Honeyville

by Waugh, Daisy

  I asked her how soon she intended to leave town. Very soon, she said. ‘But you know, now that I’ve made the decision, every moment here is purgatory.’ She must have read my expression. ‘Oh, Dora I don’t mean that exactly. I shall miss you awfully. It’s only thanks to you that any of this is even happening. Yes, it is! When I think back to how boring my life was before we met, I almost want to cry with gratitude. It’s true! You changed everything. You, Dora, are my greatest friend. Even if that is quite the oddest, most unlikely thing – which it is, when you stop to consider it. And even though Aunt Philippa must never know. You’re my greatest friend, Dora. My only friend …’

  ‘Xavier is your friend too,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. And Xavier too. Of course. Perhaps he will come and see me in New York. He might like it there. Max says there are plenty of gentlemen who dress like him in Greenwich Village.’ She laughed. ‘Imagine that!’ She surveyed her trunk. It was bursting with her arbitrary belongings. She closed the lid and sat on it.

  Max, she said, would be leaving tomorrow or the next day, depending on developments. (Anarchy in Colorado could only hold the front pages for so long.) Inez hoped to leave town on the same train.

  ‘He has a wedding to go to next Tuesday. And he needs to be back in town by then,’ she said. ‘Although of course he doesn’t really think of “marriage” in the way you or I do. For him it’s a lot more sort of … oh, nuanced. He believes—’ There was a noise outside. Someone was at the door, fiddling with the lock. She froze, a look of terror on her face.

  ‘Who is it?’ she whispered. ‘Do you hear that?’

  ‘There is someone at the door,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Xavier has returned.’ I was about to call out to him, but she grasped hold of my arm.

  ‘Shhhh!’

  ‘Why?’ But her fear was infectious. God knows, I felt it pounding in my chest too. We stayed still, waiting.

  She released my arm. Put a finger to her lips and bent down. On the floor between our feet lay her little spy-purse (never far out of her reach, I noticed). Silently, delicately, she slid out the revolver.

  More scratching at the door. The turn of a lock, and a creak …

  She stood up and, with steady hand (surprisingly steady), she pointed her gun at the door and pulled back the hammer.

  The door pushed open, and there stood Xavier. ‘What in hell?’ he said, indignantly.

  With an exclamation, half irritation, half relief, her arm dropped to her side. ‘Xavier!’ she said, as if it were all his fault. ‘What are you doing, standing there? You scared the life out of me. For heaven’s sake!’ She slid the gun back into its case. ‘You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that … It could end so badly.’

  ‘I wasn’t sneaking up!’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anyone was here.’

  ‘Well you should’ve known.’ And then, realizing how absurd she sounded, she burst into laughter, put her arms around him, and kissed him on his cheek. ‘Where have you been anyway?’ she said. ‘Oh my gosh, darling …’ She pulled back a little, waving a hand under her nostrils. ‘You reek. What is that smell?’

  It was opium. I knew it at once, of course. The smell tends to cling for hours after.

  ‘Well, I must say that’s quite some particular welcome,’ he said, exchanging quick glances with me and ignoring the question. He extricated himself from his sister’s hold – rather irritably – and headed towards the kitchen. ‘Coffee. Is what I’m offering today. Either of you girls want some coffee?’

  ‘Actually, no,’ Inez said. ‘I have to leave.’

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘Again? Already? Why are you constantly having to go places? You seem to be permanently in some kind of a mad rush.’ He sounded plaintive. ‘It’s ridiculous, Inez. I wish you would calm down, just a teeny bit. Honestly. You worry me …’

  ‘Well, it’s because I have so much to do, Xavier. You haven’t the faintest idea. I’m leaving town in a couple of days, and I haven’t even told Aunt Philippa or Uncle Richard yet. And I want to get this trunk to the train station for tomorrow morning. And then I said to Cody’s mamma that I would deliver something for her …’

  ‘What sort of thing?’ asked Xavier. ‘Deliver what? Where? Can’t she deliver the ruddy thing herself?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ Inez replied, fiddling with her coat buttons.

  ‘Nothing?’ he repeated, more alert now.

  ‘Nothing much. Something for her brother. And no, she can’t do it herself, poor darling.’

