The Jane Austen Society (ARC)

by Natalie Jenner

  The unnatural loss of youth not only hits us harder, it seems to insist on invading our days, as if the memory of the person lost too soon has a hidden, persistent source of energy. Cassandra had spent her final decades in Chawton heeding this force and safeguarding her sister’s legacy, whereas Adam feared he had failed the legacy of his brothers in not making more of his own life. Yet despite his depressed spirits, he was still always searching for something, for some way to make meaning from his life. He simply had no idea how to begin.

  Heading now in the direction of home, the rain having stopped and the sun out again, Adam opened the low wooden gate next to the old steward’s cottage and walked over to the bench in the farthest corner of the yard. He often sat and rested here at the end of his day, preparing himself for his mother’s relentless questions the minute he got home. She was keeping close tabs on the state of the now-dying Mr. Knight, as well as tracking the social deterioration of Miss Frances Knight, one of the gentlest souls among them and an easy target for someone as aggressive as his mother.

  Sitting on the bench, Adam could only imagine Jane Austen walking about the gardens, or resting on this very spot, as there was little physical sign of the house’s famous former resident. Instead he watched the new litter of tabby kittens dozing in the courtyard under the late-afternoon sun, heard the sound of the village junkman’s hand-pulled cart approaching, and caught sight of Dr. Gray and Adeline only now passing by the outside brick wall after him. They must have taken a longer route home through the fields.

  Adam got up and walked back towards the gate. Turning to his left, he spied the pile of rubbish in front of the cottage, lying in wait for the junkman’s rounds. Protruding from the mound were the remaining three legs under the flat square seat of an antique chair. As a self-taught carpenter, Adam recognized the column shape of the chair legs and the straight lines of the seat as harking from the Regency period. His pulse quickened at the thought that perhaps this chair had once been used by the Austen family, maybe even by Jane herself.

  He reached the pile of rubbish just as the junkman did.

  “Having a little poke around as usual, are you, Mr. Berwick?”

  Adam nodded and pulled at the chair, only to discover that most of its dark mahogany back was missing. In its present state the chair was useless, and he doubted he could carry it home without raising alarm at his own damaged state. As he released the chair, he spied something else, a small wooden toy of some sort, not immediately recognizable to him. Known in the village for his own handiwork, the gifts of small rattles and wooden ring-toss sets that he worked on when he wasn’t tending to the fields or reading, Adam wondered how old this forgotten object might be. Maybe it meant something more, a connection of some kind to the Austen family—maybe it meant nothing at all. But no one else in the village seemed to care about finding out any of that.

  “You can keep that there, haven’t much use for something so slight.”

  Adam gave a quick murmur of thanks and, tucking the object into his front jacket pocket, continued on his way. He was convinced that the other villagers viewed him as a subdued, broken man, not good for much, not creating any kind of legacy of his own. But at times like this, he wondered if he was also the only one paying attention to the rapid shortening of the days, the rubbish left by the side of the road, and the neglected and forgotten past.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Los Angeles, California

  August 1945

  At first Jack Leonard had found it mystifying, the obsession with Jane Austen.

  The shelves of Mimi Harrison’s living room in the small bungalow perched high in the canyon were full of old leatherbound books (the one called Emma looked particularly beat-up) and the collected works of writers he had never even heard of: Burney, Richardson, and some poet called Cowper. He did recognize the name of Walter Scott, but only because the movie Ivanhoe had recently made another studio a ton of money.

  The most common denominator with all of these writers appeared to be their connection to Austen, about whom he had been smart enough to ask around following that first encounter by the pool and the sight of the well-thumbed copy of Northanger Abbey in Mimi’s suntanned hands. Eventually she had mentioned her dad reading her the books as a girl, and the trip to some small town in England to walk in Austen’s footsteps (at that point he had wondered if she was both red-hot and insane), and the dream of one day making a film of Sense and Sensibility.

