by Gill Hornby
“But surely,” said Cassandra, “your sisters are helping you now?”
“Well, Elizabeth is so busy at her nursery—”
Cassandra held up her hand. “Yes. I do understand.” It was always the same. No matter how big the family, the mantle of caregiver-organizer-helpmeet is only ever laid upon one. “It is as if Nature can only throw up one capable person to support each generation. In my family that has always been me.”
Isabella was a picture of misery. “Then we are equals in our misfortune.”
“Not at all!” exclaimed Cassandra. “Our fortune is to have families who need us. It is our duty, our pleasure. Our very worth!”
“Oh, Cassandra. I fear you have always been so much more useful than I will ever be.”
Cassandra had not been many hours in the vicarage, but she had been there long enough to assess the domestic skills of her hostess. So it was hard to argue, and almost impossible to control her desire to promote competence and order, to combat this depressing inefficiency. In kind and encouraging terms, she dispatched Isabella back to the china cupboard to finish what had been started, and Isabella, sighing heavily, did as she was told.
Cassandra sat still and listened until the footsteps diminished and the door shut on the offices. Seizing the moment, she fastened her needle into the fabric, struggled out of the sofa, and moved toward the corner.
Miss Austen was not used to intruding upon the privacy of others. Her heart hammered at her ribs. The unfamiliar discomfort of guilt was enough to halt her in her tracks. For a moment she simply stared at the bureau. This delicate piece of walnut, with a lid that folded out into a table and three drawers below, had been Eliza’s only private corner in these big, busy rooms. Fulwar, of course, had his gracious study, which no one would ever dare enter without permission. Did he keep any secrets in there? His own, perhaps, but he would hardly be chosen as the guardian of others. Eliza, though—the excellent Eliza—was a woman of boundless sympathy. They all knew they could trust her with any sort of confidence.
How many words of advice had been dispatched from that desktop? How many most personal matters had been read about there? It was impossible, now she studied that small piece of furniture, to imagine it could contain all Eliza knew … She began to doubt the course of her own actions; she almost determined to stop at that moment, to find a more decorous approach to the problem, one that she could take with her head held high. And then she collected herself. This was Austen business: Family always trumped all.
Both she and Jane had once written many intimate letters to this vicarage. They could still be there. Cassandra was the executor of her sister’s estate: the keeper of her flame; the protector of her legacy. In the time that was left to her, she was determined to find and destroy any evidence that might compromise Jane’s reputation. It was simply imperative that those letters did not fall into the wrong hands.
Emboldened, she stepped forward and pulled down the lid. She saw only ink and paper, a pen. She shut it and opened the first drawer: locks of baby hair, first teeth, a handful of childish sketches. Footsteps approached. She pulled out the next one: laundry lists, menus, membership details for the circulating library. Someone was crossing the hall. The last held just records of charities and village good works. All of it orderly, neatly arranged; none of it that which Cassandra hoped she might find. She closed it as Fred crossed the threshold. “I was just stretching my poor legs.”
Fred nodded, uninterested. He had not come to see her but to check his own handiwork. The fire, which had started out so disappointing, was disappointing still. He assessed it with some degree of professional satisfaction, as if disappointment itself were the one true ambition, and, with a limp bow, left Cassandra alone with the chill.
She returned to the sofa, gathering her work and her wits about her. She must not despair. After all, what had Isabella said over breakfast? That they had not been able to touch any of Eliza’s possessions from the day she had died. Everything could still be here somewhere: She just needed more information before continuing her search.
There was not long to wait. Within minutes Isabella was back with her. “I have done it. I have finished most of the china. Well”—she twisted her hands in her lap—“some of the china. I have packed all the sauceboats—every single one.”
Cassandra had lived all her life with or around the country clergy. She was well aware how many sauceboats the average parsonage might hope to accumulate, and the answer was: few. “Ah. Well, that is indeed something.” This was rather like dealing with the children in the Godmersham nursery. “So that leaves only the dinner plates, the dessert plates, the bowls, all the dishes…?”
“And the tea and coffee sets and so on,” Isabella added, her shoulders sinking. “There is so much of all that, I thought it might wait for another day?” She paused, as if Cassandra—of all people—might endorse such procrastination. Then she confessed: “The truth is that I find, now I have arrived at the moment, it pains me to part with it.” Tears came to her eyes. “I have used this service every day of my life. It suddenly seemed so”—she sniffed—“so significant. And I know you must think me pathetic—I see myself as pathetic—I can hardly bear to think I will not see it again.”
Cassandra reached out her hand and grasped Isabella’s. Oh, the power of small things when the larger ones—the home or the family—proved fragile! She remembered Miss Murden polishing her little blue shepherdess, and Jane clutching her writing box, not wanting to let go.
“I do know, Isabella. Leave that till last and now, do sit and chat for a while. I have been feeling so guilty lounging here while you have been laboring. Is there nothing I can do for you that involves more sitting, less lifting? Anything in your father’s office, for example?” Though she did not want to be in his office at all.
