The Jane Austen Society(12)

“Better than last week. Which is unusual, I understand, as all the old women keep telling me it only gets worse.”

“Best not to listen to them,” Dr. Gray advised with a laugh. “They have their line, and they will stick to it. They can be counted on for at least that.”

She made as if to keep on her way, and he fell in step next to her.

“Am I keeping you?” she asked.

“Not at all—I worried I’d done the same to you.”

She shook her head quickly. “No, I was finished. Said all I needed to. And then some.”

“I’m sure He was listening. You are hard to ignore.”

“Dr. Gray!” she exclaimed in mock offense.

He was one of the few people in Chawton who did not recoil whenever they ran into her, as if suddenly flinching from the memory of her loss—which of course only made her feel even worse, the opposite of what the other villagers surely intended. She had also always loved Dr. Gray’s dry sense of humour, and the way he acted so admonishing, even when she suspected that he might be a much softer person inside. During the few times Samuel had been on leave, they would often go see a movie in Alton—always her pick—and she was sometimes surprised to catch a glimpse of Dr. Gray watching a Mimi Harrison “weepie” all alone in the back, half-hidden by the whirls of cigarette smoke, surrounded by couples at what were highly wrought romantic movies designed to make the audience cry.

Maybe the movie-going was some kind of weird catharsis for him. Certainly she marvelled at how he stood it all, the terrible random diagnoses he carried around inside him, knowing that sharing any of it was only going to make someone’s pain even worse—knowing that just a few words from him could destroy a life. Even as colleagues fighting over her teaching methods at the school, she had always looked up to Dr. Gray as one of the kinder souls in the village, quick with a comforting and attentive smile. Since his wife’s tragic death, she wondered if he had found anyone else to confide in. She knew his nurse, Harriet Peckham, was up to something about him, for all the gossip she liked to spread in town about his comings and goings.

They emerged together into the sunshine. Two female tourists could be seen loitering in the lane, gazing up the gravel path and past the church in its tree-sheltered hollow, to the large Elizabethan house standing on rising ground behind.

“They’re back,” Adeline said. “That didn’t take long. I guess only a world war could keep them away.”

“Do you ever stop and think how lucky we are, the way we get to live here every day, like Jane Austen did? I know I do. I sometimes think it was one of the reasons I moved back.”

Adeline turned to look at him with interest. “Actually, yes, I do. I always have. It made this place magical for me when I was young. That someone could spin such stories from this: this walk, this lane, this little church. Those gorgeous sunlit fields, that kissing gate, all of it. So very English. They come to see it because it exists. Here, at least, it exists. Here at least it is real.”

He nodded in agreement. “I should tell you I am reading Emma again. Every time I find a new clue, something I missed before. It’s like she’s still writing these stories, still giving them life.”

Adeline always loved discussing books with Dr. Gray. When she had been essentially fired from the local village school—although she had quit before the town could have its way with her, shrewdly using her wedding as a way out—there had been increasing concern over her class discussions. Certain subjects and authors continued to be deemed inappropriate; Adeline on the other hand did not think it was for a village to decide which of the classics counted. That job, presumably, had already been done, by people much more learned and wise than any of them. Of everyone in the village, only with Dr. Gray could she speak with total freedom about the books she loved.

“I don’t know about Emma, Dr. Gray. I mean, I am all for high spirits myself, as you so often point out, but I sometimes fail to see where the selfishness ends and the spirits begin.”

“Emma is not selfish, per se. She is self-interested, in a way that most people can’t afford to be.”

Adeline was not so sure of this. She would never want the amount of attention that Emma gladly soaked up. Even though Adeline was now an object of anxious concern among the villagers, she could never endure it for long without wanting to rotate the intense beam of attention elsewhere. She wondered what it said about Emma that she was always so content to keep the beam shining directly on herself.

The two women tourists were still standing at the bottom of the drive, and Dr. Gray for all his manners was not quite in the mood for an encounter. He looked back up at the Great House, then over at Adeline, noticing for the first time the faint shadows of fatigue beneath her eyes.

“Shall we stop and see into the back kitchens and get you some tea?”

Adeline nodded quickly. “Yes, let’s do.”

The Knights had long been known throughout the area for their generous hospitality. The back kitchens were kept open for those in the know, and even the occasional tourist who was brazen enough to walk all the way up to the front door and knock was never turned away. The kitchen at the back of the house was entered from a beautiful open courtyard, surrounded by four high walls of red brick, green ivy, and stained glass containing more Knight heraldry. There they could sit with their tea and a sugar bun hot from the ovens and, for a little while longer, capture the peace and calm of the church nearby.