The Typewriter Girl (43 page)

Miss Dobson held no expectations, though, only seemed to know it was possible for a girl to get herself in trouble, and that it was sorrowful when it happened. Such sympathy seemed the most extravagant gift she’d ever received, a string of pearls a mile long.

Benches surrounding the fountain offered places to rest with a view of the sea. They claimed one, and Lillian worked to control her tears. Looking out at the water helped, as did the distraction of remembering some Tennyson:
With blackest moss the flower-plots were thickly crusted, one and all.

“A six- or seven-month baby—did you think John would believe that?” Miss Dobson asked after a moment.

“I don’t know. . . . Do men notice that sort of thing?” Thanks to Aunt Constance, Lillian herself had only recently noted the problematic arithmetic of certain couples in her acquaintance, but Miss Dobson’s incredulous expression now made this seem atypical. “I don’t know what I thought, except that of all the eligible gentlemen I know, John seemed the one—”

“Most willing to raise another man’s child. To save you. Save the child.”

“He is good.” And he was here. At least, he had been. “He would not be unhappy with me, I think. I think he meant to ask me, once. Before . . .”

Miss Dobson gave her a frightening smile. The woman leaned toward her, and Lillian could not help shrinking back.

“That’s right,” Miss Dobson said. “Before
me
. Don’t know what to make of that, now, do you?”

Lillian shook her head, intimidated into agreeing. Lying. On the contrary, she had a very good idea what to make of it. Tears welled afresh; John was lost to her, and with him, any hope. She
pressed the handkerchief to her lips, but the awful press of emotion escaped in an embarrassing, snorting sob.

“Cry, then, I don’t blame you,” Miss Dobson said. “It’s a wretched shame what you’re going through. But hear me well, Miss Gilbey.”

With that, she touched her fingertips to Lillian’s chin and, with no physical force whatsoever, compelled Lillian to look her in the eye.

“I didn’t let John go so he’d be handy for the likes of you to use up however it suits.”

The
likes
of her? Lillian’s tears were shocked into abeyance. She was not the
likes
of anything, or at least she never had been before. But now she was fallen, so perhaps . . .

But Miss Dobson wasn’t finished. “And if you dare take this selfish, desperate request to him—”

Thoughtfully, she surveyed the milliner’s landscape atop Lillian’s head; leisurely, she withdrew the hat pin and held it pointed end up between them, all while confining Lillian with the lightest touch to her chin.

“You had best beware your neck.”

It was the most shocking liberty ever taken with Lillian’s person, excepting, of course,
that
one. Rather as with
that
one, it was done before she realized she’d submitted to it.

And now, with Miss Dobson striding away with her favorite hat pin, Lillian was all alone again, in full view of the veranda. Her parasol was up there; retrieving it was bound to be awkward.

She remained on the bench, holding her hat against the breeze, delaying the lonely, humiliating walk into the hotel.

Well, she’d gained two useful tidbits of information for Aunt Constance. John was in London. And Miss Dobson had given him up.

She touched her neck.

A long shadow fell over the bench.

“And I want my handkerchief back,” Miss Dobson said.

For every change of a subject there must be a new paragraph.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

M
r. Seiler intercepted Betsey’s dash into the hotel, speaking her name so firmly that she was certain she had missed a subtler signal to conduct herself more decorously.

She couldn’t speak. It was all there, an apology, an assurance she was returning to her desk, but her throat would not allow passage.

“My office, if you please?” he murmured, and she feared she was in for some of that demented coffee he preferred or, worse, a sympathetic ear.

Instead, he gave her a stack of correspondence to answer. It was thick; it would require hours to complete. Betsey would spend the remainder of the afternoon at the type-writing machine, too busy to think or even to make eye contact, too close to the rhythmic din of the keys to hear the whispers that had followed her ever since Mr. Jones had announced his resignation.

“Thank you,” she said to Mr. Seiler.

His lips pursed thoughtfully. “Congratulations once more upon your success at Bradford. The board will be pleased, I am certain.”

“I hope so.” She had traveled to Bradford yesterday to meet a mill owner who had tried to cancel his employee outing after the fire—an effort well worth her time since it would increase her profit report to the board.

She appreciated Mr. Seiler’s attempts to turn her thoughts, but whether the excursion scheme would continue past this summer was a separate question from her personal employment and whether Sir Alton would allow
that
to continue. If he had ever truly believed he needed her, the reason for it had vanished the moment John submitted his resignation.

Betsey turned to the door, having Mr. Seiler’s implied permission to leave, letters clutched to her bosom.

“He may marry her,” she said quietly to the doorframe.

“
Ma chérie
, he may.”

Her throat shut again. She thought she might die with the agonizing pressure of it.

Mr. Seiler said, “We had expected so, before—”

He hesitated, the way Miss Gilbey had done. Everyone understood Betsey Dobson as an intermission in John Jones’s life. Everyone, even Betsey, and except for John.

Very well, damn it,
damn it
. But she had been attempting to protect John from his own foolish, fevered self, not deliver him to Miss Gilbey.

She made a brisk trip of the walk to the company offices, trying to outpace her worry, remembering Charlie’s funeral, haunted by the sound of John’s thumb rubbing alongside his finger.

She wished she had slipped her fingers between his to hush that anguished rasp. She wished she had said yes to any mad plan he made, any upheaval he needed to create, just so he would know he was not alone.

