A chill wind whipped at the Secretary’s coat, while a blast of sea air caught him square in the face. Blinking and spluttering, he staggered back from the cliff’s edge, doubling over in the process.
“Sir!” shouted his aide-de-camp, a bright-eyed and much too bushy-tailed fellow from Oxfordshire, “are you alright? Shall I-”
“I am fine,” snapped the Secretary of State for Public Works, drawing himself back up to his full height, “take your hands off of me.”
“Of course, sir. Apologies, sir.”
John busied himself with adjusting his coat as his aide returned to a more respectful distance behind him. Satisfied with his appearance once more, he lifted his binoculars back to his eyes.
“I heard you’d come, Boney!” came an upbeat voice behind him, “can’t say I blame you.”
Fuller sighed, and spoke without turning around. “Good morning, Oliver.”
The Munitions Secretary sidled up alongside him and gave him a tip of his hat. “Not sure it is such a good morning, you know.”
“Quite,” said Fuller simply, and returned to his binoculars.
“What time is she due?”
“Due at Dover Terminal at 0715, she’ll come into view in about twelve minutes,” Fuller replied, still scanning the horizon.
“Do we know what’s hauling her?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m a bit of a railway buff, old man.”
“Oh. One of Bulleid’s spamcans, I should think. I hope you brought your notebook.”
Stanley joshingly patted his top pocket. “I daresay I won’t get a good view of the footplate from here. I’ll leave you to it, Boney.”
“Cheerio,” Fuller said flatly, but Stanley had already turned back to say something.
“I know this must be a difficult day for you, by the by. I - we - want you to know we think it’s jolly gallant of you come down and oversee it yourself.”
Fuller said nothing, and Stanley blustered his way back to his car, gesturing for John’s aide to follow him and give the Secretary some peace, which he did after a nod from Fuller.
It was a difficult day for John, truth be told. The country had known plenty of difficult days since last year, but none had taken a personal toll on Fuller like this one. There was a terrible sense of avoidable waste to the whole affair.
Could the French be blamed? Fuller closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had stood on French soil. Well, not the last time anymore - the second last. It was nineteen-nineteen. The advance into Germany, the roar of the tanks, the screams of the men under their tracks. And the vengeful bloodlust in the eyes of the poilus. Yes, the French had been bled white by the last war. They got more than their pound of flesh afterwards. But once the smoke had cleared, the Kaiser had fled (Fuller always felt he should have got the noose, not exile) and new men - ‘social democrats’ - negotiated Germany’s surrender. The reparations regime had been harsh but fair. The smashed German Army was almost completely disarmed.
If only the fire which fueled Clemenceau’s righteous anger still blazed in Paris. Instead, the old man had left office very soon after the war, and in his place had stood a decade of pygmies. When Petain had saved his country - for the second time - in back in thirty-one, few had wept for the socialist parties banned, the former premiers exiled, or even for the murdered strikers. Germany’s fall to Spartacism had horrified the world to the point that decent people everywhere accepted absolutely anything that could be done to avoid red banners on the Eiffel Tower or Palace of Westminster.
The Pact of Steel? More like the Limp-wristed Handshake of Plywood. Fuller had been present for the Calais talks, and at the signing of the Treaty of Caen. Even there, some had insisted Luxemburg and Liebknecht posed no threat. They talked of global revolution, yes, but never of ‘exporting’ it. But their deaths had ended any such talk. The new men and women at the top of the Social Democracy of Germany might still write pamphlets about workers’ liberation, but their political goals had pivoted toward expansion in a manner all too familiar - and thoroughly Teutonic.
But more worrying about the Calais talks had been the stark contrast between the French and British delegations. England had sent young, energised men, the only sign of frailty being occasional slight limps from the trenches. Paris, on the other hand, was represented by men with white hair or none at all, all of them holding ranks they had held on the Marne. While Petain was better than Blum, his was not a government as dynamic as that which sat in London. Far from it.
In the aftermath of the Great War and the Spartacist rising, the decision to withdraw from Germany in 1924 had destroyed the Liberals. “To abandon Russia is one thing, but to surrender the land of Bach and Frederick the Great to Bolshevism is unconscionable,” Churchill had thundered. The Conservatives were ready to take their place (though not quite so ready to re-invade the Rhineland), and with the arrest of Macdonald, Clynes and the rest of them, the way seemed clear. The rising on the Clyde had seen Fuller earn a ‘peacetime’ promotion commanding armoured cars with devastating effect, but he’d found his efforts to form an experimental mechanised units rebuffed by an armed forces establishment no better then than the French one was now.
