Alma

by William Bell

  She paused, as if to allow Alma time to absorb the information. Miss Olivia spoke like an educated woman, forming her words carefully, and she had an accent from away.

  “My mother carries on a significant degree of correspondence with persons from, well, all over the world, not to put too fine a point on it. She insists that her letters conform to a certain format. I visited your school the other day to look for someone with the required skill at penmanship. I chose you.”

  “Thank you,” Alma said, wishing Louise Arsenault was in the room.

  “You see, Alma,” Miss Olivia went on, “my mother requires that all her letters be handwritten. She considers any other means of producing epistles to be impersonal and unprofessional. You might say she is a little old-fashioned in that regard. However, she is unable to write with the elegance she once possessed—her handwriting is somewhat shaky, you see—and I am far too busy to take up the task myself, even if my hand were up to Mother’s standard. This is where you come in. If you could help, I—and my mother, of course—would be most grateful.”

  Alma took a breath. “I’m not sure what you want me to do,” she admitted.

  “Well, dear, my mother dictates her letters to me, and you will simply copy them and address the envelopes. She will of course add her signature. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Oh,” Alma said, letting her breath out again. That sounds easy, she thought.

  “So, may we count on you?”

  Alma thought about her mother’s constant fear of running out of money. Now, she could help. “Yes,” she said.

  “Excellent. I suggest you come here after school on Tuesdays and on Saturday mornings. Would that be all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now come with me and meet my mother.”

  Miss Olivia led Alma from the sitting room down a hallway. They passed a kitchen on the right, which was, Alma noticed, much bigger than the one in her apartment, with gleaming countertops and a four-burner stove, and a black-and-white-tiled floor with no wooden planks showing. Miss Olivia stopped before a wooden door and knocked.

  “Come,” Alma heard faintly.

  Miss Olivia opened the door and took Alma into a spacious room. At one end, a grey-haired woman was sitting in a leather wingback chair, a thick shawl around her narrow shoulders despite the flames that leapt cheerily in the brick fireplace. Her black dress was buttoned tightly at her throat and wrists. On one side of her was a brass floor lamp with a fringed ivory-coloured shade; on the other, a stand topped with a large glass ashtray, an ornate lighter and a black lacquer box, opened to reveal a neat row of cigarettes. An ivory cigarette holder rested like an oar on the edge of the ashtray.

  Despite the light from the window and the crackling fire, the room seemed gloomy and dim. The wainscotting was dark wood, the wallpaper above it maroon with thin gold lines rising to the ceiling. A thick rug with a navy blue background covered most of the wooden floor. There were two large oaken desks set before a wall of empty shelves, with more boxes waiting to be unpacked. The air was heavy with the stale odour of cigarette smoke.

  “Mother, this is Alma,” Miss Olivia announced. “Alma, this is my mother. You may address her as Miss Lily.”

  Alma hung back, tempted to slip behind Miss Olivia, out of sight of the black eyes that fixed her fiercely, like darts. The old woman’s hawkish nose dominated a long face creased from eye to chin with deep furrows. Her thin lips turned downwards in a scowl.

  “Come closer, girl,” she commanded in a voice surprisingly deep and strong.

  Alma did as she was told, reluctantly stepping toward the imposing woman, her hands clasped tightly behind her back.

  “Your name is Alma, is it?” the woman asked, leaning forward and overlapping her hands on the top of a walking stick of twisted black wood.

  Alma tried not to stare at the hands. The fingers were long and skinny and pale, but the knuckles were swollen and flushed, like knobs, as if Miss Lily had been out in the cold without her gloves on. They looked sore. No wonder her handwriting was “shaky,” as Miss Olivia had said.

  “Yes, Miss Lily,” she said, swallowing hard.

  Miss Lily’s mouth became a horizontal line, and her lips drew back slightly to reveal greyish teeth. She stared into Alma’s face, as if memorizing it. “Well, that’s a good sign. A good sign. Do you know what ‘Alma’ signifies?”

  “Um, not really.”

