Honeyville (22 page)

‘I think you should leave Cody’s mother well alone. If you’re asking me. Which I don’t suppose you are, really … I think you should keep to your own business.’

She wasn’t listening. ‘Yes. I think it would be nice to go see her. She might rather like to think that Cody and I were friends. Perhaps I could make a donation of some sort. I know they’re not rich. Cody’s pa was a miner. Did you know that?’

‘Probably could’ve guessed.’

‘He lost both legs in a mine explosion in … I think it was the mine at Engleville. Fifteen years ago. And not long after he went out and shot himself.’

‘Inez!’ I groaned. ‘Please. I haven’t even woken up.’

She pulled back the coverlet. ‘Get
up
!’she said. ‘Lazybones! I am going to see Cody’s ma. He told me she lives down by the river, and I reckon if I ask a few people, someone will surely know where to find her … And I’m taking Max Eastman with me! If he’s willing. Otherwise I’ll probably meet up with him later. He says I can help him, gathering information and so on. Due to my local knowledge. Don’t you think he’s the most delightful man who ever breathed? So educated and handsome and – I adore him!’ When I didn’t reply immediately, she sighed, went to the window, pulled back the drapes and opened the window wide. Sunshine poured in. ‘
Wake up!
’ she said again. ‘It’s a beautiful day!’

‘But why,’ I asked, reaching for a pillow to put over my head. ‘Why must I wake up? Why have you come here to tell me all this? Can’t it wait?’

‘I wanted you to know how much I completely adore Max. And how completely and utterly recovered I am from … the other fellow. Ha! Can you believe? For a moment I actually forgot Lawrence’s name. Well. And that just about proves it, doesn’t it? I, Inez Dubois, do adore Max Eastman.’

‘All right …’ I said. ‘I think I know it. Will you go away now?’

‘He’s magical though, isn’t he? Imagine – to be so full of ideas and wisdom and passion,
and
to be such an elegant, handsome, charming man.
And then
to be such a fine writer and poet.’

‘Have you read his poetry?’

‘Of course I have.’

I laughed. The sun and fresh morning air were beginning to bring me round. ‘Liar,’ I said.

She ignored it. ‘And he’s funny and charming. And he makes me feel … as if I were the only woman in the world he cared for! Do you think he does it to all the women? I wonder …’

‘He has a lot of charm.’

‘He believes in Free Love,’ she said, half bursting with pride. I think she was hoping I would ask her to tell me what it meant.

‘Bad news for us hookers,’ I said.

‘He’s married. To a sort of …
very serious woman indeed.
But he doesn’t love her and she doesn’t love him. Or that is, they
do
love each other. But it’s a free love … So they can love … freely. If it pleases.’

‘Whatever works for folks. Has my breakfast arrived?’

She bustled back into my parlour and opened the door onto the landing again. ‘
Kitty!
’ she yelled, just as Kitty appeared at the door, bearing a tray laden with steaming cups of chocolate, fruit compote, iced water and sweet pastries … I lived in luxury at Plum Street. It was hard, sometimes, to remember quite how good I had it, living under Phoebe’s roof.

Kitty laid the tray onto the table in the parlour, and finally I submitted to the irrepressible will of my uninvited guest, and climbed out of bed. She passed me my silk kimono and, as she did so, she said: ‘You know, Dora. There are sides to your life – that breakfast, this kimono – which make me quite envious, and that’s the truth.’

‘I can’t complain,’ I said. But I was touched. It was a generous thing for her to say.

‘Well then?’ I said, picking up my chocolate and flopping onto the couch. My head ached. ‘I am up. I am awake. Now tell me why.’

She’d fought with Xavier after dropping me at Plum Street last night. On the way back to the cottage, she’d told him about a plan she had cooked up with Max, and Xavier had been ‘thoroughly loathsome’ about it, she said. ‘Because he doesn’t care, Dora. Because he is so wrapped up in whatever it is that keeps that miserable look on his face when he thinks nobody’s looking, he can’t even
see
the wickedness and the suffering that is all around him. Innocent children were killed, Dora.’

‘Yes, I heard about it.’

‘Xavier doesn’t seem to
realize
.’

‘Of course he realizes. Just because you insist on making a bigger noise about it, doesn’t mean you feel it any more than he does.’

