by Toni Jordan
‘Was it difficult, typesetting a book in the late 1930s?’
‘Very. Operating a linotype was extremely skilled work.’
She doesn’t know what a linotype is. She’s never heard of it.
He shakes his head and leans back in his chair. ‘If you’d stuck it out, you’d know all this. You’d have your PhD by now. Maybe I should show you, what do they call it—tough love? Force you to come back to the department. I’m sure I could find room for you on my team.’
She folds her hands in her lap. She waits. She looks calm, she thinks, and that’s what matters.
‘A linotype is a machine, kind of like a typewriter attached to a hot metal casting apparatus. That’s how type was set for books back then. The operators were very well paid, highly sought after. People were apprenticed at it, it wasn’t easy to learn. Huge concentration required. The keyboard had ninety characters. It was hot and dirty and if the machine jammed, a great chunk of hot lead would squirt out and land on your leg. And there was a lot of pressure. Every mistake meant a rubbish slug, straight in the bin. Linotype operators were the highest paid people in a publishing company. Sometimes they earned more than the editor.’
‘How did it work?’
‘Ingenious, really. The operator would sit in front of it and type, and then the machine made a line out of moulds of the letters. Then they were cast as a single piece for each line, in metal. A slug. The lines slid together to make a page.’
‘A single line, in one piece?’
‘That’s what I said.’ He moves towards a grey metal filing cabinet behind the door, the last in a set of three, squats with his knees wide and rifles through some hanging folders. ‘Here.’ He hands her a sheet.
It’s a photo of a huge black machine with a small keyboard, and an apparatus behind it with many levers and arms. At the top, there’s a sloping screen and some kind of roller. It’s hulking and vaguely malevolent. It’s not what she imagined at all.
‘Do you think that machine could be described as using “horrible little letters”?’
He shrugs. ‘That sounds more like a description of setting type by hand. That’s when you manually pick up each individual letter, called a sort, and slide it into a composing stick. When did you say, ’38? Hand composition was long gone by then, except for things like headlines and specific design effects. Linotypes were introduced in the 1880s. By the 1910s, they were everywhere.’
In an instant, two separate truths occur to Caddie. One: Inga didn’t know how books were typeset. She didn’t know about linotypes. She’d never seen one. She’d had the same image in her head that Caddie had, of Charles Cleborn picking up each letter individually and setting it in a frame. And two: Charles, with his New York townhouse, his money and cravats, his famous impatience, wasn’t the kind of man to apply himself to that noisy, dirty machine. Charles had lied to Inga. He hadn’t typeset The Days, the Minutes himself. There was someone else who had read the book.
‘Hello?’ says Philip. ‘Anyone home?’
‘Were they always men, on the linotypes? Were there any women?’
‘Not that I’ve ever heard of. Christ, is this some feminist thing? Have you gone off men, Caddie? Jumped the fence?’
He’s only half-joking. He wants her to say yes. He wants a reason she hasn’t called him in all these years. She has a flash of memory: his bathtub, an old claw-foot type that took forever to fill. The white peaks of their knees the tips of waves on a tumultuous sea. His house, flat-roofed sixties style surrounded by bush in the numbered avenues in St Lucia, and his spare Danish furniture, the bare timber and lack of ornamentation that spoke to her of straitened circumstances. The key under the potted cactus by the back door where no one could see her comings and goings. He kept his good whisky lined up on the top of his dresser in the bedroom—it was cooler. The taste of it, from cold, heavy crystal and from his warm mouth. His tanned skin against her pale flesh. The simultaneous feeling that she’s the luckiest girl in the world to be there with him and the equal certainty he’s picked her out of the class because he knows she’s the weakest, like a leopard eyeing an antelope on Wild Kingdom. She feels a red heat spread up her throat, her face. Coming here was a mistake, she sees it now.
‘If you typeset a book, using one of these machines—is it the same as reading it? I mean, could you absorb the text that way?’
He rests his chin on his threaded fingers. ‘I guess you could, if you focused. Mostly, operators didn’t pay any attention to the words they were typesetting. It was difficult enough just working the machine.’
