Persuading Austen

by Brigid Coady

  ***

  The door to the pub opened and light and sound came spilling out onto the pavement. Annie was the last through the door, watching as the room turned to look at Austen walk in. Heads snapped around, doing double-takes, and then there was a hand wave and a shout from the back of the bar.

  Three men stood grinning at Austen and he rushed to meet them, pulling them all into a hug. No embarrassment in being demonstrative.

  The four of them spoke over each other, hands patting backs, chests, and arms. Checking that they were all there.

  Hell, Austen had good-looking friends.

  Annie recognized the tallest man as Harry Harville. He was an inch or so taller than Austen and slimmer. His brown hair was curly and growing both out and down; a pair of glasses was holding it back. He’d make a dashing Wickham, Annie thought. There was a stockier black-haired man whose naturally lugubrious expression was brightened by a beaming smile. Annie had seen his headshot in Les’s office. This was John Benwick. Which meant the smaller chestnut-haired man with the bright blue eyes and mischievous smile was Harry’s husband Lewis.

  ‘Harry, Lewis, John, I want you to meet …’ Austen started.

  ‘I’m Marie Elliot; it is an absolute pleasure,’ Marie purred as she held her hand out like the lady of the manor bestowing favours on them.

  ‘And yes, I can get you an Easy Ladies mug if you ask very nicely.’ She winked. Annie wanted to crawl her way out of the pub. The men were wide-eyed, taking Marie in. ‘Oh, this is Louisa, who is going to play Kitty. Hanging round with the Elliots has definitely helped her talent.’ Marie tried to claim Louisa’s good fortune, forgetting they’d all met already.

  ‘My husband Charlie, my other sister-in-law Henrietta, and Robbie.’ Marie waved her hand round dismissively.

  Crap, now they were all looking at Annie, waiting, the only one they hadn’t met.

  ‘And my sister,’ Marie said. ‘Shall we sit?’

  So now she had no name. Excellent.

  There were waves to her from their new acquaintances, the pub too cramped to shake hands.

  Soon everyone was seated around a cramped table in the back snug of the pub. A few brave locals had asked for photos with Austen, which he’d given with a smile and a request that they didn’t post them until they’d left the pub. Marie’s smile fell when no one asked for hers.

  Harry flanked Austen on one side and Lewis on the other. Annie squashed the happy thought that at least Louisa wasn’t snuggled up against him.

  ‘But what do your family think about acting? I mean it isn’t a particularly secure career, is it?’ Charlie was asking them, pompously.

  You would have thought for a man married into a theatrical family and with his sister acting he could think of something more imaginative. Annie sipped at her wine, wishing she didn’t feel quite so out of charity with everyone.

  ‘I think if you want to do something, you shouldn’t worry about what your family thinks. If they love you enough they’ll support you,’ Harry said.

  ‘Yeah, I mean at some point your family has to see you as a grown-up who can make their own decisions. If you don’t you end up making no one happy,’ Austen said quietly but forcefully.

  Annie gripped the stem of her wine glass.

  She knew who that comment was meant for … and the box of her Austen memories was yanked open again and she was thrown back in time.

  ‘What do you mean you aren’t coming?’

  Annie jumped. She’d thought she had time before Austen found her note. She thought she had time to pack up, leave Stratford. That she could hide out in London and never be found.

  Please go away, she thought in her head, as she carefully folded a T-shirt.

  ‘Annie-mate?’

  His voice cracked as it went up, questioning, and that crack tore a hole in her heart. The jagged edges streaming backwards as a hurricane of feeling flowed through her.

  ‘It is what it is.’

  She tried to make her voice hard but only had the energy to whisper it. Why had she never learned the art of lying with her voice? Playing with breath and tones like her family did?

  ‘But, Anne.’ He grabbed her arm and with that touch she could feel her resolutions crumbling. ‘The dream? What about AustenWorld?’

  AustenWorld. Not AnnieWorld.