Unopposed rule was not good for the Conservative Party, and nor was the fall of Budapest in 1929. Coming as it did shortly after the stock market crash, it sent shockwaves through Europe as talk of a ‘domino effect’ created images of an increasingly red continent. Baldwin had muddled along until thirty-two, and then it had all happened very quickly. His would-be successors had squabbled for his crown, damaged one another roughly equally, and before anyone knew what had happened, the government had fallen.
And then Sir Oswald had come along with his New Party, Lloyd George had thought they might be worth listening to, and the voters evidently agreed. The hastily-arranged coalition had been given an enormous electoral endorsement (thanks in no small part to the news of Prague’s declaration of a workers’ republic the week of polling day) and Fuller had been surprised to receive a summons to the Ministry of War. Yes, his plans had been revisited, and would he mind coming out of retirement? The Prime Minister himself came to visit on numerous occasions, and by thirty-six Britain was leading the world in mechanised ground forces, while Whittle would soon stun observers with his newest prototypes for the RAF.
He had been only too happy to move on. When the PM ‘suggested’ that there were younger, hungrier men ready to lead the Royal Mechanised Force, the sideways move into a ministerial position was exactly what Fuller wanted. The changes to electoral law meant the farce of a by-election was avoided, with Fuller simply stepping in when one of Mosley’s allies moved into the House of Peers. The new Public Works department required a man of military experience and, of course, a man of Mosley’s favourite word: innovationism.
The Severn Barrage. The Highland Dams. Electrifying England with pylons. The New Party had achieved so much, and Fuller had been privileged to be at the heart of all of it. He was no architect, engineer or even designer - but he had once been called ‘the finest organiser in the land’, and Mosley was adamant his military vision would be perfect for the role. Never one to be falsely modest, John had to agree with him. It had been exhilarating to work with experts in their fields and simply get things done. A sea wind blasted him in the face, and as he regained his composure, his eyes came to rest - where else? - on his finest work.
The Channel Bridge was thirty miles of unbroken steel, brick and determination. An heroic achievement of industry and design, its completion had been marked by celebrations unseen since the King’s coronation. Four tracks, two in each direction, ran in an almost perfect straight line, allowing for maximum speed (the New Line, capital N, would link the bridge to London in such a way that London to Paris would be possible in three and a half hours). Its towers were things of great beauty, each one fashioned in the latest art deco styles and bearing high-minded quotes in Latin. Its suspenders were the latest in Anglo-French technology, and the distinctive livery its passenger services ran in earned them the (soon official) nickname of the Blue Arrow.
But so much more than a simple piece of infrastructure, it stood as a monument to Anglo-French co-operation, and even greater than that, a symbol of innovationism and what the Spartacists derided as ‘the imperial capitalist system’. A link between two great powers, forged from steel and ferrying commerce, industry, culture and people at lightning speeds between the two greatest cities in the world. On a strategic level, it was also a prominent boon to British mobilisation, dramatically increasing the ease of bringing troops to the hypothetical front in France. The Spartacists were bowed - the Luxembourg Crisis of thirty-eight ended with Strasser returning to Berlin with his tail between his legs. Petain was furiously trying to modernise and expand the French army, and making good progress. Time was at last on the side of righteousness.
But time, like luck, is a finite resource. In October of thirty-nine, a fermented general strike in Wallonia had put Europe on high alert. In the Ministry of War, Churchill had darkly muttered that it was “time to put the lights out again”, and by the end of the month, reserves had been called up in France, Britain, Germany, and the Low Countries. A harsh winter had forced political leaders to listen to their military counterparts and wait for campaign season, but war had nonetheless been formally declared on 3rd December after two German patrol boats had been sunk for breaching the Channel Exclusion Zone. Fuller had known then that Britain was not quite ready.
In spring, the red panzers had rolled into Alsace and Lorraine. The First and Eighth Armies had found their flanks breached by fleeing Frenchmen. At Dinant, at the 1st Mechanised Division had proven its worth and then some. But every time it punched a hole in the Spartacist lines, it had been forced to withdraw within thirty-six hours.
The Long Retreat was a bloody one, made worse by harrying from the Soviet air force. Fuller, during a visit to the front on which he had insisted, nearly lost an arm thanks to a strafing run. The RAF had the best aircraft in the world, no question. But the Red Air Force had the most aircraft in the world.
