Longbourn

by Jo Baker

  This time, when the doorbell rang, Sarah ran for it, to caution any visitor—she anticipated a poor parishioner with an elderly or ill relative—that the family was not at home. But it was Mr. Darcy again, his big glossy self; then he was past her, and heading down the corridor, and opening the parlour door. She heard Elizabeth’s exclamation, imagined the spiriting away of the damp cloth, the swift drawing open of the blinds. But Sarah could not have even slowed his progress, no more than one of the evening shadows could trip him up. She stood there on the threshold, feeling quite transparent: the brassy polish of the doorknob seemed to shine through her hand; the evening blue leached right through her.

  Sarah sat down on the front step, the door ajar behind her. There were just days now to be counted—nine days, and this one blessedly nearly over—until they began their journey back to Longbourn. Her face lifted towards the cool evening air, breathing in the sappy scent of laurels, she rested her head back against the doorjamb. A nightingale sang in the nearby trees.

  I would write you a letter, James. If I had paper. If I had ink. If I had a frank to send it by. I would ask you how things are now, at Longbourn; how Polly gets on without me there to soften the edges for her. Whether Mr. Hill has got round to making the dubbin yet, since I had not before I left. I would write to you about the bay horse scratching her neck, and the nightingale that’s singing, and the sow with her black fuzz and her white trotters and her snuffly pink nose, who is now rendered into soap that’s drying in the closet, and that Miss Elizabeth just washed herself with soap that had a fly in it, and the fields that were just green shoots when we arrived and are now tall spears, and about Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is such a polished meaty thing that he makes me slip, for a moment, out of this world entirely, and I become a ghost-girl who can make things move but cannot herself be seen. I would write about how you make me be entirely in myself, and more real than I had ever thought was possible. I would ask if you miss me like I miss you, so that there is not another spot in all the world that seems to mean anything at all, but where you are. That the days until I see you again are just to be got through, like cold souse, or plain work, and that nothing good is to be expected of them at all, but that they will eventually be over, and I will be on my way back home to you.

  She heard a door shut within the house. There were quick footfalls coming down the hall. She got up off the step and stood aside just in time, or he would have walked straight through her: the front door was whisked wide, and Mr. Darcy strode past her shadow, and marched down the path. He left the gate swinging. When he was out of sight, she slipped down the path after him, and latched the gate shut.

  Back in the house, she crept down the hall and cocked an ear outside the parlour door. She could hear the quiet sounds of Elizabeth crying. Sarah’s hand rested a moment on the doorknob, but then she turned and crept away. Sometimes, she thought, it might be better just to disappear from notice, than to attract a gentleman’s particular attention like that.

  For James, all this time, Longbourn was not so much quiet as sharp-edged: all softness gone from it, the household jarred and jangled. Though fewer in number without their elder sisters, the young ladies generated considerably more noise. When it was not Mary’s scales and arpeggios, or the same Italian air begun over and over till the same tricky moment broke her off, it was Kitty and Lydia squabbling about the ownership of an item of clothing, or shrieking over the gossip. More often it was both faltering piano and screeching girls, while Mr. Bennet shut himself in his library and only emerged at the sound of the dinner bell, and Mrs. Bennet complained to no one’s hearing of headaches, and Polly carried heavy ewers up the stairs and stinking chamber pots back down, and Mrs. Hill, moist-eyed, chopped onions, and Mr. Hill, having sipped sherry in the cellar, slipped discreetly out of the house to meet a friend. James drove out when required, and waited on table, and sponged the mud off coat-tails, and dabbed the grass stains off pelisses, and teased the candle grease out of shirt-fronts, and lugged water and wood, and sometimes even enjoyed going about with little Polly to collect the eggs or herbs or salad leaves, but felt, all the time, suspended, like a piece of music broken abruptly off, a note left hanging in the air.

  The younger girls walked into Meryton most mornings. They went to make purchases of ribbon or Persian or stockings or toothpowder, or to call upon their dear aunt Philips. They made their way on foot, and so James did not see it for himself, but from their chatter on return it was clear to him that a brace or two of officers could be conjured up quite readily; all a young lady had to do was wander up and down Market Street a while.

