The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Page 3

  * * *

  The Chancellor’s budget speech was always the highlight of the Parliamentary year. The 600 or so MPs would have to crowd into the four wainscoted banks of benches. Winston Churchill’s had been designed as a bribe to the voters, in the election everyone knew was coming in the fall of 1929.

  Now, after several days debate, Churchill relaxed. No one had managed to land a blow on his policies. The Chancellor hadn’t reckoned with Jennie Lee’s maiden speech.

  She’d been listening to the debate with increasing anger. Three days in, she rose, caught the Speaker’s eye, and in a maiden speech made Churchill’s complacent reassurances sound foolish. On the Labour frontbench, Tom Mosley looked like he enjoyed every minute of it.

  It was an evening sitting late in April. The house was filling as the professional men came into the chamber after a day in the courts, offices and boardrooms. Those with no need to work and no theatre tickets for the evening were sauntering in from supper parties, several still in dinner jackets. Lady Astor was already in her accustomed seat two rows up from the government bench, in a black sack suit and tricorn hat calculated to convey her high-minded distain for the politicians surrounding her. Surveying the scene, Lady Nancy caught sight of something unusual. There, above the floor of the House, in the Ladies’ gallery, sat Elizabeth, the Duchess of York. Whatever is she doing here? King George V’s daughter-in-law had never before shown any interest in politics. Jennie too had noticed her friend. No one detected the smiles they exchanged.

  Jennie had been trying to catch the Speaker’s eye for a quarter of an hour, rising repeatedly from her seat along the bench at the back of the chamber. She had already learned that to hold the House she had to entertain. To win it over she had to make members laugh at Churchill. She wanted to scold, to shout, to hector. But she knew she had to mock.

  When at last her turn came, members on both benches noticed. The word filtered to the smoking rooms, “Jennie Lee is up,” and the House began to fill.

  “Mister Speaker.” Shouting out the words overmastered a moment’s fright.

  Having secured a drop in the hum of conversation, she looked down briefly at a sheaf of papers in her hand. She began coolly.

  “In his entertaining speech the Chancellor spoke in the warmest terms about the working class and congratulated himself on its increased living standards. He particularly noted the increased consumption of motorcycles and silk garments.”

  She lingered over the words ‘silk garments,’ forcing everyone’s memory back to Churchill’s words.

  “I have yet to see such finery in my constituency, still less to be run over by a miner in silk pyjamas astride his Norton motorcycle.”

  Now she would puncture the laughter.

  “What I have seen are children who go to bed wearing every stitch of clothing they own just to survive a freezing night with no coal in the grate at all. What I have seen, with my own eyes, are underfed, underpaid miners, heaving a cart filled with tons of coal up a grade because the mine owner, who drives something rather grander than a motorcycle, won’t harness the cart to a pit pony or even the meanest little engine.”

  A rather large Tory backbencher shouted out, “And put a brace of miners out of work?”

  Jennie looked across and behind Churchill lounging on the government front bench.

  “Perhaps the honourable member could employ them to help him on with his silken garments, or dress the Chancellor of the Exchequer when it comes to that.”

  The House began to roar at this riposte and even Churchill smiled. Most MPs knew of Churchill’s boast that his skin was too sensitive for anything save silk underclothes

  She turned back to look at Churchill, sprawled across the front benches, folding and refolding his order paper, whispering with Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, now back to making a show of indifference at her remarks. Jennie came to the end of her speech: a peroration she’d memorised, one as unparliamentarily in its tone as she could contrive without incurring the Speaker’s banishment.

  Jennie addressed Churchill directly, “You stand before us and, with a straight face, insist that a shilling more in the old age pension will destroy our financial position, undermine our trade, overburden industry, make it impossible for the working classes to purchase more tea, more sugar, more silk garments! You say to us the government is doing everything that economic circumstances allow! No. That is cant, corruption and incompetence!”

  She sat down, trembling with anger, but feeling the whole House’s intake of breath, the hiss of exchanged whispers.

