Dancing With Mr. Darcy: Stories Inspired by Jane Austen and Chawton House Library by Sarah Waters
Authors: Sarah Waters
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quarantine. No ‘Blitz spirit’ for them: they’d be out looting the Tesco Express, the Boots, the Morrisons, even the all-night shop at the garage. When all obvious sources of food and medicine were exhausted, they would attack each other. Her only chance of survival would be to sit tight with her doors and windows locked.
But what form would this new plague take, Miss Campbell asked herself. The avian flu? Some sort of viral cancer? Perhaps, like the Black Death, it had sneaked in at the back door and was quietly multiplying as it fixed itself on the old, the weak and the young. Mr Shanahan, a regular at the library, had been hospitalised at Halloween for laser surgery on his eye. By Christmas he was gone. If she ever needed an operation she would choose day surgery; she did not wish to join the list of superbug victims.
Now, watching the burning bushes and frozen lakes, listening to the signs and portents that issued from her television screen, Miss Campbell began to think that the end of the world might after all be precipitated by something other than a plague. By extreme weather, perhaps: melted ice caps, fire and brimstone, a black sun.
She spent the morning boxing atlases and encyclopaedias. The building she’d worked in for fifteen years had closed its doors, and they had three days in which to stock the new library. Someone came into the reference room and called out, ‘Miss Campbell, you here?’ She popped her head out from behind the shelf and bumped into Angela from reception.
‘Oh. I’ve a caller asking for the head librarian, but Matt’s at a conference. He wants to know when he can set up those PCs in HeadSpace—’
‘HeadSpace?’
‘You know, the new zone for teenagers. He just needs to confirm an installation slot.’
Oh yes, the room Matt wouldn’t let her order any books for. Some grand scheme of his to ‘raise the footfall’ of young people.
‘Very well, I’ll speak to him.’
She took the phone and confirmed a time on Thursday.
‘Great. So they’ll be up and running ahead of the launch,’ Angela said.
‘Indeed.’
Miss Campbell found it hard to be enthusiastic. She’d hoped to stay on at the library another eight years, until retirement, but her role was changing so fast. Once, her job had been to share her love of books. Not any more. Books, actual physical books made of paper, were becoming a rarity, something to be tucked away in forgotten corners.
That lunchtime she came across a skip in the car park filled with old library hardbacks. Matt had enquired about stock disposal the other day. ‘Generally we donate,’ she said, but he told her, ‘There’s additional costs attached and we’re over budget on the move.’ She spent her lunch break standing on a chair, reaching into the skip to fish out books worth saving. Then she ferried them down the road to Oxfam. It seemed churlish given how much the council was spending, but Miss Campbell couldn’t help it: she was going to miss the old library.
The day of the move coincided with a day’s annual leave booked months ago. For weeks Miss Campbell had looked forward to this trip. She was taking an evening class on the early novel, and a visit to a library of early women’s writing was part of her studies.
Fresh snow had fallen and it glittered on the ground like a Christmas card. The train travelled back in time as swiftly as it raced through frozen fields and copses, until it reached a station whose platforms held no cafés, only painted wooden shelters and matching footbridges. The last stop: the end of the line.
Miss Campbell consulted her map and picked her way down the high street and through the small town, avoiding icy patches and lumps of trodden snow. When she reached the grounds of the house, the whole area was warm and dry. A meadow stretched snow-free and golden into the distance, and a man loaded bales of hay into the loft of a barn as if she’d happened on a small unseasonable patch of summer.
She
But what form would this new plague take, Miss Campbell asked herself. The avian flu? Some sort of viral cancer? Perhaps, like the Black Death, it had sneaked in at the back door and was quietly multiplying as it fixed itself on the old, the weak and the young. Mr Shanahan, a regular at the library, had been hospitalised at Halloween for laser surgery on his eye. By Christmas he was gone. If she ever needed an operation she would choose day surgery; she did not wish to join the list of superbug victims.
Now, watching the burning bushes and frozen lakes, listening to the signs and portents that issued from her television screen, Miss Campbell began to think that the end of the world might after all be precipitated by something other than a plague. By extreme weather, perhaps: melted ice caps, fire and brimstone, a black sun.
She spent the morning boxing atlases and encyclopaedias. The building she’d worked in for fifteen years had closed its doors, and they had three days in which to stock the new library. Someone came into the reference room and called out, ‘Miss Campbell, you here?’ She popped her head out from behind the shelf and bumped into Angela from reception.
‘Oh. I’ve a caller asking for the head librarian, but Matt’s at a conference. He wants to know when he can set up those PCs in HeadSpace—’
‘HeadSpace?’
‘You know, the new zone for teenagers. He just needs to confirm an installation slot.’
Oh yes, the room Matt wouldn’t let her order any books for. Some grand scheme of his to ‘raise the footfall’ of young people.
‘Very well, I’ll speak to him.’
She took the phone and confirmed a time on Thursday.
‘Great. So they’ll be up and running ahead of the launch,’ Angela said.
‘Indeed.’
Miss Campbell found it hard to be enthusiastic. She’d hoped to stay on at the library another eight years, until retirement, but her role was changing so fast. Once, her job had been to share her love of books. Not any more. Books, actual physical books made of paper, were becoming a rarity, something to be tucked away in forgotten corners.
That lunchtime she came across a skip in the car park filled with old library hardbacks. Matt had enquired about stock disposal the other day. ‘Generally we donate,’ she said, but he told her, ‘There’s additional costs attached and we’re over budget on the move.’ She spent her lunch break standing on a chair, reaching into the skip to fish out books worth saving. Then she ferried them down the road to Oxfam. It seemed churlish given how much the council was spending, but Miss Campbell couldn’t help it: she was going to miss the old library.
The day of the move coincided with a day’s annual leave booked months ago. For weeks Miss Campbell had looked forward to this trip. She was taking an evening class on the early novel, and a visit to a library of early women’s writing was part of her studies.
Fresh snow had fallen and it glittered on the ground like a Christmas card. The train travelled back in time as swiftly as it raced through frozen fields and copses, until it reached a station whose platforms held no cafés, only painted wooden shelters and matching footbridges. The last stop: the end of the line.
Miss Campbell consulted her map and picked her way down the high street and through the small town, avoiding icy patches and lumps of trodden snow. When she reached the grounds of the house, the whole area was warm and dry. A meadow stretched snow-free and golden into the distance, and a man loaded bales of hay into the loft of a barn as if she’d happened on a small unseasonable patch of summer.
She
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