The Typewriter Girl (3 page)

But dear Caro. What she said was “Elisabeth, what had he done to you? Are you all right?”

Richard swung round to her so fast she fell back a step. “He caught her at theft and forgery, Caroline! And after she’d assaulted him and run away, it’s me Mr. Hutchens seeks out to find where she lives.” To Betsey, he said, “You might have gotten me dismissed. To be sure, I’ll be a laughingstock at best and suspect at
worst, now that everyone knows I’ve the misfortune to be related to you by marriage.”

“Richard, I am sorry—I would never want to cause you—”

“What did you tell them?” Caroline interrupted to ask Richard. “When they asked where Elisabeth lived, what did you say?”

Richard cast unwilling looks at Betsey and then his wife. “What do I know of where she lives? I told them it was likely some jerry-built hovel somewhere in the East End, where neither I nor my wife were wont to be found.”

“’Tis not a hovel,” Betsey said softly.

“Do you think someone will come to see if she’s here?” Caroline asked.

“Don’t you imagine it’s quite possible?”

A moment passed. Betsey tried to smile at her sister, to say,
I suppose I’m off, then,
but the words caught in her throat when she saw Caro’s eyes fill. Caroline pushed past her husband to catch Betsey’s wrist and draw her back inside the house.

•   •   •

Caroline gave Betsey hairpins for her falling hair; she gave her a length of twine because she knew Betsey’s ancient valise had a troublesome latch. She tried to press other things on Betsey as well: a tin of lavender-scented powder, a bottle of ink, a pair of stockings darned but once in one toe. Betsey promised she had no need of any of it, and Caroline led her to the kitchen and took the next day’s loaf from the bread box. She ignored Betsey’s protests and wrapped it into waxed paper.

“And what will Richard say when you run out of flour too soon?” Betsey asked.

“I shall remind my beloved we might have had to give you an entire plate, meat and all, had you been able to stay to dinner. He’ll feel fortunate it was only a bit of bread then.”

Richard did not look as if he felt fortunate, however, and even less so when Caroline informed him he would see his sister-in-law to the omnibus and pay her fare, too. Caro’s voice sounded as soft
and sweet as that lavender powder as she told him this, but her tone was this-is-how-it-will-be. Betsey loved that tone, so rarely used, yet employed on her behalf tonight, despite the fact that she wanted neither Richard’s escort nor his money.

She told him so as they started down the lane, saying she would walk to her flat. He pointed out the failing twilight and the descending fog that would make the journey treacherous for a woman alone. She assured him she would be fine, shook her head at the coins he was counting out: “Consider it a payment toward what I owe you if you must, but I shall not be taking it.”

He snatched out for her arm, jerking her to a halt. “You’ll take it. You’ll take it, and get yourself away from here safe enough, and keep your sister from that worry at least.” He smashed the pennies into her hand, pressed it closed, and then clamped his fingers so tightly over hers she felt a bit of sympathy for Mr. Wofford. “And as for what you owe, let’s leave off pretending about that.”

Betsey held still, afraid a struggle would make him angrier. She had never liked him. He had helped her, loaned her money for her courses at the Institute and a new suit of clothes to wear to Baumston & Smythe, but the smallness of his spirit choked the gratitude she wanted to feel. Until now, though, she had never been afraid of him.

So she held still and whispered, “I shall send portions of my wages from my new position, Richard. Twice a month. You know—”

He shook the words from her mouth. “Never mind it! Here is how I want you to repay what you owe: Stay away. Go on wherever it is you’re going and don’t come back. Write Caroline now and again to save her from worry, but when you’ve made whatever wreck you’ll make of it, don’t bring it back to my family. I’ve had enough, do you hear?”

Betsey nodded, but he held her until a carriage turned into the lane. Released, she walked beside him numbly to a street where the omnibus would pass, and they waited for it in silence. When it
came, she dashed up the steps for a seat on the upper level, feeling she would need the air, and the perspective.

