Writing Jane Austen (9 page)

The bathroom bore traces of Maud’s morning shower: a puddle of water on the floor, a wet towel, a pungent scent, a soggy cake of soap in the middle of the handbasin, and a lipstick message on the mirror—

Good morning, Sleepyhead, have a good day.

She went downstairs. No sign of Anna in the spotless kitchen. No, she wouldn’t be there, it was Wednesday, and on Wednesdays Anna went to classes.

On the kitchen table was a book. A battered old book, with no dust jacket. It was brown, with darker patches and a ring from a cup or a glass. Georgina picked it up and looked at the spine.
Jane Austen
by Elizabeth Jenkins. She opened it. A yellow Post-it was stuck on the title page. “Gina, found this on the shelves. It’s old, but readable. Have gone to Sussex with Maud to look at a school. See you later. Henry.”

The phone rang.

Georgina waited for the answering machine to click on, but the ringing didn’t stop. She went to the wall and lifted the receiver. Before she could say a word, Livia’s crisp voice spoke. “Georgina? Why don’t you pick up more quickly?”

How did Livia know that she, Georgina, had picked up the phone, and not Henry or Anna or Maud? A clairvoyant agent, all she needed. Not a bad title for a book,
The Clairvoyant Agent
. James Bond with second sight. No, clairvoyance didn’t go with guns and sadism. Perhaps…

“Pay attention. You’re meeting Yolanda at two o’clock, at the University Women’s Club.”

“Yolanda?” Georgina might not be completely awake, but one thing she was sure of, she wasn’t going to run her head into that noose. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. “She’s in Oxford. She drove back to Oxford last night.”

“That’s because she has a lecture scheduled in Oxford at nine, followed by a tutorial, then she’s catching a train to London. She can spare an hour and a half for you, before she has to go to a meeting. She wants to go through plot details.”

“Livia, that isn’t going to be helpful.”

“You can’t do this on your own. There’s a lot at stake, Georgina, sharpen your wits and do as I say. Have you got a plot worked
out? No, I thought not. Take expert advice when it’s offered.”

“Why the hell isn’t Yolanda writing this damned book?”

Livia wasn’t answering that one. “Be there. On time.”

Click.

Georgina unplugged her mobile from its charger and turned it on. Flipping through the London phone book, she found the number for the University Women’s Club and called it. Could she leave a message for Dr. Vesey? Please tell her Dr. Jackson would be unable to meet her this afternoon.

She wanted to be out of London, out of reach of Livia and the Veseys, but where could she go? Not Oxford again, that would be back into the lion’s den. She sat at the table, flicking through the book Henry had left for her. Published in the nineteen thirties. Completely out of date.

A chapter heading caught her eye. Bath. Bath! Of course, Bath. A city closely associated with Jane Austen, and where the pages of that damned
Love and Friendship
manuscript were set. She ran through the contact numbers on her phone, hesitated for a moment and then pressed dial.

“Hi, Belinda here.”

“Bel, it’s Gina.”

Exclamations of amazement, surprise, delight, reproach—“All this time in England, and you’ve never been to see me, come today, stay as long as you like, have you turned veggie or teetotal? Don’t talk now, got to rush or I’ll be late, get a taxi from the station or buy a map and walk, see you, bye.”

They’d been roommates at college: Bel, the third generation of her family to attend Brown, Georgina wondering if she’d made a big mistake. They’d become firm friends, but after two years, Bel had dropped out and headed for Juilliard to focus on her real passion, which was singing. She’d done well, but then had suddenly vanished from the scene after only a year. Lost her nerve, her voice,
her will to sing, came rumours along the grapevine. Georgina had left America to study at Oxford, and when she next caught up with Bel, she, too, was on the other side of the Atlantic. “I fell out of love with opera and in love with an Englishman,” she told Georgina.

Bel, domestic? She couldn’t imagine it. Two children, or was it three? And living in Bath, of all places. Charming, people said, but hardly in the centre of things. And Bel had always been in the centre of everything.

Anna came back from her classes just as Georgina was writing a note for Henry. “Are you going away again?” Anna inquired, hanging up her jacket on a peg in the hall. “You are very restless.”

“Off to Bath, to stay with a friend.”

“And to write, I hope.”

“Research. Gathering necessary background material. If Livia Harkness rings, please just say I’m out and you don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Which is the truth, I have no need to lie. But she will ring you on your cell phone.”

