Writing Jane Austen (3 page)

Georgina tried to keep her voice low and reasonable. Livia was in
la-la land, but with the right approach, she must be able to make her agent understand how impossible it was. “You don’t understand, I’m not being wilful nor ungrateful. It’s can’t, not won’t. I’m not capable of writing a book like Jane Austen. Oh, there are just so many reasons why I’m not the right person for this,” she finished, knowing how weak it sounded, but determined not to reveal exactly why Livia and Dan had chosen the wrong writer to do the job.

“Don’t give me that crap. I’m the one who says what you can and can’t write. You wrote one book in fancy language, you can do another. You didn’t get sales, but you got the crits. The literati like you. You won that prize and got coverage for your book, got your face and name out there. Radio, late-night TV, Edinburgh Festival, weekend supplements, that kind of thing. That gives you the credibility Dan Vesey’s looking for.”

“It’s huge, you say it yourself. Get a big name, any one of a dozen top writers would snap your hand off for this.”

“Yes, and are they my clients? No, they are not. I’ve been through my entire list, don’t think I only considered you, and none of them fits the bill the way you do. Now, I’ve got a twelve o’clock. Tish will give you the paperwork on your way out. A transcription of the pages, complete with all the interpolations and cancellations, plus background stuff. It’s been authenticated by Dan’s sister, she’s an academic at Oxford and has all the right contacts. All in the family, and that’s how we want to keep it.”

“No,” Georgina said.

“I’ll give you, from the kindness of my heart, exactly one hour to come to your senses and get back to me with an answer, and that answer will be yes. Got that?”

Email from [email protected]

To [email protected]

Subject: Georgina Jackson

She’ll do it. Send me the contract.

Georgina hurtled out into the street, eager to put as much distance as possible between herself and Livia. She was trembling. With anger? Or fear.

Fear. Pure terror. And relief that she had escaped without agreeing to Livia and Dan’s preposterous suggestion. She paused and looked up and down the street. She’d walk home. It would take her more than an hour, time to slow her heart rate down to normal, time to avoid Livia’s call.

She hardly saw the pavements, traffic, newspaper vendors, snap-happy tourists, shoppers, dog-walkers or anyone or anything else as she threaded the streets between Bloomsbury and Marylebone. After a grey summer, Londoners were rejoicing in the mild air, the brilliant blue skies, the warm sunlight of an early October day, but for Georgina the sky might as well have been a mass of cumulonimbus storm clouds.

Wrapped in thought, she almost walked past Henry’s stuccoed terrace house. She retraced her steps along the railings, looking down into the basement kitchen where Anna Bednarska, Henry’s
indefatigable Polish housekeeper, was hard at work. She had on a striped apron, and was slicing beets with efficient savagery. Georgina didn’t care much for beetroot, but if Anna was making borscht, that was fine by her.

Anna had the tiny basement flat in return for housekeeping duties. The income from one lodger was tax-free, but Henry would have to pay tax if he had a tenant in the basement flat. It was a quid pro quo arrangement that suited both parties, although Henry did from time to time feel guilty about how much work Anna did in return for her accommodation.

Georgina went slowly up the white-edged flight of steps to the black front door, and put her key in the lock. As she pushed the door open, she heard the phone ring and two voices, one of them Henry’s, the other a female one she didn’t immediately recognize, calling out to each other to take the call. Was Henry’s girlfriend back in England already? It didn’t sound like Sophie; her actress’s voice wasn’t given to such high-pitched yells.

Georgina’s eye fell on a pile of luggage beside the table in the hall. A scruffy backpack. A plastic bag with a disgruntled-looking teddy bear peering out of it. A pair of long black leather riding boots. A battered suitcase with wheels. On the marble hall table, evidently placed with more care, was a small black case covered with stick-on letters to make a slogan:
The oboe is an ill wind nobody blows good
.

It couldn’t be.

It was.

Henry’s sister, Maud; fourteen, going on thirty. An enchanting girl, but difficult. How time flew, it seemed only yesterday that she’d been setting off back to boarding school.

Maud sauntered down the stairs, a vision in a short black skirt with purple tights, her face starkly white and her lashes starkly black. She was holding out the phone. “Hi, Gina. Phone for you.”

