Nell checked the figures in the kitchen while I prepared the potatoes. I had put a clean cloth over one end of the table for her papers and left the other end to work on. It was an arrangement we had managed for years without recognising that both halves contained work.
She found two mistakes, one of mine and one in a sum copied from Mr Vale’s letter. Neither made the year impossible. The smaller rent rise we were going to propose would leave little room for a bad season, but there would be more room if I did not promise suppers which required a woman to remain at the stove every evening.
“You must do what it says,” Nell said, putting down the pencil. “Not this on paper, and something larger once they’ve agreed.”
“I will.”
She looked at me. “I hope so.”
I paid her the shilling we had agreed. She put it in her purse, gave me the corrected page and asked if I would like her to look at the books one evening a month once she was married. Paid, with a date, not whenever I discovered an uncertainty. She would decide after the first month whether it fitted her other work.
“I should like that,” I said.
She nodded, put the date in her own book and gathered the papers.
The fifth talk went well with Ellen Marsh serving. I heard the whole of it. There was a moment when she came to the doorway carrying a jug and I almost rose out of habit; then she set it down where we had agreed and left me to the book. I remained in my chair. After the final question Joan Hesketh asked whether anyone wished to bring a passage to the last evening, something to read rather than a subject to be lectured on. Three hands went up at once. Ruth, who had come with an extra single ticket, was one of them.
I had thought of the series as six things to get through honestly. By the time the women left I wanted there to be a seventh, and had to sit with the difference between wanting it and advertising it.
Before the last talk I bought Mrs Wetherby’s book.
It was a second-hand copy of Persuasion, sound except for a little mark where someone had put down a wet glass. I liked that it had already been used without being destroyed. The price on the flyleaf was half a crown. I paid it, took it home and wrote Miriam Wetherby’s name inside, with the date and the words Gift to the room. There was space below for someone else to add a name when the book went away.
Mrs Wetherby inspected the inscription on the final night.
“It makes me look deceased.”
“You asked to be remembered.”
“When someone disagreed with a sentence. Not as a caution about mortality.”
I offered to change it. She laughed, took the pen and put a small line beneath her own name. Still in possession of opinions, she wrote.
I left it. When Edith arrived she read the addition and said it was accurate but not comprehensive.
Bessie came at a quarter past seven, wearing a hat with the bright ribbon I had seen on her china dog. She had made it into something much handsomer than I could have done and pinned the brim so it did not hide her eyes. Ellen opened the door. I watched from the sitting room as Bessie gave her ticket, chose where to hang her coat and came in without asking if anything needed doing.
“Elizabeth,” I said.
She looked up, smiled and took the chair next to Ruth. There was a little book in her hand. She opened it at a strip of paper and began whispering to Ruth before the talk, both of them looking down at the same passage.
Joan Hesketh put her books on the table. I gave the introduction without the paper. Not every word was the one I had rehearsed. The listeners appeared able to withstand the change.
This time Mrs Hesketh spoke less. She read a short passage, then invited others to bring theirs. Miss Holt had chosen something which made her laugh before she got to the end. Edith read quietly, with her book held so close that she occasionally had to lower it to discover who was answering. Ruth had marked a page near the end of hers and kept looking ahead to be certain the strip of paper hadn’t moved.
Bessie had chosen the carriage ride in Persuasion. Her own copy had a blue cover with the colour worn almost white along the spine. She had found it for sixpence, she told Ruth, and read the flagged pages again in the omnibus to be certain she could manage the sentences aloud.
She began with the admiral’s conversation and gave him a brisk confidence which made Mrs Wetherby smile before the carriage came near anything dangerous. Then Mrs Croft spoke, a quicker, practical voice. Bessie’s eyes remained on the page. She had not rehearsed an entertainment for us; she had heard two people clearly enough to let us hear them too.
At the first intervention with the reins Dora put a hand against her own knee, as if avoiding the same post. Miss Holt laughed out loud. Bessie paused, found her place and went on. By the end even Joan Hesketh was smiling at the book on her table.
“She’s an excellent wife,” Ada said.
Bessie looked up. “Yes. But I chose it because I wanted to go with them.”
“With him driving?” Grace asked.
“I’d take my chance. I think he would stop somewhere interesting.”
“Directly in front of a dung-cart,” Dora said.
The room laughed. Bessie closed the book on one finger, ready to open it if we disputed the route.
