Jane Austen Made Me Do It (26 page)

Auctioneers? Maybe a piece of old jewellery, something that he thought would be a fitting memento.

She took the package and went back to bed to open it. Inside was a box, inside the box was a locket, and within the locket, just visible, was a small twist of light brown hair. She stared at it. It wasn't a pretty locket, and certainly not the kind of thing she would ever wear.

Beneath the locket was the auctioneer's receipt. “A locket containing Jane Austen's hair. For provenance see attached.” And then the staggering amount that Charles had paid for this parting gift. Five thousand pounds. She fell back against the pillows. A locket of Jane Austen's hair! An extraordinary gift from a man who knew how much she loved Jane Austen's novels.

She laid the locket on the pillow beside her before turning the light out and burying her head in her pillow to cry herself to sleep.

When she woke up, it was broad daylight and a strange woman was sitting at the end of the bed.

Shocked and startled, Sara stared at her. “Who are you? What are you doing in my bedroom?”

“I dare say you couldn't be expected to recognise me from Cassandra's portrait.”

Cassandra?

She hadn't spoken out loud, but the figure, which seemed oddly insubstantial, responded, “Yes, Cassandra, my sister.”

As a child, Sara had heard voices in her head and obviously, with the shock of Charles's departure, they had returned in the shape of a full-blown hallucination. This was nothing more than a projection from her imagination. She shut her eyes and shook
her head and opened them again to find that the woman was still sitting there, looking a little bit more solid and less floaty.

What had the child psychologist said to her parents about her voices? Nothing to worry about, a phase imaginative children often went through, she would grow out of it. Encourage her to have conversations with the voices, then she wouldn't feel threatened or alarmed by them. The voices would disappear as she grew older.

Which they had. Until now.

Okay, she'd try a conversation with the apparition. “You're Jane Austen?”

“Of course I am.”

“So why are you here?”

“You summoned me, by means of dwelling on my novels, and then acquiring a lock of my hair.”

“If I throw the locket out of the window, you disappear?”

“You can try. I doubt it, not now I'm here. And the locket cost a considerable amount. Would it be wise to throw it out of the window?”

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Some hours. When I arrived, you were sobbing, then you fell asleep. Time doesn't mean a great deal to me. Why were you crying?”

Sara's lip quivered. “Because Charles has left me.”

“Charles? Your husband, or a lover?”

“We were going to be married.”

“And he's abandoned you. Are you breeding, is that why he's left?”

“No. We'd planned to have children—”

“Pull yourself together. Your tears have made your complexion blotchy, and your nose is running. Do you often cry? If Charles sees you like that, I'm not surprised he's left you.”

Conversations were all very well, but this one was getting out of hand. Sara swung her legs out of bed, darted into the bathroom, and locked the door. She sank down on the laundry basket, head in her hands.

“That won't help you.”

The apparition was perched on the edge of the bath. No softness or twinkle in those keen eyes, just a ferocious intelligence. She'd always thought Livia had the sharpest and coldest eyes in town, but she was pure benevolence in comparison with this creature.

“I can't possibly use the bathroom with you here. Please go away.”

“Very well,” and the apparition vanished.

“For good, I hope,” Sara muttered. She emerged cautiously from the bathroom a quarter of an hour later and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no one in the bedroom. Thank goodness. She'd make herself coffee—

No, the apparition hadn't gone. There she was, on the sofa, reading Charles's note.

“That's private correspondence,” Sara said.

“Writes a neat hand, this Charles of yours. What is this reference to a lock of Mr. Darcy's hair? Is that my Mr. Darcy, the hero of
Pride and Prejudice
? The man's a fool if he thinks he could obtain a lock of hair of a man who never existed. And why would you want any such thing?”

As a child, Sara had never worried very much about the voices. They were the kind of thing that adults made a fuss about, but to her they were just invisible friends. This apparition was different. And, like a toothache or a buzz in the ear or a floater in the eye, it was going to be very irritating if she couldn't get rid of her.

