Churchill's Hour Read Online Free PDF

offend the Americans. There’s no other way,’ the Foreign Secretary announced before examining his pocket watch and rushing from the room. He left the workman squatting on his haunches, trying to manufacture another spindly cigarette.
    â€˜Take down the King? To the basement?’ he kept saying over and over, as if through repetition he would come to understanding. ‘Makes you wonder, don’t it?’
    â€˜What’s that?’ his colleague asked.
    â€˜Who the bloody hell’s in charge here.’
    The bathroom was small, narrow and hopelessly impractical. It had no windows and only the most rudimentary of ventilation systems, and was buried behind several feet of concrete. The planners who had built the fortified Annexe around the corner from Downing Street had wanted to ensure that, whatever else happened to him, Churchill wasn’t going—in his own words—‘to be blown out of his own bloody bath’. It was no idle threat; bath time was one of his set rituals. He would throw himself into the water, submerging completely, then surface once more, blowing like a whale. In between dives he would reflect, dictate, compose and shout orders, all the while cheating outrageously on the maximum level of bath water recommended by his own scrimping Government.
    A flustered assistant came stumbling from the room, brow beaded in sweat, his glasses steamed, his notebook crumpled, the ink running down the page, nearly knocking into Randolph as he fled. Another male secretary was hovering, waiting his turn to go in, and Sawyers was fussing away near at hand, but both of them drew back as the Prime Minister’s son appeared, clad in the service dress of a captain, No. 8 Commando.
    â€˜Papa?’ Randolph said, standing in the doorway. He took a step forward and was immediately enveloped in a fog of condensation, through which the outline of his father began to emerge, pink,perspiring, standing in front of the sink, shaving, completely naked.
    â€˜Don’t shut that door,’ Winston snapped, wiping away at the mirror. ‘Not unless you want me to cut my own damned throat.’
    â€˜Why don’t you bathe in St James’s Park,’ Randolph said. ‘It could scarcely be more public.’
    â€˜Whaddya mean?’
    â€˜You think Hitler wanders around the Reichs Chancellery waving his baubles about? It’s so bloody undignified.’
    They couldn’t help arguing. Always had. For them it was like breath, and love, and light—as natural as the dew following the night.
    â€˜I blame myself,’ Churchill began testily, ‘for sending you to the wrong type of school. Private showers and all that nonsense. It’s unhealthy. Encourages misconduct when you’re behind locked doors. And lack of candour when you’re not.’ He resumed scraping away the soap on his chin with a large open-bladed razor. ‘At Harrow, we used to be naked all the time, in the swimming pool, in the showers. That’s when I first met the men who now occupy some of the highest positions in the land—men of the cloth and of the law, even some in my own Cabinet. That’s why they all trust me. They know I have nothing to hide.’ He threw the blade into the sink and began groping for a towel. ‘Nakedness teaches you to look another man directly in the eye.’
    â€˜Better still, not to trust him behind your back.’
    Churchill turned. ‘Let’s not argue, Randolph. Not on your last day. Not before you leave for the warrior’s life in the desert.’
    â€˜Cairo is scarcely the desert, Papa. Must you romanticize everything?’
    â€˜There will be nothing romantic in what is about to take place in the Middle East. Where you are going could yet prove to be the fulcrum of the whole war.’
    â€˜Is that why we’ve been sent by those weevils in the War Office to train amongst the ice floes of the Clyde? So we can serve in