The Jane Austen Society (ARC)

by Natalie Jenner

  Patting her knee, he asked most solicitously, “Did he tell you, yet?”

  “Did who tell me what, Monte?”

  “Terry. Did he tell you about Angela?”

  “Tell me what about Angela, Monte?”

  “Her billing.”

  “What about her billing?”

  Monte smiled at her. “Well, I guess we could play this little game all day. About Angela’s billing going right next to yours, above the titles.”

  Mimi forced herself to breathe. “But that’s preposterous. It’s only her second feature.”

  “Yeah, but you’re both vying for Cooper and he’s the lead, so it makes sense, optically at least—or at least that’s what Terry thinks. Look, Mimi, I’m all for saying something to him—but I need to know how much you care.”

  “Monte, what do you think? We both know I’ve been one of the top money-makers around here for years, and there is no way some novice should get equal billing. It’s not a question of anything but fairness—I’m sure Angela’s time will come, she is very talented, but her time can’t come at the expense of mine. That’s ridiculous.”

  Monte sighed. “I know. It’s tough. But my hands are pretty tied. Terry had the right of approval over the credits baked into his contract on this one, given the Crawford-Gable-Davis debacle a few years back.” He shifted a little closer to her on the sofa. “Look, Mimi, we both knew this time in your career would eventually come. I’ll step up if you want me to, but I’d be a chump not to get something in return.”

  His hand now rested on her thigh, and he was so close she could smell the mix of nicotine and Scotch on his breath.

  “Monte,” she said with a stern look, moving his hand away with hers.

  “Mimi, there’s no one else in the stable that can touch you for a clear two years. We still have to teach Betty Winters how to sing, and Janice Starling how to act. You’re still hanging on at the top and you know it. And I can help keep you there. You know how much I believe in you. You’re the face of the studio.”

  “If I’m the face of the studio, then I should have top billing.”

  “Mimi, look, I’m no one to talk when it comes to the looks department—thank God they ain’t paying me around here for that. But we’re getting test-screening feedback on the Nevada outtakes, and they’re all over Angela.”

  “And?”

  He sighed again. “And they think you’re looking old. Look, it’s been a harsh location shoot and in-studio will always fare better for you now. You’re on the Scheherazade shoot next, right?”

  Mimi put her champagne flute down on the small table next to the sofa. “Monte, I’m not giving up my billing, there’s just no way. I’ve worked too hard for it. I’d personally rather never have to think about billing at all, but it totally matters in this business, and I am not stupid enough to give up something I don’t have to.”

  “But that’s just it”—he moved his hand back up her thigh again—“you might have to, and yet you don’t have to. I’m always on your side, you know that.”

  “Monte . . .”

  “Look, Mimi, I just want to help you, I always have.”

  She stood up and he got up, too, and grabbed her and pushed her against the arm of the sofa.

  “Monte Cartwright, you get your goddamned hands off of me this instant.”

  He was a hundred pounds heavier than her and a good foot taller except for her heels. “Mimi, come on, stop it.” He started trying to kiss her, and at first she was in shock, as his sheer size and power overwhelmed her. His smell was what she would always remember later, the Scotch and the cigar smoke and the too-strong cologne full of spice and patchouli and sweat. She tried with all her might to push him off, but already he was rubbing himself hard against her, and the idea that he might ejaculate any minute finally helped her find her voice.

  “Monte, get the fuck off of me . . . Monte . . . Monte I swear I will scream!”

  He was now panting so hard that she was finally able to push herself free, and he fell back and finished off on the sofa while she stared at him, shaking in horror and disgust.

  “I am going to sue the pants off of you, you animal.”

  “No, you won’t,” he replied with eerie calm, taking a crisp linen handkerchief out of his front jacket pocket to wipe his hands. “You’re on your way down, Mimi, and you know it. Say a word and I’ll put your name below Angela’s. Say a word and see if anyone gives a fuck.”

  She left him there, splayed back onto the sofa, cleaning himself like an animal, clearly not caring one little bit for his degradation, while—she feared—revelling in hers.

  When Jack arrived at the bungalow a few hours later to take Mimi to dinner, he found her sitting curled up in an armchair with her housecoat wrapped tight about her, and her long black hair hanging loose and wet about her neck.

  “I scrubbed and scrubbed in the shower until my skin was raw, trying to get rid of the smell of him,” she told Jack after recounting what had happened.

  Jack said nothing—a myriad of conflicting emotions and thoughts were running through him, the predominant of which was rage—and instead stormed out of the bungalow, reappearing an hour later with a cut above one eye and his right hand swollen and bruised.

  Mimi cleaned the cut with some disinfectant and put some ice on the hand, then knelt on the carpet before Jack, who was sitting there with a gratified ego, a distressed heart, and a splitting headache.

  “I wish you hadn’t,” Mimi finally said, after they had stared at each other for several seconds. “I told you I handled it as best I could. He won’t get away with it.”

  “As best you could is way too good for someone like him,” Jack practically growled.

