The Austen Girls by Lucy Worsley

Author:Lucy Worsley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 21

Fanny’s bedroom, Godmersham Park

Dinner was such agony.

Each time Mr Terry spoke, everyone else, Mr and Mrs Austen, Fanny and Anna, even the children, fell suddenly silent, as if to pay him the courteous attention his words must surely deserve.

Yet when he opened his mouth, what came out was so stilted and dreary it was as if he was deliberately trying to make a bad impression.

‘It’s a shame the weather has broken!’ Fanny’s father began jovially.

‘Indeed,’ said Mr Terry.

Everyone waited for him to go on, but it seemed that even commenting on the weather was beyond him.

‘The young ladies will be sorry to be denied the use of the park,’ Mr Austen persevered.

‘I’m sure the young ladies will make good use of the time to read their Bibles instead,’ Mr Terry offered up, after one of his nervous giggles.

‘Oh, but my girls love to romp outside!’ said Mrs Austen. ‘Are you fond of walking yourself, Mr Terry?’

‘Not particularly,’ he said.

‘How do you get around your parish?’

Mr Terry looked daggers at Marianne, who had spoken.

‘I have, as yet, no parish, Miss … erm, Miss Marianne,’ he said. ‘I am still a curate.’

‘But how old are you?’ Marianne cried. ‘You look much too old to be a curate! They’re generally young men.’

‘Marianne!’

The chorus from the other Austens was deafening. Amid it all Mr Terry sat sweating, and twitching his eye, and making a strange little jerky movement of his head.

Fanny noticed that he even ate clumsily, spilling his soup down his dingy black coat, then frantically dabbing the stain with a napkin.

Poor man, she said to herself severely. He obviously only has one suit. But that’s not a crime! Anna’s always saying that here at Godmersham we attach too much importance to material things.

There was a squeak as her brother George succeeded in kicking Marianne into silence under the table.

‘Do you ride to hounds, Mr Terry?’ George asked, picking up the conversational ball. George’s main interest in life was horses, with dogs coming a close second.

‘Certainly not!’ said Mr Terry, shocked. ‘I disapprove most sincerely of a hunting parson.’

Fanny caught George’s reproachful glance at Anna for having chosen such a useless husband.

‘Oh, but really, Mr Terry,’ her father was saying. ‘It’s God’s duty for every human being to enjoy himself, you know. Or herself. I hold that as a divine command.’

‘Enjoyment,’ replied Anna’s fiancé, looking down at his plate, ‘takes no high place on my list of endeavours in life.’

Fanny could not help but catch Anna’s eye. Her cousin shrugged, and looked quickly away. She must have seen what Fanny’s eyes could not hide: her consternation.

Hours and hours later, it seemed, Fanny and Anna were in Fanny’s room, getting ready for bed. Fanny thought that there’d never been such a long evening at Godmersham Park. When Anna came to stay, the long late-summer twilights usually flew past, in charades or singing if not in laughing and gossiping.

‘Everyone was too much on their best behaviour,’ Anna was explaining as she twisted her hair into a rope.

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