Sara Waters - Dancing with Mr Darcy - Stories Inspired by Jane Austen

She hadn’t understood but she had enjoyed the feel of his breath on her face. She thought it might just be despair that had caused the lover to jump but she hadn’t understood Guto then, after all she was only sixteen. It was August and her newly received exam results had been even better than predicted. For once her father had seemed pleased, pleased enough to allow her to join a small party of girls from school, boarding the day ferry from Penarth pier to Ilfracombe bay and back again. What he didn’t know was that Amelia Edwards had invited her brother and some of his friends to come along and that Amelia’s brother had brought several bottles of wine with him. Guto was one of the brother’s friends and, an hour or so into the trip, when the cliffs around Cardiff and Barry were little more than a charcoal smudge on the horizon, he had brought over a cup of red wine. Rosamunde did not drink it, though she had sipped it once. At Ilfracombe they had eaten light-brown scones with sweet strawberry jam and sticky cream. Later, as they stood on the beach, he had tried to kiss her. She had decided that she liked this, though she was nervous of what else he might try to do. Amelia said a boy had pushed his hand down the front of her knickers and put his finger inside her but Guto had never once done that to Rosa. Now she wondered what it would have felt like if he had.

She turned from the window back to the television in the corner above the filing cabinet. There had been a time when she only switched on the set to check the market prices. Tonight she was watching the early evening news. She could see a young man on the screen, someone with whom it seemed she had worked. He was crossing the crowded concourse in front of the building, a cardboard box in his hands. The dark jacket of his suit stirred as he walked, his rounded shoulders taking the weight of the box. A voice stumbled on, a voice unable to hide its excitement at the latest catastrophic news from the bank. Thirty-two storeys above the now empty concourse, Rosamunde watched the young man leaving the building, walking towards the Underground.

Her father had not approved of Guto. Because of the way his Welsh name is pronounced (the ‘u’ sounding like an ‘i’ to her father’s ears), he was always referred to as ‘the little git’. But then Guto’s father had not been pleased by his son’s growing attachment to a girl who only spoke English. Guto’s parents had both been teachers of Welsh and had brought up their children to be proud of their otherness. Guto’s dad now worked for the Examining Board and Guto’s mum was the headteacher at the comprehensive school he attended, where he was taught through a mysterious language Rosa had only ever heard on the television. He told her stories from books she had not known existed and learned of a history that seemed to have almost nothing to do with Shakespeare or English kings and queens. And all this in a building only twenty minutes walk away from her own school, where she was expected to devote herself to the development of her natural talents for Mathematics, Latin and Lacrosse.

‘Why did your Dad send you to that snobby girls’ school?’ Guto had asked.

‘It was when Mrs Shaw ran back home to her mammy,’ she had replied.

‘You see,’ he had laughed, ‘It’s just not normal!’

‘Aberystwyth University,’ her father had sneered in exasperation. ‘What the hell does he want to go there for?’

‘To study Welsh Literature.’

‘And what will he be able to do with that? He’ll be fit for nothing but teaching if he’s not careful and teachers earn a pittance. That boy of yours has no ambition.’ In her father’s eyes not to have any ambition was the worst failing possible. He had never spoken of courage or defiance with admiration, not to her anyway, yet how much he had displayed as the cancer threatened to overwhelm his failing flesh. It had been no more unnatural than the tide going out but Rosa’s father had clawed and hammered against it every minute of every day, steadfastly refusing to die in peace. The hospice had rung her late one Monday afternoon somewhere in the middle of this surprising month. ‘Come now,’ the doctor had advised and an hour later she was running down the platform at Paddington Station, cursing her short legs and her expanding waistline, leaping for the door just as the whistle blew on the train to Cardiff Central. All night long she sat by her father’s bed watching his chest expand and contract. She had remembered the prayers her mother’s religion had taught her, even though her father had nothing but contempt for ‘frail subservience and ignorance’.

‘Not in my house,’ he had shouted, ‘you will not teach my children the ways of fawning and toadying.’

‘Your father is a bad man, Rosamunde.’ Her mother had stood her ground and, when he had forgotten to collect her from the hospital after the birth of Rosamunde’s little brother, had taken the next taxi to the airport and gone home to her own mother in Tipperary. Thereafter Rosa’s father only referred to his wife as ‘Mrs Shaw’, who continued to stand her ground and would not entertain the idea of divorce until Rosamunde was forwarded to her mother in Ireland. In response, her father had taken Rosa out of the convent primary and made her sit the entrance exam to an exclusive girls’ school in Cardiff. She had passed easily, so her father’s next move was to buy a two-bedroomed luxury flat on the cliffs above the sea in posh Penarth. Suddenly their neighbours were judges, barristers and wealthy businessmen and her friends at school were the daughters of judges, barristers and wealthy businessmen. There had never been any further talk of divorce.

‘Do you think he knows that I am here?’ Rosamunde had asked the nurse.

‘He can probably hear you. Why don’t you talk to him?’

‘I’m still here, Daddy,’ she had told him time and time again through that night, her hand around his. ‘Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death,’ she murmured as his chest contracted. This time the breath did not shudder out, his body remained silent and still. ‘Has he gone?’ she asked. The nurse took a step towards the bed as his body rippled and reached out for life once again.

‘Listen to this, Rosa.’ They sat together on the sea wall, the sun shining on the last days they shared before Guto went away to university. He had made her promise she would come and see him but her father later steadfastly refused to let her leave the flat now that her A level exams were in sight. ‘You’ve got far too much work to do,’ he’d said and Guto had grown resentful of taking the bus to Cardiff and then being forbidden to see her. So Rosa’s father achieved his heart’s delight. He was able to stand in wine bars, an empty glass in his hand, boasting of his daughter who was studying Law at Oxford.

‘Listen to this, Rosa,’ side by side on the sea wall at Penarth, Guto with a book in his hand. ‘It says here that the greatest mystery in the world is that man is mortal and yet greets every day as though he were immortal. That can’t be right,’ he’d said jumping from the wall and holding out his hand, inviting her to follow him. ‘We’re not that important. What do you think is the greatest mystery, lovely Rosamunde?’ He caught her as she slid down onto the beach.

‘A volcano,’ she had replied, ‘the most beautiful, terrifying, wonderful thing on earth.’

He grinned mischievously. ‘Did you know,’ he draped his arm casually across her shoulders, ‘in Nicaragua, to appease the god of fire, only the most beautiful virgins were sacrificed to the boiling lava lake of Masaya Volcano?’ His other arm was catching her across the backs of her knees so that she was powerless to stop him lifting her above the shallow waves. ‘How would you have liked that?’ he asked and then let her drop into the water, standing above her laughing.