Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict Read online

  “Why don’t you tell me your name, then,” he says.

  “So it is a game now, is it? Very well, then. I am Miss Mansfield. And who are you, aside from the most impertinent young man I have ever met?”

  He smiles broadly, revealing unusually bright white teeth. “I should have known you were playing with me—just couldn’t resist making a fool out of Mr. Gullibility here, could you? Though you might have had a little mercy after what you put me through last night.”

  He even has a lovely cleft in his chin like Edgeworth. No, I pray he is nothing like Edgeworth. I sip the delightfully hot coffee; how bracing it is. The throb in my head is almost gone.

  “And what, may I ask, occurred last night, Mr. . . . ? Or do you intend to remain incognito?”

  His smile loses its confidence. Indeed, he looks quite as stern as a judge.

  “If you are going to be cross, then do be so good as to take your leave and send in a maid.”

  “You’re frightening me, Courtney. Tell me what you remember about last night.”

  “Dear me. You are becoming most tiresome.”

  “You went swimming, remember? Wait—” He runs out of the room and returns with a bit of what looks like soft blue fabric in his hands. He holds it up to me; it looks like short stays with a bottom attached. “Remember? You were wearing this bathing suit.”

  The laughter explodes out of me; it is impossible to be irked by such a character. “Indeed! As if any respectable woman would go around clothed in such a costume, if I may use such a word for this diminutive article.”

  He thrusts the bit of fabric at me again, and I wonder at its oddly silky texture.

  “Courtney, listen to me. You went swimming and hit your head on the bottom of the pool. They called an ambulance, and you asked the nurse at the hospital to call me.” His eyes are pleading with me. “Don’t you remember anything?”

  I sigh; I have had quite enough of this drama. “If you will not take your leave, sir, then I shall. Good day to you. I command all of this”—and I wave my hand to indicate the room and the young man “to end now.” I close my eyes tightly.

  I open them.

  The curly-haired man is still standing at the foot of the bed. “You do not exist,” I say with as much command as I can summon, but there is a hollow in my stomach now. “I awaken!”

  Yet in the strange bedchamber I remain. How can this be? Sometimes I awaken from my dreams, the pleasanter ones, that is, long before I wish to do so. But when the dream is disagreeable, I simply command myself to awaken, and I do. Instantly.

  How can I still be here? The only possible explanation is—

  “Courtney,” he says. “You are not asleep.”

  It is as if I am sinking into the floor, and I grip the bedclothes. This cannot be possible. I must have a quiet moment to think this through.

  Here is what I know to be true: I dream of what is most delightful; I almost always awaken before I wish. I dream of what is unpleasant, and I need only command myself awake to leave it all behind. Yet I have not awakened; here I stay. How can this be? There is only one possibility, but it cannot be—

  “Courtney?”

  “What is it you said?”

  “You are not asleep.”

  Three

  Indeed I am not. But how can I be awake yet not have my own name, my own body, my own voice?

  When I am able to form words my voice croaks. “Where am I?”

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to be fine,” he says.

  “What is this place?”

  His eyes widen. “Your apartment.”

  “And where, might I ask, is this apartment?”

  He sits down next to me on the bed and takes my hand. “L.A.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “Los Angeles. California. United States of America. Oh dear God, please be okay.”

  I snatch my hand away. “What? Has my mother had me drugged and transported to the Americas? Lord knows she told me a dozen times that a girl who committed the sin of filial disobedience as many times as I, deserved transportation to the Americas. But that was when I was a child, and even then my mother was teasing me with what could not be, for it was my history master who relieved my fears and . . . No! Impossible.”

  “Courtney, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The young man starts to pace back and forth and pulls a smooth squarish object from his pocket. “Should I call your mother? Maybe Anna or Paula? Tell me what to do, Courtney.”

  Laughter bubbles out of me, unbidden; I seem to have lost control of that particular faculty. “Blast your infernal names!” Dear me. Now my voice is croaking so that I sound like a frog. I cannot stop laughing. “I am Jane. Jane Mansfield.”