  Then there were parties and suppers-and-cards at their aunt Philips’s, and balls at the Assembly Rooms during the fullness of the moon, which did require James’s assistance with the carriage, and once there was a large party gathered for the evening at Colonel Forster’s lodgings, and James drove the younger girls there too.

  James waited outside the lit and noisy townhouse, having assumed his usual attitude: shoulders rounded, hat low, gaze averted.

  The uproar built and grew all evening, until it sounded as though it was perfect Bedlam in the colonel’s rooms. Someone should call the constable, or rustle up a magistrate to read the riot act. It grew very late—the town clock chimed one, and then the quarter hour, and then the half. And then, when the party finally broke up just after two, a young man came sauntering forth, tricked out in a lady’s gown and cap, with rouged lips and cheeks, and with uniformed officers draped on either arm. The boy flounced off down the street to catcalls, batting off the straying hands of his fellow officers. Lydia and Kitty watched this little show, hands pressed to their sides, helpless with laughter.

  “Did you see?” Lydia was still breathless as she flumped down onto the upholstery. “Did you see Chamberlayne, James? Only think what fun! We dressed him up to pass as a lady, and nobody knew him at all! Not till we started laughing, anyway.”

  James bowed, and clapped the door shut on their noise. He climbed up to the carriage box. The night cool in his eyes, he drove them home; there was constant gabbling below, like a crate of turkeys. It had left him feeling deeply ill at ease. There might be no harm in making free with a boy like that, but in the end the girls would meet with something dangerous, and then this cast-iron sense of their own importance would be no good to them at all.

  “Wickham will soon be gone; and therefore it will not signify to anybody here, what he really is.”

  The lane-ways were thick with May blossom when James drove Kitty and Lydia to meet their elder sisters and Maria Lucas at the posting-inn.

  Sarah had travelled inside the post-chaise on the return journey, on the fold-out seat to one side. She had kept her feet tucked under her, so that her boots were out of the way of the ladies’ pretty shoes. She had been cramped and uncomfortable, watching the world streaming sideways past her, swaying nauseously all the way from London.

  All stuffiness and sickness were quite forgotten as they drew up at the inn, and she glimpsed James.

  He opened the post-chaise door, and helped her down. His hands were on her waist, and his eyes were on her eyes. And then he turned to offer his hand to Miss Jane, and then Miss Elizabeth, and then Maria Lucas descending behind them. Sarah, too happy to smile, the ground now betraying her and swaying under her feet, followed the ladies into the inn, and waited outside the privy door for them, so that they would not be disturbed.

  While the ladies took some refreshment in a private room all together, and after Sarah had relieved herself, she returned to James, and sat on a mounting block and watched as he put the lovely old Longbourn horses into harness after their rest. She took off her bonnet, and raised her face to the warm Hertfordshire sun. She thought, There is no happiness in all the world so perfect as this: James here, and the noise and bustle of the posting-inn, and a mug of small beer that he brought for her, and put in her hand, and a slice of pie. He sat down beside her, and she handed her cup to him, and he took a little sip, and hand
ed it back.

  “That is a pretty dress on you.”

  She ran a coarse palm over the sprigged poplin; it was the day-dress that Jane had given her, which she kept for very best.

  “Thank you.”

  They both watched, in the tail of their sight, the sentinel as he marched pointlessly up and down, on guard at the town gates. There were troops everywhere these days. It made you twitchy; you could not turn round without seeing a red coat and a Brown Bess.

  “We were two weeks in London.”

  He nodded.

  “I would not have minded quite so much,” she said, “but, two whole weeks.”

  He laid his hand on her arm, and she leaned against him, and her eyes swam. He reached round and wiped a tear away with a rough thumb. She rested her head on his shoulder.

