The Jane Austen Society

by Natalie Jenner

  “Didn’t you just read that?”

  “Last winter.”

  “You read too much. You read her too much. You should be out, go to Alton more.”

  “I go to Alton.”

  “You go to the movies. You sit alone in the movie house, watching some romantic silliness. Or reading it,” she added, with an insolent nod at his book. “Your nose always in a book, just like your father.”

  He took another sip of his coffee, then stood up.

  “Where are you off to?” she asked, unrolling the afternoon newspaper that she had brought in with her.

  “I just remembered I did promise Mrs. Lewis to help with the mulching in the garden before there’s a hard frost. Sun will be down in an hour or so.”

  “There’s a boy.” His mother smiled approvingly at him as she picked up her newspaper.

  Adeline Grover sat in the window seat she had improvised for herself at the front of the drawing room. She had taken half of an old swinging door she had found in the garden shed and laid it over both the deep windowsill and the level top of the adjoining radiator. She had covered it all with a thick quilted counterpane and a variety of cushions, and there she could often be found, sitting with a stack of books, but mostly staring out the window, watching the rest of the town move on with its lives.

  She was in trouble and she knew it. She was very aware that she had not allowed herself to fully feel the loss of Sam, often pushing the thought of him out of her mind, as if he were simply off somewhere, still fighting the war. Losing Sam had been difficult and complicated enough, let alone the death of their baby. She was not coping with either of these losses, not in the way one had to in order to move on. She had surprised herself with this shortcoming—she was very proud and very smart, and it had never occurred to her that she would get something so significant, and unavoidable, so wrong. But she was at least smart enough to be able to trick everyone else into thinking she was doing okay. It had become almost a game to her. And while playing the game of appearing okay, she felt so completely detached—even liberated—from her real self, the person she had been before everything went wrong, that she marvelled at this ability to be so objective and cut off from one’s own feelings. As if this were the real achievement.

  She was starting to get a bit of a window into the male mind as a result. She could only wonder at what a lifetime of both emotional avoidance and overactivity yielded as a result. She thought about Sam’s impenetrable optimism even in the face of an opposite reality—his determination that they would be married, his forgiving of her every slip, his bright and happy surface. She had loved that about him and how he helped keep her so moored to daily life: how every day was a new day, and yesterday didn’t matter, and there was no point in ever worrying about the future.

  She pictured him in his bomber plane, the gauges rattling before him, and the sea and the rocks below, and both the intensity and the detachment that he would have brought to this one terrifying moment. He would have given his all, even though the effort didn’t matter—you were just a speck on someone else’s gauge, a tightrope walk across an abyss, an entire human life balanced on the point of a needle.

  Now she was on the point of the needle, too. There were only two ways that this could go. If she kept this up and fell off and into the abyss, she might pull herself out one day—but she also might not. So she had to find a way to stop what she was doing, this medicating away of her unavoidable pain, and taking advantage of poor Dr. Gray. For she was certainly taking advantage of him—of his guilt, and his compassion, and the confusing little soft spot he seemed to have for her, and of all the things that made him an especially caring man, outside of being a doctor.

  She looked out the window at the setting sun, and at Adam Berwick in the garden with her mother, cutting back the dead growth and covering up the more delicate perennials ahead of the winter frost. When the two of them spied her in the window seat, her mother must have said something to Adam, because he put down the shovel and picked up a basket at his side as they headed into the house together.

  “Adeline, darling, look what Mr. Berwick has brought you.”

  Adeline looked down from her perch and peered into the basket to see a little kitten fast asleep.

  She started to cry.

  Mrs. Lewis was used to all this emotion, but the poor man could only stand there frozen in place, having no idea what to do or say, gripping the basket in his white-knuckled hands.

  Mrs. Lewis put out her hand to touch his forearm gently. “Don’t mind her, it’s so sweet of you. She’s just still quite worn down. Look, I’ll go get us all some tea, shall I?”

