“Nobody will say what’s actually going on?” Pat Harding-Grayson put to her husband in a conspiratorial whisper.
“That’s because the commander of the US Navy squadron that was supposed to be ‘guarding’ the Maltese Archipelago decided to rendezvous with the larger American force approaching Malta,” the Foreign Secretary hissed, “without first informing Admiral Christopher when the aforementioned larger American force was due to arrive in the Central Mediterranean. On the basis of existing intelligence it seems that the C-in-C decided to not to turn the sudden departure of Admiral Detweiller’s four big modern guided missile destroyers into a diplomatic incident. Consequently, when the smelly stuff hit the fan around mid-day yesterday all he had to hand was an under-gunned frigate, HMS Yarmouth, and HMS Talavera, a 1945-war vintage destroyer only recently out of dockyard hands. Apparently, both ships captains were ordered by Admiral Christopher to quote ‘get out to sea’ but in the event took it upon themselves to directly engage a hugely superior enemy fleet. In so doing they cut short the enemy bombardment of Malta and contrived to so badly damage two large enemy warships that they were sitting ducks by the time the Yanks belatedly came to the rescue.”
It was like something straight out of the pages of Boys’ Own!
Pat Harding-Grayson realised that she had missed something very important.
“What happened to the RAF while all this was happening?”
“All available strike aircraft had previously been sent to attack a suspected invasion convoy. Early indications are that this air strike, backed up by a later attack by an American nuclear submarine largely destroyed this enemy force.”
“Oh. So we’ve beaten off the invasion?”
“Yes, but at a very high cost. Some reports say that as many as two thousand Soviet paratroopers were dropped on key installations across the archipelago and that isolated fighting is still going on.”
Pat scowled at her husband.
“There have been very heavy casualties, particularly amongst the civilian population,” he responded, unable to get past his customary reticence even though he made a point of not keeping secrets from his wife. “Especially, in Mdina. It is feared that Sir Julian Christopher is among the dead.”
This struck Pat Harding-Grayson like a slap in the face.
“God! No!”
While a lot of people at the heart of government suspected that Margaret Thatcher and the famous ‘Fighting Admiral’ were more than just ‘friends’; the number of people who actually knew of their betrothal could be counted on the fingers of one hand; Sir Julian’s prospective best man, Captain Nicholas Davey, currently off Cyprus in command of the 23rd Support Flotilla, Pat herself, and the couple themselves. A formal announcement had been tentatively planned once Operation Grantham, the massive amphibious assault to expel the Red Dawn horde from the island of Cyprus had come to a successful conclusion but the couple had not planned to marry until Sir Julian’s tenure in command at Malta concluded sometime in the next eighteen months.
The great Anglo-American fleet currently gathered in the Eastern Mediterranean poised to fall upon Cyprus would have swatted aside the enemy force that had bombarded Malta; but it had been a thousand miles away and the big guns of two — Red Dawn or Soviet, it mattered not — warships had, virtually unopposed, systematically rained death on the single most strategically important bastion of what remained of the British Empire. In comparison with what had just happened and was continuing to happen across the Maltese Archipelago, the humiliation of Anthony Eden’s Administration over the Suez Debacle in 1956 was as nothing.
And now Margaret Thatcher; widowed in the October War — scarred forever by that loss — had been cruelly robbed of the man who would surely have been her rock in years to come.
The door to the Prime Minister’s office opened and a tall broad figure emerged. Sternly lugubrious at the best of times James Callaghan, the fifty-two year old leader of the Labour and Co-operative Party, Secretary of State for Wales and Margaret Thatcher’s deputy in the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom trudged wearily towards the Harding-Graysons.
“Thank goodness you are here, Pat,” the big man sighed. “Margaret was unspeakably rude to the First Sea Lord earlier; she wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say to her. She was almost as bad with the Chief of the Air Staff. Willie is trying to smooth things over. This is a terrible business but we should be keeping our powder dry for dealing with the Americans not squabbling amongst ourselves.”
Tom Harding-Grayson groaned out aloud.
“We can’t blame the Americans, Jim!” He protested, not troubling to veil his exasperation. “What happened yesterday was a massive failure of intelligence and of political imagination on both sides of the Atlantic!”
“You try telling that to the Prime Minister, Tom. I wish you luck because I’ve been trying to talk some sense into her for the last two hours and all I’ve got for my pains is a splitting headache!”
Pat Harding-Grayson sometimes asked herself why even intelligent men with wide and varied experience of life were often such complete asses?
“Don’t you understand? Margaret was engaged to be married to Julian Christopher,” she whispered angrily. Adding: “You idiots!”
The two men looked at her with momentarily slack jaws.
“Pat, you said nothing?” Her husband blurted, wide-eyed.
“It was supposed to be a secret!”
“Oh, yes, but…”
“She absolutely adored that man!” The Foreign Secretary’s wife hissed in unmitigated exasperation. “She must be distraught…”
“Oh,” her husband muttered. “You never…”
“Of course I didn’t tell you, Tom,” she retorted impatiently. “You’re a politician now. The last thing anybody with any sense does is share their innermost secrets with a politician! And besides, Margaret swore me to secrecy.”
“Oh, fair enough.”
James Callaghan was looking at the husband and wife as if they were lunatics. Tom Harding-Grayson ignored the Deputy Prime Minister’s incredulity.
“Who is in with Margaret at the moment, Jim?”
“Er, Airey and Iain have just gone in.” Weariness fell upon him as he explained. “Iain thinks Margaret might lose the Party over this. Malta, I mean.”
The Foreign Secretary said nothing.
His wife was made of sterner stuff.
Airey was forty-six year old Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, the Minister of Supply and the Prime Minister’s closest friend in politics. Airey Neave was universally recognised as that most rare and precious of things in this post-October War age; a living national treasure. Among his many distinctions Airey Neave had been the first British officer to escape from the infamous German prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV–C, Colditz, and subsequently make a successful ‘home run’ back to the United Kingdom in 1942. A qualified lawyer who spoke fluent German he was the man who had read the indictments to the surviving senior members of the Nazi hierarchy at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal after Second World War. He had been involved with the Special Operations Executive after he returned to the British Isles from Colditz, and retained links with MI6 ever since. Within the Conservative and Unionist Party of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland he had been, as was still, regarded by many as something of a loner, not really a team man and in some respects a political lightweight, but everybody actually in the government knew that he was a key member of the UAUK and had the attentive ear of his protégé, Margaret Hilda Thatcher.