With Love from Jane - Theresa Howes

With Love from Jane J

Jane Austen has always struck me as the kind of girl who would enjoy a good laugh. The sort who’d share a good gossip and a giggle over a bottle of full bodied red. I’m sure that just like me, she’d prefer to leave the white stuff, and the milder forms of polite conversation to the weaker of our sex.

She’d be insulted if an Italian waiter, who in a bid to flatter, tried to guess which wine she’d select from the menu, suggested a Pino Grigio or a Chardonnay. Jane, I have no doubt would shake her mob-capped head, and insist on a good Barolo.

It was the wine we drank at our wedding, me and my husband, Michael. Even now, the word tastes bitter on the lips. We left the bubbly to the bubbly ones amongst us. Perhaps that was where we went wrong. It must be the gas in those bubbles that carries the laughter. The little fizzies of happiness that float into a marriage and keep it buoyant. Bubbles that keep bursting open to delight you during the years ahead.

Let’s face it, there’s not much laughter to be found in a heavy dark red wine. As it turned out, a cheap supermarket bottle, left in the right conditions, lasted longer than his vows.

He went off with a bubbly blonde, who turned out to be a better vintage than the brunette he’d married the year before. Eventually, even the bubbles in Champagne go flat. They say if you stick a spoon in the neck of the bottle it keeps it bubbly, but I wonder how you stick a spoon in a marriage.

And so I found myself back on the shelf, uncorked and lost at sea. I was in need of good friend. One who wouldn’t just offer sympathy and a bottle of Chablis, but someone who would put me straight, tell it like it is. Someone who could help me pick up the loose strands that had become unravelled in my life, and weave them back into a discernable and convincing plot.

So you can imagine how surprised I was when I logged onto my computer and opened my inbox on that dreary Monday morning. Oh, did I forget to mention that when my marriage went, my job went with it? Take a tip from one who knows; don’t go into business with your husband. Particularly if he’s the kind who cheats. Running a pet shop that specialized in reptiles had never been my idea of a career anyway. When you spend all day with snakes, you don’t want to take one home to bed with you.

Does this reach you? Do I have the correct address? Am so not used to this email business.

I didn’t know anyone called Jane. It’s not a name you come across much these days. Thanks to pop stars and American soaps, most peope have names like Denim,or Fuschia or are called after the dodgy hotels in which, reputedly, they were conceived. But this was an email from Jane. Just plain Jane. Well, to be exact, it was from Jane@Jane.com. It wasn’t even .co.uk. But then in this day and age, Jane is a brand; she’s probably even a corporate since Mr Darcy was given the Colin Firth, tight breeches and baggy white shirt treatment. So on reflection, I’m not surprised it was .com.

I will admit that although Jane is not common, it is not uncommon enough for the lauded Miss Austen to be the only Jane out there in the last two hundred years. But, when I scanned through to the sign off at the bottom of the email, it said, JA. Any of you that have read Jane Austen’s letters will be familiar with this sign off. She kept it for her closest friends and family. She saved the more formal J. Austen for the likes of her publisher, John Murray, who from what I can tell, rarely had the decency to reply.

Suddenly, my life seemed brighter. There was a crack in the cloud of my dreary Monday morning. The world felt full of possibility. I had an email from Jane Austen. Not many people could boast such greatness, well genius, in their electronic mailbox. She was just the woman I needed to give me stout advice. I scrolled back to the beginning of her email, to find out what she had to say.

My Dearest,

I hit the reply button.

My Dear Jane.

Am so glad to hear from you. Please advise on how to mend a broken heart. You seem to know so much about these things.

Yours affectionately

I wouldn’t usually sign off with just initials, but I thought I’d take her lead as I didn’t wish to offend by being overly formal, or by being overly familiar at that.

After pressing send, I tried to concentrate on the web sites that advertise job vacancies, but it was hard to focus on anything, knowing that any minute another email could pop up from a literary genius. It was quite likely that in a few well chosen words, she would solve the crisis that had become my life. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect much, nothing like the length of Sense and Sensibility, for instance. Just a sentence or two of perfect prose would satisfy me. Any pearls of wisdom that would set me on the right course to happiness.

I didn’t hear anything back before bedtime. Reluctantly, I shut down the computer and faced the prospect of another sleepless night, while I pondered my future.

There was still nothing in my inbox the next morning. I did have an idea, though. I’d visit the library and pick up a couple of Jane Austen novels. After all, if anyone was in need of a bit of escapism and a bit of romance, it was me. Perhaps reading a story with a happy ever after ending, would help me to know the real thing when I saw it coming. I needed to be able to spot the difference between a Willoughby and a Wentworth at twenty paces. I could also check out the latest job vacancies in the local paper at the same time.

