Rendezvous with Destiny by Michael Fullilove

Author:Michael Fullilove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-27T12:00:10+00:00

“Where did you get this mutton?”

“At the village butcher’s where we always trade,” she said.

“We bring our friend Hopkins down here and what do we serve him? Stringy mutton,” he growled.

“Tastes all right to me,” Harry said.

“English mutton is something we’ve always been proud of.” Churchill went into a speech on the excellence of English mutton and how the present sample was terrible. “You should be able to get better mutton than this, Clemmie,” he said reproachfully.

Lovely Clemmie raised her head and with a solemn face she said, “Remember, Winston, there’s a war on.”

Churchill just growled under his breath.64

Clementine took Reynolds up to Hopkins’s bedroom after lunch to work on the speech. “I’m so glad you’re helping Harry,” she said. “We worry so about his health.” She was “like a mother chicken with a chick,” thought Reynolds. Hopkins was “dog-tired” and visibly ill, but he brushed off his hostess’s concern by saying casually, “Got a little cold during that trip over.” His drafting instructions to Reynolds indicated the balance the envoy aimed to strike in his broadcast. He “wanted to give the British public hope that big things were on the way; that substantial help was coming under Lend-Lease. But he couldn’t be too specific” lest he betray ship movements to the German navy or further inflame isolationists at home who “were screaming bloody murder.” Hopkins was aware of the dangers attached to the broadcast, promising FDR he would not “upset the diplomatic apple-cart, so have the State Department keep their shirts on.” He knew that “anything I say will be construed as a direct message from FDR. People know I’m only the president’s messenger boy.” Some politicians “credit me with a Svengali-like influence over the President,” he said with a smile. “If they only knew I just deliver messages.”65

For several hours, Reynolds tapped out a draft on a typewriter, while Hopkins lay on his bed and slept. At one point Mrs. Churchill came in and reproached Reynolds for not covering Hopkins with a blanket. When Hopkins awoke and read Reynolds’s draft, he laughed. “Hell, Quent, you’ve got me declaring war on Germany!” “We should have done it long ago,” replied Reynolds. “You forget that this is the President speaking,” said Hopkins, and started editing it with a pencil. The finished product was shown to Churchill, who popped into the room in the one-piece zippered garment that everyone called his “siren suit” or his “rompers.” Churchill chuckled as he read it. “I’d like to make it twice as strong,” said Reynolds. “So, I am sure, would our friend Hopkins,” Churchill said, laughing. “But it’s fine, it’s fine.”66

At dinner that evening, the air was thick with bonhomie. Churchill, dressed in a new set of rompers, spent most of the evening kidding Hopkins, who was decked out in a dinner jacket obtained from who knows where. To Reynolds’s eye, Churchill regarded Hopkins as “a much-loved brother” and Mary Churchill saw him as “a favourite uncle.” Clemmie continued to treat him as a patient, saying every now and again, “Why not get to bed, Harry.

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