  Then shouts of “Unparliamentary language!” “Shame!” “Withdraw!” spread across the Tory benches on the other side of the chamber.

  The Labour benches were subdued. Had they been listening? Why are they silent? Surely I’ve only said what they’ve been thinking right along. All that noise on the Tory side, just mock indignation, Jennie. Pay no heed. But why are my lot silent? Was it just because they’d never heard a woman, a young woman, a girl, give as good as she got? Suddenly it came to her that there’d never been a moment’s stage fright after the first moment she had risen to speak.

  * * *

  Jennie did not wait to hear the next speaker. Nor did she feel the tug of the others on the bench, warm in their encouragement, as she rose to leave the chamber. She simply felt relief, the sort of satisfaction that comes after an examination one had well and thoroughly prepared for. She descended to the floor of the house, bowed to the Speaker and walked out.

  She didn’t notice Tom Mosley’s eye following her down each tread of the stair, over to the mace, where she bowed, and out into the lobby of the palace of Westminster. He had savoured every moment of her triumph. In fact, he’d fallen completely in love with her, or rather with the idea of having her. But it was not, Tom Mosley recognised, the moment to approach her. His instincts about women were unerring.

  As she descended the stairs to the Lady Members’ Room, Jennie heard a heavy tread of steps behind her. She turned to see Winston Churchill’s somewhat breathless but beaming face. He reached her and before she could say a word, put his hand on her arm.

  “I say, what a debut! Marvellous the way you took the wind out of my sail.” Jennie was about to thank him and move off. But keeping his hand on her arm, Churchill continued. “You must continue to speak like that in the house. There are too few voices like yours.”

  His look of pleasure was evidently sincere. Still, Jennie felt the need to be unhanded. Without a word she lifted his fingers off her arm. Churchill immediately saw that he had been carried away by his warmth. He drew back slightly and looked down at her arm.

  “I do beg your pardon.”

  “It’s quite alright, Mr Churchill.”

  “Pray, call me Winston. We’re all members of the same club here.”

  “I doubt it,” she paused to try on his Christian name, “Winston.” It sounded like false bonhomie. Together they mounted the stairs to a broad landing.

  “You were supposed to be offended by my remarks. Weren’t you?”

  “Oh, I disagreed with them, heartily. But offended? No. It’s politics, my dear. That was what you were meant to do.” He paused, gauging whether she’d understood. When Jennie nodded, he went on. “Not enough of that sort of thing from your side.”

  They both turned to see Lady Nancy Astor descending the stair behind them. She reached them and grasped Jennie by the arm Churchill had grasped, but much more firmly.

  “Come away, Miss Lee. You can’t afford to be seen with this... this...four flusher.”

  Jennie was no happier to be manhandled by Lady Astor. She jerked the arm away again.

  “Why not? Winston’s being perfectly charming.” Jennie’s tone was ever so slightly supercilious.

  Lady Astor failed to notice.

  “Winston, is it?” She literally tisked. “Well, I suppose you’re safe from being mauled by the sexless blowhard, drunk or sober.”

  By now, Churchill had moved back up th
e stair. Whether through distain or embarrassment he had not replied to Nancy Astor’s implicit accusations.

  The two women continued down the stair in silence.

  Then Jennie spoke. “I’m sorry, Lady Astor, but I fear I need to be the judge of whom I’m seen with.” They were walking side by side along the wide corridor.

  “Yes, of course, Miss Lee.” The older woman nodded her head. “It was sheer bloody-minded of me He’s quite harmless, actually, unlike most of the men in this place.”

  Jennie stopped. “What do you mean, Lady Astor?

  “Only that almost all of them will want to take advantage. Even those who don’t try will still want to. And the more important they are, the more they’re given to womanising.”

  “Except for Churchill?”

  “Horrible man. But he’s kept his marriage vows.”

  Jennie laughed. “Is that why you called him undersexed?”

