Writing Jane Austen (14 page)

“Do you know, I might just rent a car and drive out to Lacock. Is it far?”

“About fifteen miles, it’ll take you half an hour or so.”

Bel came in and caught the last part of their conversation. “Rent a car? Don’t do that, you can borrow the van tomorrow, I shan’t be needing it.”

With Bel’s words, what had been no more than a vague idea morphed into a plan. Georgina read the leaflet again. She liked the sound of Lacock, good background she told herself, and the museum was pleasingly unrelated to Jane Austen. A peaceful, uneventful trip into the countryside. “Thank you, Bel, I’ll take the van and go to Lacock tomorrow.”

The car park at Lacock only had a dozen or so cars in it, so Georgina had a choice of spaces. Not under one of those trees, damp leaves were festooned across the windows and windscreens of the cars parked there. She paused, swung into a central space, and switched the engine off. Before she could unfasten her safety belt, a thud from the back of the van jolted her forward.

Great. What idiot had run into her? She got out and went round to the rear of the van. A man stood there, inspecting her bumper, a short, middle-aged man of tawny appearance, like a well-bred dog: tawny hair, brown Barbour, ochre cord trousers, tan suede shoes and a peevish expression.

“You weren’t there when I started to back,” he said by way of introduction.

“You run into the back of a car, it’s your fault,” Georgina returned with spirit. “What’s the damage?”

The tawny man gave the rear bumper a shove with his foot, and it fell with a gentle thump to the ground. “That.” He picked it up. “Better shove it in the back, can’t leave it lying around here.”

“I’d better find a garage,” said Georgina. Damn it, damn this incompetent driver, just how she didn’t want to spend her day out, looking for someone to repair Bel’s van.

“Shouldn’t bother, if I were you. Where are you from?”

“I’ve driven from Bath.”

“When you get back, take it to your garage, they’ll have it back on in a trice.”

“It isn’t my van. And what if some other witless driver runs into the back of me on my way there?”

“They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place. Let me know how much it costs to put the bumper back on, I’ll send a cheque.” He opened the rear doors of the van and put the bumper inside. Then, after taking out a large yellow handkerchief and carefully wiping the dirt off his fingers, he extended a hand. “James Palmer. I’ll give you my address and all that, so you or the owner of the van can come after me if I don’t pay up. Which I assure you I will.”

Georgina hesitated. Trust him, don’t trust him? “Georgina Jackson,” she said, shaking his still muddy hand and wishing she hadn’t.

An alert look came over his face. “The writer?
Magdalene Crib
?”

“Yes,” said Georgina, with a familiar jump of pleasure; she never got over the thrill of meeting people who recognized her name.

Usually, the dialogue went like this:

—Oh, you’re a writer, are you? What sort?

—I’m a novelist.

—Have you had anything published?

Internal voice: That’s what being a writer means.

—Yes, I have.

—What did you say your name was?

—Georgina Jackson.

—Can’t say I’ve heard of you. Do you make a lot of money writing?

Internal voice: Is that what writing means to you?

—I’m not a bestselling author.

—Oh, literary, then. Although some of those authors make a bundle, don’t they? Ian whatshisname, types like that?

—Yes, some writers make a lot of money.

—But you’re not in that league?

—No.

—I’ve often thought I’d like to write a book. Not hard, is it? I mean, everyone can write. Put aside a bit of time at the weekends, and there you are, a book.

—What do you do?

—I’m an architect/surgeon/musician.

—Really? How interesting. I always thought it might be fun to design a few houses/do some brain surgery/write a symphony at the weekend.

Internal voice: This person has no sense of humour. Wait for it.

—What? Don’t you know it takes years to train and qualify? And then you need experience. It’s a profession, not a hobby.

—Not? You do surprise me.

—Not like writing. I mean, anyone can write a book.

James Palmer knew her name, knew the title of her book, knew about the prize, and, it turned out, had read it. “I reviewed it, in fact,” he said morosely. “For the
Atlantic Monthly
.”

Georgina racked her brains, rifling through the mostly adulatory reviews. “Was it a good review?” she asked.

“Can’t remember. Usual waffle, I dare say. Brilliant debut, searing prose, all that stuff.”

“Did you enjoy the book?”

