Austenland Read online

  Jane scratched her ankle with a toe beneath her skirt. Miss Charming scowled.

  “Mama sends her regrets, Lady Templeton, but she is quite fatigued today,” Miss Heartwright said in an infuriatingly real British accent. “She bade me bring these apples from our tree.”

  Aunt Saffronia took the basket. “Lovely! I will give them to the chef and we shall see what splendid treat he can make out of them. You must stay for dinner, Amelia. I insist.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  Jane and Miss Charming exchanged frowns.

  The four ladies sat and chatted, or mostly Miss Heartwright and Aunt Saffronia chatted while Jane and her unhappy ally listened, glumly plucking at their embroidery. But among her other qualities, Miss Heartwright was also generous in her attentions.

  “Miss Erstwhile, do you enjoy novels?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “I know they are naughty things, but I devour novels. The Castle of Otronto had me in chills.”

  “Yes, how can I forget that giant helmet?” Jane had done her homework on gothic romances a few years ago, thank goodness, in an attempt to appreciate Northanger Abbey. “But Mrs. Radcliffe’s writings are my favorite, particularly The Mysteries of Udolpho.”

  Miss Heartwright clapped her hands with delight. “Wonderful! We’ll have so much to talk about. I hope you will call on the cottage often during your stay.” Jane was spared an answer when the maid announced that the gentlemen had returned from the fields.

  “Show them in, thank you,” Aunt Saffronia said.

  The gentlemen entered, looking smart in their sporting attire, rough and handsome in grays and browns, redolent of grass and animals. Jane stood before them, thinking about whether an 1816 woman would arise for men, and then fumbled her embroidery, sending it to the ground. Colonel Andrews bent to pick it up. On his breath she caught a whiff of tobacco, which only slightly damaged the pleasing effect of his charming smile up close.

  The gentlemen remembered Miss Heartwright from last year, of course, and there was a cordial reunion. Cordial? Jane admitted that they both seemed awfully pleased to see her. Well, the colonel was effulgent and Mr. Nobley was polite—but wasn’t there a knowing look that passed between them? Did they, the enchanting Miss Heartwright and cold Mr. Nobley, have a history?

  “You are looking well, Mr. Nobley,” Miss Heartwright was saying. Jane nearly gasped. Who said such things to that man? “I hope your arm is quite recovered from the accident last year.”

  And Mr. Nobley nearly smiled! His eyes did anyway. “You remembered. One of my less graceful moments.”

  Colonel Andrews guffawed. “I had forgotten!” He turned to Jane. “Nobley here was trying to show off on the ballroom floor— for some lady, no doubt—and he slipped during the minuet and broke his arm! Or was it a sprain?”

  “Not a break,” Mr. Nobley said.

  “Do not be so hasty to spoil it, Nobley. A broken bone makes the better story.”

  “Indeed you are right, Colonel Andrews,” Miss Heartwright said. “And I am near expiring, Mr. Nobley, to see what charming bit of fun you will come up with this time. You must, of course, outdo yourself, or what will we have to talk about next year?”

  He bowed, polite but by no means offended. “I am your willing servant and shall have no other object than to seek your amusement.”

  “Well, that is neatly settled then.” Aunt Saffronia was all grin. “What a breath of fresh air you are, Miss Heartwright! You must visit the house every day, as often as you like.”

  Jane glanced at Miss Charming, who in the past half hour had withered like a carrot forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. She was hunched in the sofa, glaring at her embroidery, twisting her foot around, around, around.

  Boyfriend #2

  Rudy Tiev, AGE FIFTEEN

  Rudy was hil-ar-i-ous and so fine. Wherever he went in school, crowds scooped back, forming into spontaneous audiences, waiting with ready smiles for his wit. Or maybe, Jane considered later, drawing back out offear?

  After four months of school dances, mall movies, and after-homework phone calls with Jane, Rudy’s repertoire began to suffer for lack of a fresh subject. Without warning, the heat of his humor veered toward her.

  “We were making out, and suddenly she licks my mouth like a cat!” he told a group lunching on the lawn. “Lapped me up like milk. Meow, little pussycat.”

  In the dizzying weeks that followed, Jane read Pride and Prejudice for the first time.