  “Actually, I said ‘sexless,’ Miss Lee.” She paused. “But I suppose it comes to the same thing. Still, I don’t think he’s an... invert, so it’s the only explanation.”

  Invert had for 30 years been the polite term for men like Oscar Wilde.

  By now they had reached the Lady Members’ Room. It was the only space accorded the half dozen or so women among the 615 MPs at Westminster, and nowhere near the only ladies’ room in the entire palace. As they entered, Nancy Astor’s maid approached with a salver and a note upon it. Lady Astor reached for the envelope, her eyes widening as she scanned the return address.

  “Simkins, this letter is for Miss Lee, not for me.” She passed the salver to Jennie.

  “So sorry, milady.” Her servant blushed.

  “Natural mistake, Simkins. It’s from Buckingham Palace.” She turned to Jennie. “Who do you know at the palace, Miss Lee?” One didn’t ask a direct question like that, Nancy Astor knew well enough. But she was quite unable to supress the curiosity.

  “Only a servant,” Jennie lied, putting the envelope in the battered leather case she’d left on her desk.

  Lady Astor gave the girl a sharp look. “One who steals Buckingham Palace notepaper?” She was not fooled. There had to be a connection between the note Miss Lee had received and the singular presence of the Duchess of York in the Strangers’ Gallery. But what did this have to do with the intelligence about Jennie Lee’s parentage that Nancy Astor was already in possession of?

  She turned to her lady’s maid. “Time to dress for the Connaught party, Simkins.” The two went off to a corner of the room where a screen and a clothes tree stood. Moments later she came out in a shimmering Balenciaga gown and choker, pulled a fox stole over her shoulders and strode from the room.

  Chapter Four

  The next afternoon Jennie ventured into the Smoking Room, just to see whether anyone had remembered her speech of the night before. The Smoking Room, the terrace overlooking the Thames, the member’s restaurant—these were all places Lady Astor had sternly warned Jennie away from.

  * * *

  The noble lady had taken Jennie firmly by the hand, that first day she’d been sworn in, too firmly, Jennie thought, though she decided not to ask to be unhanded.

  “Come with me, young lady.” It was the tone of a head teacher with a stroppy pupil.

  Nancy Astor led her away from the House of Commons chamber through the palace and down a broad flight of marble stairs. At the bottom they turned underneath the stair into a windowless corridor. They arrived at an unlabelled door that Lady Astor threw open.

  “The Lady Members’ Room,” she spoke with finality and stepped aside for Jennie to enter.

  There were six women in the room to whom Jennie was now formally presented. The four Tory ladies were older, moneyed, married. A couple sat for constituencies their late husbands had filled. Another was, like Lady Astor, the titled wife of a wealthy husband, ennobled and now sitting in the House of Lords. Three of the women in the room were Labour MPs, who gathered round Jennie to welcome her.

  Jennie peered round the dark, close room, poorly lit, with rather shabby furniture: a few small desks, one chesterfield, a coat tree and a screen. The wainscoting darkened the space into a gloom. The only natural light in the room fell from a clerestory window that opened on an interior courtyard of the palace.

  “Why are we cooped up in here?” Jennie asked to no one in particular.

  “What do you mean cooped up?” It was one of the Labour members, the woman closest in age to Jennie, but still ten years older. Jennie knew the name, Ellen Wilkinson, Red Ellen she was called, owing to the colour of her hair and her politics.

  Jennie turned to face her. “Lady Nancy and I passed some very nice public rooms on the way here.”

  Before she could answer Lady Astor declaimed, “No woman of virtue would be seen in the Smoking Room of the House.” None of the other women spoke up to disagree with her. The silence was Nancy Astor’s signal to offer a diatribe. “What members get up to in those places, drinking, swearing, bawdy stories, and swarming over any female foolish enough to allow herself to be lured into the place...Stay away, Miss Lee!”

  Jennie had let the matter drop, but she knew Lady Astor’s injunction would not deter her.

