Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library by Sarah Waters
Authors: Sarah Waters
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rain, clambering down to the beach. We watch the strange sight of sheep eating seaweed by the edge of the sea, their delicate legs like burnt matchsticks, lightly tripping over the rocks. We wait for each other as we clamber along. Perhaps we’re each a little in love with Aidan. In the evening we eat pasta and drink wine and play charades, shrieking with laughter at each other’s frantic mimes, our damp coats hanging over doors and our faces pink. What a desolate island this is; how spellbindingly beautiful.
In the morning the sun is soft and the sky an unblemished blue. We head out for a walk along the sandy beach stripped bare by the tide. We move along, sometimes together in pairs, sometimes scattered apart. Aidan runs up behind me and hurls us both towards the oncoming waves. He shows me an empty shell then hurls it out to sea. Then he picks up a small piece of wood smoothed into the shape of a wave. I wait for him to throw it away, but he gives it to me and I hold it in my hand. When he isn’t looking I tuck it inside my pocket. On the way back we pass a field of lapwings dancing in the air. They suddenly drop and roll, their paddle-shaped wings flapping about drunkenly, then up again; their wheezing, bubbling song catching on the wind.
While I’m packing up my waterproofs, Aidan and Odette are covering each other in pretend punches and karate kicks. A little later Odette looks at me and says, ‘you’ve caught the sun.’
My last day. I help Aidan strip the bed. He says if he washes everything now he can move back in to his room tonight. Jane, I’m one step closer to knowing myself. Love – if it does – shouldn’t it just happen?
Aidan tells me of a time he flew away from Orkney. He says tears rolled down his face. He doesn’t call it crying. He just says, ‘The tears kept on falling.’
We say goodbye.
Later, flying away, I cry.
My inspiration: I wanted to capture a little of Jane Austen’s universal truths. Unrequited love seemed to be high on the list; it also has a timeless quality – an affliction human beings will continue to endure despite the world changing around them. Jane was also a prodigious letter writer – a format she perhaps considered a safe place in which to write down her true feelings. I wanted to mirror this in the style of the story. It was only when I finished writing that I realised my narrator had remained nameless. Perhaps the mark of a truly universal ‘I’.
EIGHT YEARS LATER
Elaine Grotefeld
They turned the corner and Chris knew this was the place, even before he saw the sign. He gripped the steering wheel to hide the onset of trembling.
Beside him his mother peered through her new-for-the-trip prescription sunglasses at the handsome red-brick house. ‘We’re here,’ she cried, and slapped the dashboard.
He still hadn’t told her.
There was nowhere to park directly outside the house – which he liked, it reminded him this wasn’t North America – but they found a place down a leafy side street. His arm under hers, Chris led his mother towards the house. They passed an open area with a few swings – where a young boy and his dad (Chris presumed) rugbytackled each other on to the long grass, rolled in the last warm days of summer. No sign of the mother… was she in the house? He both hoped – and hoped not.
He took in the large, square building set sideways to the road so that the white front door faced a green expanse of garden. He scanned the big Georgian windows on the ground floor.
‘I wonder which one she sat by to write.’ He tried to remember the snippets he’d once learnt about Jane Austen, this extraordinarily witty writer, favourite author of the two women he admired – and, yes, loved – most in all the world. One of them was Catherine, his mother, leaning on his arm now and quietly wheezing. She wore a pink summer hat and had brought a different one for each day. She didn’t do bald well and wigs made her itch. He thought again of Ms
In the morning the sun is soft and the sky an unblemished blue. We head out for a walk along the sandy beach stripped bare by the tide. We move along, sometimes together in pairs, sometimes scattered apart. Aidan runs up behind me and hurls us both towards the oncoming waves. He shows me an empty shell then hurls it out to sea. Then he picks up a small piece of wood smoothed into the shape of a wave. I wait for him to throw it away, but he gives it to me and I hold it in my hand. When he isn’t looking I tuck it inside my pocket. On the way back we pass a field of lapwings dancing in the air. They suddenly drop and roll, their paddle-shaped wings flapping about drunkenly, then up again; their wheezing, bubbling song catching on the wind.
While I’m packing up my waterproofs, Aidan and Odette are covering each other in pretend punches and karate kicks. A little later Odette looks at me and says, ‘you’ve caught the sun.’
My last day. I help Aidan strip the bed. He says if he washes everything now he can move back in to his room tonight. Jane, I’m one step closer to knowing myself. Love – if it does – shouldn’t it just happen?
Aidan tells me of a time he flew away from Orkney. He says tears rolled down his face. He doesn’t call it crying. He just says, ‘The tears kept on falling.’
We say goodbye.
Later, flying away, I cry.
My inspiration: I wanted to capture a little of Jane Austen’s universal truths. Unrequited love seemed to be high on the list; it also has a timeless quality – an affliction human beings will continue to endure despite the world changing around them. Jane was also a prodigious letter writer – a format she perhaps considered a safe place in which to write down her true feelings. I wanted to mirror this in the style of the story. It was only when I finished writing that I realised my narrator had remained nameless. Perhaps the mark of a truly universal ‘I’.
EIGHT YEARS LATER
Elaine Grotefeld
They turned the corner and Chris knew this was the place, even before he saw the sign. He gripped the steering wheel to hide the onset of trembling.
Beside him his mother peered through her new-for-the-trip prescription sunglasses at the handsome red-brick house. ‘We’re here,’ she cried, and slapped the dashboard.
He still hadn’t told her.
There was nowhere to park directly outside the house – which he liked, it reminded him this wasn’t North America – but they found a place down a leafy side street. His arm under hers, Chris led his mother towards the house. They passed an open area with a few swings – where a young boy and his dad (Chris presumed) rugbytackled each other on to the long grass, rolled in the last warm days of summer. No sign of the mother… was she in the house? He both hoped – and hoped not.
He took in the large, square building set sideways to the road so that the white front door faced a green expanse of garden. He scanned the big Georgian windows on the ground floor.
‘I wonder which one she sat by to write.’ He tried to remember the snippets he’d once learnt about Jane Austen, this extraordinarily witty writer, favourite author of the two women he admired – and, yes, loved – most in all the world. One of them was Catherine, his mother, leaning on his arm now and quietly wheezing. She wore a pink summer hat and had brought a different one for each day. She didn’t do bald well and wigs made her itch. He thought again of Ms
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