  At her ten-year high school reunion, three people remembered Jane as “tiger tongue.” Good old Rudy was there, sporting an impressive potbelly and spouting jokes that just couldn’t bring in the laughs.

  day 4, continued

  THAT EVENING (TO MAKE HERSELF feel better after the embarrassing breakdown, not to mention the Heartwright intrusion), Jane donned her favorite evening gown, pale peach with a flattering V-neck and cap sleeves. These last three days, she had been seesawing between giddy headlong rush into fantasyland and existential terror, but sometimes when she slipped into a new dress, the only word that really applied was huzzah.

  The addition of a fourth woman threw a wrench in the precedence. Aunt Saffronia declared she would dine upstairs, and then it was Jane’s turn to say that was nonsense and that she would simply walk from the drawing room to the dining room unescorted. At the back of the line. Like an unwanted puppy. Well, she didn’t actually say the part about the puppy. She did enter alone, behind Miss Heartwright and Colonel Andrews, but she told herself she did it with style.

  When the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing room, Miss Charming was quick on the draw—“I’ll pout all evening if you don’t,Mr. Nobley, and I’m a very effective pouter”—and secured both the single gentlemen at the whist table. Quite a coup. Miss Heartwright, as the guest that day, naturally made up the fourth.

  Jane tried to amuse herself by starting a new embroidery sampler, though the product itself was soon much more amusing than the occupation. Sir John, usually too engaged with his drink to do more than grumble to himself, was particularly attentive to Jane. He stared at her until she was forced to acknowledge him and then topple into his staccato conversation.

  “Do you shoot much? Mm? Birds? Miss Erstwhile?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t hunt.”

  “Yes, of course. Quite, quite.”

  “So, uh, do you shoot much?”

  “Shoot what?”

  “Birds?”

  “Birds? Are you chirping about birds? Miss Erstwhile?”

  Aunt Saffronia wasn’t as quick as usual in detecting uncomfortable situations. She sat by a lamp, an open book on her lap and a glazed expression in her eyes. It made Jane wonder how many breaks the poor woman got. The men were often off doing man things, but Aunt Saffronia always had to be on.

  “Aunt Saffronia.” Jane sat beside her so the others wouldn’t hear. “Can I persuade you to retire early? You do so much for all of us, all day long. I don’t think anyone would deny you a little rest.”

  Aunt Saffronia smiled and patted her cheek. “I think I may, just this once. If you promise not to tell.”

  It was gratifying to see the woman go get some me-time, but of course it meant Jane was left alone on the sofa with Sir John and the sloshing noise of his cud. She sat straight in her corset, shut her eyes, and tried to drown out the sticky sound by concentrating on the voices in conversation at the card table.

  Miss Charming: “Crikey, Mr. Nobley, but that was a barmy play!”

  Mr. Nobley: “I beg apology, Miss Charming.”

  Miss Charming: “Apology? Don’t you know that means it was good? Right smashing?”

  Mr. Nobley: “As you say.”

  Colonel Andrews: “You must take care with Miss Charming, Nobley. She is a sharp one. I wager she could teach you all sorts of things.”

  Miss Charming (giggling): “Why, Colonel Andrews, whatever do you mean?”

  And whenever the speed of conversation slowed a tad, Miss Heartwright wa
s there to buoy it back up.

  “Oh, good play, colonel! I didn’t see that one. Well done, Mr. Nobley. You have a fine hand, I wager. Valiantly played, Miss Charming, and what lovely skin you possess.”

  Miss Heartwright wasn’t just nice. Oh no. She was astonishingly engaging. Even Mr. Nobley seemed more responsive than normal. He still hadn’t spoken with Jane since she broke character, and she watched him now, wondering if he’d tell Mrs. Wattles-brook how her break muddied up the Experience. He glanced at her once or twice. That was all.

  Meanwhile, Miss Heartwright continued to effuse.

  The room had begun to seem unnaturally crowded, the lamps too bright but the light they made too dim. Jane caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror, propped up in that ridiculous dress, gawky and silly, a clump of brown bun and curls pinned to her head. Just the sight was enough to tip her back again.

