by Lucy Worsley
‘You mean, you never met a man you liked more than us, your family? I suppose Anna must prefer Mr Terry to me,’ she said sadly.
‘Well,’ said Aunt Jane, suddenly growing serious instead of ruminative, and engaging Fanny’s eyes with her own. ‘I sincerely hope that she does.’
What could Aunt Jane mean? Did she wonder whether Anna really loved Mr Terry?
Fanny didn’t often see her aunt’s eyes, but now they were big and brown and boring right into her.
‘Has she spoken much of Mr Terry to you, Fanny?’
When Aunt Jane asked you a direct question, it was impossible not to answer.
Fanny knew that there was a right and a wrong answer to this, and she wished that she could give a different reply. She broke her aunt’s gaze, but felt compelled to speak.
‘Well, no, not that much,’ she admitted. ‘She has, in general terms, you know, she’s told me things he’s said to her, his house, his family, and so on. But she hasn’t said much about his character.’
Aunt Jane was leaning forward.
‘It’s all been very quick,’ she said. ‘Hasn’t it? You and I, Fanny, must watch out for Anna. Perhaps she doesn’t know this young man terribly well, and perhaps he doesn’t know her. And as you and I both know, she can be so passionate, and so … well, to be blunt about it, she can be difficult. We must try to help her.’
Fanny nodded, and relaxed against the side of the sofa. She folded her arms upon it and rested her face on them. Of course Aunt Jane understood.
‘It’s true,’ Fanny said quietly, into the darkness. ‘My cousin is in love with having her own way. Perhaps she wanted her own way as much as she wanted him.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Aunt Jane. ‘Now tell me something else, Fanny. Is there anyone who’s special to you? More than just friends?’
‘No, no,’ said Fanny, quickly, dismayed. She knew of course Aunt Jane was asking about Mr Drummer. But she’d been told so often and so clearly that he was not an option for her. ‘Of course not.’
‘Well,’ said her aunt, ‘we’ll see.’
It was almost as if she didn’t believe Fanny. But to Fanny’s relief, she let the matter drop.
‘We shall find out very soon,’ Aunt Jane continued, ‘what Mr Terry is really like when he comes to visit.’
‘Is he coming here?’
‘Yes,’ her aunt said. ‘My brother has invited him. So we have lots of excitement ahead. Which means, my dear,’ she said, gathering herself up in a manner that Fanny knew was a dismissal, ‘that I need my room to myself for a while, to be getting on with, well, my business.’
Fanny left, half satisfied. If she had a pact with Aunt Jane to watch over her cousin and to help her, then perhaps all could be well.
Chapter 19
The front door, Godmersham Park
A few days later, the weather had well and truly broken. The grey sky was almost a relief after the relentless sun.
Letters had been flying between Kent and Hampshire. Fanny had written to her uncle James and aunt Mary, saying, or in fact exaggerating, how much she was looking forward to being a bridesmaid. Mr Terry had written to say that he would like very much to come to stay at Godmersham to meet his fiancée’s Kentish family. And Anna had written to everyone she knew in the whole world, announcing her joy at being engaged even though she was only just sixteen.
Fanny had read these letters through, at Anna’s request, to correct the spelling mistakes, and privately thought it would have been more attractive if Anna had left out her age. Whenever she spotted an error, Fanny corrected it with a sharp little slash of her pen.
At length, the day came upon which Mr Terry was expected. There was definitely a September nip and the promise of apples in the air. Fanny’s father had sent the Godmersham carriage to bring Mr Terry home from the Star Inn, where the public stagecoach dropped its passengers.
The family waited on the gravel outside the house. Marianne had even made a canvas banner, which read, in painted letters, Welcome to Godmeshm.
Anna had made the error of laughing at the misspelling, but Aunt Jane had said it was a perfectly comprehensible abbreviation of the name of the house, and that if Mr Terry couldn’t work out what it said then he was a sorry stick.
The wait seemed interminable. Fanny’s sisters occupied the time by discussing what they would wear as bridesmaids, and whether their brothers would be pages.
‘Boys!’ said Elizabeth. ‘Surely for once you can polish your shoe buckles and behave nicely for your cousin’s wedding?’
