That Churchill Woman Read online

  That Churchill Woman is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Francine Mathews

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to Curtis Brown, London on behalf of The Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge for permission to reprint 403 words from the Churchill College archive consisting of 276 words from the writings of Lord Randolph Churchill and 127 words from the writings of Robson Roose, copyright © Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge. Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown, London on behalf of the Master, Fellows and Scholars of Churchill College, Cambridge.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Barron, Stephanie, author.

  Title: That churchill woman: a novel / Stephanie Barron.

  Description: New York: Ballantine Books, 2019.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018038263 | ISBN 9781524799564 (hardback) | ISBN 9781524799571 (Ebook)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION / Biographical. | FICTION / Contemporary Women.

  Classification: LCC PS3563.A8357 T48 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2018038263

  Ebook ISBN 9781524799571

  randomhousebooks.com

  Title-page and part-title images: © iStockphoto.com

  Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Laura Klynstra

  Cover image: Malgorzata Maj / Arcangel

  v5.4

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One: The Dark One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two: The Dinner of Deadly Enemies

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Part Three: Happy Families

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Part Four: Ship of Ghosts

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Afterword

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Letters Cited

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  July 2, 1921

  Sunlight streamed like wings through the chapel’s clerestory windows. Margot Asquith raised her face to the feathered radiance. For all it belonged to the House of Commons, St. Margaret’s was a feminine church. Lifting the black veil of the ceiling, the cream-colored pillars were as girlish as a debutante’s arms. It was the perfect place for weddings—indeed, Winston had chosen to be married here, and his mother had stunned them all that morning years ago, looking as rare and precious as a Russian icon in a frock of antique gold satin.

  Strange how flat the chapel seemed today without her.

  Margot waited for a flash of movement somewhere near the rafters, the echo of a throaty laugh. Jennie always hated to miss a party, particularly one in her honor. But not even Mozart’s Requiem could summon her today. When the treble choristers’ voices died away, Margot stepped out with the rest of the mourners into the heat of the London afternoon. There was no casket to follow, no rose to cast into a grave. That would all be done privately by the family at Blenheim.

  The light on the street was colorless, the humidity dense. Cabs would be impossible to hail in such a crush. People would linger on the paving stones, flutter gloved fingers at Margot, demand her opinion of sudden death. Tripping down the stairs in Italian high heels! Far too old for such a thing. Naturally she fractured her ankle. And then the hemorrhage…

  Margot turned her back and strode away from them all. There would be cabs near London Bridge. She would dine at her club and then meet her stepdaughter at King’s Cross for the night train to Aberdeen. Suddenly, there was nothing she longed for more than the cold Scottish wind off the North Sea.

  * * *

  —

  “Good turnout?” Violet asked.

  The attendant had brought cocoa to their sleeper carriage. They were seated at opposite ends of the lower berth—accorded to Margot by age and precedence. Mother and stepdaughter wore silk wrappers. They swayed rhythmically with the train. Margot had braided her gray hair in a single plait, and Violet’s bob was pinned up in black net. They held their cups delicately at the level of their breasts. Blowing on the boiling stuff. Cocoa in July. But Margot would never sleep tonight without it.

  “Easily four or five hundred people,” she answered.

  “And gawkers pressed against the railings. Watching the nobs do their duty by Lady Randy.” Violet set down her cup with delicate violence. “That’s some solace at least—no more sickening black-bordered columns about how brilliant and good and sincere Jennie was, the brightest ornament of a vanished age. Such tosh. The woman was nothing but a high-class tart.”

  Margot’s cup paused halfway to her lips. “Unnecessarily harsh, my dear. Not to mention vulgar.”

  Violet snorted. “Jennie was never remotely faithful to her husband.”

  “No,” Margot agreed. “But she was immensely loyal to him. The older I get, the more I believe it’s
loyalty that counts. I suppose that’s something you modern girls wouldn’t understand.”

  “Our parents’ hypocrisy? No, Mummie, I’m happy to say we don’t comprehend it in the slightest.” Violet’s nose, too long and broad for real beauty, twitched in contempt. “The war changed all that. Men and women deal frankly with each other now. If the marriage doesn’t work—get out of it. That’s where honor lies.”

