Writing Jane Austen (33 page)

“Yes, but they didn’t help him.”

“It’s a muddle, that’s all. Some of this is relevant to him, and some of it won’t be.” Georgina looked at Anna’s troubled face. She reached out and touched her hand. “Look, why don’t you let me deal with this for Stefan? I’m used to this stuff, and I’ve a friend on the admin side at my college who’ll know the people at Imperial. Between us, I’m sure we can sort it out for your cousin. If he won’t mind my helping, that is. I don’t want to interfere.”

Anna’s smile lit up the room. “Of course he will not mind. But this is too big a kindness, you don’t have time, you need every minute for your book.”

“No, I don’t, not any more, not at the moment. And as for kindness, look at all you do for me.”

Georgina took the folder and her presents back to her room. After a swift burst of activity, going through Stefan’s forms before phoning her friend at college and bundling up the paperwork to post to her, she sank into inertia, utterly at a loose end, as though she were waiting for something to happen.

Like what?

Well, she had better try out the program that Henry had given her, so that she could say thank you nicely when he came back at the end of the day. “Only takes minutes to train,” it said on the box. She was sceptical. However, she put on the headset, plugged herself in and methodically read through the training texts. So far so good. She could try it out, but she had no enthusiasm for it, and she’d had enough of reading out loud for the moment. She took off the headset, switched off the programme and picked up a book, which turned out to be
The Letters of Jane Austen
. No, she couldn’t cope with them right now.

Well, she’d better have another go with this dictation thing. At least the computer software wouldn’t read what she’d written and tell her it was dull. She opened a new document, and after a moment’s hesitation spoke into the microphone.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

On the screen appeared
That you; as a single man Thresher good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Gobbledygook. She adjusted the headset, and tried again.

A pause and then up came the words,
It is not a single possession of auction asked me.

Gibberish.

She studied the diagram in the leaflet intently, manoeuvred the microphone into what must be the right position and tried again.

It is acknowledged the station book must be in want of a knife.

What was that computer phrase? GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. This was something different, this was GPIGO: great prose in, garbage out.

Of course, what she really needed was a program to work the other way: garbage in, great prose out.

She gave up, removed the headset and abandoned the program. Whatever might be the solution to her writing problems, this wasn’t it.

Henry would understand, he must have had to deal with duff software in his time. Thinking of Henry, she realized that she hadn’t listened to his card all the way through. She sat in her armchair, and opened it. The voice of the man reading the poem was beautiful, and the lyrical words flowed over her, sending tingles up and down her spine, as she listened to the heart of a poet seeking to express his love.

As though her senses were suddenly sharpened, the next lines sang out in her head.

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;

Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows;

And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

She listened again. And again, silently speaking the words with the reader.

Look in thy heart, and write.

She shot out of her chair as though impelled by some unknown force, sat down at her desk, tugged the headset into position, and willing it to work, began to speak.

It came out as gibberish. Random words, half sentences, nonsense, which left Georgina voiceless and frustrated. She picked up the microphone stand, ready to hurl it across the room, when she noticed a little glowing red light.

Perhaps if she switched the microphone on, she might get better results.

For the next few weeks, Georgina lived in two separate worlds, and time-travelled between them. World One was
Love and Friendship
, an early-nineteenth-century world inhabited by a vigorous, spirited and independent-minded Susan, by her aunt, the vicious, scheming, depraved Lady Carcenet, by her suitors, a world of horses and
carriages and candles and oil lamps, and a world alive with love and passion.

World Two was a twenty-first-century world in which, strangely detached, and with a sense of unreality, she spent the hours of her days and nights when she wasn’t writing or thinking about Susan and her destiny.

The detachment allowed her to put aside, as though in a shut-off compartment, her feelings for Henry, and, more practically, made her fearless in dealing with Livia Harkness and Dan and Yolanda Vesey. When they emailed her, they received short, sharp, noncommittal replies. Her writing was going well, she’d be in touch in due course. She ignored their text messages, deleted their voice mail messages and refused to speak to anyone on the landline.

