Honeyville (5 page)

I hoped so. I hoped that they would spot me and come across. They were at the centre of it all this evening, and I was curious to know what had happened since we saw Lippiatt’s body being dragged away down the street.

‘Dora!’ Inez whispered so loudly, my name echoed off the wooden floors. ‘He has
blood in his sleeve
! Do you suppose—?’

‘Hush!’ I said.

But he had already turned. They both had. They looked us up and down. We made an incongruous pair. The man without blood on his sleeve looked at me more closely. He turned to the other, muttered something …
Yes
, the other one nodded. Yes, indeed. It was me. The hooker from Plum Street. Both men raised a hand.

‘
What? Do they know you?
’ asked Inez, aghast. ‘Those terrifying-looking gentlemen?’

I wasn’t sure how to answer. It happened I couldn’t remember either of their names. And, until they chose to acknowledge me, I was duty bound – honour bound – to deny it anyway.

‘Dora!’ shouted the dark one.

And so it was decided.

They picked up their glasses and crossed the room towards us. ‘A sight for sore eyes,’ he said. ‘May we join you? Are you working tonight?’ They glanced at Inez, uncertain where she quite fitted in.

‘
Working
?’ Inez cried out. ‘Does she
look
like she is working? She most certainly is
not
working. Thank you very much …’ She studied them more closely, through whiskey-glazed eyes, and seemed to like what she saw. ‘However,’ she added, looking pointedly at the blonder one, the man with the blood on his shirt, ‘whatever your names may be, if you would like to sit yourselves down here …’ She missed the seat, patted the air around it and then seemed to lose her nerve. She glanced at me.

If I had sent the men away, how different things would be today! I didn’t do that. The excitement on her face – and the blood on his sleeve, and heck, they were two attractive men, and we were unaccompanied and a little drunk. I nodded, inviting the two of them to join us.

As they pulled up their chairs, Inez muttered something soft and briefly sobering about, ‘Aunt Philippa being worried.’ I could have called a halt to it then, I suppose. Or she could. She could have said to the men – ‘I really ought to be going.’ I might have walked with her to her home, since by then she was already canned, and certainly not able to make the journey alone. But I was canned too. I was off duty. I was having a good time. I don’t believe the thought even crossed my mind. ‘You said yourself you wanted to meet some new men,’ I whispered, and winked at her.

She swayed with laughter. ‘Oh, you’re shocking!’ she said gleefully. ‘I am in too deep now, for sure!’

Lawrence O’Neill was the taller, blonder, handsomer of the two, and the one with blood on his sleeve. He was an Irishman from Missouri; an activist, employed by the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) to do his worst in Trinidad. Back then, of course, before the Great War and the revolution in Russia, the battle between labour and capital was mustering strength and fury in every corner of the globe. It happened that, for the time being, the UMWA had designated Trinidad its American centre. It was here, among the mines of Colorado, that the Union was concentrating its funds, its fight – and all its best people. Lawrence O’Neill from Missouri was among them, he told us. And, yes, it was Captain Lippiatt’s blood on his sleeve.

We were all where we shouldn’t have been that night. I should have been working, of course. Inez should have been at home with her aunt, playing bezique. And, on the night their friend was murdered, you would have thought those two Union men had better things to do than while away the hours with a small-town librarian and a tired old girl like me.

‘Tell me, Inez Dubois,’ Lawrence O’Neill leaned his body in towards her, his expression teasing.

‘Tell you what, Lawrence O’Neill?’ she purred back at him  …  A little bit of confidence and polish – the thought flipped through my mind – and she might have made a fine hooker herself. ‘What shall I tell you, Lawrence O’Neill? I’ll tell you anything you want to hear.’

‘Inez, honey,’ I interrupted half-heartedly. ‘Don’t you think we ought to be heading home?’

‘What’s that, Auntie?’ she said.

It made me laugh. ‘Just take it easy, won’t you?’ I muttered.
These men aren’t like the ones who talk to you about automobiles.
That’s what I should have told her.The blood on their sleeves isn’t something they smeared on for after-dinner party games.

Lawrence wanted to talk about the company-owned mining camps, or ‘company towns’, as we sometimes called them. And they were towns, really: privately owned fiefdoms, fenced off from the rest of America. They had their own stores, doctors’ surgeries, chapels and schools; their own set of rules (no hookers, no liquor allowed); even their own currency: miners’ wages were paid partially in scrip, only valid in the company town’s overpriced stores. Lawrence asked her if she’d ever visited a company town herself.

