The Typewriter Girl Page 9

  She looked as if she’d like to. Tobias added gently, “A mistake corrected is not a failure. Let us see what might be done.”

  John stood aside as Miss Dobson and Tobias went back to the ledger. They huddled at Hamble’s desk, and John took the opportunity to study her more closely than he had since freeing her from the stationmaster’s office. He now had trouble imagining her assaulting her supervisor. At Tobias’s side, she seemed as disciplined and alert as a field commander taking in battle strategy.

  Two baskets sat on Miss Dobson’s desk just to his right. One held dozens of inexpensive clay pipes, each tied to a small packet of tobacco with a blue ribbon; the other held painted picture frames of heavy molded paper. Favors for the excursionists, he guessed, taking a frame from the basket to examine it. He recognized it as the work of a local cottage industry, an inexpensive trinket but pretty enough that John could imagine women like his sisters pleased to display it in their homes.

  He returned the frame to the basket and considered the rest of the desktop, which took but a moment. A pen stand, its occupant poised for use. An inkwell. He lifted the hinged lid and found the porcelain lip of the well as clean as a teacup waiting in a sideboard. He picked up the one other item on the desk, a record book.

  Ah, he’d distracted her. He gestured with the book as he caught her watching him. A shake of her head, and he would set back the book. But she looked down again, so he put on his spectacles and opened it.

  Lists. Reminders. Names, dates. He’d caught a look of that tight, neat handwriting of hers when he’d met her at Baumston & Smythe. Seeing it again, he believed it had surely been one of the factors prodding him to offer her the job.

  Tobias had mentioned she’d already made a number of new bookings. Other letters were tucked near the back of the notebook.

  “Tobias,” he interrupted, straightening suddenly from where he’d been leaning on the desk, “did you see what she’s getting from this brewers’ association?”

  He carried the notebook to Tobias, but before Tobias could look it over, Miss Dobson said, “You told me I might try to raise the charges for the height of the season—that’s all I did, Mr. Seiler. I suppose it may be a trifle early, but if they’re willing to pay? All the entertainments will be open, and the new pleasure railway—it is supposed to be finished before then.”

  She fixed John with an accusing look, as if his current absence from the railway’s building site would keep it from opening on time.

  Though she couldn’t have the least notion about the state of the railway, her doubt nettled him anyway. “It’ll be finished, Dobs.”

  Tobias said, “Miss Dobson, you cannot think Mr. Jones or me disappointed that you’re making a tidier profit? I admit my reservations as to how much we could get our first season in such a scheme, but you have proved me wrong.” He closed the notebook and the ledger and presented them to her. “Do it again.”

  If she felt any relief or pride in Tobias’s words, she didn’t show it. She nodded and spoke her thanks, and Tobias excused himself. She hugged her ledger like a chastened school miss once he was gone.

  Why did I follow her here? John wondered, because he was certain he must have had some reason. He took his time removing his spectacles, trying to recall it.

  “He has been so kind to me,” she said at last. “You’ve kept my—my trouble from him, it’s obvious.”

  Which trouble? No letter? No train ticket? The attempt to flee custody? Or—he touched his coat pocket, remembering his purpose here—that supervisor she’d allegedly assaulted?

  “Tobias trusts me, Dobs,” he said. “I had to tell him all of it your first day here. He let you stay on because he trusts me, but he wants you to do well.”

  “I know. This hotel is everything to him, I see that.”

  Not his point, but he let it pass. A more pressing matter awaited.

  “Now tell me. Who is Joseph Wofford?”

  Be careful to strike the punctuation marks very lightly.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  Wofford. Betsey would take an office stacked with Arland Hambles if it would save her hearing that name again.

  “You must know, if you have his name,” she replied. “He finally sent my character, then?”

  “Something to do with that, he did.”

  Which seemed to bring them to an impasse. She felt she held her life, this new one in Idensea, between her forefinger and thumb, a tiny clod of earth liable to crumble and scatter in a dusty rain if she altered her hold. She didn’t know what answer she could give Mr. Jones that would maintain the just-so pressure.

