The Typewriter Girl

by Atlee, Alison

  “Any more?”

  He seemed to need to think about it. She had never had a man take so long to decide whether he would kiss her, to make such a to-do over the business, and it felt like a loss. Maybe it was an insult, this indecision, but all she felt was that she had been cheated before now; all she wanted to say was the same foolishness she’d whispered last night: I think you’re rather wonderful.

  “How is your—” His finger hovered over her lip.

  “Better.”

  “A bit of sun you’ve got. Here.” He touched her then, his finger grazing the bridge of her nose. She held her breath, she held herself still as he said, “And here,” and pressed each apple of her cheek.

  “Come without my hat, haven’t I?”

  He was not for her. He’d said so. But maybe he was. It seemed they both were thinking maybe he was, and so she took his cap from his head and set it on her own. It promptly slipped down to her eyes. Laughing, she peeked out from underneath, idling her fingers along the brim.

  To her horror, this ounce of flirtation crashed the scales. Mr. Jones turned from her, back to the sea. For some time, he said nothing, only studied his laced fingers while she wilted under his cap.

  “Sir Alton is a composer, did you know?”

  Betsey supposed this to be some effort to rub out the past few minutes, put the scales to rights. It showed him a fast learner, since it was a better tack than telling her to get a dancing frock.

  “No.”

  “Well, no more, but he was. ’Twas how he came into his title, his music.”

  “And he gave it up to open a hotel?”

  “Not because he wanted to become a man of business. Hates that part of it, from what I can tell. No, he was bankrupt, or close to it. The Idensea estate he had, and that was all. Lady Dunning’s his second wife—she was the one with the money.”

  “Always an answer to a prayer, the rich wife.”

  Probably he glanced at her during the following beat of silence. She was watching her fingers comb the grass, her face still shielded by his cap.

  “Sir Alton’s, sure,” he admitted evenly. “But not only because of her money. Lady Dunning has sense, all sorts of it. All the best touches in the hotel, the ones that delight people and make them want to come again—Lady Dunning, that is. ’Twas she who saw what Idensea could be, convinced him it was worth the risk. He dreads it, risk. And that’s what I’m saying to you, Betsey.”

  The sound of her name lifted her head with the sense that she should’ve been paying better attention, that this accounting of Sir Alton’s history had not been mere distraction.

  Mr. Jones pushed the bill of the cap up off her face. “I learned quick his decisions come from fear, and that he portions out his trust the way Dora Pink does her lamb stew. Lady Dunning he trusts, and Tobias, and certain of the board members. Me, too.”

  So she would be foolish to go to Sir Alton alone. That’s what he was saying. Without calling her foolish, without forbidding her to do it, that’s what he was saying.

  She took off his cap, set it on the grass between them. Promptly, his hand covered it and rested there.

  “Something else I know. A heart-knocking thing it can be, coming alone to a place like Iden Hall and wondering whether you should go to the front or use a service door.”

  She had no trouble guessing what his decision had been. She knew he was right, about how it would feel to go alone, how anything she said would be useless if Mr. Jones wasn’t there to validate it.

  She might as well go to a duel with a piece of straw. If she hoped to keep her job, she had better say, Yes, I need you with me.

  “I understand.” She stood and started for the hedgerow where they’d left the cycles. “You’d better come tomorrow then, I suppose,” she added over her shoulder.

  How stupid. She couldn’t say it to his face. She’d thought she’d held steel, not straw. She’d put his cap on her head. How stupid.

  She heard him close behind her as she took hold of her cycle, telling her not to mount yet, that they would walk partway down.

  Now she turned to him. “You said we’d coast.”

  “I’d forgot how steep it is. Too steep, and you new at this. You don’t know how it can get away from you.”

  Arguing was pointless. Neither of them could question his greater experience, and only Betsey could trust her deep knowledge that she was ready to take on the hill. She didn’t know if she did trust it, but she was ready to try it, do something out of his reach.

  “I understand. Very well.”

  He released the cycle to her and turned to retrieve his own.