  “What a crackpot,” she whispered to herself. In all the years Jane had fantasized about an Austenland, she never considered how, once inside its borders, she would feel like an outsider.

  When Sir John started to snore and no one was paying her any mind, she stuck her theoretical pillowcase under her chair and slipped out.

  She should’ve gone to her chambers. There was that Regency rule that single women weren’t supposed to walk out alone except in the morning, but Jane had a headache, and nothing goes worse with a headache than rules.

  The night air sloshed on her bare skin and nudged her into shivering. Jane rubbed her arms and imagined Mrs. Wattles-brook’s voice crying out in Obi-Wan Kenobi tones: “Remember to wear a wrap and bonnet when you go out!” She half hoped that the old woman would find her now and just send her home and get it over with. But she was alone.

  She wandered the garden path (so as not to get grass stains on her hem), and gave up a halfhearted hope that Colonel Andrews would come looking for her. Without hope, it was impossible to fantasize. That was her problem, Jane decided—she’d always lugged around an excess of hope. If only she were more of a pessimist, she wouldn’t have to grapple with these impossible whimsies and wouldn’t be here now, forlorn and pathetic in make-believe England.

  She wound around with the path until she approached the smaller second building that housed the servants. A first-story window flickered with the unmistakable bluish light of a television set, and it drew her nearer, a moth to flame. She could hear an announcer burble “New York Knicks” and “Pacers,” though she couldn’t make out any details. The real, gritty, urban, twenty-first-century clamor of U.S. basketball sounded as good to her as chocolate soup.

  That’s right—she remembered now that those teams were opening the NBA season in a game on October 30, which meant if someone was watching it tonight in England they must have played yesterday in New York, making today— “Halloween,” she said aloud. “How appropriate.”

  The cold and the dark night rubbed against the blue light and the sound of the game, and the thought of going back alone to bed or returning to watch the whist game made her want to scream. She stepped up to the door and knocked.

  The television voice cut off, replaced by the sound of pattering activity. “Just a moment,” said a male voice.

  The door opened. It was Martin, aka Theodore the gardener, in pajama pants and no top, a towel hanging around his neck. Unclothed, he had the kind of build that made her want to say, “Yow.” She was glad she was wearing her favorite dress.

  “Trick or treat?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Sorry to interrupt.” She indicated the towel. “You’re working out?”

  “Miss, uh, Erstwhile, right? Yes, hello. No, I just couldn’t find my shirt. Are you lost?”

  “No, I was walking and I . . . I don’t suppose you could give me the Knicks–Pacers score?”

  Martin stared blankly for a moment, then looking around as if trying to spy out eavesdroppers, pulled her inside and shut the door behind her.

  “You could hear that?”

  “The TV? Yes, a little, and I saw the light through your window.”

  “Blasted paper-thin curtains.” He grimaced and ran his fingers through his hair. “You are going to catch me at everything bad, aren’t you? Let’s hope you’re not her spy. She’ll have my balls for stew.”

  “Who, Mrs. Wattlesbrook?”

  “Yes, in whose presence I signed a dozen nondisclosure and proper-behavior and first-child and I don’t know what other kinds of promises, in one of which I swore to keep any modern thingies out of sight of the guests.”

  “Tell me that Wattlesbrook isn’t her real name.”

  “It is, actually.”

  “Oh, no,” she said with a laugh in her voice.

  “Oh, yes.” He sat on the edge of his bed. “I take it, then, you’re not spying for her? Good. Yes, dear Mrs. Wattlesbrook, descended from the noble water buffalo. It’s a decent job, though. Best pay for being a gardener I’ve ever had.” He met her eyes. “I’d hate to lose it, Miss Erstwhile.”

  “I’m not going to tattletale,” she said in tired big-sister tones. “And you can’t call me Miss Erstwhile when you have a towel around your neck. To real people I’m Jane.”

  “I’m still Martin.”

  “How did you get the game on your TV out here, anyway?”

  He jerked a sheet off a combination television and VCR with a magician’s ta-da flourish, explaining that he’d asked a guy from the town to record it for him that afternoon.

  “I know, Why risk so much for a basketball game? Behold the weakness that is man.”

