Writing Jane Austen (4 page)

“What’s wrong with the school?” Georgina asked.

“Nothing, except it isn’t right for Maud. Frankly, I don’t know where she’d be happy. She doesn’t make friends easily; she’s odd, which didn’t matter in Cambridge, where the schools are full of girls like her who’ve grown up in academic households. But being odd doesn’t help you make a go of an English girls’ boarding school, and I think the other girls have given her a hard time of it. That’s the impression I got from the school, anyhow. The headmistress doesn’t want her back, she doesn’t think it’s the right place for her either. Which means she knows damn well that if Maud did go back, she’d just run away again. So her trunk’s been despatched, and a bill will follow, for extras, she said, chilling prospect. And I suppose there’ll be a fight over next term’s fees. Oh well, I’ll have to sort something out, and she’s fun to have around. I hope this Goth phase doesn’t mean she’s going to go in for suicidal gloom.”

“It’s just a look. And those vampire books she reads are wacky, but not gloomy.”

“How do you know?”

“I have to keep up with the trends,” Georgina said, not liking to confess that she’d taken a pile of them up to her room and sat up half the night, engrossed in a world of sexy fang-fic.

“Maud’s keen on Jane Austen, and knows a lot about the novels. She could do research for you. It’s going to take me a while to find her a new school, and I doubt if anywhere will want her in the middle of a term, so she’ll be here until after Christmas. She’ll be bored,
it would be good for her to have something to do, and you can use some help, by the sound of it.”

That was all she needed, a knowledgeable Maud breathing down her neck. Help? She’d need more than help to finish
Love and Friendship
.

Email from [email protected]

To [email protected]

Where are those signed contracts?

Autoreply

Georgina Jackson is away from her computer and has not read your message.

What’s that horrible noise?” Henry brushed spilled coffee off his shirt, as wolf howls swelled to a majestic climax of sound.

They were in the kitchen in the basement of the five-storey house. Henry and Maud’s parents, who were scientists with minds above kitchens, had never modernized it while they lived there, and Henry, who didn’t care for stainless steel and granite, had contented himself with having the wooden cupboards and dresser painted. The large wooden kitchen table still had pride of place in the centre of the kitchen, complete with its old-fashioned wheel-backed chairs.

Across the table from him, Maud looked up from a tall glass full of pink froth and flipped a phone open.

“You said your phone had been confiscated.”

Maud placed a precise finger on the mike. “It has. This is Gina’s phone.”

“Making that noise?”

Maud was speaking into the phone. “Hi.”

“Hi?” Livia Harkness’s voice echoed round the kitchen. “What do you mean, Hi? You don’t Hi me, Georgina. Where are those contracts?”

“I’m sorry,” Maud trilled, in a hotel receptionist voice. “Who is this speaking, please?”

“You know damn well who’s speaking.”

“No, I don’t.”

There was a long pause. “I’m ringing 07 58 664451.”

“That’s correct.”

“You’re not Georgina.”

“No. Georgina isn’t here presently. May I take a message?”

“If it’s her mobile, why are you answering it?”

“This is Georgina’s answering service.”

“She’s there. Cowering in a corner. Get her.”

“Actually, Ms. Whoever you are, Georgina isn’t here.”

“Don’t get smart with me. This isn’t a landline, people carry their mobiles with them.”

“Not always. And not in this case.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Maud Lefroy.”

Another long pause. “Lefroy? That’s the name of the guy Georgina lives with.”

“Lodges with, actually. I’m his sister. Can I take a message?”

“No. Give me a number where I can contact Georgina. Now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I don’t have a number for her.”

“If she’s not there, where the hell is she?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

Henry, exasperated, snatched the phone out of her hand. “Miss
Harkness? I’m Henry Lefroy. Georgina isn’t here. Pick up emails? I don’t think so, unless she goes to an internet café. She didn’t take her laptop. Did a package arrive for her? Yes, a courier delivered an envelope, but it came after she left. Where?” He hesitated for a moment. “She’s gone to Basingstoke. Yes, Basingstoke. No, I don’t know why. I’ll do that.”

He snapped the lid shut. “Maud, you can’t just take over Gina’s phone. Let alone change her ring tone to a pack of frenzied wolves howling their heads off.”

