Searching For Captain Wentworth (8 page)

I caught my
breath, hardly able to believe what I was reading.

March 19th: I
met the two Miss Austens on our morning walk
in the gardens today. Miss
Jane, the youngest sister, has a most
penetrating way of looking
at you, which I find particularly
unnerving, but despite this her manner is quite
friendly. Indeed, her
clear hazel eyes continually sparkle with
amusement, as if she has
just heard of something that is about to send her
off into peals of
laughter.

So, it was true!
I really had met Jane and Cassandra, as Sophia
Elliot had all those years ago. I couldn’t wait to
read more.

March 20th: A
ball at the Upper Rooms tonight. Miss Jane
Austen and her sister
Cassandra were in attendance with their
parents. Miss Jane engaged
me in conversation when she was not
dancing. I like her very
much for her intelligence and her
wonderful sense of humour. Her sister is also very
pleasant, but has
not Miss Jane’s liveliness, nor her wicked tongue.

March 22nd: A
ball at the Lower Rooms – I nearly died
laughing at Miss Jane’s
antics. She teases and abuses all her
dancing partners with her
quick wit, but the best of it is that they
do not realize she is
laughing at their expense. We danced every
dance and sat down not once.

March 24th:
Accompanied the Miss Austens to the circulating
library in Milsom Street. I
heard all about their handsome brothers
today. Edward is a rich
landowner, James a clergyman, Frank and
Charles are in the Navy, and
Henry is a banker!

There was one
last entry.

March 29th: I
met the Miss Austens in the gardens as has
become our custom on our
daily walk. They were very excited because now hostilities are at an end with
the French, the Peace
means all our brave soldiers and sailors will be at
war no longer. I
expect Jane’s sailor brothers will be home soon. At
any rate, we can
expect to see whole crews and battalions of young
men descending
on the town. There is to be a ball held in
celebration and I am to
have a new headband to wear.

My hand flew to
my mouth. I knew exactly what had
happened that day and the conversations they’d shared!

Frustratingly,
there was no more, and I couldn’t help but wonder
why, though I guessed Sophia had just been too busy
to write. How
I wished that
she’d written more about her time with the Austen
family. I flicked through the remaining pages and
then one more
entry stood out
in blue ink as bright as if it had just been penned.

On the page
marked the last day of May were some lines written in
my mum’s very familiar handwriting.

May 31st: Is it
wrong to pursue what I know my heart must
give up? I dare not go back
again. But, when I am there, it does not
feel like a deception, and I
know it is right.

Time is but a
shadow,

Too slow, too
swift,

But for those
who love,

Time does not
exist.

I am a shadow,
so art thou.

This was most
puzzling and the only snippet of mum’s writing I
could find. It did sound a bit dramatic for a woman
who’d always
been so
even-tempered and calm whilst she lived her all too brief
life. What, or rather whom had she contemplated
giving up, I
wondered? I
actually didn’t know anything about my mother’s life
as a girl, though I remembered her talking once or
twice about old
boyfriends who
clearly weren’t significant. No, the only person
she’d ever truly loved was my dad. There are photos
of her when
young, but they
almost seem to be someone else, certainly no one
I recognize. There’s one in a frame at home. She’s
standing by a
lake, her long,
dark hair flowing back in the wind, her dress
billowing out behind her showing lithe and fragile
contours. I like
that picture
because she’s laughing, it’s a face full of love and hope for the future.

I didn’t quite
feel comfortable about all the feelings and
emotions that seemed to emanate from the yellowing
pages of the
journal like a
forgotten elixir, elusive and intangible, and was about
t
o add it to the contents of the rosewood box when I
noticed the
edge of a piece
of paper tucked in to the binding at the back.
Carefully extracting the brittle paper, I unfolded
it to find the dust
of a dried
rosebud wrapped in a piece of lace, a silver medal-shaped
coin and what looked to be some sort of
subscription card. The
medal had
an engraving of the Sydney Hotel on it and I wondered
if it might be like a kind of ticket, perhaps, to
what was now the museum or even the gardens. But the most intriguing object was
the subscription card to the Assembly Rooms for the
entrance to
Cotillion Balls
for the price of a pound. The date was April 5th,
1802, and the name Sophia Elliot was written along
the top. But,
what really
caused every hair on my head to stand on end was the
realization that it was written very clearly in my
own hand.