  ‘Deliver it where?’ he asked again. ‘This “nothing much”?’

  ‘Nowhere. Out at Forbes camp. Nothing. She can’t get out there herself, poor thing. And Cody used to do that sort of thing for her …’

  ‘Forbes?’ he looked aghast. ‘You can’t go out to Forbes, Inez sweetheart. Not this week. You do realize that, don’t you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Xavier,’ she said. ‘Of course I must. I have promised. Anyway, you’re one to talk, fresh back from your crazy jaunt. How was Colorado Springs?’

  ‘I didn’t go to Colorado Springs,’ he said.

  ‘But you told me—’

  He shook his head. ‘You misunderstood. Of course I didn’t go to Colorado Springs – I’m not crazy … But I’ve just been speaking with a gentleman who came in on the road yesterday morning, and he said there were men up in the hills taking pot shots at his motor as he drove by. Twice. Twice, Inez, his car was shot at. There are snipers out there. Bands of men hiding out in the hills, planning their next attacks … It’s terrifying. It’s not a joke. He is lucky to be alive.’

  But once again Inez wasn’t listening. ‘Don’t fuss, darling. Please. Really. Max says it’s quite safe, as long as you ride with a white flag out of the window, and I just bet your friend forgot to do that … Anyhow, Cody’s ma doesn’t have a car of her own, Xavie. Of course she doesn’t. And she has a great gaggle of children. I couldn’t even count them. And no Cody to help her any longer. So how is she to get out there? You tell me that. And if you saw how heartbroken she was …’

  ‘But Inez,’ I said. ‘I thought you said you didn’t see her?’

  ‘What?’ She looked confused for a moment, and then irritable. ‘Well, I did see her. That’s all … And if I don’t make it out to Forbes today, I shall have to go tomorrow or the next day, and I don’t want it hanging over me. On top of which, if you don’t mind me saying it, you two aren’t the only people in Trinidad I need to see before I leave. There are other people in town I want to say goodbye to. Friends.’

  I asked her if she would say goodbye to Lawrence. I couldn’t resist.

  ‘I wouldn’t even know where to find him,’ she snapped. ‘Oh gosh, I wonder how we’re ever going to lift that great trunk into the car. It’s awfully heavy …’

  Poor man, I thought. Poor Lawrence. Poor Xavier. Poor Aunt Philippa and Uncle Richard. Pity any one of us who loves her. Pity Max Eastman. She takes us up and tosses us aside, but she doesn’t mean it badly. I pictured Lawrence the last few occasions we had met: thin and brusque – missing Inez.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to send him a message?’ I said. ‘I could pass it on to him, if you like. He might appreciate it.’ I remembered suggesting the same thing to him all those weeks ago.

  She blushed. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘But thank you.’

  ‘Inez,’ Xavier burst out. ‘I don’t care a hoot about your spurned lovers. But you must not go to Forbes. Is that clear?’ I had never heard him so emphatic. ‘Doyou have the faintest idea of the danger?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘Probably rather better than you.’

  ‘Of all places, Forbes camp especially. They’ve got the company guards barricaded in with the scabs. They’re all trapped in there. And if anyone tries to get out, the strikers shoot them dead. Night before last, every mule in the camp was slaughtered. Every damn one. They came in the night and slashed the beasts’ throats. And they didn’t make a sound, Inez.Nobody heard a thing. These men are lethal
… And don’t please imagine they intend to leave it at that. They’ll be back for the scabs and the guards and the women and children tonight or tomorrow. For crying out loud, it’s all anyone was talking about in town last night!’

  A beat.

  ‘Did I say Forbes?’ she said with a little frown. ‘Well, I didn’t mean Forbes,did I? Aren’t I silly? I actually meant Cokedale. Cody’s papa is out at Cokedale.’

  ‘I thought you said Cody’s uncle—’

  ‘I really have to go. Won’t you please help me get this trunk into the auto?’

  Xavier crossed the room, took hold of her thin arms and shook her, gently. ‘Inez, honey, I’ll take the trunk anywhere you want me to take it. I’ll take you anywhere you want me to take you. I’ll do anything you ask. Only promise me, whatever it is you want to deliver to Cody’s uncle – father – whatever in hell it is you are up to: stay away from Forbes. Will you?’

