The Intrigues of Jennie Lee

by Alex Rosenberg

  Then she conjured an image of the old man. A wave of contempt swept over her as she thought about the abuse she’d heaped on MacDonald for a half dozen years...her own father. There was no emotion of chagrin in her, she noticed. Just the surprise, the shock, and now dizziness. All this time she‘d been standing at the side of Mosley’s bed. Looking behind her, she collapsed into a bedside chair.

  “Who else knows?”

  “Jennie, your secret is safe with me, I promise.” He smiled. “We’re on the same side, surely!”

  Now she was angry, angry enough to need to act, to take sides, to strike out at the fates—the ones she’d struggled against in her past, and this new threat to her political life, the one she cared about the most.

  “But if I join your New Party and it comes out—about me and MacDonald. It will certainly distract the tabloids just as much as if I were to stay in the Labour Party.” She didn’t add, And ruin me.

  “I’m going to see to it that it doesn’t come out. Not even from the Tory press.” He raised hand. “Don’t ask how. I’ve a way with hacks and their editors and with the handful of people who’re in the know.” He paused. “And actually, we can’t have you joining the New Party, not just yet. There’s something you’re needed to do that makes that impossible.”

  “Something you need me to do?”

  “You know about the Ashton-under-Lyne by-election?” She nodded. “It’s why I called. We need some reliable, untraceable go-between to the palace, to the Duke. And you are the only one we’ve got.”

  The words brought her back to the present, into the room, back to immediate reality. She drew a breath.

  “Very well. What am I to do exactly?”

  “Just get in touch with the Duchess, today if possible. She’ll want to meet and give you something for me. A small package. Bring it here as soon as you have it.”

  “Why the urgency?”

  “It’s to do with this Ashton by-election.” Jennie was silent. Mosley indicated the instrument on the night table. “You can call from here.”

  “I don’t have the number.”

  “I do.” He passed her a scrap of paper and indicated the instrument, atop the small table cluttered with medicines next to his bed.

  Jennie lifted the receiver. It was a new, single-piece listening/speaking handset. She dialled and waited. A woman’s voice she recognised answered.

  It was not a servant or a switchboard operator, but sounded like Elizabeth herself, giving her number, “Victoria 6408.”

  “Elizabeth.” Jennie didn’t use the words ‘Duchess’ or ‘your grace.’ “Jennie here. Got your note. Just back from abroad. Can we meet today?”

  There was a pause. “Let me look at my book...” After a pause the voice went on. “Nothing till six. Then I have to dress for dinner.”

  Jennie didn’t want to hear more. “When and where, Elizabeth?”

  Momentary silence on the line. Then she spoke. “Remember the tea shop on Kensington Church Street? I’ll have my chauffeur drive me by in three quarters of an hour. Give you enough time to get there? Just come to the kerb-side car window. Is that all right?”

  Did the Duchess not want to be seen, or was she simply pressed for time? Jennie wouldn’t ask. She looked at her watch. Forty-five minutes. She could practically walk there from Ebury Street. “See you then.” Jennie replaced the instrument.

  Mosley pulled a bell rope at his bedstead. “My man will get you a cab.”

  He reached across to the desk and found three half crown coins. He proffered them.

  “For the fare.”

  Jennie glared at him and left.

  * * *

  It hadn’t taken much thought to work out what was going on. Jennie’s immediate guess, formed on the walk to Kensington, was confirmed almost immediately. The Duchess’s car was waiting. Without speaking, she had rolled down a window and handed Jennie a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied off neatly by a string. Then Elizabeth tapped the glass between her and the driver. The car moved off into the scant traffic.

  * * *

  Why hadn’t her friend said even a single word? Sitting in her cab on the way back to Ebury Street, Jennie answered the question for herself. She needed merely to measure its dimensions in her hand spans, bend the package and heft it to realise she was carrying a sheaf of five-pound banknotes, about three inches thick. How much would that be? She had no idea. But it would certainly fund Mosley’s New Party through the Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and probably beyond it.

