Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs
“To where?”
“To the home of Marian Nowak. I had been him for so many years. I had nowhere else to go. If I’d stayed in Warsaw I would have ended up in a gutter so deep that I’d never be able to crawl out. Anyway, I thought I owed it to his family, to tell them how he had died. My existence as Marian Nowak may have been imaginary all those years, but it was the one part of my life that remained real to me. So—I walked. Through a countryside that looked as if it had been ripped from the Middle Ages. Nothing but peasants scraping fields for food, living in filth and degradation, in fear. Poland as it hadn’t been since the Black Death.”
The Pole’s foot was still tapping remorselessly upon the deck and it was beginning to irritate Churchill, making it more difficult for him to hear, but it was scarcely the moment to complain. “And did you find them, the family of Mr. Nowak?”
“Piorun was a town like so many others. It had no airs, no pretensions. It had so very little to lose, but what it had was taken from it. And when I arrived, the people of Piorun had little to offer but suspicion. So many strangers had come to Piorun and left behind them nothing but heartache. They demanded to know my business. I pretended I was a distant cousin of the Nowaks. And that was when they told me what had happened. They were gone, almost the entire family. Wiped away as though they’d never existed. Nowak’s father had disappeared, along with an aunt. One uncle killed. Another, a priest, arrested. His mother sat herself down in the town square one night in winter, outside the church, and simply froze to death.” Nowak’s lips twisted with contempt. “And when the liberators of Poland heard that I had arrived in Piorun and was a relative of the most troublesome family in the town, they invited me for a little chat. Wanted to know who I was, where I had come from. And when I couldn’t answer their questions, they arrested me, too. Ten years in the gulags, Mr. Churchill. Sent to wander Siberia until Stalin was cold in his coffin and they no longer had any use for an aging man with half a hand and a freshly mangled leg.”
Churchill began to mumble an expression of dismay, but Nowak cut across him.
“The one thing that sustained me until the time I met you in Yalta was the love I had for my family. And afterwards, the one thing that kept me alive was my hate. I carried it with me every stumbling step of the way. Hate. For those who were responsible for what had been done to my family and my country. It was the only way to survive in the camps, to get through another winter or another beating. So I swore vengeance on them all. Promised my little Kasia that, if ever I had the chance, I would make them pay for the many ways we were betrayed at Yalta.”
The old man shuddered.
“But they cheated me, Mr. Churchill. They died, Stalin and Roosevelt. It’s so difficult to hate the dead. And then, out of the blue, you walked into my life once more. You know, I’d almost forgotten about you, a sad old man surrounded by so many fables. The living legend, the man who won the war. But you and I know better, don’t we?”
“My heart trembles for you, Mr. Nowak. But these calamities—they were not my fault.”
Nowak sprang to his feet, like an angler striking for a pike. “Then whose fault was it? Who turned the blind eye to Katyn? Who held out their hand in friendship to the Russians even as they sat on the other side of the Vistula, watching Warsaw—and my family—being reduced to ashes? Who applauded as they marched into Poland and made us all slaves?”
“You cannot blame me for those things.”
“Then who should I blame? Who was it who betrayed not only my country at Yalta but me—me? And who better to pay the price?”
“What price would that be, pray?”
The foot had stopped its tapping. Nowak’s battered body was still. And suddenly, Churchill was staring down the barrel of a revolver.
***
“Is the condemned man allowed a final drink?”
“You think this a joke?” Nowak tightened his grip on the handle of the revolver.
“Not at all. I have faced gunfire many times. They have invariably been the most exhilarating moments of my life.” Churchill looked directly at the gun, his voice sounding almost wistful. “Whatever else you have done, Mr. Nowak, you have brought a spark back into my soul and, as strange as it may seem in the circumstances, I thank you for it.”
“If you’re thinking of playing for time, I shouldn’t bother. Your detective has gone in the launch with your son, your valet is fast asleep in his cabin—a little something I gave him in his coffee—and the crew members have been told by Mr. Onassis not to disturb you unless they want—I use his words—their balls to be turned into Turkish sweetmeats.”
“Play for time? Why would I do that? At my age, there’s precious little point. Altogether too damned much of the stuff.” He held the other man’s stare. “So, shall we take the neck off another bottle, Mr. Nowak? What do you think?”
The Pole shrugged. Cautiously, reluctantly, he set about refilling both their glasses. Pol Roger. Churchill’s favorite.
“Your splendidly good health,” Churchill offered in thanks. “Glad you made it after all.”
“Ah, the Englishman’s stiff upper lip, laughing in the face of death.”
“I am not mocking, Mr. Nowak. We have both walked with Death, many times, you and I, smelled his breath on our shoulders. The difference between us is that I am very old. There comes a point where life is like a gramophone record, stuck in the same groove, going round and round, constantly repeating itself, and no one dances to the tune any longer.”
“You pretend you are not afraid of death?”
