Honeyville (31 page)

‘You were corrupting him.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘I know that you are a whore.’

I said nothing.

‘And that a woman like you has no business being a friend of my niece. Nor of my nephew. And –’ her hysteria rising – ‘most certainly not of me. How dare you remain in this room with me, while I am grieving my niece and you are a whore? Have you no sense of propriety?’

‘Miss Whitworth is here because I have invited her here,’ Xavier broke in. ‘Which is more than I can say for you.’

‘You!’ she said to him. ‘
You!
’ And in the tumult of her anger and grief, she seemed to lose her capacity for speech. In a moment her face seemed to lose its colour and then she began to cough and choke, as if on her own breath. It was time for me to leave. I picked up my purse.

But her choking grew frantic – too frantic to ignore.

I hesitated, unsure what to do. ‘Xavier?’

He was already on his feet. She had began to rasp and to clutch at her chest, and then, slowly, and yet so quickly that somehow neither of us prevented it – she rolled forwards, landing on her knees in front of the couch. Her head and neck, already white, turned from grey to deeper grey, and all the while her eyes were fixed on Xavier, an expression of helpless incomprehension on her face.

Xavier and I had both dropped to our knees, one on either side of her. Xavier held her shoulders. I scrabbled to loosen her corset. I don’t know how many seconds or minutes passed. Her breath was still rasping when I ran to the kitchen to fetch her some water. It took a moment to locate a glass, and another moment to rinse it – and when I returned she was lying still, her eyes glazed, her head resting on Xavier’s lap while he tenderly stroked her forehead.

‘Oh dear God …’ I said.

‘She’s fine.’ But he sounded terrified. ‘She’s breathing. She’ll be fine. She’ll be just fine … You’re going to be just fine, Aunt Philippa, you hear me? You stay exactly where you are. We’re going to fetch you a doctor.’

There was no telephone at the cottage. I left the two of them on the floor by the hearth and ran to the nearest drugstore to call for a doctor.

I didn’t go back again. I wanted to spend the rest of the day with Xavier and his whiskey, in his dirty house, beside his empty hearth. But it was impossible. Xavier knew where I was. I would wait until he came for me.

35

Two more days passed. The strikers had taken possession of the hospital. They helped themselves to whatever they liked from supply stores around town. Mrs Carravalho lost the side of her face when a stray bullet whistled through the glass window of the drugstore on North Commercial. The anarchy made front pages of news- papers across America and, in Trinidad, we stayed inside as much as we could.

Through all of it, Plum Street remained stubbornly open. But I never knew the place so quiet – nor Phoebe quite so bad tempered. She used to stand in the kitchen while the cook prepared our food, snarling at her to cut back on the ingredients, and in those bleak days, Phoebe’s impotent, mean-spirited fury was the only thing that made me smile.

At the end of the third day I couldn’t wait to hear from Xavier any longer. It was dusk and still too dangerous for ordinary folk to venture out. President Wilson had ordered up the troops and they were on their way at last, but they wouldn’t arrive in Trinidad for a few days yet. Finally, after a glass of bourbon for Dutch courage, I made a telephone call to the McCulloch house.

It was the housekeeper who answered. She told me no one was available to talk. She told me Philippa McCulloch had died that morning.

‘Of the shock,’ the old woman reported, sniffing back tears. ‘Her heart gave way. It was too much for her.’

‘Well … that’s terrible news. I’m so very sorry …’

‘We all are.’

‘And the funeral?’ I asked.

‘It’s for family only. May I enquire who I am speaking with?’

‘I meant – I’m so sorry. I meant for Inez.’

And then the line went dead. It was impossible to know if the housekeeper had ended the call, or if – as often happened back then – the connection had simply cut off by its own accord. I called again. It took a half-hour to get a line through. The same voice answered. I wanted to know if I could speak with Xavier.

‘I just told you. It was you, wasn’t it?’

‘I think so.’

‘The family doesn’t want to speak with anyone for the moment.’

I asked if there was a date set for Inez’s funeral. The housekeeper said the two women would now be buried together.

‘When?’ I asked desperately. ‘Where?’

‘I already told you,’ she said. ‘It’s for family only … It’s you, isn’t it?’

