The Typewriter Girl (21 page)

Chatting, a bright, tumbling stream of chatting. Was John so quiet because she could not stop? She settled him in a prime seat—not beside her, nor within whispering distance, but where they could share sight lines, to facilitate the furtive flirtation of exchanging glances.

Clark Winters, the current society president, made his opening comments, relying heavily on the notes Lillian had provided him. He introduced Lillian as tonight’s hostess, who in turn introduced Noel Dunning, a bright young talent certain to exceed the accomplishments of his famous father.

She’d promised Mr. Dunning not to mention Sir Alton. But how could she not? She ought have prepared him for it, though; the audible interest that rippled through the crowd as he approached the piano seemed to rattle him, and he fumbled the opening.

He came to a full stop, jested about the strain of performing in front of so esteemed a group as the Sydenham Music Society, and began again. The audience forgave him; they wanted him to do well.

Lillian tried to enjoy the piece as she had Sunday, but she could not help worrying that John had finally perused that volume of Tennyson. Her friend Roberta elbowed her throughout; she knew “Marian’s” proper name.

But the song’s sensational effect on the audience could not be denied. As she applauded, she remembered to glance in John’s direction. She couldn’t catch his eye just then and knew precisely
why: John couldn’t possibly feel anything but relieved that she had rescued him—and herself—from certain humiliation.

•   •   •

During the interlude, Lillian let John walk her out to the terrace. When she realized he was watching her twist a finger into the pearls circling her neck, she dropped her hand immediately. It was bad for the pearls.

“I’m turning to nerves,” she sighed brightly, “this performance waiting for me at the end of the night.”

His brow crooked.

“I am! Mr. Dunning’s quite accomplished, and I—I don’t know that I am equal to the challenge.”

His gaze took a leisurely survey of the salon, where, as groups gathered to chat, the liveliness of the party was returning. Clark Winters, who
would
sing German lieder no matter the theme that had been set, had been the final performer before the interlude and had rather depressed the mood despite all her strategizing.

John turned his back on the scene. “I’ll eat my tie and your fan if there was ever a thing you didn’t believe yourself at least equal to, Lillian Gilbey.”

Leave it to John to deliver the most inelegant, bordering-on-insulting, yet truly wonderful compliment. Then he touched her, trailing his fingers along the inside of her arm, the bare space above her elbow-length glove, making the beads suspended from her narrow sleeve tickle her skin.

“Let’s go to Idensea, Lillian.”

She was holding her breath, reminding herself he would not kiss her tonight. They stood somewhat catercorner to each other, she looking into the light and bustle of the salon, he to the dark garden. This touch of her arm was discreet enough, and all she would allow tonight. No more kissing.

His fingers drifted down to twine within hers. He leaned toward her ear. “Pack up the whole party, right now, put them on a train to Idensea.”

The warmth of his breath. She felt dazed. No kissing. Inside, Mr. Dunning, who had been moving toward the terrace, was persuaded to the piano. Roberta shared the bench with him; that flirt Lynette Ramsey stood on his other side.

“There’s half the program yet. There’s supper—”

“Pack it up. A picnic on the train. Finish the program in the Swan’s music salon. And in the wee hours of the morning, I’ll rouse one of the engineers and take everyone on the Sultan’s Road before it opens to the public.”

Ah. His little railway project.
“You are quite mad,” she said, though taken in by something in his voice. She could see the romance and gaiety in the scheme. It might have been a fine idea if only he had thought of it sooner. February, say.

At the piano, Mr. Dunning punctuated a comment with a playful run of notes that elicited whoops of delight.

“See me to my seat?” she asked.

But he did not offer his arm. He forced her to say, “Absolutely not. I’m sorry, John, but no, it won’t do,” and she had to return to her own party ruffled and disconcerted and still feeling guilty for having scratched him from the program.

So upsetting she found it, she was of a mind to make him wait until August to apologize to her. Especially since he left early, before her duet with Mr. Dunning.

Which was a triumph, thank you.