  “Of course you are.” He blanches. “Jane Mansfield, screen legend. Hang on; I’m calling Anna.”

  Finally, there is no more laughter. Only a cold hard lump in my stomach.

  The young man is now talking into the strange little object, which he holds to his ear. How absurd he looks. I cannot treat my situation with any degree of seriousness if I am to watch a grown man speak into an I-don’t-know-what and act as if he were actually conversing with another person in the room. Especially when there is no other person in the room. How droll he looks. Hand gestures, dramatic delivery. Perhaps he is an actor, not a servant.

  “. . . no, Anna. If I bring her back to the emergency room they might want to keep her there. . . . No, I won’t agree to that. . . .”

  Ah. The imaginary person in the room has a name.

  Well, then. Here are the facts. I am not asleep. I have a body and a voice that bear no resemblance to my own. And I am not the person the man named me to be. Courtney. I shiver, though the room is warm. I will not surrender to fear. I shall be mistress of myself. I still have my rational mind, though nothing about this situation is rational. I may not look like myself, but I know who I am.

  The man continues to pace and talk to an imaginary woman named Anna. Perhaps I am in—dear God, no—an asylum? No. Impossible. Too clean and tidy by half.

  “No, Anna . . .” His eyes flick over to me, then down. “Yeah, bring her. And no, I’m not leaving. If Paula can’t deal with me, that’s her problem. . . .”

  How did I get here? And where exactly is “here”?

  What is the last thing I remember about last night? Nothing. It is a blank. But in the morning . . . Riding Belle. Jumping her over a fallen tree, that leap in my stomach as we cleared it; good girl. Galloping into the woods, sending up clods of earth and clouds of dust. Into a clearing dotted with bright blue flowers, back into the woods, the sweep and crunch of branches, my bonnet lifted off my head by a low-hanging branch, turning round to look, then back again, Belle’s muscles bunching against my legs as she shied, the sensation of flying through air.

  And then blackness.

  “Courtney?”

  Four

  He’s staring at me. The curly-headed angel. Perhaps I died when I fell off Belle, and this is heaven.

  “Anna and Paula are on their way. Sure you don’t want to talk to your mother?”

  My stomach lurches. “She is here?”

  “Of course not. But I can get her for you.” He shows me the little object into which he was speaking, as if for emphasis.

  This most assuredly cannot be heaven, for no angel would ever offer to summon my mother. Although perhaps he means to put her inside that little object in his hand? That would be most convenient. I am giggling again; this is most unladylike. “I thank you, no. That will not be necessary.”

  He looks relieved and gives me a little smile. “Yeah, probably not a good idea.”

  “And the woman I asked you for? To help me?” I indicate the white dress I am still almost wearing, the dressing gown still over my shoulders.

  He regards me gravely and thrusts his hands in his pockets. “Anna and Paula will be here in a few minutes. In the meantime I’ll just—I need some water. Would you like your breakfast?
” He heads out towards the other room.

  The thought of food makes me shudder. “I thank you, no. And do be so kind as to close the door behind you.” The situation may be extraordinary, but it won’t do to have this strange man traipsing in and out of my—whomsoever’s bedchamber this is—whenever he pleases.

  I turn my attention back to the Pride and Prejudice play in the little window. Perhaps I am dead; that seems far more rational than the thought that I am indeed awake in another country, let alone that I am awake in another body. Is this how it is when you die?

  Of course my heaven would be a place where Pride and Prejudice is a play performed right in my own bedroom, a place where I see the figures perform my favorite story over and over and see them so close that I feel as if they are my friends and I can practically touch them. And then there is the curly-headed angel who is here to take care of me after my accident and is so gentle and sweet that I could not summon the least bit of alarm at his presence.

