Love and Freindship and Other Delusions Read online

  Love

  and

  FREINDSHIP

  (sic)

  And Other Delusions

  BETH ANDREWS

  With apologies to Jane Austen

  Contents

  Part One (Marianne’s Introduction)

  Part Two (Laura’s Manuscript)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Three (Marianne’s Conclusion)

  Afterword: Writing Jane Austen

  Love and Freindship

  An Unfinished Novel in Letters

  The History of England

  A Collection of Letters

  Scraps

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  (Marianne’s Introduction)

  The tale that follows is a record of the exploits of a most remarkable woman. I would hesitate even to publish something so intimate and incredible, but I am bound to do so by the express wishes of the authoress herself. I feel, however, that I must first give some explanation of how this manuscript came into my possession.

  It began on a rainy evening in Bury St Edmunds. Although that town is generally associated with the signing of the august Magna Carta, my mother and I were employed in something much more frivolous: we were attending a performance of Lovers’ Vows at the Theatre Royal. The play was entertaining enough for a young lady of one-and-twenty like myself, but it was the company that provided the most interest.

  We had been seated for no more than twenty minutes when a genteel commotion in the box directly opposite ours attracted our attention. A woman on the shady side of fifty (about the same age as my mother) entered with some fanfare. She was dressed entirely in black, though not the sombre attire of the recently bereaved. Her gown was worked with silver threads and fluttering feathers, so that what might have looked like a ghostly raven more closely resembled an elegant swan. She was surrounded by at least half a dozen gentlemen in varying degrees of dilapidation, each attending her in the obsequious manner of the devoted cicisbeo.

  ‘Who on earth is that, Mama?’ I asked, as fascinated as the rest of the audience must have been.

  My mother, raising her quizzing glass at the undoubtedly arresting spectacle, gave a snort of supreme contempt.

  ‘That,’ she answered, ‘is the greatest ninnyhammer in England.’

  Even as she spoke, the woman in question turned her head and raised her quizzing glass in our direction. She stared at us for a moment, then gave a great smile and waved enthusiastically at us. To my surprise, my mother did not, as I had fully expected, give her the Cut Direct, but inclined her head slightly in recognition.

  ‘Is she a friend of yours?’ I enquired, unable to hide the surprise in my voice.

  ‘An acquaintance from my youth,’ she confessed, ‘whom I have not had the misfortune to meet these twenty years or more.’

  ‘Misfortune?’ I was more curious than ever, but Mama cut short further enquiry by delivering a playful rap upon the back of my hand with her closed fan, and admonishing me to mind the play.

  I attempted to do as she asked, but could not refrain from casting surreptitious glances at the box where a much more interesting comedy was being played out, as the mysterious female held court while her admirers fought over every smile and pout she deigned to cast their way. I was determined to discover more about this character as soon as we left the theatre, but in the end there was no need for such effort.

  After the play, we pushed and pressed our way through the crowd as they left the building, and were scarcely outside on the pavement when we were waylaid by the very lady I had been observing all evening. She flew up to my mother, her gown glittering and fluttering, and embraced her with all the fervour of a bosom friend.

  ‘My dearest Isabel!’ she cried. ‘What a joy to find you here tonight.’

  My mother’s response was not quite icy, but it would be excessively generous to describe it as anything more than lukewarm.

  ‘You are looking very well, Laura,’ she said.

  Laura seemed to be all arms, eyes and teeth, as she responded.

  ‘Yes, but I am weary to death, fending off unwanted suitors and wallowing in unceasing mourning for my beloved Edward.’

  ‘An arduous life, indeed—especially at our age.’

  ‘Ah! I have always been too painfully sensitive to the afflictions of my friends and myself, as you know, Isabel.’

  ‘Of yourself, certainly.’

  If Laura detected the criticism in this remark, she did not show it, but turned her attention to me instead.

  ‘But surely this angelic creature cannot be your daughter, Marianne,’ she exclaimed, adding thoughtfully: ‘She takes after her father, no doubt.’

  ‘I am his image in petticoats, so I’m told,’ I answered, with a respectful bow.

  We were almost at the carriage, and the footman prepared to assist my mother up into it.

  ‘Does your papa wear petticoats?’ Laura wondered aloud. ‘I had an uncle who did the same. His wife often dressed as an Admiral of the Fleet, I believe.’

  ‘Charming.’ Mama turned away as she spoke. ‘But I’m afraid we must be off, my dear Laura.’

  ‘Pray stop for a moment,’ Laura entreated.

  ‘What is it now?’

  The other woman seemed completely insensible of any reluctance on my mother’s part to comply with her request. She reached out and took my hand unexpectedly, looking at me with such intensity that I was quite taken aback.

  ‘Dearest Marianne,’ she said, giving my hand a painful squeeze, ‘I always promised your dear mother that I would someday acquaint her daughter with all the particulars of my many adventures.’

  I could hear my mother breathe an audible sigh, apparently resigning us both to our fates.

  ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that you did once mention something of the sort. I had quite forgotten.’

