Honeyville (24 page)
‘
Well
, I don’t think that little whirlwind of a visit did much to improve our spirits,’ Xavier sighed, settling back onto the couch as his sister swept out onto the street again. ‘On the subject of which, I’ve run out of whiskey, Dora. And if that band of East Coast degenerates is really going to be descending on the cottage this evening, perhaps I should venture out and find some … somewhere. That is, assuming all the liquor stores haven’t been looted. Or shut down.’
I chuckled. ‘Degenerates indeed! Distinguished band of activists, poets, editors and … so on.’
‘Degenerates, every one.’
I didn’t stay very long after that. The spell between us had been broken, and though I think it was on our minds, we were too bashful – both of us – now that we were on our own again, to pick up where Inez had interrupted. Had his invitation been sincere? I lacked the nerve to ask him. What would it be like, I wondered, to leave all this behind? To move to Hollywood. To take a low-paid, humble job, in the movies perhaps. And to make my own breakfast? I knew as much about movie-making as I did about anything else, for that matter. What did I know? Nothing, about anything. Except I knew how to sing. In any case, it hardly mattered. The moment was gone.
I stood up. ‘Shall we venture out together? I don’t hear any guns just yet. It’s still quiet out there.’
‘Likely it’ll heat up this afternoon.’
‘Seems to be the pattern,’ I agreed. ‘So I’ll be back here about seven o’clock. Unless it’s too dangerous … Or unless Phoebe decides to open up tonight. In which case, I can only wish you the best of luck with your degenerates …’
‘I got the impression yesterday that there might be a whole lot more of them in town by today. Inez may well change her mind about bringing them back here. Or there may be simply too many, and I might just shoo them all away. Stop by the Toltec on your way over, why don’t you? Fingers crossed, you might yet find us all there.’
That evening, and the evening after, I decided it was too dangerous to go out. Plum Street stayed closed to business. Phoebe said it was ‘out of continued respect to the dead up at Ludlow’. Those were the actual words that came out of her mouth, and we girls sat, straight faced, as she uttered them. What she meant of course was: ‘the lousy cocksuckers won’t come out tonight. It’ll cost me less to stay closed.’ And I think those words were also uttered by her before our meeting was finished. Either way, it came to the same thing.
Along with most of Trinidad, we girls stayed quiet at home.
Beyond the city limit, there was unrelenting anarchy. Bands of men continued to stalk the landscape, shooting indiscriminately at passing cars. Up in the hills, the company towns had been surrounded, and the guards barricaded in: Unionists and miners, hiding out in caves and gulleys, were launching murderous attacks on the towns at night, blowing up the mines, killing mules and men and setting fire to buildings.
But in Trinidad, by that third evening, the streets seemed to be quieter. In fact, apart from the occasional sound of gunshots around City Hall, situated at the furthest end of town, it seemed – almost, with half-shut eyes and ears closed – as if we had reverted to a version of normal. Yes, guerrilla troops continued to muster on the streets (and, when necessary, to loot whatever was left in the gun and grocery stores), but the real bloodletting was out on the prairie now.
In any case, by that third night I couldn’t stand to stay in any longer. Plum Street was still closed, and my cabin fever had reached such a pitch that I longed to be on the move.
It was dusk as I stepped out for the Toltec. I walked quickly, with my head down, but the damage wrought to the heart of our town since last I had ventured out was nonetheless visible here and there – broken windows and buildings pocked with bullet holes. And on closer examination, the people were altered too. Those foolhardy few (aside from myself) who had dared to come out were a breed apart from our usual crowd. These folk talked in bossy voices and bustled about with notebooks and pens as opposed to shopping baskets. They weren’t cowboys and miners, or shop girls and factory workers, slip-slopping to the nearest bar, or Christian gentlewomen (and hookers) en route to the library – but newspaper reporters. Plenty of them. The eyes of the world were assuredly on Trinidad that week.
And by eight o’clock that evening, it seemed as if the eyes of the world had gathered around one large table in a back room at the Toltec. I found them there, exchanging noisy opinions over bottles of Scotch. I don’t know where they had gathered the previous two evenings, but tonight, for sure, not an eighth of them would have fitted into Xavier’s parlour.
