Dominion Read Free

fleshy mouth downturned in an expression of sorrow. For forty years, since he
first came to England from Canada with business scandals hanging over him, Beaverbrook had combined building a newspaper empire with manoeuvring in politics, pushing his causes of free enterprise,
the Empire, and appeasement on the public and politicians. He was trusted by few, elected by none, and after the death of his immediate predecessor, Lloyd George, in 1945, the coalition had made
him Prime Minister.
    Lord Halifax, the Prime Minister who had surrendered after France fell, stood beside Beaverbrook, overtopping him by a foot. Halifax was bald now, his cadaverous face an ashen shadow beneath his
hat, deep-set eyes staring over the crowd with a curious blankness. Beside him stood Beaverbrook’s coalition colleagues: Home Secretary Oswald Mosley, tall and ramrod-straight, India
Secretary Enoch Powell, only forty but seeming far older, black-moustached and darkly saturnine, Viscount Swinton, the Dominions Office Secretary and David’s own minister, tall and
aristocratic, Foreign Secretary Rab Butler with his pouched froggy face, and the Coalition Labour leader Ben Greene, one of the few Labour figures who had admired the Nazis in the 1930s. When
Labour split in 1940 Herbert Morrison had led the Pro-Treaty minority that went into coalition with Halifax; he was one of those politicians for whom ambition was all-consuming. But he had resigned
in 1943; the degree of British support for Germany had become too much for him, as it had for some other politicians such as the Conservative Sam Hoare; all had retreated into private life with
peerages.
    Also standing in their dark coats were representatives of the Dominions; David recognized some of the High Commissioners from work, like the thickset, frowning Vorster of South Africa. Then
behind them came ambassadors representing the other nations who had fought in the Great War: Germany’s Rommel, Mussolini’s son-in-law Ciano, the ambassadors of France and Japan, Joe
Kennedy from America. Russia, though, had no representative; Britain, as Germany’s ally, was still formally at war with the Soviet Union though she had no troops to spare for that giant
meat-grinder, the German–Soviet war, which had gone on, over a 1,200-mile front, for eleven years now.
    A little way off a group of men stood round an outside-broadcast camera, an enormous squat thing trailing thick wires,
BBC
emblazoned on the side. Beside it the heavy form of Richard
Dimbleby could be seen speaking into a microphone, though he was too far off for David to hear anything.
    Sarah shivered, rubbing her gloved hands together. ‘Golly, it’s cold. Poor Dad will feel it standing around waiting for the march past to start.’ She looked at the Cenotaph,
the bare white memorial. ‘God, it’s all so sad.’
    ‘At least we know we’ll never go to war with Germany again,’ Irene said.
    ‘Look, there she is.’ Betty spoke in tones of hushed reverence.
    The Queen had come out of the Home Office. Accompanied by the Queen Mother and her grandmother, old Queen Mary, equerries carrying their wreaths, she took her place in front of the Archbishop.
Her pretty young face was ill suited to her black clothes. This was one of her few public appearances since her father’s death early in the year. David thought she looked tired and afraid.
Her expression reminded him of the late King’s in 1940, when George VI rode down Whitehall in an open carriage beside Adolf Hitler, on the Führer’s state visit after the Berlin
Peace Treaty. David, still convalescing from frostbite caught in Norway, had watched the ceremony on the new television his father had bought, one of the first in the street, when the BBC resumed
broadcasting. Hitler had looked in seventh heaven, beaming, flushed and rosy-cheeked, his dream of an alliance with the Aryan British at last fulfilled. He smiled and waved at the silent crowd, but
the King had sat