  She carried her books to her desk and felt glad for the taps of her boot heels, the shush of her skirts, the silence broken.

  “Prevett’s finished your frock, I see.”

  “This is not a frock,” she said, then bit her lip. How foolish to correct him. She grasped the handle of the single drawer on the desk and jiggled it, the most successful method she’d found of working it past its sticky place. “I took it from them and finished it, to save a bit of money. It will do, I hope?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him as she slipped her books into the drawer, expecting that discerning gaze of his. Instead . . .

  Instead.

  She looked away. She pressed down on a growing smile. Mr. Jones needn’t say what he thought. She knew. She liked it, too. She liked what he was thinking. In the same instant, with a disillusionment as sharp as her pleasure, she thought, Is that what he’s after? and she knew she could use it; Mr. Jones hadn’t all the power anymore. Like the electric lights on the pier, she could turn on, be bright and warm. She could beckon, just enough to make Mr. Jones feel fine, fine about giving her a second-or-so chance.

  How lucky to have this stubborn drawer, the extra moment it gave her as she coaxed it shut. The entire desk trembled with the effort.

  Then she turned to him, leading with a smile, one less spontaneous than its predecessor.

  He never saw it. He was yanking things from his pockets—handkerchief! spectacles!—and then set about an intense polishing of his lenses, so plainly and uncharacteristically flustered that Betsey was swallowed up in a wave of guilt.

  He tucked away his spectacles without even putting them on. Inside her, a stupid, girlish adoration squeezed like a handclasp at the close of a prayer.

  She turned back to her desk and righted the artful arrangement she’d made of the frames in the basket. Mr. Jones hadn’t disturbed it so much, but it seemed prudent to find a reason to be annoyed with him just now.

  “I ought to have haggled a better deal,” she said of the guest favors. “Or just left them altogether. They didn’t help my budget any.”

  “They were thoughtful touches. Tobias liked them, I think.” He came to her desk and picked up one of the pipes and tobacco packets. “Perhaps leave off with the tobacco—no doubt Tisling’s would appreciate the business—and next time, for the ladies, nosegays might be more economical.”

  Next time. She wasn’t about to get the sack, then. Trying to hide her deep relief, she leaned toward him to reach one of the pipe-and-tobacco packets whose ribbon was askew.

  “Or soap,” he added suddenly. “The hotel has its own, local-made. Wrapped in blue paper, with a picture of the hotel on the label. It . . . it has lavender in it.”

  Betsey knew about the soap. Mr. Seiler’s wife, who oversaw the housekeeping staff, had given her some. She’d washed her hair with it just last night. But she didn’t like the idea, nor the one about nosegays. What was wrong with him, that he could think flowers more economical? Besides, people had their photographs taken when they came to the seaside. The frames were perfect, if only she could pay a little less for them. She finished tying off the blue ribbon, answering, “Perhaps.”

  Another fall of silence. How to speak to him? Mr. Jones had always crossed those distances of station, but now he said nothing, and with her heart racing, she could only tie up another slipped bow and feel his
eyes upon her. Did he want her to say more about Mr. Wofford? Or did that gaze feel so heavy because of something else?

  “Miss Dobson,” he said, and she replied “Mm?” quickly, too quickly, though she kept her attention trained on the blue ribbons in the basket, and he said, “I’ve things to do.” From the corner of her eye, she watched him exit.

  Seconds later, out in the corridor, in a voice that was probably meant to be hushed: “Bless God—damn.”

  And then the door struck her desk again. Both of them winced. Mr. Jones apologized; Betsey lied that she had grown used to it.

  “I’d meant to ask,” he said. “Ethan Noonan. I saw him in town today. You’ll need to pay him something.”

  Betsey stared. Her unease fell lank. “If you saw him, Mr. Jones, then you know good and well why he won’t get a penny from me.”

  “Well.” His hands went to his pockets, a posture which might have seemed passive but for that perceptive gaze of his. “Well, there’s sorry for the trouble you’ve had, Dobs. I ought have warned you. But you will pay Ethan Noonan for his trouble, I am thinking.”

