Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library (15 page)

‘Oh, please do,’ I said boldly – well, I was responsible for this weekend, wasn’t I? It was only right to take charge. And it hadn’t been a complete disaster, I reasoned, helping him out of his wet things. I wasn’t such a bad chief bridesmaid after all. In fact, I had a feeling this weekend was about to get a whole lot better.

And I’m sure Jane would have approved.

My inspiration:
Mr Darcy and a blocked toilet. A recent sewage leak in my house inspired me, alongside my love of Jane Austen’s novels and happy endings.

ONE CHARACTER IN SEARCH OF HER LOVE STORY ROLE

Felicity Cowie

Hannah Peel was dispatched by her author to shadow heroines from
Pride and Prejudice
and
Jane Eyre.
¹
Like all CAST cardholders, Hannah was well aware of the Intertextuality Act which had come in around the start of the twentieth century, acknowledging that writers could make use of existing characters, consciously or otherwise. Hannah hoped to use her shadowing work to convince her author that she could take a larger role. While some characters might be comfortable to turn in some very slight work and be used solely to comment on the downfall of the hero, Hannah was not one of them. She suspected her author of being inexperienced. Frequently, Hannah wished she might be commissioned to work with Ali Smith or Shirley Hazzard or Kazuo Ishiguro, but that was unfair. Every author deserved at least a chance to listen to their characters.

When Hannah arrived at the Netherfield Ball she immediately noted that Mr Bingley was dancing with an Unnamed Character at the far side of the floor. Hannah approached Jane Bennet, who was sitting apart, struggling with a word puzzle.

‘Miss Bennet? I’m Hannah Peel. I’m going to be the chief female character in a modern novel. I’ve been sent here, by CAST, to shadow you.’

Miss Bennet put the puzzle book aside and stood.

‘You are most welcome to Netherfield, Miss Peel. But I am afraid you have mistaken me for my sister, Miss Elizabeth Bennet. It is she who is the heroine of this novel. I am
Jane
Bennet and a secondary character in a parallel subplot. Shall I take you to her?’

Hannah studied a print-out of her CAST email.

‘No, it says here that my placement is with you. After that I’m off to Thornfield Hall to shadow another Jane.’

‘Oh,’ said Miss Bennet, her face flushing with pleasure, ‘Miss Eyre! You are to visit Miss Eyre? Please pass on my warmest regards to her. And to Miss Helen Burns if you should be travelling with Miss Eyre through her Lowood years. They both came to work with me when they were in development. They studied my equanimity.’

She gestured to the couch and she and Hannah sat down together.

‘Miss Eyre split her placement between myself and dear Lizzy. She shared Lizzy’s desire to argue for the rights of a lower class character to hold and express feelings. Miss Eyre studied Lizzy’s confrontations with Lady Catherine and Mr Darcy before making her passionate speeches to Mrs Reed and Mr Rochester.

‘In fact,’ said Miss Bennet, lowering her steady voice, ‘Miss Eyre came here at first of her own will. For you know that her author was most unhappy with Miss Austen?’
²

Laughter exploded from the side of the dance floor. Hannah turned to see a man and woman unsuccessfully attempting to compose themselves, doubling up with further laughter whenever they looked up at one another.

‘Who is that?’ asked Hannah.

‘That is dearest Lizzy and Mr Darcy. They are no doubt attempting their scene where Mr Darcy refers to her as “tolerable” which they both find most amusing.’

‘Mr Darcy!’ exclaimed Hannah.

‘You have already made the acquaintance of Mr Darcy?’ asked Miss Bennet very politely.

‘Oh no,’ said Hannah, ‘but a lot of my friends have worked with him. He’s a very popular hero just now, after the Andrew Davies adaptation of
Pride and Prejudice
in 1995 and the subsequent Bridget Jones novels. Oh, Miss Bennet, what’s wrong?’

Miss Bennet had started to frown.

‘It is nothing, Miss Peel, only that my poor Mr Bingley suffers a little for Mr Darcy’s popularity. CAST does not have so much work for Mr Bingley.’

‘But Mr Darcy is every woman’s ideal man, Jane. Aren’t you secretly disappointed that you don’t end up with him?’

Miss Bennet shook her head firmly.

‘Mr Bingley singles me out from the start of our acquaintance and, as soon as he is sensible of my returned feelings, he proposes marriage to me. But I am not sure that Mr Darcy is always so good a man until Lizzy speaks to him of his improper pride.’

