Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library (17 page)

My inspiration:
The inspiration for my story comes from the themes and characters in
Persuasion.
Beginning with the single image of Louisa Musgrove’s jump from the Cobb at Lyme Regis, I attempted a contemporary retelling of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth’s experience of separation, maturation and second chance.

THE SCHOOL TRIP

Jacqui Hazell

Stop. I have to stop.

Wheezing like an idiot.

Where’s my inhaler?

My bag’s stuffed: packed lunch, Diet Coke, project folder, mobile, Tampax, I can’t find it. Why can I never find it? They should make them fluorescent.

‘Sorry,’ I’m in the way – doorway to Victory News – better move. Oh, it’s the Jolly Jack Tar – violent dump – thank God it’s shut.

That’s it, there it is.

Okay, breathe out loads. Now puff, and puff again.

Embarrassing and never works fast enough.

Wish I could wait a while, but I have to run, Mr Sole will be doing his nut.

Breathe slowly, or should that be deeply? Be calm. It’s stress-related, according to Mum. She should know seeing as she causes it all.

Okay, Johnsons Shoes, Mothercare, Debenhams, the concrete fountain, Top Shop – wish I could look but I can’t – oh, slow down.

Bag strap is killing me. Nelson’s café and the pound shop – can’t see that nice bloke, must be his day off.

Wait, catch breath, I need to cross.

There’s the coach by the main gate.

It’s the usual English mustard turd of a bus, it matches the school. If you did one of those quizzes like you get in Minx Magazine, you know where you have to match the celebrity to the dog: Paris Hilton and her chihuahua, Sharon Osborne and her pug and Lily Allen and her English bull terrier. Well, the school equivalent would be Portsmouth High for Girls teamed with a gleaming, silver coach with onboard toilet facilities, seatbelts and headrests with inbuilt DVD players and this turd-mobile teamed with my school, Portsmouth City Comp. The dumping ground for hopeless cases and kids whose parents never bothered to fight tooth and nail to get them in anywhere decent.

It’s an eight-storey, 70s block with a few other flat-roofed buildings branching off at right angles, an eyesore, and to make it worse they’ve painted all the window frames a dark, dismal seaweed green like the crappy uniform. It’s listed of course, but that’s Portsmouth for you, so bombed out during the war, they struggle to find anything worth listing.

I can see Mr Sole beside the bus in his stripy knitwear and slacks.

‘Imperative, Lucy Welch, what does imperative mean?’ He’s shouting at me, going on about the last thing he said the day before. ‘It’s imperative you all get to school on time tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m having the worst day.’ Did he hear me wheeze? I’m trying to hide it, but I’m really hot and probably red, not to mention sweaty.

‘You can tell me all about it in detention tomorrow, Lucy.’

Mathew Relf is at the front. He’s holding up his fingers in an ‘L’ shape by his forehead. ‘Loser,’ he says, and Eric Boulter sniggers.

The words ‘Shut it, volcano face’ are on the tip of my tongue when I notice his mum seated opposite, talking to Kelvin’s mum. Both women glance over.

They’re talking about me or more likely my mum, I know it.

‘Find a seat quickly, Lucy, you’ve held us up long enough.’

Megan is already sitting next to Katie. She mouths ‘sorry’ to me and shrugs. I’ve got to sit next to Janine and I haven’t even brought my iPod.

‘All right, Janine,’ I say, sitting down on the brown-flecked upholstery.

‘All right,’ she says, beaming at me, ‘have you heard the new Lady Ga Ga?’

‘Quieten down, everyone,’ says Mr Sole, ‘just a few words before we go. No chewing gum, no mobiles, no fizzy drinks. It’s going to take a good hour to get there then there’ll be a short talk and a tour of the house, followed by lunch and then back to school in time for the bell. Does anyone have any questions?’ Mr Sole looks towards the back of the bus. ‘Yes, Akshat.’

‘I get travel sick.’

A few people moan.

‘I suggest you come forward and sit at the front.’

