Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs

Author:Michael Dobbs [Dobbs, Michael]
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Michael Dobbs
Published: 2010-04-27T08:24:05.876000+00:00

FRIDAY, 9th OF FEBRUARY, 1945

THE SIXTH DAY

SEVEN

It was supposed to be the last day, but even the impatient

Roosevelt realized they had to give it just a little longer.

Cadogan and Eden came to Churchill’s room late that morning, seeking an audience. He was still in bed. The Prime Minister’s sleeping habits were a source of both amazement and irritation to his colleagues, who had long been used to his breakfasts in bed, yet at Yalta he had surpassed himself, often not getting up until after lunch. Not idleness, of course, but eccentricity, exhaustion, and age. Oh, and excess, buckets of it, particularly the previous night.

Sawyers shuffled past the sliding door to the bedroom to tell his master of his colleagues’ arrival.

Soon a voice was raised, clear for all to hear: “Tell them they can go bugger themselves!”

“Would that be each other, or individually, like?”

“What are you blathering about, man?”

“Why, buggery, zur.”

“To hell with you, Sawyers. Get ’em in here!”

The sight that greeted his principal aides was typical. Churchill resembled a walrus wrapped in pink silk and propped against a pile of pillows, cigar stuck firmly in mouth, breakfast on a tray, papers spilling from the eiderdown. It prompted irritation in both the visitors. They were all toiling hard—harder than Churchill himself, working longer hours, digesting considerably more paper and consuming far less alcohol. Yet he lay abed while they stood and waited on him. A little too imperial, for some tastes.

“What news? What news?” Churchill barked. The diplomatic bag from London with all its messages and golden nuggets was taking up to four days to arrive, and Churchill grew increasingly impatient. He always hoped for some excitement, some new bulletin from the front where British troops were preparing to cross the Rhine, something to make Stalin just a little less smug. But the front he had to deal with was here, in Yalta, which at times made him feel as though he’d much rather be back in the trenches of Flanders. At Ploegsteert, he remembered, you could spot a rat at a hundred yards. And shoot it.

“Things going pretty well, I think,” Cadogan began, his moustache and upper lip flexing like a hamster. “Making good progress. Few hurdles still to jump, of course, but Ivan’s proving surprisingly co-operative. Giving ground.”

“On what?”

“Why, many things. The United Nations, for instance. Accepting only three votes.”

“Tell me, Alec, how many other countries are going to get more than one vote?”

“That’s not the point,” Eden intervened protectively.

“No, you’re right. The point is that Stalin doesn’t give a damn about the confounded United Nations. So long as it remains nothing more than a talking shop, he’ll pay it no more heed than he would a brothel. He’ll take advantage of it when he’s in the mood, and will pass it by on the other side when he’s not.”

“He’s been surprisingly conciliatory,” the Foreign Office mandarin protested.

“It is not a mark of conciliation, Alec, when a highwayman holds you up at gunpoint and takes only half your money.”

“Not gunpoint,” Cadogan corrected.

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