The Typewriter: Part 1
As I prepared for maternity leave, I came across a self-contained chapter of my book The Whispers of War that I had removed from the manuscript because it no longer it. However, this charming date between my heroine Marie and a widower named Richard always stuck with me so I pulled it out of my archive, expanded it, and I’m now publishing in two parts as the short story “The Typewriter.”
Below you will find Part 1. Next Friday, Part 2 will release so be sure to subscribe to make sure that you receive the final half.
The Typewriter
I
June 1940
It had been three days since Marie had seen Richard Calloway. Three whole days of agony waiting to find out what he thought of her.
“He just needs time,” said Hazel. One of her best friends and a matchmaker by trade, Hazel had been the one to make the date. Marie wondered if Hazel now regretted offering to arrange for Marie to meet the widower because, in her professional capacity, Hazel had rung him to find out what he had thought of his dinner with Marie and he’d said nothing more than, “It was very nice.”
Very nice? Did very nice mean that he wanted to see Marie again, or was it his way of politely putting her off.
Marie hated the idea of being simply very nice.
And yet, when the telephone finally rang on the third afternoon following their date and she heard Richard’s greeting, her heart practically leapt out of her chest.
“I’m sorry that it took me so long to call you,” he said. “I promise it wasn’t because I had anything other than a delightful night in your company.”
She blushed, her hands wrapped protectively around the cool Bakelite. “I did wonder.”
“When it comes to important decisions, I often take my time. To make sure I know.”
To know what? she’d wanted to ask, but instead she’d held back. She was rewarded when he said, “I wonder if you would like to join me for lunch on Saturday.”
Saturday. Her birthday.
Yes, she told him. Yes she would.
“Wonderful,” he said. She could hear the warmth come into his voice even over the static pop of the telephone. “I thought afterwards we might perhaps go for a walk.”
“I would like that very much,” she said.
She jotted down the address of a restaurant in Marleybone and agreed to meet him there at one o’clock on Saturday.
When she replaced the telephone on its cradle, she couldn’t help but smile.
II
Marie might have accepted Richard’s invitation with a casualness that implied she lunched with handsome men with soft, kind voices most Saturdays, but she found that as the date grew closer nerves began to knot her stomach. Every day newspaper headlines shouted some new threat in bold black letters, and the clipped tones of the radio presenters did nothing to hide the severity of the regular news bulletins. Hitler’s troops were marching across Europe with a speed no one could quite fathom, swallowing up great swaths of land and leaving little behind. Now rumors were swirling that France may not be safe either because, although there were those that believed the Maginot Line would hold, too many others thought that there was little the cement fortification could do against the Blitzkrieg.
And if France fell…
Marie couldn’t think about that. Not now. Already she was jumpy. It was only too easy to imagine what would happen if the British government decided that she, a registered enemy alien of German birth, was too much of a threat. She had been classed a category B, the second lowest level of threat to national security, but still she couldn’t understand why the tribunal she and every other enemy alien in Britain had faced had decided she was any threat at all. Before the war, she would have told anyone who cared to ask that she often felt more British than German. She hadn’t even been back to the country of her birth for years. Still, everything had changed last September with the declaration of war and nothing felt safe right now.
She disembarked from the bus, nodding to the driver and the conductor rather than saying thank you as she might have before the war for risk of drawing attention to herself.
The restaurant where she was to meet Richard was only two roads down from the bus stop, but by the time she’d arrived, she could hardly keep the shake from her hands. She told herself that it was silly to be so wound up about a second date with this man. She hardly knew him, and she had been a poor judge of character in the past. What if her judgement failed her now?
When she walked through the door, however, and spotted Richard speaking to the maître d’, all of her nerves calmed. He was kind. That was what she remembered most from their first dinner together. Kind and curious and not at all phased by the fact that she was German.
The sound of the door shutting behind her must have caught his attention because he turned, smiling as his eyes lighted on her.
“Marie,” he said, her name almost a sigh of relief on his lips.
“Good afternoon,” she said softly, the formality of her words holding back the excitement that was beginning to build in her chest
“We’ll be seated in one moment. Jean-Pierre is just sorting out the table.” He nodded to the maître d’ who was now engaged in a serious conversation with a waiter in a black jacket and a white waistcoat.
“You come here often enough to know the maître d’s name?” she asked.
“I have a confession to make.” He leaned into the little gap between them in the small restaurant’s vestibule. “I’m horribly undomesticated. I would hardly be able to keep myself alive without the help of my very tolerant housekeeper, Mrs. Mullens. She makes sure that there’s food on the table for me for fear I won’t eat otherwise. On her days off, I come here.”
