The Typewriter Girl Read Free

to Mr. Hutchens so he may decide the matter.”
    “You could let me go down the stairs.”
    He brushed Cora Lester into the office with a wave. He lifted his brows at Betsey.
    “Could I? And overlook the proper procedures? There is call for such a thing, on occasion.”
    He looked her over. He stood in the open doorway, before everyone and yet unseen by any, and he looked her over. The snaps of the type-writing machines grew muffled as he pushed the door almost shut, one hand curled round its edge. The other hand slipped to the front of his trousers. He gave himself a squeeze. It was a dainty squeeze, and it was the daintiness rather than the squeeze itself that mystified Betsey.
    “You should have to convince me the present situation is such an occasion,” he said. He pushed back his coat and hooked his thumb on the waist of his trousers. “You see?”
    Mr. Wofford looked her all over.
    Concentration, not contemplation. It was a good motto, and not just for type-writer girls. So many situations in life called for one to pay attention yet not think overmuch. So many times when the proper posture would promote one’s efficiency. Suppose, for example, you wanted to give a bastard his due—why then, it was wise advice indeed.
    Betsey nodded once. “I see.” She offered a closed-lip smile, a slow blink. She witnessed the shift, when some of the marbles came rolling her way. “Mr. Wofford, you are . . . entirely correct.”
    And her breasts were far from ample, but with the proper posture, she could endow them with a certain significance. She did so now, an efficient way of holding Mr. Wofford’s attention as she moved to the doorway and, with an efficient, concentrated motion, kicked the door to its frame, an efficient and concentrated way of telling a bastard to go to hell, especially when the bastard’s fingers were still curled round the door.
    And then she concentrated on the most efficient exit from Baumston & Smythe, Insurers.

OBSERVE THE BELL.
The bell rings to warn the writer that he is approaching the end of the line.
    —How to Become Expert in Type-writing
    S he had four shillings in her boot, stashed there the previous payday until she could earn five more to purchase rail fare to Idensea. Above all, there must be the rail fare, Betsey had thought, and so she had done without the meat the shillings would have bought. She’d been comforted by the coins’ hard presence in her shoe the past few days, but now, having fled the City and made the long walk to her sister Caroline’s house in Brixton, they had begun to torture the ball of her foot. Single fares to Idensea cost nine shillings, not four.
    Reaching Caroline’s door, she turned the bell and sank down, unable to wait a moment longer to loosen her laces and make adjustments. She cursed softly upon finding the ill-fitting boot had rubbed a hole in her stocking.
    “Elisabeth! Come in, for pity’s sake! I’d thought you were coming Sunday!”
    Betsey worked her foot back into her boot, not quite ready to look up at her sister. “A change to my plans. I shall leave tomorrow instead of next week, so I’ve come to say good-bye.”
    “But why? I thought your notice . . .”
    Betsey stood, managing a blithe smile. Caroline noticed nothing but Betsey’s hair, however.
    “You’ve got a fringe! And—is your hair cut? Elisabeth!”
    Caroline lifted her hand to test the length of Betsey’s hair between two fingers. Betsey intercepted the gesture, tucking up into her hat the strands of hair that had fallen during the walk from the wigmaker’s to Caroline’s house. The strands promptly slipped down again, and she hooked them behind her ear. Ah, God, she would have to buy more hairpins to have any hope of keeping it up. The back almost grazed her shoulders, but the front was shorter, owing to the way the wigmaker’s apprentice had bound her hair before sawing through it with scissors Betsey suspected were less sharp than they ought be. The fringe