Honeyville. Daisy Waugh
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in Trinidad, but seeking out improving books about Italian opera! In fact, Dora, why don’t we say you have written one? In Italian? You could offer to send for it – pretend to have one sent all the way from Verona. And then, once you’re properly established, we can say it was lost, and pretend we are sending for another … and then another. Wouldn’t that be too funny? They’d be so impressed.’
The idea had been that I should give a recital at the Ladies’ Music Club, which convened at 4 p.m., according to Inez, on the third Tuesday of every month. Each month, just like the Ladies’ Plant Appreciation Club, the Ladies’ Historical Club, the Ladies’ Travel Club and numerous other clubs, it took place at the home of a different lady, whose task it was to provide both refreshment and entertainment. Inez said it was her Aunt Philippa’s turn to be hostess:
‘Or at any rate, if it isn’t, then it ought to be. I shall make it happen. She has the only decent piano in Trinidad, so they really oughtn’t to complain. Assuming,’ she added as an afterthought, ‘you know how to play it?’
‘Of course,’ I said, indicating my beloved harpsichord, sweltering beneath a velvet throw and sundry decorative knick-knacks in the corner of the room.
‘Good.’ She glanced at it. ‘Oh, is that what it is? How adorable! The ladies love to go to Aunt Philippa’s anyway,’ she added. ‘Because of the honeycake. We have the best honeycake, and Aunt Philippa swears she will take the cook’s recipe with her to her grave. Which is horribly mean of her, I always think. Never mind. We need to decide what you will sing – something God-ish, definitely. And then something romantic.’
‘I don’t have an operatic voice, Inez. It’s more of a dance-hall, vaudeville type of singing.’
‘They won’t know the difference. Believe me, they won’t have the slightest idea. We need to choose you some clothes. And then we can tell all the ladies how lucky they are that you’re setting up in town as their singing instructress. And I shall make a great performance about how much you have helped me with my singing – and sure as night follows day, the ladies will follow me. And it’ll be perfect! We can put on a show at the theatre in the New Year, and le tout Trinidad will turn out. Et voilà! Goodbye Rotten Plum Street. Hello … Well. Hello, somewhere else! The best plans are always the simplest ones.’
‘You honestly don’t suppose that they will recognize me?’ I asked her. ‘Because I’m certain I shall recognize most of them. If not their names, then their faces.’
‘Absolutely not!’ she said, leaping up from my small couch. ‘We can make your hair as dowdy as can be – and we can make sure you only wear the plainest clothes – and if you don’t have anything suitably drab in your wardrobe, we’ll go to Jamieson’s together and pick something out! So. Are you going to show me your dressing room or aren’t you? For heaven’s sake, we only have a week or so to prepare. Do let’s get on with it!’
Lawrence was out of town for several days afterwards, and Inez dedicated herself to our project. On the morning of the event, she arrived at Rotten Plum Street (as she now referred to it) unannounced. She rushed up the back stairs and burst into my small sitting room without knocking. ‘I have thought of everything!’ she said, dropping herself onto the nearest couch.
I was alone at my harpsichord, playing to calm my nerves. Her entrance made me jump. ‘Inez!’ I said. ‘You can’t simply burst in like this. God knows – what if I had been with someone?’
She looked around the small room. ‘But you’re not,’ she said. ‘Besides, it’s ten in the morning – and didn’t you tell me you never allowed them to stay the night?’
‘Even so …’
‘It’s horribly airless in here, Dora. Why don’t you open a window?’ She stood up again, and went to open it herself, impatiently pushing aside the knick-knacks and ornaments on the sill. ‘You should throw out half this junk. What do you keep it for?’
‘They’re gifts,’ I told her. ‘Believe me, I long to get rid of them. But I can’t. Otherwise …’
‘Pour encourager les autres,’ she said.
‘Something like that.’ I smiled. ‘Most of it’s junk, but not all.’
‘Well. You’ll be out of this dreadful place soon. As soon as we’ve set you up. And, by the way, when you tell them you’ve written a book, you’ll be able to charge a fortune. You can’t imagine how much money there is flushing round in this town.’
I laughed at that. ‘Oh, I believe I can …’
‘By the way, it occurred to me in the middle of last night that you’re going to need an address! Quite why we hadn’t considered it before, I cannot say.’
‘I thought a post-office box,’ I said. ‘See what interest I can muster and then—’
‘You can’t give singing lessons in a post-office box. And the ladies have to know where to find you. That is, until you can find a little place of your own. And by the way, I have seen the sweetest little cottage on South Elm Street, which you might easily be able to take once your students start to roll in. And in the meantime, Dora, I have come via the Columbia. I’ve taken a room for you there in your new name. It’s only for the week, mind. But I thought – if we are to do this, we must do it properly. And nobody could doubt the credentials of an Italian opera singer if she is residing at the Columbia!’
The Columbia was the oldest and by far the most luxurious hotel in town. It stood elegant and proud at the heart of Trinidad, on the corner of Commercial and Main Streets. ‘I can’t afford that!’ I said.
‘It’s my gift to you, Dora, to thank you.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘For being my friend,’ she said simply. ‘You can’t imagine what a thrill it is. And for introducing me to Lawrence; and for showing me that even in this Hicksville-Snatchville of a town …’ She giggled delightedly. Ladies didn’t call it Snatchville. They just about called it Honeyville, if they were being especially daring – if they called it anything at all. ‘No matter what my brother Xavier thinks, life can be absolutely … exciting.’
‘But it must have cost you a fortune. I can’t accept—’
‘Oh don’t be silly, darling!’ She waved it aside. ‘I have already paid for it in cash. The room is sitting empty. It’s under your new name. It’s a suite. And I have told them to put a piano in there – you can play the piano, can’t you?’
‘You know I can,’ I said. ‘I already told you. And I was just playing when you came in.’
‘Oh yes, of course you were. Well then, Maria di Leopaldi,’ she pronounced it badly, but with relish. ‘You can leave the ladies a card with your name and details on it – and for a week you can hold court at the Columbia. Offer them trial lessons or something. It’s perfect. And after that, we had better find you a place.’
For authenticity we decided she would come to fetch me from the hotel, where I would be waiting in the room she had hired, in the Italian opera singer disguise she had helped to pick out, and that we would walk the five minutes or so east along Main Street to Aunt Philippa’s house together.
It was, I think, the longest walk of my life. God knows – in the exhilaration of cooking up the plan with Inez, I hadn’t allowed myself to fully acknowledge the risks. Shuffling along Main Street with my head down, stomach churning with fear, the risks hit me like a bucket of ice-cold water. If Phoebe discovered I was trying to make my escape, and she surely would, she would not only put a stop to it, she would exact a vicious kind of revenge. I dreaded to imagine quite what; although I knew, whatever it was, it would cause her no loss of income. It gave me some comfort. She wouldn’t murder me then, or have