Honeyville (14 page)
Afterwards, we travelled back the ten miles or so to Trinidad and she invited me into her new cottage for the first time. She had spent the week arranging it but had only moved in a day and a night before, and I could hardly wait to see it.
‘It’s just me! No maid!’ she said, sliding a dainty house key into the lock. ‘My second night in my very own little place … Aunt Philippa says she will send me her girl, Rachel, during the day, until I can find a girl of my own. But Rachel leaves me the place to myself in the evenings. I can’t begin to describe to you the feeling, Dora, of having a place absolutely to yourself …
Welcome
, darling,’ she cried, pushing back the door and throwing open her arms, ‘to my beautiful new home!’
And I never saw a home so beautiful, either. To the right of the parlour lay Inez’s bedroom, and beyond it her bathroom. A door at the back of the parlour opened onto a kitchen, onto a second, smaller room for a maid to sleep in, and a pantry.
But the front door opened directly into the parlour, which was large and yet snug simultaneously, and bathed in soft, warm light. Two identical couches of soft, pale leather (I had seen and admired them in the window of Cassell’s Furnishings) stood on either side of the hearth, and between them a small ottoman and a patterned rug, soft and warm and pale. There was a wooden rocker with a large velvet cushion resting on it, and a small bookcase already half filled with Inez’s books, and two identical standing lamps with matching pale green, velvet shades. There were thick green and gold brocade drapes pulled closed at the windows, and in the grate, mysteriously – since we’d been out these past five hours – a warm fire was already burning. The suffering on the Ludlow Road was a world away. On that cold night, it would have been hard to conjure a more welcoming place.
‘You’ve made it lovely,’ I sighed, closing my mind to the scenes of wretchedness only just left behind. ‘And so quickly, Inez! How do you do it?’
‘Isn’t it sweet?’ Inez laughed. ‘I couldn’t have managed without Aunt Philippa. She has such a talent. Oh gosh, and just look at that!’ She dropped her muff on the nearest couch and held out her hands to the flames, shuffling along to make space for me beside her. ‘Rachel has lit the fire! Isn’t that too thoughtful? Mind, I have to be careful,’ she said, dropping her voice, wrinkling her nose, ‘I’m certain Rachel intends to report on me to Aunt Philippa. I shall just have to make absolutely sure I leave no clues for her to report on, that’s all. You can’t imagine how peaceful it is here! I can sit quietly on the couch in the evenings and read, when Lawrence isn’t visiting. Which by the way he
hasn’t
. Not yet. Of course he can’t, with so much to do out at Ludlow. You know he is spending the night out there tonight, trying his best to make things comfortable for everyone … He is quite dedicated, Dora.’
‘I should hope he is,’ I said. But she wasn’t really listening.
‘Or if I don’t like the couch, I can sit at my desk over there and do my work …’ She giggled. ‘My “novel”. Actually, Dora, I
am
writing something. But you mustn’t tell Lawrence. It’s inspired from something I read in
The Masses
…
The
Masses
,’ she repeated, impatiently, seeing my blank expression. ‘You remember? The magazine the boy Cody was reading in the Union office, yes?’
‘Oh yes, of course.’
‘Lawrence reads it, by the way. He says it’s almost
the only thing to read
. For anyone who considers themselves in favour of change in this country of ours. So you can imagine how impressed he was when he discovered
I
readit too
.
And, by the way, I read an article which you absolutely must read, Dora. It’s about the coal strike at Paint Creek and how wicked the other papers are, not to be reporting on it. And about how the man who wrote the article is about to be prosecuted for writing it, because the authorities simply won’t put up with that sort of thing. He’s terribly handsome. Not that it’s important. But he is. He’s the editor of
The
Masses
.’
‘I’ll look out for it,’ I said. ‘Have you any liquor in the house? Or must we make do with tea?’
‘Lawrence says it’s the best magazine there is. So you absolutely must read it.’
‘Well then I will. Shall we have a drink?’
‘The magazine is terribly in favour of the strikers and the Unions, and terribly
out
of favour with the powers that rule this blessed country. My brother still sends it me. Sweetly. Well – and I’m very grateful to him for it. Bless him. You would adore him, Dora. But I swear he is the most impossible fellow. Worse than I am, Aunt Philippa says, because he
simply
won’t
get a wife. He’s impossibly artistic. That’s the difficulty.’ She paused. ‘Never mind Xavier. They put on a series of tableaux and absolutely filled Madison Square Garden.’