In this world, she was pleased when Maud was given a place at Hartbury. “Wonder how many favours Aunt Pam had to call in to pull that off,” Maud said when she came in to say goodbye before Henry drove her down to Hartbury for the second half of term. She threw her arms around Georgina and hugged her, a display of affection so uncharacteristic from reserved Maud that Georgina quite forgave her the spasm of pain it caused her arm.

She listened, as though hearing news from another planet, when Henry, relieved to have his sister back at school, but worried that she might not settle down, told her that he’d heard from Maud who said it wasn’t too bad, although the food was foul. “She’s doing an oboe solo at the end-of-term concert, we could go down.”

Georgina borrowed Maud’s recording of Mozart oboe sonatas, which she listened to while she walked her story, wrapped up against the blasts of an early and spiteful winter, occasionally looking up at a redbrick façade of an eighteenth-century house and mentally placing a scene inside, setting her characters in a first-floor drawing room lit by the glow of candlelight.

Henry and Anna treated her with a tact and sensitivity that,
had she given it a moment’s thought, would have amazed her. She worked solidly every morning, and after a few days, when she realized that the text, although readable, needed a lot of correction that she couldn’t possibly attempt, given the amount of mouse work involved, Henry came up with an immediate and practical solution.

“Send your work to someone who can sort out the errors and send you back a clean text.” He found just the person, a housebound young mother with an eye for detail and copy editing experience. “Damn the expense,” he said. “Money won’t be a problem if you can get the book written. Here’s Marcia’s email address, she’s waiting to hear from you, and she knows it’s urgent.”

In the afternoons, Georgina read through what Marcia sent back, and dictated bubble comments to the script for later revision. In the evenings, Anna cooked wonderful food for her, and afterwards she would sit wrapped in a silent dream in the drawing room, listening to Anna playing the piano. Henry often joined them, stretching his long legs out in front of the fire with one of his heavy textbooks on his knee.

One Tuesday morning, Georgina was at her desk as usual. Outside, a pale, wintry sun was making the last remnants of frost twinkle on the leaves. Inside, snug in a scarlet cashmere jersey, she was far away from modern-day Marylebone. It was ten o’clock in London, but to her it was a summer evening, and Susan, wearing a pale green flounced gown, was making her entrance into a room full of fashionable people, with hundreds of candles shedding a warm glow over the throng.

A tap on the door. Georgina ignored it; she knew that neither Henry nor Anna would dream of disturbing her when she was working.

She was wrong, Henry had done the unforgivable and intruded into her other world. He stood at her door, looking unusually elegant in a charcoal banker’s suit.

Georgina paused her speech programme, and looked round, savage at being interrupted. “Is there an emergency? Is the house on fire?”

“No,” said Henry, coming into the room. “But you have to come out of your fictive trance, just for today. Put on some glad rags, we’re going to a wedding.”

Georgina stared at him. “Wedding? Whose wedding?”

“Anna’s wedding.”

Georgina blinked, dragging her mind back into the present day.
She had a character called Anna in her book, and that Anna had a wedding scheduled for around Chapter Forty-eight. But Henry couldn’t be talking about her Anna. “Anna? What do you mean, Anna’s wedding?”

Henry spoke slowly and clearly. “Anna and Charlie are getting married today. They’ve kept completely quiet about it, and only let friends and relatives know this morning. Mind you, anyone could have seen it coming.”

Georgina, the world of her book now receding, was troubled. She had been so wrapped up in her writing that she hadn’t noticed what was happening around her. Yes, Charlie had been at the house rather a lot, but he had explained his frequent visits by saying that he was doing a lot of promotional work in London at the moment. She was ashamed not to have noticed that Anna and Charlie were so much in love that they were going to get married. And what would Lady Pamela have to say about it?