  As Mrs. Lewis left the drawing room, Adam put the basket down next to the stack of books in the window seat and noticed Persuasion at the very top.

  Adeline was wiping her eyes with the edge of her housecoat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Berwick.”

  “It’s Adam,” he said simply, then gently reached down into the basket and put the kitten in her arms. “Came from the old tabby at the steward’s cottage. It’s a few months along now.”

  She stroked the tiny animal’s brown-and-ginger coat. “It was so thoughtful of you. I really am very sorry.” She had interacted so rarely with Adam Berwick in the past, such a shy and silent man, that she was now feeling terrible for having frightened him with this display.

  He gave a little cough and looked about for a place to sit. She was sitting up there in the window, looking as if she could stay there for hours, with her books and her little pot of tea on a small wicker tray. Suddenly a mental image from years ago flashed through his head—lying up on the edge of a stone wall, surrounded by death in the little church graveyard, feeling like an effigy himself.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, please, have a seat—bring that chair over, the rocking chair. It’s my favourite. Keeps me in motion.” She smiled wearily.

  He brought the chair over from beside the fireplace and sat it down next to her. “You’re reading Persuasion.”

  “You know it?”

  He nodded. “A hard book, that.”

  “Hard to read?”

  “Hard to feel.”

  “Oh, dear, yes, I don’t know what I was thinking when I picked it up—although it always makes me so happy in the end. You like Jane Austen, too, then?”

  He nodded again while simultaneously looking everywhere about the room except directly at her.

  “Of course I have to ask then, which of the books is your favourite?”

  He looked down at his lap and gave her a small, self-conscious smile. “All of them. But Elizabeth Bennet is my favourite character.”

  “Oh, me, too. There’s no one like her in all of literature. Dr. Gray goes on and on about his Emma, but I’ll take Lizzie over Emma any day.”

  Adam was staring directly at her now, at the way she was speaking about the characters as if they were real people. They had always seemed so alive to him—it had never occurred to him that anyone else might feel that way, too.

  “You talk to Dr. Gray about the books?” he asked, leaning over to give the kitten a little pat.

  “Yes, he is a singular fan of hers, let me tell you. But it makes sense—he is such an odd mixture himself of—how did Austen describe Mr. Bennet? So ‘odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice’?”

  “Dr. Gray is a good man,” Adam replied simply.

  “Yes, he is—which is remarkable, given how clearly he sees everyone and everything.”

  “Like Austen herself.”

  “Yes.” Adeline sat up even straighter in agreement. “Exactly. The humanity—the love for people—mixed with seeing them for who they really are. Loving them enough to do that. Loving them in spite of that.”

  Adam nodded. He had never loved anyone enough to do that. Had not been given the chance. Had not given himself the chance. Like Adeline right now, he had been sitting in a window seat, watching everyone else go by, not putting himself out there. And getting nothing in return.
/>   That night he returned to his copy of Pride and Prejudice yet again. He thought back to his talk with Adeline, and of how they both loved Elizabeth Bennet, and he wondered how much of Jane Austen might be in that wonderful character after all. He would often stare at the small sketch of the baby-cheeked woman with tight brown curls and strong nose on the frontispiece of some of the books, and he wished he knew more. Wished the letters to her sister had been preserved—wished that the one sketch Cassandra Austen had done out-of-doors had revealed more than loose bonnet strings and an outward-seeking gaze.

  It mystified him that he could have grown up in the same village where Austen had once lived—where she had written the final three books from scratch—yet see so little of her around him. Yes, there was the Great House still owned by the Knights, and the graves of the mother and the sister, and the old steward’s cottage in the heart of the village. But aside from one small memorial plaque placed on the cottage in 1917 on the centenary of Austen’s death—the kind that the country gave out to hundreds of distinguished Englishmen—there were no other traces of her life.

  Adam found the courage to say as much to Dr. Gray a few days later at his annual checkup, now that Adam knew he was not the only man in Chawton to be so interested in the great writer. Harriet Peckham led him brusquely into the office, then remained in the front examining room tidying about as the two men spoke.

