JANE Austen watched Pride and Prejudice with all the intensity of a mother watching her child take its first steps.
I was dying to know what she thought of it, but she didn’t seem to want to talk. The only hint of her feelings was the occasional disturbance in her ghostly essence: a soft pink that coloured her milky-white translucence when Mr Darcy appeared naked in the bath and a series of scarlet ripples whenever Elizabeth confronted Darcy or Caroline Bingley. Other than that, she gave no sign.
It wasn’t until I pressed the pause button that I got a reaction.
‘For heaven’s sake, Cassandra!’ cried Jane. ‘What are you about? Can you not see that Mr Darcy is about to call upon Elizabeth while everyone is at Rosings Park? Pray, make it continue this instant.’
‘Sorry, Jane, but I need a bathroom break.’
‘But I wish to see what will happen.’
‘You know what happens.’
She waved an impatient hand. ‘You go along. I shall not mind watching alone.’
‘But you will mind if you’re suddenly pulled through two walls. We’re bound, remember, and I’m pretty sure the bathroom is further away than I can safely go.’
‘Oh, very well,’ she said impatiently. ‘But mind you do not linger.’
‘I’ll be sure to pee quickly,’ I muttered, ignoring her disapproving sniff at my indelicacy.
She easily beat me back to my – our – room. By the time I reached it she was already on the bed with a ball of purple ectoplasm spinning over the play button on the remote. ‘Here you are at last. Hurry and make yourself comfy, Cassandra, so that we may continue.’
‘Actually, Jane, I’m awfully tired. I was thinking we could watch the rest tomorrow—’
‘Tomorrow?’ she exclaimed. ‘No, indeed, for I long to hear what Mr Darcy will say to Elizabeth while Mr Collins and the others are from home.’
I gazed at her eager face and thought of the marriage proposal to come, of Elizabeth Bennet’s rejection of it, of Darcy’s mortification, his smouldering looks and suppressed emotion, of his famous dive into the lake, his return to Pemberley in a state of truly sexy undress, of his shock at walking smack into the last person he ever expected to see and – I gave in. After all, who wouldn’t want to see Jane Austen’s reaction to one of the hottest scenes in television history?
She loved it.
She didn’t say so in words, but I could see it in her face as Darcy strode down the hill, and in the way she leaned forward when he and Elizabeth Bennet came unexpectedly face to face outside Pemberley. By the time he met Elizabeth again at the inn at Lambton, Jane was perched on the end of the bed, and when Darcy and Bingley returned to Longbourn to propose to Elizabeth and her sister, she was only a few feet from the screen. When we reached the final scene, Jane was floating before the television with her face just inches away from Darcy as he leaned in to kiss his ‘dearest, loveliest Elizabeth’. As the credits rolled Jane pulled back in wide-eyed wonder.
I decided it was even more fun watching Jane Austen watch Pride and Prejudice than watching Pride and Prejudice itself. ‘Is he like your Mr Darcy?’ I couldn’t help asking. ‘I mean, is he anything like the Darcy you imagined when you wrote the book?’
A dimple peeped beside Jane’s mouth. ‘Perhaps.’
‘But what did you think?’ I demanded. ‘Was it close enough to your novel? Did you like seeing it acted that way? What did you think of Elizabeth and Wickham? And what about Mrs Bennet? Did you think she was too shrill?’
She laughed. ‘So many questions, Cassandra! At this moment I do not exactly know what I think, for it is all so new to me. I own it was strange to hear my words spoken thus, and curious to watch living people portray my characters as though they were a portrait brought to life. It is a peculiar sensation seeing the images of one’s own imagination made so real.’
‘Yes, but did you like it?’
‘Why, I… I hardly know what I feel. Only…’ Jane suddenly soared upwards, did a backflip and drifted slowly back down to the bed. ‘Only… may I watch it again?’