  She’d mounted and was careering down the hill before he had a chance to remind her about how to steer if she began to fall. She was a witch, streaking away on her broomstick.

  The bicycle had no brake. A brake was an unnecessary weight, Mr. Jones had said, damaging to the tires, too, and he had demonstrated backpedaling as a way to slow the cycle. Betsey was hardly proficient at it, but with the bottom of the hill still so far off, she didn’t care and was glad no brake weighted her down. Her sleeves snapping against her skin, her shins exposed, and her hair escaping its pins, she flew and knew glory. In her arms, in her pelvis and spine, the machinery vibrated, and she understood perfectly that the control she felt was an illusion, a thread easily snipped.

  Well, wasn’t it always? Just rarely in so thrilling a fashion. This flight had death or disemployment at its conclusion, she felt sure, but she kept her feet on the coasting pegs all the same.

  The ground leveled. She heard Mr. Jones pedaling up behind her, demanding to know whether she had any idea what a lucky fool she was.

  “Indeed I do, Mr. Jones.” She glanced over to him, but for the life of her, could not mask her rapture behind anything suggesting contrition. She saw his irritation, but she also saw it giving way to . . .

  She had to watch where she was going. Whatever displaced his anger, she missed it. But he played poorly that evening. In her room, trying to describe cycling in a letter to Caroline, Betsey shut the windows on him.

  Your employer will prize you more highly and will pay you better if he sees that you are careful about his property.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  Mr. Seiler would accompany her and Mr. Jones to Iden Hall, Betsey learned Monday morning. He summoned her to his office to see what she had prepared and made her a gift of a simple but pretty hair comb. “My wife often presents these to her staff,” he said, and did not suggest she make use of it immediately, though the Swan Park’s chambermaids appeared starched and impeccable at all times.

  Later that afternoon, they stopped by the Kursaal construction site to collect Mr. Jones. Mr. Seiler had to put more than one of the workers to the task of finding him—it was a sprawling property which, when it opened in August, would hold a recital hall, winter garden, and skating rink, amongst other amusements. Betsey wished it were open now so she could be charging more for the excursions. Though the Kursaal presently was surrounded by an expanse of rutted mud, it was a beautiful structure, a fanciful tribute to a Greek temple, all pale stone and pediments and columns. Iron and glass wrapped the lowest floor, winging out from the entrance and ascending to a high barrel vault in the rear.

  Betsey liked seeing Mr. Jones come out from under some scaffolding, carrying his coat and beating dust out of it as he spoke to a laborer. The Kursaal was situated east of the pier, closer to the Swan Park, upon the cliff overlooking the Esplanade, and Betsey had never been so near before. All this under Mr. Jones’s care and direction, and Sir Alton was pulling him from it for that scuffle of Avery’s. Some of her fear of Sir Alton subsided with this realization, diluted by simple irritation on Mr. Jones’s behalf.

  He swung into the carriage with a somewhat absent greeting and something about electrical wiring. He gestured at Mr. Seiler. Am I presentable? Betsey was amused to interpret. As far as she could discern, Mr. Seiler did no more than nod, but the next moment, Mr.
Jones swiped his pocket handkerchief over the tops of his boots.

  And then he frowned at her. “Where is your uniform?”

  “It needs mending,” she replied, taken aback. “And it is for Saturdays, anyway. And anyway, what is the difference to you?”

  “Miss Dobson,” Mr. Seiler murmured.

  She’d been too sharp. Her nerves. However, what was the difference to him? “Forgive me.”

  Mr. Seiler regarded her kindly. “Your attire is appropriate and you look well.”

  “I didn’t mean”—Mr. Jones yanked at his shirt cuffs—“that she didn’t . . . that you don’t . . . well, it is only that the uniform . . .” With a guttural sigh, he stretched an arm across the back of his empty seat and looked out the side of the barouche. “It does you something.”

  Betsey almost wished she had worn it. Today might have been her last chance. What if she were dismissed before it had been paid for?