“I’ll turn it off.”

“Does she know you are going to Bath?”

“No, so please don’t tell her where I am.”

“I don’t know where you are.”

“You do, I’ve left a note with the phone number.”

“But this information is not for Livia.”

“No. And most of all, not for a Dr. Yolanda Vesey.”

“Do you want a taxi?”

“A taxi?”

“To take you to the railway station. You can afford a taxi, now you have signed the contract.”

So she could. She had taken the cheque to the bank yesterday, depositing it with a sense, not of triumph but relief. After a certain
amount of reluctance—“If you’re going to be difficult, I’ll move my account to another bank”—she had been allowed to draw cash. Even so, this was no time for extravagance. A signature advance was easy, and so was publication, the tricky one was the third on delivery.

Three months. Ninety days. Less, now. A hundred and twenty thousand words. There was that cold pit in her stomach again.

“A glass of water?” said Anna helpfully. “You look pale.”

Georgina shook her head.

“Your book?” said Anna, holding up the Jenkins biography. “To read on the train?”

“Thank you,” said Georgina.

As the train drew out of the station, Georgina had a sense of release. With every mile she was further away from Livia, Dan and Yolanda. She set her phone to silent and settled back in her seat to watch the London suburbs slip past. They gave way to greener vistas, more suburbs, towns, villages on hills, with church spires sharp against the thunder-coloured sky, flashes of sunlight, a rider in a yellow jacket cantering along a grassy lane, sheep in woolly clusters, indifferent to the train racing past, trees in full glory of their autumn colours. A hillier landscape now, glimpses of a river, a canal, with a brightly coloured boat—what did they call those? a narrowboat—edging its way towards a lock. And then soot-stained cream houses, rows of them on a hillside, a swift run under bridges and alongside a garden, and a final braking curve into a station.

The loudspeaker crackled into life, startling Georgina. “Bath Spa. We are now arriving into Bath Spa. Bath Spa will be the next station stop.”

Arriving into. Station stop. Illiterates, Georgina said to herself, as she grappled with her bag. The guard was already slamming the doors shut as she jumped out. “Nearly got left behind there,” he said. “Stand clear.”

The high-speed train pulled out, and she walked along to the end of the platform, sniffing the damp, fresh air. Beyond the railings on the other side of the station she could see trees and a huge painted sign on a chapel roof,
jesus saves
. Neither chapel nor the slogan could possibly belong to the Regency period, they were Victorian in both style and sentiment.

For a moment, as she stood there on the platform, Georgina wondered what it would have been like to be Jane Austen arriving in Bath two centuries ago, driving into the centre of the city in a swaying carriage after a long and exhausting journey.

How easy it was for her to escape from responsibilities and problems; how impossible for the younger daughter of the Reverend Mr. Austen.

The air was chilly, and the skies ominous as she came out of the station. As instructed, she’d bought a map of Bath, a delightful one, with little buildings drawn on it, and labels. Roman Bath, Pump Room, Assembly Rooms, Costume Museum. Quaint, not her kind of place at all, this was a mistake. She should have fled to the north, to Liverpool, to the heartland of the old industrial north, where she felt at home.

Fat drops of rain were starting to fall, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

She gave the address. “Bartlett Street?” said the cabdriver. “You’d do better to walk, I’ll be honest with you. It’s only twenty minutes. Save yourself the fare and buy a brolly, that’s my advice. With the traffic the way it is today, it’ll take me twice that to get you there.”

Georgina had no idea Bath was so hilly. She’d visualized it as a collection of Georgian houses clustered alongside a river. Twenty minutes? Half an hour later, after walking up and up, each street steeper than the last, she arrived breathless and damp in Bartlett Street. At least this street was on the level, even though the slippery pavements made the wheels of her bag take on a skittish life of their own. It was an elegant street, she had to admit it, with the wrought-iron overthrows and railings. And big, ordered windows. Bartlett Buildings turned out to be a small cul-de-sac leading off Bartlett
Street. The white front door of Number Three had a brass lion’s- head knocker, but before she could use it, the door flew open, and there was Bel. Half a head shorter than Georgina, her hair blonde and wavy, just as it always had been, merry eyes, pink cheeks, and exclamations of joy and despair; joy at Gina being there, and despair at her dampness and the folly of walking.