  “So you left him bruised and battered—now what? He’ll probably come down even harder on me. And charge you with assault. And I’ll end up unemployed, just watch, and you’ll end up in jail.”

  Jack pulled her onto his lap in the single most tender motion he had ever made in his life. “So here’s the deal, okay? You’re not going to charge him with rape, he knows that—and he isn’t going to charge me with assault. He knows I know that, too. And you’re out of your contract, if you want. He said he’ll release you.”

  “Because I’m old.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “I’m not young. Or at least, not as young as Angela Cummings or Janice Starling.”

  “Screw him, Mimi. The writing’s on the wall over there. Go free agent and name your price and work when you want. I can take care of you the rest of the time.”

  “I can take care of myself. God knows I have enough money.”

  “There’s no such thing,” he corrected her, taking both her hands in his.

  Mimi looked at him in surprise. “What are you saying, Jack?”

  “We’ll get married. And you can retire.”

  “I don’t want to retire.”

  “Well, then, semi-retire. Like what’s-her-name. Make the occasional prestige picture, get that summer place in England you’re always going on about, and read Jane Austen the rest of the time for all I care.”

  “I don’t trust Monte, Jack, if I don’t stay busy—he’s just the sort of person who would start spreading lies. Before you know it, my name will be mud in this town.”

  “Screw him, Mimi. Look at what you’ve pulled off so far with your career. He can’t touch that.”

  “What about babies?” she suddenly asked, almost holding her breath.

  “What about babies?”

  “I dunno, Jack. Do you eat them? What do you think I mean?”

  He smiled. “Well, if you’re already thinking about making babies with me . . .”

  From the open bungalow window she could smell the hyacinths and the roses that her gardener took such care of, hear the far-off cries of the coyotes that stalked the canyon, and see every star in the August night through the skylight above their heads.

  “My head hurts.” She sighed. “I shouldn’t be making any decisi
ons right now.”

  “Don’t then. Just think about it.” He smiled. “But not too long. Time is money after all.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Chawton, Hampshire

  September 1945

  Frances Knight sat in the main-floor library of the Great House, staring at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves made of oak and walnut from the woodland on the estate. Two thousand books, Evie the house girl had recently informed her. Two thousand books dating as far back as the 1700s, and many of them bound in leather especially for the family, the front covers imprinted with the Knight family seal. The Austen family would have read these books: Jane and her brother Edward and his daughter Fanny Knight Knatchbull, Jane’s beloved niece, along with Cassandra and many other aunts and uncles and cousins too numerous to mention.

  Two thousand books. And all now just for her.

  Even more ironically, she had only read a few of them. Mainly the Brontës, the Georges Eliot and Gissing, and Thomas Hardy and Trollope. Over and over again.

  This had started in her thirties, after the death of her mother from pneumonia and her older brother in a shooting accident just two years later. Not at all close to her one remaining relative, her distant and judgmental father, Frances had retreated into these familiar worlds of literature. Something about her favourite books gave her tremendous comfort, and even a strange feeling of control, although she could not quite put her finger on why. She just knew that she did not want to invest her time trying to figure out a new world, whom to like and whom to trust in it, and how to bear the author’s choices for tragedy and closure—or lack thereof.

  When she was younger, before the Great War, she had read widely and profusely, eschewing the outdoor activities so beloved by her rambunctious and rebellious brother—the riding, the hunting, the daredevil activities that young boys always seem to devise—and choosing instead to remain indoors, sitting in one of her favourite windows, with a stack of books by her side. Reading, she now understood, had been her own choice of rebellion. A most private activity, it was the perfect alibi for a young woman in a demanding household like theirs. She could maintain a healthy distance from both her parents and their dwindling expectations and increasing disappointment in her. She could simply never do right by them, and they all knew it.

  She had also been the only true reader in the family, her mother having been extremely social and her father preoccupied with the failing income of the estate. The history behind all these ancient family books, and the legacy of Jane Austen in which the Knights had a share, was of little interest to them. Even today her father bemoaned the presence of random gawkers at the gate, especially the American ones, searching for any trace of their beloved author.

  She heard someone stop in the threshold of the open doorway, followed by the slight rustling of paperwork, and she turned to see Andrew Forrester, her father’s solicitor, standing there.

  “Miss Knight,” he said with an abrupt bow of his head. He was a very tall, ramrod straight man of her exact age—forty-seven—with a long face, high Roman cheekbones, and a severe boyish side part to his dark brown hair.

  Frances gave a slight nod back. She always had such a wistful, faraway look in her pale grey eyes, a look he did not enjoy seeing, and he hesitated before venturing farther into the room.

  “I hope I am not disturbing you.” He looked about a little awkwardly.

  “Not at all. How did you find my father?”

  Andrew took a few steps closer, then stopped to fold the set of papers he was holding and discreetly slipped them into his brown leather lawyer’s bag. “The same, I’m afraid. Has Dr. Gray been round yet this week?”

