Writing Jane Austen (34 page)

“Hi, you remember me? I’m Stefan.”

“You’re the one doing physics at Imperial.”

“That’s right, and I’ve taken over from Anna. This is much better than the digs I’ve been in, I’m very grateful to Henry and Anna for fixing me up. You are a writer, Anna told me all about you, and how you have to spend all day and every day working. And you sorted out my application and funding papers for me, and I am grateful. So I make you a nourishing breakfast, and then you get back to work, okay?”

Stefan was also a pianist, although his repertoire was different from Anna’s, and his playing was often interrupted by a question from Henry. Georgina would slip away as the two men settled down to an interesting discussion about strangelets, the Higgs boson and other mysterious particles.

Henry was thankful that Georgina seemed to be coming up with the goods, although he found her a strange companion during these weeks; distant, and often, as his Scottish cousin would have said, away with the fairies.

And he was slightly disturbed by the brightly coloured Post-it notes Georgina was in the habit of leaving about the house attached to doors, the banister rail, mirrors, pictures and even, once, on the keyboard of the piano—Stefan took that one off with a tsk of disapproval, and carefully polished the keys to remove any trace of stickiness. Henry ventured to ask what they were, and she looked at him with vague eyes.

“The notes? They’re just to remind me of things I need to research. Not in any great depth, I haven’t got time to do that. Wikipedia and Google give me most of what I need.”

That was all very well, but Henry couldn’t help wondering why she needed to research these particular subjects.

The Peninsular War

Coach travel over the Alps

DUELLING—swords or pistols

Elopement—affairs—taboos

Men’s underwear—ring costume museum

BROTHELS in St. James’s Street & Paris

The third sex in 18th-century England

The third sex? Brothels? Paris? In a Jane Austen novel?

He didn’t dare make further enquiries about the notes, because he appreciated that the last thing she wanted at the moment was to talk about anything to do with the book. Writers worked in strange ways, he supposed she needed background information which she wouldn’t ever actually use in her writing.

Jane Austen might never have written about the war with Napoleon, or about the sexual habits of the wider world in which she lived, but she certainly knew what was going on in that world. She could hardly help but know about the war, with her cousin being married to a man who was beheaded by the French, and her two brothers serving in the Navy, while the newspapers of that time, which she would undoubtedly have read, weren’t at all mealy-mouthed about scandals, sexual or otherwise.

Clearly, Georgina was immersing herself in the social and political milieu of the time, and he found that impressive.

Georgina’s writing habits had another benefit for him; with her working so hard, it was easier for him to concentrate on his studies, a definite plus since he was at a very demanding stage of his course. He had been heartened to have a response, after some time, from his parents, approving of the decision to send Maud to Hartbury. She sent him emails, grumbling about the sport—“Lacrosse, I ask you”—and the awfulness of the food and the oppressiveness of some master who insisted that she comply with the dress code—she probably had to dispense with purple hair, then—but he could tell that even if not happy, she certainly wasn’t unhappy.

He was amused to learn that Pam had been down one Sunday to see her and take her out to lunch. She reported back in an astringent phone call that she had been right in the judgement that the school would suit Maud. She looked well, was eating like a horse and seemed to think that she might be able to take a music
scholarship in the new year, which would take some of the strain off his parents’ finances.

It was very early on a Monday morning, the first day of December, a day that dawned sparkling with a magical frost, when Georgina finally pronounced the magic words,

THE END

She felt no sense of achievement, no joy at what she had done, just numbness. She’d bought herself a fast printer, having despaired at the reluctance of her original one to print more than twenty pages without throwing a fit, and now she watched, mesmerized, as four hundred and seventy-five pages flew out of the printer.

She printed out four copies. One she took down and laid on Henry’s desk, with a Post-it saying,
read me
. She tucked the next two into Jiffy bags and walked to the post office, dispatching one to Maud and the other to Anna.

