The Intrigues of Jennie Lee

by Alex Rosenberg

  “So, Communism arrives courtesy of the police state? Surely not!” Jennie was adamant. “You must believe in the future of socialism. You joined the Komsomol!”

  The English speaker smiled sheepishly. “It’s a nice uniform, and you get to eat in party canteens.” One of the three finished his soup. He rose, sauntered over to the steam tables and rejoined the line.

  Frank had been quiet. Now he spoke. “Look here, friend. This trial...what was the motive for wrecking?”

  “Oh. They were class enemies, in the pay of the former owners, now living abroad.”

  “Oh. How were they discovered?”

  “Confession.” The man’s face remained immobile, but his eyes narrowed as they focused hard on Frank’s.

  “I see.” It was all Frank said. He rose. “Time to get back to the train, I think, Jennie.”

  * * *

  Ten days later, Frank and Jennie were still recovering from their travels. Frank had made stops at a dozen of the Caucasian cooperatives still selling directly to the export market—hides, tobacco, flax, even cotton in the south. None was near a town or even a village, only a railhead. None seemed to have much food, warm water, beds with mattresses, windows that closed against the evening drafts, paved roads, or even simple outhouses. Their busmen’s holiday had turned into an ordeal.

  Now Jennie and Frank were recovering: rested, fed, warm and clean. Both were lying almost prone in wicker lounge chairs on the terrace of a white stucco residence hall. The large building overlooked an ornate fountain, making a pleasing sound in the midst of the orderly grounds of a vast sanatorium. This was Pyatigorsk, meaning roughly “five mountains” in Russian. In Tsarist times, it had been a resort for wealthy Russians with liver complaints and enough money to subject themselves to its mud-bath treatments. Now, each of the town’s sanatoria was restricted to the use of government officials of distinct ranks. Frank’s connections had brought them to the most exclusive of these facilities.

  Without craning their heads from where they lay, Jennie and Frank could see three of the five mountains surrounding the town that gave it its name. Visible behind them was the highest mountain in Russia, the ever-snowy triangle of Mount Elbrus.

  Jennie had been subdued for some days. Frank was worried. Had something come between them? Were the hardships they’d experienced more than Jennie had bargained for? Was she tired of following him round, a mute bystander to his work? He was about to broach the subject when she spoke.

  “I’m afraid this hasn’t been the education I was hoping for, Frank.” He waited for her to continue. “Socialism doesn’t seem to be working here, does it?”

  Was this why she was downcast?

  “Give it time, Jennie. It’s less than ten years since the end of the civil war. Only thirteen since the Bolsheviks took power. There will be wrong turns and right ones.”

  “No, Frank. The problem is deeper.”

  She sat up. She gestured towards the spread of imposing white buildings, each spa catering to a different echelon of the government hierarchy.

  “What happened to the classless society? Seems like they’ve just substituted political power for money as the ticket into this place.” Frank was silent. So Jennie went on. “What if the only way to get to socialism is at the point of a gun?”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Because so far it looks like that’s the only thing working here—threats, fear, punishment, making an example of ‘wreckers.’”

  He shook his head. “I fear you’re right, Jennie. If Stalin doesn’t change course, this country will turn into a vast prison.”

  Jennie was plaintive. “Where does that leave our socialism, Frank?”

  “It’s ironical, isn’t it? Stalin has shown we have to surrender scientific socialism for the utopian sort we used to sneer at.” His laugh was sardonic.

  Chapter Eleven

  Walking the terraces of her North Lanark constituency, Jennie found that the drabness did not have quite the gloom of a coal town in the Caucasus. Life in Glasgow lacked the privations she’d experienced, even in Moscow. You could buy a bolt of cloth or a packet of fags at prices anyone in work could afford. Shabby had never looked so tolerable to Jennie before.

  It’s not a fair comparison, she insisted to herself, every time the thought emerged. This country’s been industrialised for a hundred years. It’s got to do better than one just emerging from feudalism. But Russia had seriously disoriented Jennie. She still knew what she wanted for everyone. She just didn’t know how to get there any longer. It was hard for someone who took politics as seriously as she did.