Maud made slurping noises as she reached the bottom of her glass. “Actually, Gina said I could use it. Your nose has grown, did you know that?”

Henry touched his nose, then laughed.

“It was the courier arriving with the contracts that sent her whizzing out of the house. And Basingstoke, indeed, of all unlikely places, why ever would she go there?”

“Since she was up and off before the rest of us were up, we have no idea where she is, and so she might very well be heading for Basingstoke.”

“You could have told the truth and said you didn’t know.”

“The Harkness woman is not the kind of person to be fobbed off with generalities. If you’re going to lie, be brief, be specific. Basingstoke will flummox her.”

“Actually, I bet Gina’s gone to Oxford.”

“Why?”

“Bolthole. Some musty library, out of reach of pursuing Harknesses, where she can curl up with some doleful history book and feel safe.”

“That’s rather contemptuous. Gina’s not a coward.”

“No, just a bit raw at the moment. Anyhow, Oxford’s her hidey-hole. She’ll be staying at Jesse’s flat.” Maud watched her brother from under heavily mascaraed lashes. “Her ex, you know.”

“I know who Jesse is. Why should she stay with him?”

“Actually, he’s in America. And you’re right, because if he was in Oxford, it wouldn’t be wise for Gina to go near his flat. He’s got a new girlfriend in residence. Looks like a meerkat, all neck and head too big for her skeletal body. Thick ankles, though,” Maud added with some satisfaction. “She’s gone to America with him. She does shopping in a big way, hasn’t realized frugalism is the new fashion. Dim, you see, doesn’t get enough calories to keep what passes for her brain functioning properly.”

“How on earth do you know all that? And how do you know Jesse’s in America? And how can Gina stay with him if he isn’t there?”

“She’s got a key, I expect. They’re still friends. And I know all about him, because a girl at school is Jesse’s cousin. She hates Shelley, which is the meerkat’s name. Says she’s a skinny bitch who’s got her claws into Jesse. She says Jesse and Gina were a great couple, and should never have split up.”

“You’re a gossip,” said Henry. “Cut it out.”

“It’s only natural to take an interest in people you care for,” said Maud, very prim. “Isn’t that right, Anna?”

Anna came in from the utility. She sat down at the table and pulled her fair hair more firmly back into its ponytail and regarded the brother and sister with intense eyes. “Interest can be a kind of gossip, but gossip can also be cruel. And Jesse isn’t right for Gina, so it’s better for her he has a meerkat. Now, what is a meerkat?”

“It’s not essential vocabulary, Anna,” said Henry. “It’s a furry creature that lives in deserts.”

“All vocabulary is essential. And Maud’s English is extremely current, and therefore especially useful for me.”

“I think you speak better English than I do,” said Maud. “And you can spell, which is more than I can.”

Anna was taking English classes. “I’m writing an essay on this, you see, how the English use animal names as epithets of approval
or disapproval. You like to describe each other as animals. There are lots of dog words,
dogged, bitch, bit of a dog
and the American
doggone,
although only in old films, I believe. Now, if Jesse’s new girlfriend is a meerkat, what is Gina?”

“At the moment, an ass,” said Maud. “Or possibly an ostrich.”

“So why does Gina’s onetime boyfriend now live with a meerkat?”

“Shelley’s a trophy girlfriend,” said Maud at once. “He’s rich and successful, like you used to be, Henry dear, until you got the push from your high-powered job at the bank.”

“I did not get the push,” he said with dignity. Then he grinned at his sister. “I jumped the week before they wielded the hatchet, that’s why.”

“And now you’re an impoverished student of an abstruse science, your bonuses all lost in the crash, having to take in a lodger to make ends meet, addling your brain with little green men.”

“Little green men?” said Anna, interested. She had put away her notebook but now she reached for it again.

Henry sighed. “Don’t bother, Anna. She’s being sarcastic, referring to a series of seminars I’m taking in astrobiology.”

“Life on other planets,” said Anna. “My cousin is an astrobiologist. This is an important field, Maud.”

“Yeah, right, little green men with antennae blogging from the mother ship,” said Maud.