Having decisively advanced beyond the border by May, the German ‘Menschlichewelle’ long front had encircled Paris by September, and this time a siege was not an option. Predictably, a new ‘Commune of Paris’ rose bang on schedule, and the military resources expended putting it down metaphorically opened the gates to the now-multinational socialist force. Brutal, hand-to-hand fighting saw the destruction of Notre Dame and the mutilation of the Eiffel Tower, while British troops desperately held on, in no small irony, to the Somme front.
A distant whistle brought Fuller back to reality. Checking his watch, he realised the train was ahead of schedule. Out on the bridge, the various engineering detachments scrambled to clear the tracks as the sound of steam locomotion grew louder. It sounded distinctive, and Fuller soon saw why - not one but two Battle-class locos were loudly straining at the head of what appeared to be a train of two-dozen carriages. Fuller’s heart momentarily sank when he saw no flatbed trucks at the back of the train, but his hopes of any of his beloved tanks or carriers making their way back from France had ended with the news from outside Calais the night before. The carriages were packed, with men leaning out of the windows and many sitting or standing on top of them.
Fuller took another look at the locos. Yes, they were Battle-classes - Cambrai was in front, Arras behind, and both were working exceptionally hard. Swinging the binoculars back to the bridge, Fuller saw the engineering teams had resumed their work, and a look at his watch made him grateful that the train had arrived early. The RAF would be here soon.
There was no other way. Petain had not been seen in three days, and rumour had it he was dead by his own hand. The French front had completely collapsed, with no fewer than four colonels claiming to now be in full command of the army and of the nation. Withdrawal had been the only choice, and Fuller had enthusiastically agreed. Only at the end of the emergency session of cabinet had Mosley taken him to one side and pointed out what would be necessary.
A distant ‘crump’ sound told him it had already begun, though distance and fog left him without confirmation. The engineers had piled into a single carriage behind a tank engine and it had begun to hurry them back to Dover. Fuller could just about see the wires around the closest tower.
He pulled out his watch again. According to his calculations - for they were his, as who else could be trusted to get this right? - about sixty seconds remained. With the engineers gone, the stretch of bridge visible looked peaceful, though the suspension cables had begun to shake in a manner that betrayed what had begun at the French end.
Thirty seconds. The watch’s ticking seemed suddenly very loud, and Fuller steeled himself.
Ten seconds. On cue, two Whittles came into view, on the edge of Fuller’s vision.
Five seconds. The drone of Wellington engines could now be heard.
The tower split into three parts, as had been planned for. Two miles away and just in sight, the same occurred. Cables fell, and the sections they supported began to sag. The Wellingtons were in position, and there was a familiar whistling sound. There was a flash, then a bang, and then everything was falling, it was falling, falling, falling, it was falling, falling-
John turned away.
To his surprise, a car had pulled up behind him. Expecting Oliver, he closed his eyes for a moment, but opened them again when he heard a voice.
“Morning, Boney.”
“Prime Minister,” John said, quiet but surprised.
“Do get in,” Mosley said, clipped but not unkind. Fuller clambered into the car and shook Mosley’s offered hand.
“I did not realise you’d be here, sir.”
“Nor did I, until about three hours ago. Decided it wasn’t right for you to see this through on your own. Thought about coming and standing next to you, actually. But that’s a bit theatrical, no?”
“I would not have minded, sir.”
Mosley did not seem to hear. “Awfully brave of you to see this through, Boney. I know it’s not bloodshed, but no-one knows better than me what it’s like to put life and soul into steel and concrete.”
“I will always serve my country, Prime Minister.”
“There is no doubt of that. And the chaps that came back on the last trains - they’ve been running all night, you see - will be vital in what’s to come.”
“‘What’s to come’, sir?”
Mosley frowned. “You didn’t think we were going to negotiate, did you? Goodness, Boney. I’m disappointed.”
“I was unsure how our position allowed for anything else, sir,” John said, looking at the floor.
“Our position is stronger than they realise. We’ve got the Empire, and I’d back a single sepoy against a hundred socialists any day. And the news from America is interesting - I’m to speak with Tugwell this evening. I think he’ll be rather more dynamic than his predecessor.”
‘Dynamic’ was another of the PM’s favourite words. Fuller simply nodded and looked out of the window. Smoke was now rising high into the sky. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll build another, you know, Boney,” Mosley said, signalling to his driver to start the car, “and do you know what?”
