The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Read online

  While the cabinet deliberated, Jennie received a steady stream of notes from Tom Mosley, written on cabinet paper during cabinet meetings, and delivered to her pigeonhole in the House. They provided a running commentary on the ineptness, cowardice and impotence of MacDonald’s cabinet. A few were accompanied by invitations to his Ebury Street digs. Twice that winter, Jennie found herself accepting. She had come to understand Mosley’s hold on women. They’d rendezvous at his flat. Their lovemaking was considerate, knowing, effective, but remained cool and almost surgical in its precision. There was little small talk between them and no endearments. Jennie liked it perfectly well that way. She wondered if he gave pleasure for the power it confirmed. She couldn’t believe it was out of any emotion he wanted to express.

  * * *

  At the beginning of May 1930, Mosley finally saw further delay was pointless. He decided to resign from the cabinet.

  The Prime Minister was sitting alone, in the middle of the long, coffin-shaped cabinet table at number 10. As Mosley entered, he could see that MacDonald had nothing before him—no red box, no civil service files, nothing on the blotter but his hands folded together. His chin was on his chest. Is he asleep? Why ever not? He’s in his 60s but looking like elderly man, late 70s, I should say. Should I tiptoe out and alert his secretary? Mosley hesitated. But the noise of the double doors sliding closed behind him woke, or at any rate alerted, the Prime Minister, who raised his head and turned towards the sound. His brows were too bushy for Mosley to be able to see whether the eyes had been closed, but MacDonald was blinking in the way one woken from a nap might well do. He cleared his throat and adopted the mien of someone who had expected Mosley but was also pressed for time.

  “Ah, Tom.”

  They’d known one another since Mosley had crossed the floor of the House to come into the Labour Party in 1926. In fact they’d been close, spending weekends at the same country houses, holidaying together, so in private it was ‘Tom’ and ‘Ramsay.’ But MacDonald must have been confused, for his next words—“Good of you to come”—suggested he’d invited Mosley, instead of the latter’s seeking an interview. Mosley moved to a chair across the vast table, but MacDonald patted the one next to his.

  Mosley didn’t want to add embarrassment to confusion, so he ignored the suggestion that MacDonald had invited him.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me at short notice, Prime Minister.” No Christian names when it was serious business to be discussed.

  He pulled out the chair next to the PM, turned to face MacDonald and began. “Prime Minister, it’s ground we’ve been over several times. I cannot continue to serve in a cabinet that rejects my proposals for dealing with unemployment. I have to resign from the government.”

  This was something Mosley had said before in the months during which other ministers had examined his proposals and rejected them. MacDonald must have thought Mosley was bluffing, he’d been dealing with this sort of thing in the Labour Party for almost thirty years. He didn’t want to lose Mosley. The man was star of his cabinet. But he knew Mosley’s proposals were anathema to enough of the front bench and seasoned trade unionists to capsize his government.

  “I deprecate such a course, Mosley.” The use of the surname put the distance between them this interview required. “You’ve only just arrived in government. You have a brilliant career ahead of you. But you need to be patient. The ocean liner can only be moved off its compass-heading a few degrees at a time.”

  “With respect, premier, that’s all I am proposing, really!”

  “No. You’re proposing wholesale changes to the economy. It’ll be so unsettling to expectations that business will contract even further. No. Your proposals must wait for recovery.”

  Mosley was desperate at the old man’s obtuseness. He had to do something. He stood, resisting the impulse to take the old man by the lapels of his frock coat. But he was almost shouting. “Ramsay, there will be no recovery without my proposals.”

  The cabinet doors slid open and a civil servant’s head was seen in the gap.

  “It’s quite alright, Timson.” MacDonald waved the man back out with his right hand.

  Cooling now, Mosley resumed his seat.

  “I’m sorry, Prime Minister, I can’t remain in your government.” He removed an envelope from his coat, looked at it and placed it on the table. “My resignation.”