  That summer, the unemployment had increased further, especially in the north and Scotland. Men milling along, no errand or chore, with vacant looks and no way to provide enough for their families. It was not something she had seen at all in Moscow. There everyone had work—had to work! Yes, but...who’s better off, the short-hours millworker here or the one with a job in the worker’s state? Then the recalcitrant voice in her head, the one that sounded like her lover, would reply, But that’s not the choice, is it Jennie? Frank was right.

  * * *

  Jennie returned to her parents’ in Cowdenbeath in no settled frame of mind. There, a letter had been waiting, with a Forfar postmark and no return address. Forfar was the nearest town to Glamis Castle. Jennie knew immediately that the letter could only be from Elizabeth, Duchess of York. But the envelope was plain and brown, not the gold embossing and royal franking of previous posts.

  Dear Jennie,

  They say you went to Russia with a Labour Party delegation. How daring! We’re at Glamis Castle for the summer. I need to talk to you. I can drop down and meet you somewhere discreet in Edinburgh. I’ll be able to hear all about the real Bolshies.

  Mum’s the word, please.

  Elizabeth

  This time it was Jennie who was kept waiting in a pricey “tea shoppe” she’d found on Frederick Street, just below the Royal Scots Greys war memorial. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons entered the shop discreetly, no different in dress or manner from any of the handful of young married women there already, except she was detectably pregnant. Jennie rose, looked at her friend and quietly congratulated her.

  “I had no idea!”

  Her friend spoke quietly. “Well then, you haven’t been reading the court circular!”

  Jennie never did. But she wouldn’t say so to her friend’s face.

  “I’ve been away longer than I realised. I was nearly a month in Russia. When’s it due?”

  Her friend put her hand to her swollen midriff. “Any day now.”

  She sat down gratefully and looked up at Jennie, who took the opposite chair.

  “Russia.” She sighed. “Was it as grim as they say?”

  “Parts of it. But I think people in the towns are better off than they’d been before the revolution.”

  “Look here, Jennie, I want to hear all about your trip, but it’s not really why I asked to meet.” She turned anxiously to see whether anyone was close enough to hear.

  “Where to begin? My dear, it’s actually my husband”—she mouthed the words ‘Duke of York’—“who wanted me to speak to you.”

  “Your husband? Why can’t he...” Jennie didn’t need to finish the question. What might he have to say to her? “Go on.” She would not interrupt, if she could help it.

  “Jennie, you must understand this royal family is two different worlds. The older half—the King and Queen Mary—are formal, stiff, terribly cautious and correct. Terrifically old-fashioned in every way. But the younger set—David and Prince George—are completely out of control, behaving stupidly, irresponsibly, dangerously.”

  These were the oldest son, the Prince of Wales, a year older than Elizabeth’s husband, Albert, and the third son, now twenty-eight, and eight years younger than Albert. Jennie said nothing. The voyeur in her wanted to learn details. Another part, the self-protective part, didn’t want to hear about this at all.

  Elizabeth went o
n. “The Prince has a suite of mistresses, latest one is Thelma Furness, but he still pines for Freda Dudley Ward. Won’t think of marrying. Mauls any girl he fancies. The younger brother is worse.” She mouthed another word “invert,” a term recently in fashion to label the love that could not speak its name. Jennie remained stolid, resisting the temptation to ask how her friend knew. “Drugs, boys. It’s too sordid.”

  Now Jennie could resist no longer. “Elizabeth, why tell me all this? I don’t want to know...”

  “I’m coming to that, Jennie. Bear with me. It’s difficult, in fact it’s a bit terrifying.” Elizabeth gathered her thoughts again. “The King is despondent. He’s afraid that David’s mad He’s always thought there’s some hereditary weakness in the family...He’s got a certain amount of evidence, I fear. For one, there were his father’s appetites.” Edward VII was a notorious womaniser all his life. “Add to that the Kaiser’s paranoia, haemophilia in the Tsar’s family. They’re all Victoria and Albert’s progeny. The King thinks his older brother was weak-minded.”

  Jennie interrupted. “Older brother? George V wasn’t the heir to the throne?”

