It was a funny old World.
As she stood at the lectern on the stage of Cheltenham Town Hall awaiting the countdown signal of the BBC floor manager her thoughts slowly clarified. She was nervous. That was natural, she’d never been an orator of the ilk of Iain Macleod, and her objectives had never been as coherently mapped, nor as cogently catalogued as those of her predecessor. She had a tendency to hector and she didn’t have the natural comedic timing to deliver memorable one-liners. But she had other strengths and hopefully, tonight they would come to her rescue.
Behind her on the platform sat James Callaghan, the First Sea Lord, Peter Thorneycroft, Airey Neave and a slew of junior ministers drawn almost equally from the two major parties in the uneasy coalition that was the National Unity Administration. It was a rag tag, shell-shocked cast of characters who desperately wanted to hear a message of hope. Ted Heath had understood as much and the Angry Widow liked to think that was why he’d advanced her so quickly to such a prominent post in his last Cabinet. She owed it to his memory and to the memories of all the other unnamed millions who’d been consumed by this nightmare of war and the daily struggle for survival in its aftermath, to honour the lost lives not with words but with deeds.
Five! Four! Three! Two! One!
“Good evening. It is my sad first duty as Prime Minister of our great country to confirm the tragic death of the Right Honourable Edward Heath, the man who guided us out of the slough of despond after the October War. Ted Heath died by the hand of a deranged assassin at the very moment he had secured a new peace,” her voice quivered with emotion and for a horrible moment she was afraid she’d gag on the words, “and opened up the possibility of a new World order in which famine and pestilence might soon be banished from out sorely pressed land.”
She was gripping the lectern so tightly that her hands were trembling with cramp. She forced herself to relax.
“The woman who shot the Prime Minister was a Mrs Edna Maria Zabriski, the mother of one of the American airman taken prisoner after the terror raid on Malta last week. The woman was employed by the White House as a secretary. It seems her former husband was killed in the October War and when she heard that her only son was ‘missing in action’, and that his aircraft was presumed to have been shot down by RAF fighters, she snapped. We have no reason whatsoever to question President Kennedy’s assertion that this woman was acting alone.”
Margaret Thatcher heard the tenor of her soprano voice strengthen and begin to ring with assurance the longer she talked. Before her in the body of the hall, packed with workers bussed in from the Government compound and local people who had apparently, queued for several hours in the cold, the silence was neutral without being hostile.
It was a listening silence.
This was her moment.
The make or break moment of her life.
“Ted Heath,” she went on, “believed passionately that it was not enough just to survive. He had a dream for this country that I share. The old World is gone. Yes, we should mourn what has been lost and all the ones we loved who are gone forever. No, we should never give in. No, we should never accept second best. I say to you that surviving is not enough; that we owe it to our children to be worthy of aspiring to something more.”
There was a muttering in the hall.
“I solemnly promise you with every fibre of my being that I will never stop fighting for a better world for all our children!”
Author’s End Note
Thank you again for reading Timeline 10/27/62 — Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules. I hope you enjoyed it — or if you didn’t, sorry — but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilisation depends on people like you.
The sequel to The Pillars of Hercules, Timeline 10/27/62 — Book 4: Red Dawn will be available in May 2015.
These novels are set in the Timeline 10/27/62 World. Reader feedback has been most instructive, not to say very helpful, in the development of future novels and narrative arcs in this project.
The publication of The Pillars of Hercules sees the first three books of the Main Series of Timeline 10/27/62 available.
During 2015 four more full-length instalments will be added to the saga. Books 4 and 5 of the Main Series will carry forward the central spine of the narrative, while a new thread, titled Timeline 10/27/62 — USA will focus exclusively on what happened in America after the October War of 1962 and cover the period approximately up to the beginning of Book 5 (The Burning Time) of the Main Series.
By the beginning of 2016 the books in the Timeline 10/27/62 World will be:
Timeline 10/27/62 — Main Series
Book 1: Operation Anadyr
Book 2: Love is Strange
Book 3: The Pillars of Hercules
Book 4: Red Dawn (Available 1st May 2015)
Book 5: The Burning Time (Available 1st July 2015)
Timeline 10/27/62 — USA
Book 1: Aftermath (Available 27th October 2015)
Book 2: California Dreaming (Available 27th October 2015)
For details of my other books and forthcoming publications please check out www.jamesphilip.co.uk.