Page 21 of The English Wife

Keeping her veil close about her face, Janie yanked her skirts out of the way of an inquisitive horse, skirting a small, ragged band of boys. She shouldn’t be out and about at all; the rules governing mourning were strict. In three weeks, she might accept condolence calls. In six months, she might call informally on friends, lightening her mourning from black to violet. But what rules applied to this situation? What was the rule when there was no body to bury, when, instead of the muffled knocker enforcing silence, the bereaved household was riven with the cries of the press? In a world gone mad, the proprieties lost their importance.

The World Building was easy enough to find, even in the midst of such bustle: the rusticated façade dominated the street, but it was the dome that set it apart, flaming even in the weak winter sun, stretching higher than the spire of Trinity Church. It was something well out of the human scale, this monument to the news of the world.

Or, at least, thought Janie tartly, the gossip of the world. The building, with its echoes of the Renaissance, made promises that the institution itself failed to keep.

It was grander inside than she had imagined, the elaborate ironwork of the staircase more suited to a palace than a printing house. The air was thick with smoke—cigar smoke, pipe smoke, smoke from the equipment below—and the floor rumbled and rattled beneath her feet. Everyone seemed to know where they were going in this entirely masculine world, clustered in small chattering groups, striding importantly to and fro.

“Can I help you, miss?” A man broke off from his group and slouched over, trailing cigar ash.

Janie spoke without thinking. “Is the building quite safe?”

The man gave a bark of a laugh. “That’s just the presses, miss. There’s enough steel in these walls to hold up half of Manhattan.” He removed the cigar from between his lips, held it out, and eyed her lazily. “You looking for someone?”

“Yes,” said Janie, and then, more definitely, “yes. I’m looking for a reporter. A Mr. Burke.”

“Come for the reward?” He jerked a finger towards a gilded cage that was spewing forth men in battered hats and warm mufflers. “Newsroom. Twelfth floor.”

Janie would have thanked him, but he was already turning away, absorbed back into his conversation, a conversation in which she could hear her own name, Van Duyvil.

Might he have…? No. No one knew her here. There were benefits to being nondescript. She’d never had her engraved portrait in the papers. Her clothes were good, but not showy. There was no one to guess at her for what she was.

And even if there were? What did it matter now? She had spent her life in terror of saying the wrong thing, wearing the wrong gloves, showing a fraction too much ankle, the relentless abjuration to be a lady, behave like a Van Duyvil, whatever that was supposed to mean. But all that paled to insignificance now, seemed small and petty against the drama playing out in the papers, the memory of Bay, golden and fallen.

The gilded cage of the elevator jerked and swayed as it rose in the air. The dial on top jerked ever upwards. Six. Higher than the top of her mother’s house. Eight. Higher than Grant’s tomb. Up, up, up in the sky, away from the known world, the brownstones that clung close to the pavement, the long skirts that trailed on the ground.

Janie heard the sound of the newsroom before the elevator doors opened, a sound like a locomotive, the rattle of hundreds of typewriters, the shrill of a telephone, male voices raised to carry over the din. The elevator man had to ask her whether she meant to take another trip before Janie, with a murmured apology, gathered up her skirts and hurried belatedly into the Tower of Babel.

The room was large, larger than Mrs. Astor’s ballroom, but it seemed small, crammed as it was with rolltop desks jammed together any which way, creating a crazy labyrinth of winding paths. Around the walls, placards shouted their messages in large letters: ACCURACY ACCURACY ACCURACY! read one, and THE COLOR—THE FACTS—THE COLOR another.

Rather more color than facts, Janie would have said. But there was an undeniable energy to the room, the clacking typewriters, the shouting voices, that put energy into her step and color in her cheek.

The room was heaving with men, the air ripe with the smell of tobacco, sweat, and yesterday’s dinner. Janie had never seen a man in his shirt and suspenders before, not even her father or brother. But here, jackets had been dropped over the backs of chairs, sleeves rolled up over forearms. Hats lay discarded on desks and dangled from hooks.

She ought, she supposed, to be intimidated by such a palpably masculine environment, but something about it reminded her of her Girls’ Club, the charity for working-class girls at which she volunteered two mornings a week, or sometimes more when she was feeling particularly low. Nothing here was for show or display; they all were what they were, pounding away at typewriter keys, holding the phone receiver to a crumpled shirt front as they looked up and shouted something across the room. It felt, thought Janie, like being at the edge of a beehive; there was something very impressive about all that concentrated activity.

It did rather put a damper on her grand plan, though. Janie had imagined the newsroom as a series of offices with glass doors, doors which could be closed. She had envisioned herself sweeping mysteriously into Mr. Burke’s office, a woman of the world in her black veil. A few murmured words and she would be in the reporter’s own private sanctum.

Mr. Burke might not even be here. He might, at this very moment, be in her own kitchen. Perhaps, thought Janie wryly, she ought to have stayed there and waited for him to come to her.

A man sat at a raised desk by the elevators. From the fact that he bellowed more loudly and more frequently than the others, Janie presumed that he must occupy some position of authority.

She moved quickly to intercept the balding man in the gold-rimmed glasses. “Pardon me, sir—”

“Do any of you layabouts have any copy?” he shouted, before looking impatiently at Janie. “If you’re looking for the residences, you’re on the wrong floor.”

“I’ve come to see Mr. Burke,” said Janie, keeping her voice low. “About … a confidential matter.”

In stentorian tones, the editor bellowed, “Jimmy! Lady to see you!” and the entire newsroom paused in their efforts to inspect this new diversion.

“Eh, boys, Jimmy’s got a girl!” someone shouted.

Another head popped up, shiny with hair cream. “Lady, if you’d like to do better…”

Janie took a half step back. “If he’s not here, I can always come back another time.”

“Burke!” shouted the editor again, and from somewhere in the middle of the scrum, a tall form unfolded himself and began weaving his way through the aisles, replying easily to the banter that accompanied his progress.

“Chief. Miss—” His eyes narrowed as he recognized her through the flimsy stuff of her veil. He recovered with practiced ease, feigning ignorance with such skill that Janie might have believed him herself if she hadn’t known better. “May I help you, miss?”