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moved somewhere less prominent.
    â€˜Let’s try it on the other wall,’ he suggested, waving an elegant cuff but without much sign of conviction.
    The workman and his partner didn’t move a muscle.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Not going to work. Not there. Not anywhere,’ the workman said.
    â€˜Why on earth not?’ Eden enquired, stuffing his thumbs deep into the pockets of his waistcoat.
    â€˜Look at it, sir.’ The workman took a step forward. ‘It’s just too big. Turn his face to the wall and you’re still going to see his ermine slippers sticking out underneath. It’s enormous.’ Then, less loudly: ‘And we should know. Been moving it all morning.’
    Eden cast a dark eye at the workman. He had thought him a monarchist, but now he suspected him of being simply a troublemaker. ‘Are you a Communist?’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Oh, never mind.’
    The Foreign Secretary went back to examining his dilemma while the workman picked at the fragment of his cigarette with a broken orange fingernail. ‘Why the hell we have to be so nice to the bloody Yanks is beyond me,’ he said, turning to his colleague. ‘Late for the last war, they was. Run away from this war. Doing nothing but sitting on their backsides in Wall Street and soaking us dry.’
    Suddenly Eden turned, furious. He’d heard. ‘We need them because right now we have no one else.’ He strode up to the man who he was now certain was a Bolshevik. ‘Where else do you think we’ll get the destroyers and other weapons we need to win this war?’
    But the workman was not to be cowed. He was no revolutionary, but in his eyes it was Eden and his kind who had got them into this bloody war inthe first place. If he was to be asked for his opinion, he was going to give it.
    â€˜I hear we can’t afford it. Can’t afford the Americans as friends.’
    Eden snorted in exasperation. That was the difficulty with men such as this who wandered into every corner and crevice of the Foreign Office. They heard too much, yet understood so little. ‘Of course we can’t afford it, but that’s no longer the point. The Americans have suggested they lend us the matériel instead, for the duration of the war. We borrow everything—the bombers, fighters, ships, guns, tanks, vehicles—then afterwards give them back. It’s called Lend-Lease.’
    â€˜But not fighting…’
    â€˜Not fighting, exactly. But assisting. Making it possible for us to win the war. A partnership.’ He clapped his hands. ‘But that’s it!’ he cried. ‘We could get another picture. Put it alongside. Something…well…American. Don’t we have something down in the basement?’
    â€˜We’ve got a George Washington somewhere,’ the workman’s colleague began.
    â€˜Splendid! Fetch it up. Put it alongside. It’ll balance the whole thing out.’
    The workman was less enthused. ‘Stupid pillock,’ he said softly and very slowly to his colleague. ‘We’ll be shifting pictures all ruddy afternoon.’
    Which is precisely what happened. They hauledand sweated their way up from the basement with the new portrait, a remnant from the State Visit of President Woodrow Wilson in 1918. The basement was three floors down. Which meant three floors back up. But no matter how much they shifted the paintings around the room, still it would not work. The portrait of the first American President was only a fraction the size of the umpteenth English king, and in whatever position they were tried, the result looked more like deliberate insult than diplomatic master stroke. Eden eventually threw up his hands in despair.
    â€˜You’ll have to take them both down to the basement,’ he said.
    â€˜What? Take down the King?’ the workman asked in bewilderment. ‘To the basement?’
    â€˜We can’t afford to