  And that was the problem. This was his dream and she would be borrowing it. All the things Aunt Lil had been saying about penniless, selfish actors had got into her head. She remembered her mother coming home exhausted while her father lived his dream.

  ‘But that is your dream, Austen. It isn’t mine.’

  ‘It’s ours, isn’t it?’ He sounded confused.

  ‘Is it?’ She tried to talk past the lump in her throat. ‘Is it really? Because how will LA be any different for me than London is? Here I’m a daughter and a sister; I’m not Annie Elliot.’

  She smoothed the T-shirt as she placed it in the suitcase, seeing her fingers tremble as if they belonged to someone else.

  ‘But in LA you’ll be with me.’

  ‘Yes, with you. I’ll be the girlfriend. No one will know who I am.’ And she already knew how that felt. She still smarted from being left in the corner of the room at the party last night. Austen had been off with the beautiful people – the shiny crowd – and she’d stood on the outside watching. Squeezed out of her place at his side, by an actress who ‘just had to borrow him for a moment’.

  She shivered as she remembered the girl’s eyes – the one who had looked over her shoulder for someone more dazzling.

  Annie wasn’t the dazzling sort.

  ‘But …’ he said.

  She looked up at him then and wished she hadn’t. He looked so confused and hurt, a lock of hair falling over his eye. Her hand itched to brush it away. To feel the silkiness of it as it slipped through her fingers.

  ‘I need to find out who I am, Austen. Who I am if I’m not one of the Elliots or Austen Wentworth’s girlfriend.’

  ‘We can do this together. We can.’

  He stroked the back of her hand; it felt as if he was branding her.

  Why couldn’t he see she was doing this for them both? Because if she didn’t she would lose herself with him too, just as surely as she’d lost herself in her family. And she couldn’t bear becoming invisible to Austen, like she was to Dad, like she was to Immy and Marie. How she became the person who squished herself into the spaces that were in between.

  ‘Austen, you are going to be great. You can do this. And maybe in six months …’ She trailed off as he gave her hand a crushing squeeze and then dropped it.

  She watched his face harden, the confused frown turning into an angry one.

  ‘Six months? Really, Anne, don’t throw me a bone. Be serious. Are you coming?’

  Because he was right: there was no halfway house on this decision.

  It was now or never.

  ‘I can’t.’ Her voice was raspy as for the first time she stood up for what she had to. And maybe if she could stand up to Austen and fight for herself she could fight to find herself in her family.

  How had it reached the point that to save herself she had to cut herself in half? A Solomon solution.

  ‘They got to you didn’t they? Your dad, Immy, and Marie – or was it bloody Lily Russell? Did they say they couldn’t live without you?’

  Annie wanted to tell him that wasn’t true – no one had persuaded her to do anything. In fact she hadn’t even told them about the plan. If only there was a way she could up and leave without letting them know she was going.

  A fait accompli.

  But, really, how could she leave Dad? Austen hadn’t seen him when Mum had died. He’d been so lost; he had stopped eating and washing. He hadn’t slept much and when he had he’d howled for Molly. Austen didn’t know how Dad had become a desiccated, broken shell that Annie had carefully put back together. But she wasn’t sure she got all the pieces back in the right places.

  Austen never saw the versi
on of Immy who collapsed at the funeral and then sunk herself into a pile of drugs that took Annie years to wean her off.

  And Austen never knew Marie when she’d been a lost teen, who clung to Annie as the only safe person in the world, who would beg her not to leave her.

  Okay, they were better now but still, he hadn’t been there. Didn’t hear Mum asking her to look after them.

  ‘Don’t, Austen,’ she said but she didn’t deny it.

  Maybe it was easier for him to believe she was weak, she thought. Maybe being seen as weak instead of the strongest she’d ever been would make him disgusted with her and give up. Because she wasn’t sure she could stay strong, if he asked her again.

  He gave her one last long look.

  Ask me to go. Ask me to go, she whispered in her head at him. Her throat paralysed.

  ‘Goodbye, Anne.’

