Honeyville

‘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.