The Typewriter Girl (17 page)

Charlie said, “Let ’em rot. It’s you he’s waiting for, come on.”

She glanced at Sarah, and regretted it. Sarah looked so curious and . . . alert. All that had passed between herself and Mr. Jones last night had been communicated to Sarah as “he’s disappointed in me,” a broad umbrella of a phrase that covered everything from her mistake with the budget to the fact that she wasn’t an heiress, or a virgin.

She didn’t want to be forced into civility after he’d insulted and condescended to her. She didn’t care to spend another jot of time remembering how foolishly she’d allowed her feelings to run away from her.

But Charlie, impatient, said, “He told me to fetch you,” and she understood she’d been
sent for
. She pulled Sarah’s flower from her hair and permitted Charlie to tug her through the house to the front door, where she followed his order to cover her eyes before he opened it.

A bicycle. Mr. Jones had brought her a bicycle. It and he stood in the road before the house, waiting for her.

“John and me picked it,” Charlie said. “It’s from the hotel—they got new ones for the guests, and you get an old one, just to
borrow, but it’s not old, really, it’s good as new—we fixed it for you, John and me.”

He ran down the walk and hopped the fence at the edge of the front garden, then squeezed the front tire of the safety bicycle. “Pneumatics!”

Betsey came to the gate, but she didn’t go through. She stared at the bicycle.

“I asked Tobias,” Mr. Jones said. He added, “A solution to getting you home when you are late at the hotel,” as if that predicament had been the extent of their interaction last night.

As Charlie swung a leg over the cycle, she murmured, “Keep us safe from dillydallying, won’t it?”

Mr. Jones colored. He looked like a boy, blushing, standing there in his Norfolk, his soft cap pushed back on his head. Very different from Mr. Jones in his dinner suit, but both versions produced the same impossible longing in her, and she was glad she could make him uncomfortable, glad she could rattle John Jones’s easy confidence.

“I don’t know how to cycle, Charlie.”

“Why, John’ll show you—he taught me, and you see how I do.” Charlie pedaled away, suddenly looking gawky as he turned his elbows out and made laborious shoves down on the pedals, causing the bicycle to list to and fro. He wobbled up the road in an awkward hunch with elbows and knees poking out, putting on an act of incompetence only an expert could manage.

Betsey glanced sidelong at Mr. Jones. He was smiling. “There’s cheek,” he said.

“You see, a fine teacher!” Charlie called as he turned around. Then he was graceful again, releasing the handlebar and holding his arms out at his sides as he came coasting back toward them.

“A peacock.” Mr. Jones raised an eyebrow at her. “Taken him out of my pocket, have you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I mean you’re a witch, Dobs.”

The comment dropped mildly enough, but she bristled anyway. She hadn’t tried to influence Charlie, enchant him away from his devotion to Mr. Jones. He was lucky Charlie pulled up just then, or perhaps she was the lucky one. In any case, she checked her tongue.

“You see?” Charlie said, dismounting. “It’s ever so easy.”

“I don’t need a bicycle,” she said. She reached across the gate to draw a single fingertip along the curve of the handlebar. “The tram’s good enough for me.”

“But cycling’s much more fun than an old horse-tram,” Charlie said.

“And no fare to pay,” Mr. Jones pointed out. “Not that you worry much for paying fares, but—” He put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder and leaned over the boy. “You see that look, Charlie? Like we’ve sold her cow for beans instead of gold. Forgot, she has, that the beans did turn out to be magic.”

“They did,” Charlie said, as if this were a completely logical point that didn’t overlook the facts of the ruined garden, a missing son, and an ill-tempered giant. Also, that it was a fairy tale.

“I haven’t a cycling costume.”

Mr. Jones
phh
-ed, knowing this excuse to be even more preposterous than the magic beans argument. Ladies had specific costumes for every public activity in which they engaged, and probably for their private activities as well, but she was just Betsey Dobson.

