Honeyville. Daisy Waugh
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that (according to the newspaper articles I read) had made him enemies on both sides. ‘It seemed possible, though, didn’t it? Colorado might have been just the beginning. It was …’ he paused, seeming to lose himself in thought. ‘You remember that Union chap, used to hang around Inez? Handsome as hell – I was rather jealous of him.’
‘Lawrence O’Neill.’ I laughed. ‘You didn’t need to be jealous of him, Max. Inez adored you. But yes, I remember him.’
‘Well he was another, turned up in Moscow later. Or, not in Moscow, actually. Dear God.’ He sighed. ‘That is … Last I heard, he was on his way to Solovki. Poor bastard.’
Solovki Labour Camp. Poor bastard, indeed. Even here in sunny California, the name Solovki resonates with everything that is cruel and broken in the New Russia. Lawrence O’Neill hadn’t crossed my mind in many years, but I was shocked – of course I was. Shocked and very sorry. I had been fond of him. ‘But didn’t he fight on the side of the revolution, just like the rest of you? What did he do so terribly wrong?’
Max looked at me, pityingly. He sighed with enor- mous weariness, appeared to hesitate, and then to think better of answering: ‘Oh God, but Dora,’ he said instead, brightening in a breath, ‘don’t you re- member darling Inez – and her terrible, dreadful, awful, appalling poem?’Grinning, he pulled back his shoulders, threw back his head: ‘For the strikers shall fight and they shall fall …’
‘Fight Freedom!’I cried.The words came to me as if I’d heard them yesterday. Max and I both remembered the poem perfectly and we finished it together with our fists aloft:
And they will rise
And they will call –
Fight Freedom!
’Til all
In America is fair
And the wind in the trees blows freedom to our streets and all
Good-Americans-take-care-and-pledge-forever-themselves-to-share …
She had gone out that morning with Max and a whole bunch of other reporters, to see the carnage for herself. The guards hadn’t allowed her into the camp, of course. But she had smelled it, seen it, felt it, and she was wild with righteousness, buzzing with the horror – crazier than I had ever seen her. We were in the Toltec saloon, a great gang of us, and from the hidden pocket of that pantaloon skirt she was so proud of (it celebrated her status as a ‘modern woman’), in front of all the cleverest in America (or so it seemed to us then: really it was a motley crew of poets and writers, intellectuals and newspaper columnists who had descended on Trinidad that week), Inez pulled out a sheet of paper. She announced that she had written a poem.
I tried to stop her. Max, with all his wit and chivalry, had tried to stop her, too. But Inez had written the damn thing. She would not be silenced.
Upton and the others had leapt on the opportunity to mock her, as Max had known they would. And as the evening progressed and more liquor was consumed, they began to chant poor Inez’s ridiculous poem aloud – and fall off their chairs with laughter – only to climb back onto them and begin chanting the wretched thing again. Inez took it on the chin. Bless her, I don’t think she cared a bit. She simply laughed and chanted along with them. ‘Y’all wait and see,’ she said. ‘It’ll catch on!’ … The smell of young, burning flesh still lingered on the prairie that night, and we knew it. But it was a wild night. I do believe we were never happier.
‘Fight Freedom!’ muttered Max, lost in his memories. He pushed his plate away and hunched over his long legs, deep in thought. ‘The last time I saw her, we had a most idiotic squabble,’ he said at last. ‘Like a couple of spoiled kids.’
I knew it already, from the letter. But I could hardly admit to that. ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said.
‘Hm?’
‘Well. I read the article you wrote.’
He hesitated. ‘You mean – the tea party piece?’
‘The one she helped you with.’
‘Oh. Gosh, no.’ Max laughed. ‘That wasn’t what we fought about.’
‘Oh, I think it was! She was mortified.’
‘Nonsense!’ He laughed again. ‘I was reporting a story, Dora! It was why I ever came to Trinidad in the first place. She understood that perfectly. Besides …’ He stopped, seemed once again to think better of whatever he was about to say. ‘I’d offered her a job on the magazine! She’d already sent on half her luggage!’
‘I know. I helped her to pack it. She was so excited.’
‘So don’t tell me,’ he laughed, ‘don’t tell me that kid didn’t know what she was about.’
‘I don’t think she had the faintest idea. I don’t think there was ever a “kid” more out of her depth.’
But he didn’t seem to hear. ‘We used it as a perching-place in our editorial meetings for years, you know. “Inez’s Packing Case”. We used to read submissions aloud and if something was truly, spectacularly bad, one of us would sort of launch something at the packing case, and shout out—’
‘Fight Freedom?’
‘Fight Freedom.’ He sighed again. ‘Well. It was funny back then, I guess. I still have that case somewhere. That’s right. The darned packing case arrived OK. But Inez? Never turned up. I wrote her. A bunch of letters.’
‘You wrote to her?’
‘After we printed the tea party piece.’ He had the grace, at last, to look at least a little shamefaced. ‘When she didn’t materialize in New York.’
‘Where did you send the letters?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember. A post-office box? It’s been a long time, Dora.’
‘I never saw any letters. I wonder what became of them?’
‘Well – but never mind the letters, Dora.’ He leaned towards me. ‘For God’s sakes, never mind the letters. What became of her? That’s what I’ve been trying to ask you. What became of Inez? She simply disappeared.’
Max told me last night that he was here in Hollywood on one of his famous speaking tours. It’s why he has come to California. He is on an anti-communist speaking tour. I think. Or maybe an in-favour-of-poetry tour. He is still a poet, after all. Last I heard him speak, twenty years ago, he was stirring up revolution in the bloody coalfields outside Trinidad, Colorado. He was a fine speaker, too. Passionate. Persuasive.
In any case, they must be paying him well. They have put him up at the Ambassador for the entire week. And I am invited to lunch with him again on Friday, which is just five days away. I have told him about her letter. I have told him I will deliver it to him at last.
We have plenty to catch up on, I think.
August 1913 Trinidad, Colorado
Inez and I were in the drugstore on North Commercial the first time we met. Under normal circumstances, Trinidad being Trinidad and we ladies both knowing our place, we would never have exchanged a word. I would have gazed at her from beneath the rim of my extravagant hat and wondered how she could put up with the limits of her respectable life: and she would have looked at me, from beneath the rim of her more restrained affair and felt – what?
Pity, probably.
And irritation about the hat. I dressed flamboyantly, in silks and lace and satin. It’s what made me all but invisible to the good ladies on Main Street, and in the drugstore on North Commercial.