‘Not – polish – anything – for – a – girl,’ said William, although he was barely able to speak. He had hurt his teeth trying to find out if gravel was edible.
Fanny noticed that just two people were quiet. Anna didn’t have much to say, even about the subject of her own wedding dress. She’s nervous, Fanny thought. And Aunt Jane, too, was keeping her own counsel, standing with her arms folded. But there was nothing unexpected about that.
‘Will he never come?’ Fanny sighed to Aunt Jane. ‘I can’t bear it!’
But even as she spoke, there was a shout, as if the stable boys had spotted the carriage coming along the drive. Everyone fell silent. Fanny saw her brother Edward sticking out his chest and grasping the lapels of his coat, in imitation of their father. His performance as a miniature lord of the manor made her smile.
And then the carriage was in sight, and the coachman James was calling ‘whoa’ to the horses, and the whole equipage was grinding to a halt amid a spray of fine gravel and a misting of fine rain.
There was a pause, then the carriage door opened.
An unremarkable man in a black suit, rather stooped and elderly, emerged. He made two unsuccessful attempts to get his hat on to his head. He stood there with his back towards them all, fumbling to fix a pince-nez to his nose.
‘Oh, where is Mr Terry?’ Marianne cried in agony. ‘Why hasn’t he come? Did he miss the stagecoach?’
The man still stood there, confused, as if he didn’t know quite what to do.
Fanny glanced at Anna, and saw that her cousin’s face was set.
Slowly Fanny realised what was happening. Mr Terry couldn’t see without his spectacles.
Anna swallowed hard, and stepped forward.
‘This way,’ she called. ‘Here we all are!’
He turned at her voice, fixing his spectacles more firmly to his nose and snatching off his hat to bow low, lower … Fanny was afraid that he might fall over and hurt himself, so awkward did he seem.
Anna hooked her elbow defiantly through the man’s black-coated arm, lurched him back to his feet and marched him towards her aunt and uncle. There was a bright social smile on her face.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is Mr Terry. May I have the honour, Uncle Edward and Aunt Elizabeth, to present my fiancé?’
From the flurried warmth of their greetings, Fanny could tell that her father and mother had, like Marianne, not realised that this … man … could possibly be Anna’s future husband.
Fanny turned away, to spare herself the sight of her family’s false enthusiasm.
As she did so, she saw that Aunt Jane’s piercing gaze was taking in every detail of Mr Terry’s reception. There was no embarrassment on her aunt’s face, just fascination.
Fanny gave an exasperated shrug of her shoulders. Aunt Jane seemed to enjoy the situations which mortified Fanny most deeply.
‘Not quite what we expected,’ Aunt Jane hissed in her ear.
Fanny began to brace herself for the moment when she’d have to speak to him. Looking again, she realised that Mr Terry wasn’t so very old after all; it was his stoop that made him seem so. So too did his spindly black calves in their black stockings.
Anna really must get him to trim his eyebrows, Fanny said to herself. They’re so tufty!
How different he was from the hero of a romantic story!
Anna was now bringing Mr Terry along the line of Fanny’s siblings. To Fanny’s horror, M
arianne was staring at him open-mouthed, her banner drooping in her hand.
‘But he’s so old!’ came Marianne’s all-too-audible hiss.
And now here was Mr Terry himself taking her hand, and saying how very pleased he was to meet Anna’s favourite cousin again, and that there was so close a connection between them that they were practically sisters.
Fanny said how pleased she was too, the words coming out mechanically, almost as if she were following a script.
Then Anna turned to take Mr Terry into the house, the pair of them walking through the rain towards the door self-consciously, heads lowered, not talking.
Fanny herself stepped back with exaggerated courtesy to make room for them to pass. Oh, but this was a damp beginning indeed.
Chapter 20
The hay barn, Godmersham Park
Anna spent the afternoon showing Mr Terry the house, and then, beneath umbrellas, the gardens. Next, Mr Terry was summoned into the library for a conference with Fanny’s father, while Fanny’s mother bustled Anna upstairs for a matronly discussion of housekeeping.