  “Divorce was thought dishonorable in my day.”

  “Because you were too afraid to challenge Society!”

  “No, no, my dear. That’s where you’re wrong. Jennie challenged Society just by breathing. She wasn’t one of us, remember. The American bride. How we envied her freedom—”

  “To sleep with anybody who asked?”

  “You make her seem so sordid. And Jennie was never that! The very last thing!”

  “We needn’t quarrel over the bones,” Violet said impatiently. “This is all down to your bloody class consciousness. If Jennie were a fishwife in the East End, you’d call her a tart and be done. But you can’t bear to have a lady thought cheap, can you?”

  For an instant, Margot doubted herself. Was she merely a snob? Or was there something more important her stepdaughter ought to understand?

  “Jennie was a friend of mine,” she attempted. “And more important to you, I should have thought, Winston’s mother.”

  “She’d much rather have been taken for his sister!”

  “She very often was.”

  Violet was still close to Winston; almost too close, Margot thought. Still in love with him, despite both their marriages. Still determined to defend him against all comers. A week after his wedding, desperately unhappy, Violet had tried to dash herself off a Scottish cliff.

  “Don’t you see,” Margot demanded, “that Winston would never be Winston without Jennie? The way she snapped her fingers at convention, Violet! And her wit! We all queued at Hatchards when she published her memoirs, you know—and not just for the racy bits. Jennie was clever. They say she wrote Randy’s best speeches for him.”

  “Cleverness is no substitute for love,” Violet retorted. “Jennie barely spared Winston a thought when he was a boy. Only when he was old enough to be interesting—to worship her as she liked—did she bother to take him up. Poor chap might have been raised by wolves.”

  “That was as much Randolph’s fault,” Margot protested. “One almost suspected he disliked Winston.”

  “It was Jennie’s job to bring them together. Instead, she packed Win off to school at the age of six! But I suppose it suited her to have him out of the way. More time for her men, Mummie.”

  “Nonsense! We all reared our young exactly the same way. You don’t understand how it was, Violet, before the Vote and women’s colleges and having one’s own clubs. So much emphasis on birth and dress, all of us martyrs to our husbands’ careers. Particularly in public life. Entertaining callers every day of the week—and hosting endless dinners. Sitting in the Ladies’ Gallery at Commons until the middle of the night. In bustles, Violet! We sent you children off to the nursery because we had no choice. And much better you were for it, too.”

  “How would you possibly know?” Violet rose and gathered the cups. Her wide mouth had turned down bitterly at the corners. “Anyway—I didn’t think you’d spout such stuff, Mummie. You never really admired Jennie. All these fine words of friendship are due to her being dead. You weren’t always her champion. I remember you saying to Papa once, when I was small, ‘If Lady Randolph had been like her face, she could have governed the world.’ ”

  “Oh, my dear,” Margot said faintly, and sank back against her pillow. “Did I say that? How brutal of me. I must have been jealous. I think I resented her supreme social ease. And your father admired her immensely, you know.”

  “Papa was a martyr to a pair of pretty eyes.” Thus did Violet dismiss former Prime Minister Asquith. “You know Jennie had no more principle than a mercenary or Gypsy. Cross her palm with silver, and she’d promise you the earth.”

  “She kept her promises. If you had known her in her prime, Violet—she had the face of a Valkyrie. A commanding sort of beauty, with a frightening power.”

  “And nothing behind it, really, but selfishness.”

  “Perhaps,” Margot agreed. “But what I liked most, if you must know, was Jennie’s restraint.”

  Her stepdaughter laughed. “You can’t be serious!”

  “She could have ruled the world, as I said,” Margot insisted, “if she had been half as ruthless as her beauty.”

  “Mummie—”

  “With a face like hers, Jennie could have trampled all over the people who loved her. Including her son. But she didn’t. Unlike many women with her power—unlike you, darling—Jennie was kind. She understood pain and how to endure it. That’s why other women adored her. Even when she stole their men.”

  “Am I unkind?” Violet shrilled. “Or merely honest?”