  How did you get this deeply into such a vortex, Jennie? It wasn’t foreseeable. Was it inevitable? She hadn’t chosen to be Ramsay MacDonald’s child...if she really was. An hour after she’d been informed, she was having trouble believing it. She hadn’t chosen to be thrown together with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons at twelve years old, or to like her well enough to remain her friend. She hadn’t chosen the politics of her parents, for that matter. Together, these treads had drawn her to this cab ride, carrying a thousand pounds to a politician too charismatic to trust, doing something probably illegal and certainly unconstitutional, something she’d have to hide from her lover, her friends, her political allies, everyone. It had all happened without malice of forethought. But it wasn’t that she’d had no choice. Why are you searching for excuses to do what you are going to do anyway, Jennie? There was a frisson of excitement about it all. More than a frisson. It made her feel she was at the centre of something, something that could turn out horrible or wonderful. But something in which she had a real role, not just the role of an oddity, a freak—the hectoring young woman in the House to whom no one listened, except for fun. The danger was a stimulant. It made her life matter, and not just to her, but even, a little bit, to history. The hard part, she knew, was keeping all this secret from the man she loved. For his sake? Somehow to protect him? Fooling yourself again, Jennie. That’s not why you can’t tell him. He’d make you stop. You want him and you don’t want to stop.

  Back at Ebury Street, she told the cab to wait, got out and rang the bell. When Mosley’s man answered, she handed him the package and told him to pay off her cab. Then she walked away down the street towards Victoria and the tube. She still wanted to turn up at the Commons that evening.

  Swaying in the crowded underground back to Guilford Street, Jennie found herself contemplating her newly discovered real father. She was anonymous enough that there’d be no interruption. Letting the notion become real inside herself, her mind, in her thoughts about herself and the world, she searched for the feelings it would elicit. Back at Ebury Street, it had been brief shame, embarrassment, anger, guilt. But now, these emotions were gone. I should feel something powerful, but I don’t, and I can’t make myself feel the emotions I suppose I should feel...How exactly do you feel about it? The answer came into her head. Droll! It’s a nice bit of irony, that’s all. It doesn’t add to my contempt—no, not the right word—my scorn for that old man. Now it’s settled in my mind, it doesn’t make me hate him more, does it? She reflected on the matter. However had it happened? When and where? Her mother with this wizened, bent pathetic white-haired figure in a wing collar. She found herself unable to conjure up his shape, his manner, his look 25 years before. Knowing she was his child somehow just didn’t make a difference to her. Perhaps you don’t really believe it, Jennie? But she did.

  Then it struck her. How must Ramsay MacDonald have felt, listening to her in the House of Commons over the last two years? Not Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister, politician accustomed to abuse, invective, hyperbole, from opponents on his left as well as his right. How did your father feel about his own child’s harsh invective, the contemptuous tone, the visceral expressions of personal animosity, perhaps even hatred that had driven your Parliamentary speeches, Jennie? He had sat there, stolid, unprovoked, calm. But what was he feeling? Now, the notion wasn’t droll to Jennie anymore. An emotion was welling up, and she felt her eyes glisten with tears. Jennie took out a handkerchief. No one noticed. It could just as wel
l have been a bit of soot in the eye.

  She constructed the image in her mind’s eye again—her, standing above him on the back benches, lashing out, and him, below, before the dispatch box, knowing it was his own child condemning him, as she sought to get others to share the anger, the animosity her politics was driving. Is that something you should be ashamed of? The hurt Ramsay MacDonald had to keep hidden? Suddenly, she could taste ash in her mouth. How ever will you be able to stand up in the Commons again, as long as he’s the prime minister? That night in the Commons, she sat silently through the evening sitting.

  * * *

  Having taken an invisible hand in the Ashton-under-Lyne by-election, Jennie followed the last weeks of the campaign in the papers.

