Dancing with Mr. Darcy Part 12

She laughed at her reflection, face to face with the multiple reality of it, pleased that the words were spoken. It was quite short notice, but with her hair done, no need to worry on her account, Mr Collins would do all the talking.

It had never been her intention to be a heroine, a romantic lead, but she thought, given an evening in the company of Mr Collins, even she could persuade him. She longed to be part of that world, any world, to join the sorority of married women whose bliss and trials she read about so often. At least, she thought she did until she got to the happy ending. Much as she enjoyed happy endings she could not trust them. They were a failing in novels, in life, a blind alley, a cul-de-sac; their inevitability ruined many pages, many days. She often did not finish books for that very reason, preferring to leave endless possibilities.

Charlotte noticed that Eliza did not stop to run her hands over her head in that satisfying way she usually did but seemed to punish the curls with her brush.

She was looking quite out of character, her mouth knitted in a tight knot of disapproval as she worked deftly, methodically. The salon with just the two of them seemed cold. There was tension in the spray that landed finely on her hair that Eliza had not offered and she had not accepted.

A border had been crossed: the fine line of professional and personal. Charlotte saw in her reflected pink face all the what-ifs of her life, the if-onlys, the wasted possibilities and was on the verge of falling into the bleak emptiness of it.

'Know what, Charlotte? I think you should come and meet Mr Collins.'

The emptiness receded.

Eliza tweaked at her fringe, bending her knees to get closer then put her head next to Charlotte's, resting her hands on her shoulders and fixing her eyes on the reflection.

'Like seafood?'

All of a sudden, the weight of Eliza's hands was unbearable. She saw for the first time how shrewd her eyes were; how calculating and she wanted to brush them off, free herself from the eyes, the salon and the whole sorry business. The impudence of the headset. Why should she, Charlotte Lucas of independent means and a comfortable home, entertain ideas of marrying?

'Who is Mr Collins?' her reflection asked. She could see she had recovered her usual pallor and poise.

Eliza took her hands from Charlotte's shoulders, pulled down the mouthpiece, still hovering, and listened. The salon was very still. Charlotte wondered if she should get up from her chair. She was ready to go home now.

A high snivelling sound came from Eliza. Tears were falling from her eyes.

'Well be like that, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

A new chapter, a new book even. Charlotte thought she was letting herself down and pretended not to hear for as long as possible. Then it occurred to her that this was drama, a real-life drama reflected in the mirror before her.

'Is there anything-' Charlotte let the words trail, seeing herself in the mirror, the older but still attractive woman lending her worldly wisdom to the jilted youngster crying into her headset. Was the young man still there? Was he feeling remorse for his harshly spoken words? Not a bit of it, Charlotte decided. He would be brutish and arrogant and gone. Tears would not melt his heart. 'I hate it when you cry. Whatever you cook and whoever you chose to invite will be wonderful.' That type of happy ending was reserved for the type of books she did not read. Not to the end, at least.

Distinction blurred; a car door banged and the door to the salon was flung open with force such that it hit the wall. A man stood in the doorway, smiling. With the setting sun behind his head like a halo, he strode towards Eliza and taking her in his manly arms- 'Charlotte, Charlotte,' she heard her name repeated and felt a sharp tapping on her hand. He had come to take her for the meal of ready-made food. Her Mr Collins, whose presence Eliza could not endure for one evening.

A handsome young man in uniform was kneeling beside her holding her wrist.

'Please do not kneel.' Her words, though fully formed in her head, sounded jumbled.

'Can you hear me?'

What a ridiculous question. Then she remembered that was what is said at disasters when the hero or heroine is dying. 'Well, I'm not dying.' Again the words did not come.

Eliza was still tearful, 'She came over all, well, you know, and just slumped in my chair. I thought she had fallen asleep, she often does, but when she wouldn't wake up I thought I'd better call you.'

'You did the right thing, people often leave it too late and don't want to bother us. We'll take care of her. Do you know of any relative we can contact? I think it best to take her in.'

'Lives on her own as far as I know she's an old maid.'