Mrs Neale wanted to know whether it was romantic. She had enjoyed the scene without considering it in that light. Two people in a carriage, talking about somebody else’s courtship, seemed an odd place to look for a love story.
“He thinks they’re happy,” Bessie said. “So does she. They don’t have to keep asking one another.”
“That would be restful,” Mrs Tait said.
Minnie was looking for the page in her own copy. “She’s allowed to enjoy herself,” she said. “Mrs Croft. And look as if she has eaten a good dinner. I’m still not reconciled to Mrs Musgrove.”
“We never expected you to be,” Mrs Wetherby said.
“But this is a point in Miss Austen’s favour.”
She made it sound like a concession won in a prolonged correspondence. Bessie smiled at her. The woman whose earlier argument she had heard only in pieces was here, pleased with something Bessie had brought.
“I don’t think they’re being shown as perfect,” Miss Holt said. “If they were, someone else would be driving. It wouldn’t be funny.”
“Or she’d let him go into the post,” Grace said. “That would make quite another marriage.”
We laughed again. Mrs Hesketh asked Bessie whether she had wanted the book to spend longer with them.
“A little. But then I’d have had to wait longer to find out what happened to Anne.”
Ruth held up the book she was using. “I read ahead. I couldn’t help it.”
“You needn’t apologise,” Mrs Wetherby said. “There’s no examination.”
“I know. But it was so late.” Ruth glanced at Bessie, who nodded with immediate understanding. “I thought he must tell her. Then people kept coming in and getting in the way.”
“They do,” said Mrs Tait.
Ruth had marked the letter. She read a few lines, stopping once to begin a sentence again, and the room became quiet. The words she liked were not the ones I had marked. She gave the little hesitation before the declaration more time than I had, and it made me listen as if I did not know what was coming.
When she finished Minnie asked whether she thought Captain Wentworth had truly forgotten his gloves.
“No,” Ruth said at once. Then she thought about it. “Perhaps. I should like him to have forgotten them and been glad of the excuse.”
Miss Holt said she would have preferred a man who could simply come back without inventing a reason. Dora thought an excuse sometimes made it possible to do what one otherwise couldn’t. Mrs Neale asked to see the place, taking the book from Ruth rather than waiting to be shown. I watched her follow the line, look towards the next page and turn it. The voices continued round her while she read.
I had lost track of the time. Ellen appeared in the doorway with a clean jug, and Joan Hesketh drew the conversation to a pause before we carried the admiral into another ditch. There was still tea, an interval, and enough of the evening left for the other women to bring their pages.
At the interval Ellen brought Bessie a cup. Bessie set it on the little table and opened her book for Minnie, who had found another passage about Mrs Croft. Ada turned to Edith and asked about the page she had chosen.
When the evening ended Joan Hesketh thanked us and named the book she meant to read next. Miss Holt wrote it down. Minnie asked if there was a mother in it and made the speaker laugh before getting an answer.
There was applause. Bessie kept the book open on her knee, holding her cup in the other hand.
Afterwards people asked what would happen next. I told them Dora’s circle would continue if it wished, on dates we agreed, and I was considering another talk in the autumn. One, not six. I would write when there was something definite to offer.
Minnie said she would like to know before her husband arranged Bristol. Mrs Tait asked whether Mrs Neale could be sent a separate notice. Mrs Neale gave me her own address.
I wrote it in the book. I had learnt her name weeks ago. Now I learnt the road on which she lived and the time of day at which a letter would find her at home.
At a quarter past nine I began closing the evening. Bessie was one of the last to leave, not because there was work waiting for her but because she was discussing a book with Miss Holt. At the door she stopped beside me.
“I liked that.”
“I’m glad.”
“I could hear everything.”
She was smiling, but the truth in it went straight to the evening I had spent in the kitchen.
Ada joined her on the step. They had not arranged to travel together, but would walk as far as the corner. My sister held her own light bag. Bessie had nothing to carry except the book she chose to take home.
I stood until they had gone, then went back to Ellen. She was finishing the cups. I paid her, thanked her and asked whether she would like to be approached about another date in the autumn. She said yes, provided I asked rather than putting her name in the book and telling her afterwards.
“I shall ask,” I said.
She smiled and took her coat. When the door shut I went into the sitting room. Mrs Wetherby’s book lay on the table, open at the inscription. There was a pencilled name below hers already: Ruth Ellis, borrowed Thursday.
I left it where it was for Ruth to collect in the morning. Then I turned out the lamps, one at a time, and went upstairs with my own book under my arm.