The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Read online

  “He’s no revolutionary, that’s for certain. Can’t say the same for his spawn.”

  “His spawn? I suppose there are lots of serious socialists in the Labour Party. Lots of them in the ILP. Me, for one.” He grinned mischievously. The ILP—Independent Labour Party was one of the constituents of the British Labour Party, the most left wing of its component groups.

  “You’re no socialist, Tom.” Her laugh mocked him. She’d made Mosley angry for a moment. Now she needed to share something with him, something that would get him back on side again. “When I said spawn, I was speaking literally, not figuratively.”

  “I’d hardly describe Malcolm MacDonald as Bolshie.” This was Ramsay MacDonald’s son, who had won a seat in the ’29 election.

  “No, I meant his other child in the Commons, the love child...” She let the words hang in a silence, broken only by the sound of leather saddles shifting under their rider’s weight.

  “What rot are you talking, Nancy?”

  “Just some wild story I heard from Chips Channon.”

  “What’s that, then? Out with it!”

  “It’s that Bolshie girl MP from Scotland, Jennie Lee. Channon says MacDonald’s her father.”

  “Astonishing!”

  “What’s more, she doesn’t know!”

  “How the blazes did he find out?”

  “Channon is a snob, a cad, a nosey parker...and very amusing.” She chortled. “It was right here at Cliveden last winter, just after she won her bi-election, before she made that appalling maiden speech.”

  Mosley recalled it. “Rather witty, I thought. So, who told Channon?”

  “Well, MacDonald was here for the weekend. In the library one afternoon writing letters, when Channon walked in. Ramsay finished and left his letters on a salver for the footman. Brazen Chips couldn’t resist looking through them. Wasn’t interested in the official ones. But he noticed one to a woman in Scotland. So he took it off the tray, went up to his room and steamed it open, the scoundrel! There it was in black and white...MacDonald telling the mother about Miss Lee’s speech.”

  They began riding slowly down the towpath at the Thames’ edge, ducking every so often under the willows.

  “Doesn’t make him her father.” Mosley observed.

  “He quoted Shakespeare—‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth to have a thankless child.’ Enough for you?”

  “Not at all. She was attacking Winston Churchill in that speech, not the leader of her own party! Perhaps Winston is her father and MacDonald knows the secret.”

  “Don’t be silly. Winston is the only one of you who’s never strayed.”

  Spot on, Mosley thought. “Right. That’s why he’ll never be PM. Not enough sex-drive.”

  Lady Astor resisted the temptation to blackguard Churchill further. It would be more fun to tell Mosley everything she knew or surmised. Then she could watch the ambitious Mosley intrigued against his prime minister.

  “Actually, what MacDonald said in the letter, after quoting Shakespeare, was how glad he was she wasn’t attacking her father for once, but giving the Conservatives a hard time. Then he ended the letter with ‘burn after reading.’ Enough for you?”

  “But Nancy. You said the Lee girl doesn’t know the PM is her father? How did you learn that?”

  “Woman’s intuition, dear. I watched them that day in the House when she took the oath. She frowned when he offered his hand. She’s abusive about him in the Lady Members’ Room.”

  “Nancy, why are you telling me this? Sowing seeds of distrust in my party?

  “Your party?” She scoffed. “Your party is the party of oversexed politicians who just can’t resist the women that can’t resist them.” She rode away at a canter.

  A few moments later she slowed down, allowing Mosley to catch up. He spoke. “Whatever became of MacDonald’s letter, Nancy. Did Channon ever put it into the post?”

  “No. He was too proud of his naughtiness. Gave it to me.” Lady Astor rode forward, afraid of showing the pleasure on her face.

  Mosley rode after her as she pulled the reins on her horse into a walk. “Nancy, will you give me that letter?”

  “Why, Tom?”

  “Keep my leader safe from blackmail?” There was enough of the interrogative in his voice to make Lady Astor suppress a laugh. Suddenly, she saw, there was more mischief to be made giving MacDonald’s letter to an overly ambitious member of his cabinet than keeping it herself.