  “Did you play basketball?” she asked, eyeing again his sleek height.

  “Americans always ask me that, and so, curious, I started watching the NBA games a couple of years ago. Now I’m shamelessly addicted.They’re a bit more exciting than football, aren’t they? About as much running around but a lot more goals. Don’t tell a soul from Sheffield that I said that. Long live the Manchester United.”

  “Yes, absolutely, go United,” she said, crossing herself.

  “So, uh, you came about the score.”

  “Yes, the score,” she said, having forgotten all about it.

  “Last I saw, it was fifteen to ten Knicks, first quarter.”

  “First quarter? Well, would you mind if I stayed and watched the rest?”

  “If Mrs. Wattlesbrook finds you here . . .”

  “They all think I’m in bed. No one will come looking for me. I’m last in precedence, after all.”

  They stripped his bed and hung the sheets and bedspread on the curtain rod for “extra blue-light protection,” then turned the volume down so low they had to whisper not to drown out the announcer. She felt cozy and mischievous, watching the game in the dark apartment, hidden from that Mrs. Hannigan-of-a-proprietress, sipping a can of root beer from Martin’s minifridge.

  “You drink root beer while you watch an NBA game? You are an American wannabe, aren’t you?”

  “That is perhaps the most horrid thing you could say to an Englishman.”

  “Worse than French wannabe?”

  “Well, there is that.” He sipped his soda. “I spent a summer in America and one night drank two six-packs of root beer on a dare. After that, the formerly vile-cough-syrupy taste suddenly became appealing. But wait just a moment, Miss I’ve-Just-Come-From-A-Rather-Dull-Game-Of-Whist, who’s pointing fingers and calling me a wannabe of anything?”

  “Yeah . . .” She smoothed the front of her empire waist and laughed at herself as best she could. “It’s, um, a Halloween costume. You know, trick or treat.”

  “Ah,” he said. “And my interest in basketball is just, you know, research into a curious cultural phenomenon.”

  “Pure research.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “But of course. Besides, you ruined me, you know. No wonder Wattlesbrook forbids anything modern to clash with the nineteenth century. Five minutes of conversation with you in the garden and I went cross-eyed trying to take myself seriously again in this getup.�
��

  “I have that effect on a lot of women. All it takes is five minutes with me and—er . . . that didn’t sound right.”

  “You’d better stop while you’re behind, there, sport.”

  The television seemed to grow quieter, and they moved closer to it, from the couch to the carpet, and sitting on the floor with her corset still stiffening her back, she had to lean against him to be comfortable. And then his arm was around her shoulder, and his smell was delicious. She felt drunk on root beer, and soothed by the twitching of the tiny television. He started to play with her fingers, and she turned her head. Their breaths touched. Then their lips.

  And then, they really made out.

  It was fun, kissing a guy she barely knew. She’d never done this before, and it made her feel rowdy and pretty and miles removed from her issues. She didn’t think or fret. She just played.

  “Good shot,” she said, her eyes closed, pretending to watch the game.

  “Watch that defense,” he whispered, kissing her neck. An evening dress allowed for a lot of neck, and somehow he got it all. “Get the rebound, you clumsy oaf.”

  And it was fun to stop kissing and look at each other, breathless, feeling the thrill and anticipation of the undone.

  “Good game,” she said.

  The television buzzed with static. She didn’t know how long the game had been over, but her heavy eyes and limbs told her that it was very late. She thought if she stayed longer, she would fall asleep on his chest, and because that idea pleased her, she left immediately. Her torso stiff inside her corset exoskeleton, he had to help her to her feet. With one hand, he pulled her onto her toes as though she were the weight of a pillow.

  He walked her to the door and swatted her on the butt. “Good game, coach. See you tomorrow.”

  “Um, who won?” she asked, indicating the television still droning angrily at having no picture to show.

  “We did.”

  Jane didn’t know what hour it was, since a timepiece wasn’t part of her wardrobe allotment, but the moon had moved considerably across the sky. Her arms bare below her thin sleeves, she shivered and crept across the courtyard, the whisper of the gravel path announcing her presence to any lurkers. She entered through the grand front door, clicking it closed behind her, and eased her slippers over the creaking boards.