‘Who did?’
‘Oh, the intellectuals and the poets and these sorts. In New York. And the frightfully handsome magazine editor I was just telling you about. Max Eastman. They put on a series of tableaux.’
‘A series of what?’ I said.
‘Little dramas. To illustrate the plight of the workers.’
I must have rolled my eyes because she stamped her foot. ‘I know what you’re thinking!’ she said.
‘Do you?’ My irritation, I noted, was rising in line with my thirst. ‘What am I thinking?’
‘But Dora, at least
I
have been out into the company towns!
You haven’t!
You think the company takes care of the men—’
‘On the contrary. As you know, I think the company exploits them mercilessly.’
Once again, she wasn’t listening. ‘But those company towns are more like
jails
than real towns.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Inez?’ I asked her. ‘I have lived in this town long enough. You think I don’t know it?’
‘No,’ she said, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘But I think you think
I
don’t know it. You think it’s all about Lawrence for me. Well it’s not. Do you even know how many men have been killed in the Colorado mining camps just this last couple of years? Do you? I’ll tell you!’
‘How about a drink?’
‘Seventy-five at the Primero mine; seventy-nine at Las Aminas; ten at the Leyden mine; seventeen at Cokedale; twelve at Hastings … All of them blown sky-high. And you tell me there’s no need of a Union?’
‘I don’t tell you that.’ I was impressed by her new knowledge; and moved, too, by her passion. ‘But you know that the company men are as convinced it’s the Union men, blowing up the mines—’
‘Wicked nonsense!’
‘To persuade the workers of the need to unionize …’
‘And you believe them?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t believe them, no. On the other hand, I don’t quite
not
believe them either. Passions run so high. I think men are capable of any amount of evil when they believe themselves to be in the right, and if they are determined to win the argument … And both sides are convinced they have God behind them.’
‘But the Union
is
right! How could it not be right? You cannot disagree!’
‘I don’t disagree that the workers are treated abom- inably. Or that the miners’ wives are treated even worse; or that the miners’ mules—’
‘Well then!’ She looked uncertain. ‘We can agree.’
‘If you like. In any case, I don’t see much point in arguing. Let’s for goodness’ sake open some gin – do you have any?’
‘I have bourbon …’ A rueful smile. ‘Lawrence brought it here as a welcome. But he’s not coming tonight. Of course he isn’t. He’s out at Ludlow tonight.’
‘So you said. Bourbon will do perfectly, Inez. Why don’t you fetch us some glasses and I’ll build up the fire?’
She did as I suggested; seemed to calm herself as she bustled about her American
Petit Trianon
, fetching and humming and carrying.
‘Only you have to understand, Dora,’ she said, returning with bottle and glasses, ‘even if you think I’m just a silly rich girl – at least I’m
trying
. I may be rich – but I still have eyes! This town – this strike – it’s as if, right now, Trinidad were at the centre of the world. Do you see? Here in Trinidad we are living through the very battle that could decide
everything
. That’s what Lawrence says. This is the future! What happens here, matters
everywhere
. It’s a war, Dora. For justice.
And we have to win!
’
‘Enough, Inez!’ I said. ‘Everything matters. Nothing matters. What’s the difference? What matters to me right now is that we sit down in front of that fire and open that bottle of bourbon.’
‘So it’s not about
him
. You do understand that?’
‘Yes!’ I cried. ‘I understand that.’
‘It’s about justice!’ she said.
We drank the bottle that night – and I slept on her couch, and ten miles up the road, Lawrence and his colleagues struggled their hardest to deal with a situation already half unravelled, as four thousand cold and angry miners, their terrified wives and hungry children, lay cowering against the bitter wind on the icy, open prairie.
It would be a week before the tents arrived from West Virginia.
Inez was right, it was a war. And as the weeks of the strike rolled on, it became increasingly a war played out on our once peaceful, elegant streets. Fist fights were common- place – and, in the saloons, gun fights, too. The streets, at least, were reasonably safe during the day – and in truth we ordinary townfolk were generally left alone. The guns were rarely pointed at us. Nevertheless the sense of threat and violence was always present.