“Was I meant to? I doubt it. I can’t remember when I last read a book that I enjoyed. No, I tell a lie. I can. It was
Kim,
the summer before I went up to Oxford. Have you ever read
Kim
?”

“No.”

“No one has, these days. Kipling’s deeply unfashionable. Colonial, white, all that. Doesn’t make any difference, still a masterpiece.”

Another melancholy sigh.

“What did you study at Oxford?”

“English,” said James Palmer. “For my sins, English.”

“Didn’t you enjoy it?”

“Enjoy?” He gave her an incredulous look. “Oxford in the nineteen eighties, English, enjoy? That was the peak time for Eagleton’s moronic Marxism. Deconstruction was the rage. My tutor used to say that Professor E. put the
con
into
destruction
.”

It took Georgina a moment to work that out, and she laughed. “Even so, three years reading great literature can’t be all bad.”

“Reading? Where have you been? You don’t read literature these days. Kids these days have got it right. They don’t read, because they find sentences of more than six words too difficult. I gave up on literature after three incomprehensible years of jargon and—” He shook his head. “Sorry, don’t want to bore you, but it’s still a sore point. I loved books before I went to Oxford. That’s why I wanted to read English. Mistake. Big mistake. Once the academics got their grubby hands on Literature, then it was all over. Game, set and match to the dunces. Have you ever read
The Dunciad
? Pope? You should, good stuff.”

As they were speaking, he had walked back to his car, and was standing by the driver’s door. Georgina felt she had to get him off this painful ground. “So what do you do now? You review books?”

“Sometimes. Thanks to my cunning tutor, before I took up my present occupation, I whizzed into the happy world of Fleet Street. As it used to be called. I was a hack, Georgina Jackson, a hack. So are you, peddling all that emotional rubbish, although perhaps you do it with more grace and style than I do.”

By this time, a sense of alarm was creeping over Georgina. Was Mr. Palmer deranged? Had he been on some wacky substance? Was that why he’d run into her?

“Before you drive off, I want your address, please.”

He looked injured. “Of course. And I’m not driving off, I’m just going to park my car in a less prominent position. If I leave it here, some witless driver might run into me.”

“Aren’t you leaving?”

“Why should I be? I only just got here.”

“Then why were you driving out of the parking place?”

“I decided I’d be better off not parked under a dripping tree.”

He got into the car, drove in next to the van and got out. “I assume you’re heading for the village. Let me buy you a coffee and a bun, too early to offer a beer.”

Georgina would much rather set off on her own, and she hoped Palmer wasn’t going to prove hard to shake off. At that moment, there was a hoot on a horn, and a green minibus turned into the car park.

Georgina recognized it at once. Like the bigger bus in Bath, it had figures drawn on the sides. It was the Jane Austen tour bus, complete with Susie, who jumped out from beside the driver almost before the bus had come to a halt.

“Oh my God,” said James Palmer. “Jane bloody Austen. That woman gets everywhere.”

“Don’t you like Jane Austen’s novels?”

“Read them so long ago, I can’t remember. Ditsy heroine gets alpha male, sends under-educated women into swoons of fantasy eroticism. Do I care?”

“I thought the English were all very keen on Jane Austen.”

“So are you Americans, the whole JA industry is even worse over there. Perfect for the middlebrow and the middle-witted, those who want a happy ending and love ever after. Got to say that about your writing, no happy endings there. What else have you done, what’s your second book?”

“I’m working on it now.”

A gleam came into his eye. “So what brings you to Lacock? Research? Hardly your kind of place, I would have said.”

“I’m staying with a friend in Bath, and it was a good opportunity to get here.”

“So I take it you aren’t here for the Jane Austen freak show. You aren’t a Jane Austen devotee, then?”

Georgina shook her head.

“Didn’t think you would be. Why Lacock?”

Mr. Palmer might be swathed in clouds of gloom, but Georgina wasn’t stupid enough to ignore the fact that there was a keen mind behind the tortoiseshell glasses, and an intense and ruthless curiosity. Innate, or dating from his time in Fleet Street?

“Photography,” she said quickly. “Nineteenth-century photography.”

“Yes, that’s your period, of course. Reality and unreality. False and true images. And pornography,” he added.

“Pornography?”

“Since you write about exploited women, the underclass, it would seem a likely subject for your pen.”

