SILENCE reigned as my father and I stared at Oliver in disbelief.
Olive Trewell! Oxford professor, Austen expert, feminist, activist, author of the best-selling Kings Must Die fantasy novels and… Oliver’s mother! I could hardly get my head around it.
He didn’t tell me. I could hardly get my head around that either. I mean, we’d included Oliver in our quest to free Jane Austen’s ghost, so it was pretty weird that he hadn’t mentioned his mother was a world-famous Austen scholar. Here I was, enduring torture just so I could ask my father one simple question and all this time Oliver could just as easily have asked his mum. Much more easily, probably. I only needed four of Jane Austen’s possessions; Olive Trewell probably had that many at home. I’d come all the way to Meryton House and endured this hellish lunch for nothing. If only Oliver had told me. The words hammered in my head and for a split second I wished we were alone so I could tear a few metaphorical strips off him.
‘Your mother?’ My father’s voice brought me back to the present.
He stared awestruck at Oliver, then he lowered his voice to a reverent whisper. ‘Olive Trewell, Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford, is your mother?’ For a second I thought Father might actually bow.
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re her son.’
‘So she tells me,’ said Oliver, grinning.
‘Ah.’ For the first time in my life, I witnessed my father at a loss for words. Hardly believing what I was seeing, I watched him deflate: all his pomposity, superiority, and hideous condescension vanished as respect dawned in his eyes. The look on his face was almost worth all the hurt and humiliation he’d inflicted on me that day. On so many days. As I watched, the anger that Oliver’s revelation had ignited in me died away and suddenly I wanted to laugh. No one had ever met my father on home soil and out-manoeuvred him before. But Oliver had beaten him – even better, he had humbled him. An unfamiliar wave of satisfaction washed over me and I let myself wallow in the incredible feeling of having seen my father bested.
I could have kissed Oliver for doing it.
I wished someday I might do it, too.
TWENTY minutes later the golden glow of satisfaction had faded as my father talked on – and on – about Olive Trewell and Jane Austen and the Austen letters that Professor Trewell had made her particular subject. My mother had departed early, murmuring something about needing to weed the garden. Even Miss Austen’s ghost became bored with my father’s descriptions of her domestic life, visits to her family, how often she’d danced or played the piano, what she’d thought of Bath, and anything else she’d once mentioned in a letter.
‘Yes, yes,’ exclaimed Miss Austen, as my father began enumerating her preferred walks around Chawton. ‘But what has any of this to say to anything? It is prosy and nothing to the purpose. I do not wish to speak ill of your father, Cassandra, but I fear he is become a bore. Can not you divert his mind so that we may hear of some other subject besides that of my personal correspondence? Little did I suspect when I wrote those letters that one day I would be wearied by my own words. May not we return to Queen’s Solar?’
But I’d come all this way to ask my father a question and, Olive Trewell notwithstanding, I was going to ask it. It was another ten minutes before he stopped long enough for me to say hurriedly, ‘Do you happen to own anything that once belonged to Jane Austen, Father?’
He choked and coughed so violently that Oliver leapt up and banged him on the back. ‘Goodness, sir, are you all right?’
He waved a dismissive hand. ‘I‘m all right but my daughter asks the stupidest questions.’ He glared at me. ‘Own something of Jane Austen’s? Are you mad?’
My cheeks flamed and I cast a helpless look at her ghost.
Miss Austen pursed her lips. ‘I find your father extremely uncivil, Cassandra. Pray, may we not depart this instant?’
I longed to leave. I always longed to leave. Instead, I pressed on. ‘I just thought, Father… because you’re such an admirer and you never allow me into your study, I thought… maybe you might have… something of hers in there...’ My voice faded under his incredulous stare.
He laughed bitterly. ‘You actually thought I might have been able to lay my hands on enough money to purchase one of her letters? With all the bills I have to pay? Did you really think my teacher’s salary would magically provide for you and your mother and this house and buy something of Jane Austen’s?’
I forced myself to remember why I was putting myself though this misery and asked meekly, ‘Then I don’t suppose you know someone who owns something of hers?’
‘I do not!’ he retorted. Outrage at my question stained his cheeks an angry red. ‘Most of Jane Austen’s possessions are in the collection at Chawton Museum.’
‘And her letters are mostly held by university libraries,’ added Oliver quietly.
His voice seemed to have a calming effect on my father.
He nodded, and with a return to his grand manner, said. ‘It is a very great pity that not more of her letters survived, but sadly her sister Cassandra burned most of them and censored the rest.’