  She looked into his eyes. I saw her. ‘I am not going to Forbes, Xavie,’ she said softly. ‘I promise.’

  He considered her a moment. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said at last. ‘Why must you always insist on lying?’

  But she stuck to her story and left soon afterwards, reminding him one last time about his date with the McCullochs that night. ‘Max and I will be at the door at six o’clock prompt. Don’t you dare to be late, darling. Please. Please, please.’ She kissed him goodbye, leaving him with the trunk, and the task of transporting it to the train station in the morning.

  Two long days followed. Plum Street remained open for no business at all, and the state of emergency in Southern Colorado grew worse – quickly and considerably. The snipers and strikers brought their battle in from the hills and onto the streets. Nobody sane would be spending their evenings reciting lousy poetry and drinking bourbon in the Toltec now. The city was too dangerous.

  I didn’t hear from Inez. I wondered whether she ever made it out to Forbes. I wondered whether she and Max had already left town. I wondered how the meeting had gone with Mr and Mrs McCulloch. Plum Street had a telephone, as did the McCullochs’. I might have called, but I didn’t, and nor did Inez call me.

  Time crawled by. We grew tetchy and irritable in the house, Phoebe especially. And, in the background, the gunfire continued. I lay on my couch, with the fear always gnawing, reading the last French novel William Paxton ever sent to me.

  And then Simple Kitty knocked on the door to tell me Lawrence was downstairs, crying.

  30

  I saw Max Eastman last night. He turned up at dinner, very late, apologizing to us all as if the entire evening had been on hold for his arrival. When he loped into the room, I’ll be honest: my heart stopped. And this morning, when I opened my eyes, my face was covered with tears. I’ve never experienced it before – to wake, from crying. Had I been dreaming? I can’t remember. But I woke with a hundred images swimming through my head. Of Trinidad as it was almost twenty years ago. Of Xavier, as he was then. Of myself. Of Max and Inez as they were together; and the blood drying on the old brick pavements.

  *

  But the blood in my dream can’t have belonged to Inez, because they killed her on the prairie, ten or so miles out of town. When Lawrence found her, twisted in her little heap, she was still warm, he said. The earth around her was damp and red. He carried her back to the auto and drove her home through the prairie. He drove directly to the town morgue.

  He parked up in the side street by the entrance. The morgue was on Main Street, in the basement of the blessed Jamieson’s. For reasons of commercial sensitivity, its entrance was purposely hard to find, even for those who knew where to look. Lawrence carried Inez in his arms and banged on the basement door until Mr Adamsson the mortician let him in.

  Faraway in Washington, the president was, at last, ordering in the National Guard. In New York, John D. Rockefeller was releasing press statements to explain why the bloodbaths in his frontier mining towns were not his responsibility, and all the while we lived in anarchy … When Lawrence came to the morgue door, Inez growing cold in his arms, the normal rules did not apply. Certificates of death and other such formalities were not a priority. It was more a question of getting the bodies off the streets, restoring some semblance of order.

  So Mr Adamsson took Inez without the usual questions. When he returned to the front stall, paperwork in hand, Lawrence was already vanished. Lawrence couldn’t linger. It was too dangerous. But he loved her, poor man, and so nor could he leave her quite abandoned. He was on his way to Plum Street, to fetch me.

  He arrived at the parlour house – our first visitor for days – and sent Simple Kitty up to fetch me. I was upstairs, lounging on the couch in my private sitting room reading William’s novel. It was doing an admirable job of blocking out the sound of the gunfire, the marching boots – my fear. Then came Simple Kitty’s knock.

  ‘Mr O’Neill wants to see you,’ she said. ‘He has blood over his shirt. And I think he’s been crying.’

  ‘Crying,Kitty?’

  ‘He’s making strange faces.’ She shrugged. ‘And there’s the trouble at the Forbes camp … Thirty or more dead, they’re saying.’

  I brushed past Kitty, still in my breakfast kimono, and headed downstairs to see the evidence for myself. Sure enough, there he stood, alone in our glittering hall, cocooned by our damask, our crystal, our velvet and gilt, his felt hat bloody in his hand, his tears flowing freely. ‘Dora,’ he said, ‘something terrible …’ I was conscious of Simple Kitty lingering, but I did nothing about it. ‘She is shot through the throat, Dora.’

