Honeyville

by Waugh, Daisy

  Lawrence O’Neill had been away on Union business for over a week by then. Inez had dropped by the offices to find out when he was due back, and been told by Cody that it wouldn’t be for another fortnight at least. His tour of undercover meetings in the mining camps upstate (mustering support among the men) had been extended.

  Cody reminded Inez that Lawrence had banned her from hanging around the Union offices while he was away.

  ‘“Mr O’Neill told you to keep away.” Those are the very words that impertinent young boy said to me, Dora! He said, “So you’d better git. Or you’ll have me in trouble.” He was terribly rude,’ she added, ‘especially considering I thought we were friends.’

  Inez had nothing to distract her. In the days that followed she would come to my rooms in the early mornings, and sit on my couch and sigh – until my work began and I would kick her out, and she would meander back across town to her other life of card evenings with Aunt Philippa and church fundraisers, and educational teas, only to return to me the next morning. She never seemed to go to the library. When I asked why, she just sighed and said, ‘Because there’s no fun in it any more.’ She was bored.

  ‘You need to find a husband,’ I told her. ‘Have some children before it’s too late. Don’t make the mistake I did.’

  She gave a lovesick groan. ‘But you have no idea how I long to have his children! Oh God where is he, Dora? Why doesn’t he return? Do you suppose something has happenedto him? Those company guards have no respect for life. You saw it for yourself … God knows, he might be lying in a ditch somewhere with a bullet through his chest. And I am just sitting here, killing time on your couch, wasting my life away, waiting for him.’

  She was accidentally ‘passing by’ when she saw his car pull up outside the Union office a week or so later. He must have been gone about three weeks altogether. Inez said she rushed across to him and then, as she was about to call out, abruptly lost her nerve.

  ‘But I think he saw me,’ she said. ‘I’m certain he did. He was with two other men, and they all looked so serious!And then they all disappeared into that dreadful office and Dora – can you believe it? After all these weeks and days only longing for his return, there he was, hardly yards away from me and I lacked the nerve to follow him!’

  ‘It’s probably a good thing,’ I replied.

  ‘I think so too,’ she said. ‘Since he’s banned me from the office. But Dora, you could go, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘After all, he’s a friend of yours. Couldn’t you go and see him for me? Find out what he is thinking of me, find out if he is absolutely longing to see me, as I am him? Couldn’t you go to him and tell him how much I have missed him?’

  ‘I’ll go for you, Inez, all right? At the end of the day.’

  ‘I just have to know if he ever wants to see me again.’

  ‘I can’t go right now, Inez. I have a bunch of things to do.’

  ‘Thank you, darling. You’re so kind … It’s just the not-knowing that’s sending me so crazy …’

  But she wouldn’t let it rest. Within a half-hour her determination had worn me down, and I was on my way to North Commercial Street to find him for her.

  He was in the same leather chair, long legs stretched across the sawdust floor, at the same messy desk as the last time I visited. Once again, he was staring into the barrel of an open shotgun.

  There was no one else in the office. I leaned on the counter and waited quietly. He must have sensed it; the rustle of skirt, the smell of perfume – uncommon enough in that room, I assume. But several moments passed before he spoke. He said, with his eye still stuck down the gun barrel. ‘It’s you is it, Dora? Come to speak up for your little friend?’

  I said, ‘She’s wondering where you are. I told her not to bother with you, but she won’t listen.’

  He gave a small snort.

  ‘It’s a good thing she didn’t come herself,’ he said, snapping the gun shut, and looking across at me at last. Sandy hair, those startling blue eyes, and a mouth that seemed to be constantly battling not to chortle at an unspoken, private joke. He was tall and well built and handsome, by anyone’s standards. He didn’t do much for me, but to a young woman who had spent her life in church groups and libraries, in the company of gentlemen who could only talk about automobiles, he must have seemed irresistible.

  ‘She did come and see you herself. As I dare say you know perfectly well. She said you saw her. And that you looked so sternly at her, she lost her nerve. And then you didn’t come after her.’