She sent me a queer, irritable look and continued: ‘What happened at Ludlow the day before yesterday has tainted our city for ever,’ she declared. ‘Trinidad will never be the same. And I don’t even care if he disapproves. He doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t even know how to make a movie as far as I can make out. Or whatever it is he’s been trying to do over there in Hollywood all this time. And he can disapprove of me as much as he likes. But Dora – I have to do it. My conscience is telling me. And I need you to help me. Will you help?’

‘It rather depends on what you are trying to do,’ I said.

‘Well, I am going to be their researcher,’ she said grandly. ‘Their person-on-the-ground, so to speak. The Union can provide our reporters with plenty of grieving victims, and that’s essential, for a balanced argument. But what
I
can do, Dora, from my socially privileged position in Trinidad, is to provide the reporters with people on the
other side …
Do you see?’

In a nutshell: what Max and his writer friends required – what the press always required – was villains. And if the company-hired guards and the company-funded general’s army (as good as the same thing) were too worldly to fulfil that role, reporters would have to look further afield.

So Max had decided to arrange a tea party, to be made up of the gentlewomen of Trinidad most likely to provide him with the self-incriminating quotes he needed. Inez knew all the gentlewomen of Trinidad, and if she didn’t already know their addresses, she could easily unearth them from library records.

‘I can give him the best names, and I swear my head is
bursting
with all the dreadful ladies I could send to him – I mean only the
worst
ones, of course. Not my darling Aunt Philippa. Certainly not. In any case, she has to take care of her heart – and goodness knows … But I can think of plenty of other ladies, and I’m sure you could too, after our music club fiasco. Weren’t they ghastly? I love them dearly, of course … In any case, Xavier’s livid about it because he’s a dreadful old bluenose, isn’t he? Underneath it all. But never mind him. We
desperately
need
you
Dora – to be present at the tea party with Max, and to help him, you know? Because I can’t be there, of course, and you understand this town like nobody else, and you can help Max to winkle out the most dreadful remarks—’

‘Was this your idea, or his?’

‘What?

‘That I should be present at this horrible event. Was it your idea? Or his?’

‘Well it was …’ She paused to think about it. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I had finished my chocolate, and between us we had polished off the pastries. Over our empty plates I felt a sudden and violent dislike for her. I stood up. ‘It’s about the stupidest, nastiest idea I’ve heard yet, Inez, and no, I’m certainly not helping you. And, by the way, if you’re inviting the women from the Ladies’ Music Club, as you say you are, I would be no use at all. You forget that they have already met me. What disguise would you have suggested I use this time? Or did you envisage I simply turn up as the hooker I really am?’

She gazed at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Oh, but you’re not just a hooker Dora!’ she said. ‘You’re … better than that!’

I sighed. ‘The tea party,’ I said. ‘Have you sent out invitations already? Is it too late for you to back out?’

‘But I don’t
want
to back out of it!’ she snapped. ‘Why would I? Those ladies deserve whatever they get! They prance about our city, thinking they are better, simply because they are fortunate enough to have been born with wealth. Max met a miner’s wife yesterday who overheard two ladies – and they were actually
delighting
in what had happened at Ludlow.’

‘I heard him tell us so.’

‘Well?’

‘Well? Honestly, I think either Max, or the miner’s wife – or both – were wickedly exaggerating. And I’ve watched your beloved Max. He’s handsome and charming as anyone I ever met. I should think he could persuade just about any woman in the world to say just about anything he wants them to. That’s what I think.’

‘He
is
charming,’ she said, looking pleased.

‘Inez, have
you
ever heard any ladies celebrating what happened at Ludlow? Can you even imagine it would be possible?’

She wouldn’t look at me. ‘But I bet they
would
,’ she said, ‘if they thought they could get away with it. I mean – you heard them at the music club. They’re hardly sympathetic to the working man’s cause.’

‘It’s not the same as celebrating mothers and children being burned alive. And you know that.’

‘You’ll see,’ she said. But I thought there was a moment when she wavered.

‘Oh, Inez, can’t you stop it?’ I asked her again. ‘Can’t you see how he is taking advantage of you?’

