Chapter Thirty Two #2
‘You’ll have to think about going on holiday when you’ve finished,’ she said. ‘You’re a bit pale … I can see just what Mr Howarth meant when he said you’d been working too hard.’
I was grateful that Piers hadn’t told her the real reason for my visit to Bath, and so far she hadn’t mentioned Harry or Elsa. I just hoped it would stay that way.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to settle in. I found you a few books I thought you might like from the library, though perhaps you had a look at them last time.
Two are biographies, very old books written by Jane’s Austen-Leigh relatives, and the other is a lovely old copy of Mansfield Park. Have you read that one?’
‘Thank you, you’re so kind to look them out for me. I read Mansfield Park a few years ago, and I must admit I found it quite difficult after reading Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. I’d like to read it again.’
‘Will you be in for supper?’ she asked. ‘I can leave you something to warm up in the oven, but I’m due over at Larkhall tonight to see Doris. She hasn’t been well, though she’s on the mend, and I promised I’d go before I knew you were coming.’
‘Oh, please don’t worry about me, Mrs Partridge. I haven’t decided exactly what I’m doing yet, but I shall pop out to the shops if I need anything. I’m sorry to hear about your sister … you should have said before … do hurry off to see her.’
‘You’re a very kind girl, I shall go as soon as I know you don’t need anything else.’
‘No, truly, I have all I need.’
‘There’s one other thing, I nearly forgot.
Mrs Ashton-Dennis has been having a rare clear out, but I saved you a little box, which used to live on top of the japanned cabinet.
She said it’s Georgian, though it could do with being properly cleaned.
It’s the one lying next to the poor old parasol, though why that didn’t find its way to the jumble sale, I don’t know.
‘Thank you, Mrs Partridge, I’m so grateful to you.’
‘Well, it’s just a little memento, to remember your time in Bath. Now, I’d better be off … Doris will be fretting. Goodbye, my dear.’
***
The house seemed very quiet when she’d gone, except for the usual creaking of old floorboards, and the ticking of clocks.
I had so little time to think about what I was going to do next, but I had to get a message to Harry somehow.
I didn’t have his phone number in Bath, but I did know where he lived.
I sat down at the desk in front of the window and wrote a note, telling him I was in Bath, and if convenient I wished to see him later on in the evening or some time during the next day for a chat.
I added that I would understand if he didn’t want to see me, but I wanted to apologise for all that had happened, and to tell him how sorry I was to hear about his uncle.
When I’d finished, I put it in an envelope, and decided I would take it straight away.
My eye fell on the books that Mrs Partridge had left for me and I couldn’t resist picking up the top one, to have a look.
It was a very old book with pages that had been cut with a knife, and as I opened it, the very first page showed a picture that made me gasp out loud.
There on the frontispiece was a painting of Jane, just as I knew her, dressed in the gown of glossy spotted muslin that she’d described in her journal, and wearing the locket that her Great-Uncle Francis had given her on the gold chain from her cousin Thomas round her neck.
It was the girl I knew with her impish looks and intelligent eyes, a half smile suppressing what looked like laughter bubbling up inside.
Standing outdoors under a stormy sky, she held a parasol that I immediately recognised as the one I’d read about.
The painting, though only in black and white, made every hair on my body stand on end, but it was reassuring to see that all my suspicions were right, after all.
On page thirteen there was a mention of the Austens’ connections in Kent when Jane …
had for the first time the delight of going with her parents and her sister into Kent, she would make acquaintance with a number of relations hitherto unknown to her except by name - an epoch of life to a girl of that age, gifted with strong family instincts and quick power of observation.
It is due to the correspondence maintained between the Hampshire and the Kentish cousins that various facts relating to the period of Jane Austen’s girlhood were not long ago discovered …
it was her custom to write to relations at a distance, thus acting up to a remark she once made to a niece, ‘I like cousins to be cousins, and interested in one another.’
I knew how very much Jane had been interested in her Kentish cousins and in particular the cousin who held a special place in her heart.
I fetched out my locket, and couldn’t help thinking how very much it was like Jane’s locket in the portrait. I unclasped the chain and put it round my neck, thinking how serendipitous it was that of the beautiful jewels I could have chosen, this was the one that I’d wanted.
I wondered where Jane’s painting was now, and what stories it could tell.
I knew Great-Uncle Francis had commissioned it, and imagined it still being in Sevenoaks at the Red House where Jane’s cousin might have looked at it and thought about the kiss he’d stolen that day.
But, I knew I wasn’t going to find the answers I wanted out of thin air, and besides I had a letter to deliver.
I might have known I would pass through time when I was least expecting it, and as I tried in vain to reach the envelope I’d left on the desk I saw it shrink further and further away until like a dot of black ink it faded into nothing.