“That is all in order, as far as I know. For the past year Papa was making his arrangements, and of course he had his curate to help him. Such a conscientious young man, so thorough in his work.” She looked wistful. “It is most useful to have a curate, Cassandra, is it not? Indeed, now I think of that too, I have never lived without a curate around.” The pallor returned. “I suppose I shall have to get used to it now.”
Cassandra again was all sympathy. For the family—and most especially for its single women—to leave a vicarage was to be cast out of Eden. There were only trial and privation ahead.
“And of course Papa had due warning. He knew the end was coming. Poor Mama just left us. It was the work of a moment.”
“So very sad.” Cassandra reached down for her sewing. “And her papers? Could I help you with those? It would not be an intrusion. We were such friends, and for so many years.”
“Thank you, but no. Aunt Mary has expressly requested that she do all that. Her son, James-Edward, is developing a keen interest in the family history, I gather. He talks even of one day writing a book on the subject!” She raised her eyes to the ceiling at such folly. “As if the world does not already have too many books in it.” She smiled, confident of finding total agreement. “And as if anyone would want to learn about Austens, indeed.”
Cassandra smiled back. “My dear, I could not agree more. As you know, I could not be more devoted to my family and its memories, but even I must admit we are a quite splendidly dull bunch, to whom nothing of interest occurred.” This was just as she feared. It was imperative that Mary did not get to those letters first.
Isabella continued: “My aunt feels very strongly that it should be her responsibility to go through the family papers and decide what to keep—her responsibility alone. She still grieves for my mother most deeply. She says it is infinitely more painful to lose a sister than a parent, but I would not know.”
Cassandra stabbed at her patchwork to release her irritation. No matter whose body lay in the coffin, Mary Austen would always appoint Mary Austen chief mourner. “And has she yet begun?”
“Not quite yet, no. She certainly means to, but is, of course, horribly bu
sy. Somehow she has so much more to do than the rest of us. Something seems always to get in her way.”
With a renewed energy, Cassandra suggested that Isabella set out into the village: a reward for her hard morning’s work. There was the briefest attempt at resistance—Dinah was already out running errands; it would be so rude to leave their guest all alone—but one easily conquered. Isabella was soon off in search of her cloak and her bonnet. And at last it seemed that Cassandra might just have the house to herself.
She packed away her things, picked up her valise, and went out into the hall. All was quiet. Halfway up the stairs she stopped to look out of the window. There was nobody in the garden or down at the riverbank. Up on the landing she listened again—was there a daily maid who had not yet been made visible? Someone at work in the upstairs rooms? Cassandra could not feel an extra presence, though there was clearly much to be done. She crossed over and into the old day nursery; then she peered out of the back window. There was Fred, in a sheltered corner of the once-glorious poultry yard. Scrawny birds pecked in the dirt, while he chewed on tobacco and whittled a stick.
Cassandra had long admired this vicarage as the very model of domestic efficiency. It had always been run just as she herself would have run it, had her life worked out in that way. So she was quite shocked by the new sloth and general indifference of everyone left here, the ease with which the household had simply fallen apart. She itched to get control of it: For the sake of Eliza’s reputation, it could not be handed on to the next incumbent in this sorry state. And she would do so—but later. For now, this chaos suited her purpose. With a more confident step, she set off for the mistress’s room.
The door was open, as if Eliza had just left it. The bed was still made with her patchwork quilt; her nightcap waited for her by the lamp on the drawers. Brushes and combs were laid out on the dressing table by the window; ribbons trailed down from the pedestal glass; a nightgown hung over the back of the chair. Cassandra sat down heavily on the ornate oak settle against the wall, quite affected by the tableau around her: of living life paralyzed; a frozen, suspended moment in time.
She studied the samplers on the walls that Eliza had chosen to wake up to each morning: simple prayers and mottoes stitched by childish hands. “There is no place like home,” she read, and shook her head: so trite, and really, very poorly sewn. How very odd of Eliza to first mount and then live with them. But then these were the indignities that motherhood entailed: women of taste forced to cherish that which did not deserve to be tolerated. One of the many blessings of the spinster state was that at least one’s walls were one’s own. The thought quite revived her. She rose and continued her search.
There was nothing under the bed but dust balls. Nothing in the wardrobe but moths and clothes. Though the ottoman held promise, it contained only bed linen. She looked around, and her eye was caught by that settle. What an old, ugly piece it was. It was surely brought into the house by the first generation of Fowles, but a big, heavy bench made from such a coarse dark wood was quite out of place in the bedchamber of a cultured, modern lady—and with a flash, Cassandra understood at once why it was there.
She crossed the room, took the long flat cushion from the seat, put it on the floor, and, with some awkwardness, knelt on it. The strain of lifting the lid was almost too much for her. She had to pull hard, harder than she once believed herself capable. Her pulses throbbed. Then, suddenly, her struggle was rewarded. With a loud creak, it surrendered and revealed to her its contents. The search was over. She gripped the wood and looked down.
Laid out before her were the letters of a lifetime.
* * *
DINNER THAT NIGHT WAS hard to identify—uniformly pale and not at all pleasant. Cassandra suspected she had witnessed its last moments in the filth in the Kintbury backyard, but otherwise took little interest in what she was eating. She had only one concern for the evening, and that was to get to her own room as swiftly as possible, lock herself in, and return to the letters.
