Yet she did know something, didn’t she? Sarah sometimes sighed over the thought of how Charlie would miss John once he moved on from Idensea. And Betsey witnessed almost daily how he drove himself, his vision relentlessly future-fixed, except for that night on the Sultan’s Road. What if I am sick to the death?
She knew John—Mr. Jones—had ambitions that would take him from Idensea. She hadn’t thought when. She hadn’t thought soon. Sir Alton’s questions, the mention of a specific position, made it seem very soon.
“I suspect you would be as pleased as I,” Sir Alton said, “seeing an opportunity like that come to our Mr. Jones. Although, really, he is not quite ready for such a position—”
He stopped as her lips parted, ready to defend John. His eager accommodation made her change her mind and close her mouth.
He sighed. “I confess, I’d come to think of our Mr. Jones as part of Idensea—many of us imagined he was here for a good long while, working for the pier company. It would be good for him. He could marry. . . .”
The lightest pause.
“The company would help him to a house. . . . Perhaps you know Tinfell Cottage? A good house, some property with it. Fine start for a young family . . . should our Mr. Jones decide to stay on.”
She could have laughed. If it didn’t ache so, if it didn’t feel like such a vicious violation that he had guessed her simple, secret dream, she could have laughed, knowing she, of all people, had become useful to Sir Alton.
Perhaps you know Tinfell Cottage?
She didn’t give Sir Alton even a nod, but yes, she knew it. Later that afternoon, she went out of her way in order to pass it. The house was let for the season, and the family in residence appeared to be expecting guests for the evening, so standing here before it, she needed no imagination at all to see it occupied, humming with life. She imagined anyway. She dreamed in a way she had not since Thomas Dellaforde had allowed his mother to strike her a second time; she dreamed wildly and without boundaries.
John had taught her about such things. Mr. Jones and his mad railway tacked up on a wall, Mr. Jones and his fanciful notion that a type-writer girl was something else altogether.
She was in love with him. Soon he would be gone, off after his someday, and she was in love with him.
• • •
“My God, what a mess.”
Noel Dunning picked his way through a stack of building materials, pausing beside a tall crate of terra-cotta tiles. He lifted one tile out and studied it briefly before casting a glance up to the Kursaal, where the tile would soon become part of the frieze over the main entrance. “And you still entertain illusions of having it all done by August?”
John finished his count of pallets and signed the receipt before he answered. “You’ll see.” The tiles had arrived a week early, the skating rink floor would be finished tomorrow, and all things seemed possible today.
“I won’t, actually.” Dunning shrugged as John frowned at him. “That’s why I’m here, to trade farewells.”
He sounded so wistful, John knew at once he meant something more than another one of his jaunts to London or house parties in the countryside.
“I’m being sent away. That is, I’m being given a wonderful opportunity I’ve done nothing to deserve, so I’m given to understand. Father got a story, remarkably accurate given the roundabout fashion it came to him, but—ah, he didn’t mention it, I suppose? That I’d been playing a music hall?”
John gestured toward the Kursaal. “I would have recommended he book you here if he had.”
“Dreadful little dive. In Hoxton. We were there as spectators, just larking, you know. Some fellow—obviously a devoted patron of the arts—expressed his dissatisfaction with the show by chucking a chair over the pianist’s head. Knocked him cold, and, well, what could be done?”
“The show must go on,” John agreed.
“It was a lark. Penny—Lord Penderson—all but carried me down to the stage. No harm done, naught but a foolish lark that first night.”
“First.”
“It was near a week before the pianist was fit enough to return. What could be done?” Dunning attempted a careless smile. “The reek of the place is still in my suits. Can you imagine what it’s like to play somewhere like that, knowing you might be clubbed in the skull should they take a disliking to you?”
“You weren’t clubbed, by the looks of you.”
“No. I was not.” He reached inside his coat and repeated, “I was not.”
Dunning offered his cigarette case, but John nodded toward the crates surrounding them, all of them packed with sawdust.
