The Typewriter Girl (32 page)

There’d be no one like him again, not for her. He was going away, and she wouldn’t try to stop him. But before that happened, she would lie down with him. She would take what was here, what was now.

Nobody wants slovenly work, smutty pages, bad spelling, or sentences made senseless by the careless omission of words.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

T
hey went along a little lane Betsey had never traveled before. John stowed their bicycles in the brush, then led her down a path, steep and narrow, but too well-defined to be abandoned.

“People come down this way,” Betsey said, picking her way down in the darkness, her hand in his.

“The locals know it. But this time of night, none will come.”

It was a cove, lit by the moonlight, secluded and loud with the sea’s roar. Betsey paused at the bottom of the path to take it in, this place John had chosen for them, perfect and wild this night. She wondered how well he knew it, if he’d brought other women here. She wondered who they might have been. Not the Miss Gilbeys he’d sought, of course, but others?

She followed his lead, pausing to remove her boots when he did. Then he surprised her, throwing off his cap and coat, undressing with no preamble, his back to her. It was a disappointing sort of surprise, but she unpinned her straw hat and cast it, along with the disappointment, into John’s growing pile of clothing.

He noticed it and turned to her, throwing away his shirt, then standing quite still. How beautifully the moonlight touched his shoulders. She went to him and ran a hand along the ripples of his bare arm, pressed a kiss above the neckline of his under-vest, pushed it up, and he removed it. A pause, then she turned her back to him.

Nothing for a moment, though she could hear him breathing. Not until she tilted her head over her shoulder did he touch her, helping her out of her fitted jacket. Another pause when she faced him again, but then his fingers touched the top button of her vest. She watched him work down the column, and something made her think of her nephew Francis, his quiet and solid concentration when he tried to manage his bootlaces on his own.

John kissed her mouth as he pushed her vest open and down from her shoulders. “Come to the water when you’ve finished,” he said, and then he headed in that direction himself, still in his drawers. He waded in, launched himself over a wave, and disappeared.

Betsey rushed down, her heart tight even though she knew he would be fine. He resurfaced what seemed a far distance away, his face a spot of light in the water. He disappeared again and bobbed up closer to the shore.

“You can’t come in like that,” he called.

Betsey looked down at her uniform, the pleats in the skirt catching the wind like a fan. “I believed the swimming lesson to be a ruse.”

“I’ve not got any of those. Undress and come, you. I want you to feel the sea.”

She looked again at the path they’d just come down.

“No one,” he said. “I’ll turn my back.”

And unbelievably, he did. It made her feel suddenly shy, and she rushed to remove her shirtwaist and loosen the tapes of her skirts. She was stepping out of a pillowy ring of fabric when she realized he was watching her.

“You cheat.”

“Bless God, like a colt you are, those legs.”

She looked down at herself and decided John intended a compliment. She held his gaze as she unbuttoned her corset cover, and then, because he was transfixed and she found that intoxicating, she drifted her fingers along the top and over the curves of her corset before she removed it.

“Your hair down, won’t you?”

“You know it is cut off.”

“I want to see it loose.”

Her hairpins were lost to the sand, without a care for the cost to replace them. Regarding her clothing, however, she was more practical: She placed everything safely away from the surf.

“Will you come, then?” John asked. He rose, the water falling down to his waist, the skin of his arms and shoulders like polished metal as he came toward her. Betsey took the hand he extended, and for the first time since she’d been a tiny girl, she entered the sea. Her underclothes seemed to disintegrate in the chill of the water, eaten up by the waves that bewildered her body, but John wrapped his arm around her waist, cupped her head in his hand, and she felt more secure.

He would have kissed her. She touched his lips to slow him, saying, “Let’s decide.”

“Very well. Tell me what needs deciding.”

“How many times. From tonight until you leave for your new position, how many times shall we—” She hesitated as all her usual terminology failed her. “How many times shall we lie together?”

He continued to hold her but didn’t answer, either scandalized or calculating.

“Only this once?” she said, and smiled at his malcontented grunt. “Thank you for that compliment. Your suggestion, then.”

Another grunt. “I haven’t a job yet, even. Why must a number be put to it?”

She huddled against him, chilled standing here in the water as it beat against her thighs. “We’ll know when it’s done.” It wouldn’t become blurred, like with Avery, or blindside her, as with Thomas. Knowing the end was to let him go would hack the head off Sir
Alton’s bribe; it would pierce that terrible inflation of hope she’d felt standing outside Tinfell Cottage.

“And we have to take care,” she added. “I’ll not look jilted when it’s all done.”

Suddenly, he released her and ducked into the waves. Betsey’s fear was intense and instant, no matter that only a moment passed before she felt his hands take hers. He let go to push his hair off his face, then took them again and urged her farther into the sea.

“Deeper now, will you?”

She stiffened. “I want to be able to walk. Touch bottom, I mean.”

“I will show you what to do in the deep water,” he promised, causing another surge of fear in her as a wave crashed into her shoulder and lifted her off the seafloor. “Tread the water when you can’t reach. Like on your bicycle, pedaling, firm about it. Arms, too, back and forth.”

She tried it, found it worked, though not to the degree that she had any real faith in it to keep her from drowning. And the waves never stopped—what sort of defense would she have when one finally crashed on top of her?

John praised her, but her courage was failing. “Tell me more of that poem from the pub,” she said, with hopes he didn’t notice her fear. “The thought of being a pain in your side is so terribly romantic.”

He laughed. “Can’t remember, not much, so long has it been. And mostly in Welsh I heard it, you know. Take hold.” He reached for her and towed her shoreward before an incoming wave hit them. “I remember he speaks to a girl, says for her to meet him on a hillside. Make a bed under the trees. By the ferns.” He indicated the water with a nod. “Doesn’t suit, does it?”

