Jane, Actually

by Jennifer Petkus

  “Like she said, with the British Library. Mrs Westerby … the old lady who owns it … she was going to give it to the library and sell the journal. I guess now she’ll just sell …”

  “If you would be so kind, Mr Blake, please tell her I will buy it,” Jane said. “If she is a descendant of the Gorrell family …”

  “Yes, of course. Right.” He gathered up the photos and put them back in his messenger bag. “Well then, best we are off, Dr Davis.”

  He helped her to stand and then turned to address the others. “I’ll notify Sotheby’s. I’m sorry … about the trouble. I thought …”

  “I thought it was genuine,” Alice said, “because it served my purpose. Yes Court, we should go.”

  Falling on his sword

  Stephen begs forgiveness

  “Please Mary, I had no idea what she was up to, you’ve got to believe me.”

  Mary tried to ignore him as she collected the terminal from the middle of the table and disconnected the speakers. The only people left in the room were herself, Stephen and presumably Jane.

  “I haven’t talked to her for two weeks. Hell, I didn’t even know about this … showdown until I got a phone call from Austen telling me to come to this meeting.”

  “Jane called you?” she asked, not looking at Stephen while she searched for her earbuds.

  “Yes … which is pretty weird. There’s something about talking to a dead person over the phone that’s unsettling.”

  Mary finally found the earbuds in her bag and inserted them.

  “They prefer to be called disembodied,” Mary said, but not very loudly.

  “Do not be tiresome, Mary,” Jane told her. “And let the poor man explain himself.”

  “We have that BBC film crew coming up to the room in thirty minutes and I have to get ready,” Mary silently said to Jane.

  “That’s not as important as you talking to Stephen now. Hear him out.”

  “Very well,” Mary said out loud. “So you’re telling me you had no idea Dr Davis wanted to accuse Jane during her breakout session?”

  She shoved back one of the chairs around the conference table.

  “No. I mean yes, I had no idea.”

  “And you had no idea she had it in for Jane?” She shoved back another chair while Stephen followed her.

  “OK, that I knew. I mean that’s why I called you, when you were in Seattle.”

  “And before that, you didn’t know? You didn’t know when we met in Chicago, for instance?” She moved another chair but Stephen stopped following her.

  “Uh … well, yes I knew that … she asked me to look into … um …”

  Mary turned back to face him. “Spit it out,” she said, and shoved another chair against the table. He jumped back at the sound.

  “Well like I said earlier, she wanted me to find out how Austen claimed her identity. That’s why I started looking through the Chawton inventory, to see if there was some letter or memento that’d been overlooked. It was a long shot, but once I got started, well it was fun. And that’s how I knew about the missing inventory list … you know, the thing that cast doubt on the journal.” He wanted to add, “The thing that made my advisor look stupid and put a fork in my academic career.”

  She looked back at him as he said the last, the pleading in his voice unmistakable.

  “Oh, yes, although I’m not really sure I understand. Why ‘good riddance to bad rubbish?’”

  “It’s a mystery to me as well, but it might have something to do with that SOE.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I think it means Special Operations Executive. During the war, it was a top-secret department that played tricks against the Nazis. They did all sorts of propaganda and assassinations and blew things up, and they also had to be really good at making fake documents.”

  “How exciting,” Jane said. “That certainly adds a level of intrigue.”

  “So you think …”

  “We might never know. A lot of what they did is still secret so it might be difficult to find out anything about this Gorrell-Barmes, but I guess the Austen society must have known there was something hinky about the journal.”

  “Hinky?” Jane asked.

  “How do you know all this?” Mary asked, impressed despite her anger.

  “One of the romance thrillers I wrote is set in World War II.”

  “Oh, that’s … that’s very clever.”

  “He’s a writer, Mary? You never mentioned this.”

  “So am I forgiven?”

  “I don’t know. You still should have said something to me.”

  He looked down at the floor as she made this accusation.

  “Yeah, well I should have. It’s just … well I didn’t think you’d exactly warm to me if I told you I was working to expose your boss.”

  “That is a very valid point, Mary.”

  “And I didn’t find anything. Everything Dr Davis did, she did on her own. I never even knew she had … an accomplice.”

  “Oh, I suppose … how do you think things stand with you and her?”

  He pushed another one of the chairs against the conference table. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I want her as my advisor anymore. It’s funny, you know, because she really taught me how to be an academic, how to not take anything at face value, and then she goes and falls for this journal.”

  “I guess people believe in what they want to believe,” Mary said. “And I guess I believe in Jane.”

  Not just a river in Egypt

  Albert suspects his Jane is the Jane

  Albert watched as the woman who seemed to be the target of everyone’s anger left the room, followed by a man whose part in the silent drama he couldn’t fathom. They had taken with them the extraordinary documents, or pictures of documents, that they had earlier produced.

  Austen’s avatar, his roommate Stephen, the elderly man, the woman he recognized as the current JASNA president, a tall woman he didn’t recognize and a short woman he thought must be Austen’s agent remained behind. They appeared to be mutually congratulating each other, but for what he was uncertain.

