The Typewriter Girl (48 page)

She started away down the hill, toward the hotel, and only said, “Please, Mr. Jones,” when John called for her to wait for him.

“Shall I go after her?” Dunning asked.

Should Dunning go after her—
Dunning
, go after her? John knew Dunning meant well, but John wanted to get him under his knee, too, because John ought be the one going after Betsey, and he oughtn’t have to do that because she oughtn’t’ve gone anywhere in the first place. She ought have stayed and said thank you or fuck you or what have you. She oughtn’t just leave as though there was nothing to say. And she oughtn’t’ve called him Mr. Jones, either.

“You’ll not,” he answered. “I want you to go up to the pavilion—”

“The pavilion?” Dunning interrupted weakly.

“There should be a staffer there—great broad fellow, red hair. Name of Frederick. You’ve surely noticed him. Tell him to bring along another staffer and meet me down here. And don’t make a show of it. Quick and quiet, is it?”

“But Jones—” Dunning stepped a little closer and spoke softly
to keep Lillian from hearing. “My
father
is on the pavilion.” He squatted down beside John and Wofford and whispered, “You said you’d be along, you know, when the time came. You know, to face the old boy.”

“Come you here, Noel,” John said, and Dunning leaned in, and John clutched his necktie and pulled.

“Oof,” said Dunning.

“Send Frederick. Get you your father and Lady Dunning down to the hotel to meet with the Gilbeys, and the next time I see you, ’twould be best for your health if an invitation to your wedding you were delivering to me.”

“Redheaded fellow, you said?”

John released Dunning’s necktie. Lillian rushed to his side to keep him from falling completely on his arse. When the two of them had gone, Wofford mentioned it would be quite safe for John to get off him now, and John explained the ground was rather wet for sitting and stayed where he was until Frederick and another staffer found them. He put Wofford into their custody, to be escorted to the rail station and seen aboard his train. And then—

And then he ran after the thing he wanted.

•   •   •

The office was empty, dark, and Elisabeth’s still figure cut a silhouette against the window, as slim and solitary as a churchyard angel, dissolving John’s haste and frustration. He touched a hand to the pain in his side and whispered her name. “Elisabeth.”

She roused, just a lift of her head. Overcome by a sensation of having run upon the edge of the earth, suddenly and without a single warning sign, John hesitated.

Within that instant, Betsey shook off the last of her reverie, and said, “Yes, I know,” as though responding to something he’d said. “I need to hurry back. I only—I—”

Her knuckles came to rest against her mouth, and she cast her glance about the shadows for a moment before settling it on the desk that held the type-writing machine. There she headed and
readied the machine as she said, “I need a character. You won’t mind? I can type as you dictate, it oughtn’t take long.”

“You . . . need a reference letter . . . tonight?”

“Soon. Wofford, he brought that letter, you see, the one you sent him? All the way back in June!” She fumbled the slightest bit with the machine’s carriage. “It was kind of you, by the way, so unbelievably kind. . . . Only Wofford’s brought it and given it to Sir Alton, you see, and has likely told him an even worse account of what happened, so I don’t imagine there’s much hope for me anymore.”

She sat down. John stared.

“Here, I mean. Hope for me here. But I’ve spoken with Mrs. Gomery whilst you were away. About the Sundial, remember? And whoever owns the Black Lion, I’d wager they’ve given up hope of competing with the Swan Park, but I’ve thought of some ways they might revive their trade.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Please—” Tension snagged her voice, and he heard her breathe in before she continued, “Just a reasonable character. I’m ready.” A flurry of snaps issued from
the type-writing machine. “
To whom it may concern.
Go on, then.”

“Bless God!” He wanted to propose marriage, not dictate a letter.

“
To . . . whom . . . it . . . may . . .
”

“Very well!
To whom it may concern.
Allow me a moment.”

He crossed to where she sat. She was nearly soaked, he realized, her little blue jacket gone and the sleeves of her blouse clinging limply to her arms. He took off his coat, which was damp enough itself but better than nothing, and she wordlessly permitted him to help her into it, shuddering hard, once, after she had it on.

“Well, then,” he said when she had her fingers over the keys again. “
The Idensea Pier and Seaside Pleasure Building Company has been blessed to have the skills and intelligence of Miss Elisabeth Dobson at its service for these past—
”

The type-writing machine snaps stalled only a moment after John did, struck by the realization that what felt the whole of his existence had been but three and one-half months.

“
Three months,
” Betsey said and typed, a trifle viciously.

“Another fortnight since I met you in London. The first time I saw you, Elisabeth, I thought, ‘That’s what I need.’ Did I ever tell you that?”
That’s what I need,
and his instinct had never been either more true or more faulty. Quite misguided in what he needed her
for
, his instinct.

“You didn’t.” She curled her fingers into her fists, then stretched them out over the keys again. “But I don’t think that sort of thing is necessary. Go on.
Fortunate to have the skills and intelligence of Miss Elisabeth Dobson at its service these past three months.
”

“I didn’t say ‘fortunate.’”

“You needn’t worry, I know how to spell it. Go on.”

“
These past three months.
Mmm. So, at our service the past three or so months.
In fact, we consider her departure from our employ a tragedy—
”

“For God’s sake! It is business correspondence, not a sermon.”

“
A . . . tra-ge-dy.
T-r-a . . . j—”

“I’ve got it.
Tragedy.
L-o-s-s.”

“
Of the greatest
—ahhh—
magnitude.
Magnitude.
In fact, we at Idensea Pier and Seaside Pleasure Building Company consider ourselves the most foolish of all asses for letting her go.
”

Betsey stopped typing. “I’ll ask Mr. Seiler to do it.” She folded her hands in her lap and bent her head down.