“Right. Sorry.” Dunning snapped the case shut. “So I am bound for the Continent, it seems. Stepmother has convinced Father to let me study with a master in Vienna. Father studied under him, back when he cared about such things. I’m to be given a half year to study, a half to do something respectable with whatever I learn, and I’m to be very happy and grateful.”
He didn’t say why he was not. John supposed there was a world of difference between playing an East End music hall and studying with a European master, but still, it seemed a concession on Sir Alton’s part, one that once would have pleased Dunning.
“And you’ll miss the opening of the Kursaal?”
“You mean the one aspect of Father’s business that mildly interests me? Yes. I’m leaving within the week. Sir Alton wishes to have the twelvemonth done as soon as possible, I think. It will bring me back to Idensea all the earlier, you see, and I shall have all this nonsense behind me.”
“Surprised he may find himself, a year gone.”
Dunning accepted the encouragement with bleak graciousness. “You’re kind, Jones. Better than I deserve from you.” He broke off with an uneasy hesitation, and John wondered if he meant to bring up Lillian Gilbey’s musicale.
But Dunning blinked rapidly and seemed to change course, brightening with a suggestion. “What about a drive?”
John looked over his shoulder to where Dunning’s conveyance awaited, a high, fast stanhope hitched to Alouette, possibly the finest filly in Idensea, neither like anything commonly at John’s disposal. Even if John had carried any grudge against Dunning, it was not a bad peace offering. And though paperwork awaited him at the hotel, his day here was nearly done. Dunning waited while John tied off a few loose ends, and soon they were clipping along the lane, John at the reins, anticipating Hawkshaw Road.
“Do you know,” Dunning said, “we’d started working on the most horrid little operetta, Nash and I—you remember that fellow, the one I carried to London for you?”
With a response that was not quite human language, John indicated that he did indeed remember Avery Nash.
“I know, he isn’t a favorite with you, nor with Father, provided Father ever knew his name. But what a dull ride it would have been, all the way to London without a word passing between us. And as it happens, the man has a knack for the sentimental lyric and witty rhyme.”
“He’s well, then? In health?”
“Oh, I believe so.” Dunning seemed surprised by this inquiry, as was John himself. But if Betsey had one lingering concern for Avery Nash, it was whether her choices had left him in danger of sickening again. “From my observation, quite so. Hiring himself out to a number of theaters, I think, type-writing scripts . . .”
He trailed off as John turned on to Hawkshaw Road. Ahead lay a clean stretch and not so much as a pony cart in sight. John slapped the reins and let them slack, and felt the glory of Alouette’s freedom. Over the wind and the noise of the stanhope’s wheels, both he and Dunning whooped.
Someone walking a cycle had the greater wisdom or courtesy or outright fear, and moved off the lane well before they passed. “Let Alouette take it!” Dunning shouted, as though worried John would pull the reins. John didn’t need the encouragement. They flashed past the waiting cyclist, John realizing in the moment that it was Betsey standing there.
He brought Alouette to a stop more gently th
an was his impulse, Dunning cursing him all the while. Up at Tinfell Cottage, four children stared, and at the door, a housekeeper was glaring her disapproval. John touched his hat in apology, then dropped the reins in Dunning’s lap as he stood in the gig, turned round, and called to Betsey.
She had already continued on her way, walking her bicycle. She turned when she heard her name.
“Anything the matter?”
She looked about, and John could feel her distaste for shouting back at him on a public road, at least with witnesses. How he wanted her tire to be flat. But she waved that she was fine and moved on.
“I’d better see to her,” John said. He shook his head when Dunning offered the carriage—one of the three of them would be without a seat, and there was the bicycle, too.
“The operetta Nash and I were working on . . .” Dunning said as John hopped down. “We’d been speaking with that music hall owner about it. It seemed . . . well, I couldn’t help thinking all the while how it should make you laugh, Jones.”