Maud was right about boltholes. Georgina was in North Oxford, in Jesse’s flat. He’d made her keep a key, and had said she was to use it whenever she wanted. She’d texted him to make sure the coast was clear and had walked the familiar route from the station to Beltane Court. She’d slept badly and woken early and, uneasy about the flat which was both so familiar—it was where she had lived with Jesse for more than two years—and unfamiliar, full of Shelley’s presence.

Who had appalling taste, just look at the tangerine towels. Thick and fluffy, yes, but what a terrible colour. New peach curtains in the bathroom, and pink and orange cushions in the sitting room. A vast flat-screen TV—Jesse had never had time for television or DVDs, he liked his films big and in the cinema. And it was strange for Georgina to sleep in the spare bedroom instead of the main bedroom, with its huge double bed.

This was a mistake. Strange foods in the cupboard, notes pinned everywhere to stress the calories of everything from soya milk to lettuce—lettuce? Calories? Certainly no chocolate; there had always been bars of dark chocolate in the cupboard in her day. Jesse liked chocolate; did he now sneak bars into his study, or eat it outside? Or had Shelley converted him to her own wispy diet?

Their breakup had been amicable, insofar as breakups ever were. He was working for more than half the year in America, and wanted her to join him there. “You can leave the whole academic thing behind, concentrate on your writing,” he’d urged her, but she didn’t want to spend months of every year in America. She wanted to stay in England. They had gradually drifted apart, as he spent more time in the States, while Georgina spent more time with her own friends.

Shelley had had nothing to do with it. Jesse had met Shelley after he and Georgina had split up. When she’d handed in her thesis, she felt her time in Oxford was over and that was when, through the good offices of a friend, she’d met Henry. He was looking for a lodger to help pay the mortgage, and he offered her a good-sized attic room. “There’s a bathroom up there, too,” he said, “only you’d have to share with my sister. So you’d better meet her before we fix things up.”

Maud had given her the once-over, and evidently her seal of approval, and Georgina had moved out of Jesse’s flat in Oxford and into Henry’s house in London just in time to start her post-doc work at London University.

Georgina picked up a tin. Decaf coffee? What use was that to Jesse, who liked his coffee thick and strong for a punch of morning caffeine? As did she, and she put the tin back in its place.

The skies were grey, the last bright foliage of autumn glowing against pewter skies, threatening an Oxford downpour. She hadn’t brought an umbrella with her. She could buy yet another one, or rather she couldn’t, that was how the money vanished and the overdraft clocked up.

Of course if she just got on the train back to London and signed that contract, her money worries would be over. A dozen umbrellas would be nothing to her.

Signing a contract was so easy. A squiggle on a line, and money in the bank.

Writing the book and earning the money?

Not so easy.

She bought a coffee and a doughnut at the stall outside the church, promising herself it was the last time; she had to cut back. Refreshed, she walked more purposefully, heading for the Bodleian Library. She was going to tackle this in a rational manner. Get an idea of what Austen was about. Get a feel for the period. Background stuff. Historical, social, she’d be on firm ground there. She needed to confirm what she already knew: there was no way she could write this book.

She flashed her Bod card at the desk, left her bag, and armed only with a notebook and a pen, climbed the stairs to sanctuary and safety, happy to be in this familiar place, which existed in a separate universe from that inhabited by her agent, a place where she was utterly out of reach of Livia’s tentacles.

The thought cheered her, but any momentary relief was shattered by the entries in the catalogue for Jane Austen. Dear God, had every academic for the last twenty years written papers and articles and books on Jane Austen?

Where to start? Current was good. Current journals would be up to date, the thinking of the moment was what she needed. And current meant easily available. Georgina gathered up a copy of
The Journal of Contemporary Austen Studies
and headed for her favourite part of the library. Today was definitely a day for Duke Humphrey, the quintessential library, centuries-old peace and quiet.

The setting for the Hogwarts library in the Harry Potter films, but not, thankfully, open to the public for the Harry Potter tours. Here were the chained volumes, learned works of botany and early science, too precious to be loose. Or perhaps too dangerous, perhaps the intention had been to keep ideas chained up, a whimsical thought that appealed to her. Books kept under lock and key, manacled, not because they might be stolen, but as prisoners, too unsafe to let out into the world, where they might re-offend. Recidivist volumes, fettered in order to protect society against their wicked ways.