Painting at the lakeside, Churchill wore the zippered, blue siren suit, which he had designed for himself during the war to allow him to leap from nude to some presentable garb in the case of an air raid or a sudden emergency meeting in the middle of the night. On most occasions, cabinet ministers and generals had found the prime minister in his siren suit when they met with him in the underground war room.
He was proud of his fashion statement, which he called his “rompers,” although Clementine had a contrary view. His recollection of her critique always brought a smile to his face.
Once, he had called her from the war room: “Clemmie,” he excitedly exclaimed, “how long do you think it took me to get dressed for my meeting with Pug?”
Harold “Pug” Ismay was a General in charge of military strategy.
“At least fifteen minutes,” was Clementine’s guess, “from taking off your pajamas to getting into your suit.”
“Thirty-two seconds — I timed it with my new siren outfit,” Churchill boasted.
“But, Winston, you look so ridiculous in it — like a fat penguin who couldn’t fit into his usual dinner clothes.”
Churchill observed the sun as it began to hide itself in a nest of billowy clouds framed by a blue sky. He daubed some azure tincture from the palette and concentrated on the landscape, taking his mind further and further from the black dog that had plagued him.
Painting, he had learned, offered a different kind of challenge, one that used a different part of his mind. He likened it to a farmer who rotated the fields for the planting of his crops. Painting rested that part of the brain he used in writing by employing another part. While using his hands to paint, his subconscious was working on a speech or chapter he was writing. He knew that while he was creating with his paints, the writing side of his mind was percolating.
He had his daughter Sarah to thank for his taking up painting. Years ago, just after Gallipoli and his being fired as the youngest First Lord of the Admiralty, he had thrashed around for something to keep his mind off his terrible disgrace. The family had gone to the South of France. On the beach, he had spied Sarah’s little coloring box. She gave him his first lessons, for which he was eternally grateful.
But painting was only one of his exercises in extending his creative brainpower. At Chartwell, he laid long walls of bricks and would often find other chores to use his hands, especially when his brain needed relief from his intense long hours of concentrating on his creative work. But his most ardent secret personal weapon was his discovery of the benefits of midday napping.
After a short doze in the mid-afternoon, his eyes covered by a black-silk band, he would awake completely refreshed. He likened it to erasing the blackboard in the classroom at Harrow. It was one thing to use the eraser and wipe away what you had written and try to write again, but after sleep, it was as if the blackboard had been washed down clean. Thus, he had discovered, his mind scrubbed clean after a nap. Previous attempts were erased, and he could start afresh. He had kept to this schedule religiously every day of his adult life.
Hours later, he heard Sarah’s voice, “Father, your guests have arrived.”
His daughter Sarah wore white slacks that clung neatly to her figure. Her chartreuse blouse was a striking contrast to her chestnut hair. Sarah was a part-time actress in her early thirties. She had inherited her father’s flair for the dramatic — both in her acting and painting, where she relished the vibrant tones that her father liked also.
His children were all different: Randolph was a journalist like his father had been; Diana and Mary, like their mother, had married politicians; and Sarah had inherited her father’s artistic side. He was grateful for her comforting presence.
Clementine had urged her husband to accept Alex’s offer of a villa. She thought the sun and painting might break through and wash away his melancholy. When Churchill had agreed, she had declined to accompany him, sending Sarah in her place to act as hostess. Although she had begged off on the grounds that there were still moving chores at Number 10, Churchill suspected that, she, too, needed some time alone.
Dear Clemmie, he thought, missing her terribly.
She had invested her entire life in his career. His pain was her pain, and the loss of the Prime Minister’s office had hit her equally as hard, perhaps harder.
Sarah took her father’s hand and gently guided him up the slight slope back to the villa. These days, the media characterized him as an old man past his prime, which galled him, but her father didn’t look old to Sarah. Sure, his gait may have been a bit shambling and, at times, unsteady. But the pink face was still that of a cherub, with blue eyes that could still twinkle merrily. She adored him.
The villa commanded the top of the hill, yet its stark fascist architecture clashed with the soft curves of the Mediterranean hills and the Nile blue of Como’s waters, as if a modern rail station had been erected in marble and then nailed to the top of the hill. Churchill likened it to an alien invader stamping its tyranny on an inhospitable landscape. The villa had once been the headquarters of the British Army in Italy. Before that, it was rumored to be a place where rich playboys took their girlfriends. To know that his large bed had been put to good use amused Churchill.
At the villa, Sarah took command of the military guests and supervised the introductions.
“I’m Derek Luddington, Mr. Churchill,” the officer intoned, shaking hands with Churchill.
Luddington was wearing the tan uniform of the British Army. He was coatless in the hot sun, but his shirt was topped with the red epaulets of a Brigadier General. He was slender and of medium height with a neatly trimmed brown moustache.
He introduced his aide, “And this is Major Cope.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Churchill.”
Churchill nodded. Cope was a small, dapper man with black hair slicked into two matching halves.
“General,” boomed Churchill, “I hope you will convey to Field Marshall Alexander my thanks for arranging this vacation idyll.”
“Father,” interrupted Sarah, “look what the General has brought you, compliments of Sir Alexander. Some smoked salmon and a bottle of champagne.”
Churchill observed that the champagne was not Pol Roger, his favorite, but Veuve Clicquot. He silently admonished Alex, thinking he would have to make do. The gift was hardly mouthwash and would serve well for lunch.
Sarah offered drinks, and the men both ordered gin and tonics. She gave her father his usual brandy and poured herself a healthy straight scotch.
He knew, of course, the purpose of the visit. Churchill’s views had weight in the general’s circles. He was an avowed Churchill believer and a good and loyal friend. He had been heartbroken at Churchill’s defeat.
For Harold Alexander, only Churchill understood the big picture, and these men were part of the periodic assessment of his friend’s insight into the fast-moving events of the postwar era.
They took their seats in the white metal chairs around a circular metal table on the veranda under a yellow umbrella that advertised Martini & Rossi, the Italian vermouth.
The conversation mostly dwelled on the ending of the war in Japan and the ceremonies of surrender to the Americans and British on the battleship Missouri. Churchill remarked how gallant and fitting for MacArthur to let the frail and haggard General Wainwright, who had been imprisoned by the Japanese on the Philippines, receive the sword from the Japanese.
“It wouldn’t have happened so quickly without the atomic bomb, would it?” offered Luddington.
“Truman showed some spine on that,” Churchill muttered. “I thought he might be dissuaded by those lily-livered intellectuals around him.”