  * * *

  None among the guests at Cliveden that weekend seemed to notice the Wall Street sell-off the previous Thursday and Friday. At any rate, no one mentioned it. But after Black Tuesday of the following week, the financial panic in New York was on most people’s minds.

  October 30th, the day after the Wall Street crash, Jennie was sitting in a corner of one of the Westminster smoking rooms with the only other woman MP she’d yet warmed to. Ellen Wilkinson was a dozen years older than Jennie, a veteran militant who’d helped found the British Communist party in 1920. Disgusted by its slavishness to Moscow, she’d moved to Labour, been elected for the first time in 1924 and was now a minor member of MacDonald’s government. A head shorter than Jennie, “Red Ellen” she was called, for her politics and her hair, which fell from her brow in almost crimson ringlets.

  The two women had The Financial Times spread out on the coffee table in front of them. It was a far cry from the Labour Party paper, The Daily Herald, but they needed to understand the crash and were vainly seeking the explanation in the FT’s salmon-coloured pages.

  Suddenly, there were two men standing over them, casting shadows on the small print of the flimsy newsprint. Both women looked up and Ellen smiled.

  “Wise, Bevan...come and sit.” She patted the places next to them.

  The men smiled and chose facing chairs instead.

  “Jennie, let me introduce two of the new intake. Frank Wise, MP for Leicester East, and Aneurin Bevan, who sits for Ebbw Vale in Wales.”

  The first was in his early 40s, thin, with a long face that started at a balding dome and ended in a cleft chin. His smile was bright and his eyes kind. Wise was dressed rather formally for a Labour politician, Jennie thought, right down to the fob and chain that ran across his waistcoat. In fact he looked to Jennie like someone who would take The Financial Times.

  The other, Bevan, was younger, late 20s or early 30s, a bear of a man, a thick mop of hair parted to the right, oval face with wide-set eyes and strong brows, thoroughly Welsh from the moment he spoke. Grasping her hand just short of too firmly, he pumped vigorously. When this man smiled his whole face seemed to move. Bevan was wearing a rather loud tie and a pin stripe double-breasted, chosen to be noticed, Jennie thought, but obviously bought off the peg.

  “Help us, Wise.” Wilkinson indicated the newspaper spread out before them. “We’re trying to figure out the Wall Street crash.”

  The older man moved his hand dismissively over the pages.

  “Easy to explain...after it’s happened.” The others waited, inviting him to continue. “No one wanted to be the last fool.”

  Bevan looked at him. “Last fool?”

  Before Wise could say anything, Jennie interjected. “Left holding the bag.”

  She looked to the other man, who smiled and nodded her to go on. She liked that.

  “So, Frank,” she tried out the Christian name, “you think it was just a bubble, popped when the stock market ran out of fools to buy the stuff?”

  “Short run, yes...Jennie.” He returned the complement of using her first name. “But I think it’s a symptom of something serious.”

  Ellen Wilkinson nodded to the newsprint on the table. “Not what your favourite economist thinks, Frank.” Wise raised his eyebrows. “There’s a quote by Keynes somewhere in the FT from him. Says the crash won’t have any real effects. You don’t agree, Wise?”

  “I don’t, actually. Been watching wheat prices.”

  “Wise knows about wheat prices,” Ellen said to Jennie
. “He advises the Soviet trade delegation here.” She looked back at him. “Go on.”

  “Too many bumper crops all over the world—America, Australia, Argentina, even Russia. Wheat prices are starting to collapse.”

  Bevan didn’t mind admitting he was lost. “So?”

  Wise replied, “Farming is half the American economy.” He waited to hear if Bevan needed more.

  Jennie understood immediately. She would finish his explanation, and see whether Wise would approve. She wanted his approval.

  “Farm prices go down, everyone poorer. Everyone buys less. Result: a slump.”

  Frank Wise beamed. “Got it in one, Miss Lee.”

  Why had he reverted to surnames, she wondered? Was she putting him off with her interruptions?

  “Jennie, please.”

  Ellen shook her head. “Still don’t see the connection to the crash.”

  Better let Wise answer, thought Jennie.