  Her friend nodded. “Brother was just a year older. Turned out to be a wastrel, dunce and pervert. Albert Victor. Died in ’92. We wouldn’t have known about him. Too long ago.” She caught her breath. “Then there’s the King’s fourth child, Prince John. Dead of seizures at twelve in 1919. Hushed up of course.” She caught her breath. “My dear, the King feels he’s fighting against madness himself!”

  She stopped and Jennie felt she had to say something. All she could muster was “And?”

  “The King thinks that crown must pass to Albert. He’s even begun to groom him for it.”

  “But what about the Prince of Wales?”

  “He doesn’t seem to want to be king any more than his father wants him to be king.”

  Jennie reached out her hand. “But that means you might become queen.”

  “Yes.”

  Elizabeth now gave in and began quietly to blub. Jennie pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and handed it to her friend. She had no idea what to say. They’d been over this ground before.

  “I should never have agreed to marry him. Jennie, I’m so unhappy...”

  I told you so. The thought gripped Jennie. Elizabeth continued. “And now the thought of becoming queen...it’s intolerable, Jennie...I can’t.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” It was all Jennie could think of saying.

  Her friend collected herself.

  “Look, my dear, here’s the point, the King has pretty well written off the Prince of Wales, and the Prince doesn’t mind a bit of it. So, he’s begun grooming Albert. Training him in government, letting him look at the boxes...” She gulped. “Jennie, this must never come out. Government would be furious.”

  Jennie knew that only the King was to have a key to these boxes in which the cabinet papers were sent to his majesty every day, for information and for royal warrant where needed. “Anyway, Albert has become worried, very worried, about the drift of things in the country.”

  “We’re all worried...” Jennie wanted to say her friend’s name, but she couldn’t, and she couldn’t call her ‘Your grace,’ not when she was divulging secrets of state and family.

  “That’s why I’ve come to you, Jennie. Albert wants some people in parliament to know he shares their anxiety, people who could do something, instead of letting things drift the way MacDonald seems to.”

  “But why me? I’m an invisible backbencher. What can I do?” Again, Elizabeth paused, needing to gather up her courage. “It’s Tom Mosley that Albert wants to encourage. But there’s no way he can do it himself.”

  Now Jennie began to understand. Did Elizabeth know about her ‘lapses’ with Mosley? She’d known about the Curzons—sisters and stepmother. Why not about Jennie as well? Who else knew? Jennie allowed herself to show brief annoyance.

  “So, you told the Duke you knew someone who could be a go-between?”

  “I only told him we knew each other and you were acquainted with Tom. I never mentioned what you said to me last summer, about Mosley’s making a pass at you.” She did not appear to notice Jennie’s sigh of relief. “But he reads the papers, dear. He even reads Hansard.” The parliamentary record went to the palace in the boxes every day. “He knows where you stand.” She paused. “With Mosley and the other Labour MPs who support him.”

  Jennie added, “He’s backed by a couple of Conservative ones too...Boothby, MacMillan.”

  “Albert thinks Mosley could be prime minister, the next prime minister. In fact he wants him to be.”

  “And the Duke wants to help make it happen? That’s crossing a line that won’t be tolerated at Westminster.”

  It was merely a matter of appearances so far as Jennie was concerned. But the appearances mattered to the men in the House of Commons. Elizabeth reached out her hand firmly and held Jennie’s wrist.

  “No, no, no...it’s not like that at all. All Albert wants is for Mosley to know he has a friend in the palace, that’s all.”

  “Is that all I’m to pass on?”

  “Yes, but nothing more. Albert...” She began again, “The Duke...was clear on the point. He doesn’t want to hear anything from Mosley. That would be crossing a line.”

  “Crossing a line?” Jennie sighed. “What about all the rest of what you’ve told me...about the old King sharing the boxes with the Duke...and what you’ve told me about the Prince of Wales”—she gulped and went on—“the younger brothers.” She looked heavenward and hissed out the words, “Am I supposed to tell Tom Mosley all that too?”

  Elizabeth looked bereft. “I don’t know, Jennie. I’m out of my depth altogether in this matter. Would it help if you told him everything?”

  Jennie suddenly felt sorry for her. You can’t, Jennie. It would cause terrific trouble for your friend. “I don’t see how telling him all this could help Mosley.”

