Honeyville (38 page)
‘I do remember. I explained there were a few obstacles. And then, well – everything changed, didn’t it?’ I couldn’t quite hide the bitterness.
‘Yes, it did.’
My glass was empty. (When wasn’t it?) I reached for the bourbon bottle in the middle of the table, but Xavier pre-empted me. He slid the bottle beyond my reach.
‘Pass it to me,’ I said.
‘No.’
I swore at him. It was all I could do. It was all I had. And then I sat, with my hands in my lap. And I imagined what a picture I made. But there was no fight in me left. So I continued to sit, and let the tears roll down my cheeks.
He continued, conversationally: ‘So I understand Phoebe threw you out.’
‘Who told you?’
‘I heard she took a whole lot of money off you in the process. Which is presumably why she didn’t want you found. I finally spoke with the maid … I hid outside until she came out. Simple something – what did you call her?’
‘Simple Kitty.’ I almost smiled. ‘Poor darling. She wasn’t simple at all. No more simple than the rest of us, anyway. How was she?’
‘She was fine. At least until Phoebe sent one of her flunkeys to drag the poor girl back in the house … She told me about the john who remembered you in his will.’
‘William Paxton.’ I nodded. ‘Remember him? Two thousand five hundred dollars, Xavier.’ Finally, I looked at him and laughed. Just for a moment, the absurdity of it all: Phoebe’s greed, my disappointment, William putting all that money into an envelope for me, and the lawyer handing it all to Phoebe, the pair of us locked inside her airless little parlour, squabbling over who owed what – it all seemed so silly, so absurd, just so incredibly
funny.
‘It was only money, Xavier,’ I muttered.
‘Only money,’ agreed Xavier. ‘I’m glad you say that. I have an awful lot of it now.’
‘You do? I’m happy for you.’
‘More money than I know what to do with. You remember
The Adventures of Agatha
? Well, now I have so much work and so much money I don’t know what to do with myself.’
‘That’s nice.’ I shrugged. ‘Want to see where I’m living now? Want to know what I’ve been up to?’
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Of course I do! It’s why I’ve come back to this godforsaken hellhole. I told you. I came back to find you, Dora. My friend, my
dearest
friend … My only friend.’
‘Fairweather friend.’
‘No! Yes –
then
. But not now. Never again. It was for Aunt Philippa. I don’t expect you to understand. I just – I believed I had to. Because we broke her heart, Inez and I. And when she was dying, it was all she raved about. Her hatred of you, Dora. As if everything that had happened to Inez was your fault. I knew it wasn’t true. Of course I knew it. But abandoning you, my closest friend, my
only
friend … it was my penance – can you understand that? No, and why the hell should you? I’m not sure I understand it myself. But then – back then – in the thick of grief, it seemed the only way to redress her suffering, and the death of Inez. I thought I –
we
– you and I, had to pay.’
Grief, I reflected, can send us all a little mad.
‘… Never again,’ he was saying. ‘
Never
again your fairweather friend.I swear to it, if you will ever forgive me. And I have money, Dora! More than I can spend. And I miss you. I’ve missed you every day. So I am begging you to come back to Hollywood with me. I can set you up with singing classes, if you want. Dora, it’s a city full of actors. There are theatres and musicals – the city is populated with exhibitionists and everybody likes to sing! I have a house that’s so large I don’t know what to do with it. And I’m lonely, Dora.
I miss you
. Please. Please, darling? Won’t you come back with me?’
A moment passed.
‘What about your boyfriends?’ I asked him.
He said, ‘What about yours? What does it even matter?’
I said, ‘Well. It’s rather unconventional.’
And he laughed – a great bellow of laughter. The sound bounced off the tin ceiling and filled the room. ‘Is that an objection, Dora?’
‘We might get awfully jealous …’
‘We might,’ he said. ‘And if it’s miserable, or we want to set up with someone else, then we can always change it. You could stay with me until you are on your feet. Or you could stay with me forever. We might – very likely – get desperately, horribly jealous of one another. Of course we will. But we might just make each other happy.’
April 1933
Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California
We did both. We still do. There have been times, over the years, when we’ve considered going our own ways, and yet we never have. Today it’s not Xavier who brings in the bulk of our income, it’s me. Tomorrow, next month, next year – who knows? People go in and out of vogue in this crazy film business. Maybe it will be his turn again soon. In the meantime, here we find ourselves, poolside at the Ambassador – Max Eastman, Xavier and me, with a heap of cinders between us and the remains of a letter from the woman who brought us all together. A letter that poses as many questions as it answers.
Xavier gazes at the cinders. ‘… So now what?’ he is saying.
‘I still have the luggage she sent on to New York,’ Max reminds us. ‘It’s in a store-room somewhere. I could send for it. We could examine the contents for clues.’