‘Who?’

‘I know it’s you so there’s no good denying it anyways. You’re the lady who’s the cause of all the trouble
.
Aren’t you? You came sniffing round here when Inez was sick.’

‘I’m not the “cause” of any trouble,’ I said. But it was a struggle for me to keep my voice even. ‘This is Dora Whitworth.’

‘That’s right! I know who it is. The one who came round here dressed like a wop, pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Next thing you came here dressed as … something else. But I know exactly what you are. And so did Mrs McCulloch.’

‘Excuse me. You must have me confused.’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

‘I’ve done nothing!’

‘Leave this family alone. What’s left of it. If you’d a grain of pride in you, which I doubt, you’d leave us in peace …’

I took a breath. ‘I haven’t rung to speak with you. I have rung to speak with Mr Dubois. Please go and fetch him at once.’

‘They can’t abide you and that’s the fact of it. And nor can I. Mrs McCulloch spoke about you these past days. All the time, when the fever was with her.’

‘I don’t believe you … Why would she?’

‘The whore who dressed up as a wop, who came to this house pretending to be someone she wasn’t, corrupting Miss Inez, then corrupting Mr Dubois …’

‘Nonsense!’

‘They can’t abide you.’

‘No … Xavier – Mr Dubois – is my good friend.’

‘No, ma’am. He ain’t your friend. No one in this house is your friend.’

‘Is he there?’ I asked her. ‘Please! Won’t you let me speak to him?’

But the line had gone down again and this time there could be no doubt that she had cut me off.

After that, I paced the house and gnawed at my finger ends, strummed at my harpsichord and stared blindly at my filthy French novel. The minutes crawled by. If I braved the streets (which for this, of course, I would) and went to call at the McCullochs’, then the housekeeper would no doubt close the door in my face. She would refuse to take my letter from me. So I could either post it through the door without announcing myself, and scurry away, and only hope that the hateful woman didn’t intercept it. Or I could deliver the letter to the cottage.

Strikers tended to congregate a few blocks north of it, and the route was more dangerous, but the cottage was perhaps the best way.

Finally, I wrote out the letter twice. Affectionate and brief, I expressed my regret for the death of his aunt. I told him how I longed to hear from him, and how much I hoped to be able to attend the funeral, if it was permitted. I waited until dark and set out to deliver them – one copy through the McCulloch front door and a second through the letterbox at the cottage.

The early spring warmth had abandoned us again, and there was a fresh dusting of snow on the ground. It was an hour-long round trip, the coldest and the most frightening I can remember taking. Every sound, every breeze made my heart stop; and, in the midst of it all, the odd gunshot, sometimes close by, sometimes from several blocks away. On Beech Street, two idling men pointed their rifles at me as I scurried past: I could feel the noses of their guns follow me, burning into my back, until the moment I turned the corner out of sight. On my return, I never felt so happy to walk through the doors at Plum Street.

It was a wasted effort. Xavier didn’t reply to either letter. I discovered the date and location of the funeral only after Lawrence O’Neill dropped by to ask if I was attending. He hardly stayed a minute, but I cannot overstate what an extraordinary and welcome thing it was that he came at all. That week the Union was waging war, not on a single coal company but on American capitalism itself, or so we understood. Its call to arms – to union members nationwide – had brought men by the thousands into Trinidad. Every attack on every mine, on every scab and every company guard, needed to be planned and executed … And yet, there stood Lawrence O’Neill in my crimson hallway once again, his hat in his hand, asking about Inez’s funeral.

An announcement in the
Chronicle
had stated that the service was for close family only, but he had thought, considering our friendship, that I might have been made an exception.

I laughed. ‘You seem to forget—’

He shook his head. Of course he hadn’t forgotten. ‘I just thought maybe – because you were friends with her brother, too. But I guess not. Have you seen him lately? How is he doing?’

‘He’s doing fine,’ I replied. ‘That is, so far as I know. He won’t see me. I called the house – I think he has turned against me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he shrugged.

‘I thought we were friends.’

Lawrence nodded. ‘Well – these are difficult times,’ he said blandly. ‘The man has lost his family. Maybe he’ll soften.’

‘They loved each other, you know. It was just the two of them … orphans, really. And their aunt – and now she’s gone too.’