Max Eastman sat at the centre of it all, as ever; with Inez his queen beside him, her eyes shining a little too brightly, her hands on her lap fiddling with the loaded purse, clicking it shut, clicking it open, never leaving it alone. Everyone spoke at the same time, shouting and arguing, and bellowing with manic laughter. Inez gabbled as noisily as any of them, but only Max seemed to pay her much attention. Max paid everyone attention. He distributed his warm approval, his wit, his mighty observations and his gentle teasing through the room with a lightness of touch that was quite spellbinding. I never saw a man or woman so socially adept.
At some point, he said to me from across the table (we were several places away and yet, in spite of the noise, he didn’t need to raise his voice): ‘Inez tells me you’re quite an opponent of our little tea party. I’m very sorry to hear it. Are the ladies in question especial friends of yours?’
‘Hardly!’ I said, smiling – because one couldn’t
not
smile back at smiling Max. ‘But they are friends of Inez’s. Or, if not friends, they are certainly the people she grew up with.’
‘She came with us to Ludlow,’ said the man called Frank Bohn, sitting somewhere between us. ‘Perhaps it’s why she feels she is doing the right thing. Perhaps if you had gone out to Ludlow you would understand too.
Did
you? In fact? Go out to Ludlow?’
‘I didn’t,’ I told him. ‘I thought it was ghoulish.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
Ah, indeed.
Ah.
I ignored it.
But, bless him, Max laughed. ‘Good God, Frank!’ he said, ‘How dare you “
ah
” this lady? Who in heck do you think you are? You arrived in this town less than twenty-four hours ago. Don’t “ah” my friend here, who has endured a long winter through this bloody awful strike, and who probably understands the situation a hundred times better than you or I ever will …
Ah
indeed! Apologize this instant!’
‘I didn’t “ah” her,’ Frank said.
‘Yes you did!’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Frank, you’re a fool. Dora, may I apologize on his behalf? Since he won’t do it himself, though he knows perfectly well he should.’
I laughed. Of course I laughed. Who wouldn’t? ‘
Ah
-pology accepted,’ I said. Ha ha.
Max thought it was a terrific joke. He laughed so willingly that I began to laugh myself. Inez asked what we were laughing about, and I said, ‘
Ah
can’t explain.’ And so it continued. Max’s light was shining on me, and it felt wonderful.
‘It makes perfect sense that you should have reservations,’ he said later. ‘You see a crowd of reporters descending on your town. We drink the place dry – at least, I should think we will have done before this night is through. We sweep in, we sweep out – we draw our grand conclusions, publish them for all to see – and then we move on to the next outrage. Onwards and upwards.’
I shrugged. ‘You said it.’ I looked across at Inez. She was watching me speak with a glazed look in her eye. ‘In the meantime, Inez has given you a list of her neighbours and friends for you to pick apart and sneer at.’
‘
But don’t you see, Dora?
’ He leaned forward and I could smell his cologne, his passion, his exquisite integrity: ‘What happened at Ludlow wasn’t simply
yet one more
assault on the rights of our fellow man,’ he said. ‘What happened at Ludlow was
different
. You have a … It was a massacre, Dora. Capital against Labour – yes. And armed men against unarmed women and children, trapped beneath the ground, too frightened to attempt to escape.
Burned alive, Dora
…’
‘She knows it,’ came Xavier’s voice, softly spoken from the other side of the table.
Max held up a hand in apology. ‘I apologize. Of course she knows it. And you too. We all know it. I only keep repeating it because it’s … I don’t know why I keep repeating it.’
‘Because you must,’ said Upton Sinclair, patting the table with a small writerly fist. ‘Because it is our duty to say it. Again and again. And to seek new ways of saying it, so that each time we say it, it continues to shake us to the core. Don’t apologize, Max. You repeat it because you must. Two women and eleven children were burned this week. For greed. For American greed. I don’t recall your name, sir,’ he said to Xavier. ‘But I think it’s a fact we should take care to carry with us …’
‘Put a sock in it, Upton,’ said lively Gertrude Singer.
‘My name,’ observed Xavier with utmost pleasantness, but more for his own amusement than for the sake of informing anyone, since by then they had returned to squabbling among themselves, ‘is in fact Xavier. Xavier Dubois. At your service.’ He was drunk.
