‘I see …’ Max says, though for such a clever man, he seems to be taking a while to catch on.
‘Which means we only have to hold this paper to a source of heat – a lighter, for example, for the message written beneath it to become clear.’ Xavier giggles, a nervous giggle, because God only knows what we are about to uncover. ‘You will see,’ he says to Max, ‘that Inez taught her students well. I could remember all that nonsense as if she had told us yesterday.’
We all laugh. It’s not terribly funny. But we are nervous suddenly. And we have drunk too much.
‘First,’ says Xavier, ‘I think we should order some more martinis. To steady the nerves. Are we agreed?’
‘Absolutely,’ Max and I say together.
‘And perhaps we could ask for a lamp or something … A source of heat. Ah, waiter!’
The waiter is happy to oblige with the martinis, but he can’t provide a lamp. There is a problem with electric leads, he says. They don’t extend as far as the poolside.
Never mind. Max has a lighter in his pocket. We discuss whether it’s a sensible option to use a naked flame, and decide that it is. There is no breeze to speak of. And the lighter gives a steady flame. But the truth is, our curiosity overwhelms us. Her message has been hidden for twenty years, and now we cannot wait another moment to uncover it.
It is decided that Xavier, having arrived later and therefore having drunk less than either of us, has the steadiest hand. He takes the letter from the table, the lighter from Max, and as he sets the flame beneath the paper, we fall silent.
Nothing happens.
‘You need to put the flame a little closer,’ Max says. ‘A bit higher …’
‘Be careful,’ I say. ‘Not too close.’
Xavier ignores us. We are standing behind him, craning over it.
‘It’s not working,’ says Max. ‘There’s nothing there … ’
… But there
is
something there. In the gaps between the lines of the original letter, a script appears, and it is as clear as if it had been written yesterday. The handwriting is cramped, smaller and much neater than on the letter above.
The three of us wait, hardly daring to breath, as the first few words appear.
Darling Max,
I suppose that if you are reading this …
I breathe in. Feel a chill crawl over my skin. Time retracts. It is her voice, her hand. She is alive again. Max and I squeeze closer to the paper, jostle one another for a better view, and Max accidentally knocks Xavier’s shoulder. I suggest we stand back and let him get on with it, block by block, paragraph by paragraph. As each paragraph reveals itself, Xavier can lay the paper down, and we will read it together.
It’s not feasible, of course. We don’t have a fraction of the patience. We need to see the words as they appear. And the writing is minuscule. So we crouch towards the paper, as close as we can without falling over. Xavier reads each line as the heat from his lighter reveals it:
I will either be standing right beside you … laughing at what a silly … dramatic fool I have been … and feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself (although terribly proud of this fabulous ink … Has it really worked?) or, well, I don’t suppose you ever will see this letter—
‘She manages to be verbose, even from beyond the grave,’ Xavier mutters. But the letter sounds so like her. It’s as if she is right there with us by the sunny poolside, chattering away from a place and time the rest of us left behind long ago.
… since I don’t think you listen to a word I ever tell you – although I have told you about the F and the invisible ink …
‘She never told me,’ Max says.
‘I’ll bet she did tell you,’ says Xavier. ‘But she talked nineteen to the dozen, Max. Lest we forget. You can hardly be blamed for not listening to every word.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘Please, Xavier, carry on.’
Max, if some harm should come to me this afternoon, as I fear it might, and if you happen to remember all the nonsense I talk … and if you or someone else should come upon this letter, as I intend, in the pocket of my skirt … If you do ever find this message and I am gone from – Max, if I am dead, it is because I have fallen in love with a villain, and I deserve it.
*
Xavier stops. He places the letter on the table and kills the lighter flame.
‘What are you doing?’ I cry. ‘Xavier, don’t stop!’
He says, ‘My arm is aching.’ He means his heart, of course. ‘I need a break. Wait a moment will you? Just a minute.’
Max fidgets. ‘Want me to take over?’ he asks.
‘No … thank you,’ Xavier adds.
‘I should’ve said something,’ Max says. ‘I always suspected. But you can’t help who you fall in love with, can you? None of us can.’
