The Typewriter Girl

by Atlee, Alison

  “I’m going with Sophie when she leaves,” Sarah added, referring to her older daughter. Betsey nodded, glad. The only times she’d seen Sarah somewhat at peace since Charlie’s passing were when she was with Sophie’s children, an infant and a plump toddler.

  “Perhaps I won’t come back.”

  “Oh, Sarah,” Betsey sighed, aching for her.

  She asked if Betsey would oversee the management of the house until she decided what she would do. None of the servants could do the account books, and Dora Pink, well, Sarah would not say a word against her, but Betsey understood Sarah’s reluctance to give Dora official authority over the house and the rest of the servants—she claimed enough as it was.

  “And Charlie’s room . . .” she began, but got no further. Betsey closed her umbrella and climbed into the carriage, circling her hand over Sarah’s back as she promised again and again that of course Charlie’s room should not have boarders, of course it was his room, his room alone.

  Eventually, Sarah calmed. With the whistle of the London train sounding in the distance, she refused to allow Betsey to see her home but did accept the company of the hotel page Betsey had along to assist her.

  After the page and Betsey had changed places, Sarah pursed her lips at the depot. “I hope he returns before I—in time for me to—”

  “Sarah,” Betsey said firmly. “If John believed you were spending a moment of worry over how he cares for you or whether he forgives you, it would kill him.”

  But she understood Sarah’s anxiety, her desire to speak the truth, not let it exist in implication only. Since Miss Gilbey’s sudden departure, Betsey feared John might not come back at all, that she would never again have the chance she had squandered before.

  It felt lonely, frightening, to see Sarah drive away. She’d promised to take care of the lodging house, but what would it be, deprived of Charlie and Sarah? What would Idensea be to her if Sir Alton forced her dismissal from the hotel? And if John—

  Not now. Not until Baumston & Smythe had concluded its most pleasant outing ever and was headed back to London. So resolved, she hoisted her sign welcoming Baumston & Smythe, Insurers to Idensea and drilled her attention to the rail station.

  And there was her sister. Betsey caught her breath, seeing Caroline on the top step of the entrance, so far ahead of the other passengers in disembarking that it seemed she might have been the only one aboard. Caroline saw her, too, and cried out and came dashing down the steps, heedless of the rain.

  “You wrote me Richard would not hear of coming!” Betsey exclaimed as they embraced.

  “I made him hear it!” Caroline stepped back to look at her. “I wanted to surprise you, and oh, don’t you look splendid, all your brass buttons! But are you well? Your eyes—”

  They hugged again, and Betsey felt she could stay in that embrace for ages. But Baumston & Smythe employees were fast gathering round them, Richard leading the way.

  “For pity’s sake, Caroline!” He stooped to collect Betsey’s discarded umbrella and shielded his wife with his own. “Will you please remember what company we are in?”

  “Look at Elisabeth, Richard!” Caroline sang. “Look how well she’s done for herself!”

  Whatever this long-dreaded day held for her, Betsey experienced a moment of victory now, meeting Richard’s eyes, his expectation that she would come running to him and Caroline for help defied. She thanked him for bringing Caroline and realized she would be able to pay the last of her debt to him, this very day and in person. Happily, and with a touch of mischief, she kissed his cheek as his coworkers gathered near.

  She circulated the printed schedules amongst the crowd, then climbed up on Ethan Noonan’s char-à-banc to offer an official welcome. In their curiosity to discover what had happened to the scandalous type-writer girl who’d fled the premises back in May, they were the most attentive group she’d addressed all summer.

  She concluded by reminding them the Kursaal offered plenty of indoor diversions while the rain held.

  “Don’t you mean to warn us against the unsavory sorts that frequent watering places?” someone in the group called. “Thieves? Confidence men? Women of dubious morals?”

