“And what of my approval? How is that displayed? Can it be so picturesquely described?”
“Of course. It is like the sun glinting off a piece of glass. But it too is gone in an instant.”
Charlotte, still pretending to look at her book, laughed and then with a sigh closed her book. She then looked at Mr Parker and said, “How poetic you are. And from such fleeting expressions you deduce that I have conspired to … what exactly have I done Mr Parker?”
“That note, Miss Heywood. The fortuitousness of its discovery could not have been better timed. Miss Brereton is now free. And for Sir Edward too the match would have been unwise. He has no money; she has no money. Unless Lady Denham should grant either of them her estate in which case neither would need the other.”
“You are as your brother described. You feel free to say anything.”
“And you have managed to avoid denying that you saved that note and produced it when it might do the most … no, I cannot say damage for I think it was a sound decision.”
“Mr Parker, I do not appreciate being accused of looking in dustbins for discarded notes.”
“Oh ho, so that is how it was done! Very well, don’t deny it. I like a bit of mystery. Now, what do you propose to do about Arthur?” At this he stood and walked in front of her so that he eclipsed her view of the shore.
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“Please, do not pretend that my brother does not give you pause. Were it not for my natural indolence I should have addressed his many shortcomings long ago. But with your energy of action I am sure we can have him sorted out.”
“Again, Mr Parker, you labour under the misapprehension that my intent is to interfere in the lives of others.” As she said this she looked up at him and the wind caught her bonnet, which not being properly secured, blew away, causing her to cry out.
That cry was enough to goad him into pursuit of the bonnet that danced and skipped along the stone wall to lead him a merry chase. She looked in wonderment at him; his tall angular figure denying him the proper dignity of a man in pursuit of a lady’s garment. At the last he stumbled forward and with outstretched hands caught the bonnet before it could hop the wall and continue down the road. Unfortunately he secured the bonnet only at the cost of his upright attitude. Miss Heywood knew it would be better to look away from his discomfiture, but she could not help but be intrigued at this little drama. She did, however, return her gaze to the shore once Mr Parker began his long walk back to her. Presently she was aware of him standing beside her.
“Your bonnet, I believe,” he said, quite gravely. She turned her head to him, prepared to laugh again, until she saw that his fall had proven more serious than comic. She gasped to see his trouser leg torn and …
“Your knee! It is bleeding!”
“Is it? Hadn’t noticed,” he said with that peculiar male attitude of denying that which was blatantly obvious. He again offered her the bonnet, which she took, whereupon he sat next to her on the stone wall again. He winced as he took his seat.
“Mr Parker, I think you’re quite injured!”
“No, no, just a scratch. One can’t get injured chasing a bonnet. It just won’t do.”
She looked at him as if he had lost his senses but in fact he was simply loathe to display his pain and admit his embarrassment of how poorly he had acquitted himself. Later Charlotte would realize this was the moment when her estimation of him changed, when he revealed himself as more than just a man with an ironic sense of the world and instead simply as a man willing to endanger himself for something as silly as an errant bonnet. This self-realization, however, was for the future. In the present, she only viewed him as a man who foolishly seemed to be denying that he was in great pain and bleeding—and that this injury had occurred while in her service.
She took the bonnet he had handed her and quickly bound his knee with it, a duty for which it proved to be well suited.
“I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to retrieve that for you and now you’ve gone and ruined it,” he said.
“You are a very silly man, Mr Parker, but I thank you. And now we must get you back to your brother’s house for I fear my bonnet is inadequate to the task of staunching your wound. Can you stand?”
“Of course I can stand,” he said, although at this point inspiration struck when it occurred to him that Miss Heywood really was quite pretty.
“Actually, it does hurt a little. If I might have your hand to assist me?”
She ruefully offered her hand, annoyed that she now was destined to spend so much time with the one man she most wished to avoid. She helped him to his feet and together they walked back to Trafalgar House, he perhaps limping more than was warranted—or perhaps it was sufficient for his purposes.
Denver
The Tattered Cover
Mary clicked the send button with regret. She told her friend not to suggest her for the play because she was certain she’d still be working with Jane in October—after all, that was the date for the JASNA AGM in Fort Worth.
But sending the email forced her to think of the future, which hadn’t been discussed. She had no idea what might happen after October. She had signed a one-year exclusive contract with the avatar agency and had notified her school she would be leaving after Jane had picked her to be her avatar. She actually couldn’t work as an actress during that time in exchange for a steady pay packet. She couldn’t go back to school until the new year.
But will Jane need me after the AGM? The thought filled her with sadness; she truly enjoyed playing Jane Austen.
She never thought she would become an actor trapped in a role, not at the age of 23. Of course, playing Jane was a role like no other. The script was being written in real time, she had no time to learn her lines and she had to deliver them without thinking. It was all rather daunting, especially with the playwright and director standing next to her the whole time.
And yet she thought they pulled it off beautifully. She could now finish Jane’s words for her almost as fast as Jane could think them and over time, she was losing herself so much in the role that she didn’t know where Jane stopped and she began.