Each week came news of another death; another murdered body left in a ditch for its enemies to find … Both sides accused the other of the same atrocities: kidnap, murder, torture. Strikers, Unionists, company spies – outsiders, almost all of them: they roamed our little streets as if they owned them. The county sheriff applied to the state governor for military help to restore a little of the old order, but nothing happened and nobody came; and the violence increased, and the snow fell, and the miners and their families shivered through the icy winter. And still, the two sides, Union and management, would not sit down to talk.
In November, within just a couple of weeks, a strikebreaker was attacked and murdered in Main Street, on his way back from visiting the dentist; the wife of another scab set off another riot when she visited town to see the midwife, ending in her death; and yet another strikebreaker, a sickly fourteen-year-old Mexican boy, was attacked as he limped along Commercial Street, on his way back from the doctor. Two strikers defied their own side to protect him, a shoot-out followed and all three died on the spot.
On both sides, the death toll and the ill temper rose. The sheriff’s people pretended to be neutral but they were as violent and unruly as the worst of them. They threw anyone into jail they suspected of sympathizing with the Unions. The strikers, meanwhile, were frightened and frozen and angry, and the Union men made it their business to keep them angry. And the strikebreakers dared not show their face outside their guarded encampments for fear of murder. It was madness. The streets of Trinidad were crowded – but not with us. We townspeople might have sympathized more with one side than the other, but we kept our heads down. We learned to carry guns, and to stay home unless it was completely necessary to venture out. All except for Inez.
So it was: another day, another shoot-out. Three miles north of town, the sheriff’s department arrested forty or so picketing miners. Inez was walking back from Jamieson’s, on her way to see me at Plum Street to discuss a new item of clothing which she believed appropriate to her new revolutionary calling (a red felt hat – red being the Union colour of solidarity), and so happened to be on Main Street when the arrested men were frog-marched by, en route to the county jail. It was the second day in succession that arrested miners had been paraded through the streets at gunpoint.
‘Even you, Dora,’ she said to me afterwards, ‘even
you
would have found it intolerable. For once, we all did! For once, the town stood up for itself. I wish you had been there.’
She said the whole town – all of Main Street – had paused to voice its anger. But since the strike began, the streets were mostly full of striking miners themselves. The streets were so full of the strike – the Union men, the agitators and the company guards – that often there was no space on the sidewalks for the rest of us. In any case, somebody threw a rock, and then shots were fired, and somehow Inez got herself caught up in the rout.
She burst into my room at Plum Street as I was changing into evening clothes, still wearing the dress she had torn in the ruckus. ‘They arrested me!’ she cried. She looked exhilarated. ‘Dora! What do you think about that! I am so angry I could explode. And at the same time –’ in her exhilaration she took my shoulders in her hands – ‘I feel at last as if I were one of them!’
‘One of whom?’
‘I threw a stick at the guards as they passed by. And I swear it hit Deputy Sheriff Belcher on the hat. He turned around and he looked directly at me, Dora. And I swear he lifted his gun as if he was about to shoot me …’
‘What stopped him?’ I asked.
‘God knows!’ she cried carelessly. ‘Dora, I have just come from the police cells.’
‘
What?
This afternoon?’
‘Well – yes!’
‘Where is Lawrence? What does he say about it?’
‘Oh you
mustn’t
tell him, Dora.
Promise
me you won’t. He would be so mad with me he’d be fuming!’
I considered her a moment. ‘Most of the folk who get dragged into that place don’t see the light of day for months, Inez,’ I said. ‘How come you made it out so fast? Did you tell them who you were?’
‘Hm?’ She shook her head but didn’t quite answer my question. Afterwards, I wondered (I still do) if she’d really been thrown in the cells that day, or if she was simply exaggerating the extent of her adventure. ‘What’s important,’ she said irritably, ‘is that I
threw the stick
. Look! You see how my dress is torn?’ I nodded. ‘And then in a few moments, there were sticks and stones flying, and the deputies were firing shots in the air … And I suppose there were some shots from our side too. I swear I felt a bullet whistling right by my ear. And then from nowhere – that is to say, it came sweeping down from County Hall, Dora – the
Death Tank
! In our own streets, Dora! Eight Baldwin-Felts men riding the back of the vehicle, and all we could see of them were their hats, and the nozzles of their terrible machine guns, swaying at us through the crowd. I never in all my life saw anything so menacing. And to think it’s happening right here, in our beloved Trinidad. How can we have come to such a dreadful pitch?’