John didn’t know whether Dunning meant the operetta itself or his choice of collaborator, which would surely have caused his father to implode and didn’t bring John’s heart any great warmth, either. John decided to err on the side of generosity, assuring Dunning, “Traveled to any reeking music hall in Britain, I would have, to hear it.”
Dunning accepted John’s hand. “It is more than I deserve,” he said, repeating himself.
• • •
Nothing was the matter with her bicycle, Betsey insisted; she’d only felt like walking for a bit. “Walking seemed safer,” she added while he was sitting on his heels, inspecting her tires and chain. “Lunatics drive this road, I’ve heard.”
“And a lonely stretch it has, too.” He gave her an eye as he rose off his heels. “It’s not your way home.”
“I can get there this way.”
There was a brief tussle over custody of the bicycle. She gave in too easily, he sensed, was avoiding looking at him. As they walked along, she admitted she was not yet headed to Sarah’s but had to place an order at the bookshop for Mr. Seiler and pay a call on the photographer who would be taking the picture of the Duke on the Sultan’s Road, two errands which made her route by Hawkshaw Road a more puzzling detour.
Her determination to look nowhere but ahead made it easier to steal glances. He might have become a master pickpocket by now, had he applied all this practice of slyness to purses rather than Betsey’s person. Then again, just this week Charlie Elliot had walloped him with the football and crossly asked whether he intended to play or watch Betsey hang her laundry.
The Esplanade, he promised himself. At the Esplanade, he would leave her to her errands; he would go to his office and do his paperwork.
Beneath the brim of her straw hat, her cheeks were pink. She was too hot in her tweed suit. He was too hot in his own suit. It was a hot day, very hot.
At the Esplanade, he suggested a water ice and waited for her outside the photographer’s studio. The ices were sold at the refreshment stand all the way at the head of the pleasure pier, and when she pointed out, “We’d have to pay the pier toll in order to be able to buy the ice,” he laughed, though it might have been wiser to hide how she delighted him, ever surprising him by being precisely herself. He convinced her that as it had been his idea in the first place, the fair thing was for him to pay the toll.
“I shall buy my own ice,” she warned.
“Mine will you buy. And I yours.”
Her eyes rolled, and he saw the start of her smile before she ducked her head. They left her bicycle with the photographer. John walked with his hands clasped behind him.
Really, it made no difference whether his paperwork was done now or a few hours from now, and this walk with Elisabeth Dobson seemed even more urgent when he discovered that in all the time she’d lived in Idensea, she’d never strolled the pier before. “The view from the Esplanade doesn’t cost a cent,” she explained as he fished his pockets at the tollhouse, but he heard the doubt in her voice, as though his shock that she’d never done this made her wonder what she had missed. He wanted to kiss her forehead. He himself had come onto the pier only for work or the sake of someone else’s entertainment, but how shameful that Betsey had passed by nearly every day and denied herself the fun of it.
“Show me what coins you have,” he said, and received a sort of suspicious, magic-beans compliance in return. He held her open hand and used a finger to sort the coins on her palm, pushing all of the ha’pennies and a few pennies together. The others he scooped up and placed in her other hand.
“Back in your pocket, these. And these”—he moved four ha’pennies into the valley of her palm—“you owe to me for an ice.”
“Owe you!” But her eyes danced.
“And the rest? What plans had you for them?”
“Only to cast them into the fountain in front of the Swan Park.”
He removed a penny for her pocket. “One wise wish is best.” Five pennies remained. “Now, you. Choose a pleasure.”
She let him close her fingers over the coins. He watched as she surveyed the pier, the vendors with their trays of postcards and rock and false pearls, the penny-in-the-slot machines offering views through a spyglass or cards imprinted with riddles (How can you make your trousers last? Make your shirt and coat first). Farther down sounded the delighted screeches of young girls trying the Shocking Scot, the most ridiculous application of electric power John knew—a penny deposited into the Scotsman’s mouth would cause his eyes to glow and provide a mild shock as you held his proffered hand. At the pier head, they’d find a fortune-teller, a chalk artist who rendered her subjects as merfolk or Greek deities, and a minstrel show.