“I cannot think why I am so tired.” She placed her cutlery down on a plate as empty as she could manage it. “I have done very little today, compared with you, Isabella. And yet I fear I shall soon have to turn in.”
She did not anticipate any objections. After all, silence and absence passed as politeness in unwanted guests and friendless burdens. Poor Miss Murden spent most of her life pretending to be happy alone in that room. So she was taken aback by Isabella’s reaction.
“Oh, please not yet, Cassandra! I shall not sleep for hours, and that will leave me all alone!” Isabella had returned from her trip to the village flushed and merry, and her new mood had lasted right until that moment. Now she was slumped once more in dejection. “I am very bad on my own with nothing to do.”
“Forgive me, my dear. How thoughtless. Of course I shall sit with you if that is what you would like.” Cassandra would manage it all somehow. One required so much less sleep in old age; she would stay up reading all night if needs must. What worried her more was this new evidence of Isabella’s dependency. Very bad on her own? She was a single woman! Solitude was an inescapable part of her very condition.
They rose from the table and walked through to the drawing room, and tea. “I have been meaning to ask you, dear Isabella. What arrangements have you made for your own future?”
“It is not yet quite decided what is to become of me.” Isabella poured, and passed cup and saucer.
“But you will, of course, be living with one of your sisters.” Cassandra could not help but be irked by this abject self-pity. Not every single woman was blessed with family to rely on. “I merely wondered which one and where?”
“Oh, they will take me in, I suppose, if that is what I decide. I shall squash into Mary-Jane’s cottage, or together Elizabeth and I could take a small house in the village, which I shall keep while she never comes home. That was my father’s last request, most explicit. His feelings were very strong on the matter. His feelings were, as you know, very strong in general, and I have not once, in my history, done anything that might displease him. But in this instance alone, I—well—I, for once, have my own feelings to consider.”
Cassandra was aghast. To deny a father’s dying request? And to what possible end? After all, these women were sisters. There was no closer bond on this earth. “Either appears to me to be the most splendid solution, for which you should be perhaps a little more grateful.”
“‘Grateful’!”
“Indeed. And if you can add to your own comfort the knowledge that you are there in accordance with your dear father’s wish for you, then the outcome can only be a happy one—for everyone concerned.”
“Yes, there is the rub: my dear father’s wish for me. I have no real choice but to comply. But I confess it is not a future to which I can look forward with any enthusiasm. What a pitiful scene we shall make.”
Cassandra sipped at her tea, quite lost for words. It was not the first time that she had heard this assumption: that the divine blessing of a male presence somehow made a household more desirable, superior. But to hear it from a woman who had suffered sticks to the head? Now, that was a novelty indeed! Isabella had clearly not grasped the truth of her own situation: Her sisters were her future; single women have only each other. For many, mutual support was their only means of financial survival, but for most it brought other riches with it: a whole wealth of comfort, companionship, and joy. Isabella must learn this; Cassandra must teach her. It was something else to be accomplished before she left here.
“It will all fall into place, I am sure of it. Now”—Cassandra was bright but firm—“let us read together to take our minds off it all. I am not convinced these long, silent evenings of unemployment are entirely good for you. There are no spirits so low that a good novel cannot raise them.”
“A novel?” Isabella put down her saucer with a rattle. “I believe I already mentioned: I do not enjoy novels.”
“I am not suggesting we drag ourselves through Peveri
l of the Peak. That is no remedy for anything at all. I was thinking of one of my sister’s. You already know them, I am sure.”
Isabella shook her head, and showed no enthusiasm. “I believe my mother read and enjoyed them. But Papa did not permit them to be read aloud—or not that I remember. He had heard they were not of much interest.” She thought, and added: “But then I never found much of interest in Sir Walter Scott.”
“My dear Isabella.” Cassandra reached down, opened her valise, and brought out the one book that never left her. “Now your father is no longer here to offer guidance and wisdom in all the many matters on which he was so very expert, I think it may be time for you to embark on the development of your own tastes.” She opened it at the beginning. “Of course, I am prejudiced, but I believe you might enjoy this.” It did not now matter that her eyes were old and the lamplight was dim. Cassandra knew every word of it by heart:
“Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man…”
Isabella sat, studying the flames in the fireplace and listening, but with no outward sign of enjoyment. The Baronetage clearly bored her. She fidgeted, sighing loudly from time to time.
Undeterred, Cassandra went on: “Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath; an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father…”
Pyramus showed his belly to the fire and let out a snore. But her human listener, Cassandra noticed with some satisfaction, had grown still.
“… she was only Anne…”
Isabella’s eyes were now upon her, she could sense it.
“… her bloom had vanished early…”
It might have been fond imagining, but Cassandra was almost certain that her reluctant little audience was now quite in her grasp. Nevertheless the act of performance was tiring, and there was still much to do before she could rest. After four chapters she put down Persuasion and looked up: The Enemy of the Novel did not seem quite as ferociously hostile as before.