Honeyville (11 page)

Inez took the precaution of avoiding me for a week or so, and for a while I wondered if her aunt had somehow winkled the truth from her and forbidden Inez from seeing me again. Inez might have disobeyed her, of course. But she would need to be careful about it. Without her aunt and uncle’s love and money, she was as vulnerable as the rest of us.

And then, finally, she came to visit me. She let herself in through the back door early one morning, unannounced, and I emerged from my bedroom, in pale green silk kimono, to find her sitting right there on my couch.

‘I think it’s the safest place for us to meet each other for the moment,’ she said, by way of greeting. She glanced at my kimono. ‘Are you all right? You look dreadful.’

‘Well. I have only just woken up. Hello there … Good to see you. How long have you been sitting here?’

‘About a minute,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reading your filthy novel.’ She dumped it on the table at her elbow. ‘Where do you find that stuff?’

I smiled. ‘I have plenty more if you like it. A client sends me a new one every couple of weeks. It’s a devil to keep up with them.’

‘No, thank you.’ She sighed. ‘Unless you have any in English? Your French must be a lot better than mine … Darling, I am so sorry.’

‘Sorry? Whatever for?’

‘We had them eating out of our hands, didn’t we? I swear, if that wretched man hadn’t walked in when he did.’

‘Did anyone say anything after I left?’ I nursed a childish hope that perhaps all was not absolutely lost.

But Inez’s gaze slid away. ‘Oh, nobody said anything much,’ she said. ‘Mr Hitchens couldn’t exactly say much, could he? Not without giving himself away. But he hinted enough to ruin everything for everyone. By the way,’ she added, ‘I have been relieved of my duties at the library.’

‘No! Because of me? But that’s … Why? Did you not stick to our story?’

I opened the door to the landing and shouted down for Simple Kitty to bring me my morning coffee. ‘You want some?’ I asked Inez.

She shook her head. ‘I took mine hours ago. You’re up late this morning,’ she glanced again at my kimono, haphazardly fastened. ‘You’re not even dressed.’

‘I work late, Inez.’

‘Of course you do …’ She fidgeted, embarrassed. ‘Maybe I will have that coffee after all.’

So I shouted out onto the landing a second time.

It stirred the girl in the next room, who yelled at me from her bed to hush up, which (since she happened to be the noisiest of all of us, day and night) encouraged me to slam the door with enough force that the floor shook. As I plumped myself, silk kimono billowing, into the little couch opposite Inez, the girl was still bellyaching at me through the wall.

‘Apologies for the neighbour,’ I said.

Inez shrugged. ‘She sounds a little crazy.’

‘You’ve been fired from the library? But why?’

‘Well no, I haven’t been fired,’ she amended. ‘Not exactly …’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I only meant to say … Oh! That I know how disappointing it must be for you – but that there were some sharp words directed at me afterwards too … Aunt Philippa was mad as a March hare.’

‘You didn’t tell her we were friends?’

‘Of course not. Dora, I’m not stupid. I told her we met in the library and I stuck with the story.’

‘Well then?’

‘Well then … So she said …’ Inez laughed self-consciously. ‘Well, she said she might have to have a word with Mrs Svensson.’

‘Mrs who?’

‘The lady who runs the library. I don’t need to tell you, Aunt Philippa’s still pretty puckered about that evening when – oh gosh, Lippian? Lippians?’

‘Captain Lippiatt.’

‘The night he was killed, and I rolled home half-corned.’ She giggled. ‘Poor Aunt Philippa. She doesn’t know the half of it, does she?’

Simple Kitty arrived with the coffee. She placed it on the small table between us, staring in open-mouthed wonder at my respectable-looking female guest, and spilling sugar on my best silk tablecloth in the process.

We waited until she had left.

‘So she had a word with Mrs Svensson?’

‘Well. No.’ Inez looked uncomfortable. ‘No. She said … she might. Because of the immoral people I might meet as a consequence of being at the library.’

I laughed, but she didn’t.