Alone in the house, she sat in the drawing room looking out the window, feeling quite empty. Stefan discovered her there a little later, and finding she was literally empty, insisted that she eat a large English breakfast, something he adored cooking. While she ate it, he planned her day for her.

“When one has achieved a big intellectual and emotional task, such as you have, one needs mental and spiritual refreshment. You must go to a spa, and have a massage, and swim and be wrapped in algae. This will make you feel much better, and restore you to yourself.”

Georgina blinked at him. “Spa?” She thought of Aix-les-Bains, or possibly Baden-Baden, what an absurd suggestion, but Stefan explained he meant somewhere nearer home and put her into a taxi to Covent Garden.

There, smothered in Dead Sea mud, massaged, manicured, pedicured and slapped about in a deep-cleansing routine, Georgina slowly began to come back to life.

Back home, she retreated into her room once more, closed the door, sat herself down in the armchair, picked up her manuscript and began to read.

Email from [email protected]

To [email protected]

SUBJECT Book

Hi Gina

I skived off double physics this am (don’t tell Henry) to go and read your book in the loo, where they can’t get at you. I hope you appreciate my sacrifice—it means I get detention for skipping lessons.

I don’t mind, I LOVE the book—it’s fantastic—a GREAT read—I raced through it, even missed break to finish it.

Only——it isn’t Jane Austen, is it?

Maud x

Georgina read the email, which didn’t surprise her. Maud, as usual, had gone straight to the heart of the matter. Her own heart was down in her leopard-patterned ballerinas as she turned off her computer and went out of her room.

Stefan and Henry were in the kitchen, Stefan loading the dishwasher, and Henry sitting at the table, the typed pile of
Love and Friendship
in front of him.

He jumped to his feet, took hold of Georgina, hugged her fiercely, swinging her off her feet and round in a circle before putting her down.

“Watch out for my arm,” she cried, hurting, but loving the hug.

“Never mind your arm. What an amazing, brilliant book. I had no idea you could write like that.”

His praise instantly raised her spirits; yes, she was in a fix, but at least Henry and Maud liked the book.

“If only I’d known that yesterday was going to be The End day, I’d have been back earlier. You were in bed by the time I got in, and I sat down and read your book until three this morning. I couldn’t bear to put it down.” His face grew suddenly sombre. “The only trouble is—”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“It isn’t exactly Jane Austen.”

“No.”

“What happened?”

Georgina sat down at the table, and dropped her head into her hands. “You tell me,” she said in a muffled voice. She raised her head and gave him a direct look. “No, don’t, you don’t need to because I know perfectly well what happened. I wrote the book I wanted to write. Not the book I ought to have written, or the kind of book I thought I would like to write, this came from somewhere quite different. I never imagined I could write a book like this, not in a thousand years.”

“Good for you,” said Henry.

Georgina’s voice was anguished. “What really throws me is that all the time I was writing and sending chapters off to Marcia and getting them back and reading them through and then editing what I’d written, I never for one moment noticed that what I was writing wasn’t remotely like Jane Austen. How could I have been so stupid?”

“Didn’t your scenes give you a clue? That one in a brothel in Paris; very sexy, very graphic, I liked that a lot, or the pistols at dawn scene, with a pair of whores quarrelling behind a tree? What about the bit where Susan is taken for a French spy, and barely escapes with her life? She’s a great heroine, by the way, I fell in love
with her. Only there’s no way you or anyone else can dress this up as a Jane Austen novel. Let alone one called
Love and Friendship
.”

“I know, I know. I simply took leave of my senses and wrote without thinking what I was doing. What am I going to do now?”

The telephone rang, and Henry went over to the wall to pick up. He put his hand over it. “It’s Anna. She’s read your book.” He listened intently a few minutes, nodding in agreement, then said goodbye. “I didn’t think you’d want to talk to her at the moment. She adored it, every word of it, only she says she doesn’t think it’s like anything that Jane Austen could ever have written.”

