Jane in Love

by Rachel Givney

  When Sofia returned to the house that evening, she seemed surprised to find Jane there. ‘You’re still here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane replied. ‘I was unable to return home.’

  Sofia looked confused. ‘I wonder how much longer this prank can go on, is all. Surely their budget has run out by now,’ she whispered.

  Jane scowled. ‘Yes, well. I found no sign of the house.’

  ‘What house?’

  ‘Mrs Sinclair’s house. In London.’

  ‘You went to London?’ Sofia said. Her face bore a look of surprise.

  Jane nodded. ‘With your brother.’ She commanded her cheeks not to blush; they disobeyed her. She told Sofia of the house’s removal from the London landscape, the robbery, the people-eating staircase.

  Sofia poured herself a goblet of wine and nodded. ‘You’re sticking with the witch backstory, huh?’

  Jane nodded. ‘I saw my novels in a bookshop,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, sure.’ She sat down at the kitchen table and drank the wine in one swallow. She exhaled a long sigh, then shook her shoulders and nodded. ‘I’m a professional. I can keep this charade up for another day. Which ones?’ Jane’s six novels still lay on the table. Sofia picked up Persuasion and held it in front of Jane. ‘Did you see this one today?’

  The novel then performed two acts which were to dominate their discussions and occupy their actions for some time after.

  First, the book shook and turned to dust in Sofia’s hand. Jane gasped. Sofia shrieked.

  Second, the dust gathered together, and then disappeared into thin air. The women, in almost perfect mimicry, repeated their previous reactions.

  Jane stared at Sofia’s right hand, which remained outstretched and empty, with naught but air where the little book had earlier sat. Sofia stared at the hand too, and poured another goblet of wine with the other. She drained the goblet, all the while keeping her eyes on the hand where the novel had formerly stood. ‘Did you see that happen?’ Sofia asked Jane in a strangely calm voice.

  ‘The book disappeared from your fingers,’ Jane replied, equally calmly.

  ‘There was a solid object in my hand. Now there is not.’

  ‘I concur with that observation,’ Jane said, her voice shaking.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Sofia said. ‘I thought I might have been hallucinating. Can you explain what is going on?’ She peered under the table.

  ‘I do not know,’ Jane said. It was the truth. Her head spun. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Looking under the table for your book,’ Sofia replied, doing as much. ‘Perhaps I dropped it.’

  ‘You did not drop it,’ Jane said.

  ‘Perhaps if I do this’—Sofia shook her hand and wiggled her fingers—‘I can bring it back.’ She flapped her hands. The book did not return. She paced the room. Jane followed her movements back and forth and grew dizzy. ‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ Sofia began in her strangely calm tone. ‘Did CGI make the book disappear?’

  ‘I do not know what that means,’ Jane replied.

  ‘Fair enough. They do fancy things with iPads these days, but even a computer cannot make molecules disappear,’ Sofia said. ‘And we’ve ruled out drunken hallucination, for you saw it too. Are you drunk?’ Jane shook her head. Sofia stopped pacing and slammed her hands on the table. ‘I’m going to ask you a question now and I want you to answer truthfully,’ she said.

  ‘Proceed,’ Jane replied.

  ‘Are you or are you not an actress pretending to be Jane Austen in a candid-camera scheme concocted by the producers of the film I am starring in?’ She looked Jane in the eye.

  ‘I am not,’ Jane replied. ‘What are you doing now?’

  Sofia had sat down and was lowering her head between her legs. ‘I am stopping my head from exploding. I suggest you join me.’

  Jane secured her head at her knees. Her skull burned. She had never witnessed anything like what had just happened. Except for the occasion where she had travelled through time in a similar fashion.

  ‘Explain to me, then, who you think you are?’ Sofia said after a moment.

  ‘I am Jane Austen,’ Jane replied.

  ‘I see. Well, putting my head between my legs didn’t work.’ Sofia sat back up again. ‘I shall return to my first tactic.’ She poured herself a third goblet of wine, then pointed at Jane. ‘You are trying to tell me that was not CGI? You materialised in a pile of curtains?’

  ‘I do not know what see-gee-eye means.’