Various possibilities went through her mind. Alcohol? What would happen if she drank a bottle of wine?

“You'd probably be sick. And I'd prefer it if you didn't keep on calling me an apparition. ‘Miss Austen' will do nicely. I may be a ghost, but good manners reach across the centuries.”

Sara realised that the ap—all right, Miss Austen—had a more definite outline, a more substantial three-dimensionality, than had been apparent first thing that morning. Coffee was what she needed. A good dose of caffeine might clear this nuisance out of her head.

“And I don't care to be called a nuisance. I'm here to help.”

That, Sara didn't believe. Nothing she'd ever heard about hallucinations or ghosts ever suggested that they were there to help. From reading many lurid and scary ghost stories, she knew they usually ended unhappily. Besides, this wasn't a ghost, it was a figment of her imagination.

“You take a deal too much pride in your mind if you believe your imagination is capable of creating me.”

Sara concentrated on making coffee, trying to blank everything else out of her mind.

The apparition hovered behind her and said, a trifle wistfully, “It is a sadness to me that I can no longer smell nor taste the delicious aroma and flavour of coffee.”

How surprising. She'd never thought of Jane Austen as indulging in stimulants. Prim and proper in her muslins, she might take tea in the morning or perhaps a dish of chocolate. Surely nothing more exciting.

“Rubbish. I much disliked tea, and greatly enjoyed coffee, and wine, too. Your generation has a very strange idea of how things were in my time.”

Sara retreated with coffee into the study. If she absorbed herself in her computer, then maybe that would switch her mind off and vanquish Miss Austen.

“Good gracious, what are all these pictures on the wall?”

“Stills and photos from television and film productions of
Pride and Prejudice
. It's my favourite book, I love it, I practically know it by heart. This one is my favourite—this is Colin Firth when he played Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy is my idea of a perfect man.”

“Which accounts for Charles's remark about Mr. Darcy's hair. It surprises me that people are still reading my novels so long after they were written and I departed this earth, but for a young woman of your age, I suppose of moderate intelligence, to yearn for the hero of a novel seems extraordinary to me. I would have thought you had more sense. Crushes on real people are tiresome enough, and you should have grown out of any such propensity by now. No wonder Charles took himself off. Jealousy of a living man is one thing, but no man can compete with a character who never existed.”

Sara turned to her emails. She had forgotten about the grim email from Livia Harkness, and as she read it again, the feeling of panic and despair returned.

Miss Austen was at her shoulder. “Who is Livia? She is hardly polite.”

“My literary agent. You didn't have literary agents in your day; they work with authors and sell their books to publishers.”

“Or not, in your case. Who pays for the publication? In my day the author did. Do you pay to have your books published?”

“Some people do, but I haven't.” Yet, she thought.

“Each age has its own way of doing things. I used to write with a quill pen sitting at a little table, and here you are with a computer.”

“How come you know about computers?”

“Do you think I've spent the last two centuries in limbo waiting for you to buy my lock of hair? I like to keep up with the times.”

Sara got up and gestured towards the seat. “Why don't you use the computer? Perhaps,” she added cunningly, “you would even like to write something. Just press the letters on the keyboard and the words will appear on the screen.”

“They won't. It's one of the things we can't do. I can talk to people, but I can't write.”

“I bet you can't,” Sara said, sotto voce.

“On the other hand,” Miss Austen went on, flicking her fingers across the keys, “I can play games. Where's FreeCell?”

Sara watched in astonishment as FreeCell appeared on the screen. The non-existent fingers were moving the cards to and fro with astonishing rapidity.

“I always liked card games like whist and piquet and even solitaire.”

Sara tottered back to the kitchen and made herself an even stronger cup of coffee.

Miss Austen came out of the study. “You're very jumpy. I dare say you've had too much coffee. Put on your coat; a brisk walk will do you good.”