It dawned on Charlotte that they were speaking about her: she was the old maid. She would have liked to check the role in the mirror to see if it suited her n.o.ble profile but her head was so heavy she thought she would leave it for now. She was tired of the effort of life, tired of pretence. They had come to take her away, the fear of the old and lonely. Perhaps this is what happened in all those endings she had refused to read. It would be a new chapter in her life, hospital she supposed, for this was not the usual story. Perhaps she would be home again, back to her light, gentle life full of empty days, and that would do for the end.

Then Eliza, her practical friend, was beside her with her head close to hers.

'This gentleman is Mr Wickham. He thinks it best to take you in.'

None of it made much sense to Charlotte and she was in no mood to be taken in, certainly not by Mr Wickham. He had already taken in enough people when what everyone needed was truth and plain speaking.

'We may as well carry her; she only looks two sc.r.a.ps of nothing.'

Charlotte would have liked to look to see who they were talking about now, but she could not focus.

'Charlotte, I want you to put your arms round my neck, I'm going to take you-'

She felt the muscles taut across his shoulders and he lifted her as if she were no more than a feather. She laid her head on his shoulder and felt the stiff cloth of his uniform on her cheek. His smell was essence of man, of horse leather and fields and cigar smoke. It was pure Mills and Boon. Her mother had always warned her against filling her head with romantic nonsense but she felt the time had come to let herself go, 'Why, Mr Wickham.'

My inspiration: I wanted to write something giving minor characters a major role. I thought of Charlotte as the anti-heroine marrying the unfortunate Mr Collins so that at least she would have a modic.u.m of independence. The thought of Mr Collins immediately made me want to laugh so the story would be droll. I love Pride and Prejudice but wanted a story that did not work out.

BINA.

Andrea Watsmore.

She could be sitting right next to them and they wouldn't notice her; the teachers, the boys, the other girls. She could slip into cla.s.s wearing a menstrual red jumper that brought out the grey umbers and ochres in her skin, and that pulled tight across her small peachy b.r.e.a.s.t.s and still they wouldn't see her.

She was the only girl amongst us who could slowly peel a banana and bite into its flesh without the boys drooling at her. She was pretty though. Everything in the right place. And when she spoke, when she bothered, it was usually to say something considered. Not timid, like you might expect.

Then one day, I watched Mr Burdage pull her to one side at the end of Art, period three. He asked her what she wanted to do with her life. She held his eye and told him: lawyer.

Is that something you want to do, or something your family wants for you, because you have a talent in art, have you thought about studying it further?

And she smiled and asked him: was art something his family had wanted him to do?

He turned cerise and got excited and said: you know it's all going to become clear to you at university. The different ways you can live. There will be more people who... get you. Then he turned and scurried back into his art room.

Everyone knew that I liked Mani Burdage. He had never asked me what I wanted to do with my life, even though he knew that I wanted to go to Art School. He also knew that my dad was against the idea but that I wasn't going to let that stop me. We would be good together, Mani and me. I dreamt of living and working with him in his studio. Maybe even marrying. We would be a partnership, like Gilbert and George. Or open a shop and make and sell our work like Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas did in the nineties.

Seeing as how Mani saw something interesting in Bina, I decided to adopt her; keep your rival close, they say. Also I was confident that I would look well next to her. That once I had brought her out of herself, she wouldn't appear layered and mysterious to him. She would be just the same as everyone else. Besides I was short on friends at the time.

This was our final year at Aloysius, so I had to act now. I decided to follow him, to see where he hung out. I knew where his studio was. I'd been there in September. He worked there on Sat.u.r.days, Sundays and on Wednesdays, his day off. It took a couple of days to persuade Bina to come with me. At first she pretended she didn't like him. Went all wide-eyed, he's old enough to be my father, at me. But I explained to her that he was only seven years older than us. That you had to see beyond the beard. Look at the thickness of his eyelashes; it's as if he wears mascara. See how unusual his dark blue eyes are against his green-gold skin. Watch his quick and clever hands when he draws. Feel his energy.

I wore her down in art. I threatened to tell Mani that she fancied him unless she came with me. Mani sealed it by asking us what all the fast talk and giggling was about. I looked at Bina, her name already formed on my lips and she held her hands up and said: okay, okay, I'll come. He became nervous around us after that. Kept giving us these fluttering pretty side-looks.