  Frances nodded. “Yes, he still comes every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Early, when Father is at his most lucid.”

  “And his least intimidating,” Andrew replied, then quickly stopped himself. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Frances—I mean Miss Knight. That was extremely impolite of me.”

  “It’s fine, really. And anyway it’s true.” She turned to the tray of tea still warm before her. “Would you like a cup of tea before you head back into Alton? The sugar buns are straight out of Josephine’s oven this past hour.”

  Andrew hesitated briefly, then went over to the wingback chair across from hers. Sitting down, he reached for the cup she held out to him, noticing she had remembered to add the squeeze of lemon he always preferred.

  “You must have a great deal of business to talk over with Father. I know our investments are scattered at best.”

  Andrew took a long sip of his tea before answering. “How much has your father involved you in any of that?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. Apparently I do not have a head for business.”

  Andrew stared up at the ceiling as if remembering something. “That surprises me. After all, back in our schooldays, you used to trump both Benjamin Gray and me in mathematics.”

  She shrugged. “I used to be able to do a lot of things. Not so much anymore. And you—how is business?”

  Andrew was listening carefully to her words, and she noticed for the first time the frown lines of anxiety between his eyes.

  “Business is good, just fine. Always is. Although I’d rather not be busy with the estates work.”

  “It must be difficult for you. And for Benjamin, too, I suppose. Tending to the hard times in the lives of the people with whom you have grown up.”

  “Well, we none of us moved away for a reason, I suppose. Nothing is perfect—certainly being able to stay in Alton has had its share of recompense.”

  She found that an interesting statement given that Andrew, despite everything, had never married nor had children. She wondered what else could have been so gratifying about staying so close to home—she certainly knew it fell plenty short for her at times.

  “And helping people—especially people one knows—is rather a privilege, I think,” he added.

  “They say it is the key to happiness.”

  Now it was his turn to wonder at her words, knowing how rarely she left the Great House, knowing how little she now interacted with the world outside it.

  “I guess that statement speaks for itself,” she added quickly, catching the look on his face.

  He took another long sip of tea, then placed the cup down on the tray between them and cleared his throat.

  “About the estate—I know you say your father has not involved you much—and I know this must be an extremely difficult time. But decisions, sadly, will always have to be made, both in good times and in bad. The books for the estate are not in the best of shape, and I have been trying—so far as I am able—to work through as much of it with your father as I can. I do think the two of you should talk though. I mean, generally speaking, it is always wise. Times will be hard enough without too much being, um, thrown at you when the inevitable time comes.”

  She was looking down now, as if at an invisible book on her lap. “My father and I are ill-suited to conversation at the best of times.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  It was the first allusion he had ever made to their shared past, and she looked up quickly at his concerned face as if to double-check his words.

  “And anyway, it won’t make a difference. My father does as he wants.”

  “Yes, I know that, too.”

  She sighed. “I just want us all to get through the year in one piece, now that this awful war is finally over.”

  Immediately she wondered what had come over her to say something as emotional as that. She took a final sip of her own tea, then placed the empty cup down with the tiniest chink of the china against the silver tray.

  Andrew felt as if this was his cue to leave and stood up. “Well, I best get back to the office.”

  “Did you walk, by the way?”

  “Yes. It’s my favourite walk. Always has been.”

  With those words, he nodded goodbye and left.

  Frances sat quite still. She usually found herself lingering behind in empty rooms to
mull over difficult conversations like this. For one thing, her mind worked slower now, probably due to lack of engagement more than anything else. Certainly, everyone in her family who had lived to old age had remained sharp as a tack. That was why, as much as the accounting ledgers might look to be in a state, she knew that her father was still completely on top of everything. So she was a little curious as to why Andrew had been checking in on all of that with her.

  But before she could think about his words any further, Josephine appeared in the other doorway, the one leading from the library to the back gallery and the warren-like complex of kitchens and cellars beyond.

  “Miss Frances, telephone call for you. A Mr. Yardley Sinclair, from Sotheby’s.”

  Frances made a small face. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “Should we tell him you’re indisposed, ma’am?”

  Frances stood up. “No, it’s fine, I’ll take it in the hall. Thank you, Josephine.”

  She headed into the hallway just as Evie Stone passed by, duster in hand, on her way to the library. Frances smiled at the young girl’s diligence when it came to dusting the thousands of books. Goodness knows the many volumes had sat neglected on those shelves for far too long.

  Frances picked up the phone that rested on a small desk at the far end of the hallway, below the substantial hanging Jacobean staircase that led to the upstairs rooms.

  “Frances Knight,” she said uncertainly, making it sound more like a question than a statement.

  She heard a man clear his throat on the other end, as if he had been waiting quite some time to speak with her.

  “Miss Knight, hello—my name is Yardley Sinclair. I work with Sotheby’s, the auction house, here in London.”

  “Yes.” She waited.

  “Yes, I see, thank you—thank you for taking my call. I am telephoning because I just supervised the sale of the Godmersham estate a few weeks past.”