“Since I watched my father die, slowly, by fractions, it is the waiting I have feared. I watched my father being stripped of his wit and his reputation, and eventually his identity. In the end, it was Death who rode to his rescue. Just as he did with Franklin.”
“Your friend,” Nowak sneered.
“Yes, he was a friend, and a splendid one.”
“He was a man who threw away everything we had fought for.”
“That is a question I have often asked myself.”
“It wasn’t a question.”
“You’ll have to allow a dying man a few doubts of his own,” Churchill snapped back. “Franklin was weak. His sin was to be aging and infirm. And, above all, idealistic. If they are faults, then in his case they proved most grievous.”
“You can’t pile the blame on his shoulders. You were there, together, side by side.”
“I am English, he was American. Standing together, but separated by an ocean of turbulent water and contesting interests.”
“What? You’ve spent the last twenty years bragging about your Special Relationship.”
“And it was destined to be special. Just as it was destined to fail. At its very start, on the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the president declared it to be a day of infamy, while I quietly and most secretly rejoiced. It was what I had wished for, had fallen to my bended knee and prayed for over so many months. At last, America at war! It was something I had badgered and bullied him about and he had hated me for it. But when it happened, it was worth a private jig or two, I can tell you.”
“You were one and the same. Franklin and Winston. All but brothers.”
“‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. . . ’” Churchill picked up the refrain, only to cast it aside. “It wasn’t like that. Franklin used me as I used him, as it was right for us both to do. We served interests that frequently coincided, but we saluted different flags.”
“But he—”
“For God’s sake, listen, man! And learn. Be the first Pole in Christendom to listen before he leaps to conclusions.” Churchill’s voice had found a new edge; perhaps it was the heat, and the drink. “He was an American, and I was not. He was a sick man in a hurry, and I was not—not then, at least. He was a heady idealist, while I have always preferred my arse to sit on solid ground.” Churchill
“Don’t wash your hands of that. You agreed to it all!”
Churchill shook his head. “It was a deal done by Franklin directly with Stalin and without even the courtesy of consulting me. He was in so very much of a hurry.” Churchill swilled the champagne around his glass before taking more. “Then in his haste he flew to Egypt to meet with Ibn Saud and the other desert princes. Wanted to interfere, to rearrange the palm trees, to put his stamp on the world before. . . before he died. He knew the flame was almost out. His face had a transparency, an air of purification, and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. Yet there are two sides to every man, and later I discovered that while he was there, talking to the Saudis, he tried to filch the oil concessions right from under our noses. Even as he sang to the angels and talked of peace among men, he was trying to pick British pockets.”
“He deceived you?”
“At Yalta we all deceived each other.”
“You admit you led the world in a lie.”
“No!” Churchill shouted, but the passion had tired him. When he resumed, his voice was quieter, his tone more contemplative, the words trickling in a stream instead of a flood. “We led the world in hope. And was it wrong to have ambition? Franklin wanted so many things—oh, the bloody oil, of course, and much else that was mercenary besides, but he was American to his roots, and if he planted one foot in the muddy world of war then the other was set on a higher journey. What he wanted most of all was a world of peace. It was his abiding passion. That was why he gave everything—and too much—for his United Nations. He thought it would solve everything. He was wretchedly wrong, of course, but should a man be condemned for embracing his dreams?”
“Did he dream of Poland?”
Churchill wiped his eyes; they were tired, seeping. “It is a fair point. In all candor I must admit that he didn’t care much for Poland, nor for much else in Europe. In his eyes, Europe had fostered the two most barbaric systems ever imposed upon humanity, Fascism and Communism, and he saw us as a source of the most deadly infections. In his own lifetime he had watched the flower of American youth being sent not once but twice to its slaughter on the bloodied fields of Europe, and he swore that was enough. So he was determined that he would win the war, then turn his back on it all. Yes, he was an idealist, but there was also an arrogance, a blindness within him, so typical of his people, who thought that war would be done with once the bullets had stopped flying. Oh, Mr. Nowak, if only that could be so. He was like—yes, I shall put it this way—a traveling quack who sells his elixirs and potions from the back of his wagon then departs before anyone discovers that sugar-water isn’t truly enough. Americans can be the noblest of creatures in times of war, Mr. Nowak, but in matters of peace they can also prove most ridiculously dull.”
“You can’t separate yourself from him. You fought the war together.”
And we fought each other, too. I left Yalta very bitter. He had become like a sheet anchor dragging back our ship. And when he died just a few weeks later I felt—what? Shock? No, for he was a dead man even when I saw him. But I was angry, deeply hurt. I refused to attend his funeral, concocted some excuse, a silly pretension that I quickly came to regret. I even felt a measure of relief, not simply that his suffering was at an end but that a rival had gone from the scene.”
“Roosevelt? A rival?”
Churchill sighed wearily. “I thought so then. For the laurels, you see. I was envious. He had gone at the height of his fame, acclaimed as the victor, while I was left behind to tread the lonely slope of old age.”
“You were jealous of Roosevelt?”
