The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Read online

  There was a note from Frank on the top of that morning’s post scattered at the foot of her door when she pushed it open. He’d be with her the next day. And there was a letter from a theatrical agency. Would Miss Jennie Lee, M.P., be interested in a lecture tour of the United States and Canada on the subject of her experiences in Russia? Had her trip the previous summer made the papers, Jennie wondered? More worrying, had the fact she’d been there with Frank made news as well?

  * * *

  Frank Wise went directly from Paddington to Jennie’s flat on Guilford Street. It was late morning and the House would resume its sittings late that afternoon. He’d have several hours with Jennie. As the door opened it was evident to Frank that she’d been expecting him. Under a loosely-tied dressing gown, she wore nothing.

  As they disentangled themselves from a long embrace, Jennie spoke first.

  “It’s been months.”

  “Actually, seven weeks and three days since we returned from Russia.”

  She was pleased he’d been counting. Taking his hand, Jennie led him to the bedroom as he pulled off the suit coat with one hand while unbuttoning his waistcoat with the other. She turned and put a hand up to his busy fingers poised above another button.

  “Slowly...” she whispered, needing to savour the sensations that would drive Mosley’s lingering spell from her thoughts.

  When they had sated themselves, at least for the morning, both were eager to talk Labour Party politics. Jennie was too eager, seeking to distract herself from what she’d done the day before. She could not know that Frank, too, was finding excuses to put off what he had to tell her.

  Jennie reached down from the bed amongst the newsprint on the floor and pulled the almost week-old Manchester Guardian from the pile.

  Passing it to Frank, she complained, “Read the bit comparing Tom Mosley to that Hitler in Germany. Outrageous.”

  He began to read. In the silence Jennie assailed herself. You fool. Why bring that up now?

  Before she could change the subject Frank replied.

  “Outrageous? Maybe.” Frank sighed. “But not entirely off the mark.” He looked at her. She was relieved there was no accusation in his eyes. “Jennie. You were there, in that hall, weren’t you?” She nodded. “You watched Mosley stir the party to its feet. Never seen people, not British people at any rate, so transported out of themselves into, into”—he thought for a moment—“into an emotional movement. They’d lost all reason for a moment and might have walked into the Irish Sea if he’d commanded it.”

  Jennie recalled the way she’d felt amongst the seething mass within the pavilion that afternoon in Llandudno. But Frank broke the spell.

  “It was dangerous, Jennie. And with power over people’s emotions like that, Mosley’s dangerous.”

  “Spellbinding audiences makes him dangerous? No, it makes him a leader, Frank.”

  Frank held the page from The Manchester Guardian up to her and struck it with the back of his hand, reading the headline as a question.

  “British Hitler?” He passed the broad sheet back to her and she reread the passage she could still remember. Frank continued. “Do they have the wrong end of the stick? I hope so. But fact is, last month in Germany that fascist got thirty per cent of the vote.”

  “Mosley’s a man of the left, Frank. He’s a socialist. Just because he’s a nationalist too, that doesn’t make him a National Socialist!”

  Frank made no reply. They’d just had their first, their only, political row. Jennie hated it. She needed them both to show it didn’t matter. She would rebuild the bridge and she’d start directly. But moving her hand halfway toward his, Jennie recognised there was something else preoccupying Frank. She pulled it back to wait. After a few moments, he leaned across the bed and took the hand that had been folded across her naked torso.

  “Look Jennie, you know why Dorothy insisted on coming to the party conference?”

  “She’s chair of a local branch, isn’t she? She’d want to attend. Isn’t that why?”

  “Not the only reason. She needed to send a signal.”

  “To whom?”

  “To whom it may concern.” His laugh was sardonic. “That I’m her property...poachers would be prosecuted. She won’t play the Westminster game. Won’t turn a blind eye to bed-hopping.”

