by Sarah Waters
Oh, Jane. What was it you said about the anxiety of expectation and the pain of disappointment? It’s Friday night already and we’re going to bed early (separately) to catch the small plane to North Ronaldsay first thing in the morning. It’s a trip Aidan’s organised for the weekend with a group of his friends – all women! He said it’s not like their sex is relevant. I beg to differ. I’d like to see his face if I asked him to stay with four gorgeous blokes and me as the lucky girl. This trip will be a Test of Character type experience. To bed: enough of dreaming.
I knew it. The four women are beautiful. Not only that, they are French and German and Scottish, which means they speak with voices to melt any man. Their names are Odette and Silke, Ailean and Innes. While we’re waiting for the plane they sit quietly, hardly speaking. I want to hate them and I almost do, but I can’t because they are friendly which is worse, because I feel loathsome and want to crawl back under my stone. I can’t help watching how Aidan is: whether he laughs longest with Innes, his gaze is deeper for Silke or his hand lingers on Ailean’s arm. Between him and Odette, something hangs unspoken. When we arrive the others squeeze around the tiny kitchen table in the hostel. I don my waterproof trousers and march off into the drizzle.
I am much calmed by my walk. I lean over a wall and watch the seals lounging about on the rocks. They lie with their backs against the cold, sharp edges, peering at me from upside down. They scratch and clap their feet, as if relaxing on chaise longues and deep-pile carpets. Mist floats down over the sea and I feel the peace that often comes with being alone.
Jane, this is not the first time I’ve fallen down the well of my own vanity. I’ve seen meaning in the few hopeful words Aidan has given me, words that could just as easily have been offered in friendship. It’s like reaching the top of a mountain only to find that I’m the same person I was when I set out. It is the view that’s changed. It’s exhilarating; yet I feel like a small balloon not quite set free.
At dusk the six of us slip across rocks in the rain, clambering down to the beach. We watch the strange sight of sheep eating seaweed by the edge of the sea, their delicate legs like burnt matchsticks, lightly tripping over the rocks. We wait for each other as we clamber along. Perhaps we’re each a little in love with Aidan. In the evening we eat pasta and drink wine and play charades, shrieking with laughter at each other’s frantic mimes, our damp coats hanging over doors and our faces pink. What a desolate island this is; how spellbindingly beautiful.
In the morning the sun is soft and the sky an unblemished blue. We head out for a walk along the sandy beach stripped bare by the tide. We move along, sometimes together in pairs, sometimes scattered apart. Aidan runs up behind me and hurls us both towards the oncoming waves. He shows me an empty shell then hurls it out to sea. Then he picks up a small piece of wood smoothed into the shape of a wave. I wait for him to throw it away, but he gives it to me and I hold it in my hand. When he isn’t looking I tuck it inside my pocket. On the way back we pass a field of lapwings dancing in the air. They suddenly drop and roll, their paddle-shaped wings flapping about drunkenly, then up again; their wheezing, bubbling song catching on the wind.
While I’m packing up my waterproofs, Aidan and Odette are covering each other in pretend punches and karate kicks. A little later Odette looks at me and says, ‘you’ve caught the sun.’
My last day. I help Aidan strip the bed. He says if he washes everything now he can move back in to his room tonight. Jane, I’m one step closer to knowing myself. Love – if it does – shouldn’t it just happen?
Aidan tells me of a time he flew away from Orkney. He says tears rolled down his face. He doesn’t call it crying. He just says, ‘The tears kept on falling.’
We say goodbye.
Later, flying away, I cry.
My inspiration: I wanted to capture a little of Jane Austen’s universal truths. Unrequited love seemed to be high on the list; it also has a timeless quality – an affliction human beings will continue to endure despite the world changing around them. Jane was also a prodigious letter writer – a format she perhaps considered a safe place in which to write down her true feelings. I wanted to mirror this in the style of the story. It was only when I finished writing that I realised my narrator had remained nameless. Perhaps the mark of a truly universal ‘I’.