Fanny was left stranded in the hall, wondering what to do. How could she please her mother, who seemed to be acting more like Anna’s mother now? Fanny had an idea. Surely her mother would be pleased if she took the younger girls out of the way.
‘Children!’ she shouted, in her best imitation of Elizabeth. ‘We’ll go out to the barn and jump into the hay.’
Her words with met with a ragged cheer, and the thunder of small feet.
Bond the farmer would be furious, she knew, and subsequently her father would be cross. But the rain had set in, and if possible the mansion should be kept quiet so that – in Aunt Jane’s words – Mr Terry would not think he had come to stay in a madhouse.
There could well be a lot of days like this ahead, Fanny brooded, picking her way across the damp ground towards the barn. It was awful being neither one of the children, nor the grown-ups, but in between.
She sat mooching by herself on a hay bale, stirring only to give the occasional yell at Louie and Marianne to keep well away from the scythe hung up on the barn’s wall. And then she had to reassure the little girls that their brothers were only shouting ‘Rats! Rats!’ in the yard outside in order needlessly to frighten them.
As Fanny leaned back again on the bale, she felt the prickling of it through her stockings. Silk ones, not cotton, put on in Mr Terry’s honour. Had they been worth it?
He really did look ever so much like a black beetle. And his smile had revealed his greyish teeth. She tried to imagine him kissing Anna. It was horrible.
‘Fanny?’
It was a mournful little voice from behind her. Marianne had straws and wisps of hay sticking out of her hair, and there was a stain down the front of her gown.
‘Oh, Marianne, why didn’t you put your apron on, silly?’ Fanny asked, pulling her sister down to join her on the bale. Marianne’s shoulders felt comfortingly warm. The little ones had been running about and destroying hay bales like a vengeful army.
Fanny now saw that Marianne’s face was troubled, almost comically sad beneath her hay-filled hair.
‘What is it, sweets?’ she asked, expecting a story of a sore knee, or a cruel brother.
‘Fanny,’ Marianne asked again, and there was a little quiver in her voice, ‘is Anna really going to marry that man?’
Fanny was taken aback. She’d assumed that her fears and hopes for Anna would be invisible to the little girls. And yet everything, it seemed, was transparent.
‘Well, what’s wrong with him? He’s a respectable man, Marianne, and likely to be kind to Anna, and to have a nice house for her to live in, and, oh, and of course she must really like him too.’
Marianne’s neck drooped.
‘But he’s so, well, boring,’ Fanny’s sister complained. ‘He never said anything at all, all through tea, except to give his annoying laugh!’
Fanny had to admit that Mr Terry had an unfortunate habit of tittering pointlessly whenever he was asked a question. But whatever her personal doubts, she had a duty to Anna.
‘Marianne,’ she said seriously. ‘You don’t know him yet. Anna does, and she must love him. She thinks his jokes are funny, and so on, and if Anna loves somebody, so must we too.’
Marianne frowned, and Fanny could see thoughts passing across her pale little face one after another, like clouds scudding across the sky on a windy day.
‘But, Fanny!’ she said at last. ‘I don’t believe that Anna does love Mr Terry!’
Fanny’s own heart fell. Could Marianne also have seen what she herself suspected?
‘I think,’ Marianne continued boldly, ‘she’s ashamed of him.’
A cold feeling grew inside Fanny, chilling the air in her lungs and creeping out along her limbs.
Yes, it was true. Anna didn’t seem at all happy, or proud, or confident of Mr Terry. It was almost, now that he was actually here at Godmersham, as if she were dourly determined to make the best of him.
Feeling guilty even as she did it, Fanny whispered consoling nothings to Marianne, telling her that of course Anna would be happy, and pushing her off to play.
But once her sister was shoving and whooping once again, Fanny fell to playing with a strand of straw, folding it, pushing it and pulling it in her hands, endlessly, relentlessly.
Yes, although Marianne was just a baby, she had spoken truthfully. Fanny herself must see Anna privately, and try to find out more. Was it really worth putting up with a man with grey teeth, just to say that you were married?