  ‘You expect me to accept you are Jane Austen. The writer who lived two hundred years ago.’

  ‘Yes?’ Jane replied. ‘As I have said.’

  ‘The novelist who wrote Northanger Abbey. The ambitious and doomed film adaptation of which I am now acting in.’

  ‘While I’ve comprehended little of what you have said, I am nevertheless compelled to answer yes.’

  ‘And you arrived here how?’

  ‘I said a spell, and—’

  ‘The witch, the cabbages, et cetera,’ Sofia said, waving a hand. ‘That is all true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you appeared in the curtain. What happened to you?’

  ‘Difficult to say,’ Jane replied. ‘It was similar to the thing that occurred with my book.’

  ‘The dust particles and the disappearing?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said.

  Sofia nodded. ‘You are not an actress? Not an avatar?’

  ‘I do not believe so.’

  ‘You are not a cartoon?’

  ‘Not that I am aware.’ It dawned on Jane then that during the entirety of their short acquaintance, Sofia Wentworth had comprehended a different version of events from the real one. ‘You did not believe me before?’ Jane asked her. ‘When I said my name is Jane Austen?’

  ‘I thought you were an actress!’ Sofia said. ‘A poorly trained one,’ she added.

  ‘Do you believe me now?’

  Sofia drained the goblet. Jane waited for an answer.

  ‘What I want to believe is that you are a performer, sent to trip me up, whom I instead planned to manoeuvre into making me look good on camera and somehow wrangle my husband back. I hoped your appearance out of thin air, and your book’s disappearing act, were tricks of the theatre.’ Sofia sighed.

  ‘Here’s the thing. It was so strange when it happened. Dust became a person. Excuse me for a moment.’ Sofia got up and located a second bottle of wine. She opened it and filled her goblet again. Then she opened the front door. Jane peered after her. Sofia squinted at the starry night sky and tipped the glass to her lips. She swallowed and gulped. Jane thought she might pass out about halfway through, when she seemed to choke and stop breathing, but then she resumed her gulping once more and drained the goblet. She returned inside.

  ‘To summarise. You are Jane Austen. You cast a spell you got from a witch and disappeared from your own time, then reappeared here in a pile of curtains. Stop me if I have left anything out.’

  Jane made no remark.

  ‘Are there any disadvantages to me if I cease disbelieving you, and accept this story as truth?’

  ‘I see only advantages to you believing me,’ Jane said.

  Sofia nodded. She stood and cleared her throat. ‘On behalf of everyone, welcome to the twentieth century, Jane Austen.’

  ‘I believe this is the twenty-first century?’

  ‘Right. What are your plans while you are here?’ Sofia asked.

  ‘To find a way to return home,’ Jane answered.

  ‘Makes sense.’ Sofia shrugged. ‘Now we have that answered, we arrive at the next question.’

  ‘What is that?’ Jane said.

  ‘Why did a novel, written by you, disappear into thin air?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sofia led Jane out of the house and began walking towards the centre of Bath.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Jane asked as Sofia strode down the road ahead of her.

  ‘To gather more clues,’ Sofia replied. ‘
Hurry up.’ She walked even faster.

  ‘You move remarkably well for a woman who recently consumed a bottle of wine,’ Jane called after her, shaking her head.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sofia said with a nod. ‘A talent of mine.’ Jane caught up to her. ‘My husband, Jack, is your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great . . . something, by the way,’ Sofia said as they turned down Railway Street. ‘How many “greats” was that?’

  ‘Eight,’ Jane replied.

  ‘That’s not right,’ Sofia said.

  ‘How many “greats” should there be?’ Jane asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Not eight. Anyway, he is your relative.’

  Jane stiffened. ‘Am I to understand, a relative of mine, a descendant, my flesh and blood walks this earth?’

  ‘Yep. He’s handsome, too,’ Sofia replied.

  ‘He is a descendant of my immediate family? The Austens of Hampshire?’

  ‘The very same. He’s related to you, Jane. That’s the whole point. He has thirty of your letters in a shoebox in our attic in London.’

  ‘I do not understand. Your husband has my letters in his possession? Why?’

  ‘His mother left them to him. They’re collector’s items.’

