That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

  She settled herself at the small folding desk the cabin afforded, not far from Randy if he needed her. His eyes were half-closed. She took up her pen.

  I do not blame Charles, she wrote in answer to Leonie. I only blame myself for having been such a fool….These four hard, miserable months I have thought incessantly of him and somehow it has kept me going….Leonie, my darling, I am ashamed of myself at my age not to be able to bear a blow with more strength of character. I feel absolutely mad, it hurts me so.

  She paused and glanced once more at Randolph. His head had fallen forward on his chest and for an instant she wondered if he was dead. But then he snorted in his dreams and her watchfulness receded.

  Even now, I cannot bring myself to think ill of him in any way. I know you don’t like him—but I loved him. I don’t think anyone half good enough for him….He has deserted me in my hardest time, in my hour of need, and I want to forget him—though I wish him every joy and luck and happiness in this life.

  Don’t let us speak of it anymore.

  * * *

  —

  They had intended to stay at Madras’s Government House, as usual, but when Jennie emerged from her cabin later that morning in search of Keith, he took her aside to the ship’s saloon and sat down with her on a sofa. The only other person in the cabin was an elderly man engrossed in his newspaper. Keith kept his voice low regardless.

  “I’ve heard back from Dr. Roose,” he told her. “A telegram in response to my own of this morning.”

  “And?”

  “He agrees with my conclusion—Lord Randolph is in no condition to enjoy these travels; indeed, they may be hastening his deterioration. We are united in the belief that the trip ought to be curtailed, and that our party should start for home immediately.”

  “Thank God,” Jennie breathed. They had intended to tour the entire Subcontinent over the next month—and she could not imagine how Randolph was to be managed on land, with perpetual train and carriage journeys, and endless, painful parades through the lobbies of hotels. “If we are to end it, let’s do so quickly.”

  “That means a train from here to Bombay,” Keith said, “and from there, a ship through the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. We can reach Port Said through the Suez Canal, enter the Mediterranean, and be in Marseille by the middle of next month.”

  Jennie nodded. For an instant she felt dizzy, as though all the blood had rushed from her head. She would be home for Christmas. “Which of the details must I manage first?”

  “That is already done, my lady. I have booked a first-class compartment for each of us, as well as servants’ accommodation, on tomorrow’s Bombay train. I shall wire ahead to the port there this afternoon and secure passage on a suitable ship. That is enough to be going on with; we may settle our forward plans out of Egypt later.” He hesitated. “I would recommend that we carry the lead-lined coffin with us.”

  Impulsively, Jennie reached for the doctor’s hand and clasped it between her own. “You are very good,” she whispered.

  “It has been a trying time, my lady,” he said soothingly. “Why don’t you see what you can of Madras this afternoon?”

  * * *

  —

  She gathered her portable easel and watercolors, and took a cab from the piers to Fort St. George. This was the old heart of Britain in Madras—and still housed most of the region’s colonial government. From her seat on the fortress walls, Jennie could shade her eyes against the sun and look south to an area known as the Island, set between two rivers, and beyond, the white bulk of Government House’s airy verandas. To the east was the rolling stretch of the Bay of Bengal. She gazed out over the port and the water, and made a stab with her brush at ships’ funnels and masts.

  She ought to have captured the native Tamil dress or the outline of the fort’s soldiers in charcoal. Something of the local architecture. The fierce Subcontinental light. A few lighthearted scenes to send back to Winston, so that her son would know she was looking on the bright side of things. There had been a time when she had longed to see India. Now all she thought of was home.

  Under her fingers, an elusive face took shape. The blade of a nose, two intent blue eyes beneath quirked black brows. Jennie touched the sensitive mouth with her fingertips, her throat tightening. She would leave the shirt collar open, as she loved it best.

  * * *

  —

  Oh, Leonie, darling, do you think it is too late to stop it? she wrote to her sister, before the last call for mail from her ship in Bombay. Nothing is impossible, you know….For Heaven sake write to him. I am frightened of the future all alone—and Charles is the only person on earth that I could start life afresh with.

  A whistle blasted; the first note signaling visitors to go ashore. She had so little time. If I have lost him—I am indeed paid out for my treatment of him….Leonie, darling, use all your cleverness and all your strength and urge him to put off this marriage. If only I am given the chance—I will redeem all the past….

  * * *

  —

  They reached London, at last, on Christmas Eve.

  Randolph was carried to shore on a stretcher. Keith walked beside it, his fingers on Randolph’s pulse.

  On the seventh of January, at Schloss Herdringen in Arnsberg, Charles Kinsky was married.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  “Have you got your horses?”

  Winston stirred, his eyelids flickering open. He had dropped off without realizing it, the result of the heat from the coal fire and nervous exhaustion. The room was stuffy and dimly lit, the draperies closed against the light reflecting off the January snow. He was sitting by his father’s bed in Duchess Fanny’s Grosvenor Square house. It was his turn to watch; Mamma was resting. She spent most nights with Papa, although there had been little change in his condition since the New Year—stupor alternated with the most horrifying pain. Only large doses of morphine helped. When drugged, Papa slept for a few hours. When awake, he moaned.