There was no one else for me to talk to about them, and I longed for him to stay. But I was blethering, I knew it, and I knew there were many more pressing matters on his mind. Already he was backing towards the door. ‘
You
loved her, didn’t you Lawrence?’ I said.

‘I sure miss her,’ he said uncomfortably.

‘I do too. God, I miss her …’

‘Dora, I just dropped by to check on you … That’s all … Just wanted to see you were all right. I guess you’re all right, are you?’

I am so very far from all right!
I wanted to cry.
I am heartbroken and abandoned and …
but I pulled myself up. I smiled. It was sweet of him to come. His desire to get back on the road shone like a sweat on his face. ‘Thank you for calling by, Lawrence. I really appreciate it. I guess I can’t attend the funeral. I mean – of course I can’t. But I will walk by, I think, while it is happening. There can’t be any harm in that, can there?’

‘Don’t see how,’ he said, with another backward step. Simple Kitty – ever present – opened the front door behind him. He replaced his hat, glanced at one of the hundred mirrors around him and adjusted it an inch. ‘Hang around some place they can’t see you, maybe. Say your goodbyes,’ he said. ‘Say ’em for both of us, will you?’

‘I’ll do that,’ I said. ‘Thank you Lawrence.’

He nodded. ‘You be careful now. Won’t you. There’s nowhere safe in Trinidad right now. You take care of yourself.’ And with that, he marched through the snow, and out of sight.

Trinidad had seen enough funerals those past few days. Inez’s and Philippa’s were just two more. Only three days earlier, at the same handsome Catholic church, there had been the funeral service for the eleven children and three mothers who were trapped and burned alive out at Ludlow. After that service, the caskets had been carried by horse-drawn hearse to the cemetery on East Main, and the silent procession had brought everything in the city – including the gunfire – to a stop. Fifteen hundred mourners had lined the streets.

The funeral for Inez and Philippa McCulloch was a more subdued affair – and far quieter than a McCulloch funeral might have been on any other week. It was partly out of respect for the family’s wishes, of course, as published in the
Chronicle
. They had requested a small and private service. But I wondered: had the family wanted a vast and public service, how many friends and neighbours might have found themselves indisposed that day?

Under other circumstances, the guest list of grievers might have read like a roll call of Union enemies. The McCullochs were at the heart of the Trinidad elite – much of which had grown wealthy off the mines, off the sweat of the miners, and was instinctively hostile towards the Union cause. The Northcutts owned the city newspaper which published hateful reports about the strikers’ cause on a daily basis. The Johnsons owned a gun store which had only last week been ransacked by strikers, and robbed of every piece of ammunition on the shelves. This was not a week for the Trinidad wealthy to gather in public and make a show, unless it wanted to invite yet more funerals.

I found a place to stand behind an advertising board which lent me a view of the church door and which hid me from sight, and I waited for the hearse carrying Inez and her aunt to draw up.

They arrived together, through the damp snow: just two motorcars and one horse-drawn hearse. From the front car there stepped Richard McCulloch, followed by his nephew Xavier in sober, borrowed black; and, after them, two ladies of Mrs McCulloch’s age, neither of whom I recognized. In colour and in build, both bore a heavy-jawed resemblance to Mr McCulloch, and so I concluded they were his sisters, come in from Denver. In the second car there came Mrs Johnson, whom I recognized from the music club, and whose loathsome views on the miners’ situation had prompted Inez to invite her to Max Eastman’s tea party. Mrs Johnson came with another woman, also present at the music club, but whose name I couldn’t recollect.

Behind them, arriving on foot and dressed in black, came three more figures: two women, both holding handkerchiefs to their eyes. The stouter of the two I recognized as the McCulloch housekeeper. They were followed by an elderly gentleman, who walked very upright and wore a cap. I recognized him at once as the man who had come to fetch Inez from the Toltec the night she met Lawrence O’Neill. The night we befriended one another. The night all this began.

There were no friends present for Inez. None, except me, uninvited, hiding behind the hoarding in the bitter cold; and her brother, in formal black – wearing what looked like his uncle’s mourning coat. It hung loose on him. He looked shattered in it: thin and white, and half dead himself.