Alan Hannay was one of several men awarded the Distinguished Service Order, most likely because somebody in the Admiralty had said ‘we can’t give everybody a bloody VC!’ In the closing stages of the battle the dapper, amiable, impeccably courteous and modest son of a Suffragan Bishop had stood alone on the gun platform on top of the shot-riddled after deckhouse engaging a twenty-three thousand ton battleship at point blank range with a twenty-millimetre calibre Oerlikon anti-aircraft cannon! After the battle Spider McCann had found him, covered in blood, literally standing ankle-deep among the body parts of the other gun crews.
Jack Griffin was another man who ought to have won a VC; but he was perfectly happy with his Distinguished Service Cross. Like every surviving Talavera he took the greatest pleasure of all in the George Cross the Queen was due to pin on Joseph Calleja’s broad chest next Tuesday.
Practically every member of Talavera’s torpedo crew had been killed or wounded early in the battle. If Joe Calleja had not known how to operate the quadruple 21-inch tubes; and more important, had had the gumption and the raw courage to operate them under murderously heavy fire, Talavera and Yarmouth’s dead would have died for nothing…
Margaret Thatcher’s blue eyes had fixed Peter Christopher.
He got the oddest sensation that she was reading his thoughts.
‘I am advised that you are still somewhat incommoded by your wounds, Captain?’ She had asked yesterday, anxiously hustling him towards a waiting chair at the pre-set coffee table in her private rooms at Corpus Christi College.
He had been touched, and a little embarrassed by her concern since she herself was obviously moving with stiff, careful deliberation as a result of the injuries she had sustained only nine days before at Brize Norton.
‘I was,’ the woman had started, before choking on the words she had meant to say. ‘Terribly, terribly affected by the news of your father’s death.’
Peter had been shocked to see the tears welling in the Prime Minister’s blue eyes, and by how close she was to completely breaking down.
She had forced a tight-lipped smile.
‘He and I were very close,’ Margaret Thatcher had said, recovering her poise in a moment with a monumental effort of will. ‘When I was in Malta at the happy time of your wedding your father proposed marriage to me; and I accepted that offer.’
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea…’
The woman had shaken her head.
‘Contrary to Service rumours your father had no ambitions to succeed Sir David Luce as First Sea Lord. At the end of his tenure at Malta he planned to retire. At that time we would have married.’ She sniffed, looked away for a second or so. ‘But it was not to be. Everything your father told me about you and everything I have learned about you, Captain Christopher, indicates to me that you are not a man who lives in the past, or dwells upon things that we cannot change.’
Peter had not known what to say and judged it best not to risk making a fool of himself by saying something just for the sake of saying something.
‘I apologise for tearing you away from your lovely wife,’ Margaret Thatcher had continued, suddenly all business. ‘I am travelling to Philadelphia tomorrow morning, just myself, the Foreign Secretary, Iain Macleod and a few people from our private offices. The mission is essentially political but I have for some time been worried that I have nobody on my personal staff capable of giving me up to date military advice based on recent, that is, post-October War experience in battle. I have spoken to the First Sea Lord and he assured me that he has no professional objections or reservations if I ask you to become, on a temporary basis, for this mission only at this stage, my Naval Aide-de-Camp.’
Peter recollected that he had behaved like an idiot.
‘Oh, I, well… That’s…’
To his astonishment the Prime Minister had smiled one of those smiles that instantly dazzled a man.
‘Sir Varyl told me that you would want to go back to sea as soon as possible. He said that despite everything you had been through you would be aching to get back into the fight.’
‘Well, yes, actually…’
‘The First Sea Lord also told me that he had no intention of giving you the opportunity to get yourself killed again so soon.’
Peter had confessed he had no idea what the duties of a Prime Ministerial Aide-de-Camp amounted to.
The lady had smiled and he had been, well…under her spell.
That was then and this was now.
Somebody on the BOAC Boeing 707 on the long flight across the North Atlantic had mentioned that the Philadelphia White House ‘used to be a bank of some sort’. And that it was modelled on ‘the Pantheon’ in Rome. Peter had though that sounded a little crass and had therefore, been completely unprepared for the scale and the grandeur of the building into which he, spic-and-span in his best brand new expertly tailored dress uniform with the fourth — Post Captain’s ring — on its cuffs, had followed the Prime Minister.
He tried not to stare, mouth agape, at the reception committee awaiting the small British party.
The men standing in line all looked incredibly familiar and yet, completely different in the flesh and the one woman, small and elegant like a movie star. It was utterly bizarre.
The man at the head of the line looked just like the President of the United States of America, next to him stood a woman who looked exactly like Jackie, the President’s wife, and there was an older more grizzled man who could have been Lyndon Johnson. It got stranger and stranger. Who was the big man in a US Air Force uniform covered in medals? Or the broad, dignified, commanding figure at the Vice-President’s shoulder; or the man in steel-rimmed spectacles who looked like an accountant…
“Mister President,” Margaret Thatcher announced proudly. “Allow me the honour of presenting you my Aide-de-Camp, Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, lately of Her Majesty’s Ship Talavera.”
Peter Christopher blinked dazedly into the green eyes of the most powerful man in the World.
He heard a stranger’s voice say: “I’m honoured to meet you, sir.”
“And I you, Sir Peter. Once Prime Minister Thatcher and I have hammered out our differences, you and I old Navy salts ought to exchange notes over a medicinal drink!”
“I look forward to that, sir.”
And then the First Lady was smiling up at him. He had not realised she was so short — barely Marija’s height — until that moment.
Lyndon Baines Johnson’s grip was hard and dry.
Peter thought General Curtis LeMay was going to crush his right hand. When the older man released it he was sorely tempted to check if anything was broken.
The Secretary of State, J. William Fulbright was the first person to assign Peter the consideration appropriate to him in this elevated company. He was after all the most junior captain in the Royal Navy. He simply nodded acquaintance and passed him on down the line.
Robert McNamara, the US Secretary of Defense smiled apologetically, and like Fulbright passed him swiftly down the line again.