The Typewriter Girl (8 page)

He vaulted over the balustrade and, rather than distribute a sweet to each child, put the bundle in care of one of the chaperones, whose bless-you-kind-sir was not audible to Lillian but evident all the same. He strode back, shoes and trousers collecting filth. Lillian sighed, fully aware of her ambivalence. She liked the impulse behind the stunt better than its execution; she found him exasperating, and she found him compelling.

John Jones, such a great deal of work.

Yet the notion of polishing the diamond in the rough, of being the power behind the power, appealed mightily to Lillian. A woman had her place, she believed; it was on a throne, and not merely an ornamental piece.

“You might have saved yourself the trouble and paid the vendor to take it for you,” she told him.

“The trouble was the fun of it.”

Impulsively, he stroked her cheek. His thumb was enormous, hard and rough against her skin. Her throat felt tight, her knees fluid. The sensations, being involuntary on her part, were not wholly agreeable to her.

He had kissed her once, the only man who’d ever done so. When he had started kissing her
entire
mouth, she’d pushed him away in shock and . . . something else. He’d apologized, and she had not written a word about it in her diary, unsure how to phrase such a thing. And if she did record it, did it do John credit as a suitor, or count against him? Had it been appalling, or something else? Ever since, she’d been trying to decide.

As they strolled arm in arm toward the hotel to meet her mother and sisters for tea, she listened to his talk of the little railway he’d helped design. She said
oh
in all the appropriate places and with all the appropriate inflections, as appearing anything less than enthralled with a man’s interests profited a woman only on certain rare occasions. If she married him, she would have to listen
with more attention to be of any use to his career. A shame his ambitions weren’t more toward poet laureate.

She found them rather silly, these seaside buildings of his, insubstantial, like drawing-room ballads compared with a Bach cantata. But neither were they nothing, especially for a career as young as John’s. Someday, he and she could be walking toward something that truly mattered—a grand concert hall, an important museum, a cathedral. Someday, John Jones and his wife could be the toast of society.

•   •   •

“You never showed us your office when you toured us round the hotel,” she said after John had greeted the doorman and they’d come inside.

“It seemed best to get you out of doors whilst the rain held. And you were bored.”

She bristled. He dared her to deny it, enjoying her embarrassment. That he’d noticed her boredom all but insulted her femininity, but what did the man expect, dragging her round to boiler houses and underground kitchens and sprawling laundries?

He warned her his office was of the same practical character but granted she could have a look on their way to the tearoom. She sighed when she saw how accurate he’d been. Land surveys tacked to the wall, a bookcase of engineering journals and reference manuals, a frightfully muddy pair of workman’s gloves on the desk. She approved, in general, of the industrious feel of the room, but the utter lack of a personal aesthetic distressed her. Indeed, she had such a great deal of work to do, if she picked him.

She ran her forefinger along the spines of a row of journals. “Where is the Tennyson?”

With his head, he motioned toward a door behind his desk. “My rooms.”

Lillian swallowed. She’d known he lived here at the hotel, but not precisely
here
. Being alone with him in his office stretched the
boundaries of propriety to their limit. To be a door away from his private quarters was quite,
quite
—

“Do you read it?”

He joined her beside the bookcase. “Times.” He smiled down at her. “When I want to sleep.”

“You’re a beast.”

Perhaps it was only a nod, but his head moved, and her eyelids fell shut. She felt his lips on hers, and when he did not kiss her entire mouth the way he had last time, she parted her lips a little more. Had it been appalling, or something else? A credit in his favor, or not? It was necessary to know, so she parted her lips.

Yes, appalling. She was certain of it now. Appalling, how it conjured up the maddest thoughts, of shedding her gloves, of indiscreet day-trippers lolling in the sand, how it took her quite from her
self
.

She pushed him away, informed him again he was a beast, and immediately regretted breaking the kiss. A little longer would have done no harm, but now she couldn’t possibly close her eyes again and offer her mouth, not with John standing there not apologizing like he had last time, looking like she’d surrendered a secret to him.

“I ought to be done with you this moment,” she said.

“Before tea? I’ve ordered a fine one for you. And your mother invited me for your musical society in June—”

“Why did you accept? I’m sure you’ve never had a lesson. You’ll only embarrass us both.”

“And then you’re here again in August for your holiday. You might as well wait till autumn, Lils, when you can make a clean finish of me, hadn’t you?”

He wasn’t worried. She didn’t know when she’d allowed that to happen. The moment she’d parted her lips?

“Mother and everyone else will be waiting.”

She swept out of the office ahead of him. The presence of someone in the corridor emphasized how reckless she’d been, how easily she might have been caught kissing John in his office. She
halted only when she realized John had stopped to speak to the person she’d almost run down, a young woman.

Lillian could hardly enter the tearoom alone. She waited and busied herself with adjusting the wilting camellia John had given her. The woman was unnecessarily tall and apparently worked for the hotel in some capacity, though Lillian could not imagine what. She wasn’t dressed as a chambermaid or as kitchen staff. Switchboard operator? Or some sort of assistant to Mr. Seiler—she was asking John about him.

John shook his head. “That is why I took you to Sarah’s. Tobias is meeting us”—he indicated Lillian—“right now for tea, and he’ll be too busy this evening; he makes a point to socialize with the guests on Saturday evenings.”

“I see.”

It was clearly the end of the conversation. But neither of them moved. Then they both murmured, “I’m sorry.”

John added, “I thought Sarah understood. She oughtn’t have brought you.”

“No, it wasn’t her fault.”

Lillian said, “Mr. Jones.” She made it lilt.