‘If there were any female linotype operators back then, how could I find out?’
‘A boyfriend? You must have a boyfriend. Put me out of my misery, Caddie. The idea of you, lovely you, all alone will keep me awake at night. Tell me he’s treating you right.’
She flutters her eyelids. ‘I’m holding out for a particular kind of man. One who can tell me if there were any female linotype operators in New York in 1938—or even which operators worked for which publishing houses.’
Philip laughs. ‘You’re joking. About a quarter of all people working in publishing in the US back then lived in New York. Maybe forty thousand people. There were hundreds of men on linotypes, more if you count apprentices. Maybe thousands. Finding a woman among all of them? And besides, they weren’t the kind of people who went down in the historical record.’
This isn’t the end of the road. It can’t be. ‘There must be some way of finding out.’
He leans forward across the desk. ‘Why? What’s going on?’ His eyes narrow. ‘What are you not telling me?’
She opens her mouth to tell him about the woman, but his eyes are narrowed and gleaming. ‘It’s nothing,’ she says instead. ‘A puzzle. How can I find out?’
‘Caddie. Sweetie. It was nearly fifty years ago, on another continent. If a woman was enough of a novelty—maybe the New York Times might have mentioned it? There’s a vast collection here in the library. Maybe they’d have interviewed somebody or featured something. But you’d have to spend days in front of the microfiche. Weeks, more like it. And it’s highly doubtful you’d find a thing. Drone work for dull people, and a long shot. I’m sure you could think of much more rewarding things to do with your time.’
‘Would anyone else know more about this? Anyone at all.’
He sweeps his arm. ‘I’m not sure if you’re aware, but this, my Caddie, is Queensland. The inter-war American publishing industry is not exactly our specialisation. If you wanted to know about thoroughbred blood proteins or cattle-breeding programs? World leaders, mate. You could talk to Jamieson, if you can keep him awake. I used to know a mad Karlson groupie who was the apple of the dean’s eye until he dropped out in a cloud of angst to become some kind of bric-a-brac dealer but I haven’t seen him in years. Some people have all the luck in the world and still throw everything away.’
This ‘Karlson groupie’. Jamie, surely? Were he and Philip close, prior to a falling-out? The speed with which this thought comes to her: Jamie Ganivet has been burning at the edges of her mind all day while she tried to focus on other things. The heft of him, in contrast to Philip’s angles. She hesitates.
‘Leave me your contact details and I’ll let you know if anything else occurs to me,’ he says. ‘I don’t bite. Normally. Only on special request.’
He hands her a pen and paper, and she writes down her home address but not her phone number. He folds the paper and slips it in his pocket.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s behind this little flight of fancy? A research project?’ he says.
If things had worked out differently, she might have her own PhD now. She’d be working here, perhaps, as a tutor or junior lecturer. She’d have the office next door. But—and this is hard for her to admit, even to herself—the thing she’d wanted when she was so, so young, was to marry him. She’d wanted to make a home with him, to cook him dinner at the end of the day. Fill a page with ‘Caddie Carmichael’ in cur
sive script.
‘I don’t research anything. I work in a bookshop.’ She stands. He’s a busy man, she knows. She should be grateful for his time, his attention, little flight of fancy or not. ‘Thanks anyway. I appreciate it.’
‘Don’t be like that,’ he says, and he really is very attractive, with his jawline and his lovely eyes, and he knows it. For years she’s been moving through the days alone. Cold at night, calm when she wakes. Never late, heart always steady, clean and tidy.
He leans forward across the desk. ‘You’re older now. You’re no longer a student here. I miss you. We could go to the Kookaburra, have a quiet dinner.’
There’s a noise behind her: she turns and in the doorway is Jo, holding a styrofoam cup. ‘Excuse me, professor. I thought…’
‘And an excellent thought it was too,’ Philip says to her, ‘Ms Walker and I were just finishing up.’ And then, to Caddie: ‘You have everything you need now, yes? If there’s anything else I can do, you’ll get in touch? I mean it, Caddie. Anything at all.’