But Betsey’s interest lay closer at hand, at the booth promising ASTOUNDING, ALL-MOVING VIEWS OF LIFE.
“I’ve always been curious about the camera,” she said. “What is it like?”
“A charm like a fairy’s whistle.” After the girders and struts that held the structure itself against the tides, the camera obscura was his favorite feature of the pier. “And plenty of sun, still, to make it worth your while today.”
Betsey considered the coins in her hand. Then she went to her pocket for that last penny. “I have admission for two.”
Nothing had changed, John told himself as the camera keeper let them in. If Betsey’s manner toward him seemed different, it was the effect of place, this spontaneous holiday they’d allowed themselves. Or it was Betsey herself who had changed, and it was not his doing, because he had been careful. Whenever she was looking, he had been a careful, perfect gentleman.
He pointed out the lens in the roof, explained the physics of the image it projected into the dark booth, unable to stop himself from peacocking. He heard her delighted gasp as he used the handles above to maneuver the lens, changing the views projected onto the round, plaster-topped table: The tram loading passengers on the Esplanade, with the old part of Idensea peeking up from behind the shops and the bandstand, a colored postcard come to life. Then the foreshore, looking like a slapdash job of tiling, so many umbrellas and blankets hiding the sand. Now here came the pier where the camera stood, chockablock with tourists in cream-colored serge. Then the sea itself, bright and alive and dry on Betsey’s palms.
“There, girl. All the world in your hands, just as you’d like it.”
She wiggled her fingers. She had removed her gloves before putting her hands into the spill of light, a childlike action that pierced his heart.
“You are the one who wants the world.”
It was so, he remembered, but just now, it felt the world went no farther than the thin walls of the camera, and held nothing but a shaft of light and the heat of summer and skin.
“You try,” he said, and guided her hands up to the handles so she could control the lens. The world on the table tilted. For the first time since that clumsy dance, he touched her body and permitted his hand to rest on her back. The tiny shelter of the camera seemed t
o hold all the day’s heat in it, turned it thick and dark and suffused it with the scent of her, of them together.
She brought the lens to rest on the pavilion at the head of the pier, then looked up from the table, eye to eye with him. The sea rolling on the tabletop shimmered in her pupils.
“Will I be the first girl you’ve kissed in here?”
Yes, he nearly answered. Here at the small of her back, her tweed jacket felt damp. He wanted to snake his fingers under the hem, under everything, dip his fingertips in the pool at the base of her spine.
He dropped his arm to his side. His thumb touched along each damp pad of his fingers.
“I’ll not kiss you, Elisabeth.” His whisper penetrated the commotion on the pier, just beyond the walls of the camera. “Kiss you back, that’s what.”
“Mm,” she scoffed, an inch from his face.
He moved away, sitting upon the table in a wash of restless blue light. “Come with it, if you’ll have it.”
He counted the centuries before she moved between his knees. She flipped his hat to the ground, ran her fingers in the sweat along his hairline. Then she put her mouth there, drew her lips lightly along that damp, salty line. His arms ached with tension of holding them down, not clutching at her when she drew back.
She put her fingertips to her lips. “Come with it,” he repeated, and she came and licked the moisture above his lip, and it was enough, and his patience was spent. He caught her, finding that damp spot on her back again and pressing her close, nudging his mouth to cover hers, tasting salt, scalding his tongue: He kissed her back. Until they both were puddles of desire and the camera keeper was pounding at the door, he kissed her back.
Alphabet sentence: Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
—How to Become Expert in Type-writing
Outside the camera, in the violence of the sunlight, he felt like something just ladled out of a boiling pot. Betsey herself appeared rather unfocused, and after a moment of gazing at him, during which her lips were parted in the most dizzying way, she made for the railing and leaned into the wind, as a seasick steamer passenger might have done.
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