Of course she’d never visited. For that matter, neither had I.

‘I never have,’ she said bluntly. ‘But my aunt goes out to the little schoolroom at Cokedale every Friday, to help them with religious instruction. Or she used to. Before it all became so troublesome out there.’

‘It’s going to get worse now,’ he said. ‘Lippiatt changes things. You watch. It’s going to turn, now.’ He said it with a grim sort of relish. His friend nodded sagely – and I remember I felt a grim sort of chill. He was right. You could smell it – the turning point. The cold-blooded murder of a Unionist, right there, on North Commercial Street. Lippiatt’s death would change everything.

But Inez didn’t seem to be listening. She prattled on without missing a beat. ‘Aunt Philippa says it was quite the
nicest
little school building she’s ever visited, and
far
nicer than St Teresa’s here in town, which by the way I attended … And she says the company provides the sweetest little homes for the workers that are as cosy as can be. And each little family has its own little yard. And plenty of people grow their own vegetables and keep chickens and I don’t know what else. And I know what you are going to say. You are going to say that it’s perfectly all right for
Aunt Philippa
, who arrives at Cokedale in her motorcar and leaves again in a motorcar and goes home to a lovely house with two great furnaces and servants and honeycake for breakfast and all that – Well, I’m not saying anything about that …’

He laughed – rather gently, I thought, all things considered.

‘Aunt Philippa says she simply doesn’t know what the workers are complaining of.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m going to drive you out there, Miss Inez. How about that? I’m going to drive you out there tomorrow and you can see for yourself … The numbers of men who roam about the place with half their limbs missing. Because of just how nice and cosy it is down there in those coalmines. And the women who have to beg and borrow just to feed their own children. You think the company cares for its people? They don’t give a damn for the people. They
own
the people. And, by the way – if they cared so much about their damn people, perhaps you can explain to me why they send their Baldwin-Felts thugs to murder them, in cold blood, right here on the sidewalk in front of everyone.’

‘You’re getting the wind behind you, Lawrence,’ I interrupted. ‘Watch out now, or you’ll blow us all the way home.’

‘And excuse me for saying,’ Inez said, taken aback by his vehemence but – to her credit – not silenced by it, ‘with respect and all: Captain Lippiatt wasn’t employed by the company. He wasn’t one of their people. That is … He was quite the opposite.’

‘He was
for
the miners,’ O’Neill replied.

‘Oh god,’ I sighed. ‘I think it’s time for my bed.’ I’d spent too many hours of my life, listening to men windbagging about the rights and the wrongs of organizing unions, and the rights and wrongs of company towns – and I was sick and tired of the whole subject. If you asked me – but nobody ever did. I wouldn’t have told them anyway. It was none of my business.

Inez didn’t share my feelings. That much was clear. She was leaning towards Lawrence, preparing to continue the argument, when an elderly gentleman in a worn wool suit approached the table.

‘Miss Inez?’ he said.

She looked up at him. Her face fell. ‘Oh
no
,’ she moaned. ‘Not now. Please, Mr Browning. Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see me?’ She belched. ‘I’m just about getting started.’

‘I’ve been looking for you here, there and everywhere,’ he said. ‘Your uncle’s waiting outside in the automobile. If you don’t come out directly, I dare say he’ll come in and haul you out by your ears.’ The old man glanced around the table: two Union men, one blood spattered – and one old hooker: drunk as lords, every one of us …’I think you had better come with me.’

With a great, childlike sigh, she set down her glass and stood up.

‘What?’ cried O’Neill. ‘You’re running off? Just as it was getting interesting?’

‘Well, you can see that I have to.’ They looked at each other, and I swear – whatever was going to happen between them was sealed, right there and then. ‘But it was fun, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Can we do it again?’

‘Come to the Union offices. You know where they are?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Well – see if you can’t find out. Ask for me.’ He smiled at her, a liquor-leery smile, and I don’t believe he was thinking much about the iniquities of company towns just then. ‘I’ll be around the next few days, Miss Inez Dubois. Maybe we’ll motor out to the Forbes camp together …’

She was about to leave, but she turned back. ‘And I haven’t forgotten, Dora,’ she said, waggling a single, dainty finger. ‘I’ve not forgotten about the singing lessons, you know.’ For a second I couldn’t even think what she was talking about. ‘Thank you for a beautiful evening.’

