The Typewriter Girl

by Atlee, Alison

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes. I only have to go back to the hotel and fetch the party favors.”

  “I shall come with you, then!”

  “No, stay. I’ll manage, and look—I think Richard could be cajoled into another dance. Stay and enjoy yourself.”

  The path from the pavilion to the hotel was more mud than pebbles and crushed shells, and belatedly, Betsey realized the mist had turned to rain again, her umbrella left behind on the pavilion. She turned to go back to get it, only to find Wofford nearly on her heels.

  “God damn you,” she hissed, as startled as she was furious. “You’ve done your worst, haven’t you? Now let me alone.” She reverted to her original direction, deciding to forgo the umbrella.

  “Come back here,” Wofford ordered, quite as if he had the right, and not at all as if he meant to offer the use of the umbrella he carried. Betsey kept walking, wriggling out of the fitted jacket of her uniform as she tried to dodge the worst of the puddles, not easily visible in the night. She heard a plunking splash and realized he was following her.

  Holding her jacket over her head, she kept going and trusted the length of her legs to outpace him. Still, she could hear him behind her, each footfall an irritation when all she wanted was the refuge of the empty office at the hotel, just for a few moments, to breathe and to gather her grit for the rest of this night.

  “You will return to the pavilion with me, Miss Dobson! Stop where you are.”

  Not stopping, she snatched a glance over her shoulder, prepared to mock him, but felt a small bell of alarm instead, seeing the determination with which he was bearing down on her, realizing she was being chased. She didn’t like it; she hadn’t meant to be running away.

  She stopped and turned on him so quickly he fell back a step in surprise.

  “I’ve said for you to let me alone. And you are even more of a sodding fool than I knew if you think you can compel me to go anywhere with you.”

  “You owe it!”

  “I owe—? I owe you nothing, nothing you’d want, at least. I owe Mr. Jones, perhaps—he paid your doctor, didn’t he? Likely too much—Julia Vane told me there’s been some doubt as to whether your fingers were, after all, broken. Perhaps Sir Alton owes you—what a shame for you he isn’t more given to spectacular scenes—but I assure you, you’ve reaped your revenge all the same.”

  Wofford advanced. “That’s not the end of it. You disgraced me before everyone, and you will go up to that pavilion and beg my pardon before everyone—”

  “Hush!” Betsey threw her fingers in front of her lips, ignoring Wofford’s outrageous demand in order to listen to the path. She let her jacket slip down from her head and shushed Wofford once more as she turned from him, listening.

  Then, two words, escaping the mist from far down the path, over the splatter of raindrops, reaching her plainly, piercing her.

  “Bless God!”

  Someone else was with him, a man. She lifted her jacket again, blocking the rain and whatever Wofford was trying to say. A staffer, or Mr. Seiler, perhaps? She couldn’t catch enough of the words or the voice to be certain, and they were still too far inside the mist for her to see them.

  Then came a feminine wail of distress she instantly recognized. Miss Gilbey.

  Stumbling, Betsey left the path, intent on little more than seeking invisibility in the mist and darkness of the grounds, but when Wofford followed, she thought better of going too far from the path. She stopped beneath a tree, too slender to really shield her but enough cover for this night.

  She lowered her jacket again; Wofford’s voice hit her ear. “Have you considered what it’s been like for me, working there after such humiliation?”

  “Not even once,” Betsey assured him in a ruthless whisper. “Have you considered what it will be like for you, if you are discovered in the dark, sharing your umbrella with Miss Dobson?”

  He jerked the umbrella away but did keep his mouth shut. Betsey touched her forehead to the tree trunk, pressed a thumbnail into the damp, spongy bark, and listened as the gritty noise of footsteps grew closer. Miss Gilbey was talking about her shoes—to herself, it seemed—for John and the other man weren’t answering. When they had passed without noticing her and Wofford a few feet away, she indulged—punished—herself by watching John’s back disappear into the mist.

  And so much for her vow. She was too much a coward to face Miss Gilbey and her fiancé.