‘Did she do so, indeed?’ Miss Austen nodded approvingly. ‘I cannot say I am surprised, for Cassandra was always prudent, and if she thought it wisest to dispose of my letters in such a way then you may depend upon her being right.’
‘Of the one hundred and sixty Austen letters extant,’ Father puffed out his chest, proud of his knowledge, ‘those that are not in the hands of wealthy private collectors are held by the world’s great universities.’ He nodded at Oliver. ‘As your Oxford friend has just told you.’
Yeah, like he told me his mother was a renowned Austen scholar! I bit my lip on the retort, turned to Oliver and said darkly, ‘So maybe your mother,’ I emphasized the word with bitter relish, ‘has some of Jane Austen’s letters, Oliver? Or maybe something else she once owned?’
He looked a bit embarrassed, as well he should, but said calmly, ‘Mum’s greatest ambition is to own something of Austen’s, but to her great chagrin she’s never yet achieved her goal.’
Hmm. I wonder how much you’ve told your mother about our quest? And about Clarke’s letters? And his poem? My heart thumped suddenly. And about Jane Austen’s ghost? I couldn’t bear to think that Oliver might have broken his promise, but it seemed pretty likely that if he hadn’t yet, he soon would.
‘How well I understand that desire,’ nodded my father. ‘To see those remnants of the great Miss Austen’s life is always a pleasure, but to actually own something she had once touched or held or worn – that would be beyond imagining.’ He looked dreamily into the distance, then sighed. ‘It is a tragedy that so few of her original manuscripts remain. Of course, I have seen the unfinished draft of Sanditon at Chawton, and the remnant of Persuasion in the British Library Museum many times, but I have never been privileged enough to see her juvenilia in its original form.’ He looked wistfully at Oliver. ‘Oxford’s Bodleian Library holds Volume the First, doesn’t it? I have always wanted to see it, but without a reader’s ticket...’
‘Perhaps I could arrange it for you, sir,’ suggested Oliver. ‘A true Janeite like yourself should be able to see the original.’
My father’s face lit up. ‘Could you do that?’ he asked eagerly.
‘I can certainly ask my mother about access.’
Great, so he can ask Olive Trewell to help my father, but he failed to even tell me that he knew her, and he knows how desperate I am about Aunty B. A wave of frustration and ever-mounting suspicion swept over me. ‘Must be useful having an acknowledged Austen expert at home,’ I said snarkily. ‘Someone who could answer any question about Jane Austen. Especially a really, really important one—’
‘Actually,’ began Oliver, ‘my Mum’s not that eas––’
‘You are ignorant, Cassandra.’ My father’s words cut across Oliver’s. ‘No one can answer every question about Austen. There are too many gaps in our knowledge. With whom, for instance, did Jane Austen fall in love at Sidmouth in 1801? And why did she change her mind about Harris Bigg––’
Fearing another long monologue, I leapt up. ‘Goodness, is that the time? We must go. I promised Aunt Butters I’d have Dexter back by five.’
My father scowled. ‘I wish you would not drive that ancient rattletrap, Cassandra. I have told Amelia I do not like you to do so, but it is so like her to ignore my advice. She insists on playing the eccentric––’
I grabbed Oliver’s hand. ‘Don’t you have to get back to Winchester, Oliver? Didn’t you say you had an evening shift at Happy Acres?’ I barely allowed him time to say a polite goodbye before we were out the door. With, had he but known it, Miss Austen beside us.
She was not happy. ‘I find your father impertinent, Cassandra. Pray, what business is it of his for whom I may have had an affection in my youth?’
Unable to answer her with Oliver by my side, I was relieved to see my mother coming in from the garden with a basket of flowers.
‘We’re going, Mum.’
‘It’s been lovely to see you, Cassie.’ She hugged me and whispered, ‘I know your father can seem unkind, but he doesn’t mean it. He only wants what’s best for you.’
I hugged her back, burying my head in her neck for a moment and drinking in the familiar mother-scent, while her words buzzed in my head like a swarm of angry bees. Why did people say stuff like that when it was so patently untrue? It was as if the idea of family, of parents loving their children and children loving them back, was some sort of sacred, unassailable thing that, on the surface at least, must be preserved at all costs, despite all evidence to the contrary. A wellspring of unhappiness bubbled up inside of me and I pulled back. ‘Thanks for lunch, Mum.’
‘Goodbye, dear. Don’t be a stranger.’ She turned to Oliver, ‘Goodbye, Oliver, I hope we’ll see you again.’
I winced at the doubt in her voice.
‘Bye, Mum.’ I kissed her. The front door closed and I walked away from Meryton House with a familiar sigh of relief.