Writing Jane Austen (6 page)

He then gave her a guided tour of the other diners at high table, few of whom seemed to be worthy of their positions, together with scurrilous remarks about their sex lives, or lack thereof, personal habits, and financial standing. “Lost a hundred thousand pounds
when he sold the house, bought at the peak,” snuffle, laugh. “He caught a cold on that all right.”

Rollo saw her eyeing the portrait that loomed over them. “Looking at the Elizabethan gent in the ruff with the baby’s skeleton? An early scientific Fellow of the college. Possibly one with cannibalistic tendencies; I always think it looks as though he’d just consumed the wretched infant.” A burst of noise drowned his next words, and then, in a lull, Georgina realized that Rollo had switched to the subject of Jane Austen. “The society meets at eight thirty, I said you’d be delighted to do it, chap called Joe Digweed’s in charge, I’ll take you over and introduce you after dinner.”

“What are you talking about?”

He leaned over to put his mouth an inch from her ear. There was no misinterpreting his words. “I’ve volunteered you to speak at the Jane Austen Society tonight. The scheduled speaker can’t make it, so they asked me to fill in. Much better have you, I told them, a published woman novelist, just the ticket. Knew you’d enjoy it, they’re a lively bunch.”

His eyes sparkled with malice.

They walked through the stone-flagged passage and out into the North Quad, and Rollo, his immense hand grasping her elbow as though he knew she wanted to make a run for it, guided her across the quad to a gothically pointed doorway.

The lecture room brought back a flood of memories to Georgina, of scruffy students, of laptops and notepads, of earnest conversations, of questions and answers, the quintessence of academic life. It represented safety, security.

Only, she had never felt less secure in her life than she did as she was introduced to a sultry-eyed young man in cord trousers—cord trousers? Whatever happened to jeans?—who turned out to be the president of the Jane Austen Society.

About twenty young people were sitting in a circle, mostly women, with a sprinkling of men. Just in off the cold streets, they had chilled cheeks. One young man with exotic features was pulling off a woolly hat and blowing on his hands to warm them.

In the days when this room was built, the large stone fireplace would have boasted a roaring fire, fed by college servants. No women would have been present then, and it was still a masculine room in its Victorian stateliness. The walls were panelled, and a shabby chandelier hung from a dingy ceiling.

The president was holding her hand warmly. Why the hell had Rollo let her in for this? Why hadn’t she said, briskly and firmly,
that unfortunately she had other plans for the evening? Because, if she had, Rollo would in his skilled way have shown her up as a complete liar.

Okay, concentrate. She would explain, point out that she was here under false pretences, that Jane Austen wasn’t her field at all. Rollo would have to do the talk after all. But Rollo had gone, whisking himself out the door with a lupine grin, and the parting words, “Enjoy, as they say.”

Georgina took her place behind the table, willing herself to take several deep breaths. She was used to students. Used to teaching, lecturing, taking seminars. She knew the form, this was familiar territory.

Only it wasn’t, not when these eager beavers were here to listen to her thoughts on Jane Austen.

She would confess. “I’m here under false pretences, I know nothing about Jane Austen.”

The young man was on his feet, extending a fluent welcome and a verbal flourish of thanks. “We are extremely grateful to Georgina Jackson for stepping in at the last minute, when our advertised speaker, Dr. Dundle Brook, had to pull out—he’s broken an ankle. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Georgina Jackson’s book, the acclaimed
Magdalene Crib,
and I know we’re all keenly interested to hear what a modern novelist has to say about her great predecessor.”

A ripple of polite applause. Stand up, or stay seated? Up gave her more authority, down made her feel less exposed.

Thank God, a girl in a tight purple sweater was calling out to him, “Hang on, Joe, Mary’s coming, wait for her.”

“Mary should take the trouble to turn up on time.” Joe turned to Georgina with a suave smile. How could anyone that age—what was he, twenty, twenty-one?—be so assured?

Desperation came to her rescue. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she
said, nodding at Joe. “It’s a pleasure for me to be in Oxford again, and I’m delighted to meet with some students like this.”

Waffle.

