I Was Jane Austen's Best Friend (19 page)

She went off without saying anything else and I was a bit puzzled.
I wondered if I had offended her — or perhaps she thought the velvet bandeau was a better present than her silk ribbon.

I didn’t think about it too much, though. All the way up the stairs I could feel the tingle of a beating pulse in the place where Henry had put his finger, just on the soft place under my chin.

Something very embarrassing happened later on. I was dusting the breakfast parlour after lunch while Jane was practising the piano. The boys hadn’t gone back into the schoolroom yet. They were all shouting and laughing and making a great noise on the stairs.

And I overheard a conversation.

And it was about me.

And I didn’t move away as I should have done.

I just stayed there with the duster in my hand, listening.

It was my aunt and my uncle in the study next to the breakfast room. They had been talking for quite some time — about vegetables and about Mr Austen’s farm, I think — and I had been taking no notice.

And then I heard my name.

‘Mr Austen,’ my aunt had said. Her voice, as usual, was the voice of someone who is in a rush and has something of importance to say. It is a very high-pitched voice — like a corncrake, Jane says. It’s the sort of voice that easily goes through walls.

‘Mr Austen,’ she said. ‘I wish you would have a
word with Henry and tell him to stop flirting with Jenny. He’ll turn that girl’s head.’

Mr Austen must have said something. I just heard a murmur.

‘Nonsense,’ said my aunt. ‘She’s no child. She’s sixteen years old. That’s just the age when girls get all sorts of silly notions about love into their heads.’

One of the boys shouted something and then they all went running out of the hall door. I could hear the noise of their boots on the steps, and through the window I saw them running across the grass towards the field. Sometimes they played ball for a while before lessons began.

Now that they had gone, everything was quiet so I could hear Mr Austen’s voice quite well.

‘They would make a lovely couple, Jenny and Henry, he so tall, dark and handsome and she so small, blonde and pretty — lovely girl, lovely hair, lovely eyes, sweet-natured, too; she would make a perfect wife.’ From the sound of his voice I could guess that he had a smile on his face.

‘Nonsense!’ Mrs Austen’s voice was even more high-pitched than ever. ‘Don’t talk such nonsense, Mr Austen. Both of them will be as poor as church mice. How could they get married? They won’t have two pennies to rub together.’

Mr Austen was saying something about how they had married without many prospects, but I didn’t wait to hear any more. I slipped out of the breakfast
room, replaced the duster on the shelf of the cupboard under the stairs and tiptoed up to my bedroom. I was glad that Jane was still playing the piano; if she had been in the bedroom I know she would have asked me why I was so flustered. When I got to the bedroom I leaned first one cheek and then the other against the icy coldness of the window glass.

Me marry Henry! I had never imagined that anyone would even have thought of that. I wondered whether to talk to Jane about it, but then I decided against it. I thought she was a bit short with me, a bit abrupt — perhaps she is a little jealous because Henry, her adored brother, gave me such a beautiful present and made such a fuss of me. I resolved that I wouldn’t mention Henry to Jane. I didn’t want her to think that I was a flirt like Eliza.

I wasn’t sure whether Jane would want to go down to the village today, but she did.

George was pleased to see us. He ran up straight away, and now that I wasn’t so scared of him I could hear that he was saying, ‘Jane.’ I tried not to look away, but to look at him. He was occupied with Jane so I could really look at him without feeling embarrassed. I began to think that he really did look like one of the Austen family. His hair is brown and curly, just like Jane’s hair, and although his face was dirty and one side of it is a bit twisted, his eyes are the same green-brown colour as Jane’s, and as Mr
Austen’s eyes also. There was an expression in them that made me very sad. They looked as if he were trying to say something, but couldn’t: almost as if he were inside a cage and trying to get out. I wondered why he couldn’t talk. He seemed to be able to make noises and I suddenly thought it must be terrible if he thought he was saying words, but yet no one could understand them.

Funnily enough, he seemed to be brighter and better today. Perhaps Bet is right — perhaps having a fit is like a very severe sneeze and then feeling your head clear. Now that he has got over the fit, George feels better.

Jane had another slice of cake and we taught him the sign for the letter
C
with very little trouble.

On the way back I suggested to Jane that the next time we see him we should go over the three letters again and make sure that he knows them. I couldn’t think of any food beginning with
D
so I thought we might skip that and go on to
E
for egg. The Austens keep their own hens so it is always easy to get hold of an egg.

Sunday, 20 March 1791

James arrived so early this morning that he was in the house before any of the family was up. He had taken the overnight coach from Oxford. Mrs Austen wanted him to go to bed after breakfast, but he wouldn’t. He said that he had come on purpose to practise the play and that he wanted to have a really good practise because this was Cousin Eliza’s last day.

‘I want everyone there — no one going off to shoot crows,’ he said, glaring at Frank.

Actually Frank was quite good at the practise today. Cassandra was being wardrobe mistress and she dressed him up as Fag, the servant, in an old, slightly ragged coat of Mr Austen’s. He was very funny as the servant.