Akshat moves up the bus, knocking everyone with his oversized sports bag.

‘Cretin,’ says Katie.

The bus moves off with a shudder and the clunking of gears.

‘It’s like a right boring place to go, innit,’ says Janine. ‘My cousin’s school went to Chessington World of Adventures. They went on Rameses’ Revenge and the Rattlesnake and everything.’

‘I’m gonna have a nap, Janine. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’

‘Why’s that, Loos?’

‘Dunno really, just couldn’t sleep.’

As if I’d tell her how it all kicked off once I got back from swimming. I wouldn’t tell her anything.

‘You don’t look tired,’ she studies me with her hard brown eyes. ‘You look nice, you always look nice, and your hair’s so pretty,’ she fiddles with the bit that’s hanging down my shoulder. ‘I wish I had blonde hair like yours. You’re so lucky.’

‘Janine, I really need to sleep,’ I shut my eyes, and concentrate on breathing. It’s almost back to normal, while the inside of my eyelids are all red and squiggly as if my head’s on fire. It is. Perhaps I should listen to Janine go on about theme parks and pop stars. It would take my mind off things.

Diaries are dangerous, I knew that, though I thought the risk was all mine, like if Amy found out who I fancy or who I’d kissed.

I’m kicking myself. Normally, I’m so careful. You have to be when you share a room. I never write in front of Amy. I wait till she’s out or in the bathroom or else I take it with me. And then, when I am writing, cross-legged on my bed, I always have a cushion close by so I can hide it. I reckon I’ll always have a few seconds once I hear the door.

Mind you, I didn’t hear the phone at first. I must have been too engrossed. Then Dad was shouting up the stairs and I know not to ignore Dad if he shouts. Still, Amy should never have read it. And she certainly shouldn’t have told Dad.

‘Lucy, are you crying?’

Oh God, Janine’s curly head is hovering right over me.

‘It’s nothing, the sun’s in my eyes.’

Janine gives me the kind of hard look I’d normally run from if I didn’t already know how much she admires me.

‘It’s just the sun, I just woke up. I’m all right now. What were you saying about Lady Ga Ga?’

After about an hour the coach leaves the motorway and trundles along a few quaint country roads where the period houses are all absurdly pretty with perfect, flower-filled gardens and not a hint of dark green woodwork anywhere.

‘Looks like a film set, doesn’t it,’ I say.

‘People really live here, yeah?’ says Janine.

The boys at the front start to cheer and whoop.

‘That was the coach park,’ shouts Kelvin, ‘He’s missed it.’

Mr Sole jumps up to peer out of the side of the bus then has a quick word with the driver.

‘He has bloody missed it,’ I say to Janine.

Next thing we know, he’s trying to do a three-point turn in a tiny country road and backs into what is probably a listed Elizabethan wall resulting in more cheers from the boys. The bus stops. The driver gets out, inspects back of bus and glances at wall. Wall looks okay, don’t know about bus.

He gets back in, manages to manoeuvre it into the right direction, finds the coach park and at last we can all get out.

Mr Sole has this strange, mesmerised expression. ‘That’s it, that’s where she lived,’ he says, looking across the road at a neat, red-brick, rectangular house with white-framed picture windows and a green sweep of garden on the corner with a majestic, ancient tree.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I say. ‘Here, sir, I thought you said she didn’t have much money.’

‘She didn’t, it was her brother who looked after her.’

‘Give me MTV Cribs any day,’ says Janine, making hip hop gangster-style gestures with her hands. ‘I like penthouses with walls of glass.’

Where the hell is Megan?

Behind me, thank God.

‘How’s your head?’ she smiles.

‘What?’

‘Janine – is she doing your head in?’

‘You have no idea.’

Mr Sole leads the way to an outbuilding that’s been converted into a classroom. It’s a pleasant, light, whitewashed room with chairs and there’s a young woman with long dark hair and a trendy fringe, dressed in a white linen blouse and trousers. ‘Hello everyone, my name’s Emma. I’m going to show you round today.’

