First Impressions: A Novel of Old Books, Unexpected Love, and Jane Austen (2 page)

A
FTER FIVE YEARS
at Oxford, Sophie Collingwood had mastered the art of reading while walking. She knew every curve of the Thames Path from Oxford to Godstow, and had the ability to sense and avoid oncoming pedestrians. This was a useful skill for someone so absorbed by the books she read that she often pictured herself at the center of whatever romance or mystery or adventure played out on their pages. On a sunny day in July, she was walking opposite the wide expanse of Port Meadow, where horses and cattle stood grazing as they had for centuries. On the river a quartet of picnickers were making their way back downstream in a punt, and the smooth sound of the flat-bottomed boat gliding across the water seemed the perfect accompaniment to the day. In the midst of this idyll, Sophie spotted, over the top of her well-worn copy of
Mansfield Park
, a young man lying under a tree, reading. His artfully relaxed sprawl and his intentionally disheveled clothes radiated a combination of arrogance and apathy.
Slovenly
would be the best word to describe him, she decided—the unwashed hair, the shredded jeans, the faded T-shirt. It was a style that both puzzled and annoyed her. Sure, Sophie didn’t always go out of her way to look good, but to go out of one’s way to look
bad
just seemed rude. As she drew level with him he greeted her in a lazy American voice.

“How’s it goin’?” he asked, but Sophie only raised her book higher and walked on, pretending his question had been lost in the breeze. As she rounded the next bend in the river and was lost to his sight, she had a sudden recollection. She had heard that voice before. It had been two nights ago, at the Bear. She had been standing at the bar waiting to order drinks for a group of friends who were discussing the relative merits of
Mansfield Park
and
Persuasion
, when that brash American accent had cut through the clamor of the crowd.

“What really gets me is these Austen fangirls. Running around pretending the sun rises and sets with some chick who wrote soap operas two hundred years ago.” And then, in a mocking imitation of an English girl, he had added, “I think
Mansfield Park
isn’t properly appreciated by the establishment.” Sophie had crossed back to the table with her drinks, and the sound of his voice had been blessedly swallowed up by the noise of the crowd, but the damage had been done, for it had been Sophie who had made the remark about
Mansfield Park
, not five minutes earlier. When she told her friends what she had heard, they had all had a good laugh about the whole thing and had quickly come to the conclusion that this conceited American was a prat.

After a half-pint of bitter in the garden of the Trout, Sophie headed back toward Oxford. It would take her just over an hour to walk the four miles to Christ Church, and that should be enough time, she thought, to see Fanny and Edmund married. But, just as things were beginning to look inevitable for the two young lovers, Sophie heard once again that insufferable voice.

“Whatcha reading?” it asked, as Sophie approached. He spoke louder this time, and she couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” said Sophie, “but I happen to be reading Jane Austen.”

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”

Sophie was so taken aback that she almost smiled in spite of herself. After his comments in the Bear the last thing she expected from him was a Jane Austen quote.

“Surprised to hear me say that?”

“It’s just that that’s a rather obscure Austen quote for a . . . a . . .”

“A what?” asked the man. “An unsophisticated, uncultured, unenlightened dilettante?”

“That’s not what I meant,” said Sophie. “It’s just that most people haven’t read . . .”

“
Northanger Abbey
?”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re surprised since I’m not wearing tweed and sitting in a dusty study, that I have the first idea about Austen.”

“On the contrary,” she said politely. “I think lounging on the banks of the Thames on a sunny summer day is the perfect way to read Austen.”

“Well, to be fair, there are two reasons I can quote that passage so precisely. First, I saw it on a T-shirt in the Bodleian shop yesterday, so it’s not as obscure as you think.”

Sophie could barely conceal her irritation at this. “And the second reason?” she said icily.

He held up a battered paperback copy of
Northanger Abbey
. “I just read it about ten seconds before you walked up. I’m Eric. Eric Hall.” He extended his hand without raising himself off the ground, simultaneously tossing his hair out of his eyes. Sophie fought to keep her face from betraying that she already knew he was a jerk. And yet she sensed that behind his studied appearance and almost scripted insolence there was something softer. It wasn’t just that he read Jane Austen. It was the way he waited for her response with almost painful anticipation—like a little boy seeking approval.

“Sophie,” she said, offering her hand but not her surname.

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“Is it really?” said Sophie. “I thought you didn’t care for Austen fangirls.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“You said so yourself, in the Bear. And don’t you think that Jane Austen is just a chick who wrote soap operas?”

“You heard that?” said Eric. “Well, I only meant that I don’t care for people who worship what they don’t understand. You have to admit, there are an awful lot of girls bouncing around Oxford whose main impression of Jane Austen is Colin Firth in a wet shirt.”

Sophie smiled in spite of herself—much as she hated to admit it, Eric had a point. She recalled one doe-eyed girl lurking at the edge of her circle of literary friends in the Bear. From her few intrusions into the conversation it seemed that she thought Mr. Darcy’s principal character trait was the “adorable” way his wet hair hung across his forehead.

“Now,” said Eric, “if you’re walking back into Oxford, I think I’ll join you. We can keep talking about Jane Austen if you like.” He stood up without brushing the dirt and grass from his pants and slipped his book into his pocket.

“Do you promise not to imitate my voice?” said Sophie.

“What do you mean?”

“I think
Mansfield Park
isn’t properly appreciated by the establishment,” said Sophie, doing her best impersonation of his impersonation.

“That was you?”

She only scowled in response.

“Well, come on,” said Eric, “it’s such a clichéd line—all that stuff about
Mansfield Park
not being appreciated. It may not make as good a movie as some of the others, but of course it’s appreciated.”

