Adventures with Jane and her Legacy 01 Jane Austen Ruined My Life (4 page)

She was not what I'd been expecting. I'd envisioned a hawkish-looking, spare woman, rather like the silhouettes I'd seen of Jane Austen's mother, with her upright posture and the aristocratic hook in her nose. Instead, Mrs. Parrot looked like a well-upholstered granny who spent her days watching soap
operas and eating Cadbury chocolate bars. Her hair was a vivid orange, as if Andy Warhol had been her hairdresser. A pair of glasses dotted with rhinestones hung from a chain around her neck, but she could just as easily have carried them on the ample shelf of her bosom. The fabric of her flowered housedress would have looked at home on a sofa, and her feet were encased in sturdy black oxfords that had seen better days.

"Miss Grant?"

"Yes. Mrs. Parrot?"

"Sorry to keep you waiting, my dear." It was then I noticed the cane in her right hand. "Not as spry as I once was. Come in, then. Come in. No sense standing around."

"Yes, ma'am" was all I could think to say. Where was the elegant English lady that her correspondence had led me to expect? I'd pictured cashmere, Harris Tweed, and smooth silver hair, not Hyacinth Bucket.

I stepped across the threshold and almost ran into her when she didn't move. She looked me up and down. Clearly she didn't need the glasses to size me up.

"
Hmm
" was all she said. Then she slowly turned and moved into the small foyer.

The black-and-white tile beneath our feet practically sparkled. A brass umbrella stand next to the door was crammed with a wide selection of
brollies
. A curving flight of stairs with a wrought-iron banister rose above a large gilt-framed mirror. All in all, the house was exactly what I'd expected, except for its occupant.

"Just here, in the lounge," she said over her shoulder.

I followed her at her snail's pace. Fortunately, it wasn't far. She opened a door and proceeded into a large sunlit room. Again, it was exactly what I'd expected. Gorgeous white crown molding. A marble fireplace with two wingback chairs drawn up before it. Cushions and tables and lots of cabbage roses on the drapes. Even an assortment of china figurines on the mantelpiece.

Mrs. Parrot reached one of the wingback chairs and carefully lowered herself into it. At her right hand sat a small table that held a tea service and a plate of cookies. Or biscuits, as she no doubt called them. She waved me toward the other chair, and I obeyed.

"I appreciate your inviting me," I began, but she held up a hand to interrupt me.

"Let's dispense with the formalities, dear. At my age, there just isn't time." She smiled to show that her words were not unkindly meant. "You have a purpose for being here. I have a purpose for asking you to come."

I nodded, unsure whether I was supposed to say anything in response.

Mrs. Parrot reached for the teapot and a cup and saucer. "How do you take your tea?"

Apparently there was time for tea, if not for the formalities of polite conversation. "With sugar, please."

Mrs. Parrot poured with the ease of long practice, using a small set of tongs to drop a lump of sugar in my cup. She passed it to me, along with a small silver spoon balanced on the edge of the saucer. She took her own tea with milk.

"Now, then, we can attend to the business at hand." She took a sip from her cup, closed her eyes in enjoyment, then opened them and looked at me with a piercing gaze. "I will share the letters with you ... if you meet my conditions."

"Conditions?" This was the first I'd heard of conditions.

Our correspondence had never hinted at anything like this.

"A series of tasks, really, more than conditions, per se."

"Tasks?"

"So that you may prove yourself worthy."

I glanced over my shoulder. Surely Mrs. Parrot had a hidden camera concealed in the crown molding or behind a vase. "I don't understand."

She sighed and set her cup and saucer on the low table beside her chair. "They never do," she murmured, and I realized she wasn't talking to me.

Since we were the only two people in the room, I grew concerned. What if I'd been wrong? What if she was simply a crazy old lady who wouldn't know one of Jane Austen's letters from a back issue of the
Sunday Times
? What if I had come all that way for nothing?

Mrs. Parrot folded her hands in her lap. "Access to the letters is a privilege, Miss Grant, not a right. You must prove yourself worthy of them."

I set my own cup and saucer down on the table next to me. Clearly the time had come to make as hasty an exit as possible. The tea, which had tasted so lovely only moments before, now swished uncomfortably in my stomach.