EIGHT YEARS LATER
Elaine Grotefeld
They turned the corner and Chris knew this was the place, even before he saw the sign. He gripped the steering wheel to hide the onset of trembling.
Beside him his mother peered through her new-for-the-trip prescription sunglasses at the handsome red-brick house. ‘We’re here,’ she cried, and slapped the dashboard.
He still hadn’t told her.
There was nowhere to park directly outside the house – which he liked, it reminded him this wasn’t North America – but they found a place down a leafy side street. His arm under hers, Chris led his mother towards the house. They passed an open area with a few swings – where a young boy and his dad (Chris presumed) rugbytackled each other on to the long grass, rolled in the last warm days of summer. No sign of the mother… was she in the house? He both hoped – and hoped not.
He took in the large, square building set sideways to the road so that the white front door faced a green expanse of garden. He scanned the big Georgian windows on the ground floor.
‘I wonder which one she sat by to write.’ He tried to remember the snippets he’d once learnt about Jane Austen, this extraordinarily witty writer, favourite author of the two women he admired – and, yes, loved – most in all the world. One of them was Catherine, his mother, leaning on his arm now and quietly wheezing. She wore a pink summer hat and had brought a different one for each day. She didn’t do bald well and wigs made her itch. He thought again of Ms Austen – hadn’t she written the whole of Persuasion while she lived here – in a hurry, it was thought, already feeling ill?
Catherine squeezed his arm. ‘Thank you for bringing me here, Chris,’ she said. ‘It’s the best birthday present you could have ever given me.’
‘You’re only fifty once, Mom.’
‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘I don’t think much of it so far – apart from this trip, of course. I have much higher hopes for sixty and seventy.’
He smiled but his eyes stung. They both knew she’d be lucky to reach fifty-one.
Time to confess. He turned to face her, placed his hands on her shoulders, felt her bones through her shirt.
‘Mom,’ he said. ‘There’s something I need to tell you before we go in. I should have told you before but didn’t know how. Can we stroll round the garden a bit first?’
She tilted her head back to study his face. ‘I thought there was something,’ she said. ‘Lead on.’
Five minutes later, they stood together at the white front door, a little giddy from the scent of mint and roses – and their conversation.
‘We’re still early,’ Catherine said. ‘She won’t be here for a while.’ She sounded preoccupied – no wonder – it had been a lot for her to take in. And for Chris to explain – to compress eight years of intense and private longing into the five minutes it took to tell all. He’d tried to make his mother understand that the Jane Austen pilgrimage to England (they’d been to Bath first), and the visit to Oxford, Catherine’s hometown, was all about her, about him and her sharing the adventure. The other idea had come later.
Chris bent to get through the doorway and led Catherine into a small entrance room, where they were greeted by a smiling lady about his mother’s age. A collection of Jane Austen postcards, pens and notebooks lay on a few wooden tables and shelves but the commercialisation of Jane was nothing by American standards – much to Chris’s relief.
‘Thank you,’ said Chris, admiring the gleaming wooden floor, the light through the window, the painted white shutters. ‘We’re delighted to be here.’
‘Oh’ said the lady, eyes bright with interest. ‘Where are you from?’
&nb
sp; ‘Well,’ Chris began. ‘I’m from Vancouver, Canada – but my mom here, Catherine, came from England originally.’
‘Many years ago,’ Catherine added. ‘I went to Canada to visit a friend and never came back.’
Her lovely voice, still distinctively English after 30 years in Canada, had developed a raspy edge of late and Chris noticed she spoke less and less.
‘I tried to beat the Canadian accent out of my son but to no avail,’ she said. ‘Peer pressure and all that – young people nowadays – what more can I say?’
Chris grinned. This was more like the old Catherine. ‘Sorry to be such a disappointment to you, Mom.’
‘If you’ve come all this way just to bring your mum to Chawton,’ the lady said, ‘you can’t be all bad.’