  When the ladies finally emerged from their luncheon, Sarah and James were waiting separately. James handed the young ladies in, and then passed them their purchases and more tender items of baggage. When the ladies were packed tight, he helped Sarah up onto the box, and then got up beside her. He conveyed them all, at a steady pace, back to Longbourn House. On the box, Sarah and James could lean and sway side by side, together, and nobody would think it strange, or remark upon it.

  Mrs. Hill squeezed her hand and kissed her cheek, and said, “I am glad you are back,” and turned away so as not to show her face. Polly crushed the breath out of her, and then, when she had released her, made little excited jumps on the spot, asking questions, and not waiting for her to answer. Mr. Hill bowed, and then quietly patted her hand.

  The kitchen seemed very dark, and cool, and lovely, and had shrunk.

  When they had all just begun to settle back into themselves, Miss Lyddie sauntered in through the kitchen door, and went to help herself to barley-sugar. Seeing Sarah, she stopped, and offered her the open jar.

  “It is good to have you back, Sarah. We have missed you here.”

  “Thank you, miss.” Sarah took a piece of barley-sugar.

  “There’s no one here can get out a wine stain like you do. I want you to have a look at my good muslin later, and see what you can do. Not that it matters much now, any more.” Lydia sucked her barley-sugar, pensive. “I don’t suppose you have even heard, though, have you? It’s such terrible news I dare say folk have kept it from you, and I don’t know how we shall bear it at all.”

  Sarah stuffed her sweet into her cheek. “Oh goodness, no, what is it?” She assumed a disaster, sickness, death.

  “It’s the Militia, Sarah. They’re leaving.”

  Sarah presumed to take Lydia’s hand, and press it.

  “It is a shame, but we always knew that they would go.”

  Lydia nodded, unconsoled. Sarah felt for her. The days would be interminable, and the evenings dull, and even the Meryton balls would be miserable affairs, with only the same attorneys and aldermen’s sons and curates to dance with, and the best hope of the season now that someone’s grown-up nephew might come to visit. The utter tedium of a summer spent at home in the country, for a fifteen-year-old girl with no taste for landscape, or reading, or reflection: it was a dreadful shame indeed.

  When the Militia left at the end of the month, James would be happy; Polly knew this, and she was glad, because she liked James. James was her friend and played jacks and came with her on her errands, and gave her bits of chalk to draw with in the stable yard. But when the Militia left, Mr. Wickham would go with them. And Mr. Wickham gave her money. He handed over pennies and halfpennies and farthings as if they were trash for which he could have no possible use himself. She liked to trickle these coins from hand to hand; she liked to build them up in columns and colonnades on the floorboard beside her bed, and imagine what she would buy with them when a scotchman came, or when she next went to Meryton on an errand. He called her Little Miss, and that was nice. He gave her smiles, too, and asked her questions, and sometimes he touched her cheek. She was not sure that she quite liked that, but she did know that it mattered.

  “If he gives you any trouble,” James said to her one time, “you come and tell me, and I’ll sort him out for you.”

  James was a good fellow, always ready to play at five stones or shove-halfpenny, but when it came down to it, he knew nothing about anything. What would he do to a man like Mr. Wickham, an officer, who had pistols and a sword? And, anyway, it didn’t signify, because Mr. Wickham didn’t give her any trouble. He was the only person—James, perhaps, excluded—who never did. She got no chores, no scolding, no nagging off him. Instead, he gave her coins and smiles and a kind word from time to time.

  And then they heard that Lydia was to go to Brighton with Mrs. Forster, the colonel’s new wife. This was good news for Lydia, but it had the elder sisters muttering, and it threw Sarah and Polly into a frenzy to get linen clean and dresses pressed and folded and packed in good time for departure, so that Polly, having at first been sad to think of Wickham going, now could not wait for him to be gone, since it would at least mean that all the laundering would be over for a while.

