CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘So you followed me down here?’ he asked, holding the café door open for me.
I felt the lightest touch of his hand on my waist and it was like the zing of a mild electric shock. ‘Well, yes. It was a moment of madness. I mean, “followed” is a bit strong. I’m not some weird stalker.’ I gave a hoot of laugher to indicate I was joking, and several people turned to look.
I hurried into the café, suddenly unable to meet his eye for some reason. What the hell was wrong with me? I started digging in my handbag, to give me time to pull myself together.
This more relaxed Dan – with the smile that casually lit up his face – was even more troubling than the stern, bad-tempered one I was used to.
‘Lost something?’ he murmured, close to my ear.
‘My purse! Yes, I’m looking for my purse.’
‘You don’t need it. The coffee is on me.’
‘Oh. Right. Thank you.’
‘No problem. You were saying?’
‘Was I?’
‘Yes. About your moment of madness?’
‘Ah, yes.’ I took a breath to steady myself.
This acting spontaneously was really taking it out of me.
‘So when Leonard told me what train you were taking down to Chawton, I thought I’d catch you up and find out some more about Charlotte’s diary.
’ I shrugged. ‘Leonard gave me the diary to read first, so it seemed only fair.’
He made an amused sound in his throat. ‘That is fair.’
‘Your uncle is lovely, by the way.’
‘Uncle Leonard? Yes, he is. He seems to like you, too. I’m sorry I was so suspicious of you for taking the box home. Some scammer almost stole thousands from him and it’s made me suspicious of everyone.’
‘That’s awful. Did you manage to get the money back for him?’
He nodded. ‘I’m actually staying with him at the moment, so luckily, I was right there when it happened. I’ve just started work in Sunnybrook so I’ve moved in with Uncle Leonard until I find a place of my own.’
‘What do you do?’
‘I’m a solicitor.’ He pointed at the list of drinks on the counter. ‘What would you like?’
‘Ooh, a cappuccino, please.’
‘Find a seat and I’ll bring them over.’
‘Thanks.’ I went and sat at a table next to two young women. They’d clearly been shopping because they were surrounded by designer label bags, and I almost tripped over one of them getting to my seat. Not that they noticed. They were too involved in their high-spirited conversation.
It was cosy in the café after the chill of the station platform.
I slipped off my coat and laid it on the banquette beside me, all the time flicking little glances over at Dan, who was chatting to the young girl behind the counter as she served him.
He was making her laugh and I noticed her high colour and the way she kept flicking her hair back in a shy, self-conscious gesture.
I observed them, fascinated.
I hadn’t thought Dan had a single funny bone in his body. But maybe I’d judged him too harshly. I glanced at the women on the next table, wishing they would stop being so loud. They kept bursting into shrieks of laughter and preventing me hearing the banter that was going on at the counter!
Dan was at the spoons shelf now and I observed him thoughtfully. He was clearly younger than me. Early thirties, maybe? It was the first time I’d seen him without his suit and tie. Today, wearing jeans and tan boots and a black puffa jacket, he looked younger.
Turning, he caught my eye and mouthed, ‘Sugar?’
Embarrassed to be caught looking, I quickly nodded.
‘Cappuccino, madam?’ He gave me a wry look as he placed the coffees on the table and sat down.
‘Thanks.’ I reached for a spoon just as he passed me a sachet of sugar and our hands briefly collided.
There it was again . . . that funny little shock to my system.
I glanced up at him but he was looking at his phone. Next second, he tucked it away in his pocket and took a swallow of his black coffee.
I mirrored his action, picking up my coffee cup with a hand that trembled slightly.
‘I thought you wanted sugar?’
‘Oh, yes.’ I’d said yes to sugar without thinking. ‘Of course.’ Tearing open the little packet, I poured it in. If I didn’t stir too much, it would taste perfectly fine.
‘You don’t taste the coffee if you pile in sugar like that,’ he said bluntly. ‘You should try drinking it without.’