  “Now then,” Wofford began.

  “Are you still here?” she said dully, dullness spreading like spilled ink inside her, a thick and thorough soaking into her spirit.

  “You can’t just ignore me.” One syllable was touched by a whinging, almost childish note. “You owe me an apology, in front of everyone.”

  “What I owe you would keep your beard from growing.”

  She started for the path, but Wofford yanked at her arm to make her face him, the force of it suggesting he’d expected more resistance. And yet, she hardly felt it. When she said, “You had best let me go,” it was with a coldness unattached to anything she felt for him.

  Briefly, his expression flickered, let slip a trace of something like uncertainty or discomfort, but he didn’t let her go. “You ruined everything for me at Baumston and never paid for it—just swept off here, didn’t you? And now you believe you may look down on us all, as if you matter, you in your . . . your . . . uniform.”

  His eyes dipped, and he seemed to run out of words.

  “Like my buttons, do you?” Betsey asked softly, prompting another look from Wofford. “Well, they’re nothing but tin, but I worked for them, and they’re mine, and they’re much too good for the likes of you to breathe upon.”

  She didn’t tell him again to turn her loose. She wrenched away but didn’t quite free herself, and a tree root put off her balance as she tried to get her knee to the crucial locality. Another hard wrench, and she was staggering backward, Wofford coming along with her.

  Business letters should consist of short, clear, terse sentences.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  Fuck!”

  The word soared from the mist, stopping John dead on the path. He smiled and said, “Elisabeth, that will be,” and broke off from Lillian and Dunning to go after her.

  He found her in the grass, crawling out from beneath a groaning fellow she was cursing far past the devil’s good taste. Amongst John’s reactions, surprise did not particularly register.

  What did register was the groaning fellow’s efforts to sit up, his arm stretching toward Betsey, his fingers about to grasp the hem of her skirts as she scrambled on hands and knees away from him.

  The man’s groans burst into a shout as John launched into him, but after that, he went still, submitting to John’s weight pinning him to the ground, his eyes saucered.

  John didn’t ease up his force as he glanced over his shoulder. Dunning had followed him, and John saw with an unreasonable irritation and sense of loss that Dunning was taking Betsey’s hand, helping her to her feet. He took it out on the man under him, his fists bearing down on his chest just enough to provoke a squeak.

  “Did he—” John began, but the question triggered a snap of self-consciousness. He couldn’t ask if this coward had hurt her, not before he’d had a chance to ask her forgiveness himself. “Are you all right, Elisabeth?” he amended, and with Lillian proffering her pocket handkerchief with shy concern, Betsey assured him she was fine. It might have relieved him but for the ragged edge in her voice, where her anger was fraying into something else.

  John looked down at his wide-eyed captive. “Good evening, lad. And who in hell might you be?”

  “Just—just Wofford, sir.”

  “That supervisor at Baumston and Smythe,” Betsey said, and John knew instantly whom she meant.

  Wofford seemed to realize the identification did him no favors. He lifted his head from the ground defensively. “She—”

  John pushed him back down. �
�Don’t trouble yourself, lad. Miss Dobson will tell me everything I need to know.”

  “Just take him away,” Betsey said. “He doesn’t matter, only keep him away from the pavilion. I don’t want the dance spoiled, so please just take him somewhere.”

  She started away down the hill, toward the hotel, and only said, “Please, Mr. Jones,” when John called for her to wait for him.

  “Shall I go after her?” Dunning asked.

  Should Dunning go after her—Dunning, go after her? John knew Dunning meant well, but John wanted to get him under his knee, too, because John ought be the one going after Betsey, and he oughtn’t have to do that because she oughtn’t’ve gone anywhere in the first place. She ought have stayed and said thank you or fuck you or what have you. She oughtn’t just leave as though there was nothing to say. And she oughtn’t’ve called him Mr. Jones, either.

  “You’ll not,” he answered. “I want you to go up to the pavilion—”

  “The pavilion?” Dunning interrupted weakly.