I passed the second hand bookshop on the way to the library. I paused on the pavement and scowled at the thought of Michael, my ex-husband, the snake man. How happily I’d agreed, under the force of his gentle persuasion, to sell my beloved books when we first moved in together. Our new flat was tiny. It couldn’t accommodate all those precious novels that had seen me through so many phases of my life. Black Beauty, during my horsey period. The Valley of the Dolls, during my first foray into make up. And of course all those classics that I’d returned to again and again. The Brontës, George Eliot and Jane Austen.

I had learned that it was possible to feel lonely at the absence of a book. I’d been fooled into believing that a man could replace all that female wisdom, all that female heart. How wrong I was. But like a true friend, Jane Austen was still there. She had popped up in my inbox, just when I needed her most. There’s a reason why these women and their wise words have lasted. I blame it on the men. A broken heart is a universal theme. Who else would we turn to when we need them mending?

The rain began to patter as I stood on the pavement, peering through the window of the second hand bookshop. My eyes skimmed the rows of battered Penguin Classics and last year’s best sellers, straight into the heart of the shop. He was still there, Joe, the Cambridge graduate, who’d decided years ago to abandon a career as a lecturer in a Northern university to concentrate on selling second hand books. He saw it as his mission to bring good novels to the masses. To re-home unloved and abandoned, even dog-eared books, the way some people re-home unwanted pets.

He’d been happy to take my lifetime of reading pleasure off my hands when I’d gone in and offered them to him, but I hadn’t failed to notice that wounded look in his eyes. Business is business, but I could see him wondering how I could ever part with my treasures. After all, these books were not simply objects to be traded, but part of my very soul.

I hadn’t been able to look him in the eye as he handed me a couple of crumpled twenty pound notes. A fair price for tatty books, but he and I both knew you can’t put a price on their true value.

Michael, then my soon to be husband, was delighted by the transaction. We spent the money on a good bottle of red. A Super Tuscan, if my memory serves me correctly. Drinking it was more of a way of drowning my sorrows, than creating more space in our happy home.

Since then, I’d often passed the bookshop, and dropped in for a browse. Over time, I’d got to know Joe, and not minded the fact that his beard needed a trim, and that he wore socks with his Birkenstocks. He only did this during the winter, of course. I had grown used to the dustiness of his shelves and the battered table top, saved for the imposters. Those pristine books that hadn’t been read, but bought for vanity, or coffee tables, or were badly chosen presents from distant relatives. And I learned to associate the smell of the Calor Gas that seeped from his ropey old heater, with the peeling spines of well thumbed books.

I’d often buy a cheap paperback to read. I’d carry it around with me in my handbag, hidden from Michael like a guilty secret. Once finished, I’d return it to Joe. The same amount of money changed hands each time. He’d buy it back for the price he’d sold it to me. It wouldn’t do to keep it. Michael hadn’t liked books cluttering up the place.

Now that Michael had moved out of the flat, it dawned on me that I had my own space to fill. And I could fill it however I pleased. The bookselves were no longer stacked with reptile tanks and polythene containers filled with locusts, the tasty snack of choice for our leathered friends. I could start to refill them with wisdom and rattling good plots.

Joe must have seen me standing outside, dripped on by the rain and lost in my memories of long forgotten books. He opened the shop door and beckoned me in.

‘Come in and have a coffee with me. It’s only instant, but I can run to a Garibaldi biscuit. You look like you could do with it.’

‘I was thinking about Jane Austen,’ I said, as I entered his shop. I was just about to tell him about the email when a thought struck me. Who would ever believe that I’d received an email from a writer who had been dead for almost two hundred years? He’d think I was a mad woman. They didn’t even have computers in those days.

‘I’ve still got all those books you sold me last year. All the Jane Austen novels along with everything else.’

I bit into a Garibaldi. ‘Didn’t they sell?’

Joe blushed. ‘I put them on one side. I had the feeling that you might come back for them one day. The look on your face when you came in to sell them, told me you weren’t quite ready to part with them.’

‘Thank you.’ I dipped a Garibaldi into the steaming mug of coffee with a sense of satisfaction. It could have been the hot drink or the warmth that belted from the heater, but I felt a glow so strong that it must have lit me from the inside. ‘You may have gone a long way to solving my problems.’

Joe looked up and smiled. He waved the local paper in front of me. ‘I suppose you’ll be asking me for the job, as well. The pay isn’t much, but there are as many books as you can read, and I’ll throw in the Garibaldi’s.’

My Dearest Jane

I’m sorry not to have received another email from you. There must be a great many demands on your time. It may be however, that my question has resolved itself. You have been more of a help than you can ever imagine. If you ever fancy sharing a bottle of good red, please let me know. I would be happy to travel to Bath, or even to Winchester.

Yours affectionately

My Dear EW

It seems we have never met. The wine is out of the question, I’m afraid. Will not be able to meet you. Nevertheless, I am so glad I was able to help.

With Love from Jane J

That was the last email I ever received from Jane Austen. I still have her email address, automatically saved in my electronic address book. It’s a comfort to know it’s there, and that I have the means to contact her, should the need arise. Somehow, thanks to Joe and his dusty second hand bookshop, I don’t think it will be necessary