from the ducking, I hope.'
'Completely,' she said. 'I can't dismiss it just like that. Not without thanking you for saving his life – and words seem totally inadequate.'
'All right,' I said, smiling. 'In a moment you can buy me a drink and we'll both feel easier.'
'And the cleaning bill for your clothes?'
'They were due for cleaning anyway.'
'I should think the suit must have been ruined.'
I shook my head. 'You don't know my dry-cleaner. He's a genius, an artist. He should be restoring Leonardo's frescoes. Instead he has my trousers to clean.'
She was one of those women whose beauty is in their smile. 'And now I've taken you away from your party.'
'My wife's party,' I told her. 'Isn't it truer to say that I've taken you away from it? Gerry invited you, didn't she?'
'Oh, I didn't intend to stay.' She blushed. 'Sorry – that sounds rude. I'm rather tired. It's been a heavy week.'
'What's your job?'
'I'm a company driver, for a brewery.'
'You sound like someone worth getting to know.'
Another quick, self-conscious smile. 'I don't get samples. And the car belongs to the firm.'
'Is it hard work?'I asked.
'I have to earn a living.'
'Are you, er…?'
'Divorced.' She said it evenly, without emotion. 'Mat's father went back to Norway. We married too young.'
'Is it difficult to raise a son? I don't have children.'
She looked down at her drink, considering the answer. I particularly noticed that – the fact that she didn't trot out some superficial statement. 'It's a matter of being alert to the way he develops. Mat's twelve now, coming up to Common Entrance. He's coming to terms with manhood. He's neither small boy nor man. I keep reminding myself not to be too surprised by his behaviour. My worry is that he'll lose his respect for me. How am I going to be a support to him if he disregards me? I see signs of it and I'm torn between checking him and clutching him to my bosom.'
'Difficult. Does he have any contact with his father?'
'No. We don't hear from Sverre. Mat is fiercely proud of his dad's reputation – he's a chess international – and he has a collection of press-cuttings and some photos I gave him, but it's like worshipping a wooden idol. There's no response.' She drew back from the table and flicked her dark hair behind her shoulders. 'How did I start on this? Are you ready for that second drink?'
I watched her carry the glasses to the bar, exchanging some banter with a couple of men she recognized at another table. She was small, yet she conducted herself with confidence. Work must have toughened her. I felt privileged that she had been willing to tell me about her conflict in being both mother and father to Matthew. When she returned with the drinks, though, she made clear her wish to turn to other matters.
'Did I catch it right on television the other night – are you putting on an exhibition about Jane Austen?'
'Under protest, yes. I drew the short straw. In my spare moments I drive around southern England looking for exhibits. There's a worrying shortage. If you hear of a firescreen she embroidered or a bonnet she wore going cheap, I'm the man to contact.'
'Anything to do with her?'
'Absolutely. Strictly speaking, it's the Jane Austen in Bath Exhibition, but I won't turn any offer down – lace handkerchiefs, teapots, old shoes, tennis rackets.'
'Tennis – in Jane Austen's time?'
'Joke – I've got to fill the Assembly Rooms with something.'
'She lived in Gay Street, didn't she?'
'She did, indeed. Forgive me being tactless, but how did you know that?'
'It's part of a project Matthew is doing at school.'
'Obviously I should enlist Matthew's help. Yes, apart from Gay Street there were three other houses in the city where the Austen family resided: in Sydney Place, Green Park Buildings and Trim Street. She also stayed at Queen Square before the family moved here, and at 1, The Paragon, where her scandalous old aunt lived.'
'Jane Austen had a scandalous aunt?'
Now that I had vilified Aunt Jane and made Mrs Didrikson curious, I felt duty-bound to tell the story. 'It's been rather glossed over in the biographies. The aunt may have had The Paragon for her address, but she wasn't such a paragon herself. She was put on trial for shoplifting, which was a capital offence. She was supposed to have stolen some lace from a milliner's. Do you know the dress shop on the corner of Bath Street and Stall Street, just opposite the entrance to the Baths?'
'You mean Principles.'
I smiled at the name. 'There's irony. Yes, that would be on the site of the shop. Well, one August afternoon in 1799, Aunt Jane bought a card of black lace there and walked out with a card of white that she hadn't paid for. Shortly afterwards, the manageress stopped her in the street and challenged her. Aunt Jane claimed that they must have made a mistake in the shop, but they pressed charges and she spent seven months in custody waiting for her case to come up.'
'That must have been an ordeal in those days.'
'It could have been worse. Because she moved in elevated circles, she was allowed to lodge in the warden's house instead of a prison cell and her husband moved in with her. Jane Austen almost went too. Her mother offered the services of Jane and her sister Cassandra as additional company, but the accommodation wouldn't stretch to it.'
'Good material for a writer.'
'Whether Jane would have thought so is another question. The warden's wife had a habit of licking her knife clean after cooking fried onions and then using it to butter the bread.'
Mrs Didrikson grimaced. 'But I suppose it was preferable to bread and water. What happened at the trial?'
'Aunt Jane was acquitted eventually, and it used to be accepted that the poor old biddy was the victim of a trumped-up charge and perjured evidence, but modern writers who have analysed the quality of the evidence are more sceptical. She seems to have got off mainly on the strength of her reputation as an upright citizen. Witnesses galore were called to defend her character – members of parliament, a peer of the realm, clergymen and shopkeepers. All this was stressed by the judge in his address to the jury, coupled with the suggestion that a rich, respectable woman had no need to go shoplifting.'
'Which is not necessarily the case,' she remarked. 'Rich women do steal. There can be motives other than personal hardship.'
I nodded. 'Lucky for Aunt Jane that post-Freudian psychology hadn't been heard of in 1800.'
'Still, it is fascinating. I hope you can use the story in your exhibition.'
'I dare say I will. You see, it's not so peripheral as it first appears if you think what might have happened if the jury had convicted Aunt Jane.'
'Hanging?'
'Realistically, transportation. She would have ended up in Botany Bay. And then the Austen family almost certainly wouldn't have come to live in Bath the year after the acquittal. They lodged with her while they looked for a house of their own. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion might never have been written.'
'Ah, but who knows what else might have come from Jane's pen? Was she a blood relative?'
'No, Aunt Jane was a Cholmeley. She married Uncle James and became Mrs Leigh Perrot.'
'Mrs what?'
Two words: Leigh and Perrot. She lived to a great age -over ninety.'
'Innocence rewarded?'
I shook my head.' 'The good die early, and the bad die late.''