  ‘But I have not.’ Laura’s look of smug satisfaction was a treat to see. ‘And that momentous occasion has at last arrived.’

  ‘I should be honoured to hear your story, ma’am,’ I replied. What else could I say, after all?

  ‘Come to my house tomorrow, then—at noon.’

  Having issued what was more in the nature of a command than a request, she apparently deemed refusal to be impossible, and flitted off to rejoin the gentlemen who had congregated some distance away, watching our conversation with jealous eyes. By then we were safely ensconced in the carriage, and I turned to Mama to ensure that my proposed visit was acceptable to her.

  ‘Go with my blessing, dear child.’ She shrugged. ‘I make no doubt you will be vastly entertained.’

  ‘You do not mind, then?’ Somehow I had gathered that she did not entirely approve of her old friend and was in no mood to encourage the acquaintance.

  ‘On the contrary. It may be just what you need.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have been doubting your decision to marry Tom, have you not?’

  I blushed in spite of myself, and caught my lips between my teeth. Mama was ever a downy one, and I had always found it nearly impossible to keep a secret from her.

  ‘Tom is a . . . a good sort of man, to be sure. . . .’

  ‘But you wonder if
you might not do better, perhaps?’

  ‘I cannot but question if he is the one for me,’ I confessed.

  ‘Is he your True Love, you mean?’ Mama chuckled softly. ‘Your soulmate?’

  ‘Well. . . .’ I could feel the colour in my face deepening.

  ‘Yes, I think Laura may be just the tonic.’

  I looked at her curiously.

  ‘Did she marry her soulmate?’ I asked.

  ‘She did indeed—God help her!’

  ‘Mama!’ Her cynical response startled me in spite of myself.

  ‘Forgive me, my love.’ She settled back into her seat as the carriage made the turn to our street. ‘When you are my age, you will find that passion, like hope, makes a fine breakfast. Once it cools, though, it is less than useless. One wants something more substantial for supper.’

  With such bracing words to comfort me, I arrived at Laura’s house the next day with feelings of equal parts curiosity and confusion—a state of mind which her reception did nothing to allay. She was dressed in black, and I quickly learned that no other colour was permitted in her wardrobe. Her mourning was perpetual, even if no longer more than superficial.

  She dismissed my expressions of gratitude for her kind attentions with the wave of a hand, tending to the tea tray and insisting that she could do no less to the daughter of her oldest friend.

  ‘How did you and Mama become acquainted?’ I asked.

  She leaned back on the sofa, closing her eyes in reminiscence.

  ‘When I was a girl of sixteen, your mother was my nearest neighbour in the secluded Vale of Uske.’

  ‘It must have been lonely for you,’ I said with genuine sympathy.

  ‘Ah yes!’ she agreed. ‘In fact, my only other companion was my dear governess, Miss Dickson. I can still recall the last words she ever spoke to me.’

  ‘After all these years?’

  ‘Yes indeed. “Kitty,” she said. . . .’

  ‘Kitty?’ I was mystified.

  ‘It was her pet name for me,’ she explained. ‘She always said I had the instincts of a cat.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘ “Kitty, goodnight t’ye,” she said.’ She dabbed at her eyes, brushing away quite imaginary tears. ‘I could not know then that she would be cruelly taken from me forever that very night.’

  ‘She died so suddenly?’ I was touched by such a tragic turn of events.

  ‘She eloped with the butler,’ Laura corrected me, quite matter-of-factly.

  I only just managed to stifle a laugh before replying, ‘My mother’s friendship must then have become even more significant to you.’

  This abrupt reminder gave her pause and she attempted to pick up the thread of her tale, which was already beginning to unravel.

  ‘Ah yes. Your mother.’ She nodded sagely. ‘My life had been a cloistered one, but your mother had seen The World.’

  ‘Had she?’

  ‘Indeed.’ She leaned closer, as if confiding some great secret. ‘In all honesty, your mother never possessed a hundredth part of my beauty nor accomplishments, but she had a great deal of savoir vivre.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘She had spent two years at an exclusive London boarding school, had visited Bath for a fortnight, and supped one evening at Southampton.’

  It was an impressive curriculum vitae for a young lady of seventeen, I suppose, and I expressed what I hoped was a suitable degree of astonishment.

  ‘She warned me,’ Laura continued, ‘to beware the idle dissipations of London, the vain luxuries of Bath, and the stinking fish of Southampton.’

  ‘And what did you say to her in return?’ I asked.

  ‘That I should probably never experience the manifold temptations of London or Bath, nor smell the fish of Southampton.’

  ‘Something tells me that you were mistaken.’

  I had hardly finished speaking when she all but leaped from the sofa.

  ‘I could not then imagine,’ she declaimed dramatically, ‘how soon I would quit my humble home for the deceitful pleasures of The World!’

  ‘How did your fortunes change so completely?’

  She did not reply directly, but went to a nearby cabinet which she carefully unlocked, removing a neatly bound sheaf of papers. She then presented these to me with great fanfare.