  There was a gasp at the last suggestion, probably from one of the wives. As for the question itself, Betsey knew exactly from whom it had come and precisely where the inquiring bastard stood. She didn’t look at him in the beat of silence which followed. She avoided looking at Caroline and Richard, too, dreading the sight of her sister’s face, bound to be fraught with fury and sympathy. No, she glanced once more at the rail station entrance, and then, from beneath her umbrella, she gazed down at them all with a Sunday school smile.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Wofford is correct,” she said. “Pickpockets down on the Esplanade aren’t unheard of. But do inform me if you come across some fellow who puts his fingers in the wrong place. I shall tell you how to make short work of him.”

  She let the laughter ripple for only an instant before she wished them all a pleasant visit. The island of umbrellas began to break apart. Betsey let her gaze rest on one unmoving spot: Mr. Wofford’s scraggly-bearded face, pink with his seething.

  • • •

  Whatever had caused Lillian to throw the book, John had missed it. He’d been staring out the rain-splashed window, lost to anything occurring within the train carriage, until Lillian’s sharp cry had roused him and he’d turned in time to see Noel Dunning get clouted in the shoulder by a volume of sermons. At the very next stop, Lillian’s aunt threw protective arms about her niece, and the two women left the first-class coupé—Dunning’s money, that—for the dining car.

  “What did you do to her?” John asked.

  “Offered to read her book aloud,” Dunning confessed.

  John returned to the window, willing the passengers outside to alight or to board more quickly so the train might resume its journey now-bless-God. He could have advised Dunning to expect all his groveling to be met with rejection—sermons flying at his head, gazes from the depths of January—for some time yet, at least until Dunning and his new fiancée were forced to present a united front to their parents, and probably for a good while after.

  He didn’t, though. He had little interest in alleviating Dunning’s personal hell just now. He was only glad Dunning had obeyed John’s wired demands to depart Vienna for London without delay.

  Now, at last, they were bringing the good tidings of Lillian and Dunning’s great joy to their parents. The train, should it ever happen to move-again-damn-it, was bound for Idensea, where Lillian’s parents were finishing their summer holiday.

  Where Betsey was facing the Baumston & Smythe excursion alone.

  Finally, the conductor gave his all-clear, and the train resumed its journey. For a while, at least. This was a stopping train, stacking stones of time in his way back to Idensea, back to Betsey.

  “She despises me.”

  Dunning looked like something you’d find in a ditch and leave there. He’d been traveling the better of three days, John supposed, sleeping but little. The greeting he’d received from John upon his arrival in London showed redly below his left eye.

  “She’s stopped weeping, at least,” John offered as comfort.

  “She’s been crying?”

  “Not since you came.”

  “Too busy despising me.”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t think so.

  “My father will despise me.”

  “Not forever.” John closed his eyes. As ever, he saw Elisabeth, this time as she had been that Sunday dawn, on her stomach, sprawled in sleep, her slight, strong hand at rest on his arm. He had leaned over her and kissed the small of her back, something in him moved to lay some protection on that vulnerable shallow of flesh.

  Dunning broke the momentary quiet. “But she. She thoroughly despises me, enough to last forever.”

  He spoke of Lillian, of course. But John’s heart tightened anyway. A rise of fear, the squeeze of uncertainty.


  “If I could just have her alone for a minute or so—Jones, I swear to you she never told me about the child.”

  “She said you knew.”

  “I didn’t. I didn’t! She is lying, for some reason, or—or else perhaps—”

  John opened his eyes. Dunning’s ears colored.

  “What?” John said.

  “She was so awfully innocent . . . that is, of course she was . . . but I mean of everything, Jones! I didn’t realize . . . I don’t believe she even understood . . . where things were going, you might say, not until . . . you know . . . it was happening. That is, happening, you see. Lord, but it was wretched. Not quite all of it, because of course, we’d been getting on swimmingly right before—”

  John wished he hadn’t asked. He wished Dunning would shut up.

  “But then we came to the act, and, oh, God, what a mess—she just turned hysterical, began weeping, for God’s sake, and her parents just in—”

  “Dunning.”