  Jennie was silent. “She thinks the way you do. Divorce would be fatal to me—and to you—and she wants people to know she’ll use the weapon.”

  Jennie recalled, “Months ago you said she suspected something. Does she know I was with you all through those weeks in the Caucasus?”

  “I don’t know...” Frank looked at their hands folded together on Jennie’s lap, then turned to her face. “Probably.” He waited for a reply. None came, so he persisted. “Look, I’ve decided to tell her everything, give her grounds for divorce, if you’ll have me, Jennie.”

  She pulled his hands up her chest to her lips. “Frank, dear, we’ve been over this ground a dozen times. You just said it yourself. You’d be ruined. So would I.”

  “And if I forced your hand by divorcing her anyway?”

  “You can’t fritter away a brilliant political career, Frank. You’re sure to be in the next Labour government. Even if Labour loses you’ll be on the front bench of the shadow cabinet.” She dropped his hands to her lap. “You’re practically the only one in the party who understands international finance. I won’t let you destroy your future. That’s flat, Frank Wise!”

  He was silent, contemplating her speech. What she had said wouldn’t be enough, Jennie knew. She had to do something decisive to prevent Frank throwing both their futures away. She knew what it was, and it made her heart sink.

  “Besides, there’s a simpler solution to our problem, at least for the moment. One that will throw your wife off if she really suspects us.”

  “What’s that?” The raised eyebrows gave Frank’s face a hopeful air.

  “I’m off to North America next month. I’ll be there on a lecture tour for six weeks at least. Perhaps more if it works out. Ellen Wilkinson put a lecture tour booking agency on to me. I’m to tell Americans all about Russia.”

  “But you’re no expert, Jennie. You’ve spent, what, seven weeks all told in Russia?”

  “Who’s an expert on the subject in America? They haven’t even recognised the Soviet government thirteen years after it took power.” She smiled at him. “And when Dorothy finds out I’m going and won’t be back for months, it’ll have to allay her suspicions, won’t it?”

  Now she had told him her plan, and told herself as well, Jennie wanted to cushion the blow for both of them.

  “I’m not leaving for a few weeks, Frank. You’ll have to help me prepare a bit.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jennie arrived in America with a rage against the British ruling class. When she left, it had been replaced by despairing recognition that matters could be worse. There was no class-consciousness in America. Socialism had no chance in a country where exploitation was undetected by the exploited. And the worst of the exploitation was effectively masked by colour. Everyone was oppressed by a racialism whose glare made class differences indiscernible even to those suffering the most from them.

  Jennie knew that the suddenness of economic depression had made many in America much worse off than they had been. Yet now, in the winter of 1930-31, a year after it had begun, no one seemed to be doing anything about it, beyond hiding its effects. Shantytowns— “jungle camps”—were visible only from the railway tracks, soup kitchens were confined to the warehouse districts. The cheerful decorum of apple sellers at downtown corners was rigorously enforced by jocular police pretending to be hearty Irishmen, twirling their night sticks as they walked their sentry rounds.

  More than once she found herself thinking back to the weeks in Moscow six months before. There were beggars along the railway lines here too.

  In New Haven, Amherst and Princeton, audiences composed mainly of college professors and their wives w
ere happy to hear Jennie’s talks about the bracing changes in Russia, the rapid industrialisation of the Donbas in the south, how literacy was sweeping the country along with electricity. They were visibly less interested in the privations and suffering she reported. Students at Ann Arbor, Urbana and Bloomington were eager to learn about modernism in architecture and the avant-garde in theatre, film, and music—and even keener on the details about women’s rights, “free love,” contraception and abortion. All seemed eager to hear about the vast spaces of the Caucasus, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, which Jennie illustrated in a lantern show of maps and a dozen photos she’d snapped that previous summer.