Chapter 21
Fanny’s bedroom, Godmersham Park
Dinner was such agony.
Each time Mr Terry spoke, everyone else, Mr and Mrs Austen, Fanny and Anna, even the children, fell suddenly silent, as if to pay him the courteous attention his words must surely deserve.
Yet when he opened his mouth, what came out was so stilted and dreary it was as if he was deliberately trying to make a bad impression.
‘It’s a shame the weather has broken!’ Fanny’s father began jovially.
‘Indeed,’ said Mr Terry.
Everyone waited for him to go on, but it seemed that even commenting on the weather was beyond him.
‘The young ladies will be sorry to be denied the use of the park,’ Mr Austen persevered.
‘I’m sure the young ladies will make good use of the time to read their Bibles instead,’ Mr Terry offered up, after one of his nervous giggles.
‘Oh, but my girls love to romp outside!’ said Mrs Austen. ‘Are you fond of walking yourself, Mr Terry?’
‘Not particularly,’ he said.
‘How do you get around your parish?’
Mr Terry looked daggers at Marianne, who had spoken.
‘I have, as yet, no parish, Miss … erm, Miss Marianne,’ he said. ‘I am still a curate.’
‘But how old are you?’ Marianne cried. ‘You look much too old to be a curate! They’re generally young men.’
‘Marianne!’
The chorus from the other Austens was deafening. Amid it all Mr Terry sat sweating, and twitching his eye, and making a strange little jerky movement of his head.
Fanny noticed that he even ate clumsily, spilling his soup down his dingy black coat, then frantically dabbing the stain with a napkin.
Poor man, she said to herself severely. He obviously only has one suit. But that’s not a crime! Anna’s always saying that here at Godmersham we attach too much importance to material things.
There was a squeak as her brother George succeeded in kicking Marianne into silence under the table.
‘Do you ride to hounds, Mr Terry?’ George asked, picking up the conversational ball. George’s main interest in life was horses, with dogs coming a close second.
‘Certainly not!’ said Mr Terry, shocked. ‘I disapprove most sincerely of a hunting parson.’
Fanny caught George’s reproachful glance at Anna for having chosen such a useless husband.
‘Oh
, but really, Mr Terry,’ her father was saying. ‘It’s God’s duty for every human being to enjoy himself, you know. Or herself. I hold that as a divine command.’
‘Enjoyment,’ replied Anna’s fiancé, looking down at his plate, ‘takes no high place on my list of endeavours in life.’
Fanny could not help but catch Anna’s eye. Her cousin shrugged, and looked quickly away. She must have seen what Fanny’s eyes could not hide: her consternation.
Hours and hours later, it seemed, Fanny and Anna were in Fanny’s room, getting ready for bed. Fanny thought that there’d never been such a long evening at Godmersham Park. When Anna came to stay, the long late-summer twilights usually flew past, in charades or singing if not in laughing and gossiping.
‘Everyone was too much on their best behaviour,’ Anna was explaining as she twisted her hair into a rope. She was going to share Fanny’s bed, as she’d vacated the guest room so that Mr Terry could have it. ‘He was intimidated.’
Fanny sighed. She could see what Anna was saying. The Austens were so numerous and boisterous, so sure of themselves. But could the man who was worthy of Anna have so little self-confidence?
‘Marianne was incredibly rude!’ Fanny eventually pronounced, having searched for at least something she could say that was true. She reached over Anna’s shoulder and tipped the looking glass to reflect them both. Shadowy, illuminated, their two faces glimmered back, one dark-haired, one so fair she was almost ghostly.
‘He was happy to see you again, Fanny!’ Anna said to their joint reflection.
‘And I …’
Fanny faltered, braced herself, went on.
‘And I was happy to see him. I was pleased when he told me we were like sisters.’
Anna picked up the tail of her hair and gave it a few savage blows with Fanny’s hairbrush.
‘I wish we really were sisters,’ she muttered. ‘Not least because then Uncle Edward would give me lots of money, and then I could marry a lord after all.’
‘Can your father …’
It was difficult to ask, as Anna was so prickly on the subject.
‘Can Uncle James give you nothing at all? To be married on, I mean?’