I’ve got to ask Jane how long a gig this is, she thought. Because if it does end after October … I’ve got to make plans to continue my life after this.
The loud wail of the baby in the next booth broke her thoughts. She checked her phone for the time and realized she should get back to the hotel. She quickly finished her sandwich and tried to ignore a slight twinge in her mouth. She dumped the paper wrapper into the waste bin by the door and walked back to the hotel.
The traffic was loud on the downtown Denver street and the sun was particularly hot as she made her way to her Lower Downtown hotel. It had been suggested to her by the bookstore as being convenient, historic and charming. By now on the book tour, however, all Mary required was clean and quiet with good Internet access. But a mention of the Tattered Cover when booking the room gave her a slight discount and the Oxford Hotel was certainly convenient.
She went to her room, opened the door and called out to her roommate.
“There you are. I thought you’d forgotten,” Jane’s digitized voice said from their laptop.
“Sheesh, I’m a minute late,” Mary said, which was not literally true. By the clock on their shared laptop, Mary was nine minutes late and Jane had been watching the clock with her usual preoccupation.
By now, Jane had lost much of her anxiety when finding herself alone behind a closed door. She knew Mary would eventually return or that a maid would enter, but still she chafed, especially when expecting Mary to return at a specific time. The misery of the two months she had spent trapped in a room still haunted her.
But Mary had seemed to want to eat her lunch alone and Jane had taken the time to compose a long email to Albert. Every second past Mary’s expected return, however, added to Jane’s discomfort.
Mary knew the source of Jane’s upset and reassured her employer. “I’m sorry I mad
e you worry, Jane.” She decided not to throw back at her the times she’d worried about Jane’s late-night forays.
Mary was speaking from the bathroom where she was brushing her teeth. It wouldn’t do for Jane Austen to smell of an Italian special with onions and extra peppers. Then she stripped off her jeans and T-shirt and took her costume from the closet.
“I wasn’t worried,” Jane replied, “just anxious that we shouldn’t be late for our appearance.”
“Uh huh,” Mary said, certain that Jane had envisioned her crushed under a bus. It was the writer in her employer, she knew, that made her think of tragic ends for her avatar. She knew Jane wasn’t obsessively planning her demise; it was more an idle exercise in plotting, but it still sometimes unnerved her.
“I don’t plan on needing my own avatar anytime soon, you know.”
“Of course not Mary. I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“So you’re pretty excited about this book signing. What’s so special about Denver? Have you ever been here before?”
“Not recently, but I have been in contact with many JASNA members in Colorado and hope to meet them here. And the Tattered Cover is one of the biggest book stores in the region and Melody has said I should … we should be extra nice.”
“When are we not?” Mary asked, rather pleased at her phrasing, which was lost on Jane, of course. She thought she sounded like Maggie Smith playing Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and then wondered if Maggie Smith had ever played Lady Catherine, or was she thinking of Judi Dench?
“You seem to be taking extra care in your appearance,” Jane said.
Mary only distantly heard Jane’s comment while she was attending to her makeup.
“I only notice that you are applying makeup. I thought you did not apply makeup when representing me.”
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. I always put on some foundation to try to match your flawless complexion.”
“Yes, but I am referring to your lipstick.”
Mary looked in the mirror and realized she had in fact applied lipstick.
“Oh, sorry, I guess I was preoccupied,” she said, and quickly removed it.
“Are you expecting someone, Mary?”
Mary debated lying but considering how close they were and that she never knew when Jane was about, it would be impossible to keep a relationship secret from her. And so she decided to come clean.
“Maybe. Well, yes. There’s a guy I met in Chicago. We signed a book for him.” She added the last comment as if to make Jane somehow complicit.
“We have signed any number of books, Mary. How am I to be expected to remember one person in particular?”
“He’s Dr Alice Davis’s graduate student.”
Jane thought back and did remember the man in question.
“Oh, he was a rather nice young man. And how did you come to be acquainted? I don’t remember meeting him subsequently.”
Mary was now brushing her hair back and pinning it up before putting on her cap.
“We ran into one another in a coffee shop later that day.”
“How serendipitous,” Jane said, wishing she might have eyes to roll. Not the running into a young lady at the park ploy, she thought. Still it pleased her to know that things never changed and young men still dreamed up methods for “running into” young girls.
Mary emerged from the bathroom, properly attired, and unplugged the portable terminal from the computer, and placed it in her reticule.1 She also inserted the earbuds and turned them on. She gave a quick glance about the room, wondering if there was anything she required. She decided against taking the spencer.
She walked to the front door and took a quick glance in the mirror, adjusting her “AV” pin right side up and left the room, giving Jane plenty of time to exit.
“We spent the day together,” Mary continued, once they were in the hallway.
“Oh yes, I remember you did seem very happy the next day. What is his name?”
“Stephen Abrams, and he’s in town … actually he’s in Colorado Springs attending a writer’s conference, but he said he would stop by the book signing and … well if you won’t need me the rest of the day …”
Jane was tempted to make a joke and pretend to be hurt at being abandoned, but she could tell if she did make such a joke Mary might take it seriously. The truth was that Jane had grown a little too reliant on Mary to keep her company and she should go out with her young man.