  Sarah was imprisoned for much of this time in Kitty and Lydia’s shared room, engaged in a Sisyphean task. As soon as a trunk was packed, Kitty would re-open it, plunge elbow-deep in, in ferocious tears, and rummage for her own things that had been sequestered there at Lydia’s insistence. Kitty would fling out an evening-gown, her new gloves, snarl at the discovery of her best petticoat. While Kitty was convulsed with outrage, Lydia quite calmly gathered everything up and folded it again, preparatory to putting it back: Kitty must be reasonable, and see sense; if she was going to Brighton and not Lydia, Lydia would certainly let her have all her best things, and welcome, without putting up anything of a fight, without thinking twice about it, for what was the point of having pretty things at all, if no one was around to see you wearing them?

  In her own room, Mary closed her eyes and rested her fingers on the piano keys, and took a breath and let it go, and, trying to ignore the shrieks and clattering and squabbles from next door, began again her Irish air. One day, she knew, her fingers would fly about the keyboard with the facility and delicacy of tiny birds. One day. But until then, there was just the lumbering work of practise, practise, practise, and the distraction of those silly sisters, whose immoderacy of behaviour was now manifested by a series of high-pitched squeals that suggested that Kitty had lost her temper entirely, and was now pulling Lyddie’s hair. If they could but think of higher things, of music, religion, good works, instead of officers—her fingers plodded up and down the keyboard, now picking out the sweet opening notes of Haydn’s Love Dialogue—then they would, no doubt, be happier creatures for it. Her thoughts drifted unwittingly to that courteous, gentle Mr. Collins, whom, she was certain, she could have made quite happy. She had no such confidence in Charlotte Lucas, who might come one day to deserve him, but who certainly did not love him, not like Mary did; and who must never be allowed to suspect what turmoil she had, with her rank opportunism, engendered in Mary’s tender breast. Because Mary had allowed herself to daydream, and she should have never allowed herself that. She had let herself think of the possibility of reciprocated love, of marriage, of the new importance that it would bring to her; of how, on becoming Mr. Collins’s bride, she would have also become the means of her family’s salvation, and no longer just the plain, awkward, overlooked middle child.

  On the very last day of the regiment’s remaining in Meryton, Mr. Wickham was to dine with others of the officers at Longbourn. Just this one evening to be safely navigated, and then they were out into clear water. The neighbourhood would be free of militia. And it would no longer matter what Wickham’s intentions might have been regarding Polly, or James, once he was seventy-odd miles away at Brighton.

  James served silently at table, ghosting in between the officers and the ladies, keeping his eyes low, his shoulders rounded, treading the thin line between conspicuous efficiency and equally conspicuous lassitude.

  I will be, he thought, what they think me, which
is nothing much at all.

  But, as he filled Wickham’s glass, the young officer turned his head and looked at him. A long steady look, which James was determined not to meet. Instead he watched the wine tumble into the glass, and the glint of the carafe as he turned it to catch the drips, and the purple stain on the napkin with which he touched the crystal lip. Then he stepped away, and went to fill Elizabeth’s glass. Elizabeth, comfortably, did not acknowledge him at all. Whereas that look, from Wickham, a bright tiger’s eyes: it left him shaken.

  Wickham now deliberately engrossed himself in Miss Elizabeth; his notice strayed only once to the young maid, clearing dishes, but then was swiftly dragged back to his silverware, his cuffs, his companion. He seemed particularly intent on being charming, as if, James thought, he knew that he was suspected of something, and was attempting to forestall criticism.

  If only Wickham was in the regulars, James thought, as he descended the cellar steps with a candle to fetch up more wine, he could allow himself the pleasure of imagining the pretty young fellow sent off to fight in Spain. He could imagine him caught by the guerrillas and strung up from a tree, his cock cut off and stuffed in his own mouth, left bleeding and to the mercy of the wolves. That’d take the shine off him a bit.

  Both guests and family drank too much that night. James and Mr. Hill had to run down to the cellar more than once for further bottles. The large party, gathered in the drawing room, was noisy with wine and the deep feeling it engendered, and kept at their conviviality for long and footsore hours; there is nothing like the imminence of parting to make people unduly fond of each other.

  Mr. Hill, old and exhausted, sloped off to bed at eleven, with a wink to James.

  “You’ll manage without me, eh? All these young fellows; it’s all a bit too much for me.”