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‘Pardon me?’ I said, hoping I hadn’t heard her quite right.
‘It hurt my heart, just looking at you.’
‘Well – I’m sorry to hear that … Fact is,’ I added defensively, ‘I just had some bad news.’
She wasn’t listening. ‘There’s me, fussing about never finding a sweetheart or a husband or whatnot – and there were you with a face more tragic than Helen of Troy.’
‘I told you. I just had some bad news.’
‘And I don’t even care what you say about a fallen woman is better than a wife. I thought about it over and over after you said it. And heck, how do I know? I’m not even either. And maybe it is better and maybe it isn’t better. But I know from your face you’re not happy. And I have an idea. About the singing school. Remember? That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. So that’s why I decided we should go back to your rooms – you have a sitting room or something, don’t you? Where we can talk, without others listening in?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Well then. Let’s go there – I have a perfect plan for you. A perfect plan – and it’s going to save you.’
‘I don’t need saving, Inez.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘No. I don’t.’
‘Oh! Don’t be absurd,’ she said, taking my arm. ‘We all need saving!’ and she spun me towards Plum Street. ‘Especially you.’
7 (#uf0dd83b0-f101-590f-aa7e-a8a3236d793b)
The tall thin boy at the counter looked even taller and bonier when we returned the following day. He was leaning on the same counter, reading – I’m fairly sure of it – the exact same article. Lawrence O’Neill was at a desk behind him, stretched out on a metal chair, large and brawny, dwarfing the furniture around him. He had a rifle cocked between his thighs, which he was in the process of attending to.
‘Here they are, Mr O’Neill!’ the boy – Cody – declared. ‘The ladies I told you about. I told you they’d come.’
Lawrence O’Neill glanced up, looked the two of us up and down. He nodded politely at me – an acknowledgement of what had passed between us – before letting his bright blue eyes rest more warmly upon Inez. Slowly, he laid the gun on the table and stood up. There were sweat stains around the armpits of his shirt and waistcoat, and his chin was unshaven.
‘Well, well,’ he said, lifting the counter flap and stepping through. Inez, hardly five feet tall, looked like a child beside him. Or he looked like a giant. Either way, I thought they looked faintly ridiculous together. But it seemed not to bother them. On the contrary, the attraction between them was intense and obvious. I glanced at the boy, Cody. He was staring at them, with his mouth hanging open. ‘Just look here what the cat brought in,’ O’Neill said softly. ‘Tell me. How’s your head today, missie? It was fairly swimming the last time I saw you.’
‘Oh, it’s fine,’ Inez said. And then nothing. Silence. I’d never before heard her make such a short statement. It was a struggle not to giggle.
There was no window in the front office and no one had troubled to switch on the counter lamp, so the only light in the room came from the open door behind us. O’Neill’s face was bathed in afternoon sunlight, and the pleasure in his brilliant blue eyes burned bright for all to see. Inez’s facial expression, her back to the door, was impossible to read. Not that anyone needed to. Good God – she was squirming with it! She could hardly stand straight.
‘I didn’t think you’d be back,’ he said after a pause. ‘Thought you’d be chicken … But you’ve come to see how the other half lives, have you?’
‘I certainly have,’ she said.
He exhaled – something close to a laugh. His lively eyes fixed on her as she wriggled and swayed. ‘I’ll make a revolutionary of you yet, my friend.’
‘Oh! I doubt it very much, Mr O’Neill.’ It sounded pert. ‘I only long for the day my little town is peaceful again.’
‘Peace first, fairness some other time, huh? Isn’t that how it should be?’
She bridled, uncertain if he was teasing. ‘No! Yes. Perhaps … What I mean to say …’ I might have told her, except I thought it was obvious: politics wasn’t a teasing matter, not for the likes of Lawrence O’Neill. Not for the likes of anyone in Trinidad, that summer. ‘What I mean to say is, that Trinidad used to be a nice place to be …’
‘I’ll just bet,’ he said. ‘A woman like you has a lot to lose. Why in the world would you want to change things?’