  “Someone in America twigged to the wheat price decline, someone with a lot of stock. Decided everyone was going to get poorer, all businesses would suffer. Started unloading stock. Others noticed. Then contagion took over.”

  “Glad we’re not in the wheat business.” Ellen brightened. “As for Yanks wealthy enough to dabble in stocks, I’m not going to lose any sleep worrying about them.”

  Frank shook his head. “Don’t you see, Miss Wilkinson, it’s the worst news possible for MacDonald. Knocks his policy over completely.”

  “I don’t see it actually.” Ellen looked at him frankly. “Just a lot of paper profits going up in smoke. Why should it mean anything to us?”

  “Look, for ten years now, since the Great War, ‘responsible’ politicians,” each detected Wise’s ironical reference to MacDonald, “have agreed that the only way to get the unemployed back to work is to get our exports—coal, textiles, railway engines, ships—back to pre-Great War levels. That’s why the Labour Party leadership helped crush the general strike in ’26, to keep wages down so we could sell abroad cheaper.” The recollection angered all three of his listeners, but they were silent. “Well, selling the Yanks anything is going to be quite impossible now.”

  Nye and Ellen spoke one word in unison. “Why?”

  But Jennie had twigged, and she couldn’t be stopped.

  “The Americans have less money now. They are going to stop buying, stop buying from us.” She stopped, looked at Wise, who smiled, nodding her on. “Same goes for every other country. They’ll have to cut their orders for British goods, till MacDonald or whoever is prime minister realises export can’t solve the unemployment problem.” There was an ominous silence among them.

  Bevan broke it. “You’re saying things are going to get worse?”

  Frank Wise nodded his head in regret. “Lots worse.”

  Chapter Seven

  Every morning that gloomy winter of 1929-30, Jennie would wake up perplexed about what to do. There was Frank Wise. There was Aneurin Bevan. As if politics weren’t hard enough, even for an ideologue, now there’s men to make matters more complicated.

  Almost from the day they met her, both Frank Wise and Nye Bevan had contrived to find themselves sharing the busy-work of Jennie’s backbench life—parliamentary committees, sittings of the House, endless splinter group meetings, political journalism. She had detected their interests immediately.

  One long weekend she made the slog back to her Scottish constituency. A day or two in North Lanark—amongst the indomitable women standing before cold grey tenements, the haggard men nursing pints to stay warm in dank public houses—had replenished Jennie’s store of indignation. She didn’t share their cheery confidence about what Labour would do for them now it was in power. But she certainly couldn’t say so. All that weekend she’d been able to keep her mind firmly focused on politics. But now, as her train pulled out of Glasgow that Monday morning, something else intruded, persistently. The demand that she decide between the two men—Nye and Frank—became incessant and distracting. Carried along by the motion of the carriage shifting from one side to the other, she found herself longing. It was the longing that solved her problem.

  * * *

  Jennie had always been a magnet for men, ever since university in Edinburgh. She enjoyed it, the only attractive, unafraid, outspoken woman in a young man’s world. It wasn’t just the verbal swordplay, the cut and thrust of sectarian student politics. She liked the attention, the flirting. She’d let the chase take its course often enough, if she was attracted to a man. She’d no trouble admitting to herself that availability gave her power over men, and that she wanted it. But it wasn’t the only thing she liked about what, with mock censoriousness, her crowd called fornication. She knew she had to take care, not just to minimise the obvious risks, but to keep her emotional freedom too. She’d always been able to keep her feelings under control. Or perhaps you never really had feelings strong enough to test your control? Now, Jennie knew, things were different. Her feelings were out of her control, and she didn’t mind.

  Sitting through the eight hours back to King’s Cross, letting herself mull over Frank Wise and Aneurin Bevan, she came to two conclusions: She knew what she wanted. She knew what she wanted to want. And they weren’t the same thing at all.

  * * *

  Nye Bevan was flamboyant, fun, attentive, shared her politics, her upbringing as a miner’s child. He was her age, and he loved her, of that Jennie was pretty certain. When he made advances she had no trouble keeping him just this side of out of control. When she gave in, as she did from time to time, she could feel his need for her.