“As Joe has said, I’m a last-minute substitute, so I haven’t a paper or a talk prepared. So why don’t we go for a questions and answer session?” And, before Joe or anyone else could protest, she went on, “Let’s start by asking what is your interest in Jane Austen?”

“Do we get to ask questions?” said purple sweater.

The door opened, a blast of cold air blew into the room, and a tall, skinny girl in a leather jacket tiptoed in, murmuring disjointed apologies before sitting herself next to purple sweater. Once seated, she placed a large, shapeless bag on her knees and began to rummage in it.

The missing Mary. Now, if only there were more latecomers, and they could come through the door at the rate of one a minute, she could…

“Stop fidgeting, Mary,” said purple sweater. “I just asked a question.”

Mary took no notice, pulling out a pad, a pen, and a small recording device.

Joe fixed her with a severe stare. “Mary, hadn’t you better check whether it’s okay with our speaker for you to record the talk and discussion?”

Mary looked at Georgina and held up the device, a questioning look on her intent face.

“Go ahead,” said Georgina recklessly. She turned her attention to purple sweater. “Sure, you can ask me questions,” said Georgina, and to herself, Only don’t expect any answers if they’re about Jane Austen. “But I get to ask first. Is your interest in Jane Austen connected with your studies? Or do you read her for pleasure?”

“She’s cool,” said a beautiful young man in a ski hat. “So English. All that period stuff, the structured society. I love it. It’s more like
society where I come from than England is today, where
morality
is a dirty word.”

“Are you reading English?”

“Me? No way. Oriental Studies.”

“A lot of people here are reading English,” said purple sweater. “Not Joe. Joe’s here because he collects societies for his CV, aren’t you, Joe?”

“If that were the case,” said Joe smoothly, “I’d be going for a higher-profile society than this. As it happens, I’m a big Janeite, okay? I love her sexy heroines.”

A few boos and hisses rose from the seated company.

“Modern heroines are predictably passive. Catch Jane Austen’s heroines positioning themselves as victims.”

“He only does that to annoy,” said purple sweater. “Ignore him. Can I ask a question?”

Georgina’s heart sank. Here it came; this girl could easily be older than the others. She was a doctoral student, her doctorate was on Jane Austen, she was going to make mincemeat of her, Georgina.

“How long did it take you to write
Magdalene Crib
?”

All those present sat up, alert, attentive, interested.

“Do any of you want to be writers?” Georgina asked, seeing a lifeline stretching out to her.

“Yes, of course.”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Was it hard to get published?”

“How did you get an agent?”

The quicksands of Jane Austenland receded into the distance, and with an inward prayer of thanks to whichever muse looked after distressed authors and had so mercifully and efficiently come to her aid, she launched into answers. This she could spin out for the length of even the longest meeting. What she couldn’t answer
truthfully, she could invent. That at least she was good at; weren’t all novelists, at root, purveyors of convincing fibs?

“Yes, I’m deep into my second book. No, I don’t want to talk about it right now, it’s better, I find, not to talk too much about a work in progress.”

“Do you make enough to live on?”

Joe intervened. “That’s getting a bit personal, and, as you should be aware, since you weren’t here when I introduced our speaker, Dr. Jackson holds a research fellowship at London University.”

Mary, who had put on a pair of owlish glasses, too large for her small, pointed face, had been busy scribbling copious notes and fiddling with her recorder. Now she looked up and lifted a pen to attract attention. As she opened her mouth, Georgina recognized a fellow American, and a sixth sense told her that this one wasn’t going to ask how much she got as an advance for her second book.

“As a post-feminist writer—”

“As a what?”

“We’re all post-feminists now.”

“I’m not a post-anything. And, in general, I’m not too keen on
ism
s.”

“
Ism
s?”

“Feminism, modernism. Communism. Fascism.”

“What about fascism? Don’t you disapprove of fascism?”

“I mean I don’t care for words ending in
ism. Ism
s are trouble.
Ism
s are indicative of portmanteau thinking.”

“Would you care to elucidate on that?”

“Thoughts, opinions, ideas, all stuffed into a bag. As it were. Not assessed case by case. Not thought through from the root. Radically.”

“Do you consider yourself a radical writer?”

“No.”