‘In any case, I’m not so sure I really like working at the library any more. It’s sort of … restricting. It doesn’t feel right.’ Inez gave a great sigh and, spreading her arms, threw herself back onto the green silk cushions behind her. ‘So here we are, Dora. All day ahead of us …
What shall we do?
I tell you, nothing ever damn well
happens
in this town. And I wish … oh gosh … I just wish …’

Lawrence O’Neill had been away on Union business for over a week by then. Inez had dropped by the offices to find out when he was due back, and been told by Cody that it wouldn’t be for another fortnight at least. His tour of undercover meetings in the mining camps upstate (mustering support among the men) had been extended.

Cody reminded Inez that Lawrence had banned her from hanging around the Union offices while he was away.

‘“Mr O’Neill told you to keep away.” Those are the very words that impertinent young boy said to me, Dora! He said, “So you’d better git. Or you’ll have me in trouble.” He was terribly rude,’ she added, ‘especially considering I thought we were friends.’

Inez had nothing to distract her. In the days that followed she would come to my rooms in the early mornings, and sit on my couch and sigh – until my work began and I would kick her out, and she would meander back across town to her other life of card evenings with Aunt Philippa and church fundraisers, and educational teas, only to return to me the next morning. She never seemed to go to the library. When I asked why, she just sighed and said, ‘Because there’s no
fun
in it any more.’ She was bored.

‘You need to find a husband,’ I told her. ‘Have some children before it’s too late. Don’t make the mistake I did.’

She gave a lovesick groan. ‘But you have
no idea
how I long to have his children! Oh God where
is
he, Dora? Why doesn’t he return? Do you suppose something has happenedto him? Those company guards have no respect for life. You saw it for yourself … God knows, he might be lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet through his chest. And I am just sitting here, killing time on your couch, wasting my life away, waiting for him.’

She was accidentally ‘passing by’ when she saw his car pull up outside the Union office a week or so later. He must have been gone about three weeks altogether. Inez said she rushed across to him and then, as she was about to call out, abruptly lost her nerve.

‘But I think he saw me,’ she said. ‘I’m certain he did. He was with two other men, and they all looked
so serious
!And then they all disappeared into that dreadful office and Dora – can you believe it? After all these
weeks
and
days
only longing for his return, there he was, hardly yards away from me and I lacked the nerve to follow him!’

‘It’s probably a good thing,’ I replied.

‘I think so too,’ she said. ‘Since he’s banned me from the office. But Dora,
you
could go, couldn’t you?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘After all, he’s a friend of yours. Couldn’t you go and see him for me? Find out what he is thinking of me, find out if he is absolutely longing to see me, as I am him? Couldn’t you go to him and tell him how much I have missed him?’

‘I’ll go for you, Inez, all right? At the end of the day.’

‘I just have to know if he ever wants to see me again.’

‘I can’t go right now, Inez. I have a bunch of things to do.’

‘Thank you, darling. You’re so kind … It’s just the
not-knowing
that’s sending me so crazy …’

But she wouldn’t let it rest. Within a half-hour her determination had worn me down, and I was on my way to North Commercial Street to find him for her.

He was in the same leather chair, long legs stretched across the sawdust floor, at the same messy desk as the last time I visited. Once again, he was staring into the barrel of an open shotgun.

There was no one else in the office. I leaned on the counter and waited quietly. He must have sensed it; the rustle of skirt, the smell of perfume – uncommon enough in that room, I assume. But several moments passed before he spoke. He said, with his eye still stuck down the gun barrel. ‘It’s you is it, Dora? Come to speak up for your little friend?’

I said, ‘She’s wondering where you are. I told her not to bother with you, but she won’t listen.’

He gave a small snort.

‘It’s a good thing she didn’t come herself,’ he said, snapping the gun shut, and looking across at me at last. Sandy hair, those startling blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to be constantly battling not to chortle at an unspoken, private joke. He was tall and well built and handsome, by anyone’s standards. He didn’t do much for me, but to a young woman who had spent her life in church groups and libraries, in the company of gentlemen who could only talk about automobiles, he must have seemed irresistible.

‘She did come and see you herself. As I dare say you know perfectly well. She said you saw her. And that you looked so sternly at her, she lost her nerve. And then you didn’t come after her.’