‘I suppose we could do that,’ murmurs Xavier, but he shudders.
I feel the same. Clues to what, after all? And to what end? Even so, I am compelled to add: ‘What about O’Neill? If he’s still alive we should try to find him. Track him down.
Do
something
…’
‘I told you,’ says Max. ‘If he’s still alive, he’s rotting away in a Russian labour camp, and has been these past ten years. If he’s still alive, he probably wishes he wasn’t.’
‘Did you really see him there, Max?’ I ask. ‘How do you know?’
He says Upton Sinclair told him.
‘So Upton saw him?’ Xavier asks.
‘No. Gertrude Singer saw him. She—’
‘Well shouldn’t we check it out?’ I interrupt. ‘Shouldn’t we
do
something?’
Xavier gazes at me. ‘What kind of something, Dora?’
‘Well, I don’t know. If he killed her, and if we could prove it—’
‘Unlikely,’ Max says.
‘Highly unlikely,’ I acknowledge. ‘I realise that.’
‘And even if we could prove it,’ Xavier says. ‘And even if he’s somehow escaped his godforsaken Gulag and is a free man, back home in America. Then what? We go after him and punish him? Inez is already dead. And O’Neill has already suffered. What would anyone gain from it?’
There is nothing to be gained of course, nothing whatsoever.
Max breaks the silence. ‘You know what though,’ he bursts out. He sounds suddenly, ludicrously cheerful, and gosh, it jars. ‘You know what?’ he says, ‘There
was
something good that came out of Old Snatchville! Something quite wonderful.’
Xavier and I look at him, waiting to hear what.
‘Why
, you two
! … ’ he cries. ‘You guys met in Trinidad, did you not? What were the chances of that?’
‘Why yes, we did,’ Xavier and I both agree.
‘
Yes, you did
,’ repeats Max. He laughs: a fat, joyful laugh. ‘So
something
lasted! You see?’ He grins at us. ‘Something wonderful.’
Something wonderful has lasted. Yes. We grin back at him.
And it’s not such a bad moment, as moments go.
‘My friends,’ he says, waving a wrist and conjuring a waiter to his side, ‘I think we should celebrate! We should order more martinis. Don’t you? I think we should drink.’
To Inez.
And old Snatchville.
And short memories.
And survival.
And that’s what we’re doing right now.
The old frontier town of Trinidad, Colorado (pop. 8,771), where this novel is set, has seen better days. Once grand and bustling, much of it stands grand and empty today. The basement morgue below Jamieson’s Department Store, the Westfield of the nineteenth-century Middle West, is now a junk room (quite eerie, with its unused coffin-shaped shelves). Upstairs, the old emporium is home to a dusty museum, mostly filled with paintings of cowboys, and staffed by volunteers. The theatre where Mother Jones roused a packed house of miners to ‘starve and strike’ stands on the edge of the old red-light district: massive, empty and crumbling. But it’s all still there! The Toltec, with its magnificent pressed-tin ceiling (now a gym) … the Corinado Hotel where Max Eastman held his disgraceful tea party … the Columbia Hotel (empty) … the Opera House (empty, crumbling, boarded off) … and ten or so miles out of town, in the middle of open prairie, there is Ludlow. A monument stands on the spot where the women and children burned, and at the bottom of the field, trains still run along the track that, a hundred years ago, brought in America’s finest, most outraged reporters. I imagine handsome Max Eastman gazing out of his window as the train chugged through the wreckage, the stench of burnt flesh shocking him to silence (for once). There is a plaque on Commercial Street, where a well-known cowboy was shot dead, and on Main Street, carved into the wall of a building, there is a bust of Trinidad’s most powerful madam. But the spot where Detectives Belcher and Belk shot dead the Unionist, Captain Lippiatt, remains unmarked. Time has stood still in Trinidad for the most part. It’s beautiful, romantic, compact. And there’s free wifi in McDonald’s.
Above all, I want to thank the local writer and historian Cosette Henritze. What happened out at Ludlow is still a sore subject in Trinidad. Cosette introduced me to people with strong views and anecdotes from both sides of the fight. She is wisdom and warmth personified, and I cannot thank her enough. I have taken numerous liberties with facts. Cosette Henritze has nothing to do with any of them.
I would also like to thank Mike Haddad for opening up the old theatre for me; Shirley Donachy, for showing me round Ludlow; Joe Tarabino; David Barrack – and everyone in Trinidad for their knowledge and the generosity of their welcome. Please forgive my inaccuracies.
Thanks too – as always – to Clare Alexander: probably the best agent in the world. Thank you, Kimberley Young, Louise Swannell, and all at HarperCollins. Thank you Peter, Bashie, Zebedee – and especially, Panda, thank you. xxx