  “There should be a staffer there—great broad fellow, red hair. Name of Frederick. You’ve surely noticed him. Tell him to bring along another staffer and meet me down here. And don’t make a show of it. Quick and quiet, is it?”

  “But Jones—” Dunning stepped a little closer and spoke softly to keep Lillian from hearing. “My father is on the pavilion.” He squatted down beside John and Wofford and whispered, “You said you’d be along, you know, when the time came. You know, to face the old boy.”

  “Come you here, Noel,” John said, and Dunning leaned in, and John clutched his necktie and pulled.

  “Oof,” said Dunning.

  “Send Frederick. Get you your father and Lady Dunning down to the hotel to meet with the Gilbeys, and the next time I see you, ’twould be best for your health if an invitation to your wedding you were delivering to me.”

  “Redheaded fellow, you said?”

  John released Dunning’s necktie. Lillian rushed to his side to keep him from falling completely on his arse. When the two of them had gone, Wofford mentioned it would be quite safe for John to get off him now, and John explained the ground was rather wet for sitting and stayed where he was until Frederick and another staffer found them. He put Wofford into their custody, to be escorted to the rail station and seen aboard his train. And then—

  And then he ran after the thing he wanted.

  • • •

  The office was empty, dark, and Elisabeth’s still figure cut a silhouette against the window, as slim and solitary as a churchyard angel, dissolving John’s haste and frustration. He touched a hand to the pain in his side and whispered her name. “Elisabeth.”

  She roused, just a lift of her head. Overcome by a sensation of having run upon the edge of the earth, suddenly and without a single warning sign, John hesitated.

  Within that instant, Betsey shook off the last of her reverie, and said, “Yes, I know,” as though responding to something he’d said. “I need to hurry back. I only—I—”

  Her knuckles came to rest against her mouth, and she cast her glance about the shadows for a moment before settling it on the desk that held the type-writing machine. There she headed and readied the machine as she said, “I need a character. You won’t mind? I can type as you dictate, it oughtn’t take long.”

  “You . . . need a reference letter . . . tonight?”

  “Soon. Wofford, he brought that letter, you see, the one you sent him? All the way back in June!” She fumbled the slightest bit with the machine’s carriage. “It was kind of you, by the way, so unbelievably kind. . . . Only Wofford’s brought it and given it to Sir Alton, you see, and has likely told him an even worse account of what happened, so I don’t imagine there’s much hope for me anymore.”

  She sat down. John stared.

  “Here, I mean. Hope for me here. But I’ve spoken with Mrs. Gomery whilst you were away. About the Sundial, remember? And whoever owns the Black Lion, I’d wager they’ve given up hope of competing with the Swan Park, but I’ve thought of some ways they might revive their trade.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Please—” Tension snagged her voice, and he heard her breathe in before she continued, “Just a reasonable character. I’m ready.” A flurry of snaps issued from the type-writing machine. “To whom it may concern. Go on, then.”

  “Bless God!” He wanted to propose marriage, not dictate a letter.

  “To . . . whom . . . it . . . may . . .”

  “Very well! To whom it may concern. Allow me a moment.”

  He crossed to where she sat. She was nearly soaked, he realized, her little blue jacket gone and the sleeves of her blouse clinging limply to her arms. He took off his coat, which was damp enough itself but better than nothing, and she wordlessly permitted him to help her into it, shuddering hard, once, after she had it on.

  “Well, then,” he said when she had her fingers over the keys again. “The Idensea Pier and Seaside Pleasure Building Company has been blessed to have the skills and intelligence of Miss Elisabeth Dobson at its service for these past—”

  The type-writing machine snaps stalled only a moment after John did, struck by the realization that what felt the whole of his existence had been but three and one-half months.

  “Three months,” Betsey said and typed, a trifle viciously.

  “Another fortnight since I met you in London. The first time I saw you, Elisabeth, I thought, ‘That’s what I need.’ Did I ever tell you that?” That’s what I need, and his instinct had never been either more true or more faulty. Quite misguided in what he needed her for, his instinct.

