That Churchill Woman

by Stephanie Barron

  Jennie had watched from the gallery as her husband rose from the front bench and sneered at his friends and enemies. For all the long years of effort, the end came blessedly fast. As she swept through the Central Lobby of Parliament afterward with her chin held high, her smile wide and fearless, she could not help but overhear the insults. Having got rid of a boil on your neck, would you ask for it back again? And—more damningly, from Salisbury himself to his nephew Arthur Balfour—Randolph Churchill is a woman. And I can never deal with women.

  She had no outlet for her rage and frustration that day, nor for months afterward—and no use for the skills she’d learned as a crack campaigner and speechwriter. She could only smile and lie, with false serenity, when friends inquired about Randolph’s plans. “He found Cabinet a dead bore, I’m afraid. But Randy always has adventures in view.”

  “Pity they’re not with his wife, in England,” Minnie Paget observed loudly in Jennie’s hearing. “But perhaps in this case, absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

  “For someone else,” Daisy Brooke tittered.

  Only one other MP resigned from Salisbury’s Government in support of Lord Randolph: Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, Fourth Earl of Dunraven and Mount-Earl. It was Dunraven who invited Randy to set up a racing stable with him. The Abbess was the first yearling they bought together. No one was more startled than Jennie when the filly ran her heart out.

  * * *

  —

  The sound of racing hooves came to her suddenly now across the Downs—not from the mass of training horses, but nearer at hand. Cyclops turned his head and skittered sideways, despite the pressure of Jennie’s calves. Her grip on the reins tightened. She peered in the direction of the horse’s ears and saw a beautiful chestnut galloping toward them, a lean figure crouched low over its neck, urging it on through the rising morning and the living heath. Jennie’s heart lurched, as it did every time she saw him. Charles.

  He had leased a house nearby. In the fall, he was quitting Paris to take up a senior post back in London. But for now—and all of July and August—Jennie had him entirely to herself. Randolph was two months gone already to South Africa.

  Charles galloped past Jennie and then wheeled, his horse rearing, his arm raised in salute. Every eye would be upon them; the Downs were filling with other racing spectators. But Jennie no longer cared.

  He leaned in and kissed her hard on the mouth. “You’re the most beautiful sight in all of England.”

  “Come back to the house for breakfast,” she said breathlessly.

  “Is anyone up yet?”

  Jennie glanced at the sun. “I doubt it.”

  “Good.” His eyes glinted. “We can go back to bed. Race you to Banstead—”

  And he reached out and slapped the rump of Jennie’s horse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  With the help of the gardener, Winston had built a two-room hut of logs and mud close up to the edge of Banstead’s ancient moat, which was disused and foul smelling. He had set the younger boys—his brother, Jack, and his cousins Jacky and Hugh—to digging out the moat right near the hut, which they had agreed to name the Den, while he himself hammered at a drawbridge. It must have real pulleys and gears, so that it could be raised and lowered, and it was essential that the catapult he had just finished be set near enough to the Den’s defenses so that the catapult operator was not annihilated in battle. The catapult fired green apples stripped from the adjacent orchard.

  The plan, once the drawbridge could be sealed against the Enemies of England, was to defend the Den against all comers. These would probably be a gaggle of farm laborers’ sons, or the canny boys who haunted the Cheveley racing stables, carrying water and hay for the grooms and exercise lads; in moments of extreme need, the Enemy might even include a girl, like cousin Hugh’s little sister, Clare. But Winston must always be General of the forces commanded to defend the Den. At sixteen, he was the eldest and the only one in possession of sound military strategy. Jack was eleven, Hugh was nearly eight, and young cousin Jacky only six, but they would make do. The catapult, and Audacity, were everything.

  * * *

  —

  Jennie was painting en plein air near a paddock stream beloved of the horses when she heard Jack’s high-pitched cry. She cocked her head and listened for a moment; the cairn at her feet—a dog named Bonaparte, generations descended from the pup she had taken from Fanny Ronalds’s Newport stables—jumped up and raced in full-throated bark across the meadow. Jennie dropped her brush and followed him.

