“Kicking. Yes, sir.” She tried not to giggle.
The P.M. gave her a stern look. Women! He was not good with women, at least not professionally. Of course, women were to be admired, to be wooed—they were creatures of romance and moonlight and mystery. Then they were to be left in the parlors, the bedrooms, the nurseries—doing God knows what—while the menfolk got down to business over brandy and cigars. He’d had severe doubts about giving women the vote and was not impressed by those who’d made their way into Parliament, particularly that infernal Nancy Astor. However, times had changed. They had indeed changed.
“Mr. Frain tells me that you might be better suited to espionage work.”
What exactly had Frain told him? “Sir?”
“And from what I understand, you have the intelligence and pluck to be a spy—a spook, as they say.”
He chewed on his large Romeo y Julieta cigar impassively for a few moments and gazed out the car window at the countryside rolling by.
“In general, of course, I detest these so-called career women. Didn’t even see why you women wanted the vote! But Clemmie, my daughters, the women of my staff, the women of England—you’ve all shown considerable mettle. Courage under fire. And we can always use someone in MI-Five who’s proven herself.”
She nearly fell over from shock. “Y-yes sir,” was all she could manage.
“Of course,” he continued, “you could still find a nice young man from a good family, settle down, have a few babies. Four, as Clemmie and I had.”
He stubbed out his cigar in the car door’s ashtray, rolled down the window, and threw out the end. “Let there be women!” he declared out the open window, as though for all England to hear. As he cranked the window back up, he gave a heavy sigh of resignation.
Before she could even think of responding, he went straight into dictation.
Chartwell in October was even more beautiful than Maggie had ever imagined it: practically a picture-book illustration of the English countryside. A rose garden with a sundial in the center was still in bloom. Glimpses of burgundy, scarlet, apricot, pink, and yellow petals could be seen in the distance. The lake at the bottom of the hill sparkled in the golden afternoon sunlight.
On the south side of the house was another flower garden surrounded by a brick wall built, Mr. Inces told her proudly, by Mr. Churchill himself. There was “Mary Cot,” a child-sized brick playhouse he erected for his youngest daughter when she was nine. Between the playhouse and the great house was a large orchard of apple trees—Orange Pippin, Worcester Pearmain, and Bramley’s Seedling—heavy with ripe fruit. There was a tennis court for Mrs. Churchill and the children. There was a pond with goldfish and black swans and, of course, the painting studio. Cats, dogs, geese, goats, and even foxes roamed freely.
The house itself was quintessentially English inside and out. “We shape our buildings and our buildings shape us,” Mr. Churchill had once said, and Maggie could now see why. It was perhaps not to Maggie’s taste, but she could see why the P.M. loved it so—the views of the countryside. It had been built in the fifteenth century and was said to have housed King Henry VIII for a time. Inside was a crest with the Churchill family’s coat of arms and Spanish motto: Fiel Pero Desdichado—Faithful but Unfortunate.
The house’s interior reflected two distinct tastes in decorating: Mrs. Churchill’s was elegant, while Mr. Churchill’s was surprisingly flashy. Since Maggie had seen only their relatively austere quarters in the Annexe, she was amazed to see so many of Mr. Churchill’s personal treasures: an ornate Fabergé cigar box; engraved plates of gold and silver; a gold-headed walking stick engraved by King Edward VII, “to my youngest Minister”; and Mr. Churchill’s firearms from the Great War.
She and John sat next to each other in the back of the P.M.’s study as he stood and spoke from his high Disraeli-style desk with a slanting top into the large microphone that would broadcast his speech across all England.
“It is quite true that I have seen many painful scenes of havoc, and of fine buildings and acres of cottage homes blasted into rubble heaps of ruin,” the P.M. said.
“Notice how he left out Saint Paul’s,” John whispered to Maggie. “We wouldn’t want to scare people.”
“The government? Keep information from citizens during wartime?” Maggie whispered back behind an upheld hand. She rolled her eyes. “Perish the thought.”
“… The British nation is stirred and moved as it never has been at any time in its long, eventful, famous history, and it is no hackneyed trope of speech to say that they mean to conquer or to die.”