  Bevan’s style was slightly garish—patterned ties over Tattersall shirts, under pinstripe double-breasted suits. His wide face was handsome in a rugged way and his Welsh accent was poetry to Jennie’s ear. Standing next to him, she felt in the presence of a friendly bear, one ready to encircle her, lift her off the ground, crush her in an enthusiastic hug. Bevan’s thick brown hair looked like it needed cutting within minutes of leaving a barber’s chair. Jennie was forever tempted to trim his bushy eyebrows. His eyes were perpetually mischievous in their glint, and he couldn’t resist a smile, even for political opponents on the opposition benches.

  Nye Bevan was a stalwart, who would never turn his back on the workers of the Welsh coal valleys, where he had laboured himself from fourteen. But he wouldn’t deny himself fun, pleasure, and even notorious company. He had become something of a darling for the erratic reactionary newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook, accepting his invitations to dinner, to the theatre, to parties. And whenever he could he tried to take Jennie along.

  From the first, Jennie and Nye recognised how similar were their backgrounds in the coal towns of Scotland and Wales. It made them share so much they could reliably predict one another’s thoughts. Jennie recalled an evening in the fall of ’29 soon after their first meeting. They were nursing drinks on the terrace of the Commons, overlooking the slow waters of the Thames, the lights twinkling in the office buildings across Westminster Bridge. The division bell had just sounded, breaking the spell and calling them back into the chamber for a vote. Jennie put down her drink, looked at Bevan.

  “Nye, we could be brother and sister.”

  Without a pause, but smiling, he had replied, “Mmm, with a tendency to incest.”

  Jennie Lee and Aneurin Bevan were indeed well matched. She liked him terrifically. She believed in his star. She wanted to want him. But Jennie didn’t want him.

  She wanted Frank Wise. Frank was twenty years older, lean, balding, dressed like a City banker, with the slight fastidiousness of a senior civil servant. In fact, he had been one in the Great War, and carried a ‘bangle’—Companion of the Order of the Bath—for his services to Lloyd George’s government. He was erudite, experienced, accomplished, influential, without feeling the need to show it. Frank was quiet where Aneurin was garrulous, deep where Aneurin made waves, thoughtful where Aneurin was impetuous. He listened to Jennie, heard her out, took her more seriously than anyone she’d
known before. He was a thoughtful, careful, passionate lover. And he was married. Jennie couldn’t have Frank, not the way she could have Aneurin Bevan, as a husband. In truth, she didn’t want Frank that way—married to him. She just wanted Frank.

  It all could have been very convenient for Jennie. Nye Bevan was there for the taking. It would have been a match made in political heaven. It would have been fun, too, and there’d be no one to hurt or harm. Nothing to hide either. She wouldn’t have to give up a thing to marry Nye. But she couldn’t.

  Soon enough Nye knew that she loved Frank, and he was willing for the moment at least to remain a comrade, a friend, a brother.

  * * *

  Frank had fallen in love with her. In the worst way, she realised.

  The evening they first fell into bed together, after walking through quiet Whitehall streets at the end of a late night sitting of the House, neither had really expected the other to want it. She’d invited him in for a drink, knowing he’d have to refuse, and he’d accepted, knowing he should have refused. After the second small scotch she’d leaned across her chesterfield, pulled him slowly toward her, by his necktie no less, and kissed him.

  Frank had responded warmly. But then straightened up. “Jennie. I have to tell you, I’m married.”

  “Frank, I knew that. Nye Bevan was particularly keen I knew.”

  “Blighter.” Frank couldn’t help a sardonic laugh. “What else did he say?”

  “Well, he didn’t volunteer any more, out of loyalty to you, I suspect.” She paused. “But I made him answer some questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “The obvious ones—name, age, what she’s like.” Jennie stopped again. “Whether he thought you loved her. He didn’t know much.”

  “Well, I’m prepared to satisfy your curiosity.” He pulled out a cigarette case, offered Jennie one, and lit them both with a wooden match.