  Dr. Gray put down Adam’s medical file and looked at him curiously. “I must admit, Adam, I wasn’t expecting something like this from you. I mean, honouring Miss Austen’s legacy has always struck me as more of a—”

  “—woman’s job?”

  “No, not exactly—more of a historian’s. Or an educator of some kind.”

  Adam shook his head. “It’s been over a hundred years, and no one else has jumped into the breach.”

  “But what are you thinking about, then? A museum of some kind?”

  “Yes, of some kind. I was thinking, if the cottage could be repurposed again, as a single residence, and we were able to retrieve some of her things, then we could assemble it all together and people would actually have something to see, and touch, when they came. Look here.” Adam fumbled about in the pocket of the overcoat he was still wearing and pulled out a misshapen wooden object. “It’s a small child’s toy—Georgian I think, I looked it up in the library—and it was in a heap of rubbish I found in front of the house. They’ve been digging up the garden a bit of late. What if? What if this toy belonged to Jane’s family? And now it’s got no home, and it’s just lying there, trash, in the street.”

  It was the most Dr. Gray had ever heard the man speak, and the doctor nodded thoughtfully in response. “A home of sorts, then, to honour Austen. That seems right to me. You know, I always did feel that this village retained an old-world feel to it, as if one had stepped back in time.”

  “Then it might not take much.”

  “Well, it will take a house, for one thing. The cottage as it is won’t suffice, you are right—there’d have to be renovations, and town approvals for all that, and the Russell place up the road just sold for one thousand pounds. I think, with this lot size and the costs to repair, we’d be looking at a few thousand pounds at least, if not more.”

  Adam ruminated quietly. “The cottage still belongs to the Knights?”

  Dr. Gray nodded. “As far as I know. In better times, they might have sold for less than market value—but now I am not so sure. Adam, forgive me, because I am actually quite impressed by your initiative, but will you really have time to think about any of this come spring?”

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than Dr. Gray realized that time was the one thing so many in their sleepy little village seemed to have. Jane Austen had used her time here for housework and visits and composing works of genius. That the population of Chawton had barely varied since then made Dr. Gray suddenly see each of the villagers as almost pure one-to-one substitutes for those of the past. If they weren’t up to the task of preserving Austen’s legacy, who on earth ever would be?

  Adam shifted his weight about in the uncomfortable wooden chair facing Dr. Gray behind his desk. “If I have time to read her over and over, I’ve time for this.”

  It was the most declarative statement Dr. Gray had ever heard come from the man.

  “Okay, Adam, let me think about this—and possibly we can approach Frances Knight together, at the house. Best to start with her—old Mr. Knight only ever complains about all the Austen tourists we attract.” He suddenly stopped talking, having heard a noise just outside his office, and went over to slowly and discreetly close the door before returning to his desk. “In the meantime, let’s both think about others who might be interested in helping with our little project. Your mother perhaps?”

  Adam shook his head. “Not Mum—doesn’t care for all the tourists and whatnot that Austen brings around either.”

  Dr. Gray looked at Adam curiously. Having been schoolmates with all three Berwick boys, he had always had a particular concern for the farmer and his obviously depressed mental state. As part of his medical internship decades earlier, Dr. Gray had been on duty at Alton Hospital when Mr. Berwick had tragically died from the Spanish flu. And Dr. Gray was well aware of the mother’s domineering personality, which seemed to have grown only more difficult and self-pitying over the years. He had assumed Adam had been introduced to Austen by a woman—and the only woman anyone knew about when it came to the bachelor farmer was the old widow Berwick. Perhaps a teacher then, years ago, when Adam was studying for his placement and won the scholarship. A teacher such as Adeline Grover had been.

  And with that, Dr. Gray’s head shot up. “I think I know someone else who can help.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Alton, Hampshire

  November 15, 1945

  Andrew Forrester sat alone in his office, the door firmly shut. Before him on the desk blotter was the last will and testament of James Edward Knight.