I held the card
up to the light turning it one way and then the other.
Surely I must be mistaken. The brown ink was a
mystery, but there
was no confusion
about the handwriting. Even by comparing it
closely with Sophia Elliot’s writing on the journal
flap, it was
evident that
different people had written both samples of script.
And I did know my own writing as well as I knew
myself and I
couldn’t know
anything more than that. Could I?

As I puzzled
over the small card that set my heart racing to the
point where I felt so light-headed I thought I
might pass out, a
nagging voice at
the back of my mind said that I knew perfectly
well what it meant. Yet, this amazing idea was so
weird and
momentous that
if I were to speak it out loud or if I were to tell
anyone they would instantly have me locked up. But,
I knew I must
have been there.
I must have owned the subscription card to the
Assembly Rooms in 1802 and, in my heart, I knew
that the episode
in the gardens
was not a figment of my imagination, however much
I tried to tell myself that it had been. It was
time to reassess what
had
happened. It wasn’t very easy because the whole thing just
seemed so ridiculous. All I kept thinking was that
to prove it to
myself, I would
have to go back to the gardens and find out. I
would pass through the white gate once more, even
though the very
thought filled
me with a sense of foreboding so strong I could
almost taste it on my tongue. Nothing could be done
until the
morning, and
inevitably, a fitful night followed with harrowing
dreams. Once, in the night, I swear I heard the
turning of the door
handle to the
bedroom, but I couldn’t wake up enough or even turn
on my pillow to look. When the light speared
through the shutters
to coax
me into opening my eyes, I started when I saw the door was
really open. I was sure I’d shut it before jumping
into bed, but on
the other hand,
I didn’t feel very sure about anything any more.
I was up and dressed in no time, carefully tucking
the
subscription card into the back
pocket of my jeans. I wanted to do
my own research before I hurled myself back through time, if that
was in fact what I was going to do, and I knew the
Holburne
Museum in the
gardens might help with my detective work. Just
thinking about the possibility of time travel was
surreal, but I’d got
enough to
think about before I made any further attempts!

I found what I
was looking for straight away on a glass cabinet
shelf, upstairs in one of the small galleries. Full
of trinkets, I saw
beautiful examples
of the enamelled patch and snuff boxes made
for the eighteenth century tourists who’d flocked
to Bath. Amongst
the “Trifles of
Bath” were silver subscription medals just like the
one I had found and, most spookily of all, several
subscription
cards for “Dress
Balls” and “Cotillion Balls” exactly like the one in
my pocket. I took it out for comparison. There was
no mistake; it
was the real
thing, which made me feel very strange.

Ignoring my
hammering heart, I explored the upper floors and
as I made for the staircase to go down to the café,
I passed a large
poster at the
entrance of the exhibition room showing the paintings,
ceramics and decorative items that were to be in
the new display,
set against an
enormous portrait of a Captain Holburne who’d been
in the Navy in the 1750s. I will never know what
possessed me to
do it, but the
door was irresistibly ajar. I popped my head round for
a sneaky look.

The door made a
horrible noise as I leaned on it and
immediately a figure appeared from a side door, lit like a silhouette
from bright lights at the back of the room. Even as
I ran away like
some silly
teenager, I knew it was Josh even if I hadn’t seen enough
to make out his features. I would have recognized
his physique
from a mile
away. I’d never moved so fast and almost running
downstairs made me laugh out loud, partly because I
felt like a
naughty
schoolgirl, partly to relieve the tension.

Relishing a
muffin and hot chocolate in the café with its
wonderful views of the gardens all around me, I
contemplated and
cogitated on the
pros and cons of what I was about to do. There
seemed so many sensible reasons not to go back and
venture
through that
gate, but I knew that if I didn’t, I would always regret
it.