  “A great deal of hurt has been done in the name of honesty,” Margot said gently. “And now, if you please, I would like to turn out the light.”

  * * *

  —

  The cocoa failed to do its job. Margot did not sleep. Violet never stirred in the berth above her; she was unmoved by doubt. It was Margot who mourned. Was she hopelessly out of date? Was Violet right to dismiss them all? Had they been an entire generation of useless women?

  Jennie was a contradiction and a puzzle—but weren’t most complex people? At least she had been true to herself, Margot thought. Wasn’t there an enviable freedom in that?

  Violet wouldn’t agree, of course. Scarred by the Great War, her generation considered their parents shallow. But Jennie had known tragedy. She had suffered loss. Chosen it, time and again, over simple happiness, in fact. How had she managed her grief? Gotten out of bed each morning to charm the world? Kept her secrets safe? Margot had no idea. But without a Jennie Churchill, would a Violet Asquith ever have been possible?

  Margot’s berth swayed. Images flickered through her mind. Jennie on horseback at Sandringham. Arguing politics with Arthur Balfour, in the dining room at Connaught Place. Chopin unreeling from her disciplined fingers. Leaning forward in the Speaker’s Gallery, her gaze fixed on Randolph as he rose to speak.

  Jennie spiraling through a ballroom with Kinsky.

  God, Kinsky.

  He was the only one, Margot thought, who’d ever really known her.

  Tell me, Count, Margot demanded. Was it worth all the love and anguish? Give me the answers, for myself as much as Violet.

  Where would Kinsky come down, on the value of Jennie’s life?

  Was Lady Randolph Churchill, née Jennie Jerome of New York, one of the world’s most brilliant creatures—or merely frivolous?

  Tragic—or indomitable?

  An inspired mother, or an indifferent one?

  A creature of genius and purpose, or a butterfly who squandered her talent?

  Courageous? Unique? Or nothing more than a follower?

  An equal of the men she seduced?

  Or…simply a whore?

  Margot lay sleepless in her swaying berth. The answers mattered as much to her peace as they might to history. While the train shunted north and her memories unreeled, she urgently sifted the evidence.

  Singapore, 1894

  She found the Malay tattoo artist with his ivory and steel knives, his ink intended to brand the skin, set up under an awning near the entrance to the docks. She watched him, fascinated, as he bent over the arm of a British sailor. But it was impolite to stare, even here, on the far side of the world. She walked on. She had so little time for exercise.

  Late that afternoon, the Malay met her gaze unsmilingly as she strolled past, returning to the ship. He was alone now, his customers drinking in the sailors’ bars. There was no one to see her if she stepped into his te
nt.

  Was it an affront to such a man, for a woman to ask for his art?

  Impulsively, she held out her left forearm. “How much?”

  He shook his head. “The lady will swoon.”

  “I have borne two children. I will not swoon.”

  He hesitated, glanced beyond her as though searching for the man who must have her in his keeping. There was no one. The artist lifted his shoulders slightly.

  “These do not wash off. You understand?”

  “I understand.” She slipped under the silk awning and seated herself on his leather stool. “I am embarked on a very long journey. Of the soul, as much as the body. There has been too much pain—inside of me, if you understand.”

  She rejected crosses and hearts, flowers and wings. He showed her drawings of snakes, in rings and figure eights, the serpents’ mouths devouring their tails—sinister, capricious, exquisite. Why did these images enthrall her?

  “This one,” she decided, and gave him her wrist.

  CHAPTER ONE

  She was the last woman to enter the drawing room at Sandringham that Thursday night, hurrying down the stairs in her black satin slippers, one slim hand adjusting a glove. She’d kept the Prince of Wales’s guests waiting a full quarter hour while her maid, Gentry, finished dressing her hair. The cream-and-gold room was filled with the chatter of her most intriguing enemies and friends. The men were elegant in black evening dress and the ladies like a bouquet of tulips in their draped pastel gowns. Every head turned as Jennie Churchill swept through the doorway. The genteel chatter ceased. More than one gentleman ran his eyes the length of her figure; a few women gasped. Was her appearance that spectacular?