  “Warned me?” The morning’s aggravation swelled again. “Why should you have thought to warn me of a steady man like Mr. Noonan? I waited there till half-ten, making promises to the guests; I let them board only to tell them to come off a moment later, and you knew all the time!”

  She stopped herself. Or truly, a whip crack in his eyes stopped her, alerted her to her toe upon the line. He’d been giving her an order. It had come out tuned with his sweet Welsh brogue, and he called her “Dobs” and stood with his hands in his pockets as though she and he were two old chums, but an order, that’s what that had been. He had every right, of course. The only good response here was Yes, Mr. Jones.

  Her jaw locked.

  “So, when you send him his money, Miss Dobson,” he continued, the only change in his voice being the resumption of the good English he more generally employed, “write him a message, too, to bring his char-à-banc to the hotel Saturday next, and early, before the train. Then, if he isn’t in fit condition, have one of the grooms drive instead, and pay Mr. Noonan for the use of the char-à-banc.”

  “Why?” she demanded, Yes, Mr. Jones having dissolved like sugar on her tongue. “He didn’t just humiliate me; he was representing the company. Why should I?”

  “Because Ethan Noonan—” he began, and stopped. “Because I have said so, and so would Mr. Seiler if he knew. Enough of an explanation there.”

  And wasn’t it, though? Nothing like the simple truth to hack a discussion off at the knees. How refreshing to have a man admit it, none of that prosing like Wofford would do, pretending to be just, pretending to think. Nothing but sheer authority, and why should she be surprised he would use it?

  Still. She could wobble that pedestal of his, she knew it now, he’d let her see. She tipped her chin down so she could look up at him. “I see,” she said sweetly. “Mr. Jones, you are . . . entirely correct.”

  A closed-lip smile, a slow blink: It was due compliance or coy invitation, and she wondered which he would see.

  A test for him, a game. If he chose the invitation, she couldn’t slam the door on his fingers. She wouldn’t even want to, she admitted, despite the fact that, of the two of them, she was the only one who could fail, the only one who could lose the game.

  She sensed a wariness coiling up in him, but he remained quite still. He thanked her for her cooperation; he had an appointment to keep, he told her, and then was gone, and Betsey knew she was lucky.

  He’d decided not to play.

  • • •

  John couldn’t think what he’d been about, standing round discussing paper frames and tobacco. Lavender soap, bless God. He had a building weeks behind schedule to oversee and an American millionaire with two daughters of marriageable age to meet.

  Betsey Dobson, she was mad, one moment daring him to sack her, the next to—

  What had that smile been daring him to do?

  He ducked the mystery of it, or tried to, by setting his mind to showing Rolly Brues the Sultan’s Road, the pleasure railway due to open in little more than a week’s time. John was proud of it. He’d been the one to bring the idea to the board, the one to keep pressing when Sir Alton had opposed it, and he felt honored to have the chance to show it to Brues, the owner of a prime streetcar company in America. But the madness of Miss Dobson chewed at him like he was wearing all his clothes wrong-way out.

  Because I have said so. Of all the stupid—

  He quelled his distraction well enough as he and Brues inspected the railway and Brues told him of California and the expansion of his interests along the coast, but when they returned to the hotel grounds and found Mrs. Brues and her daughters having tea in the shade of an oak, John lurched without grace through the introductions, his attention diverted by a glimpse of deep blue against the grass.

  It was Miss Dobson, crossing the grounds toward the hotel pavilion where her day-trippers would have their dinner and dance tonight. She was not alone. She carried her baskets of pipes and frames, and some fellow was doing his best to slow her progress, trotting into her path, nearly walking backward at times. Certainly not a staffer. One of the trippers? He did have that brushed-up-for-a-day-out air to him, an attempt to look smart that fell short of fitting into the elegant surrounds. It took money, not just soap, to rub out the marks of working-class life, and even then, secrets remained which neither this fellow nor John himself would ever master.

  Mrs. Brues was insisting he join them at the table, John realized, and he accepted the invitation. It was as he was taking his seat that he saw Miss Dobson halt. She and the fellow held one basket in tug-of-war fashion.