  Scattered among the middle-class academics in her audiences was the occasional union organiser. These union men Jennie sought out in the milling crowds after a talk or a lecture. It was more difficult to pick them out here in the States than at home. Their accents were no different from the businessmen or academics. Their dress wasn’t distinctive, nor their demeanour. Only their questions were different. These men, and they were, she noticed, only men, wanted to find the good in the great Russia experiment, but seemed worried it was too good to be true.

  One evening in Detroit, after Jennie’s standard “The Soviet Union Today and Tomorrow” lecture, a young man approached.

  “Good evening Miss Lee, my name is Reuther, Walter Reuther.”

  His attire announced him as a workingman—no tie and suit coat, just a zippered leather jacket over a plaid flannel shirt. A white vest—they called it an undershirt in America—was visible above the open collar. The hand outstretched was strong and calloused. It felt familiar to Jennie, from the pits and shop floors of industrial Britain. He was very young, not even Jennie’s age, and strikingly good looking, a thick shock of dark hair swept away from his brow, a broad grin that invited friendship, dimples that made Jennie want to squeeze him. She made herself memorise the name.

  “I’d like to ask you a lot more questions about Russia if I could.” He looked at the crowd surrounding them. “Are you staying in town long?”

  She shook her head. “Leaving for Chicago in the morning, I fear.”

  “Can I buy you breakfast before you leave?”

  Suddenly Jennie decided to be ‘forward.’

  “How about a drink later, after this crowd loses interest? I’ve never seen a speak-easy.”

  “Gee, I know a blind pig in Hamtramck. It’s a ways...Sure you want to go there?”

  Reuther looked puzzled, as though Jennie had asked him to teach her welding.

  She was not to be put off. “Yes, let’s...but, Walter, what’s a blind pig?”

  He smiled, “It’s a place that’ll let me in dressed like this.”

  * * *

  It was a streetcar ride from the hotel, down an avenue wide enough for two lanes in each direction, even though it was lined with cars parked diagonally on each side. Almost midnight and yet there was traffic—foot and motor—all along the twenty-minute route. It was almost the first time she’d been out after a lecture. The contrast between late night Detroit and a provincial town back in Britain was striking. There, everyone would be home, asleep. Here people were out, trying to forget the depression.

  By the time their tram arrived, Jennie and Walter were on a first name basis. His hand under her arm almost lifted her up the high step. Jennie liked that.

  “So, what do you do Walter?”

  “I work at Ford.”

  This was going to be interesting. “Assembly line?”

  “No. I’m in the tool and die shop. We make and repair the equipment on the assembly line.”

  “I see. Is there a union?”

  “Are you kidding?” He smiled at her innocence. “Not at Ford. Not worth your life trying to organise there.” He paused. “Besides, the men don’t want a union, either, not the kind we want to organise.”

  “‘We’?”

  “‘We. I guess ‘we’ means a bunch of guys in the plant who agree with your Labour Party—socialists, refugees from the union movements in Europe, some old-time Wobblies.”

  Jennie was slightly amused. Would she have to explain that not everyone in the Labour Party was a real socialist? “Wobblies?” It was a word, like ‘blind pig’, she didn’t know.

  “I.W.W., International Workers of the World, the ‘One Big Union’ movement about twenty-five years ago, closest we ever got to English class consciousness.”

  “So, why are American workers so different when it comes to unions, class consciousness, and socialism, Walter?”

  The Scots girl in her wanted to upbraid the use of ‘English’ for British, but it was a battle she knew was lost.

  “I can’t answer that question for sure, Jennie. But I have some guesses. People here are too well off, or they were before this depression got started. Maybe it’ll change things.” He stopped. “But that’s part of why I wanted to talk to you. I figure the only way I’ll ever find out how we should change things here is by seeing how things work other places.” He paused again. “Especially Russia.”

  “You mean you’re thinking of going? You’re the first person I’ve met in America with that idea. How soon, Walter?”

  “Not right away. I’m saving up for the trip. But you’ve been there, Jennie. Do you think I should go?”