  With a gulp, Dunning shut up. “Right. Sorry, old chap,” he whispered, and sat fidgeting with Lillian’s book as the rails rattled beneath them. “It is only that I need a smoke. So frightfully bad.”

  “Forty shillings, you can have it,” John said unsympathetically, speaking of the fine Dunning would have to pay if he were caught smoking on the train.

  Dunning shook his head. “It makes her sneeze.”

  “Ah.” John had not known this. He closed his eyes again.

  “The thing of it. What I meant to say, that is . . .”

  Dunning paused, perhaps for encouragement to continue, which John didn’t offer. As it turned out, he didn’t need it.

  “I meant only to say that perhaps she told you I knew about the child because, in her innocence, or what have you, she is under the assumption that to . . . to engage in . . . in the act is to . . . to conceive. Inevitably, as you might say.”

  John felt inclined to believe this. Dunning had, after all, proved cooperative in every respect since getting John’s wire—departing Vienna immediately, accepting John’s fist in his eye as a reasonable greeting, protesting his sudden engagement not even a little.

  “Let us not speak for a while, Dunning.”

  “Very well.”

  And Dunning was very quiet for nearly a full minute before he pleaded with John to find some way to distract Aunt Constance so he might speak privately to Miss Gilbey before they faced their parents.

  For he loved her, it seemed, and wanted her to know.

  • • •

  On the pavilion, Betsey chafed her hands over her arms as she stole a moment from the dinner dance to look toward the hotel. She could make out lights on the upper floors only; a white mist had all but swallowed the grounds tonight, and fine points of moisture blew into the pavilion. Soon it would be too chilly altogether to have entertainments here; soon the board would decide the fate of the excursion scheme.

  Someone touched her arm, and she turned to accept the compliments of one of the type-writer girls, Julia Vane, who wanted to say again what a lovely outing they’d had, never mind the dratted weather. Betsey thanked her, and Julia was swept again into the dancers as a staffer came to murmur in her ear, “Sir Alton wishes to speak with you, Miss Dobson.”

  Sir Alton, putting in an appearance tonight for the sake of the business between the pier company and Baumston & Smythe, was already looking her way.

  Earlier, she had entertained a fancy that tonight, Sir Alton would note how well things were going, how capably she managed this job. Now she knew she would have been luckier if he’d continued to overlook her, for there existed the very unlikable likelihood someone had by now told him about her last day at Baumston & Smythe. Forgery. Wofford’s broken fingers. Flight.

  Sir Alton greeted her with a bow and a lilting good evening. “You have heard from our Mr. Jones,” he stated. “A telephone call! Rather urgent of him, true?”

  Betsey, in town for Mr. Seiler, had missed the call, but it had created a stir in the office. The switchboard operator had personally delivered the message that there was no message and attempted to engage Betsey in guessing what the message might have been, had one actually been left.

  “Something regarding Mrs. Elliot’s house,” Betsey had offered to end the game.

  The past two days, she’d spent more time than she would ever admit making up words for John to say from miles away, but Sir Alton’s interest in the call was limited to one aspect.

  “You surely would have informed me had his plans changed,” he said. “He still will move on to London, and you . . . you will remain here.”

  It was a sideways confirmation that John had thrown her over, wasn’t taking her with him. Considerate of him.

  Betsey waited with her hands clasped behind her, watching the dancers twirl through a polka. Old Mr. Baumston and Lady Dunning, Julia Vane and the type-writers, the clerks and the underwriters—heavens, even Richard with Caroline—they were all turning, smiling as they skipped, pale flames against the wet night beyond the pavilion.

  She wished Sir Alton would see it, how beautiful, how worthy it all was.

  She took a breath, about to be as open as she dared with him, to tell him she wanted to stay in Idensea, that she had done fine work this summer and knew she could do even better with more time. But the breath caught at the sight of Mr. Wofford across the way, making no secret of the fact he was watching her with Sir Alton. He nodded at her, his mouth smug.