“He had died. I had merely been sentenced to death, waiting for the maggots and the scribblers.” His eyes closed and his head seemed to drop in sorrow. “And what will posterity have of me? My paintings? Bugger it, even my detective paints better than I do.”
Nowak began to mock this man, who appeared to see the world as his playground and matters of war and peace as little more than footnotes in his personal chronicle, but even as he raised his voice in rebuke, he saw that the old man had fallen fast asleep.
***
Only the slant of the shadows on the deck told of the passing time. When Churchill opened his eyes he saw the silver scribble of the horizon and felt the brush of scented air on his cheek. For a moment he wondered whether the deed had been done as he passed through to Paradise. Then, once more, he saw the gun. The dream was not yet done.
“Poland, Mr. Churchill. You betrayed me and you betrayed Poland.”
Churchill wriggled in his chair, trying to revive both his circulation and his thoughts. “We went to war for Poland.”
“You sold my country to Stalin.”
Churchill shook his head. “You are beginning to be tedious, Mr. Nowak. Just shoot me and get it done with.”
“We fought for you! Our pilots gave their lives for you in the skies above England during the Battle of Britain, and our soldiers fought and died like heroes alongside you through the mountains of Italy.”
“They were very brave, the Poles.”
“And you lifted not a finger for them.”
“That is not true.”
“You sent many back to Stalin.”
“It wasn’t as simple—”
But Nowak rode right through him, his voice and temper beginning to rise, wanting to pound the old man into submission. “Every time you were put to the test, you failed. You gave us your word, your solemn word, that you would help. Yet you sat behind the Maginot Line while Hitler devoured Poland, then you applauded while Stalin did the same.”
“No, that’s not—”
“We were the first in this war, the very first, yet you denied us an invitation to join the United Nations.”
“Franklin thought—”
“Excuses! So what was your excuse for not inviting us to the victory celebrations in London, then? We were good enough to die with you in Monte Cassino but not fit to walk beside you through the streets of London. You chased us away like stray dogs!”
“But by then I had been hurled from office. It was not my doing. It was that damned man Hitlee or Attler or whatever he was called. Attlee!” Churchill shook fresh air into his head. “He was a bloody red, a socialist, too worried about upsetting Stalin.”
“You lied! You lied to the men who fought for your liberty. And you betrayed those who died for it!”
“It wasn’t meant—”
“And you betrayed me. Deserted me. Left me for dead. Whose fault was that, Mr. Churchill?”
At last, silence.
Eventually Churchill raised himself in his chair, struggling to control his bruised emotions. “That is a charge I should rightly answer, Mr. Nowak. It is something I have been waiting to explain ever since we last met, something I should perhaps have explained then. It may take a few moments.”
Nowak poured himself a glass of champagne, but didn’t offer Churchill more.
The old man waved a hand in front of his face as though chasing away moths. “It was so very long ago,” he sighed, “and all wrapped up with those things we signed at Yalta. Could the agreement have been different? I have often asked myself, searched my conscience, wondering whether I could have done more.”
“You could have objected, walked away, denounced it as a sham.”
Churchill held up his ha
“What the hell has that got to do with Poland?”
“Yes, yes, I shall get to Poland in a minute. Don’t be so bloody impatient. But first, you must see that power has its limits.” He thrust out his empty glass. “And you must refill my glass. My mouth is dry.”
“You drink too much,” Nowak said, complying with reluctance.
“I used to declare that I had always taken much more out of alcohol than alcohol had ever taken out of me, and it was true,” Churchill said, as he watched the froth in his glass subside. “But now I don’t give a damn.” He drank, a little of the liquid spilling down his chin. He seemed not to notice. “Now, where was I? Ah, Yalta. So I signed up to everything, not just the Far East but to Franklin’s United Nations—a quack’s cure if ever there was—and to Europe. Even had a little influence on the outcome on Europe. You see, it’s like potatoes all laid out in a row.”
Nowak looked on as if the old man had lost his mind.
“France, Germany, Poland—Russia, too. One after the other. And Stalin might have had the lot. So I persuaded them that France should be allowed to become a great power once more, perhaps greater than she deserved. I have always had a passion for la belle France, even when she played the harlot.”
Nowak was about to interrupt once more but Churchill held up a finger to stop him, like a schoolmaster with a wayward pupil.
“France was the first step, you see, the first bulwark against the red tide from the east. Then Germany. They wanted to devour her, Franklin and Marshal Stalin. They had plans to rip her apart into five or six pieces, to level her so that she would never rise again. But a flattened Germany would have been nothing but an opportunity for the Red Army, an invitation to see just how far their tanks could roll before they were stopped. So Germany, too, had to be rebuilt, in time, and be permitted to take her place in the community of nations once more. That was not a popular message, but it was a necessary one. And you see, Mr. Nowak, if France and Germany could be persuaded to co-operate, to come together even in some partnership or union, how much stronger would that bulwark against the tide be?”