  Too, she could have used the boost of confidence the uniform gave her as the footman admitted them inside Iden Hall. Though the manor house lacked the Swan Park’s magnificence, she felt the same intimidation she’d experienced her first day at the hotel. Worse, rather, knowing everything was for the use of one man and his family.

  Add to that the fact she was evidently not expected. Indeed, Mr. Seiler had to introduce her as though she and Sir Alton had not met two nights ago. But it was a pleasure, Sir Alton assured her, and ordered a chair for Miss . . . Dobson, and himself pointed where it should be placed, right beside his desk, subtly beyond the boundary of easy conversation and conferral.

  Considerately, he had folded the newspapers to the pages reporting the “incident,” or “brawl,” or “disorder,” or “rioting,” as it was variously labeled. No London papers thus far; they were all provincial, the first page of the Gazetteer and less sensational mentions in the others, a few lines amongst the resort notices. Mr. Jones passed them her way once he and Mr. Seiler had skimmed them. They stacked up on her lap, and she could not stop herself from reading and rereading. Preparing for the meeting, gaining distance from the event itself, had dulled the disastrous edge it had held for her. The printed accounts brought it all back.

  “It is not what we would hope,” conceded Mr. Seiler. “But let us consider also the good to come from Idensea this summer. The Sultan’s Road, for example, opening within the week.”

  Betsey winced. She knew from Mr. Jones that Sir Alton had hated the pleasure railway from the first suggestion, and had grown no fonder of it during construction. Quickly, Mr. Jones added, “And after that, the Kursaal opening and the visit from the Duke. People will think of those things when they think of Idensea.”

  “If only you’d mentioned this earlier,” Sir Alton said. He sat sideways of his desk, and she could not see much of his face, but he sounded so very amenable. “I should have slept like a newborn these past nights, having heard such charming tales. What do you think, Miss Dobson?”

  She needed the expectant glances of Mr. Jones and Mr. Seiler to fully realize he’d spoken to her. He’d neither looked her way nor varied the low, rhythmic cadence of his voice.

  “Is my anxiety for Idensea’s reputation excessive?” he went on, now exerting himself to speak over his arm to her. “Am I mistaken in assuming persons of Class will find a horde of brawling bricklayers an undesirable addition to their seaside holiday?”

  They weren’t bricklayers; they were from a glassworks, craftsmen with their wives, the booking approved by Mr. Seiler himself before she’d been hired. And who was to say a party of bricklayers would not have been better behaved?

  And what in hell did she know of persons of Class?

  Which was why he’d asked her. He’d not been addressing her at all, only making a point to Mr. Jones and Mr. Seiler.

  She peeked at those two men for some guidance as to how she should respond or an indication that one of them would intervene, but Mr. Seiler’s expression was inscrutable, while Mr. Jones merely appeared interested, as though she were about to take the stage.

  Well, maybe she would. Playact. Sir Alton could play a man, and she could play like she wanted him to like her.

  “A brawling horde of anything would spoil my holiday, I’m quite certain,” she agreed. At last, Sir Alton turned in her direction. She took the opportunity to catch his eye and smile at him warmly. “The couple above my old London flat is proof enough of that, and they only spoilt my tea once or twice a month. Now then.” She passed the newspapers that had collected in her lap to Mr. Jones. “You’ll let me show you these figures? I’ve waited to see what you think of them.”

  At Sir Alton’s raised brow, Mr. Jones said, “You’ll want to know the financial consequences of suspending the excursions scheme before you ask the board’s approval.”

  A mild threat. Sir Alton took it with apparent grace. “It sounds very informative. Do proceed, Miss Dobson.”

  She opened her ledger, no staging in the fumbling she did with the pages. “A bit keyed up,” she confided in a playful hush and took an unhurried moment to remove her gloves.

  “You wouldn’t mind if I . . . ?” From the awkwardly positioned chair, she moved behind his desk and placed the ledger before him. “Won’t this be better?”

  “You are my guest.”