Catherine winked at her. ‘Oh – I’m not the only reason we’re here.’
Chris winced. This was getting a little too much like the old Catherine. ‘Shall we go look around?’ he said. ‘While we have time?’
The house felt smaller inside than out, but there was much to marvel at. A little wooden table, placed by a window in the parlour, was the highlight. A sign on it read Do Not Touch. But Catherine would never get another chance and so Chris held her hand and, while nobody was looking, brushed both their fingertips across an inch of the actual surface Jane Austen must have touched herself. His hand tingled violently but perhaps it was nerves.
Next they inspected a display of family letters painstakingly written with quill and ink. When was the last time he’d actually written anything? Email had all but wiped out the personal letter. Even his undeniably romantic plea had been typed. Typed!
Catherine lingered over the letters, and Chris left her to it. Such a gift to see her wrapt withal. He wandered through or peeked into the small rooms alone, bending under the low door frames, inhaling the comforting smell of wood and ancient wallpaper. The floorboards creaked and squeezing himself down the narrow staircase he felt huge, like a bear, over-sized and clumsy amongst all these dainty artefacts and impossibly tiny period clothes.
He checked his watch. It was time. It felt like he’d just been whacked with a baseball bat in the back of the knees.
So many unknowns: would she have seen his notice in those Jane Austen online newsletters? And if she had, would she come? And if she came – would she still be free? He hadn’t thought further than that.
Back downstairs, he heard his mother back in the front entry room.
‘The thing is,’ she was saying, ‘my son has a deep, dark secret.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes – he loves Jane Austen! He was always a great reader. I think he read his first when he was about fourteen. We were on some camping trip in the rain and he’d read everything including the camping stove instruction manual – excuse me, it’s just a cough – anyway, he got so desperate he picked up my copy of Persuasion. He was so embarrassed to be found reading it, poor boy.’
Persuasion. Where his story had started.
Chris, aged seventeen, usually ran straight past the glass-fronted Starbucks on his way to the trail path through the woods, but that morning in late August, something – or rather someone – made him stop and stare inside.
A person – no longer a girl but hardly old enough to be called a woman – sat curled in the big armchair in the corner, wearing a simple white summer dress – and reading Persuasion. She even looked like the writer – petite, intelligent, impish. Prettier, though – but didn’t everyone say that the one surviving likeness of Jane Austen didn’t do her justice? Maybe this was how she’d really looked.
His heart rate spiked and he’d hardly started his run. Chris is rather timid, they said in his school reports, like it was a sin. He stared inside, wanted so much to go in, to go up and talk to her, maybe ask her about the book. He’d read it too, hadn’t he? And loved it. She wouldn’t find that odd. Surely.
But he didn’t. He was too scared. He took one last look and pounded along the sidewalk towards the woods.
By the time he started back at school the following month he must have wandered into Starbucks about twenty times in the hope of seeing the girl again. He carried Persuasion in his backpack and was all set with his master plan to sit himself near her and ‘coincidentally’ produce the same book as hers. But she never showed – he’d blown his chance.
‘We’d like you all to welcome our new English teacher,’ the principal announced at the first assembly in September. ‘Miss Anderson.’
And there she was – the girl from the coffee shop. She looked 19, but she had to be 23 – minimum. And she was his English teacher.
Obviously, he told himself to forget it.
But never had he looked forward to a class so much – and never had he wanted more for time to slow down during it. Miss Jean Anderson was sweet and clever and funny and spoke with a soft English accent. Like Jane Austen – whom she adored. She wore summer dresses at first, and then in fall exchanged them for long wool skirts and lace-up boots, and a purple velvet cloak that was totally impractical in the Vancouver rain but he loved to see her in it. He feared others would mock her for her eccentricity but nobody did. She was English, after all, only been in Canada since college, so that seemed to explain it. Everybody loved her.