Needled by his commanding tone, I was about to point out that I actually agreed with him, but then I remembered I couldn’t. In his mind, I was a clueless sugar person.
‘It would only take a week or so for your tastebuds to become accustomed to it,’ he added. ‘Why not try it? You can thank me later.’
He was challenging me with those dark eyes of his and I felt a rush of irritation. Without a word, I smiled politely and reached for two more bags of sugar, tore them open and calmly poured them in. Then I gave it a jolly good stir.
‘Fair enough.’ His eyes twinkled with amusement. He reached into the side pocket of his weekend bag and pulled something out, placing it on the table in front of me. ‘Charlotte’s diary.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
I took a sip of my coffee without thinking, and I almost spat it out.
The sweetness was literally making my fillings twang. But I recovered quickly, smiled at Dan and replaced the cup in its saucer. ‘Lovely!’ I murmured.
That coffee was truly disgusting.
Dan had pulled out a well-thumbed book, presumably thinking I was going to start reading Charlotte’s diary. So I relaxed back onto the banquette and opened the little notebook, breathing a little more freely now that Dante’s judgemental gaze was no longer trained on me.
‘You might like to use this? I borrowed it from my Uncle Leonard.’
I looked up and he was offering me a magnifying glass.
‘It’s fine, thank you. I can read it perfectly well.’
‘You must have twenty-twenty vision, then. Because I was finding it hard, despite having excellent eyesight myself.’ He went back to his book and I carried on reading – or trying to read Charlotte’s tiny handwriting. The dim lights in the café were making it a struggle.
After a while, I started to feel a pressure in my temples. A headache was the last thing I needed. I put the diary down softly. But clearly not softly enough because next second, I was being offered the magnifying glass again.
‘Are you sure you don’t need it?’ His eyes, as he studied me, made me think of a dark forest, full of tantalising secrets to discover. It seemed Charlotte wasn’t the only mystery I was drawn to on this trip . . .
‘Go on, then. It would be helpful.’ I took the magnifying glass with a smile. ‘Charlotte’s writing really is so tiny.’
He looked at his watch. ‘The train’s due in five minutes.’
‘Right.’
‘So are you coming all the way with me?’
I swallowed. Now there was an invitation and a half! ‘Yes. Yes, I think I will. If you don’t mind.’
He smiled. ‘I don’t mind at all. To be honest, your knowledge of Jane Austen could be very useful and I’d appreciate your help.’
‘Great. I’ve got a few days off work and I haven’t been to Chawton for a long time.’
He nodded. ‘Never been myself. My car’s off the road otherwise I’d be driving down.’ He lifted his bag. ‘I’m planning on finding a B&B and staying the night, possibly in Alton. There’s likely to be more accommodation on offer there than in Chawton itself.’
‘Oh. Okay.’ That was the trouble with being spontaneous. No overnight bag.
‘It’ll be too late to catch a bus to Chawton by the time we get there.’
‘I don’t have any toiletries or anything. But I’m sure I can manage.’
He studied me. ‘I think they have shops in Alton.’
‘Well, yes, I’m sure they do. I mean, I can probably just –’ I stopped, suddenly seeing the twinkle in his eye. He was joking, of course. ‘Oh, ha ha. Very funny.’
His mouth curled into a mischievous grin and I laughed, flushing with embarrassment at having fallen so easily into his trap.
I was getting used to his smiles now . . .
*****
On the train journey from Guildford to Alton, which took almost an hour, with a change in Aldershot, I had more time to study Charlotte’s diary.
The entries made such interesting reading.
She talked about her daily life in the village .
. . about how busy the main thoroughfare was with horses and carts rattling through the village, delivering goods from the docks at Portsmouth to places like Alton and further north.
She noted that it was always exciting to see the stagecoach coming through on its daily route which took in the village of Chawton.
I found all of this fascinating because my own experience of visiting the village was quite contrary to Charlotte’s.
