The Typewriter Girl (9 page)

These were the most courteous words she’d ever received from a supervisor, but Betsey didn’t fool herself that they were anything but an order to stay. The page showed her to the anteroom of Mr. Seiler’s office, very near the hotel’s main entrance. Tea arrived minutes after she’d taken a seat, white china with a leafy gold border, a harp imprinted on the saucer—no, a lyre, the head and neck of two swans creating the curved sides of the instrument.

She took her time preparing her cup. She expected to wait a good piece, knowing Mr. Seiler was at tea with Mr. Jones and his London girl—Miss Gilbey, Sarah Elliot had told her during the ride to the hotel.

Mr. Jones, asking her to join them. As if her fare-dodging and arguing were quite forgotten. As if she, in her tweed and falling-down hair, could be just another guest at the table. He was mad, he must be. What else could explain such impulsive, reckless kindness?

She’d stirred tea with a silver spoon twice today. Before that,
the last time she’d held silver, she’d been polishing it, in service at the Dellaforde household in Manchester. This spoon was plainer yet more substantial, and she watched her hand rotate it within the cup.
Well then,
she thought,
if I don’t belong here, where better?
If she’d not disgraced herself with the Dellafordes’ son, might she be there still? And would it suit her better?

No. She knew that as truly as she knew anything. And knowing it made something else clear: She had better stop letting everything cow her, or Tobias Seiler would never see a place for her here.

•   •   •

Mr. Seiler was as polished and graceful as a silver candlestick, his form slight and trim, his presence weighty. He bowed as he gestured her into his private office, expressed gratitude for her patience, doing him the favor of waiting. Betsey could almost believe Mr. Jones had revealed nothing of her disastrous arrival in Idensea. Her propped-up courage firmed a bit more.

She matched his dance of courtesy, apologizing for interrupting his leisure time. “Mr. Jones mentioned you mingle with the hotel guests on Saturday evenings.”

His brows rose with amusement. “I am an hotelier, Miss Dobson,” he said, his European accent giving the proper slide to
hotelier
. “Only well away from the Swan Park am I at my leisure. Mingling, any day of the week, is perhaps the most serious work I do.”

With an incline of her neck, she admitted her mistake. “Though to the guests, it must not seem so.”

“You understand.” Against the whiteness of his hair and trim whiskers, his pale blue eyes assessed her. She rather thought her response had pleased him. “Much we share in our duties in that regard, no?”

He drew prayer-poised hands to his chin, waiting. Betsey faltered, unsure how her work as a type-writer could be likened to having charge of a palace such as the Swan Park. But she was more than a type-writer girl now.

“You mean we mustn’t allow our guests to see the effort we put in, that we’re hosts as much as managers. I suppose I’ve known since I was a girl in service that few care to know the work behind the pleasure. It’s like that, wouldn’t you say?”

Mr. Seiler did not say. But his waxed mustache lifted a fraction. A smile. “There is more to the position than hospitality.”

“Yes. I must promote, and make bookings and travel arrangements. Entertainments and tours must be organized, and each group is served a dinner here at the hotel. An enormous number of details to tidy up in all that. Quite frankly”—she smiled at him without reserve—“it seems you ought have hired me before now, Mr. Seiler. It is nearly June.”

A laugh rumbled in his throat, even as his lips remained pressed together. “
Wie schade.
A pity Baumston and Smythe had you hidden away. Which brings us to the matter of your character. Mr. Jones instructed you to bring it, and I understand you have failed to do so.”

Her stomach dropped. What had Mr. Jones told him already? Relating Wofford’s vileness in the vaguest terms to Mr. Jones had been awkward; detailing it to the refined Mr. Seiler in his gleaming office would surely take her down to ashes. The unfairness of it bolted through her again, that she had to sit here and admit to failure before she’d even begun, that she’d reduced herself to fare-dodging and asking Avery for money, and nearly let tears fall in public, Mr. Jones looking on. A better woman would feel rueful for inflicting harm on another, but God help her, she could only wish for Wofford’s fingers under her boot heel right now.

“Yes. I have failed to do so.” She braced for the inevitable question. Mr. Seiler’s silence did not so much surprise her as induce her to add, “I am sorry.”

“
Merci.
” He put on half-rimmed spectacles, opened a leather portfolio, and thumbed the pages inside. “It is not my wish to frighten you, Miss Dobson, but I must speak as your supervisor.”

“Of course.”

He found the sheet of paper he sought, notes she supposed he’d taken from Mr. Jones. “Type-writing, dictation, composition, bookkeeping, elocution—cookery?”

“It was a female institute. They were duty-bound to make at least a portion of the education practical. What’s shorthand worth once a girl’s married, after all? But a nice fish cake . . .”

She left off, letting the lifelong value of a fish cake recipe speak for itself. Mr. Seiler gazed at her over his half-rims for several uncomfortable moments. But then he chuckled down in his throat again, and having gained that, Betsey thought better of expounding on the practical nature of the other courses, how bookkeeping was called “Domestic Accounts” and that elocution had consisted mainly of reciting moral verse which seemed to have been written for children.

“I did well in all my courses, Mr. Seiler. My instructors said I learned quickly. The headmaster chose me to assist the reading room supervisor—that was an honor he awarded, you see—”

“But no letter from the school, either.”

“No, sir.” She could not blame Wofford for that.

“Mr. Jones still believes we should, as he says, try you on.”

“And what do you think, sir?”

“Ah!” He threw up his hands, finding her question facile. “I find you delightful, and I should normally be pleased to give you a trial. However, as you yourself have noted, June is upon us, and our season to profit is fleeting. I have not time for trials. Nor failures. You understand.”

