Becoming Lady Darcy

by Sara Smallman

  “You genuinely thought it looked good?”

  Slightly offended, he pulled a face.

  “It did look good!!”

  “Who told you this?”

  “Erm,” he struggled to think of an example. “A-ha! The Daily Mail! People on Twitter!”

  Lucy laughed out loud, her perfectly winged eyeliner creasing as she did. Benn looked quite indignant but felt totally crestfallen. He had been very proud of his facial hair.

  “It’s not a good beard, not like a hipster beard or one of those lumberjack beards. It’s… well… it’s…”

  She shook her head quickly, not wanting to say any more, continuing to curl his hair.

  “Go on,” he pressed.

  “It looks a bit pubey.”

  Benn looked at her, astonished at her frank defamation of what he personally thought was rather a good beard.

  “Pubey, you say?”

  She nodded as she powdered his face.

  “So, you’re telling me now, five months later, that I have been walking around looking like a giant fanny?”

  She tried hard to stifle a laugh as she removed his paper bib.

  “Fuck me, Luce, thanks a lot! I expected more from my sister in law,

  I really did!”

  The laugh burst out of her, “but you were so proud of it!!”

  “I was! But next time, please tell me if I’m walking around with Linda Lovelace’s bush on my face, won’t you?”

  “I promise!”

  “Did Sean think it was shit?”

  “We all thought it was shit.”

  He looked thoughtful, “even my mum?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “You’re all bastards.”

  She threw back her head laughing, “but we all love you, with or without your shit beard.”

  Dabbing his nose with a final brush of powder, she released him on his way, still laughing as she packed away her equipment.

  Walking out to the front gate he went to join the rest of the main cast for a pre-arranged publicity event, pacing through the entrance porch and out onto the driveway. The new boots were rubbing his heel slightly and he stopped for a moment to adjust them – there was already a sizeable crowd waiting on the front driveway, too many people perhaps. He took a deep breath, inhaled his public persona and let it cover him like a cloak. He was ready now, stepping out with a broad smile.

  He wasn’t sure if it was being out of London or seeing the positive feedback he had been getting online – apparently Colin Firth and his wet shirt paled in comparison to Benn Williams in his tight trousers – but he was feeling pretty good right now. A few leaked pictures from the Vanquish Pictures press office had caused a stir of longing for this new Mr Darcy in the collective psyche of women of a certain age. Benn liked how quickly he had managed to get back into shape but was grateful that Mr Darcy didn’t require the same hard-toned physique as some of his more demanding wet-shirted roles. He didn’t think he was physically or mentally up to recreating the bare-chested perfection of Henry Jones or Catcher Rothschild.

  “Please can you sign it to Vicki?” the woman asked, as she passed him the pen and a copy of Pride and Prejudice.

  He nodded, they had been standing here in full Regency wedding gear for the last three hours as they completed publicity shots and did a meet and greet with a few competition winners and the local press. He signed with a flourish, before giving Vicki a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Are you excited about playing Mr Darcy?” she was aware of the heat rising to her face.

  “Well, as excited as you can be spending the hottest month of the year in a cravat.”

  He shot her the famous smile; the one perfected through years of public appearances and three weeks of painful dental work, and she visibly flushed.

  “Can I get a selfie with you and Franklin?”

  “Of course,” he said, calling Mr Bingley over towards him. They all huddled in close together. “Smile!”

  Vicki giggled as he kissed her on the cheek, she returned to her group of friends who all laughed with her before walking off triumphantly.

  “Is it always like this, Benn?” Franklin said, as they continued to pose together.

  “Not always but enjoy it for now!”

  “Oh, I intend to,” he gulped at a bottle of water greedily.

  Franklin had already been christened Bada-Bingley and as he walked off to speak to some more adoring fans, was clearly loving the attention. They had been on set since half six and it was now quarter to four and they weren’t even a third of the way through today’s busy schedule.