“Those taxi drivers are rogues, they want the easy fares, up to Lansdown and places like that, come in, mind the stroller, give me that umbrella, take off your coat, goodness, you are wet! Come straight upstairs, I’ll show you your room, and then we can eat, I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning, and I’m wilting from hunger.”

Up and up and up, to the top floor, and a big bedroom with sloping ceilings and a view across the street. “Here’s your bathroom, just leave everything, you can unpack later, come down to the kitchen.”

It was extraordinary to see Bel in all this domesticity, the kitchen with its Aga stove, an infant in a high chair being attended to by a young girl, silent and shy, a tabby cat sitting on the windowsill, a clutter of toys in a basket on the floor.

“Three!” Bel exclaimed. “Twins, you see, they’re at school, and now Thomas here, he’s one, aren’t you? This is Daisy, who looks after him.”

Thomas looked at Georgina with huge round eyes, and began to bawl.

“I don’t think he likes me,” said Georgina, as Daisy lifted him from his chair and carried him off, still weeping.

“He’s not good with strangers,” said Bel. “If you’d bothered to come and visit sooner, you wouldn’t be a stranger. Now, tell me all about yourself. What are you doing? Still beavering away at the university? I bought your book, goodness, yes, and gave it to all my friends. Who ever would have thought you’d turn out a novelist? I
was fearfully proud. I couldn’t read it, though, far too clever and serious for me.”

Georgina winced. Bel was famous for her honesty, and if she couldn’t read
Magdalene Crib,
it wasn’t through lack of brainpower or an inclination towards non-fiction.

“I’m so busy I don’t get much time for reading these days,” Bel said. “Shut my mouth, what not to say to a writer. So are you writing another book now?”

“Sort of,” said Georgina. “Can I have some more of that potato salad?”

“Help yourself. I’ll make coffee, and then I must dash. You’ll be all right this afternoon, won’t you? Curl up in front of the sitting room fire if you’re feeling lazy, or you could go out and explore. Take an open-top bus, if it isn’t raining too hard.”

“Dash where?”

“Oh, to the shop. I’ll be back around six, and then I’ll cook us a wonderful meal. Freddie’s away, so it’ll just be us. Freddie’s my husband in case you’ve forgotten. He’s a journalist, remember? Away in India at the moment. Here’s a set of keys. Must go, can’t be late.”

Shop? Before Georgina could ask what she was talking about, Bel had gone, the front door shut behind her. What shop? Did Bel work in a shop? How strange. There was an opulence to the house, and besides, Bel had family money. Why would she work in a shop? To pass the time? Bel wasn’t the kind of person to take up anything just to occupy her time. Unless marriage and motherhood had changed her.

Georgina wandered into the sitting room, a noble first-floor room with three deep sash windows. There was a grand piano with the lid raised; Bel hadn’t given up her music entirely, then.

While they were having lunch, the sky had cleared, and although clouds raced across the sky, it had stopped raining for the time
being. An open-top bus? Well, that would be as good a way as any other to spend the afternoon. Better than sitting down with Ms. Jenkins and Miss Austen’s uninteresting life, in any case.

Downstairs, Daisy was wrapping Thomas—who once again burst into tears at the sight of Georgina—into a cocoon and tucking him into the stroller. Daisy knew about the open-top buses. “Run you down soon as look at you, gliding along without a sound,” she said unexpectedly. “All right for tourists, though.” Georgina would do best to go down through the centre, she could pick one up in Milsom Street, they were always crawling about there.

A red open-top bus was drawing away as Georgina ran down the street. Milsom Street was a downhill run, but even gathering speed for the final few yards, she couldn’t catch it.

A woman in a cream leather jacket and sunglasses looked at her pityingly and remarked, “You know what they say, never run after a man or a bus, there’s always another one coming along behind,” before she walked away, her neat behind swaying in skintight jeans.

Hop on hop off, the notice proclaimed. Buses every twenty minutes. Twenty minutes! She wasn’t going to stand here like a lemon for twenty minutes.

What was this coming down Milsom Street towards her? Cream jacket was right, here was another bus. From a different company by the look of it, a pale green bus, this one with figures painted along the side, prancing women in Regency gowns, bonnets and ribbons flying, a high-hatted man with shapely booted legs holding up a quizzing glass.