  “What does ‘not really’ mean?” the old woman demanded, her thick eyebrows slanting toward the bridge of her nose. “Do you know or don’t you?”

  “I d-don’t,” Alma stuttered.

  The almost-smile, like a fox baring its teeth, returned to Miss Lily’s stern features. “Alma means, in Latin, one who nurtures, and in Arabic, learned.”

  Alma swallowed again. What was expected of her? “Oh,” she said.

  “Let us hope you can live up to such a promising appellation,” Miss Lily said. “Now, my daughter tells me that you have an excellent hand and you are prepared to work for me.”

  “Yes, Miss Lily,” Alma said, not at all sure what an excellent hand was, but certain she would rather not set foot in this room—or this house—again.

  “Well, then, we shall try you out, and if you prove satisfactory, you may consider yourself engaged.”

  The wingback creaked as the old woman sat back, holding the walking stick across her knees as if ready to strike someone with it.

  “Thank you, Miss Lily,” Alma murmured as she felt Miss Olivia’s hands on her shoulders, turning her and guiding her out of the room.

  Miss Olivia shut the door behind them, and took Alma back to the sitting room.

  “Now, Alma, I shall explain your duties,” she said. “Sit down here, dear.”

  Miss Olivia drew the chair away from a mahogany writing desk that seemed to totter on its slender, curved legs. A row of pigeonholes held envelopes and writing paper. On the surface were a green blotter with leather corners, a brass lamp with a pull-chain and a crystal writing stand with two pen-holders, an inkwell with a brass lid and a depression in which paper clips lay beside gleaming brass-coloured pointed objects Alma didn’t recognize.

  “Now, Alma,” Miss Olivia began, pulling a chair to the desk beside Alma. “This will be your workplace. As you see, your materials are all present: the writing paper”—she took from one of the pigeonholes a sheet of thick, creamy paper with a watermark that depicted a seahorse—“the envelopes”—Miss Olivia pointed to another pigeonhole—“and your pen and ink. When you arrive to work, you’ll find a folder here on the desk. In it will be letters dictated to me by my mother. I take down her words in shorthand, then type them out for you. You simply copy the letter in longhand, address the envelope and clip them together with a paper clip. Then place them in the second folder. All right?”

  “Yes,” said Alma. No, she didn’t say. She planned not to come here again, to this dreary, overheated house, this strange woman and the even stranger old woman sitting like an ogre in the back room.

  “Now, there is only one thing you might find challenging at first,” Miss Olivia went on, “and that is the pen my mother requires you to use.” She removed one of the pens from its holder. Alma saw right away that it was unusual. It had no point, for one thing. It was longer than a pencil and made of wood—black, Alma reflected, like almost everything else in this house. One end was barrel-shaped; the other tapered to a sharp point like a rat’s tail.

  Miss Olivia took one of the brass objects from the trough in the crystal writing stand and fitted it into the circular slit in the barrel end of the pen. The brass things, she explained, were pen nibs. She flipped open the hinged lid of the inkwell and dipped the nib into the ebony ink. She slid the nib over the edge of the inkwell to remove excess ink.

  “Would you like to try it?” she asked, handing the pen to Alma.

  Alma took the pen in her hand and positioned the writing paper on the blotter at the proper angle, just as Miss McAllister had taught
her. The paper’s texture was heavy and smooth.

  “What should I write?” she asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Miss Olivia replied, getting up from her chair.

  Alma wrote her name. Then her mother’s name, “Clara.” Then her favourite colour, “yellow,” and her most precious place, “the old harbour.” As her hand moved, she watched the jet-coloured ink flow smoothly from the bright nib to the glossy surface of the paper. When the pen ran dry, in the middle of “fireweed,” Alma’s choice of wildflower—even though it wasn’t, strictly speaking, according to Miss McAllister, a flower—Alma dipped the nib in the inkwell and rubbed it against the glass wall of the well just as Miss Olivia had done. She completed “fireweed” and put the pen into the holder.

  “Clear the nib before you put it away,” Miss Olivia said from the couch, where she had been sitting and watching Alma. “There are tissues in the drawer.”