‘I enjoyed it,’ I said.

‘It started badly though, didn’t it?’ she said vaguely. ‘Lawrence O’Neill, I am
very sorry
about your friend.’

‘Aye,’ he said solemnly. ‘Thank you.’

‘Well. I had better leave. Thank you all. Dora,
thank you
…’ She was swaying, possibly on the verge of tears again. The old man attempted to take her elbow, but she pulled it away. ‘It was the best night of my life.’

She weaved her way through the long bar, the old man protective and irritable beside her. She was a fish out of water. A fish that had swallowed far too much sauce … I see her now, reeling meekly beside the old man. There were snickers and catcalls from either side, and of course she must have heard them. She must have known what a figure she cut. And yet, there was something beyond pride, something grand and oblivious as she made her way through the room. She looked happy and alive – and carefree, and bold and
young
. And she reminded me of what it was like to be someone who still believed – oh, I don’t know – that life could ever be more than a thing to be gotten through.

Lawrence O’Neill, I think, watched her leave and was filled with a different sort of regret.

It was a private transaction between the two of us – strictly against Plum Street Parlour House rules. I went upstairs with him, to his rooms at the Toltec, and woke before dawn in a state of shock. I had slept with a client still beside me. I took the cash from his wallet, and left without saying goodbye.

5

I looked out for her, but I didn’t see Inez for some time after. I often wondered how her aunt had reacted when she’d rolled home that night, reeking of liquor, and I took great pleasure in trying to imagine the ride back from the Toltec, Inez and her Uncle Richard side by side, Inez belching away, jabbering about politics. That she didn’t appear at the Union offices (which fact I learned from Lawrence O’Neill when I met him on the street a week or so later) seemed to illustrate that our evening together was nothing more than an amusing deviation for her.

Inez had melted back into her parallel world of educational talks and pious ladies’ tea parties, and I pitied her for it. To my surprise, I also missed her. I considered seeking her out at the library, and once even made it as far as the library steps. But when I glimpsed her at the desk, sober and prim, gossiping with the doctor’s wife, I lost my nerve and turned back home again. I suspected that, were we to meet at the stocking counter of Jamieson’s Department Store one day (as well we might), she would not even acknowledge me.

Meanwhile, as O’Neill had predicted, Lippiatt’s murder was the talk of the town, and the talk of our visitors to Plum Street. Tempers on both sides of the argument were hot and high, and there was no meeting point between them. Only a few months earlier, up in Colorado Springs, so one of my clients informed me, Lippiatt had been found guilty of unspeakable violence against some poor young woman, and there had been moves to excommunicate him from the Union altogether. Now, of course, it was a different story. His death became a focal point. He had died a Union martyr. At the Union conference that weekend, Lawrence O’Neill and his pals wore black crepe bows on their shoulders in remembrance of his heroism. But they hadn’t watched him, as I had, returning to the fray with his handgun. They hadn’t heard the bloodlust in his shout as he waved his weapon at the two detectives … Any more than they had watched the two detectives, standing side by side over his dying body, and shooting him again – tearing a hole through his throat and then his chest.

But I had been living at Plum Street seven years by then, and I’d learned when to share my opinion and when to keep it to myself. So I kept my mouth shut. They were all fools to me.

The Plum Street Parlour House was situated in an imposing, four-storey red-brick house, which stood apart from the lesser buildings on either side of it. It was handsome: there were steps leading to the front door, and before it was a porch with ornate wrought-iron banisters. There was an electric light, set in a three-foot-high candle carved in stone by the side of the door and, on the door, a vast and shiny brass knocker. Everything about the place offered up the same message: the smell of perfume and burning opium that seemed to leak from the bricks, the shine and splendour of our brass knocker, those flamboyant railings, the rich red and gold drapes at the windows, the sparkling chandeliers within – not even a child could have been in any doubt as to the building’s function. There were other brothels, even on our street, and in handsome houses too. But ours stood out. It glowed with lubricious promise. We were the most exclusive whorehouse in town, and those of us who lived and worked in it took a certain amount of pride in the fact.