  The whole thing was a mystery, from the time earlier in the day when Stephen received the phone call that made him seem so queer. He’d been talking with Stephen when his friend got the call and Stephen pretended it wasn’t anything important. Later when Stephen excused himself from the country-dance workshop, Albert followed him to the conference room.

  The mystery of the meeting, however, was nothing in comparison to the documents the large woman and her friend had produced. The title of the one was so shocking that he was surprised no one heard his gasp. And when the large woman and her friend had left with the documents, there was visible relief among those remaining.

  Journal of Jane Bigg-Wither? What could it mean? I must have read it incorrectly.

  He wished for another look and then saw that Austen’s agent had taken photographs of the documents with her phone. He moved closer to get a better look, but then the woman sent the photos as attachments to an email. He watched as the woman quickly addressed the email to JaneAusten3@theAfterNet.net.

  The surprise of seeing that address eclipsed every thing else he’d witnessed. Why would she forward an email to my Jane?

  Soon the meeting appeared to end. There were some handshakes and smiles and people began to leave. He followed Austen’s agent out the door when he realized that Austen’s avatar and his roommate remained behind. He briefly considered remaining, but then thought he’d already intruded enough.

  He left the conference room and slowly made his way toward the lobby area. Judging by the bustle, the breakout sessions must have just let out and the lobby was filled. He needed a place to sit and thought of the walkway to the hotel one floor up and the chairs along the windows. He looked at the escalators and decided he had no desire to negotiate them and resigned himself to riding in a lift.

  He found six women waiting for the lift and entered with them when it a
rrived. Fortunately the women were all engaged in a conversation and stood closer than usual, affording him enough room in the lift that he wasn’t buffeted. The lift quickly travelled the one floor and he tried to exit but was confronted by the crowd of women awaiting it. He only just made it through the closing doors. Then he had to dodge and weave until he could find an unoccupied chair in the hallway and sat, hoping he could puzzle out the mystery.

  Perhaps my Jane is a friend of this woman, he thought, but without conviction. It seemed unlikely that his Jane would know the Jane’s agent.

  Try as he might, he could find no reason why the woman might send an email to his Jane, except one. Albert had learned the lesson of Occam’s razor during his time in the trenches, which many of the generals never had. He knew that the simplest explanation of a thing was probably the best, and in this case, the simplest explanation for why the friend and agent of Jane Austen would be forwarding an email to his Jane was …

  Still he shied away from voicing the thought. If it were true, then it would mean that his Jane had lied to him.

  But he just as quickly shied away from that thought as well. Jane has never claimed to be … Jane. Not once has she ever … Then he thought of her AfterNet profile, which mirrored the biography of the Jane Austen.

  Of course he hadn’t believed the profile when he first saw it, no more than he believed the profiles of the many Napoleon Bonapartes and Winston Churchills and Lord Nelsons and Genghis Khans he’d heard of or met. Most were either clearly insane or poseurs, but a few were quite rational and enjoyable companions. He had just assumed some people wanted a more compelling biography for their afterlife. Even he had amended the details of his death, preferring to tell Jane he died on the battlefield rather than the dull reality of dying of influenza on a hospital cot.

  So I can’t say that Jane has ever directly lied to me …

  But that thought brought back all the doubts he’d experienced the past several months and his suspicion that Jane had been less than truthful.

  What a complete and utter prat I’ve been! She’s been lying to me about everything. All that stuff and nonsense about her job. She just didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

  He thought of all the missed chats and her fictions about arguments with co-workers and her humorous anecdotes. Was any of that true! What was I to her?

  He got up from the chair, full of a rage that his incorporeal status could not dissipate. In his knockabout days he would have been spoiling for a fight, or a drink, or a drink and a fight. But in his disembodied state, his only release was movement and so he fought the crowd and went outside and wrapped in his own anger and misery, stalked the streets of downtown Fort Worth.

  The Seinfeld of literature

  Jane savours her victory

  Jane and Mary returned to their suite only five minutes before the BBC crew was to arrive. Melody was already waiting for them but gave them the good news the film crew was running late and they had another fifteen minutes. They quickly prepared Mary, changing her out of her semi-disguise that she used to move throughout the hotel and into her costume.

  Jane wasn’t needed for this part, of course, and instead took the time to savour her victory. Although she’d professed a philosophic attitude toward the outcome, she was still pleased to have put the odious Courtney Blake in his place. She was less happy to find herself at odds with Dr Davis.

  She was also upset that her victory was accomplished by confirming the existence of the letter. The high-minded paragraph she had recited gave no idea how much bile and vitriol she had put into it.

  And now everyone may see it at the British Library, where it will join my desk.1 Ah well, who visits a library these days?

  All things considered, she decided to consider the day a success and her one desire was to share that success with Albert. Watching Mary and Stephen untangle their relationship because of his very understandable failure to inform her of something that would put him in a bad light made it obvious that she should confess all to Albert.

  Her behaviour, however, was far less honourable than Stephen’s. I have actively dissembled … no, call it what it is … I have actively lied to him.