‘Well, I didn’t say things shouldn’t change. Maybe they should … I only remarked that anarchy, socialism … all these sort of things we read about … and then you Union men coming in from out of town, stirring up the workers for your own political ends … it doesn’t strike me as a fair way of going about things either. So. Please. If you wouldn’t mind. Don’t insult me and I won’t insult you.’
He blinked but said nothing.
‘I have come here because you offered to show me round one of the company towns,’ she continued. ‘To educate me. Well, here I am. Very interested to see what you have to show me. Will you drive us? Or shall I?’ She indicated the beanpole boy. He was leaning his sharp elbows on the counter, still gawking at her. ‘Your young friend here said you were headed to Forbes today. So will you take us there or won’t you?’
He took a moment to think about it, and shook his head. ‘It’s dangerous,’ he said abruptly. ‘I was drunk. You should probably go home.’
‘Of course it’s dangerous!’ I think she stamped her foot. ‘If it weren’t dangerous I would have driven out there on my own. You said you’d take me, Lawrence O’Neill. Are you going back on your promise?’
Another pause. This one seemed endless. The three of us watched and waited.
‘Well, missie,’ he said at last, ‘if you’re certain. But I’m not taking you any place in that hat.’
Her hands sprung to defend it – the very hat she had bought for the occasion, and from which she had, last night, already removed the garland of silk flowers. ‘But I have to wear a hat!’ she cried. ‘I don’t have another. Not with me. What’s wrong with this hat in any case?’
‘It’s a very fetching hat, I dare say, if you’re drinking tea with the King of England. Why don’t you wear Dora’s hat?’ he said. ‘It’s simpler. Better. You won’t look like the laughing stock.’ He returned to the other side of the counter, picked up the gun he’d been cleaning, slipped a couple of shots inside and snapped it shut. ‘Well?’ he said, looking back at her, the loaded gun hanging by his side. ‘Are you coming or aren’t you?’
‘But I can’t take Dora’s hat!’
‘Sure you can.’
‘What about Dora?’
‘Sorry. But I ain’t taking Dora.’
‘What?’ She looked at me, aghast. ‘Dora?’
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to put up a fight. Everything I needed from the camps (and more) came to me at Plum Street. I was happy to leave the rest to my imagination.
‘Of course you’re taking Dora!’ Inez said. ‘Why wouldn’t you take Dora?’
‘Hookers ain’t allowed in. They’re strictly forbidden.’ His blue eyes glanced at me with a smile, not unfriendly. ‘The company guards’ll spot her in a jiffy.’
‘Well. I am not going without Dora. Certainly not!’
‘Well, I ain’t going with her.’
‘Dora?’ she turned to me, rather pitifully. ‘Darling? Don’t you want to come with us?’
‘Heck. It’s all the same to me,’ I said.
‘No but really,’ she said again. ‘I’m not going without Dora.’ It sounded less adamant this time.
‘What’s that, missie?’ he teased her. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘You bet I am,’ she said.
He laughed. ‘Don’t be chicken. I’ll make it interesting …’
I felt a stirring of responsibility. She was a grown woman, yes, but a terribly naive one and I had introduced the two of them. ‘I don’t think you shall go, Inez,’ I told her. ‘It’s dangerous out in the towns. Feelings are running so high.’
‘If anyone tells me again that it’s dangerous!’ she said. ‘I know it’s dangerous. And please won’t you come, Dora?’ She turned to Lawrence. ‘Won’t you please let her come?’ But by then I think we all knew the answer. Inez had already begun to unpin her hat.
We exchanged hats, and they set off together. ‘You look after yourself,’ I said to Inez as she climbed into the back of the Union auto and tucked herself out of view. ‘Come and see me tomorrow if you can – and bring me back my hat!’
‘I’ll come and tell you all about it! My new life as a Union organizer …’ She giggled, waiting for O’Neill to start the engine. ‘Don’t you dare tell Aunt Philippa!’
I smiled and waved, and wondered when she imagined I was likely to do that.