  He turned and left.

  Left with her name hanging in the air – not taking up space, just floating there, accusing her. Annie never felt so small.

  ‘I would never give up something because my family didn’t approve.’ Louisa’s voice broke through Annie’s memories. She jolted back and tuned into the conversation, whilst Austen’s voice saying her name still echoed in her head and heart.

  Louisa was leaning across Lewis to get nearer to Austen, her hand reaching out and touching his arm. She preened as Austen smiled down at her approvingly.

  There was a snort from someone at the table.

  It sounded quite loud even in the crowded and noisy pub. But that could be because they were all sitting close together.

  Which meant Annie was very conscious when everyone at the table stopped talking and turned their heads to look at her.

  Crap, the internal snort of contempt she’d thought she’d made had actually projected out of her.

  She hated being the centre of attention. Quickly she grabbed one of the napkins that were in the little metal bucket on the table that held the cutlery and blew her nose, smiling weakly.

  ‘Allergies,’ she said and hid half her face behind the napkin until everyone turned back to their conversation.

  But really, she sighed and sat back, when had the Musgroves ever disapproved of anything Louisa did? The sun shone out of her bottom. It was a good thing that Louisa and Henrietta were so lovely because they would otherwise be unbearable.

  It was easy to make statements like that when you never had to deal with the reality.

  God, Annie was beginning to bore herself with this nonsense. Why was she getting tortured with bloody Austen Wentworth? She was bigger than this. She was better than this.

  She was a bloody producer now. There could be an AnnieWorld if she wanted one.

  She wished she could leave.

  Annie looked up and saw that Lewis, Harry’s husband, was watching her. He gave her a small friendly smile as if he knew what she meant, as if he understood that it wasn’t that easy.

  And then she thought, did he know? Did they all know? Harry, John, and Lewis – these men were Austen’s family. Had he ever told them who it was who broke his heart? That she was the one they’d had to save him from.

  Great.

  ‘Sometimes it isn’t as easy as that,’ Lewis said, interrupting the general conversation. ‘It is one thing to take a job your family are against; it is something else to date someone they don’t approve of.’

  Harry reached over and clasped Lewis’s hand where it lay on the table. Austen’s mouth turned down.

  ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’ And he reached a hand over to cover the couple’s joined hands.

  The rest of the table looked confused.

  Annie wanted to grab Lewis and kiss him for showing Austen that it wasn’t easy. She wondered what their story was.

  There was a silence over the table.

  ‘Anyway enough of the heavy stuff,’ Harry said with a grin, as he released his husband’s hand. ‘So who wants to know all the dirt on Austen here?’

  ‘Hear. Hear,’ shouted Charlie.

  The mood broke into laughter and Austen sank his forehead onto the table.

  ‘I have horrible friends,’ he said.

  Annie wished she had friends as horrible as them.

  ***

  ‘And then Harry here, dragged me away from the paps before I could punch them. I was flipping them off so they couldn’t use most of the photos luckily.’ Austen clapped his friend on the back as they finished another story of their life in LA. The whole group laughed. Harry and Austen had spent the past twenty minutes trying to outdo each other with embarrassing tales.

  Annie smiled down at her drink. It was weird, Austen being papped. Of course she knew that photographers followed him; she’d been avoiding the product of it for the last few years but how odd was it to be unable to go out for dinner or a drink without someone pointing lenses in your face. To know that everyone knew your business.

  ‘I was only doing the world a favour, coz the dude was big and I didn’t want this pretty face getting bashed.’ Harry had his arm slung over Austen’s shoulders and with the other squished his cheeks together. Austen even looked good with fish lips.

  Annie’s heart felt as if it were tearing a little. This could’ve been her life. She could’ve known Harry, Lewis, and John. Would’ve known these stories, would have had her own versions of them.

  ‘Hey, it wasn’t my fault.’ Austen laughed.

  ‘If you would stop being so chivalrous then I wouldn’t have to keep dragging you out of trouble,’ Harry said.