“Sir?”
“We’ll call it the Victory Bridge.”
“Sir!” shouted his aide-de-camp, a bright-eyed and much too bushy-tailed fellow from Oxfordshire, “are you alright? Shall I-”
“I am fine,” snapped the Secretary of State for Public Works, drawing himself back up to his full height, “take your hands off of me.”
“Of course, sir. Apologies, sir.”
John busied himself with adjusting his coat as his aide returned to a more respectful distance behind him. Satisfied with his appearance once more, he lifted his binoculars back to his eyes.
“I heard you’d come, Boney!” came an upbeat voice behind him, “can’t say I blame you.”
Fuller sighed, and spoke without turning around. “Good morning, Oliver.”
The Munitions Secretary sidled up alongside him and gave him a tip of his hat. “Not sure it is such a good morning, you know.”
“Quite,” said Fuller simply, and returned to his binoculars.
“What time is she due?”
“Due at Dover Terminal at 0715, she’ll come into view in about twelve minutes,” Fuller replied, still scanning the horizon.
“Do we know what’s hauling her?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m a bit of a railway buff, old man.”
“Oh. One of Bulleid’s spamcans, I should think. I hope you brought your notebook.”
Stanley joshingly patted his top pocket. “I daresay I won’t get a good view of the footplate from here. I’ll leave you to it, Boney.”
“Cheerio,” Fuller said flatly, but Stanley had already turned back to say something.
“I know this must be a difficult day for you, by the by. I - we - want you to know we think it’s jolly gallant of you come down and oversee it yourself.”
Fuller said nothing, and Stanley blustered his way back to his car, gesturing for John’s aide to follow him and give the Secretary some peace, which he did after a nod from Fuller.
It was a difficult day for John, truth be told. The country had known plenty of difficult days since last year, but none had taken a personal toll on Fuller like this one. There was a terrible sense of avoidable waste to the whole affair.
Could the French be blamed? Fuller closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had stood on French soil. Well, not the last time anymore - the second last. It was nineteen-nineteen. The advance into Germany, the roar of the tanks, the screams of the men under their tracks. And the vengeful bloodlust in the eyes of the poilus. Yes, the French had been bled white by the last war. They got more than their pound of flesh afterwards. But once the smoke had cleared, the Kaiser had fled (Fuller always felt he should have got the noose, not exile) and new men - ‘social democrats’ - negotiated Germany’s surrender. The reparations regime had been harsh but fair. The smashed German Army was almost completely disarmed.
If only the fire which fueled Clemenceau’s righteous anger still blazed in Paris. Instead, the old man had left office very soon after the war, and in his place had stood a decade of pygmies. When Petain had saved his country - for the second time - in back in thirty-one, few had wept for the socialist parties banned, the former premiers exiled, or even for the murdered strikers. Germany’s fall to Spartacism had horrified the world to the point that decent people everywhere accepted absolutely anything that could be done to avoid red banners on the Eiffel Tower or Palace of Westminster.
The Pact of Steel? More like the Limp-wristed Handshake of Plywood. Fuller had been present for the Calais talks, and at the signing of the Treaty of Caen. Even there, some had insisted Luxemburg and Liebknecht posed no threat. They talked of global revolution, yes, but never of ‘exporting’ it. But their deaths had ended any such talk. The new men and women at the top of the Social Democracy of Germany might still write pamphlets about workers’ liberation, but their political goals had pivoted toward expansion in a manner all too familiar - and thoroughly Teutonic.
But more worrying about the Calais talks had been the stark contrast between the French and British delegations. England had sent young, energised men, the only sign of frailty being occasional slight limps from the trenches. Paris, on the other hand, was represented by men with white hair or none at all, all of them holding ranks they had held on the Marne. While Petain was better than Blum, his was not a government as dynamic as that which sat in London. Far from it.
In the aftermath of the Great War and the Spartacist rising, the decision to withdraw from Germany in 1924 had destroyed the Liberals. “To abandon Russia is one thing, but to surrender the land of Bach and Frederick the Great to Bolshevism is unconscionable,” Churchill had thundered. The Conservatives were ready to take their place (though not quite so ready to re-invade the Rhineland), and with the arrest of Macdonald, Clynes and the rest of them, the way seemed clear. The rising on the Clyde had seen Fuller earn a ‘peacetime’ promotion commanding armoured cars with devastating effect, but he’d found his efforts to form an experimental mechanised units rebuffed by an armed forces establishment no better then than the French one was now.
