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ballast. After breakfast they had gathered on Beacon Hill overlooking Chequers, wrapped in overcoats and scarves against the chill February air, the low sun casting long shadows while an inspection party of crows flew languidly overhead. Those responsible for the day’s matinée scurried like grave-snatchers through the mist in the pasture below, while Sawyers weaved his way through the entourage on the hilltop dispensing coffee and shots of whisky.
    â€˜Faster, man,’ Churchill encouraged, ‘or we’ll all freeze.’
    â€˜If we’re going to invite a three-ring circus every weekend, we’ll be needing more hands to help.’
    â€˜What? Are you saying you can’t cope?’
    â€˜I can. Boiler can’t.’
    â€˜What the hell’s the boiler got to do with winning the war?’
    â€˜Do yer know where Mr Hopkins goes to read his papers?’
    Churchill began to growl, his breath condensingin the slow-warming air and giving him the impression of an elderly dragon. It was bluff, and Sawyers knew it.
    â€˜He goes to the bathroom,’ the servant continued.
    â€˜I often read my papers in the bath.’
    â€˜He’s not in the bath but in his overcoat. Only place in the whole house that’s kepping warm. So he tekks his work into the bathroom and disappears, like, for a couple of hour. Inconvenient fer other guests, so it is.’
    Hopkins was frail, American and of huge importance. Churchill thrust out his small tumbler for another shot of warming whisky.
    â€˜So what are you suggesting?’
    â€˜Like I say, we need help. More hands. Two more maids.’
    â€˜Two?’ Churchill protested.
    â€˜Two, if we’re to kepp a fire in every room and clean sheets on beds. And help poor Mrs Landemare. She’s not getting any younger.’
    Oh, but he was playing the game, and with consummate skill. Sawyers understood his master as well as any man, his foibles, his vanities, his indulgences. His meanness and his dislike of new faces, too.
    â€˜We don’t need two, dammit. This is a war headquarters, not a holiday resort.’
    â€˜I’m sure Mr Willkie don’t mind sleeping in a British general’s sheets, but what wi’ boiler being insuch poor shape, I’m afraid there weren’t time to launder ‘em, like, before he arrived.’
    Churchill snorted in alarm. Upsetting Mrs Landemare would have consequences creeping close to the point of disaster; upsetting the Americans might take them far beyond. Hopkins was a close friend of Roosevelt, while Willkie had been his opponent in the last presidential election. They had arrived as the President’s personal emissaries—‘to check up on me’, as Churchill had grumbled in exasperation. And to check up on Britain. Roosevelt had announced the principle of Lend-Lease but now he needed to decide how much to send and to lend. Some of his advisers had been whispering in his ear that he wouldn’t be getting much of it back, that most of it might soon be falling into the clutches of the German High Command. So he had sent Hopkins and Willkie to test the temper of both the country and its wayward leader: as the President had put it to Hopkins, ‘we need to know whether the Brits will carry on fighting—and whether Churchill will ever stop.’
    Churchill knew all this, knew that his American guests had been sent to spy, and he had responded by trying to seduce and suborn them. Their conclusions—and therefore their comforts—were of immense importance. It was the opportunity Sawyers had been waiting for.
    â€˜A ship lost for ha’p’orth of tar,’ he mused, ‘anda war for an unlaundered sheet.’ He shook his head in mock resignation.
    â€˜One!’ Churchill proclaimed defiantly, but knowing he had lost. ‘One extra maid. That’s as far as we go.’ He glared at Sawyers. ‘And you’d better make sure she’s