‘Yes,’ Caddie says. ‘Yes, I will.’
Her legs feel somehow unwound at the hips, but she walks to the door, passing Jo, who hands the coffee to Philip. The girl is beautiful: lean and glowing. Caddie feels a wild surge of energy as she passes her in the doorway. That girl would kick her in the shins given half a chance.
*
A few days later, Caddie sees a punk sitting on the carpet in the furthest corner of the bookstore reading Burroughs’ The Wild Boys. Her crown of hair spikes is a good handspan in height and only the top three are crimson to match her eyeshadow and her lips and the tartan of her tights, visible between her black skirt and massive buckled boots. She must be boiling, thinks Caddie, and that jacket covered in buttons and studs surely weighs a tonne.
The girl doesn’t look troubled. Her legs are crossed despite the boots. Christine is indulgent towards the store readers. It’s better than if they shoplift, she says, because at least we have a chance of selling the book. Caddie feels the same and besides, she’s fond of the punks. She likes the trouble they take. She leaves the girl alone, although she is doubtful about Burroughs. Maybe she should recommend Lessing?
Christine comes up behind her and taps her on the shoulder. ‘Normally I wouldn’t say anything.’
‘Right,’ says Caddie. ‘You’ve always been the kind of person who keeps her opinions to herself.’
‘You’re not applying for jobs, are you? Or starting your own business, or something? Not that I’d blame you. But you’ve definitely been weird. Not normal.’
‘I was normal before?’ says Caddie. ‘Jeez, Chrissie, you might have said something.’
Christine folds her arms. ‘Phone.’ She jerks her head towards the office. ‘A man. Of the male persuasion.’
In the back room, Caddie picks up the receiver and says hello.
‘Finally. I’ve rung four bookstores looking for a Caddie.’
Jamie Ganivet.
‘I didn’t expect to hear from you. I was pretty sure you’d be glad to see the back of me.’
‘I didn’t expect to be calling. But I had a visit this morning from an old colleague. Professor Philip Carmichael of Queensland Uni.’
Caddie remembers Philip’s hooded eyes, his fingertips lightly touching, his gentle condescension—cover for his ultra-competitive brain, ticking away. ‘What does this have to do with me?’
‘I’m not sure. He asked about the Karlson exhibition, if anyone had been in contact with me looking for information about a typesetter. The same question you asked: could anyone else have read the book and remembered it. A woman. He also asked if I knew who Charles’s usual linotype operators were. He thought someone might approach me.’
She should have expected this. ‘Is that all?’
‘Only that if someone should contact me, he’d appreciate a call. One scholar to another. And here’s the thing: he bought a nice first edition Rilke I’ve had for a while. Letters to a Young Poet. Hardback. Light sunning and the spine is cocked and a bit loose, but very nice. I’m dropping it in to him when it gets back from the binders.’
‘So he bought a book.’
‘Last time I saw him we didn’t part on the best of terms. Today, he couldn’t have been more charming. He even bought something without trying to bargain me down. Which means he wants something.’
‘You don’t like him,’ Caddie says.
‘I wouldn’t say that. He’s very likeable. I just think he’s a prick.’
Silence stretches between them.
‘I went to see him last week,’ Caddie says. ‘To ask about typesetters. I know him. A bit. From years ago. When I was a student.’
‘Do you,’ says Jamie.
The plastic receiver seems all at once heavier in her hand.
‘I didn’t say anything about the Karlson exhibition. He couldn’t have possibly known about that.’
‘Did you mention 1938, specifically?’
She did. She had to be specific, to find out what she needed to know.
‘You show up, asking those kinds of questions while the whole city is talking about the fragments? He’s not stupid.’
She winds her fingers in the phone cord. Philip must have guessed how difficult it was for her to ask for his help. He could only conclude that there was an important reason for her behaviour, one that would be worth his while to discover.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘If you mean: did I tell him about you, and who you’re looking for—this Rachel—then no. I told him that I had no patience with Inga conspiracy theories, and zero tolerance for people wasting my time. He knows me well enough to know that’s true. But, Caddie, I know him pretty well too. He won’t give in if he thinks there’s something to find.’