‘What are you saying?’ I ask him. It’s not really a question. Once again, I picture Lawrence’s face as he stood in the hall at Plum Street, the tears running down his cheeks. ‘
This is all nonsense!
Inez told me she was in love with you!’
‘So you keep saying,’ Max says. ‘And as I keep explaining, she was not. Xavier, shall you keep at the task? Or would you rather Dora or I continue? This midway pause is rather hard to bear.’
Xavier shakes his head. ‘Why don’t you both sit down,’ he says. ‘Perhaps if I can finish off quietly – would it be all right with you? And then once it’s done and we have it all, then we can read it together. The whole thing. Can we do it that way? It might be easier on us.’
I think Max and I both want to argue, but Xavier looks ashen under his handsome, sun-kissed skin; and out of all of us – of course – he has the greater claim on grief. She was his sister, his only living relative. The same thoughts occur to Max, I assume. We are being tactless. Too demanding. We both pull back at once.
‘I am so sorry,’ Max says.
‘No, no, not at all,’ Xavier replies. ‘I’m being feeble. It’s so long ago, after all. Dora, forgive me. I know how much you loved her. The last thing I want is …’ He leaves the sentence unfinished. He gulps back the remainder of his martini in a single swallow, beckons the waiter for another, and picks up the lighter again.
Max and I return to our places and wait. Xavier’s fingers are shaking, and I rest a hand on his leg, beneath the table. It seems to help a little. After a while, Max looks up at the blue sky and says:
‘It’s hot.’
‘So it is,’ I say.
Another long silence. Max taps and fiddles, says rather irritably: ‘I’d like to light a cigarette but I suppose I can’t. While you are doing that with the lighter. How are you getting along?’
Xavier doesn’t reply.
‘Lawrence loved her, you know,’ I say. ‘You said it yourself, Max. If you had seen him that day, after he had taken her to the mortuary … He was weeping.’
‘Yes, I believe he loved her,’ says Max. ‘No matter what else happened.’
‘And I suppose he wept after Cody died, too – did he?’ Xavier mumbles.
‘I’m sure he did,’ I reply, and I turn, the better to send him my cold air, but he is bent over the paper, not looking at me. He is about three-quarters of the way down now, and from what I can see the writing is getting smaller. He hunches closer to his work.
‘The print is getting fainter down here,’ he says. ‘It’s harder to read.’
‘Maybe it needs more heat,’ says Max. ‘Are you certain I can’t help?’
‘I’m doing fine,’ Xavier assures him, but as he speaks the flame dances; it’s just a second – a half-second – the flame pulls at the bottom corner of the sheet and the smoke darkens.
‘
Watch out!
’ Max and I shout at once. We both leap to our feet, Max knocking both our chairs to the floor. ‘Xavier!’ I yell at him. ‘Pull the lighter away!’ He has already done it, but the flame has taken. He throws the paper onto the table top, and the three of us fumble for something to put it out. Max picks up his martini glass.
‘No! The ink!’ I cry. ‘Watch out for the ink. Don’t …’
Xavier has bent his body over the table; he has laid both hands onto the flame and he keeps them there. I can see the pain in his face and I can’t bear it. Without thinking, I push at him, away from its source, and unbalance him. He staggers backwards, leaving the smouldering letter where it is.
The flame has died now, but it has taken something with it. We gaze down in silence. From the place where the lighter burned through, to the bottom corner of the sheet, nothing of the letter remains.
‘… What do you suppose?’ Max says at last. ‘How much have we lost?’
‘Not so much,’ Xavier replies hopefully. ‘The last quarter, maybe? But the writing was getting so small.’
‘Well. What does it say?’ I ask. ‘For heaven’s sake, read it to us. At least read what we have.’
He shakes his head. ‘Why don’t you read it yourself? I think it might be better.’ And then, in a burst of anguish, ‘The son of a bitch killed her.
He killed her.
How about that?’
I don’t say anything, and he doesn’t wait for my response. ‘I’m going to take a walk,’ he announces.
‘But you’re coming back?’ I don’t want him to leave. I need him to be with me.
‘Sure. I’m coming back.’ But then he doesn’t move. ‘Well go on!’ he says. ‘Read the damn thing!’
