Daisy Waugh - Honeyville

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.

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.