  To be sure, this is not Mr. Grant’s sort of heaven with its choirs of angels, nor is it the hell he preaches every Sunday till the village children quake in their pews. What would he know of heaven indeed? With all his prosing about virtue, the way he would look at me of a Sunday made me feel as if I needed a good scrubbing.

  “Courtney?”

  There are now two ladies, the aforementioned Paula and Anna, I presume, standing before the bed. Though which is which . . .

  One of them has long, light brown hair streaked with pink and blue in vibrant shades that I never imagined existed, let alone in the color of one’s hair. More shocking than even the color of my toenails. More shocking still is the immodest mode of their dress: Both are in tight bodices without sleeves, skirts which reach mid-thigh, and shoes which are mere strings of leather attached to heels, exposing almost the entire foot. Their toenails are also colored.

  The one with the pink-and-blue-striped hair speaks. “You okay, darling? And what’s with the dress?” Despite the vulgar familiarity, her manner is sweet, and the throatiness of her voice reminds me of Mary.

  I smile at her. “Are we acquainted?” She is really quite pretty, despite the varicolored tresses. She peers at me with her large, uptilted brown eyes. Her full lips, which shimmer with a sort of sandy color, look as if they would like to smile but are not quite sure about moving in that direction.

  “You’re kidding, right? Because Benedict Arnold here isn’t so sure you are.” She inclines her chin towards the curly-haired man, who has reentered the room. “And I hate to admit it, but he may have a point, unless . . .”

  She whispers something into the ear of the other woman, who has a cap of shiny brown hair that reaches her chin and which is cut straight just above her brows. The brown-haired woman gives the woman with the peacock hair a worried look and a shrug.

  The peacock turns her attention back to me. “Did you, and God help you if you did, decide to see a certain ex who shall remain unnamed, or more important, take something he gave you? Something that might inspire you to lie on your bed channeling Miss Havisham? Because if you took anything, let alone saw that philandering piece of dirt, Courtney, I swear . . .”

  The young man cuts in. “No way she saw him. No way.” His eyes search my face. “You didn’t, right?”

  They are all mad. “Who?”

  “Frank,” the three of them say almost in unison. The brown-haired one gives me an encouraging smile. “You didn’t honey, did you?”

  “Who’s Frank?”

  “You see, Paula?” curly-hair says to the peacock. “I told you she wouldn’t.”

  “That’s my girl,” says Paula to me.

  “All right then,” says the one with the brown hair, who must be Anna. “One: We know that this is a psychotropic-free situation. Two: We know you hit your head.”

  She tilts her chin towards the curly-haired gentleman. “Though if your friend Wes here”—and she sneers at the word “friend”—“had seen fit to let us know right away you had an accident instead of waiting till half an hour ago to call Paula and me, we would have been here for you last night. Though none of that explains why you’re wearing that, that . . .”

  Paula cuts in. “Go ahead. Say it. Wedding dress. Which, I might add, should be in your Dumpster by now or run over by your car or burned to ashes instead of hanging in your closet, let alone on your body.”

  Anna says, “She could give it to charity, you know. Then at least it’s not wasteful.”

  Paula rolls her eyes. “Give me a break, Anna.”

  Wedding dress? I look down at the frothy skirt, the pearl-encrusted bodice. “It is overly trimmed, to be sure, and I am most certainly not marrying, but that is a trifle compared to all—this. This voice. This body. This place. Why should my gown be of any consequence to you?”

  Paula sputters, hands on hips. “Excuse me. We’re only your best friends. And you’re acting like a lunatic.”

  “Just because I tried to cover myself with a garment of a respectable length does not mean I have lost my mind. My identity, yes. My body, yes. My voice, yes. But not my mind.”

  Paula turns to Wes. “I told you she should see a doctor. Didn’t I, Anna?”

  Anna regards me kindly. “Sweetie, maybe we should take you to see someone.”

  Paula turns her attention back to me. “You said you lost your identity. So who are you, exactly?”

  “My name is Miss Mansfield. Jane Mansfield. My father’s estate is in Somerset.”

