Writing Jane Austen (28 page)

Georgina wasn’t sure that she really wanted to see Dr. Perry, but she was desperate. If he couldn’t prescribe officially, perhaps he could recommend something she could buy over the counter at the pharmacy.

Dr. Perry was young and pink, with a round head and an engaging smile. He listened to what Georgina had to say, asked her about her work routine, felt her elbow—agony, twisted her head—excruciating, and flexed her fingers; Georgina thought she might be going to pass out.

“Nothing serious at all,” he said with great satisfaction. “I expect you’ve been imagining all kinds of things that might be wrong with you. Cheer up, it’s nothing that time and rest won’t solve, although I think you’ll have to change your working habits. No typing for a great many weeks.”

Georgina stared at him. “What on earth do you mean?”

“You have a repetitive stress injury. Caused by poor posture and too much typing. Writers didn’t get it in the days of manual typewriters, because having to stop at the end of every line and move the carriage back, and then having to roll the paper in at the end of every page meant that their actions were never as repetitive as they are now on the computer when you just carry on typing.”

RSI. Of course. But RSI was something that happened to tennis players, secretaries, musicians. In effect, other people.

A stunned Georgina came out of the surgery with her arm in a sling and a prescription for a painkiller written out by Dr. Perry and signed, after a further half-hour wait, by another doctor. She had an appointment in three weeks’ time with the practice physiotherapist,
and friendly final advice from Dr. Perry that of course she could use the mouse and type with her left hand, but the chances were if she did that exactly the same thing would happen to that one.

Maud turned out to know a good deal about RSI. “All young musicians these days are supposed to see Alexander practitioners,” she announced. “That’s probably what you need to do. They readjust your body, and you learn how you do things, and how to do it better and you don’t put any stress on yourself. Only by the time it’s got as bad as it has with you, I’m not sure there’s much anybody can do about it. Except to stop doing whatever it is that’s given it to you. We had a pianist at school who had to stop playing for two years.”

“Two years?”

Henry, brought up-to-date on the situation, was more sanguine. “All these doctors are alarmist, and I expect a newly qualified one is even worse than most of them. You’ll simply have to take two or three days off, don’t go near the keyboard, and then I’m sure you’ll find it’ll wear off and you’ll be perfectly all right.”

Maud agreed. “It’ll do you good anyway to have a pause. Otherwise I’m sure you’ll run out of things to write. Filling the well of inspiration and all that.”

Inspiration? She wasn’t relying on anything as tricky as inspiration, it was hard work that was turning out the pages. Georgina retreated to her room, and taking a double dose of the painkiller that the doctor had given her, set about trying to use the mouse with her left hand. It was clumsy, but with perseverance she would get the hang of it. Left-handed children used to be made to write with their right hands, and they managed it. What was using a mouse compared to that?

She had many lost hours of writing to make up, so she worked through the afternoon and evening, refusing to leave her room or her computer. “It’s much slower just using my left hand,” she explained to Anna, who came up clucking with disapproval, but
bringing with her a wonderful steak sandwich. “I’m sure it will get faster as I practice, and if I leave my other arm in a sling for a couple of days, I’m certain the whole thing will just wear off, as Henry says.”

Anna shook her head, and went back into the kitchen. She tidied up, and then went outside with her phone and a cigarette to have a long conversation with Charles.

The next morning, Georgina’s right arm was no better, and there was an ominous tingling in her left hand, and a pain in her left elbow. She took some more painkillers, and went back to work.

Henry let himself in, and was greeted by an anxious Maud. “I think Georgina is having some kind of a breakdown,” she announced in extravagant tones. “There have been all sorts of funny noises coming out of her room; of course she could be listening to some band that I’d never heard of, but I think she’s either in a temper or in pain. Possibly both.”

Henry went up the stairs two at a time, gave a perfunctory knock on Georgina’s door and went in. Georgina was slumped over her keyboard, a pencil held between her teeth.

Henry took the pencil out of her mouth. “You’ll do yourself a serious injury if you do that,” he said calmly. “Either you’ll ram the pencil into the roof of your mouth, which could be nasty, or you’ll break it together with a tooth or two. Give yourself a rest, for heaven’s sake. I take it that your left arm now has tennis elbow, or whatever the up-to-date terminology for it is. I’ve got a suggestion,” he went on. “I finally heard back from Sophie, and she can’t make it this weekend. My aunt will be livid if I turn up by myself, so why don’t you come with me?”

