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She was capable of delivering a stern rebuke for what she considered any falling short in standards. For all our long friendship, I have to record once or twice falling prey to at least a twitch of her nostril. Once, on signing a book, Mary looked at my ill-formed scribble and snorted: ‘What’s that?’ I replied, feebly: ‘That’s my signature.’
‘That’s not a signature,’ snorted Lady Soames. ‘It’s disgusting.’
On another occasion I had been commissioned by a tabloid to write a eulogy of WSC in wartime. I was stumped by a well-known quotation; I knew I had the words right, but couldn’t label the precise context. Experts like even Martin Gilbert failed me; so I turned to consult Mary’s encyclopaedic memory. She again couldn’t help. Rashly I said: ‘Never mind, it’s only for a tabloid; I’ll fudge it somehow.’
There was a terrifying snort at the other end of the line: ‘Alistair, you’re not a journalist, you’re an eminent historian. Now go and get it right.’ I crept back to the drawing board, reflecting that Mary had not been a sergeant in the wartime womens’ army, the ATS, for nothing.
Once Mary came to stay at what was a sad time for her. To cheer her up, I took her to tea with a mutual friend nearby. On the way I was riveted by her account of life in the wartime ATS, how she had been much happier in the ranks as a sergeant than, later, as an officer. So I clean missed the turning, despite having been there umpteen times. ‘Alistair, don’t you know the way? Didn’t you do map-reading in the army?’
One evening with Mary that I remember most particularly was 5 June 1994, the 50th anniversary of the eve of D-Day — 20 years ago. Several of us were reminiscing as to what we remembered. Someone asked, ‘What were you doing, Mary?’
Suddenly a previously closed door was opened. She said: ‘I can remember exactly. I was with my ack-ack battery in the south of England, and had been taken to a “hop” by a fellow officer. Afterwards he walked me back five miles to my billet, kissed me chastely good night, and walked back five miles to his billet. Then, as dawn came up, I heard the bombers roar overhead. I knew this was it, and I just knelt down and prayed.’
‘So had you had known the date? And that it was Normandy?’
‘Yes, Papa would discuss everything over the dining room table at Chequers. We knew everything.’ (Mary then would have been only in her early twenties.) ‘But we didn’t talk. Nobody talked in those days. Occasionally if something was very, very top secret, my mother would say, “Now Mary, that’s labelled.” But nobody did talk.’
Apart from being keeper-of-the-secrets, no one knew as much about Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill in the second world war as did Mary. Moreover, she performed an unquantifiable service — worth the equivalent of goodness knows how many battleships and divisions — in keeping Winston, with his known vulnerability to the ‘Black Dog’, on course. And in saving his much-tried generals from going bonkers. Even while away with her battery she was in almost daily touch with ‘Papa’, cheering him up with constant affection and encouragement. For that alone, the world owes her a great debt of gratitude.
Because you read about winston churchill
Also by Alistair Horne
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