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Though they tried not to be seen in public, Profumo sometimes took Christine for drives, she later recalled. "He showed me the War Office, where he worked. He even showed me Downing Street." But in time Profumo stopped seeing Christine because, she explained, he was "scared it would ruin his career." Comrade Ivanov was shipped off to Moscow, and the "model" from Middlesex, who had acquired a taste for jazz on the way up, hit the blues belt and acquired a Jamaican lover named Johnnie Edgecombe. But he could never understand what her telephone was for. "He seemed to think," Christine complained later, "that I was going to live with him forever." One day, Johnnie showed up with a gun and fired several bullets into the door before the bobbies bagged him.
Multiracialism. After Johnnie went to jail, there was another West Indian lover, Aloysius "Lucky" Gordon, who, if anything, was even more narrow-minded. In April he beat her up. Last week, at his trial for assault, Aloysius was so ungallant as to testify that he had kept her supplied with marijuana, while all she gave him in return was VD. "You can say this for Christine," said a leading Labor politician. "At least she's multiracial."
The scandal might have died, had it not been resurrected by Stephen Ward himself. Seven weeks after Profumo's denial, he told the Prime Minister's private secretary that the War Minister had lied in Commons, that he had indeed had an affair with Christine Keeler. Ward repeated his charges in letters to Home Secretary Henry Brooke and Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson. Profumo was confronted with this new accusation, but it was not until last week that he startled Tory officials by blurting the truth about Christine. In a letter to the vacationing Prime Minister, Profumo resigned as War Minister and as M.P. for Stratford-on-Avon, confessing his "grave misdemeanor." Said he: "I cannot tell you of my deep remorse." Macmillan accepted his resignation, describing the affair as "a great tragedy." Then Profumo and his wife left their Regent's Park home and disappeared into the country.
Dilemma. The scandal he left be hind got livelier every day. Christine Keeler, who was back from a Continental holiday and suddenly sported a "business manager" and a new Rolls-Royce, added more off-color to the saga by telling and selling her story to the papers. "I was very fond of Jack," she said wistfully. "If ever we meet again, we have at least this in common-both our careers have been ruined." Mandy chimed in with details of the high living that had earned her a Jaguar, mink and diamonds by her 17th birthday. At one dinner party, she recalled, "a naked man wearing a mask waited on table like a slave. He had to have a mask because he was so well known."