The evening was cool, a good explanation for why she trembled the first few minutes of the journey. In the bus’s halting progress, fog-blurred streetlamps drew near and fell behind, drew near and fell behind, belying the noisy exertion of real life occurring below their dreamy haze. Her hand throbbed. Turnabout. She wondered at her mute submission to Richard. It was the fear, of course, and the fear because of the surprise—with some humor, she tried to convince herself the surprise came not from how he’d gripped her but from his forgiveness of her debt. It didn’t work.

Did he honestly believe he could keep her from Caroline and the children? Why hadn’t she simply told him to go to hell?

Because he was right?

She pulled a bit of the waxed paper away from the bread Caroline had given her and stuck her nose near the loaf, a much nicer scent than the ones that grew stronger the closer the omnibus came to her stop. That she had made a—what had Richard said?—a
wreck
of things was unquestionable. That she would do so in Idensea—

She had to believe the matter was not so cut-and-dry as Richard assumed.

She knew Idensea was in Hampshire because Baumston & Smythe insured the Idensea Pier & Seaside Pleasure Building Company’s holdings, but she had never been there. Still, something about living beside the sea resonated within her: She had a remembrance of pinching sand from the damp hem of a faded blue frock, only to discover how it stuck to her little-girl fingers, and of her mother kicking salty water into the sunlight, telling her daughters—and son, for Daniel had still been with them then—to look and to look. And behind her mother, laughing, was a man Betsey had believed to be her father, at least until a few years ago, when she had tried to make Caroline remember Blackpool, and Caroline said no, no, it was impossible their father had been there on that occasion.

Then who was he?

I don’t know. Some stranger, just someone who caught your fancy, perhaps.

Though the memory of her family all together had already been as frail and jumbled as a ball of dust, Betsey regretted this alteration to it.

She didn’t know how she would get there, but she was going to Idensea, and was glad of it, glad to be leaving behind the filth and disappointment of London. She was to be a
manager
—that Mr. Jones used that term rather than
manageress
always made her smile—arranging day excursions for tourist groups, playing hostess to them when they came for their dinner dance at the new hotel, earning commission for every group she booked. Risky seasonal work, to be sure, but Mr. Jones had promised she would have office duties in the winter.

Why had he offered her such a chance? She didn’t know. She didn’t know why he had followed her from that meeting where she had been summoned to take dictation. He’d asked if she liked being a type-writer, and, suspicious and irate, she had given him some pert response. Worse than pert. Fearful of the resulting assumptions if anyone saw them speaking, she’d intended to put him off entirely with that worse-than-pert response.

But he kept following after her. He mentioned the wages, and it was then she stopped to truly look at him, and listen. Because the wages were good, and so was his face. A good face, open as a summer window.

•   •   •

No one had come looking for her tonight, her flatmate Grace assured her, nor had Avery shown his damn face about, a rather hostile response to Betsey’s casual question.

How much effort would Baumston & Smythe put toward finding her? Had they notified the police? Betsey fretted over it, as well as the problems of rail fare and the confiscated letter—
Bring a good character letter or two, for Mr. Seiler and Sir Alton,
Mr. Jones
had instructed—while she fed bites of bread to Grace’s little son, Sammy, and dropped crumbs into the bottom of the birdcage for Thief, her canary. Why didn’t she simply write it by hand herself, Grace wanted to know, or Avery, he was bound to have a right proper hand. But after today’s experience, Betsey had no more stomach for forgery.

Avery didn’t come. It was not so unusual, even if this afternoon’s events made it seem so, and memories of how he’d simply faded from her life after she’d been expelled and he’d been reprimanded were unhelpful at present. She and Grace, who had already arranged for new lodgings, packed. Sammy made it a game, darting about the room and lugging anything he could carry to either Betsey or his mother. Most of his selections belonged to Avery. She hadn’t realized how many belongings Avery had, even after selling most of his books and other valuables. Transporting it all to Idensea would be either pricey or awkward.

Of her own things, however, all but her winter cloak fit into the valise, and a few hours later, neighbors had helped Grace and Sammy to their new flat and Betsey lay shivering in her own bed. Her first job in Manchester after being dismissed as a housemaid had been as a laundress, and she’d spent her nights on the floor in a back room with a dozen other women. How many times since then had she wished for her own private room? Yet tonight, she missed the whirring pulse of Grace’s rented sewing machine, and the flat seemed very quiet. So quiet she could hear the fragile steps at last approaching the door, the careful grind of the door latch.