Hannah considered this and said, ‘Maybe that’s why Mr Darcy is always getting shadowed? Because he gets his act together after Lizzy gives him what for? Gives women authors and readers some belief that they can turn their men about, doesn’t it? But Bingley’s already an all-round decent bloke from the start.’

Miss Bennet laughed and asked, ‘What do you need to learn from me, Miss Peel?’

‘Well, like you I’m very attractive and good but, at the moment, stuff sort of just happens to me. My bloke loves me from the start. He proposes and we get married. I get scouted as a model but, I dunno, I don’t like it much. I feel just like a coat hanger. I want to have a baby but I’m not sure I get the chance in the novel to tell my husband about what I really want from him.’

Miss Bennet nodded quickly, ‘Yes, if Charlotte Lucas had spoken to me, as she does to Lizzy, of the need for me to make my feelings for Mr Bingley plainer, then I do not believe it would have been so easy for others to convince him of my indifference. And we would have wed within the first quarter of the novel—’

‘Miss Bennett, would you mind if I take notes?’ asked Hannah who now sat poised over a notebook with pen.

‘Shall I speak slowly for you, Miss Peel?’

‘It’s okay. My bloke, Bill, is a super-duper journalist and he’s been teaching me shorthand when our author’s been asleep. So I should be able to keep up. I’ve already got up to 100 words a minute.’

Miss Bennet continued, ‘It is Mr Darcy who returns Bingley to me after conveying my true feelings for him. And Mr Darcy has them from dear Lizzy. So my happiness rises and falls with Mr Darcy’s perceptions of my character. That is rather hard. But I am very blessed at the end of the novel, securing not just my own happiness but also that of my dear family. For you know that until Lizzy and I marry so happily, there is an entail which hangs over us all? My father’s death would have left Mama and my sisters in difficult circumstances if we had married otherwise. Does your marriage please your family?’

‘Yes. Like your mum with Bingley, my mum is quick to invite my bloke into our house. He’s only 15 and a runaway when we all meet so he lives with me and my parents. He’s not like Bingley because when he turns up he’s dirt poor, but he’s got brains and earning potential. My parents don’t care much about the cash. But we’re a close family. They like having Bill grow up under the same roof as me. They believe it’ll be a safe way for me to fall in love.’

Miss Bennet sighed and said, ‘Your parents are perhaps more sensible than my dear father to family responsibilities. I am afraid he learns a very hard lesson when Lydia elopes with Wickham after he fails to heed or check her nature. She is but 15 when she meets Wickham and lacking the prudence brought about by living within loving constraints.’

Suddenly, Miss Bennet smiled, ‘Miss Peel, is your man to come and shadow Mr Bingley?’

Hannah shook her head, ‘I’m afraid not, Jane. My fella turns out to be rather messed up.’

Miss Bennet said, ‘And so that is why you are to go to Thornfield Hall? To shadow Miss Eyre and her poor Mr Rochester?’

When Hannah arrived at Thornfield Hall, Jane Eyre was away from home. Mrs Fairfax invited her into a small, snug room.

‘That’s Grace Poole,’ said Mrs Fairfax gesturing towards a woman sitting at a round table by the fireplace, rapidly shuffling a pack of cards.

‘Do you play, Miss—?’

‘Peel,’ said Hannah, ‘I’m Hannah Peel, here to shadow Jane Eyre.’

‘And this is Bertha.’

A tall, sad woman turned from the fire, which she stirred with a poker. She extended a nail-bitten hand to Hannah and said, ‘Welcome to Thornfield. How long are you to stay with us here?’
³

An alarm sounded.

‘Goodness, that startled me!’ exclaimed Bertha Antoinette, ‘Come on, Miss Peel. It’s another fire alarm.’

The characters exited the house and waited in the drive for the siren to stop. Adele, Sophie and Leah were already outside. Grace Poole smoked a cigarette and Adele skipped around them all, breathlessly singing ‘
Sur le pont d’Avignon’
.

‘Is it a real fire?’ asked Hannah.

‘I doubt it, Miss Peel,’ said Mrs Fairfax, ‘it is most likely a test. Mr Rochester thought it best to put in a system so that none of us gets hurt.’
⁴

At that moment—
⁵

At that moment, a slight figure, gripped by a stocky, pugnacious man, could be seen approaching the house from the direction of the chapel.