  There had been the issues of aeroplanes; the location was under the flight path of Manchester airport and ten takes in a row had been ruined by the sound of Dreamliners ferrying holiday-makers overseas, secondly Jenny could not remember her lines. She only had four and she fluffed them over and over. It made it hard for him to concentrate and he had snapped meanly at her, causing her to recoil like a kicked puppy. He got up and walked off set, desperate for a drink and a puff on his e-cig. He grabbed a coffee from the catering truck and asked his assistant, Leanne, to grab his bag from his trailer.

  He wandered up past the Orangery and onto the top lawn, taking a moment to surround himself in a cloud of self-righteous pineapple vapour. Sitting on a bench at the top end of the garden, away from the tourists and the volunteers and all the popular bits that had been on the TV, you couldn’t hear anything apart from the gentle chirrup of birdsong and your own heartbeat.

  Benn wondered if Fitzwilliam had ever sat here to admire his mansion and gaze out on the land that belonged to him. He was nearly twenty years older than Darcy would have been when he inherited and didn’t know how the gentleman had coped with it all, the thought of it made him feel anxious.

  His phone buzzed. His wife’s number still caused his heart to bounce, even if her text messages were never for nice reasons.

  MADDY: You did it again last night.

  BENN: I’m sorry.

  MADDY: It’s not good enough.

  BENN: That’s not fair.

  MADDY: Neither is calling me in the middle of the night.

  He was contemplating replying, but the indignant heat on his face meant that any reply would just be fuel to an already raging fire. The crunch of gravel underfoot caught Benn’s attention; angrily walking past him was Lady Elizabeth, wearing a turquoise dress covered in swans and he was quite sure shoes with bees on them. She didn’t acknowledge him but walked straight past, continuing her way with a forceful stomp and what he guessed was an inadvertent wiggle.

  Benn sighed.

  Yet another woman he had unintentionally annoyed, but at least he could try and make it up to her.

  BENN: Can you send Lady Darcy some flowers?

  LEANNE: Sure. What kind?

  BENN: Something fancy…

  LEANNE: Is this the ‘I’ve Pissed Someone Off’ bunch?

  BENN: You know me so well… :)

  LEANNE: You should get loyalty points looooooooool!

  2001

  The winter air was thick with cold and Lizzy felt the ice in her lungs as she climbed the steep hill from the car park and up to the house. The hill was steep, much steeper than she had remembered it being when dragging her sledge up it after careering down it during the winter, Mr Staughton calling to her from the top, promising hot chocolate and buttered seed cake whilst Winston watched from his study. The cold was taking her breath away and she struggled for moment to reach the top, the icy wind blowing in from the peaks causing a chill in her bones. She pulled her coat in tightly around her, adjusting her mittens as she dragged three shopping bags up the deceptive incline.

  The transition from family home to tourist attraction was going smoothly for the house, which was enjoying a lavish and careful programme of restoration. There had been a serious repainting of the window frames, a thorough tending of the gardens and the deepest of spring cleans. Inside pictures were being restored and items rediscovered after a full
cataloguing of the attics, including the rediscovery of a trunk of authentic and delicate gowns from the early 19th century, some of which, according to their labels, had belonged to Elizabeth Darcy herself.

  She recognised a sparkly red gown with gold thread as one that she had dressed up in as a child, parading down the halls and posing for pictures that Maggie took with her new polaroid camera, before discarding the dress at the foot of the staircase and running upstairs to play skittles in the long gallery.

  Lizzy had always thought herself slightly resilient to the cold of a Pemberley winter, but this year was particularly harsh; she blamed it on her hormones. The Doctor had confirmed the pregnancy early, there were benefits to being able to pay for a private consultation in Harley Street if you needed to, and she had spent the weekend holed up in the house on Upper Grosvenor Street pretending everything was okay.