As did he. But differently from the rest. She was six years his senior and his teacher, and to make any kind of approach to her seemed to him to be not just preposterous and out of the question, but to be a gross imposition on her sweetness, her sunny innocence.
But he couldn’t hide his feelings altogether. He sought extra ‘help’, would ‘swing by’ her classroom during breaks to ‘ask her advice’ about whatever project was in play. He even got Catherine to invite her over for dinner since they were both such ardent admirers of Jane Austen. The more he saw of her the more he loved her – but she never so much as held his gaze.
Until that evening in May, when she’d let him walk her home. You pierce my soul.
She left at the end of the school year. Not just the school, but the country. Everyone was shocked. She had only just arrived, she was such a wonderful teacher – why would she leave so soon?
Only Chris understood. If she’d stayed, something would have happened. They’d acknowledged their attraction with their eyes; that was all. But Chris felt it, heard it, like a hum in the air. Perhaps she did too. In any case, to his modern-day Jane, the territory was too dangerous.
There were other girls, of course – but none to compare. He always thought of her. Furtively he’d read the novels of Jane Austen over and over because they made him feel connected to Miss Jean Anderson. He could hear her voice when he read, could even catch her trademark lavender scent. Chris was a romantic who badly wanted to find his true love. But knew in his heart he’d already met her – his very own Anne Elliot – only he didn’t know how to find her again.
Chris and his mother were back in the front room – having revisited the garden, examined the donkey carriage, reread every letter. Always listening for the sound of new footsteps.
It was eight years since he’d last seen her, and one hour and eight minutes past the time. Miss Anderson wasn’t coming.
‘Are you ready to go, Mom?’ Chris said gently.
His mother hesitated. ‘I was so sure she would come – it’s very odd.’ She glanced once more at the clock. ‘Do you mind if I get some postcards, dear?’
She took a while choosing and the lady behind the counter glanced at her watch and kept glancing at the door as if wanting to lock up. After Chris paid for the postcards (he insisted), the woman said, ‘It’s closing soon, but you’ve just time to visit Chawton House too while you’re here.’ She paused. ‘It’s just down the road and the library is superb.’
Chris dropped his change on the floor.
‘Chawton House?’ he said. ‘I thought this was Chawton House?’
‘Oh no, dear, this is just the cottage belonging to the estate. This is Jane Austen’s house, yes, but Chawton House is the grand Elizab
ethan mansion where her brother—’
‘I told her the wrong place,’ he told his mother, already pulling her towards the door. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘It’s straight down that road,’ said the lady, in the doorway now. ‘On your left – you can’t miss it.’
Chris just about dragged his poor mother back to the car and they sped off towards the real Chawton House, turned into a classic long driveway with the mansion standing proud and imposing at the other end. It was 4.50 p.m. and it closed in ten minutes. Would she even be there?
A bright red mini came speeding along the driveway towards them. Chris caught a glimpse of the driver as she passed – and did a hand brake turn.
They found the mini in their old parking spot.
Thank you God, Chris thought as, once again, he led his mother – more urgently this time – back into Jane Austen’s house.
He found Miss Jean Anderson in the entry room. She turned as they came in – and her smile, after eight long years, re-booted his heart.
‘You read my posting,’ he said.
She nodded. ‘Yes – I’d give it an A for resourcefulness… but a D for research.’
He grinned. ‘I know – I got the house wrong. But look – we’re both here now, aren’t we?’
‘So you’re the young man with the message!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘I had a feeling it was you.’
‘So you suggested we go to Chawton House?’ Chris said. ‘Just in case?’
She winked. ‘Being here all the time, Jane’s genius can’t help but rub off a little, you know.’
He looked with love on these three extraordinary women – and had an overwhelming sense of there being four people in the room with him.
‘Maybe it’s being in Jane Austen’s house,’ he said, ‘but I have the oddest sensation—’
‘The end of Persuasion, right?’ Jean said. ‘You feel like we’re in it?’