Betsey flexed the hand resting in her lap, remembering the pressure of Richard’s grip.
When you’ve made whatever wreck you’ll make of it, don’t bring it back to my family.

“Mr. Seiler, I understand you perfectly.”

•   •   •

After providing her with a small notebook and pencil, Mr. Seiler escorted Betsey to the basements via his private stairway, hidden behind one of the panels in his office.

These basements were a city, the reverse of the leisurely and upholstered world above. The maze of stores and kitchens, of lifts and laundries and staircases could be mastered only with time and familiarity; Betsey reserved her concentration for Mr. Seiler’s directions, furiously jotting notes as he explained his expectations, suggested methods of organization, provided names of staff with whom she’d be working.

Selectively, he paused to introduce her or take a question, but otherwise, they moved quickly, in a river of pricked attention rippling with curtsies and nods and
Mr. Seiler, sir
.

In the lift back up, Betsey confessed she had no idea where in the hotel they would be when the operator opened the door.

“To be expected,” Mr. Seiler replied. “Do spend time learning your way,
avec discrétion
—my staff is to be always at hand, never on display. I trust you understand.”

She did. Moreover, she vowed to remember.

The rear of the hotel’s main floor opened onto a wide veranda with a lattice roof; from there spread acres of parkland, nothing she would have believed had she seen it in a painting, what she suddenly understood people meant when they used the word
idyllic
. Every sandy path beckoned with some promised bliss, to shelter in a tunnel of ivy and blossoms, descend between the slopes of a chine for a shaded and fragrant walk to the shore, be soothed by the swans’ effortless passage over the green pond. The more sporting could head for the tennis court or bicycle shelter, or croquet and bowl on a carpet of trimmed grass.

“Oh, good God.”

“Miss Dobson.” Mr. Seiler nodded meaningfully toward the guests on the veranda.

“Such a sweet little garden.” She scanned the property again, this time to find the open-air pavilion where her excursion groups would have their dinner dance. She did nothing so gross as point when she spied a glass-and-iron cupola through a copse of fir trees, but Mr. Seiler confirmed it was her pavilion.

She wanted to go to it right away, but Mr. Seiler ushered her
back inside to a familiar corridor, the one where she’d found Mr. Jones’s office. The hotel and pier company offices were here as well. He unlocked a pair of wide doors, and Betsey felt silly when she realized she had expected to see rows of type-writing machines and tiers of clerking stands. This was a much smaller space, divided by three broad arches, the twilight filtering through a bank of windows and a skylight. A glass partition with narrow doors indicated a few private offices, and the longest solid wall was filled up with cabinets and shelving, two telephones, and a single type-writing machine.

Mr. Seiler apologized for her desk, clearly a recent addition, squeezed in beside the doorway and stacked with record books and loose papers.

“You see we have been collecting things in anticipation of your arrival,” he said. “Monday, your first task shall be to . . . ah, consolidate these matters. The excursion scheme has suffered from too many overseers, I fear—we had thought to distribute the responsibilities amongst the staff, but all too soon it became clear that was inadequate. You have here the records and invoices and such from the various departments of the hotel. Once you have sorted them out, let us meet again to discuss what you’ve learned—a quarter past five?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me amend. This is your second task. Your first—” He pulled a silver case from inside his coat and gave her his card. “Prevett’s, King’s Lane. Let them fit you for a suit of clothes to wear Saturdays, something to show you as part of the staff here. Mr. Hamble”—he gestured toward one of the desks—“shall arrange to have half the cost taken from your wages in installments.”

While the disarray on her desk made Betsey’s fingers itch to be busy, she balked inwardly at this command. She had her gray tweed and her brown tweed; they were decent and had served her well, not to mention that the cost of them was included in the sum she
would
pay to Richard, regardless of his “forgiveness.” An entire new uniform for a single day of the week!

“Would not a ribbon or badge of some sort do as well, sir?”

Perhaps she hid her gall too well. “Not at all,” he responded without a trace of concern. “Mr. Creacy is two shops down from Prevett’s. He will fit you for gloves.”

She expected him next to tell her where to buy hairpins, but with a check of his pocket watch, he escorted her to the main entrance and arranged a carriage and a staffer to wait with her before she had the chance to refuse. Amidst ladies and gentlemen dressed for the evening, a glowing fountain, and the melody of some unseen violin player, Betsey was handed into a carriage as though she too wore silk and pearls.

She stripped off her gloves as soon as the door shut. She was diligent about keeping them clean, but they were two years old, and damn it, what a long way she’d come since rifling Avery’s pockets for a pasty this morning.

Still, Mr. Seiler was right. She needed new gloves.

And God, she could buy some. He had not sacked her.

The carriage avoided the Esplanade, taking the road on the cliffs and through the town center. Betsey happened to be looking out when the lights on the pleasure pier below flickered and lit. How strange and lovely, those burning points over the water. She would never find the sight ordinary.

She could see them from her windows at the lodging house, she remembered.
The
windows, not hers. She hadn’t found the right time to ask Mr. Seiler about the staff lodgings, however.

Perhaps she wouldn’t. If Mr. Seiler was right about the gloves, then perhaps Mr. Jones was right about this lodging house. Alone in the carriage, Betsey relieved her exhaustion with a wild, delicious stretch and drummed her fingertips against the carriage walls, thinking perhaps she would just stay put.

All ordinary work should be without an error.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

A
lmost a fortnight since ordering the damn uniform, Betsey was thinking Mr. Seiler might have been right about it, too. For frugality’s sake, she took it from the seamstress to do the finishing work herself, and with her first excursion group arriving in the morning, she stood on an ottoman while Sarah Elliot helped her prepare the hem.