"I'm a serious researcher, ma'am. I have a PhD from one of
the most prestigious universities in America. Your letters never said anything about tests or having to prove myself worthy."

"Not tests," she corrected gently. "Tasks. A far different thing."

She was loony. Nuts. Or whatever the equivalent British term was for "off your rocker."

"I don't see the difference." I reached down for my purse, slung it across my shoulder, and prepared to stand up. "You've been very kind to invite me--"

"Whatever you do, protect my children from the coarse and vulgar speculations of others,"
Mrs. Parrot recited, a strange half smile lighting her face.
"The world may know my words, but it has no such privileges with my heart."

Mrs. Parrot almost glowed, as if light emanated from just beneath the papery skin of her cheeks. Her words were enough for me to let my purse strap slide off my shoulder and onto my lap.

"What's that from?" It wasn't in any of Austen's known letters or her novels. I could quote them all backward, forward, and upside down.

"One of the letters, my dear. I believe number twenty-eight hundred eighty-five."

"Twenty-eight hundred eighty-five?"

"One of the last ones. Written near the end of her life."

"Twenty-eight hundred eighty-five?" I repeated, stunned. Only one hundred and sixty of Austen's letters were known to exist. I paused, squeezed my eyes shut, and asked the question I knew would seal my fate. "How many letters do you have?"

"Personally?" Mrs. Parrot picked up her teacup again. "About five hundred I should think. Perhaps a few more."

"And the rest?"

"In very good hands, I assure you."

"How many?" Adrenaline and disbelief mangled my question so that it was hardly comprehensible, but Mrs. Parrot understood.

"In total, the official inventory lists almost three thousand letters."

"Official inventory?"

The conversation was growing more fantastic by the minute. No doubt I would soon discover that Mrs. Parrot had recently been released from a mental institution where she'd been hospitalized as a delusional psychotic. I glanced down at my tea cup. It hadn't tasted funny, but ...

"The integrity of the letters has been well preserved, Miss Grant, I assure you."

Integrity of the letters? Was she kidding?

"You say you have almost three thousand of Jane Austen's letters, hidden away, and you're worried about integrity?" I pushed my purse strap back up on my shoulder. Definitely time to leave Mrs. Parrot alone with her delusions. "I apologize for troubling you--"

"Don't you want to know?" she asked. The vague question hung, suspended, in the air between us.

"Want to know what?"

"The truth."

"About?"

"The truth about Jane Austen, of course."

"Mrs. Parrot--"

She held up one hand. "You've come this far. Why give up so easily now?"

Because you're mad as a March hare
, I wanted to say, but I stopped myself. No need to be unkind merely because this sweet, tabby-haired lady was unhinged.

"I really think I'd better--"

"Let me show you one, then." She rose rather unsteadily to her feet. "Perhaps that will convince you."

"Show me one of what?"

"Why, one of Jane Austen's letters, of course."

"You have them here? In your home?"

She laughed. "Not all of them. That would be madness, wouldn't it?"

I stood there, my mouth hanging open, unable to utter a word. Madness? We'd passed that particular stop on the delusional express long ago.

"Come with me." She started off toward the door of the sitting room. Mrs. Parrot moved very slowly. I could only hope that wherever we were going, it wasn't a long distance, or up a flight of stairs.

As she made her way through the door and back into the foyer, her shuffling step gave me plenty of time to study her home. We moved down a long hallway, and I could peer into each room. Every inch of wall space was covered in artwork-- oil paintings, watercolors, sketches, pastels, silhouettes. The
pictures were framed in a jumble of gilt, chrome, and wood, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Here and there, modern photos and portraits sprang up like weeds in a garden.

A jumble of antique furniture formed a maze of Victorian settees, inlaid tables, and random bric-a-brac. There stood a five-foot-tall replica of the Venus de Milo. Next to it, yet another umbrella stand, this one fashioned from what looked to be an elephant's foot. The sight of it made some of the tea in my stomach leap into my throat.

"You have some very interesting things," I said, more to try to anchor myself to normalcy than in a bid to renew our conversation.