  Alma pulled open the wide desk drawer, where she found a flat box of tissues among more stacks of writing paper and envelopes. She cleaned the nib and placed the pen in the holder. Then she pushed back her chair and stood up.

  “Well, then,” Miss Olivia said. “We’ll see you again next Saturday morning.”

  Oh, no, you won’t, Alma didn’t say.

  Alma dawdled on her way home, and by the time she reached the alley behind the Liffey Pub it had begun to rain. She ran the last of the way and used her key to open the door.

  She found her mother in her bedroom, sitting before a makeshift dressing table—a board resting on two upended wooden boxes, with a mirror above. She was brushing her hair, humming to herself. Alma sat on the edge of the bed and watched.

  Clara wore no makeup, just lipstick. Her chestnut hair was thick and lustrous, and she was proud of it. She kept it long—to her shoulder blades—but wore it up under an ugly white net when she was working in the Liffey. It was a rule.

  “How did your interview go?” Clara asked.

  “I don’t like them.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Olivia Chenoweth smells like dried flowers and she has crooked teeth. And her mother, who I’m supposed to call Miss Lily, is right scowly. She reminds me of Miss Havisham.”

  “Who?”

  “Miss Havisham, in Great Expectations. She’s skinny and ugly and she looks like she just got up out of a coffin.”

  Clara laughed and put down her brush. “Alma, that’s not nice. What’s the job?”

  “Copying out letters with an old-fashioned pen.”

  “No more than that?”

  “I have to do the envelopes, too. But I don’t want to go back.”

  “Well, Alma, I don’t want to go upstairs to that hot kitchen, either. But we need the money. So I want you to take the job. Try it out for a few weeks, at least.”

  “Then can I quit?”

  Clara tucked her hair under the net. “We’ll see,” she said.

  CHAPTER

  Six

  On Saturday morning, Alma ate a breakfast of tea with toast and blueberry jam, brushed her teeth, put on her coat and slipped quietly out the back door, locking it behind her.

  It was a sunny day and the air was chilly, carrying the heavy scent of seaweed, sand and salt, the sharp tang of autumn leaves. Alma walked quickly down Little Wharf Road. She didn’t want to be late on the first official day of her first official job. Because it faced west, the front of the Chenoweth house, as Alma now thought of it, was in shadow. Since her first visit, the porch railing had been repaired and painted. The dormer stared down on the street like a Cyclops eye. Alma thought of Hansel and Gretel finding the witch’s house in the forest. She crossed the street and lifted the knocker.

  Miss Olivia bade Alma good morning and let her in. Alma returned her greeting, noticing that, under the flower fragrance that seemed to envelope Miss Olivia like a cloud, was the faint whiff of perspiration.

  The cardboard cartons had been cleared away from the hallway. The odour of fried bacon and coffee hung in the air, and Alma could see the breakfast dishes on the kitchen table. Miss Olivia showed Alma into the sitting room. Just as she had promised, there was a folder on the desk to the left of the green blotter and another folder to the right.

  “Everything is ready, Alma,” Miss Olivia said. “Call out if you need me. I’ll just be in the kitchen.”

  “Yes, Miss Olivia.”

  Alma seated herself and opened the left file folder. Briefly, she savoured a wicked thought: if she made a poor job of copying this morning, Miss Lily might fire her, and Alma wouldn’t have to return to this spooky house anymore. The folder contained three sheets of paper, each with typing on it. She took a leaf of the creamy writing paper from the pigeonhole and placed it on top of a lined page, picked up the pen, lifted the brass lid of the inkwell, dipped the pen nib into the black liquid and began to copy.

  Dear Mr. O’Hare,

  Allow me to express my gratitude for your assistance in putting my affairs in order prior to our removal to Charlotte’s Bight. Though the circumstances leading to our decision were not at all happy, my daughter and I are resigned….

  When she had finished the body of the letter, Alma wrote “Sincerely,” followed by a comma, and left space for Miss Lily’s name. She took an envelope from the pigeonhole and wrote out the address, a law firm in Rockport, Massachusetts. Then she put down the pen. She got up from the desk and stepped into the hall.