“You’ll manage fine. Mind your skirts is what there is to that.” He gestured as if to demonstrate how she ought to lift her skirts. But as their eyes met, the motion turned awkward and charged, and he left off, blushing again.

He used both hands to pull his cap down, then held open the gate. “Come along then, Miss Dobson,” he said, so Englishly, so supervisorously. “The afternoon is about to get away from us.”

She wanted to refuse, remind him this was
Sunday
afternoon, and that even given the because-I-have-said-so factor, he hadn’t any right to demand she learn how to ride a bicycle, nor to send
Charlie to fetch her at his convenience. It didn’t matter that cycling seemed a rather glorious activity, and that she’d long wanted to try it. Just now, she wanted to be difficult.

A small bit of torture. Just to even things up.

“Very well, damn it,” she said, and came through the gate.

Well, fairness was a luxury, after all, and one made dearer by her actions last night. If she became more difficult than he cared to abide, what would happen to her?

Sarah called Charlie back to the house. Mr. Jones adjusted the saddle for Betsey, then straddled the steering wheel to hold the cycle steady while she mounted to test the height of the saddle. He made a clumsy inquiry regarding the angles of her knees, and she lifted her skirts so he could judge for himself.

“Off,” he ordered. “More height, you need. Go put on some low shoes whilst I fix it.”

“I’ll make do with my boots.”

He raised his brows. He clearly did not care to repeat the command, thus compelling her to explain, “I haven’t any others.”

“They’ll do, then,” he admitted. “’Tis but a matter of comfort.” A few moments later, his focus trained on the saddle, he murmured, “You made yourself scarce after church.”

He didn’t ask why or where she had gone, so she let the comment hang. The second adjustment was perfect, and they walked, pushing their bicycles, toward a neighbor’s open field where Mr. Jones said she should have her first lesson, and she promptly questioned why she couldn’t practice on the road before he shoved her into oblivion down a hill, and he said it was a slight downward grade, not a hill, and it would help her learn more quickly. Also, he’d be right beside her, not shoving her anywhere. It was a hill, she insisted, and she was sure she would do better on the road. He explained about motion and friction and balance, and how the grade—“the
hill
”—would make gravity work for her, and she explained how she’d seen bicycles on roads many a time, and in fields exactly never.

“The grass makes a nicer landing place when you fall.”

“I have decided not to fall.”

“Then no difference it makes, and my way we will have it.”

Betsey said nothing, not with her mouth.

“Since I’m the one what’s done it, you see,” he said, his voice low with victory, his Welsh brogue tapping along the tops of the words, vowels like a boot heel cutting into loose dirt.

“I do see. Mr. Jones, you are . . .
entirely
correct.” She smiled at him, closed-lip.

“Ow—
damn
,” he grunted, the poor thing having rammed his shin into his pedal as he walked. “Learn to balance, you will, but when you feel yourself going over, you must try to remember to put the steering wheel in the direction of the fall. To turn it away will mean a fall for certain. Keep hold of the handlebar, no throwing your arms out to catch yourself. Break your wrist or worse that way.”

She had no wish for broken bones. She put aside her contrariness and gave him her attention. He was, as Charlie had promised, a fine teacher, especially after he became so engrossed in her progress that he forgot the self-consciousness with which he drew close to her to help her balance, an arm before and behind. By the time she completed her first lengthy run, unassisted and fairly steady, he was jubilant, running to her as she came to a sloppy halt and shouting that he’d known she would take to it.

How could he have known? She hadn’t. But she, too, was rising in a bubble of elation, amazed at herself, reveling in his approval, as nourished by his confidence in her as by any meal she’d ever eaten.

He let her practice on the road next, and she readily agreed to his suggestion for a longer ride. They rode toward Castle Hill, where the ruins of Iden Tower overlooked the sea.