  MacDonald looked at him with a frown. “Fair warning, Tom. I’ll have to accept it.” The other nodded. “You must realise you’re giving up the chance to be the next Labour prime minister. Don’t you want that?”

  Mosley waved his hand. “I’ll get it anyway.”

  “That’s what Parnell thought.” Parnell was a name infamous in British parliamentary politics. The greatest orator and tactician of his time, forty years earlier, destroyed by the public exposure of his personal ‘indiscretions.’ Every politician was still familiar with the history. Revealed to be cuckolding his second-in-command, Parnell had been driven from public life.

  Dudgeon rose in Mosley’s face. “Is that a threat?”

  “No, no, of course not.” MacDonald retreated. “It’s only I worry about you, Tom. Such promise, but you’re giving hostages to fortune in your conduct.” He paused. Mosley remained silent. “The further you go in politics, the more threatening you become to the”—MacDonald searched for the right word—“the old order, the greater the temptation of your enemies to bring you down.” Both knew that Parnell had been ruined by his enemies just at the point of his greatest triumph, the only chance for home rule Ireland ever really had.

  MacDonald’s words had come as near to menace as the old man could make them sound. If this was a threat, Mosley needed to counter it. But it wasn’t just a matter of calculation or strategy. Mosley’s mind was flooded as much by the need to retaliate against the old man then and there. He put his hand inside his coat, feeling for the other envelope in his pocket, the one Lady Astor had given him. He tried to keep his tone casual. “Well, perhaps I’ll avoid Parnell’s fate, Ramsay. You managed it.”

  “What? What are you saying, Mosley?”

  So, they were back to surnames. “Well, you’ve survived twenty-five years now without anyone learning about your ‘indiscretion.’”

  MacDonald face reddened. “What rot are you talking...”

  “Jennie Lee.”

  At Mosley’s words the older man’s face collapsed from indignation into humiliation.

  After a silence, MacDonald spoke again. “So, we’re both in a position to ruin each other?” He searched Mosley’s face. “Did she tell you?”

  “No.” Mosley could read MacDonald’s wretchedness. It sapped his desire to be cruel to the old man. “I don’t think she even knows.”

  MacDonald sought to get a grip. “Who does know? How the blazes did you find out?”

  Mosley couldn’t bring himself to recount the sordid little story of Chips Channon and Lady Astor. “Just some catty gossip and a guess I decided to try on you. Don’t think anyone really knows...for now.”

  There was no threat meant in the last two words, but too late he realised they would not sound that way. Mosley pushed the long white envelope still on to the blotter before MacDonald.

  “My resignation.”

  Then he turned and walked from the room.

  Chapter Nine

  Jennie and Frank were standing at the long bar of a pub in Victoria Street just behind Westminster Abbey. They were still shaking off the rain. It had been a short walk from the palace of Westminster, down the narrow footpath between the Abbey and St. Margaret’s church. But the shower caught them just as they had set out. The pub was Labour territory. The odd Tory who might find his way in was tolerated, teased and made to feel like a foreigner. Sconces above the alcove booths brightened the darkened wood of the interior. There were a dozen or more escapees from the Commons evening sitting, drinking together at the bar and among the scattered tables.

  Frank ordered a lager, Jennie a gin and
tonic. She was ruminating.

  “What will it take to move the cabinet off its arse? There’s what, two million people now without work.”

  Frank sighed. They were going over old ground. “Nothing. It’s the 20 million union men in work what controls the government.” The working class syntax made his point.

  Jennie shook her head. “No. It’s not the Union men. It’s their bosses, comfortable men paid large salaries not to think beyond a company’s next wage contract. We’ve got to find a way to reach over them.”

  “We can’t do that.” He stopped for a moment. “A couple of back benchers? Even the whole ILP faction in the House wouldn’t be enough.”

  There were about 30 ILPs--Independent Labour Party--MPs in the House. He smiled at Jennie.

  “And besides, your ‘friend’ Nye is right. It would split the party and bring in the Tories.”

  Did Jennie hear the resentment in the word ‘friend’? Was her partner jealous of a meaningless liaison? She ignored it.

