Nobody in Edward Heath’s administration walked through the doors of Government House with anything other than a very, very heavy heart. They were living through terrible times and they owed it to the survivors, and to the memory of the dead millions to do their best for their country.
There was a loud scraping of chairs on the polished oaken floor.
“Good morning,” the Prime Minister boomed in the voice he’d customarily reserved for those days when he stood at the helm of his racing yacht at Cowes, or for when he was conducting a choir or orchestra. Since last year he’d had no opportunity to indulge either of his life’s passions — music or yachting — outside of politics. Heavy sat the cloak of leadership but cometh the hour, cometh the man. It did not matter that but for the random, wholesale murder of the twenty or more men ahead of him in the succession to the leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party, that he would never have risen to lead his people in such a time of trial. He’d learned as a young man that life was what one made of it and fate was a cruel mistress. He’d joined the Army as a private soldier in 1940, risen to Lieutenant-Colonel by its end. In the intervening five years he’d led men in battle, witnessed the true cost of war in the trail of shattered bodies, hopes and lives it left in its wake. The experience had steeled him for the challenges lay ahead. Last November in the week after Lucifer’s hammer had fallen the survivors had demanded a figurehead around whom they might cluster about for safety, and he’d been it. He’d seized the moment.
Henry Tomlinson followed the Prime Minister down the side of the long, rectangular table in the middle of what had once been the Machiavellian newspaper robber baron’s banqueting hall. The Prime Minister took the middle chair on the long side of the table with the imposing brick hearth at his back and waved for his colleagues to sit down. The Cabinet Secretary drew up a chair to his master’s right hand, opened his big notebook and looked up, his eye roving around the faces of the members of Edward Heath’s War Cabinet. The three service chiefs sat directly across the table from the Prime Minister, while the political members of the group flanked him. Tom Harding-Grayson had diplomatically withdrawn to the left hand end of the Cabinet Table, where he too, like Henry Tomlinson, had opened a large, well-thumbed hardback notebook.
“Thank you all for attending this meeting at such short notice,” Edward Heath said, bringing the conference to order. He turned to his right, looking beyond his Cabinet Secretary to where Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, Earl of Home had settled in a cloud of regal dignity. He’d be the calm, detached voice of reason no matter how sorely today’s discussion tested his personal equilibrium. Douglas-Home had been the only other viable candidate for Prime Minister in the week after the cataclysm fell. He’d been too slow recovering from the shock of the catastrophe — he’d never really recovered, in fact — and Edward Heath had snatched up the reins of power. “Particularly you, Alec,” a respectful nod to the elder statesman, “and to you, Jim,” he added, looking to his left where a brooding man in his forties shrugged acknowledgement, “as you had the farthest to travel.”
“I serve at your pleasure, Prime Minister,” the other man replied, a flicker of mischief in his eyes for they both knew he’d initially owed his elevated place in this august company to the absolute necessity of maintaining the fiction of political unity to the outside world.
Edward Heath guffawed. He still hadn’t decided if he liked the Right Honourable Leonard James Callaghan, the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Cardiff South East, but he respected him more with every week that passed. He’d offered the rump of the Labour Party — Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition — the Ministry of Defence to reassure those who’d tacitly assumed he planned to be a war monger bent on revenge. He’d subsequently also asked Jim Callaghan to speak for Wales in Cabinet because he’d come to trust his feel for the mood of his people.
The Prime Minister directed his gaze towards the only woman in the room.
“I asked Margaret to join us because, frankly, everything we do, and everything we are going to talk about revolves around supply, and Margaret is achieving the impossible at the moment.”
“You are too kind, Prime Minister,” the Angry Widow protested, leaning forward in her chair to flash her increasingly famous smile at her leader. “One is simply doing the best one can in a difficult situation.”
Edward Heath guffawed, again. He was distracted momentarily by the oddity of Margaret Hilda Thatcher electing to seat herself to Jim Callaghan’s left, rather than to Alec Douglas-Home’s right. Most curious…
Jim Callaghan cleared his throat.
“Prime Minister,” he began, lugubriously for one of his relatively tender years. He was only forty-one but was one of those men who always looked five to ten years older than their age. “The Chiefs of Staff,” a look at the three men in uniform across the table, “take the view that given that the first item on the agenda is Operation Manna that, with your permission Vice-Admiral Christopher should join us directly.”
Edward Heath sobered. He’d taken it as read that the recently returned Commander of the British Pacific Fleet would attend the War Cabinet and couldn’t for the life of him comprehend why the man wasn’t already in the room. Despite his own extensive military experience he sometimes found the workings of the minds of senior officers baffling. He masked his irritation.
“I agree. Would you ask him to join us please.”
The stocky, pugnacious man sitting at Alec Douglas-Home’s right elbow grunted his impatience. Iain Norman Macleod, the Chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party and Minister without Portfolio in the United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration stirred impatiently. Edward Heath could never tell whether his colleague’s restlessness was from the pain of an old war wound, or the tedious first outward manifestation of some new intellectual or doctrinal outpouring.
“Yes, Iain?” He inquired, urbanely.
“Does Supply get a vote in our deliberations today, Prime Minister?”
Edward Heath understood that Macleod’s question was political, not tactical. Did the Angry Widow’s inclusion at the top table infer that a permanent promotion was in the offing? Or was it merely an opportunistic manoeuvre to keep her in line?
“The War Cabinet’s role is to inform my future submissions to the full Cabinet, Iain. Margaret will have her right to vote at that forum. As will all our colleagues at the next scheduled meeting of the full Cabinet.”
Edward Heath’s patience was forced. It was almost as if until that moment he’d not really accepted the enormity of the actions he’d been contemplating the last few weeks. Today marked a jumping off point on a road upon which if he hesitated, or took a single ill-considered step all would be lost. He was a man used to keeping his own counsel, a very private man for somebody who’d adopted a career in politics, and his sense of personal honour and duty was momentarily suffocating as the silence around him deepened when Vice-Admiral Julian Wemyss Christopher was ushered into the Situation Room.