  ‘Here,’ she announced, ‘is my greatest treasure. I entrust it to your keeping, assured that Isabel’s daughter will know what to do with it.’

  I was somewhat perturbed by this exaggerated degree of confidence in my abilities, and quite reluctant to accept the mysterious object.

  ‘I really do not feel worthy,’ I began, but was immediately forestalled.

  ‘Doubtless there is nobody worthy of this great honour,’ she agreed. ‘But you will do as well as any other.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ I said, duly chastened.

  ‘This,’ she continued, ‘is the story of my many adventures, from the age of eighteen, when your mother departed from the Vale of Uske and left me friendless and despairing.’

  ‘I’m sure she had not meant to leave you so,’ I tried to reassure her, feeling I must offer some defence of my mother’s apparent desertion.

  ‘No matter.’ Laura sat down beside me once more, taking my hand and squeezing it painfully. ‘The World called her away to her own adventure—though it could not, of course, compare with my own.’

  I felt obliged to make some appropriate comment, but was momentarily incapable. At last I stammered out what I hoped would be acceptable.

  ‘Naturally not.’

  ‘Dear child.’ She released my hand and looked kindly upon me, so I assumed that my words were what she had wanted to hear. ‘When I am gone, I wish you to publish these words. The world should know of my sufferings. It may be that they will inspire other young ladies of noble heart and exalted mind.’

  ‘Anything is possible,’ said I.

  ‘Would you read it to me?’ she asked suddenly, as though the idea had just occurred to her—though I did not doubt that this had been her intention from the beginning of our conversation.

  ‘I can hardly read it all today,’ I protested, looking at the considerable number of pages before me.

  ‘No, no,’ she agreed. ‘You must visit me again. We will enjoy a chapter or two each time.’

  It was a daunting prospect, but I acquiesced, if only from curiosity as to the kind of life this unusual woman had led.

  So we settled down and I moved to a more comfortable chair, while she stretched out on the sofa to enjoy a period of what surely must have been supreme self-gratification in hearing her exploits recounted by someone other than herself.

  What follows is essentially the text which I began to peruse that afternoon and which I later submitted to a publisher in Edinburgh at the request of my supine auditor. Only minimal changes in grammar, and the necessary divisions of some episodes, have been made to the original.

  PART TWO

  LAURA’S MANUSCRIPT

  Chapter One

  Many and varied are the afflictions of my life, and I can only hope that the fortitude with which I have borne them may prove a useful lesson for those who face their own trials and tribulations.

  My father was a native of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales. My mother was the illegitimate daughter of a Scots peer by an Italian coloratura soprano. I was born in Spain and received my education at a remote convent in the south of France.

  When I reached my eighteenth year, I was recalled by my parents to my paternal home in Wales. Our house was a large one, without being precisely a mansion, and was situated in one of the most romantic parts of the Vale of Uske, ensconced among lush green hills where the sun shone like a golden haze in the mist-shrouded mornings.

  I was a paragon of beauty and grace, but these were the least of my many perfections. I was mistress of every feminine accomplishment, supreme in every art. At the convent, my progress always exceeded the expectation of my teachers, whom I soon surpassed. My proficiency w
as wonderful, and in my mind every virtue, every good quality, and every noble sentiment was united.

  If any fault could be found in me, it was only an excess of humility and a tendency to forget my own perfections. My looks may be faded now, along with my accomplishments: I can neither sing so well nor dance so gracefully as I once did, and have entirely forgotten the minuet now that I have learned to waltz. Nevertheless, at eighteen, I was absolutely incomparable.

  My perfections were all quite wasted in the wilderness of Uske, however, for the only person of consequence in our neighbourhood was Isabel, who was already nineteen, practically on the shelf, and eager to accept the first decent proposal of marriage which might come her way, since her parents had left her in indigent circumstances.

  At last, to the astonishment of all, Isabel did indeed receive a proposal of marriage and abandoned her friend to find what happiness she might on the distant shores of Ireland. It seemed that I was doomed to waste my youth and beauty alone in a remote residence on the pockmarked posterior of Wales. Such, however, was not the case.

  Chapter Two

  One evening in December, my father, my mother and I had arranged ourselves in a picturesque tableau around our fireside in the drawing room. I was entertaining myself with Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, while my father puffed contentedly on his pipe and my mother sat studiously embroidering something of no significance whatsoever. The fire was warm and cheerful, while outside a steady rain—not unusual in that part of the country—fell with unwearied persistence.

  Our domestic peace and harmony was suddenly shattered by a loud knocking at the front door, which was situated some ten feet from where we sat.

  ‘What noise is that?’ my father asked of nobody in particular.

  ‘It sounds like a rapping at the door,’ I cried.

  Papa took a great puff at his pipe.

  ‘It certainly appears to proceed from some uncommon violence against our unoffending door.’

  ‘I cannot help thinking that it must be somebody who seeks admittance.’ I nodded in agreement.

  ‘That is a definite possibility,’ he conceded, ‘though by no means a certainty.’

  As he spoke, the knocking resumed, much louder and more insistent than before.