Jane, Actually Read online

  JaneAusten3 Says:

  What is a shiksa?

  BertieFromHants Says:

  LOL It’s a Gentile woman, a non Jew. Sorry, I’ve been in Florida quite some time and have successfully absorbed the culture.

  JaneAusten3 Says:

  Oh, so you are making fun of me—again. But I suppose I am “going native.” It is the folly—or the talent—of the British to do so. But the longer I’ve existed and the more I’ve travelled, I find myself enjoying the mutability of mankind more and more. (JaneAusten3 is still typing.)

  JaneAusten3 Says:

  We started off with the same basic needs for food and shelter and yet we end up with the Anglican Church, Hindoos and Scientology. So many faiths, beliefs, customs, rules and accepted behaviours and all the … well I will not be so judgmental as to call them wrong, but …

  BertieFromHants Says:

  My word, Jane, you’ve grown philosophic from a simple jibe.

  JaneAusten3 Says:

  Yes, well travel has that effect on me. Restore me to the quiet and green of Hampshire and I shall promptly rusticate.

  BertieFromHants Says:

  Have you found yourself a small fish in a big pond?

  JaneAusten3 Says:

  How perceptive you are, although in fact I’ll have you know I am considered a person of some importance now, but yes, perhaps I do feel myself thrust into a world of business of which I know little. Enough self pity, however, tell me of your family, especially your little Alicia. How did she perform at the school fete?

  Albert talked of his granddaughter and great grandchildren and his great, great grandchildren with delight, and Jane envied him his relationship with his family. It had been relatively easy for him, a man not made famous, to be welcomed into his extended family. Jane had little contact with her family, although she had received warm wishes from Robert Knight, president of the Jane Austen Society and a descendant of her brother Edward.

  She had, of course, followed the lives of those relatives alive when she had died, and even the generation that followed, but drifted away from them as she had drifted away from England. And upon her return, she found a world too changed and a family unrecognizable. By the Great War, she no longer followed her family, save for a very distant relation who she thought resembled her brother Henry and whose name he shared. And it was interest in this relative that brought her to the mud and the horror of the Somme and unbeknownst to her at the time, also to be in attendance at the death of the man who would be her friend decades later.

  . . .

  After their chat ended, Albert chuckled at the interest of his friend in the little reports of his family. She had actually corrected him on the age of Thomas and she reminded him that it had been she who recommended the Thomas the Tank Engine DVD as his birthday present.

  He also had to laugh at how deftly she’d managed to avoid rejecting his offer to pay her admission to the AGM. He had an uncharitable thought she’d invented the job as an excuse not to accept his charity, but as she did confirm she would be attending—as a paying attendee—he had to assume her employment was genuine.

  And as always after a chat with her he felt the warm glow he remembered after receiving one of the letters from his wife. And as always he felt the tug of guilt that this woman should excite in him feelings he knew were the province of his long dead wife Catherine.

  He tried to push the guilt aside and instead he found additional humour in the patterns of his friend’s conversation. She always began her chats in the modern vernacular but by the end of it would always devolve into the language of Hampshire. She might not actually claim to be Jane Austen, but she certainly was of Hampshire.

  And she had died a long time ago, for she used expressions familiar to him from his youth. As a gentleman, he’d never pried into her age, but he had the unfounded belief that she might have died during the same epidemic that claimed him.

  And then he remembered his own language, how he became far courtlier than was his wont when alive. His romance of Catherine was never as mannered as his conversations with Jane. He had fallen in love with Catherine on the spot and within a week had proposed and within a month had married. His memory of the eloquence of his proposal shamed him, it being along the lines of “Wotcher say we get married?”

  She had deserved better than him, certainly better than being a widow at twenty with two babies.

  Is that my compensation? I gave Catherine my passion and I give Jane what little eloquence I can command.

  The thought struck him hard and brought him out of the AfterNet field and made him aware of his surroundings and the sleeping octogenarian at the card table and the brisk steps of the caregivers in the hallway and the overhead fluorescent lights of the games room, especially the one that presaged its imminent death by its annoying flicker.

  I just equated Jane with Catherine. I just equated a dead woman with … And then that thought struck him even harder. They’re both dead and so am I. I’m being a ridiculous old man. Even Mr Cardenas is more alive than me, he thought, looking at his fellow inmate who’d fallen asleep in the games room.

  Day is dead, and let us sleep.1 If only I could.

  1 From the poem of the same name by Augusta Davies Webster

  Something fresher

  It was the best of times?

  “It was hardly the best of times, but Judith had to concede it was hardly the worst. Mostly it just lay there, waiting.” She laughed at her own cleverness or perhaps pretension. Truth was, she was not as enamoured of Dickens as a novelist should be. She tore the paper out of the typewriter, mashed it into a ball and threw it at the wastebasket. It did not go in but bounced off the edge and fell to the floor where it joined its compatriots of similar failed openings.