  Andrew felt sick to his stomach. Frances Knight, the woman he had loved and lost decades ago due to this same man and his meddling, was about to lose everything she had.

  That very morning, James Edward Knight had summoned Andrew Forrester to his sickbed, confined to a room he would never leave again. In all the years that Andrew had provided legal advice to Mr. Knight, Frances’s name had rarely come up. They had all functioned best by never mentioning the past.

  But on this occasion, Mr. Knight finally mentioned his daughter:

  “Frances has no head for business.”

  Andrew appeared to listen patiently, but doubted that was true. Frances might be a little shy and yielding, but she had a firm grasp of the value of the estate and its contents. He also knew that she had done her best with household decisions to conserve expenses as much as possible, often to her own detriment, in order to attend to the costs of running the estate.

  “Sir, your daughter cares greatly both for you and for this estate,” Andrew countered, suspecting that the conversation was about to take a very difficult turn.

  James Knight shook his head. “Who knows what that girl cares about. I surely don’t. Certainly she never bothered to marry or bear children to carry on the family name, her one female duty.”

  Andrew could feel an old familiar anger rising within him, and he practically had to bite his lip, given what he knew of James Knight’s involvement in Frances’s few chances at love. Andrew wasn’t sure he had ever met a greater hypocrite than this man now dying before him.

  James Knight sat up in bed and Andrew went to adjust the pillows behind him, then sat back down on the chair left by the bedside for the infrequent visitors.

  “Pass me some paper,” the old man ordered, “and go get Dr. Gray’s nurse. She should be downstairs by now, to give me my bath. Oh, and that writing desk over in the corner—I’ll take that, too.”

  Andrew hesitated but did what he was told, then gritted his teeth and walked one floor down to find Harriet Peckham standing in the front entranc
e, inspecting the visitors’ log on the small side table.

  He had never liked Harriet, whom he suspected of being a busybody. But trained nurses were hard to entice out to Chawton, a town with all of one hundred homes and practically no commercial business to speak of. At least Harriet, who had grown up in town, was a familiar sight to the villagers and could be relied upon to show up in any emergency.

  When Andrew and the nurse entered the bedroom together, James Knight held up a sheet of the paper that Andrew had given him. “I need you both to witness my signature on this. I don’t want any questions about it, no bloody argument about my state of mind. I am completely satisfied as to its contents, and there’s not to be another word about it, do you hear?”

  He then placed the document back down on the mahogany writing desk and signed it with a flourish. Andrew went slowly over to the side of the bed and added his signature, then motioned for Harriet to come over and do the same.

  “That’s done then. As it should be. Maybe this estate—including the cottage—will now stand a chance. The last thing I want when I’m gone is a bunch of American tourists hanging over the fencing, trying to sneak a peek inside, and I don’t trust that daughter of mine to keep any such thing from happening.” James Knight glanced quickly at Miss Peckham, then over to Andrew, where he saw increasing anger darting across his longtime lawyer’s face. “You’re going to take this and lock it away, and that is the end of it, understood? And as my lawyer, you are of course required to keep its contents completely confidential.”

  Andrew sighed. He knew when he was beat. He had been here before.

  Back in the privacy of his office, Andrew now read the new will before him.

  Inside his locked cabinet was another will, one that had been executed nearly half a century ago, in 1896, soon after the passing of the new death-taxation laws. This earlier document had left the entire estate to the eldest surviving child of James Knight. At the time of execution this would have been Frances’s brother, Cecil, who had been born that same year and ended up dying in his thirties in a hunting accident. The estate would then pass to the next eldest child, being Frances, born two years after her brother in 1898. This was similar to the pattern of inheritance that the Knight family had prescribed for generations. To keep the property in the Knight family, the estate had often been inherited by women laterally over the centuries, rather than being passed down to some distant male relative.