‘Good God! Miss Eyre’s back from the doomed wedding already with Edward. I must return to the third storey,’ exclaimed Bertha Antoinette. She started to rip at her clothes and pulled her black hair into disarray as she ran back into the house. The fire alarm stopped. Grace Poole hastily stamped out her cigarette and followed her.

Mrs Fairfax said to Hannah, ‘In eight minutes, Miss Eyre will withdraw to her own room. You may be able to speak with her briefly until Mr Rochester arrives. He will sit outside her door before he makes his inappropriate offer of sinful living.’

Hannah knocked on Miss Eyre’s door.

‘Ed?’ exclaimed a voice in surprise.

Hannah entered, ‘No, it’s me, Hannah Peel. I’ve come on a CAST placement. I know it’s not a great time but—’

‘Come in, Miss Peel. I thought it strange that Ed should be knocking at the door. I usually stumble over him sitting in a chair across my threshold, some time in the afternoon.’

‘Have I disturbed you getting undressed?’ asked Hannah, who saw a square, blond veil on the bed.

‘I need to take off my gown mechanically and put on my stuff dress from yesterday. But I have all morning to do that. Miss Peel, are you certain that you are to shadow me?’

‘Yes,’ said Hannah.

‘But you are very beautiful. Even more magnificent than Miss Ingram. And I am small and plain.’

‘What! Are you kidding me? Your look is so right now. Slight, boyish figure, elfin. You might even be a size zero. And your skin is clear, hair in great condition and a versatile style. As for height, Kate Moss is five seven. Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole are way shorter than that.’

‘Miss Peel! How can this be true?’ asked Miss Eyre, moving to a very small mirror to study her face, ‘And I’m so much used to being plain,’ she said, wonderingly.

‘Jane, you are hot right now.’

‘Hot?’ repeated Miss Eyre.

‘Still—’ said Hannah.

‘What?’

‘Well, it is all a bit of a waste of time, isn’t it? Looks come and go, don’t they? But it’s your actions which count, isn’t it, Jane? Miss Eyre?’

Miss Eyre continued to consider her small face in the mirror. ‘Miss Eyre?’

‘When you said “hot” just a moment ago, Miss Peel, I wonder if you were teasing me as I am so very plain, am I not?’

Hannah sat down in a chair and said, ‘Look, Miss Eyre, you must know you’ve got something going on, otherwise how do you explain all of your marriage proposals, right, left and centre.’

‘There are not so many. Two.’

‘Right, one from Rochester who’s minted and chased by women, and another from St John who’s attractive and ambitious. Between them you’re holding the whole deck. You ain’t doing badly.’

‘Yes, but sometimes I do wonder if it is my littleness which attracts them. After all, it is not so very hard to destroy something small when you are finished using it. I have no family in the world to protect me, for most of the novel anyway, and I wonder if, knowing that and in desperate want of a mate, Mr Rochester proposed this impossible wedding to me. When he asks me to travel abroad with him, unmarried, that cannot be with any true mindfulness of my long-term welfare. And St John plainly does not love me but presses me to travel to India with him where it is almost certain that we shall perish in the difficult climate. He asks me to give him my life. I wonder if life might be more ordered if I were to train myself out of my strongest feelings. But then, I suppose I do not really wish for a passionless life.’

Miss Eyre sighed and lowered herself onto the bed.

‘Are you ever tempted to marry St John, Miss Eyre? I ask you because when my husband Bill suffers and pushes me away, my friend Flash asks me to start a relationship with him. I don’t know what to do. Bill is very hard work, like Mr Rochester. But I love him. I want to have a baby and Flash offers me that. But I don’t love Flash. It feels morally wrong to have a child with someone you don’t love.’

‘I do not wish to marry St John, Miss Peel, because he does not love me. God did not give me my life to throw away on any fruitless mission. Nor you. Nor any character. Regardless of what Mr Pirandello may write on the subject.’

Hannah, emboldened by Miss Eyre’s passion and disgusted with the objectification of Miss Bennet returned to the CAST HQ in a resolute mood. She showed her card at the barriers to pass.
⁶

She filed her report back to her author and hoped that the equipment wasn’t playing up and that her author could hear her distinct voice.

My inspiration:
In the early stages of writing my novel, I felt uncertain about my central female character, Hannah Peel. I wondered if I might get to know her better by having her interact with other literary heroines. I have studied
Pride and Prejudice
five times (from GCSE to an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa). My admiration for this novel influences the way I draw characters. My own novel is quite dark and it was a joy to write this ‘essay’ for a complete change. It worked, too. It gave me Hannah’s voice.