“I was hoping to pay a courtesy call on Her Majesty,” Walter Brenckmann remarked over drinks around the customary, guttering fire before dinner. “I gather that she is a little more herself, Tom?”
The British Foreign Secretary grimaced.
“Yes, Her Majesty is much more cheerful now that Prince Phillip has joined her at Woodstock. He’s still fairly badly crocked, of course.”
The American Ambassador could not help but wince.
One day the true story of the failed plot to murder Queen Elizabeth II and her family at Balmoral last year would emerge. When it did the fingerprints of traitors in the United Kingdom, terrorists in Ireland and God-alone knew how many rogue — or worse, not so rogue — CIA operatives were going to be all over the attempted regicide. Both men knew this; and consequently both men wanted the day of reckoning to be delayed as long as possible.
“I look forward to meeting His Highness,” Walter Brenckmann avowed solemnly.
“We both do!” His wife added brightly. Already in the relatively short time they had been in Oxford, Joanne Brenckmann had struck out on her own, determined to have a role other than as ‘the woman on the Ambassador’s arm’. She had visited local schools, hospitals, spoken to Women’s Institute meetings and had reached out to the growing community of ‘Government and Civil Service’ wives who had successfully followed their husbands to Oxford from the former seat of administration in Cheltenham. On occasions when her husband’s schedule had been changed at short notice, she had stood in for him at several charitable and other events. Whereas, few people in the street instantly recognised Walter Brenckmann, Joanne was constantly in the local papers, a familiar face in Oxford and beyond.
If Tom Harding-Grayson was aware that his guests were a little preoccupied he gave no hint of it.
“What‘s this I hear about your youngest boy earning himself unwanted notoriety out in California, old man?” He inquired jocularly of the US Ambassador.
“Oh, that,” Walter Brenckmann chuckled. He winked at his Joanne. “Sam’s his mother’s son. Jo’s been dealing with most of the flak!”
“We didn’t find out the half of it until a few days ago!” Joanne Brenckmann explained. She and Walter were a well-honed party double act; having discovered long ago that all the tricky things in marriage were best handled together. This was one of those times when Walter would play it straight and Joanne would play it for laughs. She met the Foreign Secretary’s wife’s eye, and smiled resignedly. “Sam’s a musician,” she explained, as if that said it all. “He gets that from my side of the family. The older boys take after Walter. Walter junior is in the Navy and Dan is an attorney, they’re both sensible boys. Well, most of the time. But Sam…”
“Sam’s a musician,” the long-suffering father sighed.
“Actually, he’s a very talented one,” the proud mother countered. “He has a contract with Columbia Records and his first ‘single’ is coming out in a week or two. He’s been recording an ‘album’, a long-player apparently. Of course, we wouldn’t know any of this if it wasn’t for the letters Judy, that’s Sam’s wife, sends us!” Joanne knew she was gabbling but did not care. “They met in Bellingham in Washington State on the day of the war and they had all sorts of adventures before they got back to California. Anyway, if it wasn’t for Judy who seems a very practically-minded young woman, we’d be completely in the dark!!
Joanne was so distracted thinking about her prodigal son, his new wife and her first granddaughter — named for her dead daughter Tabatha — that her voice had grown a little distant and moisture had begun to fill her eyes. The well of loss rose suddenly, her bottom lip trembled before she caught herself.
Her husband stepped in.
“The story is a bit confused,” he declared, touching his wife’s arm. “Sam, or his manager, by all accounts an eccentric club owner called Doug Weston seem to have fallen foul of a dirty cop in Los Angeles. A club Sam was performing at, The Troubadour, got fire-bombed back in December and somehow or other, goodness knows how, Sam and Weston, the owner of the club got arrested. It all happened around the time of the unpleasantness in DC and they both got ‘lost’ in the California ‘correctional’ system for several weeks before things were cleared up. Jo and I are under orders not to breathe a word about it, any of it, to any living soul. Not that we’ve got a clue what really happened, anyway!”
Joanne Brenckmann had recovered her composure.
“It could only happen to Sam!”
Over soup — potato with trace elements of leek and onion — Tom Harding-Grayson and Walter Brenckmann started one conversation, while the wives set off on another.
“In a funny sort of way,” the British Foreign Secretary remarked affably, “now that I’ve had a little time to think about it, the situation developing in Iran may be a blessing in disguise.”
“Oh, how does that work, Tom?” The US Ambassador knew exactly how ‘it’ worked. His heart sank because in that moment he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that his friend had understood his government better than he had long before he accepted the ambassadorial post in England.
The Foreign Secretary put down his soup spoon.
“That night of the shooting in the Oval Office,” he prefaced, with not one scintilla of animosity in his tone, his expression or in his level gaze. “Iain Macleod and I found ourselves in a little room down in the White House bunker discussing what happened next. What of the peace we had just concluded? And more importantly, upon whose head the crown of leadership should now rest back in England? I was very much the junior partner in the negotiations between Iain and Jim Callaghan — then as now the Deputy Prime Minister. Margaret’s name came out of the hat. There were various reasons for that but in retrospect, the two things that recommended the lady to my ‘political’ colleagues was that she was not of the generation responsible for sleepwalking into the October War; and that given her tender years and lack of experience at the top table of government, that she would be ‘controllable’.” He shook his head and chuckled. “The thing none of us realized was that of us all, only Margaret really understood what she was getting herself into and that one day, and that Jack Kennedy would, sooner or later, ‘let us down again’.”
“Tom, I, er…” But Walter Brenckmann’s heart was not in the fight.
“An Ambassador, as one wise and very cynical man once said, is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the Commonwealth, my friend,” the British Foreign Secretary comforted him. “I for one have no doubt that you have been an honest man in your dealings with the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom.” He shrugged, picked up his soup spoon, paused. “As I say, it is good to know where we all stand on things.”
Walter Brenckmann stared at his friend.
Tom Harding-Grayson smiled sympathetically.
“Margaret will never forgive Jack Kennedy,” he declared wearily. “Margaret can be very pragmatic about some things, but others well, she can be infuriatingly moral about the big things. Even if President Kennedy gets re-elected in November, granted, that’s not very likely, but even if he does he’ll be gone from the scene in fairly short order I imagine. Margaret could be Prime Minister for the next twenty years, and, as I say, she won’t ever forgive the United States for letting us down a second time.”
Walter Brenckmann groaned out aloud.
“I’ve been considering my position,” he confessed.