  She could see Austen’s cheeks go pink.

  Yeah, he would still be chivalrous. She envied every person he’d met since her.

  ‘Well I wasn’t having him make nasty comments about you and Lew,’ he said.

  Lewis reached over the table and tapped his hand with his thumb. ‘And we love you for it but you can’t fight everyone,’ he said.

  ‘I can try.’ Austen grinned at them both.

  ‘So when you aren’t stuck in the production office keeping us all on the financial straight and narrow, what do you do?’ Annie turned to smile at the man who had been quietly sitting next to her and was now asking the question, taking her attention from the three men.

  John Benwick.

  She’d recognized him when she’d seen his headshot in Les’s office. He was one of those actors who was always steadily working and you went: ‘There’s thingy,’ when you saw him on the telly. He was never the lead, always the solid best friend, or the baddy or the policeman.

  He was of middling height, his hair black and slightly receding into a widow’s peak. His face a little too long, he was going to make a perfectly mournful Mr Collins, she thought.

  She shrugged. ‘Mostly I read, go to gigs if I can get the time,’ she said.

  His face brightened. ‘You like music. Who?’

  And suddenly Annie was deep in conversation as they exchanged the names of bands that they both enjoyed. Maybe rehearsals next week wouldn’t be so bad.

  ‘Have you heard the latest by Dan Weston Cohen?’ she asked. She wondered if John would’ve have heard of such an obscure singer-songwriter.

  There was a brief pause, a hitch in John’s breathing. ‘Becca bought me his album, Bluebird,’ he said.

  Annie saw his eyes fill with tears. She couldn’t help but cover his hand with hers.

  ‘Becca?’

  ‘My fiancée. Harry’s sister. She … Well. We lost her last year.’

  For a beat Annie wasn’t sure what to do, but then she squeezed his fingers. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ It wasn’t much. It felt like empty words but what else could she do?

  He smiled sadly, turned his hand over, gripped hers, and squeezed.

  ‘I miss her every day.’ He laughed without humour. ‘And music just makes it worse sometimes. I’ll be going about my day and a song comes on and rips me back to a memory with her.’

  ‘And you can smell and feel everything that happened in that moment, like time
travel,’ Annie finished quietly.

  How many times had songs taken her unawares and for a brief moment she was back in Austen’s arms, her face stretched in a grin as she laughed up at him. The smell of his shower gel in her nose, the taste of the coffee he used to make her on her tongue. Then the crash and she’d shudder when she realized she’d been hijacked by her memories.

  ‘Sounds like you know?’ John said still gripping her hand as if it were a lifeline.

  ‘I didn’t lose someone like you but I did love someone and lost them because I wasn’t brave enough. I’ve never really got over it.’ It was weird to be telling John this when Austen was sitting a few seats away.

  ‘Do you listen to the music you listened to with them often?’ John said with a desperate edge as if wanting to make a connection.

  Drowning myself in words and music

  Anything to keep memories at bay

  Until one song comes sneaking through

  Russian roulette every time I press play

  The Feckless Rogues song ripped through her mind, and filled all the holes it left with memories of Austen.

  She blinked and held on to John a little tighter.

  ‘I do but then I think sometimes you have to add a few more new artists into the mix. Ones that are as good but maybe more upbeat – and they can make new memories?’ she suggested quietly. If only she could take her own advice.

  They sat like that smiling at each other and holding hands for comfort for a few moments.

  Annie turned her head to see what the rest of the table was doing.

  Austen was staring at her, his face blank. His eyes flicked down to where John and her hands were clasped.

  She could feel her cheeks redden. Her fingers twitched to release. She wanted to explain.

  But why should she?

  She sat still without moving and when Austen looked back up, his mouth was pulled tight. Anyone who didn’t know him would think he was calm, but she could see a muscle twitching in his jaw.

  Did he think she was going to corrupt John, or something?

  She sighed. She couldn’t deal with Austen thinking she was the devil.

  Annie squeezed John’s hand again and let it go.