Free Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs Page B

fact, he used a term of some crudity, but none of the interpreters felt inclined to co-operate. “The proletariat can do for us all. Just like they did for our own king.” More crudity. The interpreters squirmed, Stalin chuckled, revealing dark tobacco-stained teeth, and the other Russians joined in.
    “If you will allow me, Marshal Stalin, I think I shall stick to elections, which, for all the terror they inspire, at least have one great advantage over your own methods.”
    “What’s that?”
    “They allow you to come back from the dead. As I have proven several times.”
    Stalin thumped his hand upon the table. “Waste of time! Better stick to our method.” A sly smile escaped from beneath the thick moustache. “After all, it removes the uncertainty.”
    Now they were all laughing, except Churchill.
    ❖ ❖ ❖
    Stalin stayed the half-hour, and more. It seemed that he was determined to take the most out of the evening, which itself took more out of Roosevelt. Eventually, it was the president himself who, with a tired wave of his hand, indicated that the moment had come for his guests to go. “I need my beauty sleep, the Marshal has his war to fight and, doubtless, the prime minister has another speech to prepare.”
    It seemed yet another remark aimed at Churchill that had been cut with an unnecessarily sharp edge, but the Englishman didn’t respond. Instead he waited until Stalin had left and his own time had come to bid farewell. He bent low, his lips close to the President’s ear, his lisp grown heavier with the hour. “My dear Franklin, we must stand firm. Together we might deal with this man—see how he backs off when we stand square to him.” Not that Roosevelt had stood square to him. . . “You saw how I tested him, time and again. He makes a pretense at anger, stamps his foot, but he stays. Yet we have nothing in common with the Russian. He even had the temerity to turn your dinner-table into an exhibition of arms. There is no music in this man, no sense of justice or any fear of God. And that nonsense about Uncle Joe—he’s known as much for years, yet only now does he try to find malice in it.” Churchill gripped the other man’s arm, felt the bone beneath the sleeve. “He’s trying to soften us up, Franklin, make us malleable. But we must not allow him to divide us. We must be as constant in pursuing the objects of peace as we have been in pursuing the ends of war.”
    Two aching, red-rimmed eyes looked up at him. “Oh, Winston, why did you have to go wreck my dinner party?”
    ❖ ❖ ❖
    Churchill arrived back at the Vorontsov in a somber mood after Roosevelt’s rebuke. He found Sarah waiting with Sawyers to put him to bed. The room was lit by nothing but the flames of a log fire and candlelight. There was no sign of any lamp.
    “Sorry, zur. Clumsy of me. They replaced the light, quick as you like, but somehow I went ’n dropped it again.”
    “Damn fool.”
    The servant poured a measure of whisky into a tumbler and placed it on the bedside table where the lamp had once stood.
    “Have you had a good day, Papa?” Sarah asked.
    “Let me see,” he began, sipping, then counting on his fingers. “I’ve been insulted, abused, offended, ill-treated, ostracized… And yet again I seem to have run out of fingers.”
    But already he was beginning to relax, to reclaim his optimism in the company of the imperturbable Sawyers and his beloved Sarah. Oh, she could be willful, opinionated, passionate, just like him. Even the same blue eyes and flame-red hair—when he had had hair. There was no mistaking the connection. She was in her early thirties, an aspiring actress who, against her father’s firmest wishes, had eloped with a music-hall comedian and thrown herself into a marriage that was already over. And if she was a little reckless, they all knew from which side of the family she had inherited it. Father and daughter never stopped fighting each other, never stopped loving.
    “Get your