“Mademoiselle. Monsieur Calloway,” said the maître d’ before stepping back from his podium and weaving his way through the restaurant.
She stepped forward, and Richard’s hand lighted on the small of her back as she passed. It was such a small gesture, courteous and protective all at once, and it was all she could do not to blush.
Once they were settled at their table and wine was on its way, Richard cleared his throat and began.
“I wanted to apologize again for taking my time in ringing you,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said as though she hadn’t spent the time playing back every scrap of conversation she could recall and wondering if she had somehow offended him. If her Germanness had somehow offended him.
Whether you are German or not doesn’t matter to me.
“Do you know why I took my time?” he asked.
“You said that you didn’t believe in rushing important decisions,” she said.
“That’s partially true. The other reason is that I was not expecting you. I’ve taken lovely, accomplished women to dinner but never before have I felt so utterly at peace, simply talking with them.”
A long pause stretched between them while she tried to grapple with what he’d just told her.
“You’re very quiet,” he said.
“I’m afraid you’ve overwhelmed me,” she said.
“Turnabout’s fair play, because you’ve overwhelmed me, Marie.”
Toying with the base of her knife so that it rocked gently back and forth on the tablecloth, she asked, “Did you know that it’s my birthday today?”
“Many happy returns of the day,” he said with a smile.
“Thank you, although it’s never been a day I’ve looked forward to with any real excitement.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. When I was a child, my parents were often too busy to do anything. I never had much of a fuss made over me. I suppose that sounds rather infantile to want that sort of thing,” she said.
“I don’t think it sounds infantile at all. In fact, I think everyone should have a little fuss made over them on their birthday.”
She straightened her shoulders a little. “I suppose they should.”
“How have you celebrated this year?” he asked.
“My friends raised a toast to me at our last monthly dinner, but that was all. Not that I expect anything else,” she said in a hurry. “Twenty-four is not a very significant birthday, is it?”
“I should think making it another year around the sun is significant, no matter what your age,” he said.
She wondered about his wife, Mrs. Calloway, who had died so very young. What had he said about her? That they were opposites in every way, her vivacious and him reserved. That he respected her, but that theirs had not been a great love affair.
“He is looking for a wife,” Hazel had told her. “If he finds the right sort of woman.”
“And you think that could be me?” Marie had asked with skepticism.
Hazel shrugged. “Perhaps, but you will never know unless you get to know the man.”
In the restaurant, Marie settled against the padded back of her chair. “I sometimes think about the things that I thought I would be doing when I turned twenty-four.”
“What were those?” he asked.
She laughed. “It’s silly really. I suppose like many little girls I assumed I would be spending every evening in a ball gown, being swept around the dance floor by Clarke Gable or Errol Flynn.”
“Men of adventure,” he said.
“All of the girls at school were mad about them,” she said. “That was one of my first lessons when I arrived at boarding school. American film stars were considered the height of glamor.”
“What else did twenty-four look like?” he asked, mirroring her posture by easing back.
“I would be living in my own chic flat somewhere in London, which I thought was the height of daring.”
“And how would you fund this extravagant lifestyle?” he asked.
“I would be a writer of course,” she said with a laugh.
“What kind of writer?”
“Oh, novels, newspaper columns.” She waved a hand. “I don’t think I ever imagined the practicalities in great detail. I was far too wrapped up in the idea of me at a typewriter, making people weep with my deftly crafted sentences.”
He nodded. “I can see it now.”
“You are too kind,” she said.
“You could still try your hand at it. It’s never too late for something you love.”
“I’m afraid that reality caught up with my fantasy. I realized that it would be far harder than I’d thought to write. Besides, I don’t even have a typewriter at my disposal,” she said.
“I can see how that could be a very real problem,” he said.
“Precisely.”
“Well, I for one feel very lucky that you should wish to spend the afternoon of your twenty-fourth birthday with me,” he said.
“I can’t think of any better company,” she said honestly.
There was a beat, weighty with meaning, and then he reached his hand across the small table and rested it palm up on the white linen cloth. She hesitated a moment, but then placed her hand in his. Skin pressed against skin, and after a moment he wrapped his long fingers around hers. His thumb stroked across her knuckles. She shivered.
“Thank you, Marie,” he said.
They sat that way, talking and holding hands, until the waiter came and they were forced to finally look at their neglected menus.
Part 2 will release next Friday. Be sure to subscribe to make sure that you receive the final half.
My book The Whispers of War, a story of friendship and loyalty on the British Home Front, is available in print, ebook, and audiobook. Further information is available on my websi