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.
(It was in fact a very simple plan, requiring above all that the nice ladies of Trinidad conformed to expectation, and etiquette, and failed to recognize my face. If I dressed demurely and spoke – this had been Inez’s brainwave – with an Italian accent, ‘the ladies won’t have the faintest idea who you really are. No one in Trinidad knows anything about Italy,’ she had said. ‘Or about anything else, come to think of it. You only need to throw out a few names. Michelangelo, Botticelli – oh gosh. That’ll do. And they’ll fall at your feet. Trust me.’)
I asked Kitty to send up lemonade and we stretched out in my small, overstuffed sitting room, taking one sweaty, silk-swaddled couch each, on either side of my empty hearth. I opened the window, to catch what small breeze there was. First, we talked about Lawrence.
She was smitten. ‘But you mustn’t tell Aunt Philippa,’ she kept repeating.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ I said at last, ‘I don’t know Aunt Philippa. And even if I did … But she must have guessed something’s up, hasn’t she?’
‘Aunt Philippa? Oh, gosh no,’ she said, waving the suggestion aside – and it struck me what a strange mix she was. Her childlike openness was so fresh and natural and disarming, and yet she possessed an equally fresh and natural – artless – talent and willingness to deceive, if not Aunt Philippa, then (should our project go ahead) all the gentlewomen of Trinidad. It was so instinctive, so pragmatic – I don’t believe any judgement of it even crossed her mind. I rather envied her the freedom.
She continued, forgetting Aunt Philippa: ‘Lawrence took me to a fleapit,’ she said. ‘Well, no, it wasn’t a fleapit. It was a perfectly pleasant hotel. Out in Walsenburg, because we couldn’t do it in Trinidad. And he signed us in as a married couple. I thought I would die of shame. But then. Gosh, darn it Dora, I can hardly believe you’ve kept it to yourself all this time!’
I felt a prickle of unease. Had he told her of the night we spent together? But it was nothing – a mere transaction. Surely not. ‘Kept what to myself?’ I asked.
‘What? Why, sex of course!’
I laughed. ‘Believe me. You can get tired of it.’
‘Impossible!’
‘Trust me.’
She uttered a sound, a sort of gurgle, a mix of mirth, smugness, wonder, lust …’Well perhaps. In your line of business, maybe you can. And I guess not everyone can be as pleasing as Lawrence. But anyway you must tell me all your tricks – will you? You must have hundreds of clever tricks.’
‘I’ll tell you plenty of tricks so you don’t conceive his child,’ I said. ‘And I’ll tell you what and how and where to go if my tricks let you down.’
‘No – I mean yes. Of course, you must. And thank heavens to have a friend like you. But I meant the other tricks – you know …’ She looked coy. ‘The filthy ones. So he doesn’t wander. So that I please him absolutely and completely and he never looks at any other woman ever again.’
I managed not to smile. ‘I shouldn’t fuss on that count,’ I replied. ‘If he’s going to wander, he’s going to wander. The only trick I’ve got for you is to darn well please yourself, Inez. Please yourself, and the rest will likely follow. Probably. Sometimes. Or at least for a while. Enjoy yourself.’
Inez nodded very solemnly, as if I were divulging to her the one and only true secret of the universe, and it occurred to me that, of all women, Inez hardly needed the advice. She pleased herself instinctively and, by way of pleasing herself, instinctively pleased others. And by way of pleasing others, pleased herself. She was warm and bold and open-hearted enough that the two were generally one and the same.
Not for the first time, I reflected what an excellent hooker she might have made, if she had been born in different circumstances. I wondered if it would amuse her for me to tell her so – and decided against it.
‘But you haven’t even asked me about the company towns, Dora,’ she said suddenly. ‘And the dreadful plight of those poor miners. You really should have come to Forbes with me! You can’t imagine … Did you even know …’
Of course I knew. Coal company managers and Union agitators – they all passed through my rooms. Miners too, sometimes, when they got lucky in the gambling halls. If what you wanted was a balanced view of the hatred and distrust that consumed our corner of the prairie, I was surely best placed to provide it. There wasn’t much I didn’t know about the misery of the company towns, where miners lived and worked and raised their families, cut off from the rest of the world. It was why (aside of course from the fact that hookers were forbidden) I never had much inclination to go visit them for myself.
Of course I knew – but I was surprised by how much she knew now and what a turnaround had occurred in her thinking since last I saw her: the transformative effect, I reflected, of a few hours at Forbes, and a few hours in bed with Lawrence O’Neill. She proceeded to lecture me, with the convert’s passion and certainty, about the collapsing, exploding tunnels, and the miners killed and maimed … and the long hours, the late pay, the poverty, the danger and the darkness. ‘The companies don’t employ the workers,’ she said. ‘They own them: their homes, their schools, their doctors, even their currency – and then they keep the prices so high in the company stores, the poor miners can afford to buy only half of what they could afford to