Max allowed the conversation to meander, and when he picked it up again, he took care to include both of us: Xavier and me. ‘I believe, if you travelled out to the camp as Inez has, you would agree with her that if it might help to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again, then any means at all would justify the end. And frankly,’ he smiled at us, ‘holding a small tea party for ladies who are more than happy – hungry, even – to present their side of the story, is hardly on the same scale, when it comes to assaults on the rights of individuals.’
‘Nobody ever suggested the two were comparable,’ said Xavier. ‘Only that you have asked Inez to betray people she has known all her life. And when you are gone, she will still be here to deal with the damage that you and your article leave behind.’
‘But Xavier, that’s just what I’ve been wanting to tell you!’ Inez burst out. ‘It’s quite decided, isn’t it Max? I can tell them, can’t I? Only we decided it together this afternoon.’ She leaned across the table top and placed a hand on each of us. ‘Darlings, when all this is over, I’m going back to New York with him! He has offered me a job. Haven’t you Max?’
Xavier and I turned to Max.
‘I certainly have!’ Max confirmed, swiping his floppy hair from his handsome forehead in a self-deprecating flurry. He grinned at her. ‘The way you helped us these past couple of days, Inez, we’d be lucky to have you! We don’t pay anything at the magazine, mind. But you know that. It’s a labour of love …’
‘A labour of
love
!’ she said, smiling right back at him.
‘You see?’ she looked from Xavier to me. ‘So it’s perfect! I just have to persuade Aunt Philippa and Uncle Richard to release some of my money … and it
is
mymoney, after all. And Xavier, I absolutely expect your support on that. You will help me, won’t you darling? You have to come with me tomorrow or the next day, when I introduce them to Max. He promises not to mention politics
at all.
You promise, don’t you Max, darling?’ She took his hand. ‘We’re going to say he is editor of a magazine called
Home Topics
. Which is true. In a way. Because politics
is
a home topic. Or certainly it ought to be. I think Aunt Philippa will like that …’
She had leaned away from us and taken hold of Max. Their hands were entwined on the table top. It looked odd. Everything about them, about Inez that night, seemed wrong and peculiar. Her eyes shone but there was no life behind them. She seemed to be only half present in her own skin: not my friend, nor Xavier’s sister, but an exaggerated, distorted version. On her lap, her free hand snapped open the catch of her spy-girl purse, and snapped it shut,
open and shut, open and shut
… Xavier’s eyes flicked unhappily from one of her hands to the other, to her face. He was thinking the same thing.
‘Did I dream it,’ I said to Max, ‘or did Inez mention that you already had a wife?’
‘Oh for absolutely heaven’s
sake
, Dora,’ snapped Inez. ‘How can you be so
drab
! Trust you to be so completely bourgeois! We’re not talking about Trinidad, Colorado. We are talking about
Greenwich Village
!’
The comment seemed to strike a chord with Xavier. He burst out laughing. ‘Oh, what a dub you are, Inez darling. This time last week, you’d barely heard of Greenwich Village! If you want me to lie to Aunt Philippa and Uncle Richard for you, then so I shall. It won’t be the first time, let’s face it … But the way you’re behaving lately, sweetheart, I begin to think you deserve absolutely whatever’s coming to you.’
A couple of days later Phoebe reopened for business. Not, I imagine, because she expected there to be any, but because she couldn’t stand the sight of her girls eating her food, living under her roof, and not at least being available to the possibility of making money for her, should the opportunity arise.
Inez came to find me, sounding sweet and conciliatory, and saying she missed our afternoons together. She seemed a little calmer – or perhaps I imagined it. But in any case, I was touched that she had come. It was shortly after lunch and the parlour house was like a graveyard, just as it had been all week, so when she asked me to while away a few hours with her, I didn’t hesitate. I slipped out of Plum Street by the back door without telling anyone I was going, safe in the knowledge that my absence would not be noticed. We scurried through the town back to Xavier’s cottage where many of her belongings still remained, and I kept her company while she packed.
She had made a start on the packing before she came to find me. There was a trunk already opened in the middle of the room when we arrived, but Xavier was nowhere to be seen.
