Winter of the World (Century Trilogy 2)

sorry,’ then she was convulsed by grief again. ‘Oh, Walter, my Walter,’ she wept.

Eventually her crying subsided. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘I didn’t mean to make a fuss.’ She wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘I just wish your father could see the baby, that’s all. It’s so unfair.’

Ada surprised them both by quoting the Book of Job: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ she said. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord.’

Carla did not believe in God – no holy being worthy of the name could have allowed the Nazi death camps to happen – but all the same she found comfort in the quotation. It was about accepting everything in human life, including the pain of birth and the sorrow of death. Maud seemed to appreciate it too, and she became calmer.

Carla looked adoringly at baby Walter. She would care for him and feed him and keep him warm, she vowed, no matter what difficulties stood in the way. He was the most wonderful child that had ever been born, and she would love and cherish him for ever.

He woke up, and Carla gave him her nipple again. He sucked contentedly, making small smacking noises with his mouth, while four women watched him. For a little while, in the warm, dim-lit kitchen, there was no other sound.

(ii)

The first speech made by a new Member of Parliament is called a maiden speech, and is usually dull. Certain things have to be said, stock phrases are used, and the convention is that the subject must not be controversial. Colleagues and opponents alike congratulate the newcomer, the traditions are observed and the ice is broken.

Lloyd Williams made his first real speech a few months later, during the debate on the National Insurance Bill. That was more scary.

In preparing it he had two orators in mind. His grandfather, Dai Williams, used the language and rhythms of the Bible, not just in chapel but also – perhaps especially – when speaking of the hardship and injustice of the life of a coal miner. He relished short words rich in meaning: toil, sin, greed. He spoke of the hearth and the pit and the grave.

Churchill did the same, but had humour that Dai Williams lacked. His long, majestic sentences often ended with an unexpected image or a reversal of meaning. Having been editor of the government newspaper the British Gazette during the General Strike of 1926, he had warned trade unionists: ‘Make your minds perfectly clear: if ever you let loose upon us again a general strike, we will loose upon you another British Gazette.’ A speech needed such surprises, Lloyd believed; they were like the raisins in a bun.

But when he stood up to speak, he found that his carefully wrought sentences suddenly seemed unreal. His audience clearly felt the same, and he could sense that the fifty or sixty MPs in the chamber were only half listening. He suffered a moment of panic: how could he be boring about a subject that mattered so profoundly to the people he represented?

On the government front bench he could see his mother, now Minister for Schools, and his Uncle Billy, Minister for Coal. Billy Williams had started work down the pit at the age of thirteen, Lloyd knew. Ethel had been the same age when she began scrubbing the floors of Ty Gwyn. This debate was not about fine phrases, it was about their lives.

After a minute he abandoned his script and spoke extempore. He recalled instead the misery of working-class families made penniless by unemployment or disability, scenes he had witnessed first hand in the East End of London and the South Wales coalfield. His voice betrayed the emotion he felt, somewhat to his embarrassment, but he ploughed on. He sensed his audience beginning to pay attention. He spoke of his grandfather and others who had started the Labour movement with the dream of comprehensive employment insurance to banish forever the fear of destitution. When he sat down there was a roar of approval.

In the visitors’ gallery his wife Daisy smiled proudly and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

He listened to the rest of the debate in a glow of satisfaction. He felt he had passed his first real test as an MP.

Afterwards, in the lobby, he was approached by a Labour Whip, one of the people responsible for making sure MPs voted the right way. After congratulating Lloyd on his speech, the Whip said: ‘How would you like to be a parliamentary private secretary?’

Lloyd was thrilled. Each minister and secretary of state had at least one PPS. In truth a PPS was often little more than a bag-carrier, but the job was the usual first step on the way to a ministerial appointment. ‘I’d be honoured,’ Lloyd said. ‘Who would I be working for?’

‘Ernie Bevin.’

Lloyd could hardly believe his luck. Bevin was Foreign Secretary and the closest colleague of Prime Minister Attlee. The intimate relationship between the two men was a case of the attraction of opposites. Attlee was middle class: the son of a lawyer, an Oxford graduate, an officer in the First World War. Bevin was the illegitimate child of a housemaid, never knew his father, started work at the age of eleven, and founded the mammoth Transport and General Workers Union. They were physical opposites, too: Attlee slim and dapper, quiet, solemn; Bevin a huge man, tall and strong and overweight, with a loud laugh. The Foreign Secretary referred to the Prime Minister as ‘little Clem’. All the same they were staunch allies.

Bevin was a hero to Lloyd and to millions of ordinary British people. ‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ Lloyd said. ‘But hasn’t Bevin already got a PPS?’

‘He needs two,’ the Whip said. ‘Go to the Foreign Office tomorrow morning at nine and you can get started.’

‘Thank you!’

Lloyd hurried along the oak-panelled corridor, heading for his mother’s office. He had arranged to meet Daisy there after the debate. ‘Mam!’ he said as he entered. ‘I’ve been made PPS to Ernie Bevin!’