This time the coughing was agonising and the rag he held to his mouth came away bloody.
“Stronger, as they were in the recent war over Cuba. We must strike now and again and again while we still have the strength or we are finished…”
Chapter 49
It was not going to be any kind of conventional summit. There would be no great fanfare, nor was there going to be an official, agreed communiqué at its conclusion. Nevertheless, ahead of the ‘conference’ the village of Hyannis and nearby Hyannis Port and from what Peter Christopher had seen, most of Cape Cod, had been transformed into an armed camp.
His and Marija’s brief idyll at Camp David had been cut short two days ago with an urgent summons back to Philadelphia, where within an hour of reaching the British Embassy he and several members of the Ambassador’s staff had boarded a US Air Force transport jet bound for Otis Air National Guard Base, located some fifteen miles from the Kennedy Family Compound at Hyannis Port. On arrival in Massachusetts, the Ambassador, Lord Franks had asked Peter to travel with him to ‘have foresight of the summit venue’ while the rest of the Embassy party went ahead to check the security of the small hotel in New Bedford where the Prime Ministerial mission would be staying.
The Ambassador wanted to talk to Peter about his ‘conversations with the President’ at Camp David.
Both Peter and Marija had been bewildered by the personal hospitality of the President and the First Lady. They had dined with the First family twice, albeit with other dignitaries present; Marija had been introduced to the Kennedy children at a ‘coffee morning’ with the First Lady while Peter had been called to a surprise late night chat beside a crackling log fire in the Presidential chalet on the couple’s second night at Camp David.
The President had wanted to hear all about HMS Talavera’s part in the Battle of Malta.
‘That’s a heck of thing!’ He had sighed several times as Peter had self-effacingly recounted his tale. ‘Heck of a thing!’
The younger man had summoned the temerity to ask his host about his own wartime exploits in the Pacific. Jack Kennedy had been reticent.
‘We had some close shaves and I got my boat rammed by a Japanese destroyer,’ he had drawled. ‘I still don’t know how we got ashore without being eaten by the sharks!’
Peter was at pains not to parry Lord Franks’s earnest questions.
“To be honest I just think the President and the First Lady were grateful for the opportunity to spend a little time with people who aren’t,” he had shrugged, “political.”
“Don’t under-estimate yourself or Lady Marija,” the British Ambassador had countered ruefully. “If you stood for parliament you’d walk into any constituency in the land. As for your charming wife, Lady Marija is the nearest thing the Maltese people have to a princess!”
“Yes, but were not political,” Peter had insisted. “We’re patriotic, obviously and we both understand our duty, and so forth but we aren’t politicians and we aren’t about to start behaving like politicians.”
Oliver Franks was too wise a man to believe that for a moment.
Photographs of Marija Christopher and Jackie Kennedy with the President’s offspring were splashed across every newspaper. The Administration’s publicity machine was churning out stories and by-lines about Jack Kennedy’s “natural affinity” with the hero of the Battle of Malta, and the complimentary asides that Peter had voiced about the US Navy’s part in the latter stages of that engagement had been seized on by every newsman in the country. Both husband and wife had offered humble and moving tributes to the ‘brave American sailors’ who had dived into cold oily waters of the Mediterranean to save badly wounded Talaveras when the old destroyer’s back had broken. After the President and his wife the Christophers were the most famous and recognisable couple in the country at present and it was only to be expected that the Administration would exploit the fact.
Likewise, the fact that every time either Peter or Marija opened their mouths or smiled in public, American hearts melted a little towards the old country seemed to be a fair exchange for whatever credit the Kennedy Administration garnered from the exercise.
“The President invited me to go sailing with him during the conference,” Peter explained. “I said I’d love to, exigencies of the Service permitting.”
Their hosts had provided a plush limousine to carry them from Otis Air National Guard Base to Hyannis Port. The two men stared out at the verdant landscape slipping past the windows, every now and then glimpsing the sea. In this part of New England one was never far from the sea or of reminders from where the majority of its original settlers had hailed. They were being driven east along Falmouth Road and there were road signs pointing to Yarmouth, Barnstable and Chatham.
“I don’t know much about the Summer White House,” Peter admitted.
Oliver Franks chortled.
“As long ago as 1926 Joseph Kennedy, the President’s late father, rented a place in Hyannis port for the summer. In the way of wealthy men from time immemorial, liking what he found he bought the biggest house in the street a couple of years later. These days the family compound comprises three houses set along six acres of seafront overlooking Nantucket Sound. Jack and Bobby Kennedy own the two adjacent properties to the original big house acquired in 1928. Given the wealth of the Kennedy family people are often a little surprised by how unremarkable the three houses are. They’re all white-framed constructions in the clapboard style popular in these parts. The main house has splendid porches, a living, TV, sun room and dining room on the ground floor and a dozen or so bedrooms and suchlike on the first. Old Joe Kennedy installed a movie cinema in the basement, a wine cellar built to resemble the inside of a wooden ship’s hull and a so-called “sipping” room. Basically, the compound must have been a pretty convivial place from which to organise a Presidential campaign back in 1960.”
Peter Christopher was still digesting this when the Ambassador asked him a question that took him completely by surprise.
“What is your personal impression — man to man, I mean — of the President?”
The younger man still had not got used to the idea that people in authority actually gave a damn what he thought about such things, and therefore had no pre-prepared or remotely organised answer poised on the tip of his tongue.
He did not reply for some seconds.
“Honestly, I think he wishes he was still back onboard PT107, sir.”
“What about America First?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never had to make the sort of terrible decisions he has had to take.”
“No, what about taking on the whole Red Navy single handed?”
Peter felt the heat flush his face.
“That was different, sir.”
“How so?”
“I was just doing my duty, sir.”
“Okay, how do you think President Kennedy feels about letting us down in the Persian Gulf?”
“Isn’t it the first duty of a politician in a democracy to get himself elected, sir?”
Oliver Franks smiled.
“I thought you said you weren’t a politician, Sir Peter?”
The younger man brushed this aside.
“Once you get used to the idea that one has a duty to one’s people, Queen or whatever, I suppose that makes the hard decisions easier. I think he knows that we’re natural allies. He probably feels awful about standing aside in the Gulf but honestly, if he wants to be President in November what is the man supposed to do, sir?”