  Elizabeth seemed relieved to have shifted the problem to Jennie’s shoulders. “I’m certain you’ll do what’s right, dear.”

  “Well, I don’t exactly know how I’ll get him a message,” she lied, but Jennie caught the fleeting look Elizabeth gave her. She knew after all, or had guessed. Her next sentence subtly confirmed the suspicion.

  “To think, the future of the country may rest with that man. I only wish he wasn’t such a cad.” She rose. “Why are so many successful politicians like that, I wonder?”

  Jennie thought she knew but remained silent. It was a subject they’d covered before, in any case. Elizabeth brightened. “Better get back. Wouldn’t do to have the baby in a tea shop off Prince’s Street.”

  Then she kissed Jennie on the cheek, a surprising gesture of closeness, and unsteadily wobbled her girth out on to the pavement. Through the shop window Jennie could see a large car immediately pull up.

  You are in a mess now, dearie! Jennie realised with a surprising cheeriness. There was suddenly the electric feeling she was in the thick of it. But the thick of what, exactly, she didn’t quite know. Had her friend just wrecked her parliamentary career? If anyone ever learned she’d delivered the Duke’s message to Mosley, she would have to resign. The crown had to be above politics: no one from the palace could favour a politician openly. To do so secretively and be found out was worse. If someone got hold of it, the breach of an unwritten but well understood constitutional prohibition would be enough to end her political prospect. Could she refuse to carry the message to Mosley? No! She knew she wouldn’t refuse. You want Tom Mosley to know! He’s the only chance this country has to escape its pathetic inertia!

  Only then did a really sinking weight begin to make itself felt in the pit of her stomach. Somehow, the Duchess knew Jennie was a reliable secret channel to Tom Mosley? How long before Frank Wise knows too?

  Jennie rose from the table, gathered her things. She was about to pay the half crown bill when she saw the gold sovereign on the heavy linen tablecloth. She look
ed at the waitresses, wan in starched white collars over black uniforms. It was utopian socialism that made her decide not to wait for change. Jennie left the teashop with a rueful thought. The Duchess of York hadn’t really been very interested in hearing about Russia at all.

  Chapter Twelve

  Jennie didn’t like party conferences. In the early autumn of each year, each of them would find a different dull seaside resort for a week of socialising and infighting. They’d give the newspapers plenty to write about, without having much of an effect on anything at all. This was especially true of Jennie’s party—Labour. But every MP had to be present or accounted for, herding, cajoling, flattering the activists from their constituencies when they could, protecting themselves from the embarrassment of even the whisper of a reselection fight.

  This year, Labour’s venue would be Llandudno, a cream-coloured stretch of hotels perched between the Welsh mountains and the Irish sea forty miles west of Liverpool. The water would be too cold to swim, the food too cooked to eat, the chairs too hard to sit upon, and MacDonald’s rhetoric would be too self-congratulatory to abide. But something important is going to happen! Jennie reassured herself repeatedly on the all-day train journey down from Cowdenbeath. Mosley will get his chance!

  She had to change at Edinburgh and again at Liverpool. Then there was the long ride along the River Mersey and the estuary of the Dee to the Irish Sea, all under leaden skies. Along the docks of the Mersey, empty goods wagons rusted on sidings in mute expression of the slump that now gripped the whole country. In the afternoon gloom, the small resort towns and caravan parks dotting the strands along the seacoast looked as neglected as Jennie felt.

  Her newspapers were no distraction. All were filled by accounts of the crash of the R-101, the government’s experimental airship—the largest one in the world, begun in the previous Labour administration five years before and now crashed to the ground in France on its first international flight, to India. Forty-eight had been killed, including the Labour government’s air minister. The omens, more than one leader writer had remarked, were ominous for MacDonald’s government. The R-101 had been built by the government in competition with a privately built airship, the R-100, just returned from its successful crossing and re-crossing of the Atlantic. What everyone had called the “capitalist airship” had bested the “socialist” one. Jennie threw the papers aside. Her thoughts returned to Mosley. It was no secret that now, almost five months since he’d left the cabinet, Tom Mosley would finally go over the government’s heads, seek to take the party away from MacDonald to his vision for the country. It was the only thing about the week Jennie had to look forward to.