“I never talk about work in progress,” said Georgina. How priggish that sounded. “What one talks about doesn’t get written.”

“Yes, novelists always say that. I suspect it’s because most of you haven’t a clue what’s going to be on the next page. Let me know when it comes out, I’ll do a review. And you can invite me to the launch party. I’ll go anywhere for a free drink and a few canapés.”

The rest of the party had climbed out of the minibus, and Georgina recognized, with a sense of inevitability, her fellow bus travellers from Bath. Gluttons for punishment, clearly. Here were the Russian enthusiast and his unconvinced wife, and the two American women and, still glued to their DVD player, Dot and Rodney.

The whole group, with Georgina and James Palmer out in front, walked towards the centre of Lacock, Dot and Rodney bringing up the rear, jigging in time to some music emanating from the DVD player that Rodney was still holding up in front of them.

Lacock was everything the brochure had promised, with a wide main street, impossibly charming houses, a shop with a bow window and, not in the brochure, a mêlée of people.

Thick cables snaked along the sandy surface of the road. A
technician was heaving a tall crane of lights into place. A girl with skinny legs in tight jeans holding a clipboard was pulling out a roll of plastic yellow tape with the other hand and shouting at bemused tourists to “Step back, please keep off this area, we are trying to make a film here.” A tall man with a gold earring and a bald head, dressed in black from head to foot, was deep in consultation with a ponytailed young man who kept nodding his head up and down and saying, “Yeah, yeah.”

“I think they’re making a film,” said Susie, frowning.

At the word
film,
Dot looked up from the tiny screen. “Film? Filming? Cool!”

A spotty youth with a clapper board darted out in front of the cameras and snapped his board, intoning, “Scene thirty-one, take five.” They were filming outside one of the bow-fronted shop windows. The door opened, and a ravishingly pretty girl, dressed in a high-bosomed Regency frock, muslin under a velvet spencer, and a poke-fronted bonnet, emerged from the shop. She paused, looked up and down the street, and then her expression lightened into pleasure as she apparently caught sight of someone.

“Cut. Do it again, Sophie,” the black-clad man called out. “Just linger a second or two longer at the door, and let’s see that glow of delight on your face. Sex on the hoof is approaching, let’s see your reaction.”

The actress retreated into the shop, the doorbell clanging as she closed the door, the boy and the clapper board went to work again, and the cameras rolled.

Good heavens, it was Sophie, Henry’s actress girlfriend.

What was Sophie doing in Lacock? The last she’d heard, Sophie was in Ireland. Maud had told her Sophie had to cancel her weekend in London with Henry because of filming in Ireland. Oh well, the unit must have moved to Lacock. Only, hadn’t Henry talked about flying over to Cork for a day or two next weekend? It was none of
her business where Sophie was, or where Sophie said she was, but if she could catch her attention, when she wasn’t filming, she’d say hi. She liked Sophie, who was full of fun, serious about her acting, and very good for Henry. Henry might get staid if he didn’t have a lively girlfriend like Sophie to keep him on his toes.

Here was Sophie once more, big dark eyes lighting up again. This time, the supposed object of her interest came into camera. The embodiment of a heroine’s dreams, tall, dark, manly, virile, handsome. Hot, as Amelia would say, clad in skin-tight breeches and a blue coat. One had to admit that breeches and boots did a lot for a man with a good body. The man bowed over Sophie’s hand, as she smiled, blushed, and dropped a curtsey.

Igor had found out what was going on. “They are filming
Pride and Prejudice
. They were filming it in Bath, and now they are using Lacock as Meryton. Who is this supposed to be? One assumes Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, however—”

“Can you keep it quiet there,” shouted the woman with the clipboard. “We’re trying to work here.”

Susie was on her mobile. “Why wasn’t I told they’d be filming? Of course it will have been scheduled, these sessions are fixed up weeks in advance. How can I take my group around when half the village will be closed off? Well, get on to them and find out where they’re going to be.”

“Yet another version of that bloody book,” said James Palmer without enthusiasm. “Fans dressing up in costume, actors and actresses in costume, they must have filmed and televised every one of her wretched novels a dozen times, and yet here they are at it again. The chap in the clinging breeches is Chris Denby, not a bad actor, National Theatre, picking up some easy money, I suppose. Don’t know the actress.”