  John bolted up. The man didn’t fit. He didn’t fit there next to Miss Dobson; he didn’t fit here at the hotel. “Pardon me,” he murmured, and turned in Miss Dobson’s direction.

  But then it was over. Miss Dobson resumed her pace, baskets in tow, and the fellow, trotting backward, stumbled and fell back on the ground. He got himself up quick enough and strode off in another direction, while Betsey Dobson marched onward to the pavilion without a backward glance.

  The man had taken the sharp side of that wicked tongue of hers, John had no doubt, and he would have given a great deal to have been close enough to hear. Go after her, said the voice he trusted.

  Here was the millionaire, though. His two daughters of marriageable age. And a most delectable-looking tea. He sat down, a nagging unease curling in his shoulders.

  • • •

  Perhaps that unease was what made him play such ferocious croquet with the American girls once tea was done. The younger—just sixteen, John discovered, and thus not of marriageable age—only laughed at his cutthroat play and served it back to him in a way he couldn’t help but admire, but when he knocked the older daughter’s ball nearly to the tennis courts a second time and she looked to be on the verge of tears, he was appalled at himself. He’d trade colors with her, and it would please him very much if she would take his next two turns, he said, exchanging his blue mallet for her red one.

  He trotted off to see where the ball had got to, found it under an azalea, got the devil stung out of his hand by a bee when he reached in to retrieve it, and there the afternoon’s recreation hobbled to a halt.

  He’d be disinvited from the dinner party, John was certain as he delivered the young ladies back to their parents, the younger with her hair fallen and her white frock sullied with grass stains, the elder silent and sulky over being forced to quit the match once it had begun to go in her favor. Rolly Brues, however, only recommended his elder daughter “buck up,” while Mrs. Brues undramatically instructed the younger to follow the maid back to their rooms to change. Again? girl and maid complained.

  Thus, some hours later, there John sat in one of the hotel’s private dining rooms, sharing a meal with several of the hotel’s wealthiest guests along with Sir Alton Dunning, recently returned from a trip. Sir Alton gave him a wr
y smile to hide his surprise at John’s inclusion in the party. John’s connection with the pier company and hotel had provided such opportunities before, but with his work in Idensea coming to a close, they mattered more than ever now. A single conversation with the right person could lead him to his next position.

  His earlier unease had almost gone. Still, he was not much surprised when a staff member spoke low into his ear: “Mr. Seiler asks you to come, Mr. Jones. Trouble at the pavilion with the trippers.”

  Pushing the keys blurs the printing. Strike them squarely, with a light, springing blow of sufficient force to make a clear impression, and no more.

  —How to Become Expert in Type-writing

  John followed Tobias Seiler’s cool example as the two of them traversed the great hall and the Palm Lounge, but he broke into a run as soon as he cleared the hotel’s rear terrace, which was crowded with nattering, speculating guests, all their faces turned toward the electric glow of the pavilion. Thankfully, the distance between the buildings ensured the glow was all they’d be able to make out. A few people hurried along the path leading to the pavilion, intending to get a first-class view of it all; John sprinted ahead and trusted Tobias to tactfully herd them back to the hotel.

  But the pavilion was bedlam anyway, shouts and cries where there ought to have been music, writhing knots of people who seemed uncertain as to whether they witnessed horror or entertainment. John recognized hotel guests and Idensea locals, and knew the crowd to be much larger than it ought.

  He looked over his shoulder to make certain Ian and Frederick, the most brawny of the staffers who’d followed him from the hotel, were still on his heels, then plowed through the throng, now hearing one voice above the rest of the confusion. “Avery Nash, you goddamned fool,” Miss Dobson was crying, and she sounded not the least confused.

  It blinked in his mind then, the certainty that in the midst of this chaos, he’d find that jack he’d seen her with this afternoon. John didn’t bother to consult her, or to think whether Ian and Frederick were close behind as he broke through the crowd. He saw the men grappling on the floor and went for the one currently on top, grabbing collar and coat and yanking with all his strength.