  Paula turns to Anna. “This is worse than I thought. Come on,” she says, grabbing my hand and pulling me off the bed, “I’m taking you to a doctor. Anna, get her into some clothes.”

  Wes—I do like this name somehow—puts his hand up and scowls at the two ladies. “No shrinks, okay? They’ll just pump her full of drugs till she really doesn’t know who she is.”

  Paula flicks back a strand of bright pink hair. “Since when are you so concerned with her welfare? Where was all that concern when you knew Frank was sneaking around?”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Paula.”

  But she merely turns her back on Wes and pulls out a shiny little flat object, which she taps several times, then starts talking into it in the same odd manner that Wes did. “Suzanne,” she says, “it’s Paula. I’ve got a little emergency here.” And with that she leaves the room and I cannot make out anything else.

  Anna rummages through drawers and the hanging garments and presents me with a miniature dress and a pair of ridiculous, strappy shoelike things.

  “You must be joking,” I say. “I most certainly will not appear in public with my legs and arms completely exposed.”

  Anna sighs, rummages a little longer, and produces a pair of long, dove-gray trousers and a white, short-sleeved bodice with buttons down the front.

  I hold up the trousers in front of me. “What a novel idea—I’ve always wished to wear trousers and ride Belle astride. It always struck me as the most practical and comfortable way to ride.” And then the thought darts through me: Could Belle have been lamed in the fall? Would they have had to—dear God, please let that sweet creature be well.

  Anna’s lower lip trembles. “Courtney, you’re frightening me.”

  I feel a tear rolling down my cheek, and I brush it away with the back of my hand. I realize I have dropped the trousers on the floor. “Do calm yourself,” I say, retrieving them from the floor. “I am merely commenting on the advantages of masculine attire.”

  Anna looks at Wes, who shrugs. Paula strides back into the room, flinging a stray strand of pink-and-blue hair out of her face. “My cousin Suzanne, a respected psychopharmacologist, has agreed to squeeze us in.”

  Wes glares at her. “Fancy name for a high-priced drug pusher.”

  Paula ignores him. “We have to leave right now. It’s just over by Huntington Hospital.”

  I do not see how I am going to step into these lovely soft trousers if they keep arguing. “Do be kind enough to take your disagreements o
utside so I might dress.” I hold up the trousers for emphasis. “Besides, your shouting is making my head throb.”

  “Sorry,” says Wes, moving towards the door. He turns back to Paula. “All I’m saying is, there’s a lot of overprescribing going on. And not everyone who’s grief-stricken or heartbroken or—”

  “Or lying around wearing a wedding dress and saying she’s someone else? Even you must admit we’re out of our depth. And why are you still here anyway?”

  “She asked me to be here.” Wes regards me. “But if you want me to leave . . .”

  If you want me to leave. The heat rushes to my face as those words take me back to the library of Mansfield House, where I stood before the glass doors opening onto the garden. “If you want me to leave,” said Edgeworth, “I will of course do as you choose. But I beg you to tell me what I have done.”

  How dare he act the innocent? “Sir, I see no need to tell you what you already know. Now leave me in peace.”

  Face bleached of color, he closed his eyes and let his head fall down, as if all the life had gone out of him.

  “Courtney? What are you talking about?”

  It is Wes who is looking at me, not Edgeworth. His eyes are soft behind his spectacles.

  “You will leave my room at once. I am not in the habit of explaining myself, particularly to a man who is nothing to me.”

  He blinks, as if flinching from the force of my words, and for an instant I want to take them back.

  But he turns and walks slowly out of the room. “That’s my girl,” Paula says, jabbing a thumb in the air for emphasis, and sails out the door after Wes.

  While the quarrel continues unabated in the next room, Anna helps me out of the white dress, puts it away, and produces two tiny garments from a drawer.

  “I don’t get it,” says Anna. “You said weeks ago that you wanted nothing to do with Wes.”