Honeyville (12 page)
‘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 … now 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
.’
I laughed happily. ‘Never mind history,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t give a fig about the history. But I guess it’ll be quite a show. I’ll come with you. Only afterwards I shall have to return here directly. Do you understand? And of course there may well not be space in the theatre—’
‘Oh, I’m convinced there’ll be space!’ she said. ‘And if there isn’t I can ask Mr Rossiter. He’s the manager – and he is quite a friend of my brother Xavier’s. Or he used to be, before Xavier left … They were friends at school, I’m sure of it. In any case, I am certain there will be room for us. Have you been in there? It’s
vast
, Dora! It’s the grandest theatre in the West. Will you really come? Thank goodness. Thank you, darling. I
hate
it when we argue. This morning when I left I was so sorry. I was quite certain you would never speak to me again.’
‘So was I,’ I said. ‘And I am sorry too. And, by the way, I am coming with you tonight because …’ I stopped, uncertain why, exactly. It was because she was impossible to refuse. ‘Because I am curious,’ I said. ‘Because I should like to hear what the legendary Mother Jones has to say.’
Inez gurgled with delight. ‘I should think you’ll be out striking with the rest of us by the time she’s finished.’
I didn’t bother to say it, but Inez would not be striking. If they called for a strike tonight, the company would not be throwing her out of her comfortable bed. And there would still be honeycake for tea.
She tracked down her brother Xavier’s old friend, Mr Rossiter, who, even in the flurry of urgency surrounding him, appeared flattered beyond sense that pretty, warm Inez should remember him. He dislodged the wives of two Union delegates from Pueblo so that we didn’t have to stand and, thanks to him, and the great charm of Inez and, no doubt, of her mysterious brother Xavier, we ended up with two of the best seats in the house, in the front row of the middle tier. I felt the usual flutter of nostalgia and regret as we settled into them. Theatre halls always did that to me then. In fact they still do. And sitting there, among that angry, unlikely, unperfumed audience, I admit I felt a longing for my old life as strong as any I had felt before.
The auditorium hummed with barely tethered energy and expectation that night. Inez had vastly underestim- ated the numbers who would turn out to hear the old woman speak. The theatre was packed, not just with Union delegates and miners, but with miners’ wives and miners’ children. The company had peppered the place with their spies and informers, and there were reporters from across America come to witness the event. Every seat in the house was filled, and in every space between them stood another pair of feet. The crowd spilled out beyond the theatre into the lobby beyond, and beyond that, through double doors, thrown open onto the hot and dusty street.
Mother Jones came onto the stage at last. She’d arrived fresh from a tour of the minefields of Northern Colorado – and, before that, from the picket lines of West Virginia. Along the way she had clearly learned a trick or two in public speaking. Eighty-three years old, tiny, upright, white haired and dressed head-to-toe in black, she instantly cast a spell on us. In fact, before even opening her mouth to speak, she played a small trick to win us over. She unpinned her hat and simply threw it to the crowd. And how the audience roared!
Within moments of her beginning, my seat was shaking with their whistles and cheers; they grew louder and wilder as time drew on and she whipped the crowd to ever-increasing anger and frenzy. And it was impossible not to be moved. The tales of suffering, the low pay, the violence, the danger; I was familiar with all the stories. Nevertheless, as she spoke, I raged against the company exploiters as never before, and when she bellowed out to the packed room:
‘It is Slavery or Strike! And I say
Strike
, until the last one of you drops into your graves …’
Inez was on her feet – and so was I. We were shaking our fists in the air and chanting with the workers:
Strike! Strike! Strike!
The people did indeed vote to strike that night. Afterwards there was a moment of absolute silence; as if at last we realized – no,
they
realized what
they
had done. The strike was set to begin in one week’s time.
It was on our way home from the theatre, as we weaved between the crowds, that Inez announced she had persuaded her aunt to allow her to rent herself the cottage in town.
‘For you to live in?’ I asked her, astonished. ‘You and Lawrence?’
‘Certainly not!’ she replied.
I laughed. ‘Well what else would it be for?’
But she wasn’t amused. ‘It really surprises me, Dora,’ she said, ‘and so soon after you have heard that incredible little woman, that your mind should descend to such levels. As it happens, I want a place of my own because, as I said to my aunt, I am a grown woman. And the way things are looking, I shall almost certainly never marry.’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’
‘And I can’t live at home for ever.’
‘Why not? It’s what ladies of your class generally do, isn’t it?’
‘In any case,’ she continued. ‘It’s especially infuriating because Xavier is allowed to keep his inheritance, whereas mine is under trust, so I’m forbidden from spending it without my aunt and uncle’s say-so.’
‘Unjust,’ I agreed.
‘On top of which, I hardly need to point out, there is important work to be done here in Southern Colorado. Especially now. And I am doing it, Dora. And as I said to Aunt Philippa, I need a place where I can work undisturbed.’
I asked her (it was something I had been wondering for some time) how she accounted for her busy days when her aunt asked her at dinner what she had been doing with herself since breakfast. Inez gave a little skip of pleasure at the reminder of her own, simple duplicity, a gurgle of laughter. Her self-importance evaporated.