Midnight in Austenland
Page 28
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“I know, but I don’t want to complain. I worry she has enough to juggle.”
“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is a very capable woman.”
Aha! His face lit up, his hands clasping earnestly in front of his body. Oh yes, Neville felt quite the opposite about the woman Wattlesbrook.
“She’s the best,” said Charlotte, dangling the hook.
“I am happy you see her truly, madam.”
She smiled at the butler and made again to leave, but asked on her way out, “Oh, by the way, how did Mr. Wattlesbrook arrive here?”
“He generally comes in his own … vehicle.”
Of course he would drive a car. This was not a man who cared about keeping up Regency appearances. “And is that ‘vehicle’ still around? I just don’t want to see it, if you know what I mean. I’m trying to be immersive!” she added gamely.
“I noticed it gone, madam. That is why I am certain the gentleman is gone as well.”
Charlotte thanked him and went upstairs to investigate Mrs. Hatchet’s room. The drawers and wardrobes were empty, but there was an ominous-looking trunk at the foot of the bed.
A dead body could fit inside there, she thought.
But it was empty too. She wished Colonel Andrews would be more obvious with his mystery. She left the room just as Miss Gardenside was entering her own.
“Charlotte! What were you doing in my—in Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“I was looking for clues to Colonel Andrews’s mystery.”
“The Mary Francis affair? In Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“Yes. Well, Mrs. Hatchet did disappear, and I thought maybe it was just a hoax.”
Complete bafflement registered on Miss Gardenside’s face.
“She went home,” Miss Gardenside said.
“Okay. I guess I just got carried away.” Charlotte made her halfhearted smile.
“Why would you think my mother would be involved?
“Mother?”
“Did I say ‘mother’? Odd, I don’t know what I meant.”
Miss Gardenside shrugged prettily and went through her door.
Charlotte remembered her mentioning that her mother bore scars on her knuckles from nuns’ rulers, which must mean she’d attended a Catholic school. And once she’d seen Mrs. Hatchet cross herself—forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder—an unconscious gesture, the reflex of a lifelong Catholic. Mrs. Hatchet was pale and blonde, but Miss Gardenside could have a dark-skinned father or be adopted. So, Mrs. Hatchet was her mother. And she had sent her away. Or something.
In the safety of her own room, Charlotte started to dress for dinner, but the excitement of the mystery made her too antsy to do up the hooks, and she didn’t want to ring for Mary. Mary—she had the same name as Mary Francis. Maybe that was a clue?
Stop it, Charlotte! She lay on her bed and tried to thrust the crumbling abbey and Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car from her thoughts. Obviously she was getting way more into this than Miss Gardenside and Miss Charming were.
You’re doing that thing you do whenever you’re supposed to relax, she told herself. Hunting out any old problem just so you can solve it.
Yeah, you totally do that, added her Inner Thoughts. So why didn’t you figure out the million clues pointing to James’s affair? How can you be so hawkeyed and yet so dense?
Her Inner Thoughts could be a real downer. Charlotte put her arm over her eyes. No more unraveling just to avoid leisure. She exhaled slowly and cleansed her mind of this Gothic mystery. Done.
Other thoughts promptly swooshed in to take their place:
Lu: “I’m done with you.”
Justice: “Beckett called me ‘Mom’!”
Charlotte opened her eyes and welcomed the all-consuming mystery to take back her brain. It really wasn’t such a bad preoccupation when compared with others.
Home, eleven months before
“I’m worried about what this is doing to the kids,” Charlotte confessed to James when he stopped by the house to pick up Lu and Beckett for the weekend. She peered out the kitchen—the kids were in the living room watching television. She lowered her voice. “Beckett hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s anxious … about you. About us.”
It was weird talking to James about the kids after everything they’d been through. They’d spent thousands of hours speaking as partners in the past, but now … well, it was like trying to eat amazingly realistic rubber food. But who else could she talk to?
“I don’t know,” said James. “They seem fine to me. And it’s not as if divorce is uncommon. Over fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I’m sure at school they’re just one of the crowd.”
Could that statistic really be true? Among Charlotte’s acquaintances, about 10 percent of the marrieds had divorced. Before James had left, divorce had seemed distant and improbable. Besides, statistics felt as irrelevant as a nice wool blanket in the vacuum of space. Let’s look at a mother who is standing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor telling her that her child has died from a rare disease. Is it a comfort for her to hear that only one in five million children contract it?
Some postdivorce statistics:
• James saw the children 75 percent less than before.
• He missed 85 percent of their afterschool woes.
• He was absent for 99 percent of their family dinners.
Screw statistics. One hundred percent of Charlotte’s marriage had ended in divorce, and for her, that was the only number that meant anything at all.
Austenland, day 6, cont.
Charlotte reached behind her and tried to do up twenty-seven buttons. This mad world. It had all been very real for Austen, for her characters. Their clothes, their manners, their marriages—all absolute survival. But for Charlotte, in the twenty-first century, it was like eating Alice’s mushroom and shrinking a couple of centuries.
She was playing dress-up, playing pretend, playing hide-and-seek and chase and kissing tag. Does play belong exclusively to children? How does one be an adult in a child’s world? Well, for one thing, she would dress in her fine pink silk. Her hair still looked decent, so she stuck in some pearl clips and called it good. She got up and headed to the hallway, but she saw Mr. Mallery rounding the stairs and hurried back into her room.
Why was it that just thinking of that man made her aware of every cell in her body? And the state of her lipstick. She wasn’t proud of this fact, but when Mr. Mallery was around, she became increasingly concerned with the general appearance of her lips.