Late the following Sat.u.r.day afternoon we sat in my mum's Honda watching his studio. I had parked it on a raised slip road at the back. From this position the area looked worse than I'd remembered. I could tell that Bina was not impressed; she was quiet, but not in that comfortable way of hers. The studios must have been ordinary offices once, perhaps for tax inspectors or telesales; row on top of row of balconied windows, punctuated with faded mustard panelling. Retro, but not in a good way. Many of the windows were boarded up. There were plants crushed against the gla.s.s on the inside and climbing green leaves coming through from the outside. Like Romeo and Juliet, only squalid. Perhaps if we had come at night, or if it had been a sunny day it might have looked better. The wall that half hid the skip-sized bins had been painted three shades of blue. Someone had graffittied a face with huge teeth and red and white eyes on it. Underneath they had written, Mine, all mine. I took my phone out to snap it. Bina said: you're not taking a picture of it? It's horrible. It's not Banksy, you know. It's just a c.r.a.p drawing on a nasty wall using the paint left over after they'd finished decorating their bedrooms.

I had to photograph it then. Besides Banksy's first stuff wouldn't have been great either. Everyone starts somewhere. I opened the window to lean out. The stench outside was gagging. It stuck and clung in your nose and throat. Bina leant across me shrieking and hit my b.u.t.ton to close it. The smell was inside now. A thick, heavy green fug. We started to laugh.

I tried to explain Mani's work to Bina. At his private view there had been two video monitors each showing the head and shoulders of a different woman. They were both talking, one at a time, as if in a conversation, but what they were saying didn't add up. They were isolated in these screens, not able to listen or respond to each other.

Bina shook her head: so, he's trying to make the point that some people don't get other people? That they don't listen to what the other person is saying? Don't we know that already?

I told her that there was other stuff, drawings and these hankies embroidered in lilac with random words: war treats, stone room, extra bullet. And that also to get into his studio you had to walk under a ladder. This was part of the work, a funny joke, playing with people's superst.i.tions and prejudices. I didn't tell her that although he had invited everyone in his year thirteen cla.s.s, I was the only one who had gone. That Mani hadn't spoken to me until I was about to leave. Then he asked me to spell out my name for him, as if he didn't know me: Emma I Dunsley. He scribbled it down in this little square-lined notebook and then laughed, delighted. He told me, I'm collecting anagrams and yours is unseemly maid. Thing was, Bina didn't have to get it, because this wasn't the world she wanted to be part of.

I told her that we couldn't sit here in this smell. Who knows how long we would have to wait, even a.s.suming he was in there. We would have to go inside and find him. Then she could judge his work for herself and we could see how he reacted to each of us. Bina got into a tizz and grabbed my hand and said, I can't go in there. We were both laughing and she pumped my hand and told me: you can't go in there, because...because...that smell is the smell of dead teenage girl. Mani lures them here and molests them, peels them alive and st.i.tches their skin into canvases. And out of their bones he sculpts the finest, most beautiful miniature animals with his clever hands. Their entrails he just chucks in the bins with the KFC boxes.

I told her that that was the longest sentence that I'd ever heard her speak. She turned her face away and flashed her cobalt-black hair at me. I reached into it and felt the weight of it. It was thick; each piece of hair, not just the volume of it. I plucked a strand, wound it round my finger and told her that you could use her hair to sew with, it was so strong. Then I buried my face in it. It was just washed and the sweet chemicals were so strong that they obliterated everything else. I whispered to her that Mani is a conceptual artist. He doesn't do sculpting and painting. That he doesn't have the b.a.l.l.s to do something as wild as that. I grabbed her left hand back and laid it on my palm. It was tiny, like a child's, but puffy and red like an old hag's. I told her this and she laughed so hard, she started to snort. So I told her that she snorted like a man. And she pulled her hand back and acted all offended: a man? A man? Not even a pig?