She uncurls her fingers from the phone cord. ‘But there’s nothing to find. You were right—there’s no way of knowing if the woman knew the line or was making it up. It’s a dead end.’
He pauses. She can hear a vague clunking and sliding. It’s a familiar sound—a box of books being delivered? Until then she hadn’t considered the similarities of their work, only the differences. Caddie can hear him breathe. She can almost feel it against the pink of her ear. Through the crack in the door she sees the punk girl look around, then slip the Burroughs into her bag.
‘Sharks can pick up one drop of blood in a million drops of water,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘My father used to sail. That was one of his sayings. He knew about stuff like that, fishing and sharks and what you should do if you fall overboard. He used to check my backpack before we left to make sure I wasn’t trying to smuggle a novel on board.’
‘He sounds fun.’
‘Oh, he was. Up at six for callisthenics, then reef the jib. My knot-tying skills are world class.’
‘I don’t think Charles typeset the book,’ she says. ‘I’m sure he didn’t. So maybe the woman was the typesetter.’ She tells him about her father’s temperament, the little letters, her misunderstanding.
‘Not exactly conclusive,’ he says. ‘What do you want to do now?’
‘Does this mean you believe me?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far. But I suspect there’s a possibility of giving Philip the absolute shits and that’s very appealing.’ He sighs, into her ear. ‘Or maybe after all these years, I’m still a little in love with Inga.’
‘The university library has the New York Times from the late thirties. Philip suggested that if there’s any evidence of a female typesetter working in New York back then it might be there. But it’s too big a job.’
‘Too big a job for one person, maybe,’ Jamie says. ‘Not for two.’
10
Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1938
Rachel does not make a sound. She creeps to the kitchen and back again, nudges her ear against the door and hears nothing but guttural breathing from outside. The room becomes very clear around her: the green tin light shade above her head; the three lace
-fronted shelves above the low dresser; the chipped blue enamel milk jug and matching coffee pot and two shiny saucepans hanging on hooks. A Goodrich calendar with sailing boats at harbour in front of a dawning sky. Time passes; she doesn’t know how long but a patch of sun appears on the floor. Then she hears a voice so like her father’s that her stomach turns over.
‘I’m hungry, Rach, light the stove.’
It’s George, barefoot and rubbing his eyes. He’s close to twelve now, a little man.
She puts her finger to her lips. George waits and soon they both hear it. A shuffling on the porch, a scrape of arm and boot sole on timber. Fabric rustling like the shake of a damp dog. Then Rachel hears the knock of a single knuckle on the door.
‘Mary, my love.’ Walter clears his throat. ‘I seem to have misplaced my key.’
Rachel and George stand stock-still.
Another few knocks, a jaunty rat-a-tat-tat.
‘Georgie boy, there’s a good lad. Are you there? A man could freeze to death out here.’
Mary appears in the hall in her nightgown and a blanket, hair soft and loose around her shoulders. She cannot take her eyes off the door. Hand to her mouth, ghost face.
Now the whomp of a flat of a hand against the door. Now the side of a fist and a forearm.
George starts toward the door, stops.
‘I’m asking nice for the last time,’ Walter says. ‘Open this door or there’ll be hell to pay.’
Rachel feels a thousand insects crawling under her skin. ‘Papa?’ she says. ‘Is that you? Where’ve you been all this time?’
‘Rachel, there’s my good girl,’ Walter says. ‘Open up now.’
‘It’s been months, Papa,’ Rachel says. ‘Whatever became of you? We thought you’d passed over.’
A throaty sound that might have been a laugh. ‘No, no, Rachel. I’m sound and well, praise the lord, though not for want of effort from some people in the world.’
Mary staggers to a chair and folds into it. George drops to his heels as though his legs can no longer bear his weight.
‘Everyone’s been looking for Helen, Papa.’