  It had been weeks since his father had been able to articulate words. And yet Winston had heard his voice. Have you got your horses? He must have been dreaming.

  He leaned closer to the bed. A sour odor rose from Papa’s skin, which was covered in sores. A gleam of light seeped from between his eyelids, however; he seemed to be turned toward Winston. He could not take Papa’s hand—the joints were swollen, deformed, too painful to be touched. He said clearly, “Yes, sir. Three chargers and two polo ponies.”

  He had returned to Tattersall’s after his graduation from Sandhurst, where he had ranked eighth among one hundred and fifty subalterns, the greatest success of his young life. He would not be posted to a regiment for another three months, but Winston was determined it would be the Fourth Hussars. Once Roose had opened his files and explained about the syphilis—once Roose had admitted Papa was dying—he’d known there was no point in waiting for a decision about his future. It was only his to make.

  His father grunted. It might have been the word Good. His head shifted slightly on the pillow. His eyes closed.

  The bedroom door opened, and Duchess Fanny came in. Her face looked dreadful, racked and pale with apprehension. She had no idea why her son was dying, only that there was nothing she could do to stop it. Winston had been sworn to secrecy about the syphilis. He thought it was awfully sporting of his mother to keep Papa’s secrets when Duchess Fanny so clearly blamed her for letting him down. “Had you been a more careful helpmeet…” was one of the ways she began her conversations with Mummie, and “…if only all the world, at home and abroad, had not turned against him” was generally how such conversations ended. Duchess Fanny already wore mourning. Winston assumed she would never wear anything else again.

  “Leave us,” she ordered him. “Find something to eat.”

  Number 50 Grosvenor Square, although an unimpeachable Mayfair address, was not a large house. Like so
many London places, it was tall and narrow, with a redbrick Georgian front and a single room to either side of its door. The ground floor held the hall and a sort of saloon where guests might wait; the principal rooms for entertaining were on the second floor; three bedrooms were on the third; and the maids slept in the attics. The basement was entirely given over to kitchen, butler’s pantry, servants’ hall, and offices. A separate building at the rear housed the laundry and two stalls for Duchess Fanny’s pair of horses. It was vastly different from the life she had known at Blenheim.

  Winston was not staying in the house. There was no room. His father had one bedchamber, his grandmother another, and Jennie the third. He was sleeping at Margot Asquith’s girlhood home—her father, Sir Charles, still owned No. 40 Grosvenor Square—but spending most of his time at the Duchess’s. He was no stranger to her kitchen, and as it was now several minutes past eleven o’clock in the morning and any formal meal was long since over, he went down the back staircase. Unlike his grandmother, Cook had a soft spot for Master Winnie.

  * * *

  —

  Awareness of the death watch playing out in Grosvenor Square mounted gradually in the public consciousness. Newspapers posted medical bulletins on Lord Randolph Churchill’s health. Newsboys hawked headlines on London streets and pasted the doctors’ latest statements on sandwich boards, which they walked up and down railway platforms, crying out Dandy Randy Sinking! Strangers traded rumors on the top decks of omnibuses and as they waited in queues. In Commons, each day began with a prayer for Lord Randolph’s health.

  Even his mother wishes now that he had died the other day, Jennie wrote to her sister Leonie late one afternoon as she lay on the chaise longue by the embers of her bedroom fire. Outside, the snow had begun to fall again and darkness was absolute, although it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. She could catch the rush of hansom wheels on the wet streets around the square. Up to now the General Public and even Society does not know the real truth, and after all my sacrifice and the misery of these six months, it would be hard if it got out. It would do incalculable harm to his political reputation and memory and be a dreadful thing for all of us.

  Jennie had been the subject of whispers for much of her life. But she could not bear Jack and Winston to be ridiculed or shunned or even pitied—to their faces, or behind their backs. She wanted an end to Randolph’s pain. And peace and silence on his death for the rest of their lives.

  She touched the snake encircling her left wrist. In the candlelight, it seemed as though the serpent’s eyes flickered. A threat? Or a promise? She could not decide.

  * * *

  —

  “Master Winston! Master Winston!”

  He jerked instantly out of sleep, one arm throwing back the covers. His batman’s face loomed over him, a candle held in one hand; the rest of the room was dark. The fire had gone out.

  “What is it?”

  “Your father, sir. You’re summoned to the Duchess’s.”

  He pulled on his clothes and dragged a comb through his hair. A queer sensation was rising in the pit of his stomach, like a rubber bladder filling with air. It might burst at any moment and leave him in pieces. He breathed in short gasps, aware that his heart was racing.

  It was a few minutes after five in the morning. The streetlamps still glowed; the square itself was empty and filled with new snow. He cut across the park, his boots skittering in the drifts, his gloveless hands chill in the predawn darkness. Ever since he’d had pneumonia, it hurt his lungs to breathe freezing air. He felt the stab now and thought of his father struggling for breath. Let me be in time. Lights burned in nearly every window of his grandmother’s house.

  The door knocker had been removed to keep the noise from disturbing Papa. Winston rapped dully on the oak instead. It opened almost immediately. They had been watching for him.