Max picks it up. Little pieces of ash leave a floating trail behind it. He hands what remains of the burned sheet to me. And so we sit, the three of us, side by side in the sunshine, and – twenty years too late – we read from the beginning.
Darling Max,
I suppose that if you are reading this I will either be standing right beside you, laughing at what a silly, dramatic fool I have been and feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself (although terribly proud of this fabulous ink. Has it really worked?) or, well, I don’t suppose you ever will see this letter, since I don’t believe you listen to a word I ever tell you – although I have told you about the F and the invisible ink.
Max, if some harm should come to me this afternoon, as I fear it might, and if you happen to remember all the nonsense I talk, and if you or someone else should come upon this letter, as I intend, in the pocket of my skirt … If you do ever find this message and I am gone from – Max, if I am dead, it is because I have fallen in love with a villain, and I deserve it.
Cody tried to warn me. He told me Lawrence was passing information to the other side but I wouldn’t listen. And – of course – there was the potato digger at Ludlow and then, after Cody was shot, his poor Mama said to me the very thing I most dreaded. I won’t believe it. I mustn’t believe it. But Max, I watched him last night when he thought I was sleeping, and he was counting out great fistfuls of dollars. He is not the man he pretends to be. And yet, god knows why, I still love him!
He says he will marry me when we get to New York. How can I marry him now? I am going to confront him. This afternoon, Max. I am going to tell him what I know, and if he loves me, as I believe he does, he will listen to me. I know he will. He will repent. We will start afresh. And if not –
‘And if not?’ I say to Max and Xavier. ‘And if not, what?’
But the answer is obvious. The answer is Inez with her throat shot through, lying on a slab at the mortuary; and Lawrence O’Neill with blood on his shirt, sobbing in the hallway at Plum Street.
A long silence. Nobody answers. Xavier moves near us and we read the letter again. And then, I suppose, again.
‘So now what?’ Xavier says.
1914
Trinidad, Colorado
Phoebe gave me a week to clear out. I think she believed she was being generous. Certainly when other girls were ejected, the process had always been brutal. They rarely stayed longer than a couple of nights in the house, no matter what wretched state they were in. Phoebe didn’t like advertising their departure to the johns – for obvious reasons. The johns belonged to Plum Street, not to the girls.
She allowed me to stay for a week, but she didn’t allow me into the ballroom, nor any of the common parts, and I was forbidden from talking to any visitors – not that there were any that week. Kitty brought my meals to my room, and I was left to pack and arrange my future in peace.
At least I could throw out the trinkets that had cluttered my rooms for so long: the French novels, the crystal ornaments, the glass jewellery; the mass of valueless gifts, offered to me as sentimental mementos by men I never wanted to remember. Anything I couldn’t offload on the other girls (and they had enough junk of their own), I threw out joyfully.
By the time Carlos came to transport my belongings, aside from the harpsichord, I had only a single trunk’s-worth left to take and, in fact, as I followed Carlos down the back stairs and slipped away from Plum Street for the last time, it seemed to me that even a single trunk was too much. I was thirty-eight years old, and I had never felt such tiredness.
I needed time to think, of course; an inexpensive place to perch while I calculated how and where I would dispense with the remaining years of my life. I would sell the harpsichord as soon as possible – it might fetch $50 if I was lucky. Add that to the $350 I was taking from Phoebe, and in truth it was not
nothing
. I could leave town, rent a room, set myself up someplace else, do something else … But all of that involved an investment of energy and hope, and I didn’t possess either.
Carlos carried my belongings to a small crib a few blocks away, which I had taken on a week-by-week arrangement. Still in our red-light district, where I felt most comfortable, it was one in a row of identical clapboard structures, single-storey, single-roomed and windowless. (For natural light, I had to open the door.) It hardly mattered. I didn’t need light. I needed sleep. Oblivion.
There was a single cot at the front of the room, with a throw of some sort, which could be converted into a couch during the day. There was a small table with two chairs, and at the back of the room, behind a worn curtain, a stove and a small basin. At the end of the row there was a toilet, shared between fifteen of us.