  Imogen had been bouncing around, giddy and dancing with glee singing Tiny Dancer in a decidedly Mediterranean accent; Carol was fussing and cussing about the nanny, Jacinta, who spoke too much Spanish; Hugh stormed about the house complaining about the noise whilst added to it in loud well enunciated tones; Charlie was home for a few days from Oxford with a few pals from the rowing team, and they hoo-haa’ed and drank.

  Lizzy sat there in the middle of it all, feeling like the calm eye of the storm.

  “Tu Madre está loca, Lady Lizzy.”

  Jacinta said, one lonely dark night as they sat in the kitchen together, both unable to sleep in the house where silence fell like lead after ten pm.

  “Ella no es mi Madre,” she frowned, stumbling with GCSE Spanish and a smile at the older woman, who passed her a small sweet biscuit wrapped in waxy paper.

  “You must eat,” she said softly. “The sickness will pass, but you must get stronger....”

  Lizzy was apprehensive, unsure how the small woman with almond shaped eyes and olive skin knew her secret.

  “I have had many babies… I know the signs. You mustn’t be worried, you are fuerte… strong…y usted es clever.” Jacinta placed her hand gently on Lizzy’s shoulder, “I am a firm believer in this, Lady Lizzy, donde hay gana, hay maña…”

  Lizzy shook her head at Jacinta nonplussed.

  “How you say…” she thought, “Where there is a deseo…desire…ummm… will, there is a way… always in my family we say this.”

  “You do?”

  She nodded, pouring a cup of hot, sweet coffee.

  “My great great grandmother she raised three sisters alone after their father was gone.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was a gentleman. A Captain. They fell in love, but she was poor, and he was from a rich family, they would not have approved.”

  “Ooh, a secret love affair! Did he ever tell them?”

  Jacinta fussed over the biscuit wrappers in her hand.

  “That is the tragedy of it…his ship sank on the way back home to her. She never saw him again. He was lost to the ocean,” the coffee was being stirred through with cream now, “but my ancestor, she pressed on always striving, always better. You are like this too, pienso... Valiente.”

  “Brave?”

  “Si, es usted brave, very valiente, muy, muy.”

  “She sounds very brave. I hope I can have half of her courage.”

  “I know that you do, Lady Lizzy.”

  Jacinta took her by the hand, the crinkly tanned fingers squeezing gently, before the older woman padded down the stairs to her little flat in the basement of the house, crooning a soft melody in Spanish, the words rolling off her tongue.

  Lizzy pondered and sipped on her drink, taking the time to delicately dunk the small biscuits, watching as they soaked up the liquid, never faltering. She didn’t know what kind of mother she was going to be, but she did know that she was going to do her best.

  It was the Darcy way.

  “Hello, I was wondering if you would be able to help me,” Lizzy asked the kindly faced woman at the Student Advice desk on the second day of term.

  “I will have a go.”

  The woman had a warm Mancunian accent, the badge on her lanyard said that her name was Barbara.

  “I was told that I needed to register a name change to ensure that it’s correct on my transcripts?”

  Lizzy had been dreading this day, it felt so pretentious. She had loved being able to coast as Lizzy Darcy, getting the odd smirk from an English Lit undergrad or a glance of recognition from the occasional lecturer, but mostly she had been anonymous at Manchester.

  Barbara took Lizzy’s name and student ID and begin to tippity-tap into the keyboard; they had only recently moved over to a new computer system and she wasn’t used to it yet, preferring the old-fashioned methods of cards and files.

  “Right, so I will need your marriage certificate, have you brought it with you?”

  “Marriage certificate?”

  “Yes, your marriage certificate… for your change of name?” She glanced down at the protruding bump between them, a friendly smile spreading across her face.

  “Oh,” Lizzy wrapped her coat around her tightly, “no, I haven’t got married …”

  “Have you changed it by deed-poll or been legally adopted?” Barbara’s tone was getting ever so slightly more official with each

  word she spoke. Lizzy reached into her bag and pulled out the envelope that contained the letter and legal information from her uncle’s office, which documented the change in her name from simply ‘The Hon. Miss Elizabeth Darcy’ to ‘Lady Elizabeth Darcy’. Barbara scanned through the letter, before taking it to a colleague, who squinted over it before looking at Elizabeth as though she was bonkers. Barbara came back and placed the letter back on the desk, taking time to fold it flat.