As though mesmerised, Sara picked up her handbag and opened the door. Miss Austen wafted past her. She seemed to know where she wanted to go, but Sara wanted to go the other way, in the direction of the doctor's surgery.

“You don't need a physician. There's nothing wrong with your mind, except sentimentality and stupidity. Can't you walk any faster than that? In my day there were no cars and we were indefatigable walkers.”

“It's different in the country. There's all this traffic and pollution in London.”

“I love London. I never spent nearly enough time in town. My brothers were anxious because I liked town life so much; they
thought it was unsuitable for a woman in my position. It's odd how men always try to prevent you enjoying yourself if they possibly can.”

“Charles doesn't.”

“Then Charles is a remarkable man, and you should have kept hold of him.”

“Where are we going?”

“In here.” Miss Austen floated into the Oxfam shop.

She found the secondhand book section and scanned the shelves, finally pouncing on a dreary little volume on a bottom shelf. She handed it to Sara.

Scouting for Girls
?

“Open it.”

With a shrug Sara opened it, expecting to find illustrations of knots and advice on knitting and all those other things beloved of the Girl Guide movement.

To her surprise, the pages inside had nothing to do with scouting. Instead, here was thick paper with the slightly brown colour of very old books and the elegant typeface of the eighteenth century. She turned to the title page.

THE ORPHAN'S PROGRESS by Clarissa Curstable
.

“It's a novel!”

“Yes, and a good one. Not up to my standard of course, but it caused quite a stir in its day.”

Sara had never heard of Clarissa Curstable.

“No one has. Buy it, please.”

Sara obediently took the book to the till. Should she say something about it being an old volume, possibly precious? “It's not really a scouting guide for girls,” she said to the assistant. “It's an old book with the wrong cover on.”

“Is it, dear? I don't think so.” The woman opened the book,
and to her astonishment, Sara saw a page full of old-fashioned drawings of knots. “I don't know what gave you that idea. Fifty pence, please.”

“Fifty pence,” said Miss Austen as they left the shop together. “A modest sum for a book. And a veritable bargain, given that it will save your career and transform your life.”

“Transform my life? How?”

“First, you must read it. No doubt you're an accomplished reader, and it won't take you long. Meanwhile, I shall enjoy reading some of the novels you have written.”

Not if you're really Miss Austen you won't
, Sara thought.

She was right. Back at the flat, Miss Austen galloped through the books she'd plucked from Sara's shelves, emitting snorts of laughter interspersed with occasional yawns.

“You have a certain facility with words, and I think indeed you might turn into a writer of some distinction, with effort and application, but the sentimentality of these is not to my taste.” She tapped the cover of
Twin Souls
. “In this volume, for instance, your heroine is a dispiriting creature and your hero is exceedingly disagreeable. Your literary agent is right to suggest a different genre for your pen.”

Sara was too absorbed in Clarissa Curstable's remarkable work to argue. It was one of the raciest, most scandalous, salacious, and outrageous novels she'd ever read. It concerned the adventures of an orphaned young woman cast upon the town, who, by dint of selling her charms and a shrewd business head, achieved the distinction of marrying a marquis and ending up the possessor of several handsome properties and an enormous fortune.

It was a conventional enough story of its kind, but the breathlessness and the exciting way the story was told and the luscious lasciviousness of it were almost shocking. Sara reached the last
page and put the book down with a sigh. “It's a good read. Why have I never heard of Clarissa Curstable?”

“For the very good reason that her name has been expunged from the annals of literature.”

“Why, when she wrote so well, and was a published author?”

“Clarissa was widowed at an early age and left with a daughter to support. She turned to her pen and succeeded, to admiration, writing three-volume novels of the kind now called Gothic literature, in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe. However, although this made her a modest income, it barely sufficed to keep her in anything more than respectable gentility, and was not enough for the great hopes she cherished for a daughter who was both beautiful and amiable.