I thought I might have gone too far, so I put my lips against her stomach and burrowed and blew into it. I asked her to forgive me, told her that she was the most beautiful girl ever, more beautiful than Shilpa Shetty, hair more lovely than Amy Winehouse, eyes prettier than Mani Burdage-We were squealing and laughing so much it took us ten seconds to register the tapping sound on the gla.s.s.

The light had slipped since we had been sitting here and there was a face pressed against the window. We screamed and jumped and held on to each other's flesh. The figure reeled back like a frightened child. It was Mr Burdage. He waved both hands at us. I dropped Bina, turned my back on her and pressed the window down. I leaned out and filled the s.p.a.ce, putting myself between Mani and Bina, so he could see only me.

I held his eyes and started to talk. I could feel him trying to look past me, but I told him we were looking for the Moustache Bar, that it was near here and that because we couldn't find it we were about to come in to the studios and ask someone. He gave me his down-turned smile, pretended that he believed the story and said no, he had not heard of that one. What sort of bar was it? Then he said we could try Persuasion, on the High Road. It seemed to be popular with a young crowd. Then he looked at his watch and said. It's a bit early, though. I asked him if he goes there. And he said, not me, I'm too old for that. Then he backed away from us. When he was at a safe distance, he moved his finger as if he was scribbling lines between us and said: I'm glad you two found each other. I called after him and asked him what the smell was. He looked confused and said, do you mean the ca.n.a.l?

Bina didn't say anything on the drive home. I asked her if we should try that bar. She shrugged and said that she had to get home. She was scratching a lot. Her hands, her arms, around her stomach.

In the end I said, Mani Burdage is all right, but he isn't worth peeling your skin off for. She covered her mouth in an affected way and then leaving one finger across her lips she looked at me and said: I was never interested in Mr Burdage. I don't know what interested me here.

I almost went after her when she left the car. But what could I say to her? Wasn't it a shame that he came over when he did, because for a moment there I thought we were going to kiss and I ached all over and this was so pure that the words shouldn't be spoken or embroidered or played with, and now I feel bruised and I want to sit rigid looking into her eyes, not even touching and then fall asleep wrapping myself in her hair and when we wake we are so entangled that we don't know where Bina ends and Emma begins. And this wouldn't be a partnership, a convenience. It would be everything.

My inspiration: In writing 'Bina' my starting point was Jane Austen's Emma, a character whose comic meddling and ambitions set off a chain of events that transform her and allow her to find the love that was there all along. My Emma is the narrator of the story.

Biographies.

Lane Ashfeldt grew up in Ireland and England, and has lived and worked in several European countries. She is working on a collection of short stories. Her ambition is to live in the past; somewhere sufficiently far back for there to be no mobile phones or speaking buses, but not so far back that chalk gets pa.s.sed off as food. Information about areas of Europe with permanent network voids gratefully received contact Lane via her website www.ashfeldt.com.

Esther Bellamy is 28 and lives and farms in Hampshire. She read history at Oxford and worked at the House of Commons before studying land management at Cirencester Agricultural College. Between chasing beef cattle and avoiding paperwork she is studying for a Masters in Research in English at Southampton University where she is writing her thesis on the concept of failure in the novels of George Eliot. She is working on a novel. She reads omnivorously and a trail of destruction at the back of her house indicates that she may recently have taken up gardening as a hobby.

Kelly Brendel was born in 1989 in South London. She is currently a student at the University of York studying English Literature.

Suzy Ceulan Hughes was born in England but has lived in mid-Wales since 1977. She is a writer, translator and book reviewer. This is her first short story to be published.

Beth Cordingly was born in Brighton and attended Birmingham University where she gained a double first in English and Drama. She is currently doing the MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck. She is a founding member of Nomads, a writers' workshop and of Lou's Crew, who are working on a comedy series for television. She is an established television and theatre actress.

Felicity Cowie is a former BBC Panorama journalist and a student on the MA in Creative Writing course at Bath Spa University. She is currently finishing her first novel and wrote 'One Character In Search Of Her Love Story Role' whilst developing the central character of Hannah Peel.

Felicity was longlisted for the Fish International Short Story Prize 2006 and, as a teenager, won the WH Smith Young Writer of the Year Compet.i.tion. As a journalist, her most interesting guest was Buzz Aldrin.