John put out his arm for her, but she had to move a few steps to take it, and she could sense his uneasiness over the hotel girl, even though her predicament was of her own making.

“Come with us,” he said.

Both Lillian and the hotel girl laughed.

Lillian saw her own panic reflected in the other girl’s eyes.

The exercise of taste and good judgment are as necessary to success in type-writing as in any other occupation.

—How to Become Expert in Type-writing

T
obias will be happy to meet you,” John went on. “You’ll be able to get acquainted before—”

“Mr. Jones,” Lillian said, no lilt.

Of all the mad notions, inviting an employee to dine with a superior. From age twelve, Lillian had navigated more garden parties, soirees, socials, holiday meals, and balls, both masquerade and otherwise, than she could count, but the thought of the awkwardness this situation would bring—and just as she was meeting for the first time John’s dearest friends in Idensea—was more than she could stomach. And did he have no feelings for the hotel girl herself, how humiliated she’d be in the tearoom dressed as she was?
John Jones, oblivious to the most basic social mores.

“You already invited Mr. Dunning earlier today,” she reminded him. “Let me go ahead of the two of you, and give the tearoom staff a bit of notice of these last-moment changes, hmm?”

She released John’s arm as if already en route. But if she were forced to enter that tearoom without an escort, and all to ensure a switchboard operator or whatever she was had a chair—

But no, she was safe. The hotel girl was begging off, walking off, cutting off any chance for John to argue or persuade. She and the hotel girl had rescued each other, good feminine sense prevailing in the onslaught of male idiocy.

John, however, was too quiet on the way to tea.

But she knew what to do. Here at the table were his friends: The Seilers each came from old hotelier families in Switzerland; Mr. Seiler was the Swan Park’s chief manager, while his wife headed housekeeping. Then, Mrs. Elliot, a widow for several years, sitting with her son, a lad of twelve or so. John had lived with the Elliots his first months in Idensea, before Dr. Elliot’s death.

Lillian would dazzle them.

And best of all, there was that last-moment addition to the party, Mr. Dunning, Sir Alton’s only son.

“How best to punish our tardy host, Miss Gilbey?” he asked as she and John were seated.

She smiled at him. They’d become acquainted in London, when he’d been tagging along once with John. Wasn’t that a funny way to think of it, a baronet’s son tagging along with John Jones? Yet the reverse hadn’t been the case.

“Hide the sweets, of course,” she replied.

“How awfully cunning of you. But you wouldn’t be very comfortable huddling beneath the table, I fear.”

The jest was not the wittiest she’d heard, but she laughed all the same, because she found something appealing in its delivery, and because it suited her to let John hear her laugh with another man, let him hear her speak with another man about the upcoming Albert Hall season. Invite another man to her music society party in June.

Mr. Dunning was young, fresh from Cambridge, but he made her think of her parents’ eighteenth birthday gift to her, gleaming pearls nestled in black velvet. Immediately, effortlessly attractive, inspiring a dozen ready visions about how and where they would be worn. Noel Dunning was easy to like; he didn’t discomfit her with ambivalence.

John Jones, a great deal of work.
Worth it? With Mr. Dunning at the table, it was impossible not to think of Sir Alton, who’d come by his title through his music, a composition memorializing Prince Albert. Could not a builder who served the Public Good hope for some similar honor?

These things, too: Whom else did she permit to call her Lils, or to kiss her entire mouth? Things like that surely meant Something, even if neither of them said so.

•   •   •

In her determination to extract herself from Mr. Jones’s invitation as rapidly as possible, Betsey went the wrong way, deeper into the hotel rather than where she wanted to go, out. Out, for God’s sake. She halted when she realized the light had changed and found herself in an airy space with ferns and palm trees—entire trees, indoors! On the furniture, on the islands of carpet atop the parquet, on Betsey’s own sleeve and glove as she started to touch her forehead, dapples of light glowed blue and turquoise, and she could only look up.

The source was a dome of colored glass, white feathers and yellow scrolls strewn over a patchwork of watery hues. Betsey allowed herself to stare, to wonder at the imagination behind it, one unfettered by practicality or moderation. She followed the repetition of the scrolls and plumage in the plasterwork as it ringed the dome and cascaded down to the pilasters with the easy profusion of cake icing flowing from a piping bag. Each archway surrounding her framed its own ideal view of some other architectural feature, like the stairway directly across from her, itself an exhibition for the ladies gliding down the steps, the misty fabrics of their gowns wafting behind them.

No one here rushed.

The carpet beneath her boot soles felt like it had been rolled out over sponges.

Cream-colored upholstery covered the settees and chairs. People actually sat upon them, extending their arms along the backs in utter ease. At least one held a cup and saucer.

Behind her hand, to herself, Betsey whispered, “Hell and hell.” As she retraced her steps to find her way out, she wished she’d stayed put at the lodging house and delayed this misery.

How could she work here? The parlor at The Bows had nearly done her in. How could she ever even enter here and not feel like a playactor or a foreigner whose very name was unpronounceable to the natives?

“Miss Dobson?” An apple-cheeked page stopping her.

“Yes?”

He looked relieved. As the hair on the iced cake, Betsey reckoned she’d been easy enough to pick out, but the boy had not been certain. “Ma’am, Mr. Seiler sent me. He’s eager to meet you, he says, and wonders if you’d be so kind as to await him in his office.”

Mr. Seiler, at last! “Certainly—”

But the boy had memorized the entire message; he would relay it. “However, as it may be some time before he is able to join you, he does not wish you to feel obliged. If the wait is an imposition, he is pleased to see you Monday morning.”