  Ashton seemed favourable ground for Mosley. It was a midlands town east of Liverpool, with a deep and deeply unprofitable coal mine, a large number of textile mills unable to compete with Britain’s Indian colonies, a real Colonel Blimp as the Conservative candidate, and a do-nothing trade union boss sitting as the Labour member. Until the last week before the poll, Mosley was too ill to speak at the New Party campaign rallies, but Cynthia Mosley did. Jennie wondered, was it her glamour and beauty that drew large crowds, or her evident sincerity? Then, with only six days to go, news broke that Mosley was well enough to speak. A hall was booked—one large enough to accommodate thousands—and a speech announced.

  The morning after, Jennie was avid for the papers. She strode down Guilford Street to the newsagent at the Russell Square underground and bought all three papers, the Herald, the Times and The Manchester Guardian. The meeting had been a great success—6800 people, a spellbinding speech, all three papers agreed. There were photos in the Herald catching him pacing across the platform. Never tethered to the rostrum, Mosley had dealt effectively with the Labour hecklers, calling them Communists, securing wave after wave of loud cheering. Was he going to win? Parliamentary sketch writers were preparing their readers.

  Night of the poll, Jennie sat by the wireless till the last news report without learning the result. So, again the next morning she rushed out for the papers. The Times gloated that the Tory, Colonel Broadbent, had beaten the Labour sitting-member by more than 1000 votes. The New Party’s candidate had come third with 4500 votes. The Herald complained that Mosley’s candidate had deprived Labour of a victory. But the bigger news, reported by the Liberal-supporting Manchester Guardian, was the riot outside the town hall after the result had been announced. Leaving the announcement of the returning officer, Mosley and a small group of supporters had waded directly into a sea of angry Labour Party supporters, courting harm and establishing an instant reputation for courage. Jennie knew immediately this was an action Mosley had decided to take with calculation.

  Towards noon, her telephone rang.

  Jennie expected to hear Frank’s voice and began to think what she should say about the news. “Bloomsbury 7208,” she said in a neutral tone.

  It was Elizabeth, Duchess of York, certain that Jennie would recognise her voice and not even waiting for a response.

  “Jennie, dear, did you see the results? Wasn’t it exciting?” She paused for agreement. Hearing nothing she went on. “I just had to talk about it with someone we can trust.”

  “I’ve just been reading about the fighting afterward—”

  “Yes. I was terrifically worried for Cimmie.” This was Mosley’s wife, Cynthia. “She was at the returning officer’s announcement. Then there was that mob...”

  Of course, Jennie remembered, the Duchess of York would have known the daughter of Lord Curzon well and for a long time. She recalled the casual way Elizabeth had first mentioned Tom Mosley’s indiscretions with Cynthia Mosley’s sister, and her step-mother—his mother-in-law. The Duchess hadn’t been worried about that, not a bit of it. In fact, she’d sounded slightly jealous not to be party to such a ménage. But now, it occurred to Jennie to ask herself, If Elizabeth knows Cimmie Mosley so well, why do they need me to be go-between? Then she had a disobliging thought. Is it because Lady Cynthia Mosley has more constitutional scruples than I do? Did Cynthia Mosley herself even know about the improper campaign funding? Jennie couldn’t work it out and was not going to ask. But the question remained: why were Mosley and the palace using Jennie as an intermediary? An extra link in the chain between them was just a risk they wouldn’t take unless they had to.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The New Party hadn’t won the by-election, but it had raised enough hopes and enough dust to begin to look like a movement that would last. The result, Jennie knew, would be more clandestine meetings with the Duchess, and more deliveries of discreet financial support from the palace to Mosley. Through the spring of ’31 everything worsened, and still the government temporised. It would do nothing radical in fear of a fatal blow from Wall Street and the City. The half measures the Trades Unions allowed it to take were both ineffective and offensive. Jennie seethed. You’ve got to do something, and this is all you can do for the moment. The thought was enough to absolve of the only real guilt she felt: keeping the secret from Frank.

  * * *

  What Jennie really couldn’t understand was the hold international capital held over a supposedly socialist government. Why should millions of men and woman be made miserable in order to satisfy J. P. Morgan in New York? What did he care about how much gold bullion there was in the vaults of the Bank of England, anyway? The papers were full of dire warnings about runs on the pound, but what did they really amount to, and why did it matter?

