My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

My Willis would never hurt me like this.

'Can I get you anything?' Randolph said, back from the cafeteria, a plastic cup of vanilla pudding in his hand. His manner toward me felt inappropriately familiar, especially considering his reserved British gene pool. While he spoke, his eyes followed a nurse's backside to the counter, breaking contact when she turned to reveal a bad complexion.

'Oh,' I said, 'no, thank you.' I closed the book.

'Say, Vera's told me about you,' he said. 'You're working on the business plan?' His expression was perfectly serious, as though he spoke with a legitimate business consultant.

'Yes,' I said. 'We understand the need to rethink the festival to meet financial demands more effectively.' Not knowing what the financial demands might be, I was winging it to a major extent. But Randolph nodded, the pudding hanging at his side. My Jane Austen began coughing so furiously that, if she weren't already dead, she would have required medical assistance. Pulling what felt like the draft of ideas out of my JASNA bag, I found some entirely unfamiliar papers; Bets's stuff. 'I don't wish to add to your burdens,' I said, holding the unfamiliar papers as if they were the beginnings of a plan to save Newton Priors and Literature Live. 'However, with our agreement expired and future operation depending upon the use of your house, we're developing a plan that promotes everyone's best interests.' My Jane Austen had turned purple.

'Well.' Randolph touched his breast pocket as he straightened. His eyebrows arched seriously at the paper I held up. 'That's not your business plan, is it?'

I looked at the paper, scrunched from having been in my bag, a photograph of some scruffy people posed gloomily around a bare-chested man. They wore lots of black stuff around their eyes like vampires. Superimposed over the picture were the words: 'I'll Find You.' I pushed the photo back into my bag. 'My roommate, Bets, used this bag,' I said. 'She forgot to take her papers.'

'Bets. She's my cousin, you know.' Randolph folded his arms, manicured fingernails peeked around his biceps; the natural ridges of his nails smoothed. 'Say, how about if I call you after things have settled a bit. And perhaps we could meet and take a look at your plan together.'

'Yes,' I said. 'I know this is a difficult time.'

Randolph looked into his grandmother's room. 'Yes, difficult,' he said.

'Rand?' Philippa called from the bedside.

'I'd better deliver this.' He held up the pudding. 'I've enjoyed meeting you.' He extended his hand and I made certain not to withdraw prematurely. 'I'll be in touch,' he said.

*   *   *

Walking to the car, the truth hit and my world shifted: Willis misled me.

'I'm afraid this mission failed,' Vera said, gazing straight ahead in search of the car. 'There is no doubt in my mind we are in trouble.'

'Yes,' I said, tired. 'But Randolph said he'd call. You think he'll forget?'

'I don't know, Lily.' Vera sounded tired, too.

'Well, what's the worst thing that could happen?' I asked. 'We have to get a new house?' We stopped walking.

Vera looked at me hard while her hand searched her bag for keys, and I remembered what Magda had said about Vera not thinking clearly. 'Getting a new house, as you so casually put it, is not easy. And Nigel is not well.' Vera paused to consider her words, unlocking the car door. 'When you get older, Lily, your ambition declines,' she said. 'If we lose this house, Nigel will be finished.'

'But there is hope.' I opened my door, feeling no hope.

'Right,' Vera said dryly, rolling her eyes. 'You will marry Randolph and Literature Live will have use of the house forever.'

Seventeen

I think we should do a skit about the Fanny Wars,' I told Sixby. We sat at the top of the second floor staircase. Tourists had been climbing the stairs since we opened that morning, hoping to view a nude portrait of Jane Austen allegedly hanging in the second floor hallway. No nude portrait existed and Vera sent me upstairs to fend off the curious and distribute fliers explaining the bogus Internet posting. Tourists expressed such disappointment that I nearly redirected them to Magda's room as a consolation prize. Magda and Archie fooled no one, arriving and departing separately.

'Did you hear the comments at the Fanny Wars discussion the other night?' I asked Sixby. 'Some readers might enjoy voting Fanny out of the book.' An old man wearing a beret huffed up the stairs; most of the nude portrait pilgrims were men. 'So sorry,' I said, handing him a flier as he looked past me into the hallway and I looked past him down the stairs. The real reason I agreed to perch on the landing had more to do with the possibility of encountering Willis arriving or departing. Although I had mentally rehearsed our encounter, I had no idea what I would say if he appeared, and I felt sick with waiting.

'A Fanny Wars skit sounds deadly dull,' Sixby said from the floor, slumped against the wall, arms on his raised knees, stifling another yawn.

'Why are you so tired?' I asked.

'Because,' Sixby said, 'I fell victim to the Regency skirt of a young fan who enticed me from the pub to her hotel room last evening.'

'So you're in love.'

'Not exactly; she wouldn't keep her dress on.'

'Well, wake up. We've got to focus or we won't be ready.'

'That's why they call it improv, Lil.'

I offered fliers to a group of women. 'So sorry,' I said. 'An Internet hoax.' And then to Sixby, 'What angle can we take to amuse our audience?'

'Let's amuse me for a change. How about a hot love scene; Edmund finds his groove.'

'By the way, there's no kissing in this skit, Sixby. None.'

Just then a woman with three little children struggled up the stairs, the children looking very much like Sheila's, but it wasn't Sheila; it was Bets, a baby in each arm, big brother following slowly. 'Bets, are you babysitting?' I asked. Sixby sat up wide-eyed.

'Not for long,' Bets growled.

'Where's their mother?'

'In her room crying.' Bets plopped the babies on the floor next to Sixby, who jumped up.

'Why do you have them?' I asked.

'Because Sheila dumped them on Archie who dumped them on Magda who dumped them on Gary. And Gary is totally clueless about kids.'

I looked at Bets and the babies.

'I was planning to dump them on you. I'm meeting Bella for lunch.'

Sixby waved. 'I'll see you later, Lily. Pleasure, Bets.'

'No way,' I said, the horror of my last experience with the little brutes still fresh in my mind. 'I've got work to do. Where's Magda?'

'The visa office with Gary.'

'Again?' I handed a flier to a portrait pilgrim without providing an explanation. 'Hard work renewing a student visa if you're not in school.' I stared into her eyes. 'You're not going to marry him, are you?' One of the twins screamed, prompting the other two to do likewise, making it hard to hear.

'No,' Bets said, turning to go.

Suddenly events blurred: Bets walking away, the children following her, the tourist who got past me searching for the nude portrait. I felt the first flicker of relief as my life burst into color and the earth resumed its revolutions without me having to pedal. I understood the ease addicts feel when the drug finally enters their bloodstream. Willis was coming up the stairs. He stopped at the top; no books in his arms, no question about the