  “You didn’t.” She curled her fingers into her fists, then stretched them out over the keys again. “But I don’t think that sort of thing is necessary. Go on. Fortunate to have the skills and intelligence of Miss Elisabeth Dobson at its service these past three months.”

  “I didn’t say ‘fortunate.’”

  “You needn’t worry, I know how to spell it. Go on.”

  “These past three months. Mmm. So, at our service the past three or so months. In fact, we consider her departure from our employ a tragedy—”

  “For God’s sake! It is business correspondence, not a sermon.”

  “A . . . tra-ge-dy. T-r-a . . . j—”

  “I’ve got it. Tragedy. L-o-s-s.”

  “Of the greatest—ahhh—magnitude. Magnitude. In fact, we at Idensea Pier and Seaside Pleasure Building Company consider ourselves the most foolish of all asses for letting her go.”

  Betsey stopped typing. “I’ll ask Mr. Seiler to do it.” She folded her hands in her lap and bent her head down.

  John whipped a chair next to hers, sat, and reached over to stroke her cheek. Her stillness did not seem an acceptance of the gesture.

  She said, “How is Miss Gilbey?”

  Careful.

  “Likely in tears by now, if her future father-in-law has been informed of the engagement. But she will come along all right, I think. She and Dunning.”

  “Mr. Dunning?”

  “That’s right. You were kind to her, she told me—said you . . . She said you gave me over to her.”

  This last part was not precisely how Lillian had phrased it, but it so thoroughly banished the frightening blankness from Betsey’s expression that he couldn’t regret the fabrication. He laughed gently, because the pitch of her demonic brows gave him hope, and Betsey looked down again, obviously feeling tricked.

  “I thought it sounded rum,” he said. “Just giving me away, not a shilling for your trouble. You had best not ever try it again.” He caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “It would never work, in any case.”

  She gave him the magic-beans look, forcing him to remember that he had, in fact, been engaged to Lillian for a few days. He remembered it as a suicidal man, rescued, might recall the window ledge, but he had done it.

  “Even if I had married her,” he added, “it wouldn’t have worked. You’d still have me. All the way
through. That is what I have found out, Elisabeth.”

  He had more to say.

  The rain had pasted her fringe of hair to her forehead, and he combed it aside, thinking of the night she had let him trim her hair. He had expected a flat refusal, coming at her with the scissors, but Betsey had shut her eyes, leaned toward him, let him do it. He had been so careful, so wary of taking too much.

  His throat shut suddenly, clogged with grief for that broken trust, and he watched Betsey’s dark eyes open and turn wet.

  “Forgive me, girl.”

  He’d wanted the words to sound forthright, strong; he’d meant to list every promise; he had a speech in his best English. But holding her face, her eyes glistening with answering grief, he was reduced to a few broken, husky syllables.

  As was she. “I did. You?”

  “I did.”

  She pulled his hand from her face and kissed his fingertips, then turned and skimmed her own fingertips along the letters of the type-writing machine, tracing the round edge of each black key. “I believed I knew what you wanted,” she said softly. “I was trying to manage without you. But I made a wreck of it all, didn’t I? Just as Richard said.”

  “I don’t know that. If the board heard your report, who knows what they would say? And not run off half-cocked, have you, and fought your dad and spent your savings and made you some sham engagement?”

  She shook her head, the curl at the corner of her mouth rising. “I suppose I wanted to do something to prove myself, on my own. Something by myself.”

  He smoothed his hand along the side of her head. “Do you still, girl? All by yourself?”

  And suddenly, his girl was crying, and he was reaching for her, gathering her into his lap, smearing her tears with his cheek.

  “There is good, then,” he whispered as he held her. “Because neither do I. Neither do I.”

  He’d meant to be on his knee. He had a ring he was unwilling to reach for just now. He’d plotted for the sea and the starlight, not the cold glint of a type-writing machine.

  “Marry me, Elisabeth,” he said anyway, and it felt perfect. “I love you so, and no telling there is of what will become of me without you. Marry me, girl.”