8 (#uf0dd83b0-f101-590f-aa7e-a8a3236d793b)
There was a back door to the house that the girls were supposed to use when we were off duty, opening onto a narrow servants’ stairway (the contrast between it and the plush richness of the front of house was almost comical). The stairway led directly up to the second floor, where I had my private rooms: a parlour, in which to entertain my clients after we had departed the ballroom, with bedroom, dressing room and bathroom leading off it. They formed, by necessity (as all the girls’ rooms did), an oasis of apparent privacy. As Inez knew from her vist the other day, it would have been a simple business for her to slip in and out of the building without meeting anyone. Even so, she didn’t come. I waited for almost a week, until finally I was concerned enough for her welfare that I called in at the Union offices to ask after her.
Lawrence wasn’t there. He’d been summoned to Denver that morning. I asked Cody (the bony lad) if he’d seen Inez recently, and he laughed.
‘She’s in here most the time,’ he said.
I was rather hurt to hear it, which surprised me. I left him with a sullen message for her, asking for the return of my hat, and trudged back home through the hot streets, feeling glum and slightly foolish.
She was sitting on a wall on the corner of Plum Street, tucked into the side of our imposing parlour-house porch, waiting for me, swinging her feet in the sunshine.
‘There you are!’ she cried, leaping off the wall and coming towards me. ‘I thought you would never come home! Where have you been? I have so much to tell you. So much! First about the camp. And then about Lawrence. You realize, don’t you, that I’m in love. At last, Dora! And I have you to thank for it.’
‘In love?’ I repeated, a touch sourly. ‘Well, goodness me!’
‘Absolutely in love. Of course I am in love. And by the way, if that’s you “acting surprised”, then you need to work on your acting skills, darling. You look just the same as if I had said to you: after night comes day. Was it really so predictable?’
In the face of such excellent cheer it was, of course, impossible to remain chilly for long. I said: ‘Well. You look very happy, Inez.’
‘Because I am!’
‘He seems like a good man,’ I said pleasantly, though in truth I’d not given it much thought.
‘Oh he’s awfully good,’ she replied. And she smirked and blushed and giggled. And wriggled and writhed.
‘Oh …’ I said slowly, examining her. ‘Oh my …’
‘What?’ she said. ‘What, Dora? Why are you looking at me like that?’ Her face and neck had turned quite purple.
‘You fucked, didn’t you?’
She emitted a feeble, miniature gasp, something be- tween outrage and delight.
‘You’re a fallen woman!’ I laughed. ‘Well well … And welcome to the club!’
‘What? Shh! Silence! For heck’s sake, Dora!’ She peered frantically up and down the empty street.
‘Hey – no one’s likely to be terribly scandalized round here,’ I said.
‘Oh God. There is so much I need to tell you,’ she said. ‘Can’t we please just go inside?’
As we climbed up the back stairs to my rooms, I put a finger to my lips. I didn’t want to have to introduce her to Phoebe, who would doubtless have invented a rule on the spot to prevent Inez from staying. Inez nodded her understanding, and made a show of dropping her voice to a whisper, but whispering wasn’t a skill she had mastered. ‘You must teach me all the precautions, Dora,’ she announced as we paused on the landing outside my door. ‘And then we have our project to set in motion. Have you forgotten?’
Inez’s project: to rescue me from my life of sin. I had not forgotten it, though I was unwilling to admit that too easily. She and I had discussed our ‘project’ when she first visited Plum Street after our hat shopping trip, and though in my heart perhaps I always knew it was preposterous, it gave me hope because I was lonely; it gave Inez hope, because she was a woman who needed a project. It gave us something to do together. And I had been quietly stewing on its possibilities all week.
(It was in fact a very simple plan, requiring above all that the nice ladies of Trinidad conformed to expectation, and etiquette, and failed to recognize my face. If I dressed demurely and spoke – this had been Inez’s brainwave – with an Italian accent, ‘the ladies won’t have the faintest idea who you really are. No one in Trinidad knows anything about Italy,’ she had said. ‘Or about anything else, come to think of it. You only need to throw out a few names. Michelangelo, Botticelli – oh gosh. That’ll do. And they’ll fall at your feet. Trust me.’)
I asked Kitty to send up lemonade and we stretched out in my small, overstuffed sitting room, taking one sweaty, silk-swaddled couch each, on either side of my empty hearth. I opened the window, to catch what small breeze there was. First, we talked about Lawrence.