  She could see the Labour frontbench—MacDonald, the PM, Snowden, the Chancellor, Thomas the minister of Labour—motionless, hypnotised day after day, paralysed, in thrall to the flow of dollars, franks, guilders and gold in and out of the Bank of England. Once upon a time, Jennie had learned why economists demanded every pound be backed by an ounce or two of gold, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what that reason was.

  Finally, she decided to admit her ignorance to Frank. They were sitting in his large Bloomsbury flat. His two girls had gone back to Bucks for the Easter holidays, so he and Jennie could enjoy the rainy spring weekend. They’d decided to go nowhere, see no one, do nothing but enjoy one another. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon. They found themselves in the drawing room, turning the pages of the broadsheet papers, reading aloud from leaders and columns that struck their fancies. As one read, the other would survey the lush green of the growing foliage in the square, framed by the mullions of the rain-streaked windows.

  “Gold standard? Why should we care, Frank?”

  He put down his paper. “Fixed amount of gold about. Government can’t issue more pound notes than there is gold to back ‘em.”

  “So?”

  “Fixed amount of pounds, but more things to buy with the same amount of money... Well, prices have to fall. That goes for the price of labour, Jennie. Wages go down and stay down.”

  Jennie smiled ruefully. “So, if you’ve got lots of money, the gold standard keeps making you richer and richer as it makes prices fall.”

  Frank now frowned. “And if you don’t have much money, you’re worse and worse off.”

  “You’re telling me we have to get off the gold standard as soon as possible, aren’t you, Frank.” Then the thought came, That’s Mosley’s policy, isn’t it? Jennie wasn’t going to bring that up and risk spoiling a long rainy Sunday afternoon indoors.

  * * *

  Jennie hadn’t been able to bring herself to speak in the House of Commons all that winter and into the spring. She didn’t have the stomach for Ramsay MacDonald’s sorrowful countenance. She could see he felt himself powerless before the black tides washing over the country, and now she wouldn’t add the pain of a child’s reproach.

  First Frank, and then Nye Bevan had noted her reticence. She shrugged them off. One day in the smoking room when she was alone with Ellen Wilkinson, her friend wondered aloud if Jennie was losing heart. It seemed to Jennie a good excuse for her silence.

  “W
hat’s the point, Ellen? Government won’t listen, and the other ILP members are already convinced. Should I address the Tories or the Liberals?” It was a convincing reason. And it worked pretty well till one day in early June.

  She’d come into the Lady Members’ Room. There was no one present but Lady Astor, and her maid, helping her out of a glittering evening dress and into the sombre suit and tricorn hat Nancy Astor affected on the Conservative back benches.

  She looked round from behind the screen where she was changing and hissed, “Ah, Miss Lee. Have you heard what your party’s government is about to propose in the Commons?”

  What are you outraged about now, Lady Astor? Jennie waited, knowing if she didn’t know she’d soon learn.

  “They’re going to try to cut the budget deficit on the backs of women.”

  Nancy Astor was glaring at her as she strode forth from behind the screen in her parliamentary battle armour.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  Jennie nodded, supressing the reply almost on her lips: You’ll tell me soon enough.

  “I have it straight from the PPS for that Bondfield woman.” This was the MP serving as parliamentary private secretary to Margaret Bondfield, the minister of Labour, the only woman in MacDonald’s cabinet.

  Jennie lost patience. “Well, what’s she done? Spit it out.”

  “She’s going to announce that unemployed women will no longer be eligible for national insurance payments.”

  “But, but...working women have been paying into the unemployment insurance scheme. How can they be cut out of it?”

  “Simple, just pretend they don’t need the money because their husbands work, or, if they’re not married, because their families can support them.” She caught her breath. Before Jennie could think of anything to say she continued. “Besides, your lot don’t want women working anyway, just crowds out men’s chances to find jobs.”