Unopposed rule was not good for the Conservative Party, and nor was the fall of Budapest in 1929. Coming as it did shortly after the stock market crash, it sent shockwaves through Europe as talk of a ‘domino effect’ created images of an increasingly red continent. Baldwin had muddled along until thirty-two, and then it had all happened very quickly. His would-be successors had squabbled for his crown, damaged one another roughly equally, and before anyone knew what had happened, the government had fallen.
And then Sir Oswald had come along with his New Party, Lloyd George had thought they might be worth listening to, and the voters evidently agreed. The hastily-arranged coalition had been given an enormous electoral endorsement (thanks in no small part to the news of Prague’s declaration of a workers’ republic the week of polling day) and Fuller had been surprised to receive a summons to the Ministry of War. Yes, his plans had been revisited, and would he mind coming out of retirement? The Prime Minister himself came to visit on numerous occasions, and by thirty-six Britain was leading the world in mechanised ground forces, while Whittle would soon stun observers with his newest prototypes for the RAF.
He had been only too happy to move on. When the PM ‘suggested’ that there were younger, hungrier men ready to lead the Royal Mechanised Force, the sideways move into a ministerial position was exactly what Fuller wanted. The changes to electoral law meant the farce of a by-election was avoided, with Fuller simply stepping in when one of Mosley’s allies moved into the House of Peers. The new Public Works department required a man of military experience and, of course, a man of Mosley’s favourite word: innovationism.
The Severn Barrage. The Highland Dams. Electrifying England with pylons. The New Party had achieved so much, and Fuller had been privileged to be at the heart of all of it. He was no architect, engineer or even designer - but he had once been called ‘the finest organiser in the land’, and Mosley was adamant his military vision would be perfect for the role. Never one to be falsely modest, John had to agree with him. It had been exhilarating to work with experts in their fields and simply get things done. A sea wind blasted him in the face, and as he regained his composure, his eyes came to rest - where else? - on his finest work.
The Channel Bridge was thirty miles of unbroken steel, brick and determination. An heroic achievement of industry and design, its completion had been marked by celebrations unseen since the King’s coronation. Four tracks, two in each direction, ran in an almost perfect straight line, allowing for maximum speed (the New Line, capital N, would link the bridge to London in such a way that London to Paris would be possible in three and a half hours). Its towers were things of great beauty, each one fashioned in the latest art deco styles and bearing high-minded quotes in Latin. Its suspenders were the latest in Anglo-French technology, and the distinctive livery its passenger services ran in earned them the (soon official) nickname of the Blue Arrow.
But so much more than a simple piece of infrastructure, it stood as a monument to Anglo-French co-operation, and even greater than that, a symbol of innovationism and what the Spartacists derided as ‘the imperial capitalist system’. A link between two great powers, forged from steel and ferrying commerce, industry, culture and people at lightning speeds between the two greatest cities in the world. On a strategic level, it was also a prominent boon to British mobilisation, dramatically increasing the ease of bringing troops to the hypothetical front in France. The Spartacists were bowed - the Luxembourg Crisis of thirty-eight ended with Strasser returning to Berlin with his tail between his legs. Petain was furiously trying to modernise and expand the French army, and making good progress. Time was at last on the side of righteousness.
But time, like luck, is a finite resource. In October of thirty-nine, a fermented general strike in Wallonia had put Europe on high alert. In the Ministry of War, Churchill had darkly muttered that it was “time to put the lights out again”, and by the end of the month, reserves had been called up in France, Britain, Germany, and the Low Countries. A harsh winter had forced political leaders to listen to their military counterparts and wait for campaign season, but war had nonetheless been formally declared on 3rd December after two German patrol boats had been sunk for breaching the Channel Exclusion Zone. Fuller had known then that Britain was not quite ready.
In spring, the red panzers had rolled into Alsace and Lorraine. The First and Eighth Armies had found their flanks breached by fleeing Frenchmen. At Dinant, at the 1st Mechanised Division had proven its worth and then some. But every time it punched a hole in the Spartacist lines, it had been forced to withdraw within thirty-six hours.
The Long Retreat was a bloody one, made worse by harrying from the Soviet air force. Fuller, during a visit to the front on which he had insisted, nearly lost an arm thanks to a strafing run. The RAF had the best aircraft in the world, no question. But the Red Air Force had the most aircraft in the world.