“Mrs. Wattlesbrook is a very capable woman.”
Aha! His face lit up, his hands clasping earnestly in front of his body. Oh yes, Neville felt quite the opposite about the woman Wattlesbrook.
“She’s the best,” said Charlotte, dangling the hook.
“I am happy you see her truly, madam.”
She smiled at the butler and made again to leave, but asked on her way out, “Oh, by the way, how did Mr. Wattlesbrook arrive here?”
“He generally comes in his own … vehicle.”
Of course he would drive a car. This was not a man who cared about keeping up Regency appearances. “And is that ‘vehicle’ still around? I just don’t want to see it, if you know what I mean. I’m trying to be immersive!” she added gamely.
“I noticed it gone, madam. That is why I am certain the gentleman is gone as well.”
Charlotte thanked him and went upstairs to investigate Mrs. Hatchet’s room. The drawers and wardrobes were empty, but there was an ominous-looking trunk at the foot of the bed.
A dead body could fit inside there, she thought.
But it was empty too. She wished Colonel Andrews would be more obvious with his mystery. She left the room just as Miss Gardenside was entering her own.
“Charlotte! What were you doing in my—in Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“I was looking for clues to Colonel Andrews’s mystery.”
“The Mary Francis affair? In Mrs. Hatchet’s room?”
“Yes. Well, Mrs. Hatchet did disappear, and I thought maybe it was just a hoax.”
Complete bafflement registered on Miss Gardenside’s face.
“She went home,” Miss Gardenside said.
“Okay. I guess I just got carried away.” Charlotte made her halfhearted smile.
“Why would you think my mother would be involved?
“Mother?”
“Did I say ‘mother’? Odd, I don’t know what I meant.”
Miss Gardenside shrugged prettily and went through her door.
Charlotte remembered her mentioning that her mother bore scars on her knuckles from nuns’ rulers, which must mean she’d attended a Catholic school. And once she’d seen Mrs. Hatchet cross herself—forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder—an unconscious gesture, the reflex of a lifelong Catholic. Mrs. Hatchet was pale and blonde, but Miss Gardenside could have a dark-skinned father or be adopted. So, Mrs. Hatchet was her mother. And she had sent her away. Or something.
In the safety of her own room, Charlotte started to dress for dinner, but the excitement of the mystery made her too antsy to do up the hooks, and she didn’t want to ring for Mary. Mary—she had the same name as Mary Francis. Maybe that was a clue?
Stop it, Charlotte! She lay on her bed and tried to thrust the crumbling abbey and Mr. Wattlesbrook’s car from her thoughts. Obviously she was getting way more into this than Miss Gardenside and Miss Charming were.
You’re doing that thing you do whenever you’re supposed to relax, she told herself. Hunting out any old problem just so you can solve it.
Yeah, you totally do that, added her Inner Thoughts. So why didn’t you figure out the million clues pointing to James’s affair? How can you be so hawkeyed and yet so dense?
Her Inner Thoughts could be a real downer. Charlotte put her arm over her eyes. No more unraveling just to avoid leisure. She exhaled slowly and cleansed her mind of this Gothic mystery. Done.
Other thoughts promptly swooshed in to take their place:
Lu: “I’m done with you.”
Justice: “Beckett called me ‘Mom’!”
Charlotte opened her eyes and welcomed the all-consuming mystery to take back her brain. It really wasn’t such a bad preoccupation when compared with others.
Home, eleven months before
“I’m worried about what this is doing to the kids,” Charlotte confessed to James when he stopped by the house to pick up Lu and Beckett for the weekend. She peered out the kitchen—the kids were in the living room watching television. She lowered her voice. “Beckett hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s anxious … about you. About us.”
It was weird talking to James about the kids after everything they’d been through. They’d spent thousands of hours speaking as partners in the past, but now … well, it was like trying to eat amazingly realistic rubber food. But who else could she talk to?
“I don’t know,” said James. “They seem fine to me. And it’s not as if divorce is uncommon. Over fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. I’m sure at school they’re just one of the crowd.”
Could that statistic really be true? Among Charlotte’s acquaintances, about 10 percent of the marrieds had divorced. Before James had left, divorce had seemed distant and improbable. Besides, statistics felt as irrelevant as a nice wool blanket in the vacuum of space. Let’s look at a mother who is standing in a hospital waiting room, a doctor telling her that her child has died from a rare disease. Is it a comfort for her to hear that only one in five million children contract it?
Some postdivorce statistics:
• James saw the children 75 percent less than before.
• He missed 85 percent of their afterschool woes.
• He was absent for 99 percent of their family dinners.
Screw statistics. One hundred percent of Charlotte’s marriage had ended in divorce, and for her, that was the only number that meant anything at all.
Austenland, day 6, cont.
Charlotte reached behind her and tried to do up twenty-seven buttons. This mad world. It had all been very real for Austen, for her characters. Their clothes, their manners, their marriages—all absolute survival. But for Charlotte, in the twenty-first century, it was like eating Alice’s mushroom and shrinking a couple of centuries.
She was playing dress-up, playing pretend, playing hide-and-seek and chase and kissing tag. Does play belong exclusively to children? How does one be an adult in a child’s world? Well, for one thing, she would dress in her fine pink silk. Her hair still looked decent, so she stuck in some pearl clips and called it good. She got up and headed to the hallway, but she saw Mr. Mallery rounding the stairs and hurried back into her room.
Why was it that just thinking of that man made her aware of every cell in her body? And the state of her lipstick. She wasn’t proud of this fact, but when Mr. Mallery was around, she became increasingly concerned with the general appearance of her lips.