She stood up. ‘First it’s Lawrence you think is taking advantage, then it’s Max. You’re like my mother, Dora. And it’s a bit rich. Frankly. Considering all the men who take advantage of you. Every single night.’

‘They don’t take advantage,’ I said.

‘Yes they do. On a nightly basis.’

‘For which I charge.’

‘I have to go.’ She glanced at me, uncertain and unhappy. ‘I
hate
it when we fight. And you are wrong, you know. You and Xavier are wrong. You just can’t see how important it is that the world understands—’

‘Understands
what
? That your neighbour, Mrs Ingleby on Third Street, whom you have known all your life, turns out to be a dreadful bigot? And that Max Eastman, because he is a charming, ambitious reporter, who will make her feel important for a minute, is going to take her idiotic chatter and twist it round and turn her into a fiend for all of right-thinking America to feed on?’

Inez seemed to watch the words flow from my mouth as if they were some strange and unpleasing curiosity: a cloud of tiny mosquitoes. It was hopeless. She couldn’t hear me. She gave a sad, defensive shrug. ‘You don’t seem to like Max very much,’ she said finally. ‘Whereas he likes you
awfully
…
’

‘Of course I like him. How could anyone not like him? He is funny and charming and clever. I only think we should remember why he is here in Trinidad. He is a reporter. We should never forget that.’

‘All right,’ she said, waving me away. ‘I wish you would stop going on. I have to leave now, in any case. I have to find Cody’s mama.’

‘Well, good luck,’ I smiled, not wanting to fight, but relieved she was leaving. ‘I hope you find her.’

‘She’ll probably be a lot happier to see me than either you or Xavie seem to be. Is Phoebe closing up again tonight?’

‘I think so, yes.’

‘Well, if she does, you had better come and join us.’ She looked on the edge of tears again. ‘Please will you? Maybe Max can persuade you, even if I can’t. And even if neither of us can make you understand, at least we can still be friends. Can’t we?’

‘Of course we can!’ I said. We embraced each other across the tray of pastry crumbs. But I didn’t feel warm towards her, nor she to me. ‘I’ll see you later, no doubt.’

She had dragged me out of bed at an ungodly hour and left me high and dry, with a vile headache, and feeling slightly sick from the pastries and hot chocolate. I returned to my bed, taking a novel with me, and I must have fallen back to sleep.

When I awoke a couple of hours later, it was still too early for any sign of life at Plum Street, but I was too restless to stay in my room. I wanted company, so I decided to repay the Dubois compliment, take myself over to the cottage and – since I strongly suspected he kept the same hours as a call girl – haul the slumbering Xavier out of his bed and invite myself in for a second breakfast.

The town was subdued that early morning, and empty of women. I scurried past one group of armed miners, struggling under the bulk of looted groceries. Behind them, a store window had been smashed, and the men were making their way – quite casually – uptown, towards the City Hall. I was careful not to catch their eye. And Inez was right. In their midst I was indeed safe enough. Though our streets had become a warzone and our stores a free-for-all, I was all but invisible to them. They were fighting a war all right, but it wasn’t with me.

At the door to the cottage I wavered. Perhaps he would think it odd that I had come to call on him so early – before he was even out of bed? Perhaps he would think it rather shaming that a whore should come to see him while he was still in his pyjamas? He had said he was a friend – but it didn’t give me licence to barge in on him any time I fancied.

I had a hand already raised to beat on the door, but I pulled it back and was instead beating a rather shamefaced retreat when I heard the door swing open behind me.

‘Where are you
going
?’ he cried. ‘Dora, I saw you through the window and I couldn’t think of anyone in the world I wanted to see more, so I rushed to let you in. And now here you are, rushing away again. Where are you going
? Please come back!
’

He was dressed in a paisley silk wrapper, in an abom- inable shade of lilac, and a pair of royal blue, velvet Aladdin slippers with shiny silver bells at the toes. I laughed aloud at the sight of him, because he looked wonderful. I had been worrying about maintaining respectable appearances on his behalf, and yet here was I in grey silk skirt and shirtwaist, scuttling homeward, and there was he, shouting to the world from his doorstep in lilac silk and silver bells.

He invited me in, cleared a space on the nearest couch and disappeared into the kitchen to make coffee.