All eyes noted her return to the office. She sat down at the type-writing machine and discovered John’s pocket handkerchief inside her hand, wound and crumpled around Miss Gilbey’s hat pin. She tucked the handkerchief inside her cuff, the pin into her hair, and prepared the machine with sure, familiar actions. Then
she skimmed the letter on the top of the pile and proceeded to smash onto the page the heading and the salutation to one Mr. Jerome Worth. She began the response.

Thank you

Her fingers held over the keys, immobilized. She could not see the words—the machine was a model that required the operator to lift the carriage in order to view the work. Such a detail mattered only to insecure type-writers, not someone with Betsey’s experience, but suddenly those words hidden inside the carriage filled her with sorrow.

Was her strength for his sake, or hers? Why hadn’t she taken his hand? Said,
I can’t come with you, but I love you . . .
?

Or,
You’ve taken leave of your senses, and I love you . . .
?

Or simply . . .

Miss Slott would not have approved. Mr. Wofford would have accused her of stealing. But when Betsey’s hands stirred again, the letter was hers and hers alone.

When he comes back, I will tell him “Thank you.” Regarding the following:

1, Idensea.

2, Sarah, Charlie. My chair at their table.

3, A needless vow. As though you were some saint and I was too.

4, Rail fare.

5, The widest sky I’ve ever seen and that typewriting is not the best job a girl can hope for afterall. Mr. Seiler, bicycle, how to ride it, how to swim, every thing I try because I thik you might thinkI could do it.

I will tell you my thanks, and by the by thankyou also means I lvoe you..

I love you.

•   •   •

John had told Betsey,
I know how it needs to be
, and yet here he stood in an empty parlor, stalled, unable to imagine such an extravagance of space furnished. Wouldn’t he like to see the other rooms, the house agent suggested, and John said yes, and then he said no. The place was fine, perfect, he would come round the agent’s office this afternoon to arrange the lease.

Well, why not? The agent had obviously heeded John’s stated requirements, and John had things to do. See Pearse Leland, hire a nurse for Owen, acquire furniture, catch a train to Wales. He’d made plans.

Outside, in the little square park across the lane, a Salvation Army band in full uniform played, and John stood watching the musicians and the singers, two women with good strong voices singing “A Mighty Fortress.” Feeling in his coat for some coins, he started to cross the street when he heard his name.

He looked about, then spied the elegant curve of a hat brim poking out from a hansom cab waiting just down the street. Lillian Gilbey?

“How are you, John?” she said, smiling, when he came to the cab.

“I am surprised,” he admitted. “Back in London already?”

“Oh, we—Aunt Constance and I—decided to return early. You remember my aunt, Mrs. Middleton.”

John nodded at the woman as she leaned forward to look out at him.

“Aunt Constance has a visit to pay nearby here. She says I may sit in the square with you whilst she goes there.”

With no chaperone? Thoroughly bemused now, John opened
the half door of the hansom and helped Lillian out. The cab moved on, and he offered his arm.

“How did you find me?”

“Oh—” She waved her hand as though it had been no great task. “Your hotel, and then the house agent’s office.”

He tried to imagine Lillian Gilbey inquiring after a man at a hotel. Could not. He stopped and turned her around to get a good look under the hat brim. “You are mystifying me, Miss Gilbey.”

She tolerated his scrutiny briefly, then glanced away with a scowl, holding her hands up to her ears. “Oh, that racket!” she said of the Salvation Army band a few feet away. “Can’t we come away from it? It’s too horrible—I can’t think over it!”

John started to lead her to the other side of the square, handing some coins to one of the uniformed singers as they passed. The singer broke off from her verses of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” to say “God bless ye, sir” to him, and John hesitated there in front of her before he felt Lillian urging him on. He swiped a few dead leaves from a bench for her, then sat watching the band.

“You have taken a house?” Lillian finally said.

“Just rooms.”

“It’s not terribly smart here.”

“Safe and respectable will have to do till I have more cash.”

“Oh, certainly. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

John frowned. When the world had been normal, Lillian always scolded him if he mentioned money in any specific way. “You didn’t offend me, Miss Gilbey.”

She took a moment to draw off her gloves, fold them, unfold them, then pull them back on. A tense laugh. “My dear papa—do you know what he has promised each of his daughters?”

“Everything from a mockingbird to another day?”

He feared, with no little shock, the gentle jest would send her to tears, but she manufactured more laughter instead. “You think me spoilt. I shall never dissuade you of the notion if I tell you Papa’s promise. A house, you see. One for each daughter, isn’t it funny?” Her eyes darted to his. “A house as a wedding present?”

If he’d been walking, he would have stumbled; eating, he would have choked. Sitting here, John found he could not hold her gaze, pretty and blue and entirely too hopeful. He glanced back to the band in the middle of the square.

Bless God, had Lillian Gilbey truly tracked him down in order to propose to him?

“You have, I am fairly certain, thought of marrying me before.”

She had.

It was as topsy-turvy a scene as ever imagined in Wonderland, but here it was in this perfectly rational square in staid old London on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. With a Salvation Army band booming “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” no less.

“Lillian, I don’t—”

“I know you have changed your mind, John. I know. But if you could see any way to . . . that is, if you still had any inclination toward it . . . I’d like you to think of it again, and know I’d accept.”

So she was asking
him
to propose. This made a touch more sense, he supposed.

“There is the house,” she went on, “but I have a dowry, too, naturally. And my father would find a place for you in his company, or you could stay on with this new position of yours if you prefer. Or study architecture. You mentioned that once, didn’t you? You could do it, now. And I would be a good wife for you. I shall be better than I have been, more pliable, and pleasant—”