I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend (9 page)

‘What about Captain Williams though? Dear, dear, dear, Jenny, what a sad flirt you are — going from one young man to another.’ Jane made her voice sound just like Mrs Cawley at the school.

I told her immediately that I didn’t even want to think about Captain Williams because he could ruin my reputation forever. Jane nodded wisely and said, ‘Very true!’ twice.

I would do my best not to think of Captain Williams — not even when I was in bed at night, I decided as we went home, slipping and sliding on the frozen puddles of the lane.

After dinner all the boys decided to have a game of cricket. The ground was hard with frost but the sun was still warm and Mrs Austen said that I could go out if I wrapped up warmly.

‘You can bowl, Jane.’ To my surprise John Warren handed her the ball. I had thought that we would just be watching, but Frank was sending me up to the top of the field with instructions to throw the ball to Jane if it came anywhere near to me.

Tom Fowle was first to bat and I saw Cassandra come out and stand where she could see him and smile shyly at him. I felt quite sorry for her, though she wasn’t very friendly to me.
I was so interested in watching the two of them that it was only when everyone started shrieking ‘Jenny!’ that I realized that the ball was actually at my feet.

Frank, the captain of our team, was very nice to me. He said that I probably wasn’t well yet, so he sent Charles up to help me in my part of the field.

We had almost finished the game and Tom Fowle was fielding when Frank hit the ball a tremendous whack so it went right over towards a row of poplars on the far side of the field. One minute we could see Tom running after the ball, and the next there was no sign of him. It was Cassandra who realized first that something was wrong. She gave a shriek of ‘Tom!’ and then she set off running across the field. Jane and I followed and the others came behind. Tom Fowle was stretched out on the ground, his head pouring blood, and the colour was completely drained from his normally healthy-looking face. His eyes were shut.

Cassandra gasped and then, without a moment’s hesitation, she tore a strip of muslin from her petticoat and held it against Tom’s dark hair, cradling his head in her lap. She said nothing, but I think I will always
remember what she looked like in those few minutes before Mr Austen came running up and Tom opened his eyes.

‘Slipped on a piece of ice,’ said Gilbert nonchalantly. ‘You all right, Tom, old son?’

‘Cassandra, get up off that wet grass,’ scolded Mrs Austen as she came puffing up the field. By this stage Tom had sat up, but Mrs Austen’s eyes went immediately to Cassandra’s torn petticoat, to the bloodstained strip of muslin around Tom’s head and to her daughter’s stricken face. Cassandra didn’t even glance at her mother. All her attention was on Tom, and her whole soul was in her eyes as she tenderly stroked his hand. It was true love, Jane and I agreed afterwards — no one, remarked Jane wisely, would ruin a good petticoat for a man unless they loved him.

* * *

It’s bedtime now and I should be asleep, but I can’t sleep. My candle was blown out about an hour ago by Mrs Austen when she came in to say goodnight. I just lay tossing and turning for half an hour. Jane was asleep so I could think my own thoughts. At the moment everything in my mind seemed to be about falling in love and getting married. I was thinking of Cassandra and Tom Fowle and how she had looked when she thought he was injured. I thought about the two of them a lot, of the way they kept looking at each other — during meals, when they passed each other on the stairs, when they danced together in the evenings. And then I thought of the handsome William Chute, sitting on his black stallion with the hunting horn in his hand. It’s the first time, really, that I seriously thought about falling in love.

In the end I got out of bed and came to sit by the fire with my journal on my knee. There is enough light from the fire to write by. So I’ve written down the bit about Cassandra and about the fun that Jane and I had in the church, filling out the forms for calling the banns.

But in a few years this will all be very serious for us.

I will have to find a husband.

And it will have to be a rich husband, if Mrs Austen is right.

After all, my mother was much poorer than Jane’s
father, who is rector of a parish and has a large farm. I know that she only left fifty pounds a year for my maintenance. Edward-John won’t want to give me anything when I marry — even if he did, Augusta wouldn’t allow him.

I will have no fortune, so who will marry me?

Jane was telling me about a girl who lived near to one of her cousins. This girl was aged barely sixteen when she ran away with an army captain. According to Jane, she was attracted by the soldier’s red coat! When her relations caught up with her, the couple had already been living together as man and wife so there was nothing to be done except to get them married as soon as possible.

I just can’t imagine!

Thursday, 10 March 1791

It’s nice sharing a bedroom with Jane. Cassandra and Jane used to share it, but now Cassandra has her own bedroom as James has left home. I like sharing with Jane; it is good fun to be able to chat together. We stayed awake so late last night, talking and joking — and even after that I had got out of bed and written in my journal — so this morning we both woke up late, and had barely enough time to wash our faces and just smooth our hair before running down to breakfast.

After breakfast I asked Jane to come and help me to brush my hair and said I would do hers for her after that. My mother always said that to have nice hair you had to give it one hundred strokes of the brush twice every day.

When we got to our bedroom, Jane started doing an imitation of her mother scolding the butcher.

‘
I really cannot think, Mr Baxter, that you can know what you’re talking about. How anyone could pretend to be a butcher and sell those pieces of scrap meat for gigot chops, I declare to goodness, I just do not know. These were no more gigot chops than I am a donkey. Do I look like a donkey, Mr Baxter?
’

I asked Jane why she did not like her mama. There is something about the way she imitates her mother that makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

‘She’s not my mother,’ said Jane, and her voice was all sort of hissy and low. ‘My real mother has been
imprisoned in a lonely castle hundreds of miles away. She’s been locked up there since I was born. That woman’s just my stepmother.’

‘What?!’ I said, and I must have screamed it because Jane put her hand over my mouth.

‘Shh,’ she said mysteriously. ‘Terrible things can happen in this house. Haven’t you read Mrs Parson’s book
The Mysterious Warning?
Did you hear that creak last night at midnight? And those footsteps coming slowly up the stairs? Did you hear a dripping sound?’

In a way I found it funny, but in another way I felt uncomfortable. It wasn’t really like one of Jane’s weird stories where you can tell that, inside, she is finding it all just as funny as you are. Jane actually sounded bitter when she spoke of her mother. I tried to think of something to divert her.

I reminded Jane that since her mother is my aunt — and my mother’s sister — then she couldn’t possibly be Jane’s stepmother. As if my mother would have kept that piece of family news from me! I said all of this in a joking tone of voice. I hoped that she would laugh, but she didn’t. She just kept on brushing my hair until she had finished the hundred strokes.