“A fine guest I’d be, when I can’t use a knife, and if this goes on I doubt if I’d even be able to use a fork.”

“I’ll sit next to you and cut your food up for you. You’ll be doing me a favour, it will do you good to get away, the food is always
excellent there and you can probably pick up an oddity or two to add to your character list.”

Georgina looked in despair at the pile of paper. She had drawn up a large chart which was pinned on the wall, and she pointed out to Henry how much she was falling behind.

“What you need is a rest from the keyboard. If you don’t come with me, I’ll probably come back to find you’re trying to type with your toes.”

How convenient is that?” said Maud. “You’re off to Motley Manor, and my friend Nadia’s house is only about five miles from there, so you can drop me off.”

Maud’s nagging had been too much for Henry, who had reluctantly said she could stay with Nadia.

Maud tried to persuade Georgina that she would be much more comfortable in the back of the car—“No chance of your arm knocking against anything there, far more room”—but was put in her place, which was in the back, by Henry.

“Get in, before I change my mind about giving you a lift, and instead deposit you at the Tube station to make your own way.”

Motley Manor was in Kent. “Good thing we’re not going there in the depths of winter,” said Maud. “It snows a lot in Kent.” She then hooked herself up to her earphones and subsided into happy silence.

“Kent is one of Jane Austen’s counties,” said Henry as they made their slow way through the southern outskirts of London. “Hunsford, which is where Rosings is, was in Kent. Elizabeth went to stay with the Collinses there; quite a journey in those days, from Hertfordshire to Kent.”

“Didn’t Jane Austen’s brother, the rich one who was adopted, have a house in Kent?”

“Godmersham.”

“From the letters, it looked like she visited him a lot. I suppose it
might be the model for Rosings. I wonder if there was a formidable old aunt in residence there, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh.”

“You know how in films and on TV they always portray Lady Catherine as being a grande dame, a kind of archetypal great-aunt? It’s completely wrong,” said Henry.

He braked abruptly as a mad pedestrian launched herself on to a crossing when his wheels were nearly on it. He waited patiently until the elderly woman had made her away across, ignoring her rude gesture.

“Wrong?”

“She can’t have been more than forty-something.”

“Why?”

“Think about it, she has a daughter, Anne. A young woman who’s not yet married and whom she wants to marry her cousin, Mr. Darcy. Lady Catherine might have had a baby when she was past forty, but it’s much more likely that she would have had her when she was in her early twenties. It’s the same with Mrs. Bennet. She’s always played as being well past middle age, and yet she can’t be. Do the arithmetic.”

Georgina thought about the ages of the Bennet family. “Forty then was much older than forty now. Teeth and health and things like that.”

“Even so, there’s no way that Lady Catherine would be a grey-haired wrinkly. If I were casting a film, I think I’d have Kristin Scott Thomas play her.”

Maud spoke up from the back. “That’s an old game, casting Jane Austen adaptations. Like, who for Mr. Darcy?”

It was a mystery to Georgina how Maud could have her ears full of earphones, and be listening to music, and yet hear what she and Henry were saying. Maud removed her earphones. “I’ll begin,” she said. “I’m very good at this, we did it a lot at school.”

“Do you know,” Georgina said, “I’d much rather not talk or
think about Jane Austen at all. Not now, and not for the next two days. I’m starting to hate the very sound of her name.”

“Over-exposure leading to an over-loaded system,” said Maud, stuffing her earphones back in place. “In your mind, that is. All the little neurons working overtime.” She whistled a few bars of music. “I really love this bit.”

Nadia’s house was about half a mile out of a small town, set well back from the road. It was a modern house, quite large and totally characterless. Maud was out of the car and round to the back to get her bag out almost before Henry had put the brakes on. “No, don’t get out,” she said. “I’m not a child being delivered to a party, I can manage perfectly well on my own, thank you. Goodbye, don’t give my love to Aunt Pamela, since that would give the game away, but have a wonderful weekend.” She went up to the front door, and stood there, clearly not intending to ring the bell until Henry had driven away.