•   •   •

Betsey’s buttons had waited inside the biscuit tin since the night she’d snipped them off in her pique, but as she needed her uniform tomorrow, they had to be put on again. Even so, it was late on Friday before she began—Sarah Elliot had declared a covert sweet-making session after Dora Pink had gone to bed and couldn’t scold her for her sugar consumption, and Betsey and Charlie joined her, which left Charlie wide awake past midnight. He begged to use her window to get out to the roof while she did her mending—John had the same room when he had stayed here and took him
out there, oh, all the time, as Charlie told it. At last, with a warning it would not become a habit, Betsey consented.

It was here, as she was finishing off the first button, chatting in hushed tones of tomorrow’s opening of the pleasure railway, that Charlie leaned over and kissed her.

The kiss landed on her jaw, almost on her earlobe. A miscalculation, a swift peck that made tears, instant and mysterious tears, bite at her lower eyelids and alongside her nose. She worked hard at the needle between her thumb and forefinger, wiggling it to bring it through the wool before she spoke.

“Now, Charlie, what’s that for, eh?”

In the night, the thread made several noisy passes through the fabric, too many for a single button, a waste of thread.

“Because I think you’re nice, Betsey.”

She almost dismissed him, almost said
pooh
and set him straight, but fresh stings beneath her eyes kept her from speaking right away. “You’re so awfully nice to think so, did you know that?”

He didn’t answer right away. Then, “I don’t know.”

“Well, you are. So thanks, Charlie.” She tied off the thread, wrapped her fingers in the surplus, and yanked. The thread didn’t break.

“You’re—you’re welcome, then.”

Betsey, button and thread at her teeth, glanced at him.

“I s’pose,” he added, and shrugged.

They both smothered laughter then, Betsey for his poor confusion and Charlie, she guessed, with relief to have the moment done. He lifted his shoulder and scratched his cheek against it, hiding his face from her. A mistake, giving in to him. But to send him away now would only add salt to his wound.

Another moment of determined gnawing, and the thread came loose. “This will take all night if I don’t fetch my scissors.”

She felt Charlie watching as she tied a knot and readied another button, but he didn’t take her hint about going inside. “Ain’t those the same buttons from before? And you’re sewin’ ’em all over again?”

“They are. I—” Having to recount her own foolishness, she sighed. “I cut them off.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. They were too extravagant. I thought to sell them, perhaps, and put on plainer ones, and put the money to a gown of some sort, because Mr. Jones thought I should have one.”

“What’s John care?”

“He doesn’t.”
Wishes he didn’t, anyway.
“Just ordering me about is all. Likes that, doesn’t he, ordering people about?”

She spoke teasingly, but Charlie was too loyal to admit Mr. Jones short of perfect. “On the job, I s’pose.”

“In any case, I decided he was wrong. No gown. So back go the buttons, and there they will stay until I need to sell them for bread. And perhaps, when that day comes, I shall eat them instead.”

Charlie laughed, but she didn’t. The notion of having to sell her buttons seemed all too possible since the meeting at Iden Hall. She shifted carefully, trying to catch more of the lamplight spilling from the window. Hardly ideal conditions for sewing. The moon was little more than a bright slit that would succumb to shadow in a few nights’ time, and whenever the breeze stirred itself into a proper wind, she thought perhaps she oughtn’t be barefoot.

She was about to suggest they go inside when Charlie said, “Someone’s coming.” His face was turned to the road, watching a single bead of light joggle toward the house. “John, I bet.”

Betsey frowned at the light. “He’s in London, at Miss Gilbey’s party.” And it was far beyond a reasonable hour for a call, even if he weren’t. But something in Betsey surged anyway, and she knew then why Charlie’s light kiss had stung her eyes with tears. To know Charlie’s hopeless hopes was to know her own.

The light was certainly a bicycle lamp. It stilled, and remained still, for quite some time. Betsey imagined the cyclist—imagined Mr. Jones—pausing there, looking at the windows where light still glowed. Looking at her windows? Was that what he was doing?

“Why doesn’t he come on then?” Charlie put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

“Oh, Charlie. Miss Everson always has her window open.”

“He’d’ve stood there all night. See? It
is
him, just as I told you.”

So it was. At the front gate, Mr. Jones dismounted, looking up at them. Then, a gesture—a beckoning one, she believed.

