Winter of the World

‘This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note, stating that, unless the British government heard from them by eleven o’clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us.’

Lloyd found himself feeling impatient with Chamberlain’s verbiage. A state of war would exist between us : what a strange way to put it. Get on with it, he thought; get to the point. This is life and death.

Chamberlain’s voice deepened and became more statesmanlike. Perhaps he was no longer looking at the microphone, but instead seeing millions of his countrymen in their homes, sitting by their radio sets, waiting for his fateful words. ‘I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received.’

Lloyd heard his mother say: ‘Oh, God, spare us.’ He looked at her. Her face was grey.

Chamberlain uttered his next, dreadful words quite slowly: ‘. . . and that, consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’

Ethel began to cry.

Part Two

A SEASON OF BLOOD

6

1940 (I)

Aberowen had changed. There were cars, trucks and buses on the streets. When Lloyd had come here as a child in the 1920s to visit his grandparents, a parked car had been a rarity that would draw a crowd.

But the town was still dominated by the twin towers of the pithead, with their majestically revolving wheels. There was nothing else: no factories, no office blocks, no industry other than coal. Almost every man in town worked down the pit. There were a few dozen exceptions: some shopkeepers, numerous clergymen of all denominations, a town clerk, a doctor. Whenever the demand for coal slumped, as it had in the thirties, and men were laid off, there was nothing else for them to do. That was why the Labour Party’s most passionate demand was help for the unemployed, so that such men would never again suffer the agony and humiliation of being unable to feed their families.

Lieutenant Lloyd Williams arrived by train from Cardiff on a Sunday in April 1940. Carrying a small suitcase, he walked up the hill to Tŷ Gwyn. He had spent eight months training new recruits – the same work he had done in Spain – and coaching the Welsh Rifles boxing team, but the army had at last realized that he spoke fluent German, transferred him to intelligence duties, and sent him on a training course.

Training was all the army had done so far. No British forces had yet fought the enemy in an engagement of any significance. Germany and the USSR had overrun Poland and divided it between them, and the Allied guarantee of Polish independence had proved worthless.

British people called it the Phoney War, and they were impatient for the real thing. Lloyd had no sentimental illusions about warfare – he had heard the piteous voices of dying men begging for water on the battlefields of Spain – but even so he was eager to get started on the final showdown with Fascism.

The army was expecting to send more forces to France, assuming the Germans would invade. It had not happened, and they remained at the ready, but meanwhile, they did a lot of training.

Lloyd’s initiation into the mysteries of military intelligence was to take place in the stately home that had featured in his family’s destiny for so long. The wealthy and noble owners of many such palaces had loaned them to the armed forces, perhaps for fear that otherwise they might be confiscated permanently.

The army had certainly made Tŷ Gwyn look different. There were a dozen olive-drab vehicles parked on the lawn, and their tyres had chewed up the earl’s lush turf. The gracious entrance courtyard, with its curved granite steps, had become a supply dump, and giant cans of baked beans and cooking lard stood in teetering stacks where, formerly, bejewelled women and men in tailcoats had stepped out of their carriages. Lloyd grinned: he liked the levelling effect of war.

Lloyd entered the house. He was greeted by a podgy officer in a creased and stained uniform. ‘Here for the intelligence course, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes, sir. My name is Lloyd Williams.’

‘I’m Major Lowther.’

Lloyd had heard of him. He was the Marquis of Lowther, known to his pals as Lowthie.

Lloyd looked around. The paintings on the walls had been shrouded with huge dust sheets. The ornate carved marble fireplaces had been boxed in with rough planking, leaving only a small space for a grate. The dark old furniture that his mother sometimes mentioned fondly had all disappeared, to be replaced by steel desks and cheap chairs. ‘My goodness, the place looks different,’ he said.

Lowther smiled. ‘You’ve been here before. Do you know the family?’

‘I was up at Cambridge with Boy Fitzherbert. I met the Viscountess there, too, although they weren’t married then. But I suppose they’ve moved out for the duration.’