Once outside,
and through the gates into the larger part of the
gardens, I tried to convince myself that I just
needed to walk, and
have a think
about things. At least the weather was better. The
whole place had a far friendlier feel about it in
the sunshine. When
I got to the
laurel hedge, my heart began to pound again so I took
a deep breath to steady my nerves. I decided to do
exactly as I had
before. I
stepped through the gate and down the steps to the canal
side. Everywhere was quiet, thankfully, not even a
seagull in sight.
I turned,
marched up the steps and put my hand on the gate, which
scraped reassuringly as before. But, this time,
nothing happened.
No matter how
many times I crossed the entrance, or held onto the
gate, placing my foot on the stone threshold as I
had that last time,
I was
disappointed. And that’s exactly how I felt, strangely. I felt
really let down and as I walked home I began to
doubt that what I
thought had
happened last time, about actually travelling through
time, was for real.

I didn’t want to
go home. I was feeling really fed up. It was
being on my own, I decided, that had given me all
these daft ideas
about talking to
Jane Austen in 1802. It was time to forget all that
nonsense and do something else. I’d been in Bath
for two days, but
I’d seen nothing
of it yet. I veered off back down Pulteney Street,
thinking that I would walk into town, do a bit of
sightseeing and
pick up some
shopping on the way back. But where should I go
first? I wandered towards the imposing Abbey,
immediately
recognizing the
scene from my favourite
Persuasion
film.

Just walking
through the revolving door under the Pump
Rooms sign was as good as stepping back in time and
it did look as
wonderful as I’d
hoped. A sea of tables dressed in crisp white linen
stretched the length of the room, each decorated
with arrangements
of white lilies
scenting the air, along with the evocative aromas of
Earl Grey tea, pungent morning coffee, the fragrant
smells of cake
and toasted Bath
buns. From the lofty ceiling, a dazzling chandelier
glittered above the throngs of tourists. Spangled
with strings of
crystals like
sprinkles on winter cobwebs, every pendalogue
dripped prisms of rainbow light to illuminate the
glossy hair of a
young girl, or
to wink in a clinking, silver teaspoon. Fringed,
terracotta hangings in the Regency style framed the
long windows
and, on the
opposite side, the brass dogs in the fireplace gleamed
against the dark marble of the chimney-piece making
the perfect
foil for the
rich green of a potted fern. There was something so very
English and genteel about the whole place, not
quite Jane Austen
perhaps, but
lovely, nevertheless. The room was buzzing with
chattering people whilst a trio on the stage
entertained everyone
with
music from a piano, viola and violin. Presiding over it all was
the statue of Beau Nash who along with the
portraits of stern
gentlemen looked
as if he might climb down from his stony
pedestal at any moment to remonstrate with the
table underneath
him, a noisy
family who were gathered to catch up with their
gossipy news. At the water fountain in the
bow-windowed alcove,
a man in
fancy livery was dispensing water into glasses. A little
queue was forming and there was a lot of laughter
and pulling of
faces as people
decided whether they liked or disliked the taste of
Bath’s spa water. I made my way to the counter,
pulling off my
gloves and hat
and leaving them to one side. The steaming water
frothed from an urn into the mouths of copper fish,
green with
verdigris, as
the Pumper filled the glasses placing each one before
reticent customers. He put one before me with an
enquiring look. I
couldn’t really
come to Bath and not try the waters. After all, I was
sure Anne and Captain Wentworth had managed, as had
Jane
herself, so I handed over my
money. I must admit, I wasn’t thrilled
by the smell and I did end up holding my breath so that I couldn’t
taste the warm, sulphurous liquid. But, I managed
to get to the
bottom of the
glass, which I felt was an achievement, though I
wasn’t sure I was going to do it again. I was just
about to leave
when I was
suddenly aware of someone standing too closely behind
me, right by my elbow, wedging themselves in
between the person
next in line and
myself. I think I probably looked a bit cross when
I turned round, but I was sure that they were
rudely barging in.