Winter of the World

Lloyd’s mother and the other female MPs had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The Prime Minister accepted the challenge, and – in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness – appealed to his friends to stand by him.

The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce ‘non-intervention’ by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultra-conservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.

‘And yet,’ said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, ‘Chamberlain isn’t really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is First Lord of the Admiralty, and your mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done – Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia – it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something that isn’t really his fault.’

‘Everything is ultimately the Prime Minister’s fault,’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s what it means to be the leader.’

Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was thinking that young people saw everything too simply; but, to his credit, Bernie did not say it.

It was a noisy debate, but the House went quiet when the former Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.

He was merciless. ‘It is not a question of who are the Prime Minister’s friends,’ he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. ‘It is a far bigger issue.’

Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.

‘He has appealed for sacrifices,’ Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. ‘There is nothing which can contribute more to victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office.’

The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.

Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering, sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamour.

He sat down at 11 p.m. and the vote was taken.

The voting system was cumbersome. Instead of raising their hands, or ticking slips of paper, MPs had to leave the chamber and be counted as they walked through one of two lobbies, for Ayes or Noes. The process took fifteen or twenty minutes. It could have been devised only by men who did not have enough to do, Ethel said. She felt sure it would be modernized soon.

Lloyd waited on tenterhooks. The fall of Chamberlain would give him profound satisfaction, but it was by no means certain.

To distract himself he thought about Daisy, always a pleasant occupation. How strange his last twenty-four hours at Tŷ Gwyn had been: first the one-word note ‘Library’; then the rushed conversation, with her tantalizing summons to the Gardenia Suite; then a whole night of waiting, cold and bored and bewildered, for a woman who did not show up. He had stayed there until six o’clock in the morning, miserable but unwilling to give up hope until the moment when he was obliged to wash and shave and change his clothes and pack his suitcase for the trip.

Clearly something had gone wrong, or she had changed her mind; but what had she intended in the first place? She had said she wanted to tell him something. Had she planned to say something earth-shaking, to merit all that drama? Or something so trivial that she had forgotten all about it and the rendezvous? He would have to wait until next Tuesday to ask her.

He had not told his family that Daisy had been at Tŷ Gwyn. That would have required him to explain to them what his relationship with Daisy was now, and he could not do that, for he did not really understand it himself. Was he in love with a married woman? He did not know. How did she feel about him? He did not know. Most likely, he thought, Daisy and he were two good friends who had missed their chance at love. And somehow he did not want to admit that to anyone, for it seemed unbearably final.

He said to Bernie: ‘Who will take over, if Chamberlain goes?’

‘The betting is on Halifax.’ Lord Halifax was currently the Foreign Secretary.

‘No!’ said Lloyd indignantly. ‘We can’t have an earl for Prime Minister at a time like this. Anyway, he’s an appeaser, just as bad as Chamberlain!’

‘I agree,’ said Bernie. ‘But who else is there?’

‘What about Churchill?’