“He wants me to come down, I think,” she said, rising with less caution than she ought have. The remaining loose buttons she’d been holding in her lap clattered down the slope of the roof and bounced into the night, toy stars lit by the sliver of moonlight.

“Oh, hell.” She eased down with a guilty glance at Charlie. “That is . . .” She looked again at the black garden where the buttons had disappeared, more provoked by her eagerness to answer Mr. Jones’s gesture than the loss of the buttons. “Hell. Hell and hell.” With Charlie snickering, she tossed her vest back through the window, a single boot and stocking, too. Charlie had knocked their mates off the roof when he’d come out the window.

She climbed inside, then heard Charlie say, “I’m coming down with you.”

“No.” She turned round to the window, where he sat with one leg over the sill, halted by her refusal. “It’s too late, and your mum thinks you’re in bed already. Besides”—
I want to be alone with him,
she thought with a sweep of shame—“I’m certain it’s just some business to do with the excursionists. You’d best just go to bed, then, please?”

He nodded, and she felt like a Judas.

“But I’m seeing you home tomorrow night, ain’t I? John asked, and Mum said I might.”

It was ridiculous that she must have anyone see her home at all, but she agreed as she put out the light. She tugged off her apron and smoothed a hand over her hair. She’d already fixed it into the two very short plaits she wore to bed and considered taking the time to put it up properly.

“Betsey,” Charlie said from the window, “was it . . . was it any good?”

She stilled, her hand falling. Her heart, it flooded. “Oh, Charlie. I suppose it was the dearest sort of kiss there is.”

He looked back out at the night. The pale glow of his hair drew her, and she went to him and stroked his head, just once.
Save it for someone who deserves it,
she wanted to tell him.

It came out like this: “And you know, you try any such thing again, I shall be obliged to push you off the roof, don’t you?”

•   •   •

Mr. Jones offered her boot to her when she slipped out the front door.

“Didn’t find the stocking, I suppose?” she asked.

“Inside your shoe, there.”

How bashful he sounded, and over having touched her stocking? She didn’t understand.

“Here.” He opened his hand. Her buttons seemed small, piled in his palm, and she couldn’t help but think how light and cheap they must feel to him. He himself was dressed in his best suit, and even though he’d cuffed his trousers for cycling, and his hair was blown nine ways from riding hatless, Betsey felt the plainness of her own appearance—sleeves of her shirtwaist rolled to her elbows, her skirt the same faded print she’d been wearing when she’d been turned out from the Dellaforde house more than seven years ago, a contrasting border of fabric at the hem to lengthen it. She had been overzealous with the egg whites for the sugar kisses this evening, and only now felt the sticky results on her arms and face.

“Hold them, won’t you,” she said of the buttons. “My feet are cold.” She sat down on the porch step and began to pull on her stocking. “Late for a call, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. She felt for her suspenders and asked him why he was not in London, but he didn’t answer that question, either. Too engrossed in watching her sort her stocking, she realized when she glanced up at him, though there was little for him to see besides the shift of her skirts as her hands moved beneath them, attaching the stocking to her suspenders. She made a better show of the second stocking: a hint of naked knee, syrup in her wrists. She could have embarrassed him, forced eye contact,
coughed the merest
ahem
. But she was careful to make it seem the task absorbed her as it did him.

They’d barely spoken since Monday. Betsey had tucked away her tangle of feelings for him the way she’d stored her buttons in that tin. At least the buttons had some purpose, and fastened to her vest or strewn in the grass, they wouldn’t cost her anything more than she’d already given.

One beckoning gesture, and it was done, she was flying to him. One gesture that could have been a trick of the night shadows would have her lifting her skirts as though she believed lighting his lust could give her the warmth she yearned for.

She pressed her knees together and tucked her skirt around her ankles. To flirt, to tease him because he occasionally noticed she was a woman with all the parts and he found the parts good—that was one thing. To hope he would act on his attraction was to wish for her own destruction.

“Your performance went well, I trust,” she said, because they both needed to be reminded of Miss Gilbey. “Sarah will want to hear all about it. But . . . she’s long abed, you know.” She glanced up.