The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,38
bag of groceries, and a rolled-up newspaper onto the counter. She went over to put the kettle on, still not having looked over at Adam. “Just as I’d feared, of course.”
Adam knew best to shut his book.
“Tells me the poor girl can’t get out of bed. That Dr. Gray is beside himself with worry, for all he apparently botched that delivery—has taken to checking in on her so regularly, you’d think she was his only patient.”
“Maybe right now she’s his most important one.”
His mother turned about at the stove to stare pointedly at him. “Now there’s a pretty young thing. Why didn’t you ever have your eye on her?”
Adam pushed the book a little farther away from him.
“Adam, my boy, one has to be on the lookout for these things. You need to find someone to take care of you. I won’t be around forever, you know.”
He did know—she reminded him regularly. He hated when she talked like this. To him it felt the opposite of caring. It wasn’t helping him find the key to those happier worlds he read about in books; it only made him feel trapped and desperate and even more alone.
“Adeline Grover’s never going to be interested in the likes of me, Mother. And now’s surely not the time to discuss it.”
“Suit yourself. Just know the village is always speculating about you, whether you want to discuss it or not,” she said with a shrug, then went and cut herself some bread and butter on the counter. Sitting down across from him with her tea, she glanced at the book before him.
“Didn’t you just read that?”
“Last winter.”
“You read too much. You read her too much. You should be out, go to Alton more.”
“I go to Alton.”
“You go to the movies. You sit alone in the movie-house, watching some romantic silliness. Or reading it,” she added, with an insolent nod at his book. “Your nose always in a book, just like your father.”
He took another sip of his coffee, then stood up.
“Where are you off to?” she asked, unrolling the afternoon newspaper that she had brought in with her.
“I just remembered I did promise Mrs. Lewis to help with the mulching in the garden before there’s a hard frost. Sun will be down in an hour or so.”
“There’s a boy.” His mother smiled approvingly at him as she picked up her newspaper.
* * *
Adeline Grover sat in the window seat she had improvised for herself at the front of the drawing room. She had taken half of an old swinging door she had found in the garden shed and laid it over both the deep windowsill and the level top of the adjoining radiator. She had covered it all with a thick quilted counterpane and a variety of cushions, and there she could often be found, sitting with a stack of books, but mostly staring out the window, watching the rest of the villagers move on with their lives.
She was in trouble and she knew it. She was very aware that she had not allowed herself to fully feel the loss of Sam, often pushing the thought of him out of her mind, as if he were simply off somewhere, still fighting the war. Losing Sam had been difficult and complicated enough, let alone the death of their baby. She was not coping with either of these losses, not in the way one had to in order to move on. She had surprised herself with this shortcoming—she was very proud and very smart, and it had never occurred to her that she would get something so significant, and unavoidable, so wrong. But she was at least smart enough to be able to trick everyone else into thinking she was doing okay. It had become almost a game to her. And while playing the game of appearing okay, she felt so completely detached—even liberated—from her real self, the person she had been before everything went wrong, that she marvelled at this ability to be so objective and cut off from one’s own feelings. As if this were the real achievement.
She was starting to get a bit of a window into the male mind as a result. She could only wonder at what a lifetime of both emotional avoidance and overactivity yielded as a result. She thought about Sam’s impenetrable optimism even in the face of an opposite reality—his determination that they would be married, his forgiving of her every slip, his bright and happy surface. She had loved