If it weren’t for the visitors to Jane Austen’s cottage flocking there during the tourist season, it would be a quiet, rather pretty village with very little traffic ‘rattling through’.
Much of Charlotte’s diary was descriptions of the minutiae of her daily life, which included keeping house and hard physical labour.
She was in her mid-twenties, unmarried, and lived on the outskirts of Chawton, sharing a small dwelling in a row of cottages with a younger brother called Lovell.
Sadly, their parents had died a few years earlier from a fever, which ‘took both within weeks’.
To make a living, Charlotte took in washing for better-off households – sometimes for the local grand estate, Chawton House, in part payment for rent owed on the cottage.
Her brother earned money as an agricultural labourer, although the work seemed to be seasonal.
He supplemented their income by also working as an odd-job man, making small household repairs, cutting firewood and on one occasion mentioned in the diary, replacing rotten windows in a neighbour’s house.
I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for both of them – but especially Charlotte.
Apart from doing all the household tasks, she was also boiling water, scrubbing and wringing out clothes and bed linen on a daily basis.
On dry days, Charlotte worked outside, but there could be no let up during the winter months.
Then, the work had to be done in the confines of the cottage, and Charlotte was waging a constant battle against the black mould that appeared periodically on the damp walls.
She worried that woodsmoke would cling to the linens as they dried, and on one occasion she noted that the washing had completely frozen on the line.
She was forever trying to find a cure for her hands, which must have been reddened and cracked with being constantly in hot water, and she commented that covering them with goose grease or lard and wrapping them in cloth at night helped a lot, although she wasn’t fond of the smell.
She preferred to use melted beeswax but this was more costly and Charlotte recorded only using this moisturising potion for special occasions such as when she and Lovell went to church on Sundays.
Sundays were also when she met and talked to Albert.
I sat up straighter when he was first mentioned, eager for details. I was already so invested in lovely Charlotte and her brother, and the hardships they faced, that the idea of Charlotte having a life of her own beyond the daily grind seemed like such a big relief!
She knew Albert through her local church and on occasion, he would walk the same way home with Charlotte and Lovell.
He’d moved to the village from Portsmouth to take up work on one of the larger farms in the area, and accommodation was included with the job.
Charlotte noted that Albert shared a ‘quite comfortable’ loft above the dairy with another single male farm hand.
She wrote that there were shorter routes he could have taken home from church, but that he seemed to enjoy their company!
It seemed clear to me that a romance was gently brewing, but Charlotte’s restrained way of expressing herself – typical for the times – meant it was necessary for me to read between the lines.
On one rare occasion, they were alone on their walk and were forced to avoid a flooded lane by taking a short cut through a field.
Charlotte wrote that Albert helped her over the stile, and I smiled to myself, imagining the thrill she must have felt at the unexpected touch of their hands.
In one diary entry, she wrote, ‘He spoke to me of what he hopes for in time.’ And knowing by then that this was as passionate a statement as Charlotte would reveal, I took this as a very positive sign that their relationship was going from strength to strength!
‘Have you got to the interesting bit yet?’ asked Dante, putting his book down.
‘But it’s all interesting.’ I didn’t know which ‘bit’ he meant.
He gave me an odd little smile that puzzled me and went back to reading.
And then a few diary entries later, I saw it. The first mention of a mysterious friend of Charlotte’s, who she identified by only a single initial.
Her words seemed to jump out at me from the page, and I had to go back and read it again.
I sat up straight and looked at Dan, my mind in a whirl.
‘You’ve seen it, then. Charlotte’s friend?’
‘Yes.’ The hairs on my arms were prickling like crazy. ‘A friend Charlotte refers to as simply “J”?’
He nodded. ‘My sister got quite excited when she read that bit. And it gets even better as you read on.’
‘Really? How?’
‘Read on,’ he instructed with a grin.
So I did, eagerly scanning the words through the magnifying glass, my excitement mounting with each new diary entry. I could hardly believe what I was reading.
Could it be true?
Or were we guilty of simply wanting it to be true?