  “One way or the other, you have to! It’s the only way to find out if it’s the grand future or a hideous nightmare.”

  A frown broke out on Reuther’s face. “Hideous nightmare? That doesn’t seem a possibility you raised in your lecture.”

  “I didn’t advise anyone to move to Russia either.” Jennie took a breath. “Look, Walter, Soviet power is a huge experiment. No one knows how it’s going to turn out. We have to hope for the best, but six weeks there last summer left me very worried.”

  “Are you saying it’s dangerous?”

  “Not if you keep your head down. You aren’t a Trotskyist?” Reuther shook his head. “Then you’ll be all right. Look, life is tough in Russia right now. We have to believe it’ll get better.”

  He didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Is there real socialism—worker control, democracy on the factory shop floor? That’s what I want to know. If there is, I’m sure it’ll get better.”

  “If that’s what you’re looking for, Walter, you’ll find some of it there.” She paused. “The problem is whether Stalin will let it work.” She told her companion about the trial of the ‘wreckers’ in Shakhty. “They were just trying to manage things between them the best way they knew how. All they got for their trouble was interference from Moscow and a lot of prison sentences.”

  Reuther was thoughtful for a minute. Then he rose.

  “This is our stop, Jennie.”

  He took her arm again, as though it was the most natural act and led her out into the night. There were lights still on in a few of the long row of two-storey detached houses, a yard or two apart, each with wide porch across the front at both levels. They were wood but larger than the narrow brick housing terraces of mill and mining towns in the north of England, and Jennie could see no outhouses in the alleyways between the streets. She was about to ask Walter whether everyone had indoor plumbing. No, girl. It’ll break the mood.

  There was no sign advertising the bar, but Jennie was surprised there was also nothing much to hide the nature of the business either.

  “Walter, isn’t this place illegal?”

  “Hi fellas.” He waved a hand as he entered. A few men looked up and the bartender waived back.

  “Hey, Walt.”

  Reuther turned to Jennie. “Yup. Has been illegal now for about 15 years.” Without catching his breath he continued. “What’ll you have?”

  “A pint,” replied Jennie. She could tell he didn’t understand. “A beer, please.”

  Reuther looked surprised and pleased at the same time.

  “Good girl. Thought you’d ask for sherry or port or something else they don’t have here. He called down the bar. “Two Labatt’s,
Bill.”

  “Not married, are you, Jennie?”

  It was the very question she wanted to ask him. How to answer?

  “No, or I wouldn’t be here with you now, or even on a lecture tour alone, in another country, I suspect.” She paused. “You.”

  “Too young, no money...wild oats to sow anyhow.” He smiled.

  “Let’s sow some tonight.” To make her meaning unmistakable, Jennie covered his hand with hers.

  * * *

  It was before seven the next morning when the telephone next to Jennie’s bed rang. It was a wake up call. She was unused to having an instrument in her room, next to her bed at all. When it rang eighteen inches from her ear, she realised she had been in the midst of a nightmare, about to plunge into an icy sea from a transatlantic liner with no lifeboats. She was so glad to be in a cold hotel room in Michigan. But she was hung over. So, apparently, was Walter, sitting up next to her, knees drawn up, head in his hands. He smiled at her, sheepishly. Jennie couldn’t suppress a laugh as she grabbed a robe and headed to the bathroom.

  When she came out, he was already dressed, rubbing a day’s growth of whiskers and waiting his turn for the bathroom.

  “Can I buy you breakfast... Miss Lee.” The formality communicated intimacy.

  “My train leaves at 8:52 for Chicago.”

  “That’s plenty of time. Terminal is across the street.”

  Twenty minutes later they found themselves on a pair of shiny chrome swivel stools that matched the facing of the long Formica counter. This was the sort of starkly efficient establishment they called a ‘diner’ in America. It was operated by one man in white, behind the counter, who, unasked, placed a mug of coffee before her.