  “Did you get this for Christmas?” Barbara flicked through the documentation with a well-manicured fingernail. “Because I know it says you’re a ‘Lady’, but those gift packs aren’t legally binding, we couldn’t update it on your degree certificate. Do you understand, love?”

  “Yes, I do understand that, but this is…” she smiled politely at Barbara, who proceeded to look at her as if she was a simpleton. “Wait! I have the card for my Uncle’s office, and you can speak to them and they will confirm it… I wouldn’t usually have bothered, but apparently it’s a legal requirement.”

  “Well, yes,” Barbara grumbled as she took the card and then retreated to her colleague, who phoned the number, both women stood looking at her from across the sea of office furniture.

  The smaller woman glanced over at Barbara and nodded, Lizzy could see her visibly redress herself and she returned to the counter with an ingratiating smile.

  “All of that seems to be in order, Lady Elizabeth, so I will get your records updated and we will reissue last semesters transcripts and send them out to your home address, which is…?”

  She stared with squinting eyes through the thick lenses of her heavy brown spectacles.

  “Pemberley.”

  “Oh, yes. I see.”

  Barbara wondered what had happened to the young woman with the frizzy hair and heavy eyeliner, that she was here now all alone with no husband and a baby on the way. Her face softened, and she glanced at Elizabeth with a thoughtful and kind look.

  “Can I ask you a question, Lady Elizabeth?”

  Lizzy wondered what this could possibly be.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Did Colin Firth walk about in that wet shirt all day?”

  Lizzy reached the top of the hill and hurried towards the porch, desperate to get inside. Instinctively she turned left, before remembering and turning right to enter the house via the staff entrance. She went into the estate office – this had, thankfully, not changed – although Winston’s office was now occupied by the House Manager. Carefully she placed a tin of posh biscuits on top of the staff sign-in sheets – the people who had led the Pemberley tours before were all kept on by the HHS and she was happy that there were still so many familiar faces, as well as l
ots of new ones.

  Winston had always bought biscuits for the small team, always looked after the people who loved the house, small gestures like handwritten cards at Christmas, a picnic party in the Summer, and she knew that wherever he was, he would want her to carry on these traditions that made Pemberley feel less like a workplace and more like a family. It had always been the Darcy way, he said.

  As she reached the door to her flat, she took a deep breath, fully aware that it would be freezing; dumping her shopping on the floor, she scurried quickly through to the bathroom, not noticing the figure sitting on the couch. The woman waited for her to return, eyed her up and down as she walked out of the icy bathroom wiping her hands on a similarly cold towel, watched as she removed her coat and turned on the kettle.

  “Hello, Elizabeth.”

  The cut-glass boarding school tones seemed hideously out of place coming from the lofty, slender woman with pink dreadlocks and a nose ring. Lizzy was astonished to see the woman standing there, having only ever seen her on photographs at Maggie’s, where she wrapped her arms around Matthew with Big Smiles and city landscapes. She was much taller than Lizzy had imagined and had a frostiness that was incongruous with her general appearance.

  “Cara? So nice to meet you finally, I have heard so much about you.”

  She crossed over with her hand outstretched, the origins of Lady Liz beginning right now in this moment.

  Cara Dalhousie did not take Lizzy’s hand, nor did she smile or move, instead she stood as still as a stone statue.

  “Was that before or after you fucked my boyfriend?” Cara stared with cold, dead eyes, her pupils massive like a great white shark getting ready to strike its prey. “Or was it during…did he tell you all about me when he was taking you roughly from behind?” She giggled, but there was nothing funny about this. Cara Dalhousie was not used to people playing with her toys, she trilled. “I mean, he wouldn’t look at your face, would he? Little frizzy thing, aren’t you?”