  Jane revelled in the thought. ‘Whose child is he? Rather, from whom is he descended?’ Was this her great-grandson? Was she destined to return to her own time to marry and bear a child, who through generations of careful marriage and breeding would produce a handsome descendant named Jack? Who was she destined to marry, then?

  ‘James, I think?’ Sofia replied.

  ‘Yes,’ Jane said with a disappointed nod. ‘I have a brother named James. I see.’

  ‘Jack is your great, great, great, et cetera, nephew, I believe,’ Sofia said.

  Jane felt deflated. Still, it did not mean there weren’t others. ‘Is there any resemblance between us? May I meet him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your husband,’ Jane said. ‘Does he live here in Bath?’

  ‘No. We are separated,’ Sofia said. She swallowed and gazed at the ground.

  ‘Oh,’ Jane said with horror. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry,’ Sofia said. Jane caught a look of turmoil on Sofia’s face before she turned away. It was a complex expression, one of both hope and pain. Jane could not respond. She had never met anyone whose marriage had ceased to be. She knew plenty of persons who remained roped to another human in misery, infidelity and hatred, yes, but no one who had abandoned the marital bed, or whose spouse had deserted them. ‘Perhaps you can come to set, where they’re filming the movie?’ Sofia said. She seemed to force her face into a smile. ‘It’s your novel. Jack will be there.’

  ‘Mov-ie?’

  ‘Like a theatre production, but fancier.’

  Jane felt so overcome with delight, confusion and intrigue that she needed to sit down again. ‘I might like to see that,’ she said.

  The two women entered a honeystone building in the centre of Bath and rode a travelling staircase to the second floor. ‘I have been on several of these!’ Jane remarked with joy. ‘Observe my technique.’ She jumped on a stair with a wobble.

  ‘Not bad,’ Sofia said. She led Jane inside a large room filled with shelves of books.

  ‘A library.’ Jane smiled. ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘The plebs,’ Sofia said. ‘Anyone’s.’

  This concept greeted Jane as entirely new. In her own time, a man brought a cart filled with books into the village; one could borrow them for a week. Indoor libraries were private and the domain of the rich. Jane’s brother Edward had inherited a spectacular example from the Knights when he became their heir, and whenever Jane visited, she spent days lost amongst its shelves, devouring mountains of books. Her brother did not use the library himself. ‘I am astounded by the number of books in the twenty-first century,’ Jane remarked.

  A man in rags walked up to them and elbowed Sofia with a withered arm. ‘I loved you in Doctor Zhivago!’ he said. He wore a perfume of old potatoes.

  Sofia rolled her eyes at the man. ‘Though I’m not one to turn down a compliment, that was Julie Christie.’

  ‘She was beautiful in that film. Can I get a selfie?’ He put one arm around Sofia to pose and held out his other arm in front of them.

  ‘You don’t have a camera,’ Sofia said.

  ‘No,’ he replied. He put his arm down. ‘How about an autograph?’

  ‘You don’t have any paper. Or a pen.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. He stared into the distance.

  Sofia sighed. ‘We’re off to the information desk. If you find paper in that time, I’ll sign it when we get back. Always nice to meet a fan.’ She led Jane away.

  ‘You are a woman of fame,’ Jane remarked to her. ‘I recall other times when people have stared and pointed at you in the street.’

  Sofia nodded. ‘I am an actress, Jane.’

  ‘How wonderful. A poor player that struts and frets her hour upon the stage. Do you play Ophelia? Do you play Electra?’

  ‘I used to,’ she said with a smile. ‘Then I grew famous, and I played ingenues, sexy action sidekicks and hookers with hearts of gold. Now I’m the wrong side of thirty-five, I play fishwives and grandmothers.’

  ‘Oh. But you have a profession? You earn an income for this acting?’

  ‘An income? Jane, I have six swimming pools across my various houses. I’ve never even swum in most of them.’

  Jane shook her head in disbelief. ‘I have never met a woman who earned her own income before. Do other women have professions? Or only actresses?’

  Sofia shrugged. ‘Sure. Women are doctors, lawyers, garbage collectors. You can do what you want. You’ll get paid less than a man’—she snorted—‘but you get paid.’

