‘Rain in My Heart,’ Frank Sinatra, 1968, Reprise
THE BEDROOM GLOWED with late afternoon light the colour of Lucozade.
When Jane walked in Willie was exactly where she'd left him two hours before, sitting up in bed wrapped in a tartan dressing gown, working on his typewriter which was propped on a wooden tray in front of him. The tray acted as a resonator, exaggerating the clack of the key-strikes. He interrupted his typing to cough consumptively into a fist.
He'd arrived home last week from his disastrous trip down south looking deathly pale and with a streaming cold. Jane's first, uncharitable, thought had been that in such a state he'd be forced to take time off his writing. But she'd been wrong. On his bedside table towered a stack of perfectly squared-off pages, each side a sheer vertical cliff. An unclimbable alp of words. It seemed to her that following the trip, he had recommenced his work with even greater intensity than before. He couldn't have contracted a fever? Not that she wanted him to be sick. Just a little fever. Something minor to slow him down.
She hovered in the doorway. They hadn't talked about the marriage proposal since his return. He hadn't mentioned it and she hadn't brought it up. She wondered if he'd changed his mind. He'd popped the question at the end of a long and emotional day, but perhaps in the aftermath he was regretting his impulsiveness. If she were being pedantic—and if this wasn't a perfect opportunity, nothing was—then he hadn't popped any question. On the phone he'd said ‘let's get married’—a passive form of words that hadn't demanded a response from her. Technically speaking, anyway. Some women would have evinced delight and rapture; she remembered her surprise—shock—and then the call was over. In a daze she'd turned round to find Tom had gone.
Willie's subsequent silence on the subject had provoked in her a mixture of relief and indignation. Proposing to someone wasn't like putting up a shelf, something you could just say you'll do and then forget about. Then a few days ago when folding away some laundry she'd stumbled upon a ring-box in his pants drawer. She'd debated for at least half a second whether or not to peek inside and when she flipped open the lid to discover a pair of cufflinks she felt only relief.
‘Can I get you anything?’ she asked. ‘A cup of tea? Piece of cake?’
He ignored her, continuing to hammer the keys until he had filled up the page, and then with a flourish he ripped it out and slapped it down on top of the stack. He turned to her with a broad smile.
‘The phone.’
‘The phone?’
He gestured to the handset on the table. He could have reached it himself, but she was closer. She passed it to him. With a wink, he dialled and turned on the speaker.
‘Global Creative Management, how may I direct your call?’
‘Priscilla Hess,’ said Willie.
There was a click, then a new voice said distractedly, ‘Yes?’
‘Priscilla,’ said Willie with a flashy smile at Jane, ‘it's your favourite client.’
‘Peter!’
‘No,’ he said, sounding wounded. ‘Willie.’ He linked his hands behind his head. ‘Listen, sweetheart, get out the big pen. Time to bill the bastards for my first draft.’ He swivelled his head towards the tower of pages. ‘I just finished the script.’
Jane gawped. Finished? How could he have finished? She couldn't write a word and he had finished. This was so unfair. On the other hand, it did mean she'd be free of his incessant typing, at least until he began the next draft.
There was one other topic they hadn't broached since his trip. When he'd departed for London she'd thrust a portion of her new novel into his hands. What did he think? Had he even read it? She'd dropped numerous hints but he'd singularly failed to pick up on any of them, and in one memorable instance—they'd been waiting for an order at the local Chinese takeaway—he had mistakenly believed she was trying to initiate sex. Either he was oblivious, she reasoned, or he was making a Herculean effort to avoid having to tell her what he really thought.
Her gaze fell on his completed screenplay. Reluctance to read worked both ways. She wasn't sure if she dared read Happy Ending the movie, certainly not after he had hinted at the destructive changes he'd made in adapting her novel. The script sat there like some arcane tome bound in flayed human skin, waiting to unleash an evil spirit upon anyone who opened its pages. Not that she was overreacting or anything.
Willie finished the call with Priscilla and hung up. ‘We should celebrate,’ he said.
‘We should,’ she agreed blandly. What were they celebrating exactly? His massacring her novel?
He coughed again and then wrinkled his nose. ‘Now how about that cup of tea?’
Darsie was waiting for her in the kitchen, sitting on the countertop wearing a white Empire line dress and a what-the-fuck expression; a character combination that in the course of writing six novels and assorted juvenilia Jane Austen had somehow contrived to omit.
‘He's sick,’ said Jane.
‘Oh, come on, he's just taking the piss now.’
‘He said he loves me. Wants to marry me. You heard him.’
‘Actually I didn't. Maybe it was in your vivid imagination.’
‘And I kind of love him too.’ On paper, anyway. ‘I think he makes me happ—’
Willie's cry cut across her declaration. ‘Any chance of that cup of tea, doll?’ His voice dissolved into a wracking cough.
Jane studiously avoided Darsie's look of I-told-you-so, filling the kettle and setting it to boil.
She motioned to Darsie's dress. ‘Interesting. Like Eliza Bennet with a licence to kill. What's with the gear then?’
‘I'm wearing it in honour of your impending nuptials.’
Jane held up her hands, palms out. ‘Hey—there'll be no talk of nuptials. Nobody's talking about a wedding. We're not even engaged.’
‘I fear I misunderstand your meaning,’ said Darsie. ‘Is not marriage the desired end? Does not every Austen novel reach its satisfactory conclusion only with the advent of a proposal?’
‘Well, yes. True. Marriage is conventionally, as you say, the end. But not now. Eventually. Maybe.’
‘I favour spring for the wedding. With the apple blossom in full flower and the dusky scent of bluebells—aw bollocks, forget it. I can't keep this accent up. Jane, you're mental. You're not marrying that eejit. You know it and I know it. And let's face it, I am you, so you know it twice over.’
Jane pondered her character's words.
Darsie jumped down off the counter. ‘I see what you're doing. Stop it. Stop it right now. Don't start with your internal narrative. I want to hear whatever you're thinking. Out loud. Admit it, you don't love Willie. You can't. Oh, Jane! Do anything rather than marry without affection.’
‘I … I …’
The kettle began to shake and steam plumed from the spout as the bubbling water inside reached boiling point.
Darsie wagged a finger. ‘Don't you dare sublimate your anxiety into a metaphor. Especially not one as crap as a boiling kettle.’
The cut-out kicked in with a click.