Henry and Georgina sat and looked at one another. Stefan, much intrigued by what was going on, joined them at the table and demanded to hear the entire story, with all the facts and particulars in their proper order. “Clearly, you have a problem. The only way to work through a problem is to write it down, with all its elements and then, rationally, set about solving it. Henry will agree with me on this.”

He took out a notebook and a pen, and listened intently to the story of how Georgina came to be writing
Love and Friendship
in the first place, and how it had in various ways gone so wrong. He sat in silent thought for some time before he spoke.

“Every problem has a solution,” he announced. “Yet I think what you have here is a solution without a problem.”

Georgina looked at him, mystified. “In a parallel universe, perhaps?”

“Your problem is not essentially the writing of a book by Jane Austen called
Love and Friendship
. Your problem is that you need to write a book so you do not have to go back to America, and so you can make enough money to stay in England and to pay rent to Henry. Is that right?”

“It’s a good way to look at it,” said Henry, interested. “Go on.”

“I haven’t read the book, and if I did I would not be able to judge
it, I know nothing about Jane Austen. But Henry and Anna and Henry’s sister have read it, and say that it’s a good book.”

“A page turner,” said Henry.

“Exactly. What is called a compulsive read. And books like this sell, readers like such books, and so it will make a lot of money for Georgina.”

“That’s all fine and dandy,” Georgina said. “Only I don’t have a contract for the book I’ve actually written, I have a contract for a book I haven’t written. The delivery deadline for which is next Monday. I’ve blown it. I’ve let my agent and my publisher down, and I’ve let myself down, and I got a chunk of money that I’ll have to pay back, and I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to do that.”

Henry was thinking. “If this book is as good as we all think it is, then surely someone will want to publish it. That would bring you some money, as Stefan pointed out.”

For a moment, Georgina felt a surge of hope, then the words of the contract came into her mind. “No. Since I haven’t written the book that Cadell and Davies want, they’ll reject it, and if another publisher picked it up and wanted to publish it, anything they were prepared to offer would have to go back to Cadell and Davies.”

“In this case,” Stefan said, “an alternative way is for you to persuade Cadell and Davies that this is a book that they want to publish in any case. Why does it have to be a Jane Austen? Does there need to be another Jane Austen novel, aren’t there enough?”

“If they don’t have this Jane Austen look-alike from me, it means that when they release the details of their discovery, some other publisher will come out with a finished book. That’s why they wanted it done so quickly.”

“Can Livia Harkness give you any advice about this?” asked Henry. “I assume you sent it to her.”

“No, I didn’t. I wanted all of you to read it first. I was planning to send it to her at the end of the week. Only as soon as I read it
through myself yesterday, when I wasn’t any longer in the peculiar state I have been in these last few weeks, I knew at once it was hopeless. Livia will be incandescent with fury, and I think we can take it that, as of now, I no longer have an agent.”

The phone went again, and Henry got up to answer it.

Georgina knew with utter certainty that it was Livia on the other end of the line. She pushed her chair back and stood up as Henry picked up the receiver. Livia Harkness’s sharp tones rang out into the kitchen. Henry held the phone away from his ear and raised his eyebrows enquiringly at Georgina.

She winced, and shook her head, and then, as the word
coward
sounded in her ears, she reached out for the phone.

“Are you sure?” he hissed. “I know you’ll have to face her sooner or later, but do you want to do it now?”

She took hold of the phone, shut her eyes, took a deep breath and said, “Georgina here.”

“Didn’t you get my email? I want you here, now.” And the phone went dead.

Georgina looked despairingly at Henry. “She’s a mind reader. Or maybe Dan Vesey’s stooge down the road has been reading the manuscript through my window with a telescope, and knows just how wrong it is.”

“What are you going to do?” said Henry.

“What would you do?”

“I’ve never had to deal face-to-face with your agent. She scares me witless on the phone, so I don’t think I’d care to.”

Of all the things that she might like to do that day, bottom of the list was an encounter with Livia. She didn’t have to go, she didn’t have to be at Livia’s beck and call. A brief tussle with cowardice, and she was heading for the door. “Better get it over with.”