She came, still wearing her firewatcher’s outfit from the night before.
‘I ‘ope this is nothing urgent. A night on the roof is about as knackering as a night on the tiles.’
‘No matter, child. It is my wife I seek. Would you find her and ask her to have the Crossley brought round to the front. I am going into town. And do not say “blimey”, “stroll on” or any other of your cockneyisms. I am not housebound.’
‘Can’t do that. Your wife drove down to Hertfordshire two hours ago. In the Crossley.’
Alex thought about it.
‘The Morris, then.’
‘You gave the Morris to young Fred in 1939.’
‘The Lagonda?’
‘Up on blocks in the garage in Hertfordshire.’
‘The Rolls?’
‘Well – the Rolls is actually here. It’s in the mews, but no-one’s driven it since last autumn.’
‘Fine,’ said Alex. ‘Tell the chauffeur to have it out front in fifteen minutes.’
‘No, boss. Not fine. The chauffeur joined up just after Dunkirk. And I doubt the Rolls’ll start. Battery’s gonna be flat as pancake Tuesday.’
‘Battery?’
‘Battery – as in electricity, you know?’
‘Nonsense. I may not be able to drive a motor-car, but I know for a fact that they run on a petroleum derivative. My brother runs his Armstrong-Siddeley on kerosene. They’re not electrical.’
Polly led him outside, round to the mews, pushed back the garage doors to show him. Rats had eaten the tyres. There was no point in even demonstrating the silent frustration of a flat battery.
‘I could get you a cab.’
The two of them walked back to the end of Church Row and stood ten minutes without a single black taxi passing. Alex looked at his pocket watch.
‘Urgent, is it?’ Polly asked.
‘A meeting with the Prime Minister.’
‘Why didn’t you say so? Come on, we’ll get the tube.’
She slung her tin hat over one arm, extended the other to the old man and lugged him across the road in the direction of the Northern line.
‘We?’ said Alex.
‘You think you can make it on your own, do you?’
He capitulated quietly. He had not been on the tube in donkey’s years. It might even be an adventure.
It was a little after ten when they arrived at Storey’s Gate. A naval lieutenant with a list of names did not ask Alex for his. He simply turned to a colleague and said, ‘It’s Alex Troy!’
Alex insisted on Polly accompanying him inside, described her as his ‘amanuensis’ – a word he doubted meant much to any of these young sailors who waited on Churchill, foot as well as hand. In the press room, the reaction was the same. A rising whisper that ran round the room and turned every head as they took their seats – ‘Good God, it’s Alex Troy.’
He recognised hardly any of these men. Most of them had risen in Fleet Street as he had retreated to his study and his garden. But he knew their papers. The Times, which had wilfully ignored the reports coming from their own man in Berlin throughout the early thirties, the Observer, which had applauded Hitler’s invasion of the demilitarised Rhineland in 1936, the Daily Mail, which had been stupidly pro-Nazi, and Beaverbrook’s own Daily Express, which had repeatedly furthered the shaky cause of peace by urging ‘no intervention’ as Hitler tore up treaties, broke rules and extended his territorial imperative. Since 1930 Alex had opposed, criticised and, as he saw it, used his papers to alert the world to the menace of both Hitler and Stalin. When, in 1939, he had reacted to the Nazi-Soviet pact with a leader urging Britain not to judge Russia on this act, every single one of these newspapers had sent him to Coventry – a metaphor, but also a city that might not now be in ruins had such people not so espoused the little corporal at a time when he was still vulnerable.
Now, they were staring. Alex Troy had not been seen in public for two years. He stared back. Only the gruff harrumph made by Churchill as he entered the room swung their attention to the front. Alex had hoped that Winston would wear one of his siren suits. He had a passion for dressing up. Peaked caps, pea jackets, Royal Navy battledresses, now romper suits for the grown up – a touch of silliness that Alex found an endearing characteristic. Churchill was not in mufti of any kind – black jacket, stripy trousers, waistcoat-with-watchchain, spotty bow tie. Alex waited. If he mentions Russia, if he tells these assembled hacks the truth, all well and good – if he does not....
Churchill looked straight at him. Not a trace of double-take. All the same, Alex knew he had not expected him. This was Beaverbrook’s game with the two of them.
‘Gentlemen,’ Churchill began. ‘Crete . . .’