“No.”

“Sweet things he tells her about how she looks.”

“Naturally. What does he say?”

“All the Welsh songs I know praise fair girls, golden-haired, rosy-cheeked girls. Not girls like Betsey Dobson.” He cocked his
head as he regarded her. “I remember he says her breasts are like balls of yarn. Does that suit?”

She thought returning the smile that touched the corners of his mouth would be invitation enough, but after a moment, she guided his hand inside her chemise. His touch was almost studious, as though he searched for the proper poetic description of her breasts, which were nothing like balls of yarn, but then he pulled her close. He boosted her up, and Betsey shuddered and dug her fingers into the base of his neck as his hot tongue chased the numbing chill of the water.

He let her slip down against him. “
Dy gorph hael a’m dug o’r ffydd.
”

“Poetry? Tell me.”

“
Her flesh makes me stray from God.
”

That suited too well, Betsey thought, spoke too close to the risk and the longing of this fleeting thing.

“
When she greets me, I will sing psalms of her kisses.
”

A wave nearly pitched them over, and Betsey realized with alarm they’d drifted out again. “I am with you,” he promised before she could say anything. “The next one, we will go under with it. A deep breath, and under, and I am with you.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Still, you will try it.” Not an order, that, only something in which he had confidence. He took her hand. “
I will sing psalms of her kisses, seven kisses from the maiden—
”

“I’m not a maiden,” she murmured, though here, in the moonlight and relentless sea, her fingers tangled in his, their bodies close and nearly naked, there was something new and untried welling within her.

“Shh,” he lulled, and began to chant, “
Seven kisses from the maiden, seven birch trees at the grave, seven prayers for evening, seven the songs from the boughs.
”

The wave hit. Betsey had tried to prepare herself, say it would be like ducking her head in the tub to wash soap from her hair, but once underneath, she knew the naïveté of that. Caught in the
power of the wave, suddenly, sharply aware of the openness of the water, she wanted control again. The wave pushed her toward the seafloor and she pushed back with all her might, trying to tear loose from John so she would break the surface more quickly.

She burst to the air choking and gasping for breath, as though she’d been under for minutes rather than moments. Her hair fell in tangles over her face, stinging her eyes. Between blinks, she saw John.

“There is good, girl.” He cleared the soaking net of hair from her face. “There’s brave. Will you try it again?”

“Yes,” she told him, and meant it, but she was trembling when he took her in his arms again, and he didn’t make her prove it.

“
Seven stories for a gift, seven pearls and rings,
” he crooned beneath the water’s roar.

Her teeth chattered. “Why seven?”

“Don’t know. Seven’s magic. Odd and even, the boy and the girl.
Seven verses writ in grass, seven times to sigh. Seven hymns for—
” He hesitated. “Her name he says here.”

“Little chance it’s Elisabeth.”

“No matter.” Her head was resting on his shoulder, and he kissed her cheek. “
Seven hymns to Elisabeth’s firm flesh, seven twenty times. No longer does she lock away the payment owed—
”

Nothing else suddenly. “Owed? To whom?”

He didn’t answer, and like a finger snap before her face, she realized he didn’t mean to. A wave broke high against his back. He swayed, and water splashed her face. She lifted her head to get her bearing.

“Too far. Too deep,” she said, not sure if she wanted to cling to him as a safety or push away again, somehow get herself closer to the shore.

“There’s safe. I have you, Elisabeth.”

“Please. Go back.”

“I’m taking you.” He caught her up in his arms and moved them closer to the shore. “Stretch out, now.”

She clung more tightly to his shoulders. “What?”

“Rest on the water. I have you.”

Rest on the water. Hell. Still, she tried, tried to shove down the fear, tried cautious movements toward straightening her knees. But whenever his hold loosened, she jerked up, tense and uncertain about the gathering waves.

“I have you,” he said. “Look you up, the stars and moon.”

His hands worked beneath her, encouraging her back and knees to relax. She felt his support, but when water lapped around her face, splashing in her ears and under her chin, she started again.

“Betsey, be easy with me. The simple part this is, nothing for you but to lie back and feel the water, see the stars. Do it, now.”

Again and again she tried, each time breaking the pose he wanted her to make, aware of the rising tension in his voice but certain he was misjudging the height and strength of the waves rolling in. Finally, she shoved hard against him and broke free, only to be caught in a swell that filled her mouth with salt water.

John caught her, and she fought against him, coughing, her feet scrambling for a bit of sand, rock, anything. She heard him saying something, shouting perhaps—probably—because she felt herself panicking, and why should she not, for she was drowning now, going under for good, shore and shallows in her sight.

Then, air. She was vaulting through air, and it took her breath as surely as the water had. She hit the water, terrified and insensible, grasping and kicking for purchase until she realized her knuckles scraped the pebbly sand. Knees, too, and she crawled, gasping, to the water’s edge.

“You damned idiot!” she swore to the ground. He’d
pitched
her. Still on her hands and knees, she turned back to the water, half-expecting to see him grinning, pleased with himself.

He was too far out yet for her to make out his expression by the moonlight. But he was moving closer, thrashing through the water, his stride creating a white wake.

Betsey leapt up. She bent over and filled her fists and fingernails with the coarse sand—as much pebble and tiny shells as sand—and flung it out to the water. Most of it broke apart and
went wildly off course, but some of it struck him, leaving dark splotches on his shoulder and jaw. A pebble glanced off his cheek, and it halted him for a fraction of a moment as he flinched. She could see his face then, terrible and furious, and he came pounding out of the surf at a stride to match.