  “Miss Olivia,” she called out.

  Olivia Chenoweth looked up from the kitchen table, which she was wiping down with a large rag.

  “Um,” Alma began.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “You didn’t tell me the return address,” Alma said. “To put on the envelope.”

  “You needn’t include it,” she said, rather abruptly.

  “Oh,” Alma replied, frowning. That’s strange, she thought. At school we learned always to include the return address. It’s a rule.

  She went back to the desk. The second letter was to someone named Madeleine.

  We have arrived and are set up in our

  new home, a modest but snug little spot

  by the harbour. Thank you again for

  your help. Should you wish to write to

  Olivia or me, you may send your letters

  to the usual address.

  The third was also short. It was addressed to a library in a place called Cambridge.

  Dear Mrs. Gatwick,

  Thank you for your invitation to visit your library and speak with your patrons. I fear I must decline, however, because I have recently moved.

  There were two more letters. It was past ten when Alma slipped the last sheet into the folder to the right. She carefully cleaned the brass nib and placed the pen in its holder. Pushing back her chair, she got up just as Miss Olivia entered the room.

  “Quite finished, Alma?”

  “Yes, Miss Olivia.”

  “Excellent. Then you’ll be on your way. See you next time.”

  When Alma got home, it was almost noon, and her mother was sitting at the kitchen table in slippers and bathrobe, a cup of tea before her and an open book propped against the teapot.

  On the floor by the icebox was a large cloth bag. The week’s laundry. Later, they would haul it to the old house by the park on Springbank Road, where Mrs. Squires took in laundry from the Liffey Pub and several restaurants. She kept three electric washing machines in her cellar, and on Saturday afternoons she rented one of them to Clara for a couple of hours.

  Clara would grocery shop while Alma sat under the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling, reading, accompanied by the slosh-slosh of the washer. When the wind-up timer on the shelf gave off its piercing ring, she would run the clothes through the wringer, cranking the handle with both hands as the clothes slipped into the rinse tub.

  Clara put down her book. “There’s a drop of tea left.”

  “No, thanks, Mom.”

  “Well, sit down anyway and tell me all about this new family in the
Stewart house.”

  “It’s the Chenoweth house now,” Alma said with authority.

  “Is it, indeed, then? So what about the occupants of the Chenoweth house?”

  Her mother loved gossip. Whatever she picked up from Alma would be passed on over drinks and dinner orders and tubs of dirty dishes in the kitchen of the Liffey Pub. Dutifully, Alma told all she knew.

  “So you didn’t see the old one today? The Miss Havisham woman?”

  “Miss Lily. No. And Olivia Chenoweth smells. And she has a space between her two front teeth.”

  “So you’ve said. And what about these letters?”

  Alma sat up straight in her chair. “Mom, I had to swear not to talk about them. They’re private. Miss Olivia said I should think of myself as a pen that writes them but doesn’t understand. Or something like that.”

  Clara stirred her cold tea. “I guess you’re right. You wouldn’t be much of a secretary if you blabbed, would you? Well, let’s get dressed and get some work done.”

  “I am dressed,” Alma said.

  “So you are. Then while I don my finest apparel, you can do up the dishes.”

  CHAPTER

  Seven

  One Monday after school Alma headed for the library, carrying her school bag. The trees around the square had turned blazing red and orange, and a chilly rain pattered on the broad leaves, knocking some of them to the soggy grass.

  To Alma, the large double door of panelled oak, shiny with varnish, adorned with long tubular brass handles darkened by many hands, was like the portal to a castle. She stepped inside and shook the rain from her coat before hanging it alongside six or seven others on the rack by the door, eyes averted from the stairs to the darkened basement, where, according to Robbie Thornton, the ghost of a dead janitor lurked.

  “Of course he’s dead,” Alma had sneered when Robbie told her the story of how the janitor had hanged himself from the steam pipe. “He couldn’t be a ghost otherwise, could he?”