She was smitten. ‘But you mustn’t tell Aunt Philippa,’ she kept repeating.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said at last, ‘I don’t know Aunt Philippa. And even if I did … But she must have guessed something’s up, hasn’t she?’
‘Aunt Philippa? Oh, gosh no,’ she said, waving the suggestion aside – and it struck me what a strange mix she was. Her childlike openness was so fresh and natural and disarming, and yet she possessed an equally fresh and natural – artless – talent and willingness to deceive, if not Aunt Philippa, then (should our project go ahead) all the gentlewomen of Trinidad. It was so instinctive, so pragmatic – I don’t believe any judgement of it even crossed her mind. I rather envied her the freedom.
She continued, forgetting Aunt Philippa: ‘Lawrence took me to a fleapit,’ she said. ‘Well, no, it wasn’t a fleapit. It was a perfectly pleasant hotel. Out in Walsenburg, because we couldn’t do it in Trinidad. And he signed us in as a married couple. I thought I would die of shame. But then. Gosh, darn it Dora, I can hardly believe you’ve kept it to yourself all this time!’
I felt a prickle of unease. Had he told her of the night we spent together? But it was nothing – a mere transaction. Surely not. ‘Kept what to myself?’ I asked.
‘What? Why, sex of course!’
I laughed. ‘Believe me. You can get tired of it.’
‘Impossible!’
‘Trust me.’
She uttered a sound, a sort of gurgle, a mix of mirth, smugness, wonder, lust …’Well perhaps. In your line of business, maybe you can. And I guess not everyone can be as pleasing as Lawrence. But anyway you must tell me all your tricks – will you? You must have hundreds of clever tricks.’
‘I’ll tell you plenty of tricks so you don’t conceive his child,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you what and how and where to go if my tricks let you down.’
‘No – I mean yes. Of course, you must. And thank heavens to have a friend like you. But I meant the other tricks – you know …’ She looked coy. ‘The filthy ones. So he doesn’t wander. So that I please him absolutely and completely and he never looks at any other woman ever again.’
I managed not to smile. ‘I shouldn’t fuss on that count,’ I replied. ‘If he’s going to wander, he’s going to wander. The only trick I’ve got for you is to darn well please yourself, Inez. Please yourself, and the rest will likely follow. Probably. Sometimes. Or at least for a while. Enjoy yourself.’
Inez nodded very solemnly, as if I were divulging to her the one and only true secret of the universe, and it occurred to me that, of all women, Inez hardly needed the advice. She pleased herself instinctively and, by way of pleasing herself, instinctively pleased others. And by way of pleasing others, pleased herself. She was warm and bold and open-hearted enough that the two were generally one and the same.
Not for the first time, I reflected what an excellent hooker she might have made, if she had been born in different circumstances. I wondered if it would amuse her for me to tell her so – and decided against it.
‘But you haven’t even asked me about the company towns, Dora,’ she said suddenly. ‘And the dreadful plight of those poor miners. You really should have come to Forbes with me! You can’t imagine … Did you even know …’
Of course I knew. Coal company managers and Union agitators – they all passed through my rooms. Miners too, sometimes, when they got lucky in the gambling halls. If what you wanted was a balanced view of the hatred and distrust that consumed our corner of the prairie, I was surely best placed to provide it. There wasn’t much I didn’t know about the misery of the company towns, where miners lived and worked and raised their families, cut off from the rest of the world. It was why (aside of course from the fact that hookers were forbidden) I never had much inclination to go visit them for myself.
Of course I knew – but I was surprised by how much she knew now and what a turnaround had occurred in her thinking since last I saw her: the transformative effect, I reflected, of a few hours at Forbes, and a few hours in bed with Lawrence O’Neill. She proceeded to lecture me, with the convert’s passion and certainty, about the collapsing, exploding tunnels, and the miners killed and maimed … and the long hours, the late pay, the poverty, the danger and the darkness. ‘The companies don’t employ the workers,’ she said. ‘They own them: their homes, their schools, their doctors, even their currency – and then they keep the prices so high in the company stores, the poor miners can afford to buy only half of what they could afford to buy in town …’
When she seemed to have finished, I assured her that I agreed. ‘They treat the men like animals,’ I said. ‘It’s a disgrace.’