  He glanced around the room, checking we were still alone. ‘Yes. Well … Tell her sorry, will you? Of course I saw her. Only she mustn’t come by here any more. I told her that. It’s not helpful. If she wants to help—’

  ‘She wants to see you,’ I said. ‘That’s what she wants.’

  ‘And I want to see her,’ he said. ‘Very much.’

  ‘Good. She’ll be happy to hear it.’

  He looked at me frankly, surprising himself, I think, by what he was about to say. ‘I missed her, Dora.’

  ‘She’ll be happy to hear that, too. Why don’t you tell yourself?’

  ‘She mustn’t come round here any more,’ he said again.

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  ‘Tell her …’ He stopped. ‘Tell her I miss her. That I want to see her. And that I may have a job for her, if she wants one.’

  ‘What kind of a job?’

  ‘None of your business, my friend,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Maybe it isn’t. But you can tell me this at least. How’s she going to meet with you or do any kind of job for you if she can’t come round here to find you? She’s got to meet up with you someplace, and I don’t think you’ll be terribly welcome at her aunt’s place.’

  He didn’t respond.

  ‘Lawrence?’

  ‘Hush up a second, won’t you?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking … What’s the name of that old dram shop – the queer one, up by the Avenue?’

  ‘Crazy Annie’s.’ I laughed. ‘Is it the best you can do? I’ve never even been inside, have you?’

  ‘Tell her I’ll meet her there.’

  She was waiting for me at a tearoom a couple of blocks away. When I turned into the street, she was standing at the door, peering out, in search of me.

  ‘He has a task for me?’ she cried. ‘What can it possibly be? I’ll do anything – for the cause,’ she added quickly, and giggled. ‘No, but I mean it. Honestly. I care so much about the miners now. You know that, don’t you?’ She kissed me on the cheek and dashed away.

  12

  I spotted her a day or so later, speeding through the streets behind the wheel of her automobile, bright silk scarf flowing behind her. She waved, almost running down a trio of miners in the process, but she didn’t stop, which was just as well. They were singing something angry, and if she’d stopped they might well have lynched her.

  Once Lawrence returned to town, I saw much less of her, and felt rather bereft. I had grown accustomed to her lovelorn presence on my couch each day. But he kept her busy (and happy) at her secret Union task.

  I guessed the nature of it long before I winkled it out of her. It was too obvious. She would, of course, have made a perfect spy: dazzling in her prettiness and charm, and to anyone unaware of her link with Lawrence (which was everyone, if you didn’t count Cody and me), she would seem about as far removed from being a Union sympathizer as it was possible to be. Lawrence sent her into the camps, alone, in her own automobile, with a supply of Bibles and improving stories for the young, which had been brought in from Denver for the purpose. Her instructions were to ingratiate herself with the miners’ women and children. She was then to report back on families who confided a lack of sympathy with the Union, so that the Union plants employed within the company could feed back false information to their company managers, get the poor saps falsely labelled as pro-Union troublemakers and revolutionaries, and thrown off t
he camp. Off the camp, that is, and out of home, and job, and school, and future … out onto the wide prairie to fend for themselves.

  I didn’t agree with what she was doing. It seemed to me she was meddling in something that didn’t concern her, something that, with so much money and security behind her, she could never understand.

  ‘I am ashamed, Dora,’ she said to me once, lying back in her limpid pool of newborn sensuality, only killing time in my rooms until she was summoned by her lover again. ‘I am ashamed,’ she said, ‘that I have lived beside these fine, brave, working people all my life – and until now I never once paused to see things from their side.’ It was the weekend of the Miners’ Conference, the streets were spattered with men shouting from soapboxes, there was a sense of sullen expectation in the air, and I was sick of the whole subject: the bitterness and self-righteousness on both sides. I was sick to death of everyone’s inflexible opinions.

  ‘But you aren’t seeing it from their side,’ I snapped at her. ‘You’re seeing it from Lawrence’s side.’