  “But Mosley could do something.”

  “How can he, now he’s resigned from the cabinet?”

  Jennie knew the answer to this question and she blurted it. “He’ll take his programme to the party conference and demand a vote.”

  For thirty years, once a year, in the fall, each of the political parties had repaired to different seaside resorts for a week of socialising and strategizing.

  “How do you know?” Frank demanded.

  “Mosley told me.”

  Frank was silent for a moment. He was no longer thinking about what she knew, but how she’d come to know. He feared the answer that immediately came to him. He loved Jennie Lee. He was sure she loved him. But he didn’t own her, couldn’t make demands on her, not when he was still married himself. In that instant, he decided he didn’t want to know, couldn’t bear to know. He would not speak from the inevitably rising jealousy. He would ask nothing. When he finally spoke, it was about politics.

  “Jennie. I worry about relying on Mosley. He’s walked across the floor of parliament too often to be committed to anything but himself.”

  “Just doing Churchill one better, no?” Jennie wanted to laugh the caution off. But she couldn’t. She knew. “There’s something personal in all this, isn’t there, Frank?”

  “I fear there may be, Jennie.” It was the closest he would come to an admission, or was it an accusation?

  Again she felt the need to reassure her lover, her friend. “Oh, Frank, it doesn’t mean a thing. I love you.”

  But desolation had taken hold of Frank. “Jennie, I can’t really go on like this.”

  Now a new emotion took hold of Jennie. “Does this mean you’re going to break it off with me, Frank?”

  He smiled.

  “No.” Covering her hand, he continued. “No. I’m going to ask Dorothy for a divorce. Then I want to marry you.”

  Tension left her shoulders, but Jennie audibly sighed.

  “Frank, we’ve been over this ground. It won’t wash. You have a calling, so do I. We’re political animals. We need to be there.” She nodded towards Westminster Palace, out in the rain, beyond the Abbey. She continued in a steely voice. “Divorce would destroy both our political careers. It would be senseless. Just think what the Tory papers would say…you leaving four children? Me? What gossip would they get up to publishing?”

  Frank raised a hand, attempting to staunch the quiet, relentless flow of her argument. But Jennie continued just above a whisper.

  “A third of my North Lanark constituency are Irish Catholics, all Labour voters. Think what their parish priest will tell them before the next election.” Then she looked at him with as much love as she could muster. “Besides, Frank. I don’t want to marry.”

  He turned away, but Jennie pulled him back. “No, listen. It’s not that I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone!”

  The cutting reply was out of his mouth before he could think it through. “So, you love me but you want the freedom to sleep round Westminster?”

  Venom formed the words on Jennie’s tongue, How dare you? But then she stopped herself. She did love this man. She wasn’t going to wreck everything by giving him back the abuse that his pain was hurling at her. Instead, she reached up, pulled him by the lapel towards her and kissed him with an open mouth.

  Then she spoke. “Listen, and try not to interrupt. First of all, I’m not forty-four, like you. I’m not even thirty-four. I’m twenty-four. And I’m afraid I attract men, especially in the men’s world of politics. I can’t help it. And you men, well, you all reach the point of wanting to sleep with a woman rather quickly. No matter how seriously I want to be taken, and get taken, I can’t always resist either. I don’t even want to resist every time. And it’s not just me. It’s other women my age, perhaps not many, but some.”

  Frank nodded and began to speak. He got no further than “But” before Jennie held up her palm and continued.

  “And then there’s us...together, we’re wonderful. I couldn’t be happier. When I’m with you I never look at another man.” She had kept her fingers slowly running up and down his lapel. “But how often can we be together? There’s your constituency and mine, hundreds of miles apart. There’s all the traveling you do to Russia. There’s your wife in Bucks with the kids. And it wouldn’t be much different if we were married, not for a long time anyway...even when we lost both our seats in the scandal of a divorce.”

  “Jennie, I love you, I love you enough to... to...”—he searched for the word he needed, not a judgment like ‘condone’ or a euphemism like ‘understand,’ and then he chose the word—“to accept what you tell me about how you want to live.”