  ‘She is … what?’

  ‘I found her by the roadside – northward … She is in the morgue.’

  ‘In the morgue …’

  ‘Will you go?’

  Something, because he hadn’t said the words, made me cling to the idea that she was in the morgue for some other reason. In the morgue and yet alive: shot through the throat and waiting for me. I clung to the idea as I dressed, as I hurried through the horrible streets. Until the moment Mr Adamsson ushered me into that small room at the back, I had imagined her sitting up, legs swinging, eyes shining with the drama of it all, waiting for me, as she had the day I fetched her out of jail. My beautiful friend, Inez. But she lay very still.

  Mr Adamsson, stout and grey, didn’t much care who I was. He needed a name for the body, and a name of someone to take responsibility for it. So he stood close to me as I gazed down at her, unwilling to leave my side.

  The bullet hole was neat: ‘right through the jugular’, he explained. The blackened marks around it, he said, were where the gunpowder had scorched her skin; and the thick crust of blood which coated everything – the bottom half of her face, the top half of her slim body – was only to be expected. He pointed to the wound, his finger scuffing it carelessly. ‘She bled to death in just a minute or two,’ he said. Her once-white shirtwaist, her coat, her skirt – the pantaloon skirt she was so proud of: all had been drenched, stained, ruined. ‘Your friend found her lying out by the road to Forbes. I guess she was caught up in the gunfire … But whatever was she doing out there?’ he sounded plaintive. ‘A young lady on her own. At a time like this. Why wasn’t she home safe? You have to ask yourself.’

  ‘Are there many dead out there today?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Forty or more, I heard … I can’t take them, anyways. They’ll have to go on to Walsenburg. Maybe Pueblo.’ He bent over the wound, his nose so close he seemed to sniff her. ‘She would have had to be near to it, you know. Slammed up real close … You can see.’ He prodded. ‘The bullet’s gone right through…’

  He was slammed up too close to her blanched face. I longed to yank him back. ‘Can I please have a moment with her, Mr Adamsson?’

  He continued as if he hadn’t heard me. ‘Her shooter would have been right there, you understand. Right beside her, you see? Like … Almost, she might’ve shot the thing off herself …’ He picked up her hand, caked in blood, frowned, gently laid it down again. ‘I
’m guessing they robbed her. She didn’t come in with nothing.’ He glanced up, seemed to remember my question. ‘Well, Miss. Ma’am. I guess I can leave you for a second. But you mustn’t run away. I need the papers done. I can’t do nothing with the young lady until I got the papers done … You kin?’

  I shook my head.

  He looked me up and down. ‘Didn’t think so.’

  ‘But I can give you the names. Her uncle and aunt live nearby. And she has a brother. I only need a minute, sir. She was my friend.’

  There was only one exit from the room, in any case. I couldn’t have slipped away if I’d wanted to. ‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘You stay right here, mind. And I’ll fetch the papers.’ He held up a finger – the one that had scuffed at her wound. ‘Don’t go running away now.’

  He left me, resting the door ajar, and Inez and I were alone together. Rather, I was alone. She was gone. I whispered my goodbye. But it was too late and I felt absurd. I looked at her still face. She was a stranger now, peaceful in a way that affronted me.

  I tried to imagine the moment she was shot: the terror that would have run through her. They took her jewellery: the little gold bracelet she wore and the golden locket – both gone. She’d not died a martyr to any cause, as Lawrence wanted me to believe. She’d been robbed in the crossfire – nothing more. A victim of the chaos, who shouldn’t have been there at all.

  I wanted a memento of her. Something, before the McCullochs swooped, and our friendship was brushed into a corner. I scanned her body, arms, fingers, neck. The thieves had indeed taken every trinket. I remembered her pantaloon skirt had a hidden pocket inside the lining. ‘For carrying the sorts of things that modern ladies aren’t supposed to carry,’ she had said to me once. And when I’d asked her what ‘sorts of things’, she didn’t know or care. ‘Heavens, you are boring, Dora!’ she’d said. ‘What does it even matter? Cigarettes, perhaps? French letters?’ and then came that magical, happy laughter. ‘I shall think of something! You can’t have a secret pocket without putting something inside!’