“Half-term?” Georgina mouthed, as she took the phone, which was emitting squawking noises.

“No. I ran away.”

Heart sinking, Georgina spoke into the phone. It was Livia, of course it was.

“Your time’s up.”

“Livia, you and Dan are out of your minds. I am totally the wrong person for this job.”

“We don’t think so, and we’re the experts, not you. Dan’s displeased, Georgina. Seriously displeased. Read through what I gave you, sign the contracts I’m about to courier round to you, cancel any appointments you may have for the next three months and get writing.”

“No. No, no, no. A thousand times, no!”

“Shut up and listen. I’m an A-list agent. For about a fortnight, you were an A-list author. Now you’re heading for the Z slot. I don’t do Z-list authors. You take this commission or you find yourself a new agent. Clear?”

Georgina sat down on the bottom step and put her head in her hands.

It didn’t take Henry and Maud any time at all to get it out of her. In past centuries, they’d have been star interrogators for the Inquisition. Henry was concerned for some thirty seconds about the non-disclosure paper she’d signed, and then he decided it wouldn’t hold up in court. “Signed under duress, she didn’t give you time to read it properly, and she’ll never know, anyhow.”

“Better out than in,” said Maud. “Troubles shared and all that.”

“You’ll be on the phone two seconds after I tell you, texting your friends.”

“Scout’s honour, I won’t,” said Maud. “I don’t have many friends. And I don’t have a phone right now, because that cow of a housemother confiscated it.”

“Is that why you ran away?” asked Henry. “I need to get your side of the story straight before the mistress-in-charge from the running-away department gets on the phone to me.”

“No one will know I’m gone yet,” said Maud. “They’ll just think I’m skiving off somewhere. They’ll notice in”—she looked at her watch—“approximately three and a half hours, when it’s orchestra and they find they haven’t got a second oboe. Shoot, Gina.”

Georgina was torn. Half of her was longing to talk it over, the other half knew that the best thing she could do was keep her mouth shut, go upstairs, send Livia an email and say to Henry and Maud that she was out if anyone rang.

“It’s like this.”

Maud sat enthralled, her eyes growing rounder and rounder, her face alive with delight and disbelief as Georgina came to the climax of her story and uttered the magical words,
Jane Austen
.

Maud and Henry swept all her protestations aside.

“It’s the wrong period.”

“Take a course on it.”

“No time.”

“You did English at university, you just need to bone up a bit.”

“I majored in history, I only did one course in English. Literary Theory 101, as it happens.”

“Those Jane Austen books, sequels, prequels, sex with Mr. Darcy, whatever—they sell and sell,” Maud said. “No more popping into Oxfam for your clothes, don’t think I haven’t noticed. Those sneakers, by the way, Gina, ghastly.”

“It’s a challenge,” said Henry. “That’s what you need. A big challenge.”

“It’s far too big a challenge,” Georgina said. “Apart from anything else, I’m not that kind of novelist. Novelists come in two varieties, those who are basically reporters and those who do imagination. Austen’s imagination, I’m reporter through and through. She’s romantic. I go for realism.”

“Yeah, but that’s why your book’s so depressing,” said Maud. “Jane Austen’s much more fun; God, I can’t tell you which of them is my favourite, I just love them all. We all do. Hey, maybe they’ll make a film of it.”

“Austen writes romantic comedy. Comedy!”

“Yes, she makes me laugh out loud,” Maud said. “Satirical. Sharp. Cool.”

“You can be witty,” Henry said. “You just need to get it on the page. And surely, with your brain and ability to re-create language of another time, you won’t have a problem with her language and style. Not once you get into it. And you’re wrong, Jane Austen is definitely a realist.”

“Do you like
Pride and Prejudice
best? Most people do, but I think
Emma
’s kind of special,” Maud said. “How about Fanny Price, what do you reckon? Should she have married Henry Crawford instead of Edmund?”

Georgina had to say it, and she was so agitated that her words came out as a shout, startling Henry and Maud as much with the volume as with her shocking revelation. “You don’t understand! I’ve never read an Austen novel in my life. Not a single one. And what’s more, I don’t intend to start now, let alone write one!”

“In England, we readers call her Jane Austen,” Maud said. “It’s a sign of respect.”

Henry raised incredulous eyebrows. “You aren’t serious, are you?”