  Undaunted, she pulled another sheet from the ream of crisp, white blank paper and loaded the typewriter for another attempt. She sat poised, her fingers resting lightly on the keys, a cigarette dangling from lips in what she hoped was a world weary attitude, something befitting a novelist attempting the definitive book that would capture the essence of an entire generation scarred by four years of war.

  “Are you still here?” she suddenly heard. Her flatmate had entered unbeknownst to her and was looking over her shoulder. “Christ, you still haven’t written a thing!”

  Jane looked at what she’d written and closed the window, the mouse pointer poised above “Don’t Save” in answer to the question “Do you want to save the changes to Document2?”

  She didn’t know how to answer the question. Her earlier thought of writing a story about the WAAF she’d followed had somehow become a story about a woman novelist trying to write about the Great War. She blamed Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Stein and all those other American expatriates who had flocked to Paris and whose writing she had at first detested and then embraced. She had met Hemingway in Paris, or rather looked over his shoulder while he wrote, and had admired the passion that drove his work, but she could not understand his spare prose that laid bare the world under a harsh and unforgiving sun. With time, though, she came to accept it as a new style for a new world and had experimented with it again and again.

  She clicked “Save” after naming the document.

  “Hi Jane, still at it?” Tamara asked as suddenly as the fictional flatmate she’d discarded.

  “Oh, hello Tamara. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you enter.”

  Tamara threw off her coat, which missed her target, the couch, and it landed on the floor. Then she indecorously flopped onto the couch.

  “How’s that even possible? I thought you saw in 360.”

  “I’m afraid it’s still possible to be unaware even then,” Jane replied. She looked at the clock on the terminal and saw that Tamara had returned early from her job and that it would still be some time before Melody might return.

  Her calculations made her feel guilty. There was no real disagreement between Jane and Tamara but simply no real agreement on tastes or interests other than the
ir mutual association with Melody. Tamara worked for the city of New York as a planner, a job Jane still found incomprehensible whenever she contemplated the vast insanity of the city. How could anything so chaotic and beautiful be planned?

  They were very cordial, however, and whenever Melody was present they would have no difficulty, but without her they simply had no idea what to say.

  “You look as if you’ve had a difficult day,” Jane observed.

  “But not a bad day. I got approval for a project I’ve been working on. It should let us get by with 15 fewer street cleaning crews just by being a little more flexible with scheduling, which is useful because they removed 18 street cleaning crews from next year’s budget.”

  “I know next to nothing of these matters, but I imagine both numbers are significant.”

  “You’re right. And the really amazing thing is that if other departments could apply this same kind of thinking … hey, let me get some wine and I’ll tell you about it.”

  Tamara got off the couch and went into the kitchen and poured herself a glass, talking loudly enough for the terminal to recognize her. She related to Jane the new schedule she’d devised, that involved 12-hour shifts with rotating days off and bemoaned the resistance that the union had mounted to her plans. But other concessions had finally won over the last resistance and the plan would be implemented in a few months time. To Jane, the plan seemed as if it might cause a major disruption in the lives of the employees, but she refrained from any negative comments, happy to have found some rapport with the lover of her agent and good friend.

  Jane did her best to engage Tamara, congratulating her and asking questions where appropriate. Tamara was only too happy to talk, glad to have an audience and to hear Jane’s congratulations. She was very animated in her descriptions of the various opponents of her plans. They were mostly men, of course, and Tamara offered impressions of them that emphasized their pompousness and intractability.

  “Thanks very much for hearing me out, Jane. I don’t usually get to go on about my victories in the planning department. Melody tends to glaze over when I talk about work; it’s not very glamorous.”

  “But it is important. And I can understand your need to celebrate. I used to dance about the room when I had found the solution to a plot complication.”

  “Yeah, that’s what it’s like. I needed to dance about the room. So, were you working when I came in? I’m sorry if I interrupted you.”

  “No, the interruption was welcome. It wasn’t going very well, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, if you don’t want to talk about it …”

  “I would love to talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

  Jane explained to Tamara her need to write something new and her attempts to write something of a little more import.

  “So what are you writing?”

  “It’s the story of a young woman, a writer like myself, writing at the end of the Great War. She’s writing about the war and her involvement.”

  “But she’s not like a soldier, I mean not if it’s World War I.”

  “No, she was a spy, in France,” Jane said, which was a surprise to her. She had not thought that far ahead in the story; it truly was just an experiment, an exercise for the left hand. But suddenly her heroine was a spy.

  “Wow, that sounds pretty interesting. I suppose she falls in love with a guy.”

  “Well yes, there is a romance.” Jane had not specifically meant to write a romance, but she enjoyed describing a book that she thought Tamara might enjoy.

  “It sounds very exciting, not like … I mean, the books you wrote …”

  “That’s all right Tamara. I realize I am not known for writing thrillers.”

  “So, do you know much about World War I? Oh, what a stupid question. You lived through it. Well I don’t mean lived. I mean you experienced it, didn’t you?”

  “I did and it was … it was during one of those periods where, perhaps understandably, I was despairing of mankind. It was all so familiar and reminded me of our long war with France, when I was alive, I mean. And here we were at war again, only now with France against Germany, which seemed incomprehensible because England’s ties with Germany were so many and so strong.”