Elaine Grotefeld was born in Montreal, Canada and grew up in the UK, where she read English at Jesus College, Cambridge. She wrote two of her dissertations on her favourite writer, Jane Austen (the second to attempt reparation for the first). Since then she's lived and worked in London, Vancouver, Hong Kong and Singapore where she 'headhunted' technology executives by day and wrote poems, short stories and her novel by night. Happily squeezed between mountains and sea, Elaine is now back in Vancouver with her Scottish husband, two children, and the occasional rummaging bear. Persuasion's theme of long-lost love inspired Elaine's short story 'Eight Years Later,' as well as her first and almost-cooked novel, Meeting Joe McMa.n.u.s.

Jacqui Hazell was born in Hampshire in 1968. She studied textile design at Nottingham and has had a range of humorous greetings cards published. She has also been a runner-up in the Vogue Talent Contest for young writers and worked briefly as a secretary at Buckingham Palace. She is a journalist and magazine editor and is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway. Her first novel is ent.i.tled, The Flood Video Diaries. She lives in London.

Elizabeth Hopkinson usually finds her imagination veering towards the fantastic, and is therefore very pleased (and a little surprised) to find herself doing so well with a (nearly) straight story. She lives in Bradford, West Yorkshire, where she finds an endless source of inspiration in the coffee shop in the old Wool Exchange. Her stories have appeared in several genre magazines, webzines and anthologies, and her themed collection of 12 short stories, My True Love Sent to Me, is available from Virtual Tales. Her website is: www.hiddengrove.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk Mary Howell was born with many advantages, most of which she turned her back on.

Educated to be a lady at a private convent, she excelled at truancy, managing only to achieve a fistful of star A levels. Her university career and her nursing career both ended abruptly with spells in prison. Both times she was released without stain.

She has lived all over the world, with as many aliases as lovers, She has been an orthodontist's a.s.sistant, a serial absconder, sawn in half by a magician and a happily married mother of three. She now lives in North Wales.

Clair Humphries graduated with a BA Hons in English Literature. She has worked in the Official Publications Reading Room of the British Library and is currently employed at a London university, where she provides support for disabled and dyslexic students. She writes humorous contemporary fiction and lives in Kent with her husband, Steve.

Kirsty Mitch.e.l.l is 25 and was born in Ayr on the west coast of Scotland. She now lives in Glasgow. Her short stories have previously been published in Mslexia magazine, and placed in the Cadenza Short Story Compet.i.tion, Frome Festival Short Story Compet.i.tion, and the Bristol Short Story Prize. She is a graduate of Philosophy and History at Glasgow University.

Victoria Owens worked first in the book trade and later as a legal executive before reading for an English degree. PhD research on John Dryden's translation of the Aeneid followed; she finished her thesis about ten days before her eldest daughter's birth. She wrote her first novel when her younger daughter started playgroup and her second on Bath Spa University's MA in Creative Writing, but neither has found a publisher. Victoria runs and swims to keep fit, enjoys choral singing and belongs to the Gaskell Society. She lives near Bristol.

Penelope Randall was born in Leicester. She grew up in Norfolk and Nottinghamshire and, for three teenage years, in the Bahamas. She read Engineering Science at Oxford University and has worked as a civil servant, editor, typesetter and playgroup a.s.sistant. She currently teaches science and maths and wants to start a campaign against education buzzwords. She has always loved writing stories, and recent successes (and near-misses!) encourage her to hope that her three novels may one day find a publisher. She lives in Manchester.

Nancy Saunders lives in a Hampshire village and works in Library Aquisitions, sending out lovely new books to hungry readers. Writing, fiddle-playing and enjoying the great outdoors are all squeezed in around the job. Nancy is a past member of Alex Keegan's Bootcamp online writing group without which her writing would not have won a couple of prizes and appeared in various publications. Elly and Oscar are Nancy's two true significant others.

Stephanie Shields was brought up in the Midlands but has spent all of her adult life in the north of England, where she has combined sheep farming with a career in further education. She has written poetry since childhood, but short fiction is a more recent development. Having had some early publication of her poetry in the 1970s, she has continued as a covert writer. She is a member of the Otley Courthouse Writers, based in the market town of Otley, West Yorkshire.