  * * *

  Sauntering alone into the member’s Smoking Room, Jennie was soon standing at the bar, the focus of an orbit of a half dozen members, the youngest perhaps twenty years her senior, all of them safely Labour men, all of them fawning in their compliments.

  The room was large, unashamedly masculine in its heavy leather furniture. There were long tables at which members sat playing backgammon and chess, and smaller ones for those sharing tea or a pint, or something stronger. Every one seemed to have a cigar, pipe or cigarette in his hand. Well, it is the smoking room, Jennie thought. The rather ugly applique on every wall, under pictures of parliamentary worthies, made the room look decidedly Victorian, aggressively so. There were large windows that overlooked the terrace and the invisible Thames below, racks of newspapers, a billiards table and a bar behind which stewards stood in white jackets.

  Lady Astor had been right. Standards in the smoking room seemed rather louche. Jennie couldn’t help thinking, Must all your compliments have to be laced with innuendo? But she smiled agreeably. Thankfully, no one in the claque surrounding her was smoking a cigar. She found she was enjoying herself. This is what a gentlemen’s club must be like...and what do you know, I’m a member.

  Through the tobacco smoke, she noticed someone staring at her. He was magnetically handsome. Standing very erect, he was well built, with dark hair over a broad forehead, heavy brows, penetrating eyes, a moustache between chiselled cheekbones. Yes, this was the same man who had been sitting on the Labour front bench, twisting to watch her speak the night before. He evidently knew that he was striking to look at. Even standing with his hands in his suit coat pockets, he had the bearing of a guardsman, beautifully dressed in a Saville Row double-breasted. Could he really be a Labour member? She tried to place him. Looks more like a Tory toff. And he was staring at her with a smile that made his carnal interest frank. Who are you? She looked about her. Can’t ask this lot who he is! She didn’t want to meet him surrounded by these men anyway. Evidently he didn’t wish to meet her then and there either. When he was sure she had noticed him, he nodded and walked out of the room.

  Of course! Suddenly, Jennie knew who this was, though no newspaper photograph did him justice. But the descriptions, the word portraits she’d read in the papers, should have been enough. It was Mosley, Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet Mosley of someplace or other, Jennie couldn’t remember. Like Jennie now, he’d once been the youngest member of the House of Commons, elected at nineteen just after the Great War. Over a period of three or four years beginning in 1924, he’d moved from the Conservative Party all the way across the spectrum to Jennie’s left-wing of Labour. Their paths had never crossed. She thought she might just change that. The chance came much sooner than she expected.

  * * *

 
Less than a week later, Jennie found herself at Charlie Trevelyan’s home, invited for dinner. She’d managed to find something to wear at a shop just below her dingy little flat in Soho. It specialised in the sort of evening dress a deb would cast off after a single wearing that made it no longer fashionable. The long gown, in dark violet, backless and with a cowl front, was close enough fitting to show what there was of a boyish figure, but long enough to cover rather shabby pumps. It made her look taller than her five feet seven inches, but alas, no older.

  There were to be eight for dinner: Sir Charles and Lady Mary Trevelyan; a Cambridge economist named Keynes and his ballerina wife, Lydia; a conservative MP, introduced as Captain Harold Macmillan, and his wife Lady Dorothy Cavendish—odd, she’d introduced herself that way, not as Mrs Macmillan. Jennie was the seventh. The eighth was apparently late.

  The name Keynes meant something to Jennie. He’d made a mark writing a book about the Treaty of Versailles, and then another one, a slashing attack on Churchill for returning Britain to the gold standard. Keynes was in his late 40s, thin enough to bend in a stiff breeze, his tone something between avuncular and condescending. His wife looked every inch the dancer, but initially said almost nothing. The other couple, closer to Jennie’s age, seemed ill matched. He was tall and reticent, stooped, with a slight limp. He’s Captain Macmillan, so a war injury? Jennie wondered. The wife was fashionable and effusive.

  The guests, host and hostess were all in the drawing room, indulging in the new craze for American cocktails, when the butler announced the last member of the dinner party:

  “Sir Oswald Mosley.”