  “And how’s it going? The writing I mean.”

  Jane was tempted to answer her question with a platitude—she’d heard that one writer had responded to the same question with the phrase “it’s a process.” And Jane had always been a furtive writer, loathe to divulge her progress to anyone. Any dancing she might have done was away from watchful eyes. But today she decided to be honest.

  “It’s not going well, and please don’t tell Melody because she’ll worry.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help? To make it easier for you to work. I realize … I realize that maybe I haven’t … that I haven’t been as open to you as I should.” Tamara put down her wine glass and sat upright. “I’m really kind of jealous you know. Or I was. I mean how can I compete with Jane Austen?”

  “Oh Tamara, how could you be so foolish. Melody loves you utterly and completely. You pierce her soul.”1

  At these words Tamara’s eyes grew wide and the smile on her face made clear her appreciation of the sentiment. Granted Jane felt a little guilty for borrowing from her own work, but she knew Tamara was not a fan.

  “Thank you Jane. Melody’s kind of … well she’s never spoken like that … but you think that’s what she really thinks?”

  “You may depend on it.”

  Tamara reached in a pocket for a tissue and dried her eyes.

  “Uh, so what I was saying before. Is there some way I can help? I mean I don’t know how, but … I mean what’s the problem? Is it writer’s block?”

  “Ha! If it only were. I will tell you something that I don’t think I could tell anyone else. I’ve lost my voice. I don’t know how to write anymore.”

  “But you just wrote your sequel, I mean your completion, Sandytown.”

  “I finished that a century ago. I haven’t written anything new since.” Of course this was an overstatement of the facts. She had written many small stories and countless undeliverable letters to Cassandra.

  “Oh, OK, that’s a dry spell. Was it for lack of trying?”

  “Partially. I’ve seen so much since I died. So many wonderful and horrible things, but I’ve been apart from the world, just observing.”

  “But isn’t that what a writer does? They stand back and watch. I’ve always found it a little creepy, to be honest. Most of the authors Melody represents are … they’re kind of weird, just a little detached from reality.”

  Jane considered this. She knew that might be an apt description of her while alive.

  “So what else is going on in the novel you’re writing?”

  Jane briefly considered admitting to Tamara that she had written only a few opening paragraphs, but with a ready audience, she decided to set aside her caution and made up a story for Tamara, much like she’d done when she was much, much, much younger.

  1 In Persuasion, Austen’s last completed novel, Captain Wentworth says this of heroine Anne Elliot in a letter he sends her

  The Real Jane Austen

  Melody learns of Court’s book

  Melody looked at the press release for the third time, still willing the words to be different if she just read it again:

  Courtney Blake’s book examines the personality of Jane Austen with the tools of modern-day medicine, forensic psychiatry and textual analysis to expose the famous Regency author as being much more sexually aware and adventurous than her reputation as a spinster would suggest. Blake’s detective work even suggests Austen did not die ignorant of carnal pleasures and identifies her possible partners, both from the usual suspects and some that will surprise and even shock Austen fans. Blake is aided by in his analysis by FBI profilers, neuro-linguistics and computer-aided analysis of the text of Austen’s novels and letters.

  The press release included a picture of the book cove
r, which showed a woman with heaving bosom more appropriate to a bodice ripper than any sort of serious examination of Austen.

  Oh my God, this is horrible. Poor Jane. I have to tell her right away before she sees it. Melody was shaking from the outrage of it.

  She could imagine the distress of her client and friend, further summoning her anger against this insect who would dare besmirch Jane’s reputation. Her anger could not be contained and she stood from her desk and paced angrily around her office. Finally her emotions drove her from the little space, now filled with boxes of stuff waiting to be moved, and she left her office for the hallway. She walked up and down the hallway, past all the other little offices of accountants and dentists and other professionals desperate for any space in the city that wouldn’t bankrupt them.

  Slowly her anger cooled and her instincts as agent and publicist took over. The PRNewswire release said Blake’s book was due to be released just before the AGM. It smacked of a rushed release to capitalize on Sanditon, hoping to ride that book’s sales.

  But it could work both ways, Melody realized. Sex sells and sex was something conspicuously missing from Sanditon. This Blake creature’s book could save Jane from eternal spinsterhood, even if it isn’t true.

  But what if it is? Is that so bad? Why should I resent it if Jane didn’t die a virgin? Of course, what really worried Melody was that “surprise and even shock” line. Is it going to revisit the accusation that Jane was a lesbian? The thought first angered Melody and then confused her. How can I be mad at Jane were I to learn she’s a lesbian?

  But it would be a betrayal, Melody knew. It would be the crushing realization that a very close friend had kept something from you, something that would help you understand and identify with that person. After reading and countlessly rereading Austen, Melody thought she knew everything about Jane, ignoring the very real difficulty of ever truly knowing the elusive author.

  I would have something in common with her that I never knew I had, but I don’t want her to change. I want my Jane Austen to be the Austen I grew up with.