Churchill had inspired, Sir Horace Wilson succeeded Chamberlain as the head of government. Wilson was, if anything, even more bonelessly pro-Nazi than his mentor had been.
“We’re bloody well out of it,” Walsh said one cloudy afternoon over a pint of best bitter at the Lion and Gryphon, a pub not too far from Parliament that these days found itself full of men in ill-fitting civilian clothes they seemed uncomfortable wearing. It was, in other words, a place where veterans the armed services found politically unreliable congregated. Misery loved, and drank with, company.
Some of the disgruntled ex-soldiers and -sailors and -flyers nodded. But another man who seemed as out of place as Walsh in tweeds and linen said, “We shouldn’t let them sideline us, by God. If the PM and the Foreign Office have gone off the rails, who’s going to set ’em right but us?”
He spoke like an officer, with a posh Oxbridge accent of the kind much imitated by BBC newsreaders. He had an aristocrat’s long, bony features, too, and an air that said he expected to be taken seriously.
But ranks didn’t matter any more. They were all demobbed together. Anyone could take a potshot at anyone else, no matter which accent he had. Someone at the back of the room said, “Sounds like treason to me.”
The aristo-he was too young to have fought the last time around-only shrugged. “Winston would have quoted that bit about treason’s only being treason if it fails-if it prospers, none dares call it treason.”
His easy use of the Christian name made Walsh ask, “You… knew Churchill?”
“I had that honor, yes,” the younger man replied. “And you?” He was trying to place Walsh, as Walsh was trying to place him.
“I talked with him once,” Walsh said. “He came to see me after they put me on ice here. For my sins, I was the bloke who met up with Hess in the middle of that Scottish field.”
“The famous Sergeant Walsh!” the other fellow said. “Winston spoke well of you, if that matters. Said you rather wished you’d plugged the bugger instead of bringing him in.”
Walsh didn’t remember telling Churchill anything like that. Maybe he had. Or maybe Churchill worked it out from what they had said. “Might’ve worked out better if I had,” Walsh said. “Couldn’t very well have worked out worse. On the same side as the bloody Hun…” He drained his pint to show what he thought of that idea.
“Let me buy you a refill, if I may,” said the man who’d known Churchill. He nodded to the fellow behind the bar. “Publican, if you’d be so kind…?”
“Coming up.” The barman worked the tap. He slid a fresh pint across the smooth surface to Walsh.
“Obliged,” Walsh said. “I’ll do the same for you when you finish there. And, begging your pardon, but you’re a step ahead of me.”
“Oh, quite. My apologies.” The younger man laughed. “The name’s Ronald Cartland.” He held out his hand.
Walsh shook it. The name rang a bell. “You’re an MP!” he blurted.
Ruefully, Cartland nodded. “Afraid so. These days, I’m not what you’d call proud of it. But they couldn’t drum me out of Parliament, and I’m not about to resign there, the way I did when they tried shipping me off to Byelorussia to fight alongside the same bastards I’d been shelling after they invaded France.”
“Same with me, sir,” Walsh didn’t know Cartland had been an officer, but an MP serving in the ranks struck him as wildly improbable. And he liked the certainty of status rank gave. After so long away from it, the arbitrary, whimsical nature of civilian life confused him. “I’d just got back from Norway when the Hun came parachuting down.”
Cartland upended his glass of whiskey. When Walsh signaled to the barman, the MP shook his head. “Another time. For now, why don’t you come with me?”
“Come with you where, sir?”
“Some chaps I’d like you to meet. They’d like to meet you, too, believe me.”
Walsh frowned. “I fancy the crowd I’m in with now.”
“Well, I understand that. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel the same way. But…” Cartland’s voice trailed off, as if there were things he wanted to say but didn’t want overheard. “Please, old boy?”
Wondering what he was getting into, Walsh stood up and lit a Navy Cut. “Lead on, sir. I expect I’ll follow.”
