The Jane Austen Society(65)

After all, he clearly had quite some way to go before becoming the type of man that deserved her.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Chawton, Hampshire

Midnight, February 2, 1946

As the meeting was wrapping up, Miss Frances offered to give Mimi and Yardley rooms for the night. Mimi was thrilled at the idea of sleeping in a house once full of slumbering Austens—perhaps even Jane herself in the midst of nursing a feverish niece or nephew, despite living just a short distance away.

The three of them walked the length of the village together with Evie, leaving Andrew Forrester heading in the opposite direction towards Alton and Adam escorting Adeline home. The sun was already starting its descent at 4.30 P.M. on a brisk winter’s day, and the shadow of the full moon was waiting patiently above to make its evening appearance. Yardley was peppering Frances with questions about Chawton and its history, and she was gamely answering everything, although she would often refer to Andrew Forrester as the best historian on the village that Yardley would find.

After a late supper in the dining room and drinks by the fire, Evie headed up to her small attic bedroom in the south wing, and Miss Frances to her suite in the opposite corner from Evie’s. On the second floor below was her late father’s bedroom, whose door had remained sealed since his passing and burial two weeks earlier. Frances wondered when she would finally find the nerve, if ever, to re-enter the room and go through his papers as Andrew had so politely requested.

The guest bedrooms were in the north wing on the second floor, next door to each other on a separate landing reached by what Frances referred to as the Tapestry Gallery staircase. This was because the stairwell was draped in several medieval armorial tapestries from Flanders, which were making Yardley as quietly excited as Mimi had ever seen him. He was convinced their counterparts were hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and he was already planning a long-distance call to one of the senior curators there to discuss the possible value.

Having said good night to Yardley in the long gallery hallway outside, Mimi entered the stunning Tudor bedroom suite she had been offered. After poking around among the different pieces of furniture, some Georgian, some Edwardian, and some practically medieval, she next took a warm bath in the tub that rested on a raised wooden platform in the far corner of the room, soaking and washing her thick mane of hair so that it would dry while she slept. Despite the coldness of the house in general, a fire raged in her fireplace, courtesy of Josephine, electric baseboard heaters were beneath the windows, and a hot-water bottle was wrapped in wool for the foot of her bed. An old white cotton nightgown had been left out for her as well, and with her sunglasses, powder compact, and single red lipstick in her purse, she felt ready to face the outside world in the morning, whether she ended up recognized or not.

Climbing into bed, she immediately pushed her face into the goose-down pillows and tried not to think of Jack. She missed him the most at night, when his body seemed to enclose hers as they lay together, keeping her warm, keeping her bare shoulders covered with kisses, and as she looked about the stately old bedroom, with its canopied bed and wall tapestries, she wondered what he would have thought about all of this. She had telephoned him several times the past few weeks, after he had returned to L.A. following a few days’ stopover in Scotland on business. Their month together in England had functioned as a honeymoon of sorts, even though their wedding date was set for April. When she had cabled to tell him of the Knight estate now being up for grabs by any living male heir, and the society being formed in honour of Jane Austen, he had made a crack about never getting her back stateside again. And on nights such as this, as she stared at the full moon through the row of casement windows made of leaded glass panels and diagonal glazing, wondering who else had once stared at the night sky from this very room, she could understand his underlying concern. Mimi had always been one for moving continuously forward, but now that Hollywood was losing interest in her, or, more specifically, her face, she felt this pull to England, and to the past, and to the lives lived in the books that she had spent her own life devouring.

She got out of bed and walked over to the black plastic phone on the vanity table, a modern instrument fully at odds with the rest of the room. Placing a collect call to Beverly Hills, she dragged the phone as far as it would go over to the windows.

“Hey, what time is it?” Jack’s own voice sounded slightly groggy.

“Midnight—that puts you at what? Four P.M.? Cocktail hour.”

“Actually, I’m just about to head over to the studio to see Monte.”

She laughed. “Say hi to him for me.”

“Actually, Mimi, I’m serious.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, we’re partnering in a new distribution company, trying to offside the risk from your Scheherazade with our upcoming Sense and Sensibility. Monte says the studio will put up fifty per cent in exchange for our covering their exposure to loss with your final film for them.”

“Scheherazade isn’t going to lose any money,” she asserted, although she was becoming increasingly worried. She had learned the hard way that once money was at risk, few in Hollywood cared about anything else.

“Of course, baby, you and I know that—that’s why it’s such a great deal for us.”

“For you. A great deal for you.”

“Tell me about the book club meeting. Such a little ragtag group you’ve got there. Who cried the most?” he teased. “Oh, who am I kidding—it was Yardley. It’s always Yardley, that little fruit.”