  Charles Kinsky was holding her younger son high in the air, shielding his own body as he faced down the remaining forces ranged inside the Den: Winston, little Jacky, and Hugh. The three faces could be glimpsed through the slits cut in the Den’s turf walls, paralyzed and uncertain. The drawbridge was up, the moat churning with fresh water, the catapult already discharged. Presumably what Jennie had heard was an apple, intended for Count Kinsky, striking her younger son. Charles had his Austrian hussar’s saber raised high in one hand. The other firmly grasped Jack Churchill’s waist.

  “Parlay!” Charles yelled. “Or my hostage dies before your eyes!”

  Poor Jack’s face was very white under his summer tan, and his eyes were squeezed shut so that he would not have to witness the ultimate sacrifice visited upon his own neck. Jennie nearly went to him—nearly pulled him from Kinsky’s arm and roundly scolded them all—but something of Leonard Jerome whispered in her ear. She dived instead for Bonaparte’s outraged body and smothered his barks in her chest.

  She had asked for a man in her sons’ lives. Papa had told her she already had one.

  Suddenly, Winston’s red hair knifed through the Den’s doorway. He was waving a strip of white linen, probably torn from one of his cousins’ shirts. Everest would be furious.

  “Parlay, agreed!” he yelled.

  “Terms?”

  “Hand-to-hand combat. Have you another sword?”

  Charles laughed, and set Jack down on his feet. “No, as it happens. This is a family heirloom. Would you like to see it?”

  “Very much, sir,” Winston said. “Let us exchange prisoners. My person shall be forfeit for my brother’s.”

  “Very well.” Charles glanced at Jack. “Off you go, back into the Den.”

  The drawbridge began to lower, Winston working the pulley rope hand over hand. Little Jacky and Hugh had peashooters trained on Charles. Jack stood anxiously on one leg as Winston emerged, then scuttled across the drawbridge. His cousins cheered.

  “Golly,” Winston said as Charles handed him the saber. “It’s ever so heavy. Is that a ruby in the hilt? What are the three slashes for? Are they ivory?”

  “Yes, it’s a ruby—an ancestor brought it back from the Crusades. The slashes are meant to be wolves’ teeth.” He glanced sidelong at Jennie. “They’re fashioned from an elephant tusk. My father, the Prince, presented me with this when I came of age.”

  “Has your family got a motto?”

  “Yes,” Kinsky said, “but you wouldn’t understand it.”

  “Ours is ‘Faithful but Unhappy.’ I should rather have wolves’ teeth.” Winston glanced up. “Did you know that I’m a jolly good fencer? I’ve been learning at Harrow. I was School Champion last term.”

  “Were you?” Charles’s eyebrows rose. “And I am a knight of the Holy Roman Empire. Have you got a foil here at Banstead?”

  “In my room. But it has a cap on the tip. It’s not a real sword like this.”

  “All the better. I shouldn’t like to be scarred. Fetch your weapon, Winston—and we’ll have a go, shall we?”

  * * *

  —

  Jennie’s sisters Leonie and Clarita came out of the house to watch the combat from lawn chairs drawn up to the strip of grass. The children settled themselves cross-legged on the ground, boisterous with excitement, until Winston
told them firmly that they must keep quiet so that he and Count Kinsky could concentrate. Kinsky stuck a wine cork on the tip of his saber so that it would not cut Winston, and laid down the rules: the target area was solely the chest. He had removed his coat and was in vest and shirtsleeves. He towered over Jennie’s son, and for a moment she was sure that the episode would end in humiliation and disaster. But she had not counted on Harrow.

  When the two fencers faced each other and Kinsky cried, “En garde,” she was astonished to see Winston move as lithely as a cat, springing forward and back with his arm extended—lunging into Kinsky’s reach to touch his chest, only to retreat just as Kinsky parried. He really had learned how to fence, a claim she’d discounted when he boasted of it in his letters from school. Her heart accelerated, and suddenly, as Winston lunged again and Kinsky said “Riposte” and flicked Winston’s breast, she could no longer sit still. She got to her feet and began to pace, her eyes trained on the combatants.