‘
Rich!
’ he declaimed, sounding, except for his half-broken voice, just like his father in the pulpit. ‘
Why, I believe she owns half the stocks! Zounds, Thomas! She could pay the national debt as easily as I could my washerwoman! She has a lapdog that eats out of gold — she feeds her parrot with small pearls — and all her curl-papers are made of banknotes!
’

James and Eliza were funny too. I thought they acted very well together. Jane couldn’t stop laughing when James said, in very prim tones, after Mrs Malaprop was complaining about Lydia (Cassandra), ‘
It is not to be wondered at, ma’am — all this is the natural consequence of teaching girls to read. Had
I a thousand daughters, by heaven! I’d as soon have them taught the black art as their alphabet!
’

‘Time for church, everyone,’ said Mrs Austen, putting her head round the door and grinning at the way that Mrs Malaprop was mixing up words with other words that sounded like them, like calling
particulars ‘perpendiculars
’.

‘Oh, Aunt dear, I have such a headache. I vow it is a true migraine.’ Eliza clasped her hand to her forehead dramatically, as if she were still in the middle of the play. ‘Oh dear, I so hate to miss church, but I fear I cannot go.’ And then she staggered off with a quick look over her shoulder at Henry. Jane grinned and nudged me.

Henry came with us all along the lane to the church, but I didn’t see him in church, though I turned around a few times to see whether he was standing at the back.

When we came back from church though, there was no sign of Eliza, and Henry said he wanted to practise the scene with me, and that was good. I lost my shyness as I was determined to be as like Eliza as I could (but without the French accent) and it was so lovely afterwards, while Jane was playing on the piano, when Henry whispered in my ear some words from the play: ‘
Let music be the food of love.
’

* * *

After dinner, Cassandra, Jane and I went up to the guest bedroom to help Eliza to pack her clothes as she was returning to London that evening.

I said very politely to Cousin Eliza that it was a shame that she had to go back especially as she was returning a few days later, and her answer gave me a shock.

‘Ah, but,
chérie
, I must go back to my poor little boy.’ She pronounced the word
little
as ‘leetle’.

I said that I didn’t know she had a little boy — I wondered why no one had mentioned him. And then, since she had called him ‘poor’, I asked her politely whether her little boy was unwell.

‘Poor angel! He is never well! But I have found a physician that will give a new treatment.’ She was mopping her eyes with her handkerchief and Cassandra was shaking her head and frowning at me so I said no more. A minute later Eliza had gone to the window, laughing gaily and calling down to Henry. She accepted his invitation to come and see the new horse that he had bought and went clattering down the stairs on her high-heeled French shoes.

When she had gone out, Cassandra told me the story of Hastings, Eliza’s son. Apparently he was now aged about four or five, but he had not been
normal from the age of ten months. He suffered from fits from an early age and could not stand or walk unaided, though Eliza and her mother had managed to teach him his alphabet, according to what Eliza told her uncle.

‘The trouble with Eliza is that she is so stubborn. She will not admit to herself that the child will never progress. She insists on keeping him with her and trying every cure that comes up. Last year it was sea bathing — goodness knows what it will be next year. She should find some responsible person to care for him and then just put him out of her life.’ And Cassandra sighed in an elderly fashion over her cousin’s obstinacy.

I said nothing, but I did not agree with Cassandra. I found myself admiring and liking Eliza more than I had done before.

I vowed to myself that if I had a child who had problems, like George or little Hastings, I would not abandon it, but would love and care for it tenderly and to me it would be the most precious child in the world.

At the end of the day, we all walked up the hill to see James and Cousin Eliza off on the stagecoach — Henry was going to stay on at Steventon for the week.

And this time I was the one that suggested to Jane that we go and see George on our way back and get on with his lessons. We didn’t have any food for him,
but I had my sketchbook with me and I thought he might like to see the stagecoach that I had drawn. He nodded when he saw that, but on another page I had a picture of a gun, which I had drawn for Frank in my sketchbook, like this, and George was more interested in that. As soon as he saw it, he said, ‘Bang!’ instantly. Jane tried to get him to make the sign for the letter
G
, but he would not do it, just kept saying, ‘Bang!’ and smiling as if he wanted us to be pleased with him.

‘I think that is fine, Jane,’ I said after a while. I could see that she was getting upset and George was beginning to look at her in a worried way. ‘I think it’s even better that he says “bang”. That means something to him. It probably means that he can hear a little, also, if he can hear a loud sound like a shot. He’s probably not completely deaf. Good boy, George, good boy,’ and I patted him on the back and Jane threw her arms around him and kissed him.

Monday, 21 March 1791

When we finished our lessons this morning, Frank gave me the usual riding lesson on the donkey. I was getting on well now, and Jane could perfectly well have done it, but Frank insisted that he was the one to teach me. Cassandra is probably right about Frank. He was bored. He couldn’t wait to get back to his life at sea. He and Jane kept arguing about the best way to teach me.

When we came back in, Mrs Tuckley was there and I explained to her about the new beads. She looked at them dubiously and said they would take a long time to sew on and that I should think very carefully about whether there would be time for them.

‘You’ll need to count them, Miss Cooper,’ she said with a sigh as she slipped her thimble on to her finger. ‘Then you’ll have to plan where to put them. There may not be enough to arrange all over the gown.’

I got a pewter plate from the sideboard, opened the box of glass beads and began to count them carefully, one by one, on to the plate.