“Of course you may spend the rest of the day together, but only after we’ve been properly introduced.”
They’d left the hotel and as usual Mary’s costume elicited some notices and even a car horn, which caused her to jump. She almost responded as a New Yorker, but thought the sight of Jane Austen flipping someone the bird might cause her employer some embarrassment.
“Well, he definitely would like that. Maybe we could sit with him for a cup of tea and you could chat.”
They walked down Wazee Street and turned right at the 16th Street Mall and could see the bookstore ahead of them.
Once inside, Jane felt the comforting presence of a very strong AfterNet field.
“OMG!” Jane said. “Mary, you will not believe the AfterNet field in this store. I have never experienced its like.”
Mary grinned at Jane’s enthusiasm and then pointed to a prominent sign in the store that explained the entire store was an AfterNet hotspot and also the process for joining the local store chat rooms.
“Mary could you … would you excuse me for a moment?”
“I will carry on without you,” Mary said silently, for a store employee was approaching her with an already outstretched hand.
“Miss … Austen,” the woman said, after quickly glancing at the AV pin. “I’m Laurie Smith. We’re so honoured to have you here.”
Mary returned the appropriate pleasantry, remarked on the charm of the store, the fineness of the day and the large banner welcoming her. She enjoyed employing the full Austen charm offensive and yet again marvelled at the effect an English accent, a Regency costume and the aura of Jane could have. More than once Jane had told her to turn it down. “I was not that charming!”
“Yes, perhaps we should go to the room where you will give your talk,” Ms Smith finally said, and then led the way through the store.
“Is Miss Austen actually with you?” Ms Smith suddenly asked in a whisper. Mary was surprised at this, for she had seemed to understand the etiquette of addressing an avatar.
However, Mary replied, “No, I don’t think so. I think she was surprised by your store’s field.”
The woman sighed. “I thought so. The disembodied always get a little lost their first time in the store.” She was leading Mary down a corridor that seemed to take her to an adjacent building. “I’ll broadcast a message to the chat rooms and see if I can find her.” They approached the meeting room. “Can I get you anything? Water, tea?”
“Water would be appreciated. I am not used to this dry climate.”
“Oh believe me, compared to winter it’s positively damp. And here’s where you will give your talk and sign. We think it will be a very large turnout but we can limit the signing.”
“That shouldn’t be necessary. I …” But Mary’s reply was interrupted by her phone ringing and she knew from the ring that it was Melody.
“Excuse me, that’s my … our … Jane’s agent.”
Ms Smith left Mary, who answered her phone.
“Hi Melody.”
“Mary? Is Jane there?”
“No, Jane’s exploring the store. I guess it has an awesome AfterNet field.”
“Good … I wanted to talk alone. Everything’s a go for tomorrow. I heard back from the Denver chapter and they have reservations for ten so Jane …”
“I’m back,” Mary heard Jane’s voice say in her earbuds.
“Hold on Melody, Jane’s back. Let me tie you in.”
Mary took her terminal from her reticule and synced it with her phone.
“O
K, we’re both here,” Mary said.
“Yes, Mama, we are fine. We called you from the airport.” Jane said. She assumed Melody was worried that she hadn’t heard from them.
“I was just a little worried that you hadn’t called from the hotel,” Melody said.
“Would you have been awake had we called?” Jane asked. She knew that Melody had only just returned to New York. Her agent, after leaving England, had added a quick Los Angeles trip.
“Tamara would have picked up.”
“Hah!” Jane said. “You prove my point. You both needed a full night’s rest. And now Mary will look properly rested for her young man.”
Mary’s eyes widened. She had hoped to keep her date with Stephen from Melody.
“What young man? Do you have a date Mary?”
“She does,” Jane said. “One of Dr Davis’s graduate students. They met in Chicago.”
Mary winced at Jane betraying all the information about Stephen. Melody no longer held Dr Davis in much regard. Davis had written a review of Sanditon that praised the writing and the story but some of the remarks seemed to question Jane’s authenticity. Jane had not been bothered by the review, as she was happy with Davis’s commendations on the modernity of the style, but those same commendations Melody viewed as an accusation.
Mary was also worried that Melody would object to her seeing Stephen because of the morals clause she had signed.
“When is this date, Jane?” Melody asked.
But Mary quickly spoke. “After the reading. We don’t have anything scheduled the rest of the day.”
Mary waited for Melody, who eventually said, “Well if it’s OK with Jane.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, with just a little irritation that she must now seek approval if she wanted to go on a date. And yet that was the agreement she had signed. During her conversation, customers began to arrive and Mary smiled pleasantly at them. She avoided the temptation to turn away. In the early days of her representation of Jane, Melody had wanted to avoid photographs of Mary, as Jane, speaking on her cell phone. But after the first photo of Jane Austen on her cell phone had become an Internet meme, Melody had not only stopped her injunction, she practically encouraged it.
Jane, Actually Page 25