John whipped a chair next to hers, sat, and reached over to stroke her cheek. Her stillness did not seem an acceptance of the gesture.

She said, “How is Miss Gilbey?”

Careful.

“Likely in tears by now, if her future father-in-law has been informed of the engagement. But she will come along all right, I think. She and Dunning.”

“Mr. Dunning?”

“That’s right. You were kind to her, she told me—said you . . . She said you gave me over to her.”

This last part was not precisely how Lillian had phrased it, but it so thoroughly banished the frightening blankness from Betsey’s expression that he couldn’t regret the fabrication. He laughed gently, because the pitch of her demonic brows gave him hope, and Betsey looked down again, obviously feeling tricked.

“I thought it sounded rum,” he said. “Just giving me away, not a shilling for your trouble. You had best not ever try it again.” He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It would never work, in any case.”

She gave him the magic-beans look, forcing him to remember that he had, in fact, been engaged to Lillian for a few days. He remembered it as a suicidal man, rescued, might recall the window ledge, but he had done it.

“Even if I had married her,” he added, “it wouldn’t have worked. You’d still have me. All the way through. That is what I have found out, Elisabeth.”

He had more to say.

The rain had pasted her fringe of hair to her forehead, and he combed it aside, thinking of the night she had let him trim her hair. He had expected a flat refusal, coming at her with the scissors, but Betsey had shut her eyes, leaned toward him, let him do it. He had been so careful, so wary of taking too much.

His throat shut suddenly, clogged with grief for that broken trust, and he watched Betsey’s dark eyes open and turn wet.

“Forgive me, girl.”

He’d wanted the words to sound forthright, strong; he’d meant to list every promise; he had a speech in his best English. But holding her face, her eyes glistening with answering grief, he was reduced to a few broken, husky syllables.

As was she. “I did. You?”

“I did.”

She pulled his hand from her face and kissed his fingertips, then turned and skimmed her own fingertips along the letters of the type-writing machine, tracing the round edge of each black key. “I believed I knew what you wanted,” she said softly. “I was trying to manage without you. But I made a wreck of it all, didn’t I? Just as Richard said.”

“I don’t know that. If the board heard your report, who knows what they would say? And not run off half-cocked, have you, and fought your dad and spent your savings and made you some sham engagement?”

She shook her head, the curl at the corner of her mouth rising. “I suppose I wanted to do something to prove myself, on my own. Something by myself.”

He smoothed his hand along the side of her head. “Do you still, girl? All by yourself?”

And suddenly, his girl was crying, and he was reaching for her, gathering her into his lap, smearing her tears with his cheek.

“There is good, then,” he whispered as he held her. “Because neither do I. Neither do I.”

He’d meant to be on his knee. He had a ring he was unwilling to reach for just now. He’d plotted for the sea and the starlight, not the cold glint of a type-writing machine.

“Marry me, Elisabeth,” he said anyway, and it felt perfect. “I love you so, and no telling there is of what will become of me without you. Marry me, girl.”

Her body shook in his arms. Through her tears, into his shoulder, she spoke, but nearly every word was unintelligible to him. He caught one,
Owen
, and pressed her to him harder, trying to stop her shaking, banish her doubts.

“Owen would be lucky,” he said. “The fiercest protector he would have, and he’d belong to the sweetest, purest heart, and stand by him always, she would. And bless God, some unfit language he would learn, and likely never win a cycling race, but a mother he would have, and he would be lucky, and there’s sorry I am I could not bring him to you.”

Her hand on his cheek. Her hand, saying,
I’m sorry,
acknowledging his disappointment for that loss while tears held her voice captive.

She tried to speak. He couldn’t understand her. What made even less sense was how she bolted from his lap, snatched a pair of baskets from her desk, and ran from the office.

Remember the machine will not work well unless the carriage tension and the finger key tension correspond. They must be equally weak or equally strong.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

T
hank you,
she had said, and
I have to pass out the favors,
but Betsey knew she sounded like a bawling calf. She knew she couldn’t turn up at the pavilion in such a state, every breath collapsing into a sloppy sob, but she kept going, aware of the stares as she rushed through the hotel, aware when the rain hit her face that it would spoil the packets of tobacco and the paper frames, aware that John had come after her, that he was at her side, taking one of the baskets, putting his hand to the small of her back as they walked—ran, almost. She could do nothing about any of it. Her body had quit itself of any submission to her mind.

The band was playing “Now and Then,” which meant the speeches were done already, the final galop in progress. And though the party favors mattered not a jot just now—after all, she was falling to pieces, drowning in a sea beyond her control, and anyway, she was probably going to resign or get the sack no matter what she did with the damn favors, and most of all, John—oh, God, John had asked her to marry him!—no, the favors didn’t matter at all, but she cut off the path to tramp through the grass
and the mud just the same so she could reach the pavilion before the music stopped.

John came after her. He was with her, carrying the basket of ruined tobacco, not telling her to stop her foolishness, just with her and carrying the basket, the damn basket. When her ankle turned and she fell, he was with her, there in the grass and the mud. He propped himself over her and kept the rain from falling on her face.

“Boys and dogs,” she gasped.

“Bless God, what are you speaking of, girl?”

“You said you wanted them, and little girls to feed sweets at tea.”

“I have a ring for you.” He fumbled in his coat, which she still wore. “No stone to it yet—you would not believe such a lot of slate as what I spent my money on whilst I was away—but no other woman has worn it, and it has this box, you see, because a proper jeweler it came from.”