Free Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library by Sarah Waters Page A

contemplate what is, or might have been, behind it. The door might be very beautiful in itself. An ancient oak door, say, with a single extraordinary hinge. The hinge, of course, is not a hinge, any more than the door is a door. But it is also very beautiful. It is a hinge forged of horseshoes. You can see the curving shapes, the nail holes; the groove that provides the grip. The ends of the shoes are hammered into simple flowers, like daisies. The door goes nowhere. It does not open. The hinge serves no purpose. It is pure ornament. It is all a comforting deception.’
    ‘Like the prince?’ he said.
    ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘the prince. I suppose I must tell you that the girl has rather cannily held on to three magic fruits, each of which she has been instructed to cut when she meets the first great need of her life. I never fail to wonder why she doesn’t cut at least one of them to avoid those seven years of mourning in the Valley of Glass, or at the very least to avoid the agony of that hideous shoeing of iron. But she’s right, you know, because in the end she needs all three of those magic fruits to conquer the demons who would see her finally vanquished and to secure her love.’
    ‘Hmm,’ he said.
    ‘Well, precisely,’ she said. ‘I did say I’d told you the interesting bit. Shall we get this last pony’s feet trimmed? At least this one doesn’t wear shoes.’
    She held the lead rope, standing first on one side of the pony’s head, and then on the other, and then back again, depending on which foot he was working on. It was a dance, choreographed over time, and the three of them knew the pattern of the steps and their pacing. They did not falter.

    I should like to acknowledge Kenneth McLeish’s superb version of ‘The Black Bull of Norroway’ in Tales of Wonder and Magic by Berlie Doherty (ed).

    My inspiration: In February 2009 I was one of the lucky few to get through the snow to Chawton House to attend a writing workshop. There I found my horseshoe motif in the single hinge on the ancient oak door set against a wall in the Long Gallery. Jane Austen’s life and work provided my central theme: sometimes through our own choice or error, sometimes because of external events and circumstances, doors close on relationships. In life, they might never again open, even if we wish them to; in fiction we might hope for redemption in a prince or a Mr Darcy.

MISS AUSTEN VICTORIOUS
    Esther Bellamy
    ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,’ Mrs Bennet announced.
    Mr Bennet, wedged between the wings of a Sheraton armchair, lowered his newspaper, which bore the headlines ‘72 killed in V2 rocket attack’, and inquired cautiously over the top of it, ‘Is that his design in settling here?’
    Mrs Bennet nodded vigorous encouragement in his direction, before throwing back her head and hands in order to signal exasperation.
    ‘You take delight in vexing me; you have no compassion on my nerves.’
    Mr Bennet gave a sort of bleat and peered frantically at Miss Bates, who was squeezed uncomfortably behind the curtain on a camp stool, but whilst trying to find her place in the script she had dropped her spectacles and, whilst groping for them frantically, she was unaware of the emanations of distress from the armchair, or indeed of anything else.
    Mrs Bennet, almost equally unaware, blundered on. ‘Ah you do not know what I suffer—’ She stopped abruptly as it finally occurred to her that she had not given Mr Bennet the chance to make her suffer. He had not refused to wait upon Mr Bingley and, mouth half open from anxiety, showed not the faintest signs of doing so. Mrs Bennet leapt in to the breach and extemporised furiously.’ ‘Since you have already said that you will not visit Mr Bingley what use is it if twenty such men visit the neighbourhood?’
    Inspiration came to Mr Bennet and he assured Mrs Bennet with the glee of a man who