‘Not Emma Woodhouse, surely,’ Mr Sole thinks he’s
so
hilarious.

Emma smiles, though she’s obviously heard it before, ‘No, I’m not Emma Woodhouse or Emma Knightley.’

‘But are you single though, miss?’ shouts Mathew Relf.

‘Mathew,’ his mum looks furious.

‘Not really relevant,’ says Emma with a smile, but Mr Sole is shaking his head.

‘No shouting out, and sensible questions only,’ he says, ‘do remember you’re representing Portsmouth City Comprehensive.’

Portsmouth City Dump, more like.

Emma then gives a talk about Jane Austen’s life at Chawton. ‘This house was provided by her brother, Edward, who owned nearby Chawton House, which you can also visit. It’s a much grander residence with a large hall for entertaining and a well-stocked library which Jane would often visit.

‘It was a great relief for Jane to have this house at Chawton and it enabled her to concentrate on her writing. It was here during the last eight years of her life that she revised
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
and
Northanger Abbey,
and also wrote
Mansfield Park, Emma
and
Persuasion.’

Emma takes us back out into the courtyard, round the back and through the front door which is at the side and probably wasn’t the front door in Austen’s day. We file through the shop and I’m watching Janine. Her left hand can’t help reaching out to touch a Regency-style bonnet, and a Chawton eraser, and I can see she’s really tempted by a quill – just like Jane used to use – but thankfully she places it back down.

Emma talks us through a Jane Austen timeline, detailing the big events Austen lived through; then it gets more interesting: a lock of hair, a ball and cup, ivory dominoes and Jane’s silhouette. She really lived here. She really lived.

‘And this is where she wrote,’ says Emma, as we enter a lovely square room with a window of small-paned glass. And that is where she sat, by the window at a tiny wooden desk.

‘Bit small, innit,’ says Mathew Relf.

‘That’s all she needed,’ says Emma, and then she tells us about the door and shows us how it creaks. ‘Jane Austen wouldn’t let anyone oil or mend the door, she liked to have a warning if her writing was about to be disturbed.’

Upstairs, we see the room where she slept and then there are the clothes, the tiny clothes.

‘You are joking me?’ says Chantal Thomas, her arms folded, as we stare at the mannequins dressed in Jane Austen’s printed muslin dresses.

‘Jane Austen wore that? I was bigger than that when I was eleven.’

A few people nod in agreement. Chantal Thomas has always been tall.

‘I’m nearly six foot now,’ she says, ‘I’ve been scouted by Models One.’

‘Oh, very impressive,’ says Emma, ‘but I have to say, I doubt any woman was as tall as you in Austen’s day. You see, people weren’t as well nourished as we are today. Okay, I’m going to take you out to the gardens now and we’ll have a look at the kitchen and laundry.’

Everyone starts to move, shuffling down the stairs in a long, snaking line and out of the back door, but I don’t want to go. There’s something about this place. I want to stay and try to feel Jane Austen’s presence. I can’t do that with my schoolmates around so I hang back, check no one’s noticed, and then scoot back into Jane’s writing room.

I can see her there sitting at the window, watching friends and neighbours and the world in general all passing by until she focuses in on her work in progress and her characters: Emma, Harriet, Mr Elton and Knightley—

She had it sussed – positioned herself perfectly. She could take in both the outside and inside, whoever was coming through the door. It’s all so simple. She had all she needed – a quiet little life and yet so much to say.

‘Lucy, there you are,
I’ve been looking for you,’ Mr Sole is frowning. ‘You upset my headcount. I couldn’t think who was missing, and then I realised it was you
yet again.’

‘Sorry, sir, I just wanted to have another look.’

Mr Sole stops, his frown fades away. ‘And what is it you see, Lucy?’

He’s really interested, waiting to hear, waiting as long as it takes.

I look back at the room, from door to desk to window.

‘I see that you need only a little space, a tiny desk and a creaky door.’