  Back and forth the two figures went, first one scoring and then the other. Winston fell behind—Kinsky had found his chest three times—until suddenly he danced furiously toward the Count, forcing him to retreat, and then raced past him with his foil extended. “Flèche!” Winston cried.

  “C’est une touché,” Kinsky agreed. He narrowed his eyes against the sun, his jaw set. Jennie realized he regarded Winston with utter seriousness. She glanced at her younger boy: Jack’s fists were clenched and his whole face alive with hope.

  On the next action, Charles scored again. Then Winston beat aside Charles’s blade and grazed his sternum. The score was tied. Kinsky halted and raised his saber in salute; Winston did the same. “La belle,” he said. That was what they called the next touch, the tiebreaker that would decide the victor.

  Winston retreated, his foil held high. Retreated again, and again. And then as Charles lunged in attack, Winston parried and thrust forward. His foil bent in a shining arc against Charles’s waistcoat; his tip had struck one of the horn buttons. Charles fell back and dropped his guard. “Et là,” he said, and held out his hand. A concession of defeat.

  For an instant, Winston stared at him. Then he swished his foil up through the air and touched the guard to his forehead in salute.

  * * *

  —

  The rest of the afternoon, the boys were absorbed in fencing lessons, the younger ones clamoring to be taught everything Winston knew, using sticks cut from the orchard. The ladies sat about in the lawn chairs drinking tea. Charles Kinsky lay on the grass at Jennie’s feet, tossing a leather ball for Bonaparte. When the shadows began to lengthen, and Leonie and Clarita went inside to dress, calling to their children, Charles said, “Stay a moment.”

  Jennie glanced down at him. “What is it?”

  He threw himself into a chair beside her, turning the cairn’s ball moodily between his fingers. Bonaparte had already moseyed toward the kitchens, his nose to the turf. “That lad of yours,” Charles said.

  “Winston? What about him?”

  “He’s too old to play with little boys.”

  Jennie shrugged. “That’s all he has, I’m afraid. Sunny—George’s son—is nearly twenty, and already up at Cambridge. The future Duke of Marlborough can’t be expected to show a schoolboy of sixteen any interest.”

  “Hasn’t Win any friends? Boys his own age, from Harrow?”

  “None that he mentions.”

  The ball spurted angrily into the air, was caught in Charles’s fist. “And I’m correct that he has no mount? Here in Newmarket?”

  “Randolph doesn’t think it worth the cost of board for a horse, when both boys are away at school most of the year.”

  “Win’s never taken out a gun?”

  “He says he’s had Riflery at Harrow. But real shooting? On an estate? Good Lord, no.”

  “And yet the preserves at Blenheim must be among the best in the kingdom.”

  “Win doesn’t live at Blenheim.” George had married the widowed American, Lily Carré Hamersley—who was indeed a shy and lovely woman, entirely friendly to Jennie—and was busy refurbishing his estate with his second wife’s fortune. He and Randolph were back on speaking terms, but in her husband’s absence, Jennie avoided Blenheim.

  “He visits the place enough. It’s his ancestral home.” Charles thrust himself out of the chair and began to pace before her, raging. “For God’s sake, Jennie, what is Randolph about, to neglect his son’s education so completely? It should have been his first duty to teach Win how to go on—as a gentleman and a member of his class. The boy ought to have been given a pony at the age of three and schooled to take any fence. He should have been hunting with the Blenheim pack from the age of ten or twelve, as I dare swear Randolph was. And as for guns—what does Randy expect him to do on the Glorious Twelfth? Play with his toy soldiers?”

  He meant August 12, the opening of grouse season.

  “I doubt Randolph expects him to do anything,” Jennie replied mildly. “George and Sunny will be in Scotland, of course—”

  “Winston is sixteen! Has he ever touched a fowling piece? Or even walked out with a party of beaters?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a bloody disgrace,” Charles snarled. He stopped short and glared at her. “Tomorrow I’ll bring over a target and a few shotguns. Jack’s old enough to learn, and so is Hugh. We’ll set up a range. And you may tell Winston he’s welcome to ride any horse in my stables while he’s here in Banstead. I’ll teach him to jump. He can teach me to fence like a champion. I can’t do more than that until hunting season, but—”

  Jennie held out her hand.

