Dear Jacky,

I just want to know why you ran out on me six years ago. I thought we were so happy, but I must have been wrong. It bugs me, that’s all.

You act scared when you see me, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not angry, just curious. I would never do anything to hurt you. You were the first girl I ever loved.

Can we meet, just for a cup of coffee or something, and talk?

Very sincerely,

Greg Peshkov

He had added his phone number and mailed the note the day he left for Newfoundland.

The President was keen that the conference should result in a joint statement. Greg’s boss, Sumner Welles, wrote a draft, but Roosevelt refused to use it, saying it was better to let Churchill produce the first draft.

Greg immediately saw that Roosevelt was a smart negotiator. Whoever produced the first draft would need, in all fairness, to put in some of what the other side wanted alongside his own demands. His statement of the other side’s wishes then became an irreducible minimum, while all of his own demands were still up for negotiation. So the drafter always started at a disadvantage. Greg vowed to remember never to write the first draft.

On Saturday, the President and the Prime Minister enjoyed a convivial lunch on board the Augusta. On Sunday, they attended a church service on the deck of the Prince of Wales, with the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack draping the altar red, white and blue. On Monday morning, by which time they were firm friends, they got down to brass tacks.

Churchill produced a five-point plan that delighted Sumner Welles and Gus Dewar by calling for an effective international organization to assure the security of all states – in other words, a strengthened League of Nations. But they were disappointed to find that that was too much for Roosevelt. He was in favour, but he feared the isolationists, people who still believed America did not need to get involved with the troubles of the rest of the world. He was extraordinarily sensitive to public opinion, and made ceaseless efforts not to provoke opposition.

Welles and Dewar did not give up, nor did the British. They got together to seek a compromise acceptable to both leaders. Greg took notes for Welles. The group came up with a clause that called for disarmament ‘pending the establishment of a wider and more permanent system of general security’.

They put it to the two great men, who accepted it.

Welles and Dewar were jubilant.

Greg could not see why. ‘It seems so little,’ he said. ‘All that effort – the leaders of two great countries brought together across thousands of miles, dozens of staffers, twenty-four ships, three days of talks – and all for a few words that don’t quite say what we want.’

‘We move by inches, not miles,’ said Gus Dewar with a smile. ‘That’s politics.’

(iv)

Woody and Joanne had been dating for five weeks.