"Treasure is in the eye of the beholder," Mrs. Parrot said. She looked back at me over one slightly hunched shoulder with a smile I could only describe as mysterious. "The value of a thing always depends upon your point of view."

Before I could reply, she pushed open another door. I followed her into the dimly lit room. I couldn't see as clearly here, but there was enough light to outline the jumble of objects fighting for space on the floor and over the walls.

"Let me just find the switch." Mrs. Parrot fumbled around for a moment, and then suddenly the room was illuminated.

"Oh!" I stood there, my mouth agape. Rows and rows of shelves lined the walls, each one crammed with dozens of books. Desks of every size and shape covered almost all of the floor space.

"What in the world--"

"One of our research rooms," she said, giving me a tip of her head to indicate that I should follow her. "Over the years, our mission has expanded."

"Our research room? Our mission?" Mrs. Parrot was merrily leading me down the same road to madness that she had already traveled. "Who do you mean?"

"The Formidables, of course."

"The Formidables?"

I recognized the phrase immediately. Jane Austen's own appellation for herself and her sister, Cassandra, in their later years. As in the formidable maiden aunts who bossed, cajoled, comforted, and cosseted all their relations.

"Cassandra deputized the first of the lot before her death. Fanny Knatchbull was one," she said, referring to Jane's niece and one of her best-known correspondents.

"One of the Formidables." I repeated her words in a monotone, not as a question but as if trying to convince myself that they might be true. A secret society? Devoted to Jane Austen? It was too fantastical to be believed. As an academic, I knew better than to give it a moment's credit. But as a woman ... a romantic. As my mother's daughter. My heart leaped into my throat.

Of course it wasn't true. It was some elaborate game of make-believe played by elderly ladies with vivid imaginations and too much time on their hands. It couldn't be true. But, oh, how desperately I wanted it to be.

Mrs. Parrot paused next to a set of bookshelves. "You don't believe me?"

"You have to admit, it all sounds a bit far-fetched."

"Most true things do," she replied. She reached up and pulled a heavy volume from the shelf. It wavered in her ancient grasp. I darted forward, caught the book, and helped her lower it to the nearest desk.

"Thank you, dear."

I stepped back, and she opened the cover and leafed through the large gilt-edged pages. "I'm sure I left it in this one ..."

The mere idea that this obviously senile old lady might actually have one of Jane Austen's undiscovered letters shoved in a book somewhere made my pulse race, both out of excitement and anxiety. "I can help--"

"Here it is." She held up a yellowed piece of paper in triumph, shot me a victorious smile. "Sharp as a tack," she said, pointing to her head with her free hand.

"May I?" I held out my own hand toward the letter. I could see that spidery handwriting covered the sheet. At first glance, the letter certainly looked to be antique, but that was a far cry from actually having been penned by Jane Austen.

"Not so hastily," she said, pulling the letter away from me. "Sit down first."

I resisted the urge to lunge forward and snatch it from her hands. At least she kept it stored in a book, away from the damaging ultraviolet rays.

With great reluctance, I sank into a straight chair pulled up to the nearest desk.

Mrs. Parrot nodded her approval. "Very good. Now, before I show you this, I must swear you to secrecy."

Secrecy? Now she was mentioning secrecy? And then I realized she'd baited her hook quite irresistibly. She wasn't nearly as dotty as she appeared to be. At the moment, I would have promised her my firstborn, not that I was ever going to have one now, for one close peek at the letter in her hand. Even from several feet away, I could tell the handwriting had the right slant and elegance to belong to Jane Austen.

"I will be as discreet as possible," I said, hoping to evade an outright commitment. I should have known that wouldn't work.

"Absolute secrecy," she said again. She glanced around, and then plucked up yet another book from the shelf behind her. She laid it on the desk in front of me. "Swear on this."

"You want me to swear on the Bible?" That was taking things a bit far. And given my current disillusionment with the Almighty ...

Mrs. Parrot sniffed. "Of course not. People break vows sworn on Scripture all the time. But this? If you're the Austen scholar you claim to be, you'd never desecrate this with a lie."

She nudged the book toward me. It was a small leather-bound volume. "Open it," she instructed, and I did. I didn't have to turn any further than the title page to realize what she'd placed in front of me to secure my fealty.