“Even if you were right, that’s entirely beside the point.”

“And what is the point?”

“That you’re an ass,” said Sophie.

“Yes, but wouldn’t talking to me be more interesting than walking alone?”

She stared at him, detecting an intensity in his eyes that belied his relaxed attitude. Finally she sighed and said, “Marginally.”

“Great,” said Eric, starting toward Oxford. She wasn’t sure how it happened, but by the time they reached the edge of Port Meadow, they were deep in conversation about the youthful style of
Northanger Abbey
.

“Listen, tomorrow’s Saturday—I thought I might drive down to Steventon,” said Eric at a lull in the conversation. “You want to come?” Sophie had, in fact, never been to Steventon, the village in Hampshire where Jane Austen had spent the first twenty-five years of her life and had written the first drafts of three of her novels. She would have loved to go, but not with him, and in any case she couldn’t help laughing at his transparency.

“Does that work?” she asked.

“Does what work?”

“That ploy. You find out a girl’s favorite author and then offer to drive her to Jane Austen’s birthplace, or George Orwell’s gravesite, or Charles Dickens’s favorite pub.”

“I don’t like Dickens.”

“How can you not like Dickens?”

“All that poverty. It depresses me. At least Austen’s heroines end up in nice big houses.”

“Setting aside the fact that I find you disagreeable,” said Sophie, “the truth is I have plans tomorrow.”

“Oh, I don’t think you find me disagreeable,” said Eric.

“Then how do you think I find you?”

“I think you’re intrigued by me—and even though I’m rude and generally unpolished, you think you might have finally met someone who appreciates Jane Austen as much as you do.”

“When I heard you the other night, my first impression was that you were a prat,” said Sophie, annoyed that he had so accurately guessed what she was thinking. She had dated Clifton for two years and he
never
knew what she was thinking. This guy had known her for twenty minutes and he could read her like a book. It was unnerving.

“First impressions can be misleading,” said Eric. “Just ask Eliza Bennet. Come to Steventon with me.”

“I have plans.”

“What plans?”

“I have to go home for the weekend. My mother’s having a . . . thing.”

“A thing?”

“A garden thing,” said Sophie. “It’s a sculpture show. My mother is a bit obsessive about her garden. She thinks it’s the finest in Oxfordshire.”

“What sort of things does she grow?”

“Latin things,” she said. “English names aren’t good enough for my mother. Everything is Latin.” She hadn’t meant to sound quite so harsh. Sophie actually liked her mother’s use of Latin—it reminded her of her Uncle Bertram reading Horace to help her fall asleep when she was a girl.

“I take it you’re not a gardener,” said Eric.

“I like to
read
in the garden,” said Sophie, “and I can tell a flower from a shrubbery and a shrubbery from a tree, but my thumb has always been distinctly black.”

“And your father?”

“What about my father?”

“What sort of chap is he?” asked Eric.

“Oh, really, don’t use the word ‘chap.’ You’re American; don’t try to pretend otherwise.”

“Sorry, what sort of bloke is he?”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “He likes to shoot things. They’re quite the pair, my parents. Mother only wants to grow things and Father only wants to kill them.”

“Sounds like you don’t like them very much.”

“Mother and I get on well enough,” she said. “She’s not much of a reader, but we like to sit in the kitchen and talk all morning over coffee. I don’t get to do that as often as I used to.” It suddenly struck Sophie that, in spite of her apathy about her mother’s garden, she was really looking forward to the morning
after
the sculpture show, when she and her mother could have one of their long relaxing talks.

“So it’s your father you don’t like. Is he just annoying or is it something worse?”

Eric’s question cut a little too close to the bone, so she turned the conversation on him.

“What about you? Are you on one of those American university study abroad programs?” she asked.

“Hardly,” he said. “I’m a little old for that.” He explained that after getting his M.A. he had taught at Berkeley for two years but was now between jobs, so he was taking a year off, hitchhiking across Europe, and reading great books in beautiful places. “You know, Proust in Paris, Dante in Florence, and Jane Austen in the English countryside. I suppose you think that sounds a bit pompous.”

“I think it sounds wonderful,” said Sophie, who could think of no better way to spend a year. “But, if you’re hitchhiking, how were you going to drive me to Steventon?”

“Good question,” said Eric. They had reached Osney Lock. He leaned against the white metal railing that separated the nineteenth-century lock, with its hand-cranked wooden gates, from the narrow width of the path. They stood watching as the water pouring into the lock slowly raised up a long, narrow canal boat. Sophie loved the locks and almost always stopped to watch the traffic whenever she passed one.

“I would have found someone to loan me a car,” Eric said as the boatman cranked open the upstream gates and the boat began to move slowly away. “I’m very persuasive.”

She wasn’t quite sure how he had done it, since she had thought they were both watching the canal boat, but suddenly she found him looking directly into her eyes and she felt her knees go weak. The desperation and need for approval were gone, replaced by a confidence that both frightened her and drew her in. She turned away and continued down the path toward Oxford, convinced now that he could, indeed, be very persuasive. She resolved not to look into those eyes again.

“I don’t get along with my father, either,” he said, falling back into step with her.

“I’m shocked,” said Sophie. “I mean, unkempt and unemployed—he should be so proud.”

“Sarcasm!” said Eric. “Bully for you.”

Perhaps she was being too harsh—after all, they had been having a pleasant conversation—but the way he’d gazed into her eyes had really thrown her. “I’m sorry,” she said, more gently. “Tell me about your father.”

“I’d rather talk about yours,” he said. “I look forward to meeting him.”

“Oh, I hardly think that’s going to happen.”