  She had planned to confess after the AGM, but now she realized, in being unable to share her success with Albert, the consequences of her deception. She determined then that she must tell him the truth. She searched for him online but he was nowhere to be found.

  It is my own fault. I have heartlessly neglected him since arriving. She wallowed in these thoughts for a time before the possibility that he might have left the AGM occurred to her.

  She looked over the recent emails he’d sent her, to see if he’d said anything about leaving, but found nothing other than his obvious upset that they’d been unable to meet.

  She briefly considered confessing to him in an email, but she thought it improper. Even if she couldn’t see him and he her, she felt she owed him an explanation in a private real-time conversation. Toward that end, she sent him an email explaining that her schedule had opened up and she could meet him that night to chat.

  The film crew arrived while Jane was writing. They quickly found a suitable spot for filming in the suite, settling Mary into a comfortable chair beside a large poster of Sanditon. The presenter, Amanda Vickery, introduced herself and was punctilious to address Mary as Jane.

  Jane was familiar with Vickery’s books, having enjoyed The Gentleman’s Daughter, which she thought helped dispel somewhat the impression that Georgian marriages were loveless unions based on money and status.

  Vickery was currently filming a documentary that had originally been titled The Many Lovers of Jane Austen, but in light of Courtney Blake’s book and Jane’s identification, it was now to be called Jane Austen Today.

  After fifteen minutes of setting the lighting and audio levels, they were ready to begin.

  AMANDA VICKERY: Thank you, Miss Austen, for giving me this opportunity. I am an unabashed fan.

  JANE AUSTEN: You’re very welcome, Ms Vickery. And I’ve enjoyed your books as well.

  VICKERY: Always nice to hear, thank you. And still for me a little unreal, that I should actually be talking to Jane Austen. Since the discovery of the afterlife, I’ve hoped that of all the great authors, you could find a way to reclaim your identity. So many of your admirers identify with you and claim you as a friend. Why do you think that is?

  AUSTEN: I assure you it was not grand design on my part. I wrote my novels primarily for the enjoyment of my family and friends. I imagined what joy my sister or father would experience when reading this or that, and perhaps because that was my goal, my stories seem personal and the voice of the author seems like that of an intimate.

  VICKERY: But you don’t pretend that you wrote only for family. Mansfield Park and Emma you wrote after the success of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. There seems to have been a calculation and experimentation there, resulting in very different novels.

  AUSTEN: You are correct, perhaps with the consequence that those novels are not as popular, but I do not regret my decision to try something different or to appeal to a larger public or to write something that pleased me more than it might please others.

  VICKERY: I mentioned before that I had hoped you could reclaim your identity, but I wonder why it was so important to you, a woman who never sought recognition for her work.

  AUSTEN: Now here, Miss Vickery, you ask a question that I know you know to be a lie. I always sought recognition as a writer. I revelled at the sight of the title page of Pride and Prejudice, proclaiming it as being written by the author of Sense and Sensibility. What I did not want is notoriety.

  VICKERY: What you’ve also done is fail to answer the question. Because I can’t help but think you’ve achieved both recognition and notoriety with your reclaimed identity.

  AUSTEN: Oh, pardon me. Yes, I am afraid I now have some small notoriety, which I had hoped to avoid. Now as to why I went to the trouble, and it was considerable, to re
claim my identity. I am afraid it all comes down to pettiness. Despite the efforts of many scholars, such as you, to represent me as more than just a literary spinster, I am afraid that is precisely what I have become. I have become known for writing books with little plot and no sex. Someone called me the Seinfeld of literature2—I had to look up the reference—meaning I wrote books about nothing. Others have belittled my novels as being only about relationships and marriage, as if that isn’t the biggest challenge, hope and desire of most of the people in the world. While at the same time a dedicated cadre rank me just below Shakespeare, which while flattering, is arrant nonsense. I thought if I could regain my identity, I could argue for a middling sort of reputation.

  VICKERY: So you couldn’t be content with simply seeking a publisher for Sanditon as … as …

  AUSTEN: Precisely, you see the difficulty. What name would I use? In today’s publishing world, I could not be anonymous. And yet I had no desire to use a nom de plume. I wanted to write again as the author of Emma and Persuasion, but no publisher or agent would have me as such, until I met Melody Kramer, my agent and now my business manager. She recognized that establishing my identity was paramount.

  VICKERY: You could have self-published. You could decide to publish as Jane Austen even without reclaiming your identity.

  AUSTEN: I was prepared to do just that, but fortunately it was not necessary. As you know, Sense and Sensibility was essentially self-published; I am no stranger to taking matters into my own hands.

  VICKERY: Moving on to Sanditon, is this another novel about nothing … or nothing more than relationships and marriage?

  AUSTEN: I very much fear most people will view it as such, although I think it quite different. In fact, Janeites have long remarked that the little of it I wrote before death seemed very different from the other novels. And my death and experiences have undoubtedly combined to produce something markedly different, even though many will undoubtedly complain it is just a book about the gentry hoping to make a suitable marriage.