Free Longbourn by Jo Baker Page A

and a few rough and hungry years in the poorhouse, and she had come through all of it alone; she had survived, it seemed to Sarah, simply by failing to notice how unlikely it was that she should. It also meant that Polly did not possess the capacity for nostalgia, wishful thinking or regret; it was not worth trying to solicit her sympathy in this, because to her this was as good as things ever got, and were ever likely to: there were no golden memories for her.
    Sarah, though, could still summon her ghosts, blurred with summer sun and dim with shadow: chickens scuffing at the cottage door beside a little boy who was still unbreeched and smelt of piss and milk; of the woman in a red dress who had whisked her off her feet and kissed her; of a man who sat indoors over a shuddering loom, a book balanced on the frame, and got up from his seat so stiffly in the dark; of lying in her box bed, her brother curled warm and damp beside her, listening to her parents’ voices in the night, weaving back and forth, holding the whole world together.
    Happiness was a possibility for Sarah; she had a fair idea of what she missed.

The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family .
    Candlelight spilt out of the front door, making a warm pool in the blue moonlight. Mr. Bennet stood on the threshold, a shawl over his powdering gown, to see his family off. James, seated up on the carriage box, lifted his hat to his new master, who gave him a gentlemanly nod in reply; Mr. Hill was handing the ladies into the coach; their gowns frothed up over the doorsill like breaking waves.
    Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids waited on the gravel, as was expected, to watch the ladies leave; the older woman’s expression was benign and fond, Polly bounced on the spot to keep warm, and Sarah, with her wrecked hands tucked under her armpits, was looking off into the moonlit night, a frown creasing her forehead.
    “Don’t they look lovely!” Mrs. Hill said. “My beautiful girls!”
    Mr. Hill clapped the carriage door shut, and stepped away. And now it was up to James.
    James clicked his tongue, flicked the reins, and the horses stirred themselves. There was that moment’s pause as the slackness in the tack was taken up, and then the tug into movement, gravel crunching under wheels, the carriage lamp swinging, and from inside one of the girls gave a little shriek of excitement, and a bubble of conversation swelled, and they were under way.
    Sarah did not see it, because she avoided looking at him; and Mrs. Hill did not see it, because she only noticed how fine he looked in his livery; even Mr. Hill did not remark upon it, and he tended to be on the lookout for shortcomings; but James was all too aware of how his hands shook, and that the trembling would be communicated downthe reins, all the way to the delicate flesh of the horses’ mouths, and could make them all skittish and jumpy.
    But they knew the way better than he did, so he let them get on with it, enjoying the comfortable sway of the carriage, and intervening only so as to keep them on the left, in case something brisker than their own conveyance might thunder through. And the horses, sensing they were trusted, held their heads high, picked up their feet smartly; and Jane, inside the coach, said to her mother what a capable young fellow James had turned out to be, and Mrs. Bennet agreed that the ride was both brisk and comfortable, much more so than when old Mr. Hill had driven them about.
    James turned up his greatcoat collar, and tugged his sleeves down over his hands, and gazed out at the silvered landscape, at the soft slopes, dark copses, the fields studded with sheep. Everything seemed clean and clear and fresh. James smelt the spearmint growing in the wet ditch, and the sweetness of a hay barn as they passed, and these were, he realized, the old scents of home.
    Below him, the ladies’ voices twittered; the carriage was a cage filled with pretty birds. How could he ever show