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She dozed off in the small hours, and dreamed she was catching a train, but silly things kept happening to delay her: the taxi took her to the wrong place, she had to walk unexpectedly far with her suitcase, she could not find her ticket, and when she reached the platform she found waiting for her an old-fashioned stagecoach that would take days to get to London.
When she woke from the dream, Boy was in the bathroom, shaving.
She lost heart. She got up and dressed. Maisie prepared breakfast, and Boy had eggs and bacon and buttered toast. By the time they had finished it was nine o'clock. Lloyd had said he was leaving at nine. He might be in the hall now, with his suitcase in his hand.
Boy got up from the table and went into the bathroom, taking the newspaper with him. Daisy knew his morning habits: he would be there five or ten minutes. Suddenly her apathy left her. She went out of the flat and ran up the stairs to the hall.
Lloyd was not there. He must already have left. Her heart sank.
But he would be walking to the railway station: only the wealthy and infirm took taxis to go a mile. Perhaps she could catch him up. She went out through the front door.
She saw him four hundred yards down the drive, walking smartly, carrying his case, and her heart leaped. Throwing caution to the wind, she ran after him.
A light army pickup truck of the kind they called a Tilly was bowling down the drive ahead of her. To her dismay it slowed alongside Lloyd. "No!" Daisy said, but Lloyd was too far away to hear her.
He threw his suitcase into the back and jumped into the cab beside the driver.
She kept running, but it was hopeless. The little truck pulled away and picked up speed.
Daisy stopped. She stood and watched as the Tilly passed through the gates of Ty Gwyn and disappeared from view. She tried not to cry.
After a moment she turned around and went back inside the house.
v
On the way to Bournemouth Lloyd spent a night in London, and that evening, Wednesday, May 8, he was in the visitors' gallery of the House of Commons, watching the debate that would decide the fate of the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain.
It was like being in the gods at the theater: the seats were cramped and hard, and you looked vertiginously down on the drama unfolding below. The gallery was full tonight. Lloyd and his stepfather, Bernie, had got tickets only with difficulty, through the influence of his mother, Ethel, who was now sitting with his uncle Billy among the Labour M.P.s down in the packed chamber.
Lloyd had had no chance yet to ask about his real father and mother: everyone was too preoccupied with the political crisis. Both Lloyd and Bernie wanted Chamberlain to resign. The appeaser of Fascism had little credibility as a war leader, and the debacle in Norway only underlined that.
The debate had begun the night before. Chamberlain had been furiously attacked, not just by Labour M.P.s but by his own side, Ethel had reported. The Conservative Leo Amery had quoted Cromwell at him: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!" It was a cruel speech to come from a colleague, and it was made more wounding by the chorus of "Hear, hear!" that arose from both sides of the chamber.
Lloyd's mother and the other female M.P.s had got together in their own room in the palace of Westminster and agreed to force a vote. The men could not stop them and so joined them instead. When this was announced on Wednesday, the debate was transformed into a ballot on Chamberlain. The prime minister accepted the challenge, and--in what Lloyd felt was a sign of weakness--appealed to his friends to stand by him.
The attacks continued tonight. Lloyd relished them. He hated Chamberlain for his policy on Spain. For two years, from 1937 to 1939, Chamberlain had continued to enforce "nonintervention" by Britain and France, while Germany and Italy poured arms and men into the rebel army, and American ultraconservatives sold oil and trucks to Franco. If any one British politician bore guilt for the mass murders now being carried out by Franco, it was Neville Chamberlain.
"And yet," said Bernie to Lloyd during a lull, "Chamberlain isn't really to blame for the fiasco in Norway. Winston Churchill is first lord of the Admiralty, and your mother says he was the one who pushed for this invasion. After all Chamberlain has done--Spain, Austria, Czechoslovakia--it will be ironic if he falls from power because of something that isn't really his fault."
"Everything is ultimately the prime minister's fault," said Lloyd. "That's what it means to be the leader."
Bernie smiled wryly, and Lloyd knew he was
thinking that young people saw everything too simply, but to his credit Bernie did not say it.
It was a noisy debate, but the house went quiet when the former prime minister David Lloyd George stood up. Lloyd had been named after him. Seventy-seven years old now, a white-haired elder statesman, he spoke with the authority of the man who had won the Great War.
He was merciless. "It is not a question of who are the prime minister's friends," he said, stating the obvious with withering sarcasm. "It is a far bigger issue."
Once again, Lloyd was heartened to see that the chorus of approval came from the Conservative side as well as the opposition.
"He has appealed for sacrifices," Lloyd George said, his nasal North Wales accent seeming to sharpen the edge of his contempt. "There is nothing which can contribute more to victory, in this war, than that he should sacrifice the seals of office."
The opposition shouted their approval, and Lloyd could see his mother cheering.
Churchill closed the debate. As a speaker he was the equal of Lloyd George, and Lloyd feared that his oratory might rescue Chamberlain. But the House was against him, interrupting and jeering, sometimes so loudly that he could not be heard over the clamor.
He sat down at eleven P.M. and the vote was taken.