  He had listened, patiently for him, to all of this, all the while wondering if Jane Austen was somehow the key to getting Mimi Harrison into bed. But between dinners out and cocktail receptions and red-carpet walks, Jack Leonard was starting to feel that migraine coming on again, as he walked Mimi to her front door night after night. For one thing, she was no spring chicken anymore, as her latest box-office receipts were finally starting to reflect, so all the games made less sense to him and—worse still—would have less of a physical payoff. For another, he could tell she was interested in him, too.

  That Mimi might have been fighting against a strong physical attraction to him, in deference to her usual better judgment, would never have crossed his mind.

  One thing he had learned in Hollywood was that there was no better way to sleep with a leading lady than to make her one. He hadn’t paid much attention to the recent Laurence Olivier–Greer Garson adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but now that that was out of the running, he turned to Mimi’s own interest in Sense and Sensibility. He liked the idea of three young sisters under twenty (casting was already going on in his head on that one) and had a genuine appreciation for Willoughby’s willingness to seduce young women out of wedlock. He thought there was a backstory in there that could be alluded to in defiance of the Code. The more he learned about Austen from Mimi, the more he was impressed by how she mostly wrote about bad behaviour. As far as Jack could tell, there weren’t too many pure heroes in the books. Everyone was making mistakes, and falling for cads, and giving the wrong people the benefit of the doubt. He loved it.

  Of course, he wasn’t reading any of it—but he had one of the screenwriters, a famous debauched novelist living in bungalow seventeen on the back lot, working on a treatment of it. So far Jack liked what he saw.

  Mimi, on the other hand, was not so thrilled.

  “The scene in the script, where Willoughby shows up, because he’s heard Marianne is near death—I never bought that. Of all of Jane Austen, that is the one scene that rang hollow for me. Willoughby doesn’t care about anyone but himself—if he’s visiting Marianne, it’s totally out of guilt. But he doesn’t care about guilt either. Why on earth would he ride there all night and demand that Elinor see things from his point of view? Why on earth would he care?”

  They were sitting in two facing armchairs in Jack’s spacious office, which was in bungalow number five, at the perimeter of the main studio lot. Outside the front bay window were huge pink hydrangea bushes and a white picket fence leading to the Main Street façade that featured in every “Let’s put on a show” musical that the studio was currently cranking out. As Mimi continued speaking at length about Willoughby, Jack was getting the feeling that she was projecting that character onto him, and it bothered him greatly that she could underestimate him in this way. He didn’t mind being a cad, but he was the hero of his own life, and he would always get the girl in the end.

  The scene as she described it was bothering him, too, but for different reasons. From what he understood from both Mimi and the script, Willoughby was acting here like a loser, yet had gotten everything that he’d wanted in the end. He’d impregnated an underage girl, seduced one of the heroines into visiting an empty house unchaperoned, and married an heiress.

  If Jack Leonard could get even half as far with Mimi Harrison, he would be a happy man.

  “Isn’t the point of the scene to show that Marianne was not wrong for thinking Willoughby loved her, just wrong in thinking he would do anything about it? Isn’t it really about redeeming her?” Jack w
as parroting the words of the scriptwriter, who had explained exactly this in a recent meeting, after one of the co-producers had voiced the same concern as Mimi.

  Mimi shook her head. “The reader knows all that already. I really think Austen slipped up here—I think she actually responded to Willoughby. I think she liked Henry Crawford, too.” Jack stared at her blankly. “Henry Crawford, from Mansfield Park, remember? Anyway, I think part of her wanted us to forgive them, or at least feel sorry for them. I think this is where her religious sincerity sometimes got in the way—goodness knows Fanny Price was the poster girl for that. But if Willoughby is genuinely seeking expiation for his sins—”

  “Seeking what?”

  Mimi stared back at Jack just as blankly. He had claimed to have gone to an Ivy League business school, but this was one of those times when she wondered if he really had.

  “Expiation. Seeking atonement; forgiveness.”