He turned the car and headed off back down the short drive to the main road. He was frowning. “I don’t like just leaving her here.”

Georgina twisted round in her seat and looked back at the house. “It’s okay, the door’s opened and she’s gone in. She’s got money, she’s got a mobile phone and you know where she is. What can possibly go wrong? Would your mum be worried about her?”

“I have an uneasy feeling my mother wouldn’t have let her come.”

“So why did you agree?”

“She doesn’t have many friends, and she was keen, and she’s having a hard time of it, trying to find a school she likes which will take her.” He paused and shook his head, adding in exasperation, “I’m not cut out for all this responsibility, damn it.”

“Speaking as one who was once a fourteen-year-old girl, I think you’re doing just fine.”

***

Soon after dropping off Maud, Henry turned off on to a side road. The light was fading, and the trees and hedges were stark against the twilight sky. The winding road narrowed, and Henry slowed down, taking his car carefully round muddy corners, once only just avoiding collision with a tractor with no lights coming in the other direction.

The stillness and solitude soothed Georgina. “All of England must have been like this in Jane Austen’s day.”

“I thought Jane Austen was on the banned list.”

The gates to Motley Manor were wrought iron and imposing, and the heraldic dragons, clasping shields in giant claws, looked down from supercilious snouts. In days gone by, the gate would have been opened by a lodge-keeper, who would have greeted the arrivals with “Good to see you, Mr. Henry,” or a lodge-keeper’s wife, in service with the family since she was in her cradle, dropping a curtsey and smiling fondly at a young member of the family.

“It’s electronically controlled,” Henry explained, as the gates swung open and he drove through them. “CCTV, with screens here and there so that they can let visitors in.”

“Not very Jane Austen.”

The drive to the house was up an incline. It was long and straight, with lime trees marching alongside. “The original entrance was further round, but it was altered when the park was landscaped in 1750.”

“By Capability Brown?” asked Georgina.

“Naturally.”

Georgina was beginning to feel alarmed. “Henry, I get the feeling that your family is seriously rich.”

“No such luck,” said Henry. “My aunt is rich, but she’s only my aunt by marriage. This is her house, it’s been in her family for generations. Her grandfather won a fortune on the Irish sweep or some lottery, and invested it surprisingly well, and once you get to
a certain level of wealth, it’s quite easy to hang on to it. They need it, because these days a house like this costs a fortune to maintain and run.”

“Where do the wild boar come into it? Are they kept round the back someplace?”

“Good God, no. My aunt wouldn’t have anything as unruly as wild boar on the premises. No, that’s entirely Charlie’s business, and his place is about twenty miles from here. Look, there’s the manor.”

It was a manor house out of a picture book, or out of a BBC cosy crime dramatization. Its mellow brick façade glowed slightly pink in the last light of the day, and Georgina was enchanted by its pleasing proportions, the numerous sash windows with white surrounds, and the vigorous rose, still bearing some blooms, which spread over the handsome doorway and along the front of the house. It looked like a house to live in, not to impress.

“It was a fortified manor house, originally,” said Henry. “Then it got smartened up in the eighteenth century, but it still has a great hall from its original manorial days, you’ll see when we get inside.” As he drew up, the big front door opened. “There’s my aunt. Oh, and she isn’t Mrs. Grandison, by the way, she’s Lady Pamela, although she’ll tell you to call her Pam.”

Lady Pamela? Henry hadn’t said anything about a title. “Does that make your uncle a lord?”

“Definitely not. It’s my aunt’s title, because her father’s an earl.”

Georgina had somehow expected Pamela Grandison—Lady Pamela, for God’s sake—to be a comfortable body in tweeds, like a character from an Agatha Christie novel, or one of Bertie Wooster’s aunts. Not so. Lady Pamela was aloof and elegant. Sleek platinum hair, a beautifully made-up face, and a cashmere sweater and tailored pants that looked as though they had been made for her. Hooded eyes, a modulated, authoritative voice, and Georgina felt the complete hick.

“Henry,” Lady Pamela said, presenting a cheek to her nephew. “This is Georgina, I take it.” She held out her hand. “How do you do? Welcome to Motley Manor, we’re glad you could come.”