He didn’t stop as the incline steepened. Behind him, Betsey struggled, straining to propel the bicycle, her thighs afire and her previous pleasure waning. When Mr. Jones looked back, she muttered a curse between gritted teeth. He was pedaling more slowly now as well but didn’t appear to be suffering. She pushed on longer
than she thought she could, but when her pedaling grew too sluggish to keep the bicycle upright, she surrendered.

“I’m done!” she gasped, coming off the cycle with none of the technique he’d taught her, scarcely able to keep the heavy machine upright.

“Bless God!” he shouted, and hopped off. “What is it you’re made of, Dobs?”

Betsey did not have the breath to answer. She pushed the bicycle to him and then asked, her words coming in gulps, “Why . . . didn’t . . . you stop . . . then?”

“Determined to go so far as you, there’s sure. Bless God!” He took off his cap to run a hand over his brow, then into his hair. “I didn’t guess you carried a racehorse’s heart in you.”

She balked when he asked whether she was ready to resume their journey up the hill.

“We can have a look at the ruins. It isn’t far now,” he said.

“I can see them from here. I can see them from the hotel. I can see them from nearly anywhere in Idensea, for God’s sake. There’s no reason to send ourselves into apoplexy pedaling up this hill. And I can’t. I simply cannot.”

“We will have to walk it, but Dobs, if we don’t go up, there’s no coasting down.” He leaned over his handlebar toward her, tilting up a frankly cajoling smile. “You of everyone shouldn’t wish to miss that ride.”

Betsey contemplated it, losing her breath all over again. A glorious downhill coast on a bicycle, a flight into the green shine of his eyes—she contemplated them both for a moment too long, a moment that allowed the two separate things to become fused into one thing she wanted. Looking away over her shoulder at the road declining away behind her, she worked at unfusing them.

“I know you’re not afraid,” Mr. Jones said. “Or if you are, it’ll not master you.” He touched her jaw, two fingers that set her face back to the road ahead.

The touch fired through her, too akin to what he’d done last night, too much like he had the right. Too little of everything else.
Something she didn’t know how to refuse, because of her own feelings and because he could finish an argument with
because I have said so
.

She moved from the touch diplomatically, by bowing her head and beginning the plod up the hill. “Very well, damn it.”

Never fail to use Mr., Esq., or some other title when addressing a gentleman.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

I
den Hall you can see now,” he said as they neared the crest, and Betsey paused. Sir Alton’s home nestled on a distant hillside, a gray, symmetrical arrangement of chimneys and columns and rows of windows.

“I’ll go alone tomorrow,” she said. “You needn’t come.” She had decided this last night as the two of them finished their silent walk to Sarah’s. She’d liked being rescued by Mr. Jones far too much.

She was prepared to defend her decision. But he didn’t tell her
no
. He asked, “Why do you want it so?”

“It’s my responsibility. My position at stake, my bookings. My fault.” She sighed. “I might have placated Avery when he turned up at the pavilion. He wanted to tell me how he’d already spoken to the headmaster at Parkhurst about a job. I might have taken two minutes to listen.”

“Had time for a chat, did you?”

The irritation in his voice surprised her. But he meant it for Avery, didn’t he? And yes, Avery’s timing had been wretched. She was absorbed in her duties, dozens of details to keep straight, a
hundred mistakes to avoid. She hadn’t time to listen and sort out his intentions, her feelings. He wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. He’d been drinking; his eyes had burned with it.

“No,” she answered, “I didn’t.”

“So I thought.”

He leaned his cycle into a hedgerow of field roses, took hers to do the same, then walked beside her to the ruins, still another steep rise away. No wonder the picnickers and holidaymakers up here appeared so languorous, worn out from the climb, lulled by the nuzzling breeze. You could count shades of green like stars up here, from the glow of the tender shoots at your feet to the earthy burr of the heath far below.
Put out your hand for mine again,
Betsey thought. She’d take it and tell him her gratitude for putting the world at her feet this afternoon.