Elsa A. Solender, a New Yorker, was president of the Jane Austen Society of North America from 1996-2000. Educated at Barnard College and the University of Chicago, she has worked as a journalist, editor, and college teacher in Chicago, Baltimore and New York. She represented an international non-governmental women's organisation at the United Nations during a six-year residency in Geneva. She has published articles and reviews in a wide variety of American magazines and newspapers, but 'Second Thoughts' is her first published story. She has been married for 49 years, has two married sons and seven grandchildren.

Hilary Spiers lives in Stamford, Lincolnshire, works in adolescent health policy part-time and writes every day, when time and life permit. She has won a number of national writing compet.i.tions, been published in several anthologies and had some of her stories broadcast on the radio. Her abiding pa.s.sion remains playwriting, for stage and radio. Her play Hoovering on the Edge was staged by Shoestring Theatre in September 2009 and she has had work performed at London's Hampstead Theatre and the Oundle Literature Festival. While collecting rejection letters, she acts in and directs other writers' plays.

Stephanie Tillotson joined the BBC in 1989 and worked in television and radio for many years, at length crossing to the independent sector in Wales. For the past ten years she has been writing, directing and performing for the theatre. Originally from Gilwern near Abergavenny, she now lives in Aberystwyth, where she has been teaching in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the university. At present she is editing a book of short stories for Honno called Cut on the Bias, a collection of fictional writing about women's relationship to clothes and image.

Andrea Watsmore was born in the London/Ess.e.x borders in 1966, has four children and a Fine Art degree from Chelsea School of Art. This has led to a number of opportunities including usherette, engineer, tote operator, teacher, shop girl, bag lady and artist.

She has always written, whether in paintings or on lonely walls. Now she generally limits it to a spiral-bound notebook and laptop. 'Bina' is her first published story.

The Judges.

Sarah Waters was born in Pembrokeshire. She has won a Betty Trask Award, the Somerset Maugham Award and was twice shortlisted for the Mail On Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. Fingersmith and The Night Watch were both shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes, and Fingersmith won the CWA Ellis Peters Dagger Award for Historical Crime Fiction and the South Bank Show Award for Literature. Tipping the Velvet, Affinity and Fingersmith have all been adapted for television. Her latest novel The Little Stranger, was published by Virago in 2009. She lives in London.

Lindsay Ashford is a former BBC journalist and the author of four published crime novels. Her second, Strange Blood, was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. She has had short stories published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and has edited two collections of short fiction and prose for Honno: Written In Blood and Strange Days Indeed. She splits her time between a home on the Welsh coast and Chawton House, where she is a PR consultant.

Mary Hammond started her career writing historical novels for an American book packager in the early 1980s. She is now Senior Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Southampton, specialising in book history, and convenor for Southampton's MA in Creative Writing. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the print culture of Victorian Britain and has also written on contemporary creative writing.

Rebecca Smith is the five-times great niece of Jane Austen (descended from Jane's brother Frances, through his daughter Catherine Ann, who was born at Chawton House). She is a Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at Southampton University. Her first novel, The Bluebird Cafe, was published by Bloomsbury in 2001. Other novels are Happy Birthday and All That (Bloomsbury 2003) and A Bit Of Earth (Bloomsbury 2006).

Janet Thomas is a freelance editor, living in Aberystwyth. She has edited a wide range of books, including four short-story anthologies for Honno: Catwomen from h.e.l.l, The Woman Who Loved Cuc.u.mbers, Mirror Mirror and Safe World Gone, which were co-edited with Patricia Duncker. She has published short stories and her children's picture book Can I Play? (Egmont) won a Practical PreSchool gold award.

Chawton House Library.

Two hundred years ago Jane Austen made a momentous journey. On a July day in 1809 she set out from Southampton at the invitation of her brother, Edward. He had inherited the Manor of Chawton after being adopted by a wealthy, childless couple and had offered her a new home on his estate. On taking up residence there with her mother and sister, Jane did something she had felt unable to do for a very long time: she took up her pen and began working on a novel.