  But she still wasn’t finished. “Then there’s the politics. At the moment we seem to agree pretty much on the way things are gong, in the country and the party. But what if that comes apart? I’ve got to have my independence to say what I think and choose a course you may not agree with. I can’t be your wife and do that.” She stopped for a minute. A happy thought formed. “Frank, you’ll be in the Labour cabinet soon. Maybe not the very next election, but the next time our lot win. It’s certain. With your experience, they’ll need you, perhaps even as Chancellor of the Exchequer.” She shook her head, pre-empting another interruption. “I can’t preside at your table, entertaining people I can’t stomach, keeping my mouth shut, following your lead, being the political wife...It’s not me, Frank. Not yet anyway.” She put her hand up. “There, I’ve had my say.”

  She smiled and leaned over to plant still another reassuring kiss on his mouth.

  Frank was silent, trying to find an argument, a consideration, an objection, a motive to which he could harness his claim on Jennie. The search for an answer was written in the knit of his forehead, chin on his hands, elbows on the bar. Jennie replied to it before his words came. “Frank. I’m yours in everything that matters, everything that matters to me. It’s got to be enough.” She squeezed his hand.

  He nodded, cleared his throat as if to indicate the subject was closed.

  He brightened. “Look, when the House rises for the summer, I’m to take a half dozen or so MPs to Moscow. After that, I’ve got to go south to the Caucasus for the Soviet Trade Office.” Frank was a consultant for Centrosoyus—The Central Union of Cooperatives, which sold agricultural produce and mineral ores to British firms. “Come to Moscow. You’ll see Stalin’s Five-Year Plan in action. We can have a month together.”

  “That sounds grand, Frank. But we must be back for the fireworks at the party conference in September.”

  * * *

  It was a chance to jump at, Jennie saw, and not just for time with Frank. The Soviet Union, everyone on the left knew, was the best hope for the future, a laboratory in which the recipe for human happiness would be perfected. Not without some false starts and some birth pains and a little unavoidable suffering. But think of socialism’s future! And whom could one really trust to report on the experiment? Not the journalists owned, op
erated and edited by the English press barons, nor yet the members of the British Communist party subservient to the Comintern in Moscow, certainly not the gullible British political ingénues like the playwright Shaw, ready to believe whatever they might be shown by the Bolshevik commissars.

  In the end, the group that went included Nye Bevan, Ellen Wilkinson and a half dozen other Labour MPs. All eager to see what planning could do to avoid the excesses of the unfettered market, with its poverty, inequality, its wasteful surpluses of unneeded luxuries and outrageous shortages of meaningful work.

  * * *

  It was a warm sunny morning in July 1930 that they arrived at Moscow Belorussian terminal. They were met at the end of the quay by a small but energetic young man whom Frank introduced all round.

  “Friends, this is Valery Kutuzov. Valery and I have been working together for a couple of years now.”

  Frank’s friend held out a hand that was shaken by all. He had short dark hair, oval glasses and a serious face, that smiled briefly into each face as he took their hands.

  “Valery is liaison between the foreign ministry and the Centroysoyus.”

  This was the Central Union of Cooperative Enterprises Frank represented back in Britain.

  Introductions completed, Kutuzov spoke, in good English. “The baggage will be sent to the hotel. I have a car waiting for us all.”

  He led the way through the vaulted entryway out onto the pavement where a large open vehicle stood, a red star painted on its one door, riding high on large wheels, with four benches behind a driver. His shirtsleeves rolled up, Lenin-like worker’s cap pulled down over his brow, the man was smoking and looking straight ahead. He made no effort to welcome his riders, but waited silently for instructions. With visible embarrassment, Kutuzov was trying hard to make up for the wooden indifference of the driver to these foreign guests. They mounted up the car and clambered into their seats in good humour, seeing no reason why the proletarian driver should abnegate himself before dignitaries. In fact, they rather enjoyed his want of class-consciousness.