  Jane’s brother Edward, who picked things from his ear and ate them, had been adopted at age twelve by a childless couple, the Knights, who were cousins of Jane’s father. Jane far exceeded Edward in mathematics, languages, wit and talent, but Edward had the talent of maleness, the most important talent of all. By the time Edward reached twenty-five, he had inherited three estates, from which he earned rental income of £10 000 a year. When Jane had reached the same age, she inherited nothing. When one day she’d expressed aloud a desire to earn her own income, Edward pronounced her a prostitute. The last time she had spoken to her brother involved a letter asking him of his recent holiday to Ramsgate. Edward had replied that it was a wonderful tour and she might have joined them, if there had been room in the carriage.

  Jane stared at Sofia, her income-earning female friend, feeling gripped with admiration and agitation. How did she feel earning her own way, existing as a burden to no one? What was it like to be beholden to none?

  Sofia showed Jane to the back of the room, where a woman sat behind a desk. Sofia greeted her. ‘Where can we find Persuasion, please?’

  The woman squinted at the large steel frame on the desk. ‘Who is the author?’

  Sofia froze. ‘The author is Jane Austen.’

  The woman laughed. ‘No. Jane Austen never wrote anything by that title.’

  Jane baulked. She had memorised those six titles in an instant when Sofia showed the novels to her. They had become as precious to her as children’s names.

  ‘Could you check on your computer, please?’ Sofia asked the woman.

  ‘Don’t need to. Jane Austen never wrote a novel called that. But to humour you . . .’ She operated the frame and turned it to face Sofia. ‘See?’

  Sofia examined it and scowled. ‘Out of interest, how many novels did Jane Austen write?’

  The woman behind the desk shrugged liked it was obvious. ‘Five.’

  Jane shuddered.

  Sofia thanked the woman. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to Jane.

  Next to the library was a shop selling coffee. Jane’s sister-in-law Eliza had written from Paris of such things, and Harry had tried some once in London. Sofia pointed to a table and chairs. ‘Sit down, I’ll order
us coffee. I need to sober up,’ Sofia said. ‘This is a disaster,’ she added. She attended the shop’s counter, then returned and sat down next to Jane.

  ‘I understand something is wrong,’ Jane said, ‘but I am unsure exactly what.’

  ‘Jane. Your book has disappeared. You don’t write Persuasion any more! You once wrote six novels, now you only write five. I was in a time-travel movie once. I played the girl who lived next door to a man called Rob. Rob had the power to move back and forth through different periods in time, from the sixties to today and back again. Every time Rob moved from one era to the next, he inadvertently changed events and outcomes in the other time, to the detriment of everyone. A person he spoke to in the past ended up killing a whole bunch of people in the future, for example, and someone who never met their hairdresser because they were talking to Rob instead received horrid haircuts from that day on.’ She paused and shrugged. ‘The film was not a masterpiece, to be fair. Variety called it “a poor take on the genre”. But that’s beside the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’ Jane said.

  ‘The point is, the actions Rob made in one time affected what happened in the other time. He went back and forth, changing things and erasing events until eventually, he erased himself and, if I recall correctly, the universe.’ Sofia stared at Jane.

  ‘That does not sound ideal,’ Jane said.

  Sofia nodded. ‘If you stay here, that is what will happen.’

  The drinks arrived. Jane sipped hers and scowled. The hot, brown liquid sunk to the back of her throat, strangling her from the inside. ‘The bitterness of this substance astounds me,’ she said. ‘But I feel strangely compelled to drink more.’

  ‘It’s coffee, Jane. Suck it down,’ Sofia replied. She took a large gulp from her own cup. Jane did the same and found herself buzzing like a bumblebee. She felt disgusted by the drink, but also glad; in some way it made everything seem clearer. She focused her mind back on the issue. The moment when the book had vanished from Sofia’s hand disturbed her – not the magic of it, which unnerved her, of course, but no more so than the other strange acts she witnessed – but the true feeling of horror came from the thought that something she had written, which had been published and sent out into the world, now ceased to exist. ‘What can we do?’ she asked Sofia.