“But—”

“Thank you, Mary,” said Joe.

Purple sweater shot her neighbour a withering glance, and asked about digital versions of
Magdalene Crib
. That started a lively debate and a heated discussion about copyright and royalties and free downloads.

Joe finally raised his voice. “I think we have time for one last question. As president, I’ll use my privilege to ask it. Tell me, Dr. Jackson, as a writer, you must have been influenced by Jane Austen. Which of her writings do you think has had the greatest impact on your own work?”

Georgina’s mind was a blank. At this moment, she couldn’t remember the title of a single one of the wretched woman’s novels.

“I couldn’t say it was one more than another. As a writer, one draws on so many sources, historical and contemporary, of which fiction is only one strand. So you could say, all of them.”

One thing she did know how to do was to conclude a session. “I’d like to thank you for asking me here this evening, and for providing such interesting and stimulating questions.”

Joe formally wound up the meeting, and then with easy courtesy suggested they could adjourn to the bar and perhaps continue the discussion.

“I’m afraid I can’t linger,” said Georgina. Linger? How pretentious. “Thank you for the invitation, though.”

All she wanted to do was escape, as quickly as possible, before any of these astute youngsters rumbled her.

Why should she feel so awkward about it? she asked herself. Why was she, an honest person, ashamed to say, “Listen up, folks, I’ve never read a word of Jane Austen and I don’t intend to”? What was wrong with that?

She’d be branded a philistine. Who cared?

These kids would despise her. So what? There wasn’t a law, you can’t be a decent person, or count yourself as having a brain, unless
you’ve read all the works of Jane Austen. Think of all the people in the world who had never even heard of Jane Austen.

Lucky them.

She could have stormed the meeting, explaining just why she’d chosen not to read Jane Austen. She could have told them how romantic fiction was a dead duck as far as she was concerned, how the novel had to move on from boy meets girl, how cut off from reality a middle-class Englishwoman like Jane Austen must have been. To which, if any of them had half a brain, the answer would have come flying back, how can you judge, if you’ve never read her?

Just think of all the books she hadn’t read. Thousands, tens of thousands of them. Why should Jane Austen be anywhere near the top of her list? Why was it any reason to feel guilty, or at a disadvantage?

It was cultural oppression. You can’t call yourself educated if you haven’t read…

The wind and rain lashed across the quad. Two figures hurried past, clinging to one another under an umbrella in danger of turning inside out. Georgina pulled up her collar and wished she’d worn a coat rather than a jacket. She could feel her trousers flapping damply around her ankles.

Joe was apologizing for not having an umbrella. “I never use one,” he said, increasing his stride as a gust of wind buffeted them. “The porter will call you a taxi,” he added helpfully.

“No,” said Gina. “No, I don’t mind the rain. And I haven’t far to go, it’s not worth a taxi.” They dived into the cover of the lodge, where light spilled out across the flagstones. Gina said goodbye to Joe with a final insincere burst of thanks for asking her to speak, as she edged round the sign that said, the college is closed. Joe, who had seemed disposed to hover, accepted his congé, and with a graceful wave of his hand, headed inside the brightly lit lodge.

The huge wooden doors that led out to St. Giles were closed,
leaving the wicket door open. With a sense of relief and elation, Georgina stepped out into the sleeting rain, oblivious of the wet, uneven pavements and the swishing of cars swirling past, headlights flickering across the black road. She hurried past the walls of the erstwhile Radcliffe Infirmary, destined for a second life as offices for the university, and narrowly avoided being run down by a cyclist, riding without a light, who shouted at her, “Out of my way, spastic,” as she jumped clear.

Thank God, here she was at last, back at the block of flats. Tonight they took on a gothic air, the dark brick and the unlit windows of the side with offices and the drawn curtains of those flats with occupants depressing her spirits still further.

The lift wasn’t working; no doubt some thoughtless inhabitant had left the iron grid open on the top floor. She squelched her way up the narrow stairs, and then had a heart-stopping moment at the front door, unable to find the keys.

By the expedient of turning out the contents of her handbag on to the doormat, she unearthed them. She shovelled the debris back into the bag, and thankfully let herself in.