  “So many, many prospects as you must have, Miss Dobson,” Sir Alton went on, “and you wish to stay on here? My gratitude for your loyalty. Still, I would have thought—if you’d wanted to keep your position—you would have made yourself more . . . valuable. Particularly in matters close to me.”

  Such as keeping John in Idensea. Betsey turned her gaze from Wofford to find Sir Alton appraising her as he might a worn garment: Burn? Or cast off to the beggar outside the gate?

  “I expected too much, of course” was his bland conclusion, and Betsey crushed her lip between her teeth, for she had, too. In all sorts of ways, she had expected too much.

  How young Caroline looked! She beamed at Betsey as she and Richard spun by, and Betsey knew Caroline’s pleasure in the dance was exceeded only by her pride in her sister, standing in her smart blue uniform beside Sir Alton Dunning. Even Richard regarded her with warmth; he had accepted Betsey’s final payment to him with more grace than she might have expected, and nodded with apparent sincerity when Caroline hoped Betsey would make a visit to London soon.

  “Curious, how hope will insinuate itself,” Sir Alton murmured as Caroline waved to her, as Wofford lurked like a jackal waiting his turn at the carcass. “Even in the bedrock of logic. I hadn’t realized I was such an optimist.”

  Betsey tightened the clasp of her hands behind her back. Very well, damn it. She had expected too much. But of him. She’d expected too much of him, while of herself . . .

  Not nearly enough.

  She bent her head for a moment, long enough to glimpse her buttons, long enough to make a vow: Whatever happened this night, at the end of it, she would be proud of everything she’d said and done. She concentrated on her remaining duties for the night, ordering a mental list of dances, refreshments, speeches, and, oh, the favors, the paper frames and tobacco. She had left them on her desk at the hotel. She would have to fetch them, or send someone—

  “You did, I presume, permit him to fuck you with sufficient frequency?”

  The folding of a letter is a matter of no little importance.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  The timing, the pleasant, offhand notes of Sir Alton’s voice—the vulgarity—it was all calculated to take her breath away. His reckonings were true, and Betsey reeled. Without warning, the pavilion lights dipped and swirled like eddying currents. She blinked hard, looked up and swallowed, and the tears subsided and the lights stilled.

  And her voice was clear. “You presume too much, if you imagine I did anything to help
you except to make money for your company and show it to advantage. If you imagine you’ve any right to ask for more than that, you presume far too much, Sir Alton.”

  A light, fine interest dusted Sir Alton’s features, as though he found the sound of her voice a mild oddity. Apprehension brushed along her spine. Sir Alton reached inside his coat and produced a letter, which he offered. Expecting to see her own foolish work, the forgery she’d made at Baumston & Smythe, she opened it.

  It was indeed a typed letter, but John’s scrawling signature drew her eye first. She frowned, skimming back up to the salutation. John had written Wofford? So it seemed, though Betsey recognized the fluffed-up language of the company secretary as she read:

  We appreciate the apparent concern prompting you to contact Idensea Pier regarding Miss Dobson. Pray be assured your warning will be remembered should future circumstance warrant. As for your monetary claims, you will please understand a letter from your physician is necessary to verify any sum Miss Dobson may owe.

  John, her ally from the start. Far more than the implications of the letter in Sir Alton’s possession, the ache rushed out to her—she missed John. Where would she find such extravagant trust and kindness again?

  She returned the letter to Sir Alton, who wished her a pleasant evening as he slipped it into his coat, his needs regarding her met. What else had they to discuss? He would no doubt present the letter and Wofford’s version of the story when she gave her report to the board, and even if the report persuaded them to continue the excursions scheme, the letter would do little to convince them that she should continue to manage it.

  Caroline, rosy and breathless, came to her with arms extended.

  “I’ll be back in a bit,” Betsey said into her sister’s ear, hoping the unsteadiness she felt in her hands would go unnoticed. They tingled, her hands, as though they’d been deprived of blood.