Having decisively advanced beyond the border by May, the German ‘Menschlichewelle’ long front had encircled Paris by September, and this time a siege was not an option. Predictably, a new ‘Commune of Paris’ rose bang on schedule, and the military resources expended putting it down metaphorically opened the gates to the now-multinational socialist force. Brutal, hand-to-hand fighting saw the destruction of Notre Dame and the mutilation of the Eiffel Tower, while British troops desperately held on, in no small irony, to the Somme front.
A distant whistle brought Fuller back to reality. Checking his watch, he realised the train was ahead of schedule. Out on the bridge, the various engineering detachments scrambled to clear the tracks as the sound of steam locomotion grew louder. It sounded distinctive, and Fuller soon saw why - not one but two Battle-class locos were loudly straining at the head of what appeared to be a train of two-dozen carriages. Fuller’s heart momentarily sank when he saw no flatbed trucks at the back of the train, but his hopes of any of his beloved tanks or carriers making their way back from France had ended with the news from outside Calais the night before. The carriages were packed, with men leaning out of the windows and many sitting or standing on top of them.
Fuller took another look at the locos. Yes, they were Battle-classes - Cambrai was in front, Arras behind, and both were working exceptionally hard. Swinging the binoculars back to the bridge, Fuller saw the engineering teams had resumed their work, and a look at his watch made him grateful that the train had arrived early. The RAF would be here soon.
There was no other way. Petain had not been seen in three days, and rumour had it he was dead by his own hand. The French front had completely collapsed, with no fewer than four colonels claiming to now be in full command of the army and of the nation. Withdrawal had been the only choice, and Fuller had enthusiastically agreed. Only at the end of the emergency session of cabinet had Mosley taken him to one side and pointed out what would be necessary.
A distant ‘crump’ sound told him it had already begun, though distance and fog left him without confirmation. The engineers had piled into a single carriage behind a tank engine and it had begun to hurry them back to Dover. Fuller could just about see the wires around the closest tower.
He pulled out his watch again. According to his calculations - for they were his, as who else could be trusted to get this right? - about sixty seconds remained. With the engineers gone, the stretch of bridge visible looked peaceful, though the suspension cables had begun to shake in a manner that betrayed what had begun at the French end.
Thirty seconds. The watch’s ticking seemed suddenly very loud, and Fuller steeled himself.
Ten seconds. On cue, two Whittles came into view, on the edge of Fuller’s vision.
Five seconds. The drone of Wellington engines could now be heard.
The tower split into three parts, as had been planned for. Two miles away and just in sight, the same occurred. Cables fell, and the sections they supported began to sag. The Wellingtons were in position, and there was a familiar whistling sound. There was a flash, then a bang, and then everything was falling, it was falling, falling, falling, it was falling, falling-
John turned away.
To his surprise, a car had pulled up behind him. Expecting Oliver, he closed his eyes for a moment, but opened them again when he heard a voice.
“Morning, Boney.”
“Prime Minister,” John said, quiet but surprised.
“Do get in,” Mosley said, clipped but not unkind. Fuller clambered into the car and shook Mosley’s offered hand.
“I did not realise you’d be here, sir.”
“Nor did I, until about three hours ago. Decided it wasn’t right for you to see this through on your own. Thought about coming and standing next to you, actually. But that’s a bit theatrical, no?”
“I would not have minded, sir.”
Mosley did not seem to hear. “Awfully brave of you to see this through, Boney. I know it’s not bloodshed, but no-one knows better than me what it’s like to put life and soul into steel and concrete.”
“I will always serve my country, Prime Minister.”
“There is no doubt of that. And the chaps that came back on the last trains - they’ve been running all night, you see - will be vital in what’s to come.”
“‘What’s to come’, sir?”
Mosley frowned. “You didn’t think we were going to negotiate, did you? Goodness, Boney. I’m disappointed.”
“I was unsure how our position allowed for anything else, sir,” John said, looking at the floor.
“Our position is stronger than they realise. We’ve got the Empire, and I’d back a single sepoy against a hundred socialists any day. And the news from America is interesting - I’m to speak with Tugwell this evening. I think he’ll be rather more dynamic than his predecessor.”
‘Dynamic’ was another of the PM’s favourite words. Fuller simply nodded and looked out of the window. Smoke was now rising high into the sky. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“You’ll build another, you know, Boney,” Mosley said, signalling to his driver to start the car, “and do you know what?”
“Sir?”
“We’ll call it the Victory Bridge.”