Once they were out of the Lion and Gryphon, Ronald Cartland let out a sigh of relief. “Bound to be people spying in there-maybe the tapman, maybe a customer, maybe the tapman and a customer, to make sure they don’t miss anything.”
“Who’s they?” Walsh asked.
“People who report to Horace Wilson,” Cartland answered. “Like Neville before him, he keeps tabs on anyone who disagrees with him and has a chance of doing anything about it. And he’s smarter than Neville ever was, damn him.”
“Why’s he sucking up to the Nazis, then?” Walsh demanded.
“Because he’s afraid of them. It’s the only thing I can think of.” Cartland walked on a few paces, then added, “Almost the only thing, I should say. He’s jealous of them, too. Dictators are very popular these days, as Edward said before he got to be King.”
“Did he really?” Walsh said. Crawford nodded. Walsh blew out a big cloud of smoke. “A good job he didn’t stay King long, then.”
“Yes, a lot of people thought so,” Cartland said, and not another word, leaving Walsh to wonder whether Edward’s passion for his American divorcee was the only thing that caused him to lay down the crown.
Cartland’s case-hardened reserve would have effortlessly turned a question about that. Seeing as much, Walsh just asked, “Where are we going, sir? You can tell me now, eh?”
“Why, to Parliament, of course,” Cartland answered in surprise. “I should have thought you’d work that out for yourself.”
“Sorry to be so slow.”
“Don’t worry about it. It will all come right in the end… unless, of course, it doesn’t.” On that cheerful note, Cartland led him past the guards outside-who nodded respectfully-and into the Parliament building.
Everything was smaller and shabbier and lit worse than Walsh had expected. This was the fount of democracy in the modern world, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t it be bright and clean and shiny? Evidently not. It reminded Walsh of nothing so much as a down-at-the-heels club for veteran sergeants. The thought made him feel more at home than he’d dreamt he could.
Cartland rounded up several other MPs. Eden, Macmillan, Cranborne (who seemed to go by Bobbety)… Names washed over Walsh. He wasn’t sure he had them all straight, or connected to the right faces. It seemed to matter little. The others were all at least as incensed with the government and its policies as Cartland.
“We have to take back the country’s soul,” one of them said; Walsh thought it was Macmillan, but he wasn’t sure. The MP went on, “Whatever our sins, we haven’t done anything to deserve this. ” He waved his left hand. He didn’t use his right arm much. Had he caught a packet in the last war? He was the right age.
“How do you propose to do that, sir?” Walsh asked. “Short of using soldiers, I mean? There’s plenty who like what’s going on-especially the blokes who don’t have to fight the Fritzes any more.”
Macmillan and his comrades all looked unhappy. “Ay, there’s the rub,” one of them murmured. “They think they can ride the tiger without coming back inside him.”
You could get drinks in the commons, as you could in a club. The MPs did. Cartland put Walsh on his chit. He’d come up in the world a bit, all right. These men were as disgusted and furious as any of the veterans in the Lion and Gryphon. Whether they had any better idea about how to change things remained to be seen.
November 5, 1940, was chilly and gloomy in Philadelphia. It drizzled on and off. It wasn’t cold enough to turn the water in the streets to ice, but it didn’t miss by much. Peggy Druce would have been more disappointed if she’d been more surprised. Indian summer might linger this late, but more often than not it didn’t.
Her polling place was at a school only a couple of blocks from where she and Herb lived. Every fence and telephone pole was plastered with Roosevelt or Willkie posters. Some had both. Some had Alf Landon posters, too. Some had one guy’s stuck on top of the other’s. Some had a bunch of different layers going back in time like the rock strata that confounded geologists. Whoever got there with his stack of flyers and pastepot won… till the other side’s guys came by.
She marked her ballot for FDR and stuck it in the box. “Mrs. Druce has voted,” intoned the snowy-bearded poll attendant. He didn’t look old enough to have fought in the Civil War, but he might well have been alive through