  He pelted up the stairs. A woman was weeping quietly—a desperate, hopeless sound. That would be the Duchess. Behind and on top of her sobs wove the thread of stertorous breathing.

  The death rattle, he thought.

  A faint glow seeped from his father’s open doorway.

  Winston slowed. Stopped short on the edge of then and now.

  “Win.”

  His mother. She had risen from her chair and come out into the hall. Her black hair was unbound to her waist and she had not changed her dress in two days. Exhaustion made the brilliance of her eyes otherworldly.

  “He’s unconscious,” she whispered as she took Winston’s hand. “It’s a matter of hours, Keith says.”

  Winston nodded. He could not speak, but at least he had not cried.

  She led him into Papa’s room. There was no third chair. He leaned against the wall near the head of his father’s bed and stared down at him.

  He was still standing there at eight o’clock in the morning, when Randolph died.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  The funeral was a state affair in Westminster Abbey, as Randolph had once predicted. Arthur Balfour and George Curzon and Hartington and Lord Rosebery filed into the church in ceremonial robes. Joseph Chamberlain and his sons, Austen and Neville, came. Soldiers attended the coffin to Paddington Station, where Walden, Randolph’s valet, followed it mournfully down the platform. The entire Churchill family—Jack from Harrow and Randolph’s sisters with their husbands and children, Leonie and her sons, even Jennie’s sister Clarita—filled the first-class compartments of the Woodstock train. They did not bury Randolph in the vaults beneath Blenheim’s chapel with his father and brother, but in the eleventh-century churchyard of Bladon St. Martin in Woodstock. He had always preferred the open air.

  Jennie and Winston were the last to leave the grave. It was such a dreary day, and wet; everything the color of stone.

  “I dreamed of friendship,” Winston said suddenly, “that never came. Of earning his love, Mummie—and even more, his respect. I thought one day I would enter Parliament at his side.”

  Her heart ached. How brutal for a boy to grow up longing for his father’s approval. Yearning for love he never felt. If Leonard Jerome had not cherished Jennie—made certain she knew that her father’s belief in her was as solid as the granite shore of Newport—would she have endured and survived so much?

  “I didn’t know,” she attempted. “That you wanted a life in politics. I thought the Army…your Fourth Hussars…”

  “There is no other life worth having,” Win said simply. “The cavalry is just a means to an end—a way to make a name for myself. As I must, now Papa is gone.”

  She studied his profile. Grief and something worse—despair—nipped at his heels like a black dog. “My darling. I understand how you feel. I don’t think I have ever spoken to you of my sister Camille?”

  His sandy eyebrows furled; his eyes were still fixed on the bleak earth. “Camille?”

  “She died when I was a child.”

  “I never heard that name.”

  “She was two years younger, my particular little sister. The person I loved most in the world when I was nine.”

  He looked at her then. “Why have you never told me?”

  “Guilt.” Jennie’s smile wavered. “Because I lived. We were both sick, you see—only I proved stronger. I survived when Camille did not. I would have gone gladly into the grave in her place, Win. But your grandfather told me something then that I ought to tell you now. Live twice as hard. For the ones who are denied life. Don’t apologize to the world for the days you’ve been given. Use them.”

  Winston stared at her. “I’m not sure I understand, Mummie. I can’t become Papa.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to, my darling. You’re your own person, and better for it. But you might try, Win, for the things Papa valued—if they truly matter to you as much. Your father set his heart on high office—then threw it away after six months. He was brilliant, Win, but fragile. Too
rash and heedless…and yes, weak. He was driven by ambitions he could never fulfill.”

  “He was a great man.”

  “He might have been,” Jennie replied ruthlessly. “You could be. You’re tougher than you know. Why not do what your Papa only attempted? Fulfill his dreams—as well as your own?”

  Winston nodded slowly, considering her words. “Yes. I must at least try. Fight on, for both our sakes. Raise up the fallen standard from the field…”

  A battle metaphor. It was all he understood at twenty, with his military education, but it was preferable, Jennie thought, to despair. “You know I’ll help you all I can.”

  His fierce gaze returned to the dark mud at their feet. “Tell me something else, Mummie.”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you carry his sickness?”

  Her heart turned over a second time. He was braced for the worst of all possible news.

  “No, my dearest. And neither do you.”

  He heaved a shuddering sigh. Unable or unwilling, Jennie knew, to ask how she could be so sure.

  She pulled Win close. The last time, perhaps, that she would hold him while he cried.

  * * *

  —

  On Wednesday, six days after Randolph’s death, Jennie walked Bonaparte along the northern side of Grosvenor Square. She had returned to Duchess Fanny’s house with no intention of remaining long; when her body and mind had fully recovered from the terrible strain of the last few months, she would make plans for the future. Winston had gone to stay with friends in the country. Jennie had spent most of the previous day with Randolph’s solicitors—his estate was entangled in debts. Almost all of the principal and the remainder of his gold shares would have to be sold to meet them. But she would have the furniture and household goods left in storage while she lived with the Duchess, two thousand pounds a year from the Jerome trust, and five hundred from Randolph. Surely enough for a small house of her own?