  She wasn’t listening. ‘The workers must be forced to unionize, Dora. Don’t you see?’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘And of course the company wants to stop them. And of the course the workers are afraid. They are terrified of the company discovering they are Union sympathizers and throwing them out onto the road—’

  ‘Which is what the Union is doing when you report on them as non-sympathizers to Lawrence. Why can’t you see it?’

  ‘Exactly!’ she said. ‘Why can’t you see? If the workers are made to understand that their livelihood isn’t safe unless they agree to unionize – well then. They will unionize! And the workers will win! The trouble with you, Dora,’ she added carelessly, ‘is you see so many company men in your work that you’re biased …’

  ‘I see plenty of others,’ I said. ‘They allcome to me, Inez … Your Union men, too. Your Union men, most of all.’

  She blinked, and coloured up. I might have set her mind at rest with a harmless lie, but I was angry. I didn’t feel inclined.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You may see “plenty of others”. I’m sure you do. And don’t bother to blame me for that. I tried my best for you …’

  ‘I’m not blaming you,’ I laughed. ‘Why would I blame you?’

  ‘Oh, but never mind that,’ she hurried on. ‘Only I know you entertain more of management than of work- ers here. Of course you do. Don’t tell me those pathetic little Greek miners—’

  ‘Not so pathetic, really. When you get to know them. Far from it, actually. But you are terribly patronizing, Inez.’

  ‘Don’t tell me they get their toes inside that ballroom very often. Not on their wages, and with children and wives and parents back in Europe and goodness knows what else to support. Don’t tell me they can afford you. Because they can’t.’

  ‘You’ll be amazed what a man can afford, Inez, if he wants it badly enough. Even though his wife and children go hungry.’

  ‘No! They are not like that!’ she cried. ‘And in any case, even if they were, which they are not, you should turn them away. Send them back to their families. You shouldn’t take their money.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. And I stood up. ‘I’ll bear your advice in mind. But now, Inez, I have things to do.’

  ‘What, this very minute?’ she was affronted. ‘But it’s not even noon! You never start work before noon – I know it. You’re angry with me!’

  ‘Well, yes I am. A little,’ I replied. (A ‘little’ being a lie.) ‘I also have things to do.’

  But she stayed where she was. ‘Please, darling Dora. Don’t be angry. I am telling you what I think … because I have woken up at last! Don’t you see? Isn’t that something to celebrate? I have lived side by side with this terrible injustice all these years. And all I saw was the grime on their skin, and their dirty boots and their grisly, angry little faces – the women, too – cluttering up my beautiful town … And now,’ she said triumphantly, ‘I see them as people! Does it sound too absurd?’

  I didn’t bother to answer.

  ‘And Dora, I am tryingto see what their lives must be like. And I am determined to help them.’

  ‘You’re seeing it from Lawrence’s point of view. Because he turns you into a quivering idiot, Inez. Who can think of nothing but the fire that’s burning in her twat.’

  ‘Oh! You’re revolting! Why won’t you listen to me?’

  ‘I have listened enough for today. And now I have an appointment at the surgery. If you would like to know, if you would like to see life from my point of view, I need to renew my certificate of clean health. It costs me a fortune each month. And of course I must pay the doctor well over the odds because without his certificate, I cannot work. So please. Enough. For today. No more lectures from you. I think what you’re doing for Lawrence is about as wrong as wrong can be.’

  ‘As wrong as taking money from a man who should be spending it on his wife and children?’

  I hesitated. Smiled. ‘About the same, my friend. But needs must. It’s not something you would understand.’

  She left my little parlour then. She yanked her childlike body from the sea of green silk cushions, and swept out of the door, muttering something inaudible, uncertain, and I think – I know, because I saw the damp on her cheeks – that she was crying.