  One could find satin and velvet at the rag shop, but one would do well to check for mites. Sir Alton sounded disconcertingly sincere, and Betsey found she simply could not judge the hazard. Her heart thumping, she leaned over his arm, created a space for only the two of them, and began at the end, what the earnings could be by September with every Saturday booked, how she had asked and received more for the summer’s later bookings. She grazed her fingertips prettily over the pages of her notebook, guiding his inspection of her correspondence lists and advertising copy, proof she was not offering the hotel grounds willy-nilly to dustmen and navvies. Her budget error—easy enough to tuck that behind all the promise of what was to come.

  She suspected she might have done rather well. Straightening from Sir Alton’s side, she looked first to Mr. Jones.

  His expression was grim, pinched. He might have had a stray pin in his coat.

  Mr. Seiler’s “Thank you, Miss Dobson” brimmed with approval. But without validation from Mr. Jones, she felt it less.

  Sir Alton said “Thank you,” too, shutting the covers of her books and sliding them to her. “It’s enchanting, hearing you speak of numbers. Please make yourself comfortable again—I confess myself too seasoned by etiquette to let you stand whilst we gentlemen take our ease.”

  She took her books. Mr. Jones rose to pull her chair closer to his, in front of the desk, but it was too late. She was hot with dismay.

  “Pray tell, Mr. Jones,” Sir Alton said, “are you as clever with dogs, or monkeys, say, as you are with type-writer girls?”

  “Depends on the heart of the beast, I find.”

  She wanted to crack her ledger over one of their heads—it was only a question of which one.

  “Mr. Seiler, you’ve seen these plans?” asked Sir Alton.

  “Certainly. You know I shared your concerns, but the scheme makes good use of the resources the hotel has already, and putting Swan Park in the black a full season sooner than expected is no small consideration.”

  “Forgive me, I must disagree. Compared to the hotel’s good name, the difference of a season is a small consideration, especially when we’ve had a clear warning of how wrong this pavilion venture could go. You’re very kind to remind me, Jones, that we must carry on with this nonsense until the next board meeting, but you’ll understand I would be shirking my duty if I did not include the matter on the next agenda. Until then, we shall suspend any future bookings—”

  “Suspend bookings!” Betsey broke in. “The summer is brief enough, I could be filling Fridays and Sundays, as many—”

  “Sun. Days.” Sir Alton’s interruption, quiet and swinging with cheer and amusement, stopped her protest. “What an extraordinary notion, Miss Do
bson.”

  Betsey bit down on her lip, exchanged a quick, communicative glance with Mr. Jones. It was not an extraordinary notion; it was a damn good, logical next step. But she ought have kept it to herself a little longer.

  “Speaking as a shareholder, I assure you a season makes a difference to me,” Mr. Jones said. “And clearly, it makes a difference to the board. It may make a further difference when they learn none of the excursionists were involved Saturday.”

  “Innocent bystanders, all of them? Extraordinary.”

  “Unless they were helping to break it up. It was provoked mainly by one fellow, as I understand it to have gone, and he’s a—an incorrigible blackguard, obviously, but the constable’s dealing with him, and he won’t be back.”

  Betsey smiled to hear Mr. Jones use a priggish word like blackguard to describe Avery. It was surely for Sir Alton’s benefit, though that promise, he won’t be back, held more conviction than she felt. She added, “The rest were locals or others who had no call to be there. Mr. Seiler and I have already decided to post more staffers to make certain the gathering remains private.”

  “A fine idea. I shall recommend the suspension of the scheme at the next board meeting, so our manageress here needn’t trouble herself with making new bookings.” He stood and extended his hand to Betsey, who in her confusion over this gesture, could only reciprocate. Patting her hand, he lilted cheerfully, “In fact, I absolutely forbid it.”

  • • •

  “Manageress,” Betsey said, as though substituting the word for a good hard spit over the side of Tobias’s rig.

  John could swear his eyes ached from all the darting they’d done, watching that duel of amity and good manners between her and Sir Alton. She couldn’t appreciate how well she’d come out.

  “You were flirting with him.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise, then it seemed a denial was forthcoming, but finally, she settled her hellion brows in a mutinous angle.