  Jack downed the Scotch he had been cradling in his hands. “Yeah, yeah, I know. So,” he said in a relaxed tone, “I’ve been thinking. Angela Cummings. For Marianne. Monte tells me you two make quite a team.”

  Mimi was not surprised to hear the name of her latest co-star, who was taking Hollywood by storm following a brief modelling career out East. But it was hard to begrudge Angela anything. For one thing, she was a most supportive castmate, having stood up for Mimi many times to Terry Tremont, the director on the Western they had just filmed in the Nevada desert in the scorching heat of summer. Mimi was secretly impressed with the way the girl went after anything and everything that she wanted, the bigger the better. Mimi was also one of the only people in Hollywood who knew that Angela was juggling a torrid affair with Terry alongside a new relationship with her married co-star on an upcoming film. Next to the twenty-year-old and her lovers, Mimi’s relationship with the equally notorious Jack Leonard seemed positively chaste.

  “Well, she’s certainly young enough,” Mimi finally replied. “And I like her—she’s easy to work with. Doesn’t take any of this too seriously.”

  Jack was watching her with a look of surprised relief. “Listen. I have a five o’clock with Harold at the Beverly Hills to discuss Eleanor and her little ‘dolls.’ Why don’t we meet for dinner after that and keep this talk going?”

  “What is it with all the hotel meetings all the time? Monte wants to meet at the Chateau Marmont tonight to discuss the grinding promo tour for I’ll Never Sing Again.”

  “You be careful with him. Can’t keep his dick in his pants. Waves it about like the goddamned flag.”

  “Jack, honestly, the swearing.”

  “Oh, trust me, honey, swearing will be the least of your problems with that guy.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  “I know you can.” Jack replied, although he wished this weren’t true. Wished there were some crack in the façade, some little chink in the armour, that would finally let him in. That was the problem with well-bred college girls like her—they seemed to always be holding out for something, putting a guy through his paces, making sure there was something of value at the end of it all—otherwise they didn’t budge an inch.

  Jack may not have been book smart, but he was shrewd enough to know that what he had to offer Mimi (the money, the power—but mainly the money) wasn’t anything she couldn’t get on her own. He was not used to feeling this redundant—it was one reason he had leapt at the chance to make a Jane Austen movie of all things. He was feeling checkmated completely off the board right now. Mimi hadn’t even let him kiss her yet, at least not a proper full-throated kiss. Her powers of restraint were proving to be unexpectedly formidable.

  “Listen, Mimi, let’s make this movie. Together. We’ll be a great team, you’ll see. You don’t put up with any of my crap, and you keep me honest. And you’ll get your beloved Jane Austen out of it.”

  He came over and sat down on the arm of her chair with his glass of Scotch in hand, and he heard her give the softest sound, almost a sigh. Almost, he thought, his ears pricking up, the sound of resignation.

  Mimi was becoming resigned, but not to him: to herself. She had a weakness for handsome men, be they farmers or actors or university professors. Jack Leonard was definitely handsome—movie-star handsome—and a constant frisson of energy came from his striking looks meeting hers every step of the way. She was not used to that, even in Hollywood. Jack also had an over-the-top extravagance that made everything he touched jump to life. For the first and only time she identified with Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park, repining over the otherwise ill-suited Edmund Bertram: “he gets into my head more than is good for me.”

  Mimi Harrison was also becoming resigned to the fact that she wanted Jack Leonard: wanted to be kissed by him, and held by him, and have him say things she knew a woman would only ever hear from him in bed. There was power in that, to be sure, but it wasn’t just about feeling emboldened. Jack had a little-boy quality that she still couldn’t quite put her finger on. The degree to which a certain look from her could hurt him—the degree to which she thought she could get him to open up his heart—seemed to be behind her crumbling resistance. Maybe this was all part of his routine with women, but if it was, he was the best damn actor she’d ever worked against.