  I never did leave the house that afternoon, after all. Instead I hung around inside feeling overheated and miserable. It was an airless, burning hot day – one of the last of summer. All the windows in Plum Street were open and the house was filled with the noise from town: the stomping of boots, the banging of drums, the playing of pipes, and the sound of male voices singing. It grew louder as the day progressed, and by evening the prairie seemed to throb to one single chorus: We are fighting for our Rights boys, We are fighting for our Homes, Cry the battle cry of Union! Cry the battle cry of Union! We are fighting for our Homes …

  Rumour had it that Mother Jones herself was in town: the notorious Mother Jones who could no doubt rouse a roomful of stock traders to fight for a worker revolution, if she found herself in a room with them long enough. She was an eighty-three-year-old widow, scourge of the capitalists, who toured the country rallying workers everywhere to fight. Love her or loathe her, in 1913 I don’t suppose there was an adult in America without an opinion on her. And by all accounts she was staying at the Toltec this evening, and she was addressing the miners’ rally tonight.

  There would be fighting in town tonight. At any rate, we all thought so in Plum Street. The stuffy air seemed thick with trouble. And I, for one, had no enthusiasm for joining the fray. Instead of dragging myself through town to the surgery, I went to the ballroom, to while away the afternoon with some of the girls. Their gossip, I knew, would be a welcome distraction.

  We huddled in the usual corner, on the red velvet cushions and couches beneath the empty stage, as far from Phoebe’s vision and earshot as possible. The ballroom’s thick curtains were drawn, to keep the hot sun out, and we lolled on our cushions, beneath the darkened chandeliers, almost hidden, we liked to think, in the half-light: smoking and drinking, talking in half-whispers. There was an unspoken understanding that the more softly we spoke, the smaller the chance of Phoebe descending, and adding to our misery by reminding us of her existence.

  I had been aloof from the other girls for too long. There was, I discovered, plenty of good gossip to catch up on.

  Councillor Titchfield had a secret wife in Houston, Texas. And a whole bunch of full grown kids …

  Deputy Sheriff Westbroke had been so drunk two nights previously, he’d been unable to get his cock up, which was unlike him …

  Pastor Norton had insisted on Nicola bringing her fourteen-year-old daughter Maude upstairs with her on Wednesday.

  (‘He’s a randy fucker, Pastor Norton is,’ Luella said. We none of us argued with that.)

  Jasmine thought Nicola had set Maude to work too young, but Chloe said Phoebe had insisted … no
w that she ate like a woman, she could fuck like one too. We all agreed it was a wonder the pastor had funds enough for one girl, the number of visits he paid, but two at a turn, and one of them untouched! We wondered what price had been set.

  And so the afternoon spun pleasantly by. It was a lull before the storm. Whether the men called to strike tonight, or they didn’t, once Mother Jones had said her piece, their blood would be up. There would be plenty of business tonight.

  But at six o’clock that same day, Inez returned to Plum Street. She didn’t burst in, as she usually did. She tapped politely on the door. I had returned to my rooms to prepare for the evening’s work by then, and I assumed the knock was Kitty’s, telling me I was needed downstairs already. I pretended not to hear.

  ‘Dora, it’s me!’ she said. ‘It’s Inez. I hate fighting with you. And I am sorry we disagreed.’ She pushed open the door. ‘Only, darling, I desperately need you this evening. Lawrence won’t take me. He is too busy with all his organizing. But Mother Jones is speaking at the theatre! It’s such a great event – and I daren’t go on my own …’

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I had feared that she might never talk to me again; might never come to cheer me and divert me, in these airless rooms. For a moment, my relief at hearing her voice seemed to stop everything. I could hardly speak.

  ‘Please, Dora,’ she said, seeing me hesitate, misreading my silence for hostility. ‘I swear I’ll never ask anything of you again. Only Lawrence doesn’t want me to attend. He thinks I should stay home and spend the evening playing Bridge. That’s what he said to me! Because he’s so darned protective. But I’m determined to be there. I want to watch and listen and learn and I’m begging you, Dora. Please. We can disguise ourselves and sneak in at the back. Whatever you like. But we cannot miss it! Mother Jones is speaking! And history, Dora. This is our history in the making.’