  He took it and raised it to his lips.

  “Thank you, my darling,” she said.

  “It’s what any man would do.” He strode off toward the Den. “Winston! Jack! Come dress for dinner!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  In September, both boys returned to school and Jennie moved regretfully into Duchess Fanny’s house in Grosvenor Square. She had found a lessee willing to take No. 2 Connaught Place furnished, and with Randolph still away in Africa, the savings in household expenses were too great to ignore. Living alone with a quantity of servants was crushingly expensive, and Duchess Fanny’s establishment was decidedly good. Jennie’s new position as a dependent chafed at her, however—the Duchess could not help mentioning every time she received a newsy letter from Randolph. He wrote only rarely to Jennie, but complained to his mother of Africa’s flies, which plagued him in unceasing swarms; of the poor coffee and the dirty water and what he regarded as the unimaginable crudity of Boer life. He was constantly on the move, camping throughout the veldt, prospecting for gold and writing articles for the Daily Graphic. The paper had paid him two thousand guineas for twenty articles of four thousand words each—enough to keep him in funds for the year. He hadn’t shared his largess with Jennie. Nor, she reflected, had he asked for her help with writing.

  Duchess Fanny still knew nothing of Randolph’s disease. His mother ascribed his poor health, his ravaged features and fits of temper, to the burden of an unfaithful wife. An ungrateful nation. A Conservative Party that had betrayed its greatest voice. Randolph was a victim of a general conspiracy, Fanny believed. Taking Jennie under her own roof only deepened the Duchess’s contempt.

  “You might make yourself useful while you’re here,” she suggested over the breakfast table one morning. “I am sure you have nothing better to do, Jeanette, with your children from home and your poor husband martyring himself in Mashonaland to keep you all.”

  Jennie sipped her tea, counting silently to ten. Was there no end to the humiliations she was forced to endure to protect Randolph’s secrets? “Did I mention I met Lord Winchester in Bond Street yesterday?” she asked brightly. “He is just back from Africa, where he had a glimpse of Randolph—being carried across a river, in a litter filled with champagne bottles.”


  Duchess Fanny stared at her. “I am sure it is the best thing he could choose to ward off dysentery. Were he to drink from those filthy rivers, he might contract any sort of disease!”

  “True.” In her stifled fury, Jennie almost burst out that it was far too late—Randy was already doomed from a sickness he had probably contracted at Oxford—but she bit her tongue and set down her cup. “I interrupted you, Mother Duchess. You wish me to make myself useful?”

  Fanny sniffed. “Whatever your more variable qualities, Jeanette, you do have a talent for exhibition. You might lend your flair to my concert scheme, in support of the Paddington Recreation Ground.”

  This was the Duchess’s pet charity in Maida Vale, an open-air park designed to improve the lot of Randolph’s borough constituents through healthful exercise. The Ground offered cricket pitches, a bowling green, tennis courts, and a cinder track for footraces and cycling. It had begun life purely as a cricket club, but in 1887, the year of the Queen’s Jubilee—a year of economic slump in Britain when so many of the local people suffered from want—the plan had been enlarged by a benefactor. Some five hundred out-of-work men were employed for months, clearing the ground for the courts and tracks and building an actual gymnasium. Now there was a Churchill Gate at the entrance.

  Randolph might not have appeared in Parliament as the Member for South Paddington for most of the past year, but Duchess Fanny was eternally watchful. The charity must not be allowed to lapse, or the Churchill Gate might be pulled down.

  “Very well,” Jennie said. “When is it to be?”

  “At the end of October. I thought perhaps the twenty-ninth, as it is a Thursday.”

  “And what are your plans?”

  Duchess Fanny’s pug eyes started and her lips set in a thin line. “Plans? I have none. I leave all that to you, Jeanette. You are the one who professes, after all, to have connections in the artistic world.”