  “Jack, honestly, you don’t need to buy me—you don’t need to buy me a movie.”

  He smiled, a very slow, mischievous smile. “Oh, I don’t want to buy you, Mimi. I want you for free. I want you to give yourself to me, all of you, every last inch, because you can’t stand it one more second either.”

  He dipped his finger in his glass of Scotch and started to trace it along her collarbone and just below her long neck, then moved his hand down farther still. As he leaned in more, he brushed his long sleeve across her right breast (she had noticed that he never wore short-sleeved shirts except on the tennis court, no matter the heat), and she felt her skin grow warm and flushed under his touch. He tilted her chin up towards him with his other hand, and then their lips met, and everything up until that point finally made some weird kind of sense. It was as if her physical attraction to him was so deep, it had bypassed her mind, and now her mind was finally catching up to her body.

  Mimi could no longer judge Marianne for preferring Willoughby over the older and more muted Colonel Brandon, only to wind up close to feverish death; she just hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t end up a sobbing, reclusive mess by the end of it all, too.

  “Mimi, how lovely you look. Let me get you some champagne.”

  Monte Cartwright was an older, portly man well into his fifties. The head of the studio that had made Mimi a star, he had a preternatural knack for sizing up a young actor’s marquee value from the first screen test, then locking them into a long-term contract so punitive that they would spend at least the next decade ruing the day they had ever met him.

  Mimi’s ten-year contract had three years left on it, and every time she saw Monte she mentally checked off another square on the calendar of her servitude. The out-of-house projects she was allowed to do, such as the burgeoning Sense and Sensibility adaptation with Jack, had been hard-earned over time, through contract negotiations aided by her business-lawyer brother back home in Philadelphia. At age thirty-five, Mimi shrewdly understood that her only leverage with the studio came from her box-office receipts, so she continued to take on as many promising projects as she could. Some of her fellow aging actresses were already raising families or otherwise taking “breaks” that quickly became permanent in an industry where perception and momentum were everything. But Mimi kept working at building up career capital, before the tiny lines about her eyes deepened and the first grey hair showed up.

  Monte was now sitting on the matching sofa facing hers in his hotel room, staring at the hair about her brow, that famous raven-black mane, wondering when that first grey hair would show up. Mimi was finally starting to look just the tiniest bit different from before—he knew the signs well, as he was constantly on the lookout for them, as if circling his prey f
or any indications of injury or fatigue.

  “You’re looking a little tired, Mimi, although as lovely as ever. Is Terry running you ragged on the Western shoot? Those early-morning calls out in Nevada for his goddamned sunrises—what are you now, two hours in the make-up chair?”

  Mimi shifted about in her seat, losing count of the number of references to her age he could make in one single ramble.

  “It’s all good, we’re all wrapped up now. Angela’s going to be a revelation in it.”

  He looked at her in surprise, unable to figure out her end game in singling out her much-younger co-star for his attention. “Yeah, that kid’s a real find. What is she, twenty? Twenty-one at most? You’d never know it—smokes like a teamster and swears like one, too. Hell, she even sounds like one sometimes—we’ve been working on that. There’s husky, and then there’s just goddamned menacing.”

  On some level, Mimi always enjoyed her infrequent meetings with Monte, as his love of hearing himself talk and his need to put others in their place kept him so fully occupied, she could usually just sit back and think about something else. Lately that something else had been Jack Leonard, to her complete surprise and consternation. He was indeed getting into her head—and worse still, she worried that he knew it. If he didn’t before, that kiss a few hours earlier had probably done the trick.

  Meanwhile Monte was talking about some poor “dimwit” actress, and her recent shotgun marriage, and a conflict of laws with the Dominican Republic over the equally recent divorce (Mimi had to hand it to Monte, he did know the law, at least well enough to get around it). She was half listening, sipping the second glass of Piper-Heidsieck that he had poured her, when Monte finished his Scotch, got up, and sat down uninvited next to her.