“Pam is furious,” said Henry. “I’ve had her on the phone for half an hour, telling me I’ve got to put a stop to it.”

“What exactly does she have against Anna, apart from her being Polish?”

“I don’t have the time to tell you. Come on, get a move on, or we’ll arrive after the bride.”

Georgina got up and headed for her cupboard. She spoke over her shoulder, “Where are they getting married, at the register office?”

“Anna, at a register office? Don’t be ridiculous, the ceremony is at St. Stephen’s, it’s a Catholic church with a Polish priest, and a largely Polish congregation. For all I know, the service will be in Polish.”

“That certainly won’t please Lady Pamela, or isn’t she coming? Turn your back while I get changed.”

“I’m not sure. It sounded like she was planning a boycott, but
then I spoke to Rupert and he said he would make sure she would be there. He’s rather pleased, he’s got a romantic streak, the old devil.”

Ten minutes later, clad in an elegant claret-coloured suit, and with her make-up bag in her hand, Georgina followed Henry out of the house.

He hailed a taxi. “I’ll never find anywhere to park near the church,” he said, holding the door open for Georgina. As the taxi rumbled towards the church, Georgina applied her make-up, and then put on the earrings she’d snatched up as she left her room.

Georgina had left love and romance on the page only to find herself face-to-face with the real thing. The church was Victorian and gloomy, but the altar was heaped with lilies, and huge wax candles enclosed Anna and Charlie in a soft circle of light as they stood in front of the priest, bathed in fragrant incense. Georgina sat completely still while Anna and Charlie exchanged their vows in clear, certain voices. The way Charlie looked at Anna as he came back down the aisle from the altar with his bride on his arm made her heart turn over.

Anna, radiantly lovely in a cream silk dress she had made herself, was aglow with happiness. Next to Henry, Rupert Grandison was audibly sniffing. Lady Pamela had remained stony-faced throughout the service, and after the ceremony was over, although she condescended to give Anna a peck on the cheek, was clearly set to refuse to join the bride and groom and their friends for lunch at a Polish restaurant in Soho.

Rupert wasn’t having any of it. Georgina overheard him having it out with his wife. “Charles is our son. Anna is now our daughter-in-law. They are man and wife, married in church, by a priest, so you can’t pretend it hasn’t happened. There’s nothing you can do about it, other than accept it with a good grace. And, speaking for myself, I would far rather have Anna as a daughter-in-law than
Hermione or any other of Charles’s past girlfriends. Besides, I like Polish food, and I’m going to this lunch, with or without you.”

It was a wonderful meal, lasting far into the afternoon, made even more enjoyable by the lively presence of Anna’s Polish friends and relations and a posse of friends of Charlie’s, who had abandoned desks at banks, law offices, and in the case of an Olympic rower, a training schedule on the choppy waters of the Thames, to come to the wedding.

Henry refused to let Georgina go back to her desk. “For one thing, you’re tipsy, and anything you wrote would have to be rewritten in the clear light of day tomorrow, and for another, I shall feel desolate if I have to sit downstairs by myself. I’m going to take you out to a film.”

Put like that, it would have been churlish to lock herself away upstairs again, and besides, Henry was right; she was in no state to write anything that would make sense. “We shall miss Anna,” she said to Henry as they walked back from the cinema. “It’ll be nothing but takeaways from now on.”

“Don’t you be so sure,” said Henry cryptically.

“Are you planning to go on a cookery course?”

Henry didn’t reply, but gave her a sardonic look as he opened the front door and stood back to let her go in.

When Georgina came downstairs into the kitchen the day after the wedding, feeling distinctly the worse for wear, she discovered why Henry hadn’t been bothered by the prospect of takeaways. Anna, mindful of the gap her disappearance into the country to raise wild boar with Charlie would leave in Henry’s household, had thoughtfully provided a replacement, and there was the lanky Pole whom Georgina had last seen in the kitchen at Motley Manor, with a long apron tied around his waist, making coffee.