His clothes fanned scents into the room as he removed them, tobacco and ale and something else—smoky but more substantial, roasted—and she wondered why she’d not guessed,
the theater
. Avery had friends who had missed him when he’d dropped from their circle, and who, for the past month, had been happy enough to spot him an admission or a supper. They apparently were not the sort of friends to keep you from losing your best chance for a stable income in a card game, nor to care for you during an illness, but Betsey supposed those were rare enough amongst men.

His hands smoothed along the empty space in the bed beside her, then patted more firmly, searching for the blanket, which he wouldn’t find because she’d already given it to Grace as a poor substitute for the money she’d wanted to leave. His fingertips brushed the wool of her cloak and paused, but didn’t grasp, didn’t pull.

He eased into the bed, and after he had lain utterly still for a moment, Betsey rearranged her cloak so both of them had at least some cover. Mostly healed from pneumonia Avery might be, but the night was cool and he wasn’t wearing a stitch.

“Damn it all,” he said.

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

They moved closer, huddling rather than embracing. She thought he would speak.

“You saw a show?”

“Only the Alhambra,” he answered, the
only
because variety entertainment didn’t rate as true theater to Avery, regardless of the opulence of the venue.

He added nothing else; perhaps he believed there was a chance in hell he’d be permitted to drift off to sleep. But the last time he’d seen her, she had been enduring Wofford’s jobation. If he didn’t wish to discuss that, he at least had to know she was leaving London on the morrow. They had plans to make, the two of them.

“You do realize how I hated it this afternoon,” he whispered abruptly. “Having to . . .
sit by
.”

He sounded as if he were accusing her of something. She thought of how she had waited, briefly, irrationally, in a doorway where she could see the Baumston & Smythe entrance. Just catching her breath after her run out of the building, that’s all that was, she told herself.

“Both of us with no wages for the week would be a fine thing,” she said.

“Still, I wish there had been another way. I felt like the lowest
sort of cad, watching it all, and once you vanished, it only became worse. Lizzie, the sensation you caused, you cannot—”

“Don’t call me ‘Lizzie.’”

“You’re cross.”

“I’m not. I’ve been waiting, is all.”

“I needed respite tonight, you understand, after all that dreadfulness. I brought you a pasty. Shall I fetch it now?”

She nearly said yes. Her stomach felt empty, and suddenly she yearned for the decadent comfort of eating in bed in the middle of the night. They’d done that, she remembered, in the beginning. Picnics in Avery’s bed, in that wonderful flat of his near the Institute. She wished he’d come in without a care for waking her and begun hand-feeding her.

“I’d best save it,” she said. “Tomorrow’s apt to be long. I—I’ve packed, Avery. I decided to go on to Idensea tomorrow.”

“Oh.” He sounded confused, caught out. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it, if you won’t be type-writing? And if Wofford’s determined to find you. . . . Damn him. But what if that Jones fellow won’t take you on without the letter?”

She thought,
I don’t know,
and pressed her hand against the lurch in her gut. Avery, inclined to answer his own questions, didn’t this time.

Instead, several moments later, he said, “You might let it go,” which she didn’t understand in the least.

“A bit absurd, isn’t it,” he said, “going all that way only for a job. How long would it take for you to get another type-writing position?”

“What, here in London?”

“Certainly not more than a few days. Granted, without references, you would have to look a step or two down from Baumston, but if you answered some adverts . . . Or the switchboards. Openings there by the hour, it’s said, and your accent isn’t at all repulsive, you know. I’ve always said so.”

So she might let it go. She might just stay in London. She
might have just told Mr. Jones
no
and never asked Mr. Wofford for a character and thus never made herself a spectacle and a . . . an
outlaw
. She might still be a type-writer at Baumston & Smythe, Insurers with high hopes of still being a type-writer at Baumston & Smythe, Insurers in five years more, which was the length of time a female type-writer could expect to work before she earned a wage that granted true, livable independence. That had been the extent of her hopes until a few days ago.