Maud said in astonished tones, “None of her novels? Not a single one? Not even
Pride and Prejudice
? What about the TV serializations? Or the films? No?” A pitying shake of her head, and then, with a mixture of sympathy and disdain, “Poor you.”

Henry recovered himself. “It’s easily remedied, Gina. We’ve got all of Jane Austen’s books in the house, you just need to get reading. Lucky you, not poor you; what a treat you have in store.”

It was Georgina’s turn to shake her head. “I’ve got no plans to read any Jane Austen. I haven’t read the books because I’ve never wanted to, and I don’t want to now. They’re just not my kind of novel.”

“How do you know, if you haven’t read them?” Maud said.

“I’m not good with romance. Her novels are all about young women falling in love and getting husbands, aren’t they? Not my thing at all. Don’t nag, Maud. Even if I wanted to agree to this ridiculous proposal, there’s more to it than reading the books and heading for my computer. Her words would have to seep into my bones, and nothing’s going to seep in, in the few weeks they’ve given me.”

“Coward,” said Maud, and thumped off upstairs.

“Sorry, Henry,” Georgina said, after a moment’s silence. “You wanted to know why Livia had summoned me, and I told you. Can we forget it, please? You’ve got other things to worry about right now. Such as Maud.”

Henry gave her a long, thoughtful look and retreated into his study. Georgina reluctantly went upstairs to her room. She supposed she had better read the typescript Livia had forced on her, although what was the point? At least Livia hadn’t wished the handwritten manuscript on her, at least she could read this easily enough.

The arrival of a fourth daughter was greeted with a sigh by Mr. Edward Turner, and resignation by Mrs. Turner. The child was christened Susan, and with the birth the following year of the long-awaited son and heir, Susan took her place as the least important member of the family.

Georgina, too, greeted Susan’s appearance with a sigh, and she skimmed through the rest of the chapter. Nineteen-year-old Susan Turner, now one of eight children, had been sent as a companion to her rich cousin, Lady Carcenet, a widow in her early forties, who lived in Bath, and wanted a companion. “
She will expect you to amuse her, to play backgammon in the evenings, to perform upon the
pianoforte, for she is very fond of music, and perhaps to accompany her when she ventures out into society
,” Mrs. Turner told her dutiful daughter. Georgina could see why Susan would want to get away from her family, who lived in a quiet way in a rural parish where the girls’ only amusements were muddy walks and a rare assembly ball at the inn in the nearest town. Although backgammon and sonatas didn’t sound like a bundle of fun; what a bore this genteel lifestyle was. Here was Susan bidding farewell to her family, having a brief encounter with a handsome gentleman in a blue coat during a stop to change horses at a posting inn, arriving at nightfall on the doorstep of her cousin’s large and elegant house in Bath.

That was it?

That was it. Jane Austen, having got that far, had clearly decided this book was never going to be more than a Chapter One. Like
The Sadness of Jane Silversmith, Love and Friendship
was going nowhere. And she, Georgina Jackson, was supposed to craft a hundred and twenty thousand words or so of a convincing narrative from this unpromising beginning? To do what Jane Austen couldn’t?

Forget it.

Georgina stuffed the pages back into the envelope and thrust it into a desk drawer, which she slammed shut.

Henry hadn’t uttered a word of criticism to his sister, but that evening after dinner, when Maud was back upstairs disarranging her room, he flung himself on to the sofa in the sitting room with a sigh and a harassed expression in his normally cool grey eyes. “I don’t blame her for running away, I half expected it, I never thought that school was a good idea. My Aunt Pam steam-rollered my parents into it when they knew she would have to go to boarding school. It’s a damned nuisance my grandmother’s gone to New Zealand, because when she lived in Cambridge, Maud could stay with her when my parents were away on their trips, and go to day school.”

Henry’s mother was a glaciologist, his father a geologist, and
they were both away on a six-month expedition to investigate undersea volcanoes in the Antarctic. They’d left Maud, at her insistence, in her brother’s guardianship. Henry, at thirty, was sixteen years older than his sister, so it made sense. Especially, he told Georgina, when the alternative was his aunt. “Who’d stand no nonsense from Maud, is how she’d put it, and that kind of approach just doesn’t work with Maud. You have to take the scenic route with her.”