He glanced around the room, checking we were still alone. ‘Yes. Well … Tell her sorry, will you? Of course I saw her. Only she mustn’t come by here any more. I told her that. It’s not helpful. If she wants to help—’

‘She wants to see you,’ I said. ‘That’s what she wants.’

‘And I want to see her,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

‘Good. She’ll be happy to hear it.’

He looked at me frankly, surprising himself, I think, by what he was about to say. ‘I missed her, Dora.’

‘She’ll be happy to hear that, too. Why don’t you tell yourself?’

‘She mustn’t come round here any more,’ he said again.

‘So you keep saying.’

‘Tell her …’ He stopped. ‘Tell her I miss her. That I want to see her. And that I may have a job for her, if she wants one.’

‘
What kind of a job?
’

‘None of your business, my friend,’ he said.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Maybe it isn’t. But you can tell me this at least. How’s she going to meet with you or do any kind of job for you if she can’t come round here to find you? She’s got to meet up with you someplace, and I don’t think you’ll be terribly welcome at her aunt’s place.’

He didn’t respond.

‘Lawrence?’

‘Hush up a second, won’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking … What’s the name of that old dram shop – the queer one, up by the Avenue?’

‘Crazy Annie’s.’ I laughed. ‘Is it the best you can do? I’ve never even been inside, have you?’

‘Tell her I’ll meet her there.’

She was waiting for me at a tearoom a couple of blocks away. When I turned into the street, she was standing at the door, peering out, in search of me.

‘He has a task for me?’ she cried. ‘What can it possibly be? I’ll do anything –
for the cause
,’ she added quickly, and giggled. ‘No, but I mean it. Honestly. I care so much about the miners now. You know that, don’t you?’ She kissed me on the cheek and dashed away.

12

I spotted her a day or so later, speeding through the streets behind the wheel of her automobile, bright silk scarf flowing behind her. She waved, almost running down a trio of miners in the process, but she didn’t stop, which was just as well. They were singing something angry, and if she’d stopped they might well have lynched her.

Once Lawrence returned to town, I saw much less of her, and felt rather bereft. I had grown accustomed to her lovelorn presence on my couch each day. But he kept her busy (and happy) at her secret Union task.

I guessed the nature of it long before I winkled it out of her. It was too obvious. She would, of course, have made a perfect spy: dazzling in her prettiness and charm, and to anyone unaware of her link with Lawrence (which was everyone, if you didn’t count Cody and me), she would seem about as far removed from being a Union sympathizer as it was possible to be. Lawrence sent her into the camps, alone, in her own automobile, with a supply of Bibles and improving stories for the young, which had been brought in from Denver for the purpose. Her instructions were to ingratiate herself with the miners’ women and children. She was then to report back on families who confided a lack of sympathy with the Union, so that the Union plants employed within the company could feed back false information to their company managers, get the poor saps falsely labelled as pro-Union troublemakers and revolutionaries, and thrown off the camp. Off the camp, that is, and out of home, and job, and school, and future … out onto the wide prairie to fend for themselves.

I didn’t agree with what she was doing. It seemed to me she was meddling in something that didn’t concern her, something that, with so much money and security behind her, she could never understand.

‘I am ashamed, Dora,’ she said to me once, lying back in her limpid pool of newborn sensuality, only killing time in my rooms until she was summoned by her lover again. ‘I am ashamed,’ she said, ‘that I have lived beside these fine, brave, working people all my life – and until now I never once paused to see things from their side.’ It was the weekend of the Miners’ Conference, the streets were spattered with men shouting from soapboxes, there was a sense of sullen expectation in the air, and I was sick of the whole subject: the bitterness and self-righteousness on both sides. I was sick to death of everyone’s inflexible opinions.

‘But you aren’t seeing it from their side,’ I snapped at her. ‘You’re seeing it from Lawrence’s side.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘The workers must be
forced
to unionize, Dora. Don’t you see?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘And of course the company wants to stop them. And of the course the workers are afraid. They are terrified of the company discovering they are Union sympathizers and throwing them out onto the road—’

‘Which is what the Union is doing when you report on them as non-sympathizers to Lawrence. Why can’t you see it?’