No longer whispering, I tried speaking quietly, "All we go down to the dust." Unable to focus on the prayer, I surrendered to the excitement growing in my spirit: the feeling of being in deep communion with a great mind. Even if the volunteers were a sorority of secret stockings like those of Mrs. Russell, and even if the academics were mostly incoherent to me, this festival was all about the book, Mansfield Park. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Jane Austen and her book. But here was a whole new rich, promising world opening up for me, something I hadn't been aware of two days ago. The novel was alive. This was what I had meant about living in a novel. We were all alive in Mansfield Park. This could never have happened in Texas.
And from this great distance, I could see clearly that Martin didn't get me. He'd never read Forster; he thought only connect was a dot game. Being married to Martin would mean sharing him for weekends of hunting and paintball. His ideal vacation would be scuba diving with the guys in some oversubscribed Central American destination. Perhaps I generalized, but it seemed Martin, as well as all the men in my social circle, relied on the same slim catalogue when choosing interests and vocations. We met in a bookstore, yes. But he wasn't buying books. He was checking out the chicks who bought books. I kept squeezing myself into underwhelming romances with men like Martin because I wanted one so badly. But they never had enough gravitas to survive on their own merits. In these relationships, we parked in each other's lives until something like holiday travel interrupted the flow, and when we got back into town, we couldn't remember where we'd left our cars.
Something creaked. I held my breath, and waited for a repeat of the sound I'd heard. Something besides me had moved. Although I thought I was alone in the dark, I couldn't really be sure. It sounded like something alive in another pew but I saw no one. The creak happened again. I sat up straight. My scalp tingled and fear gripped me. What if the tombs opened up? Too late to hide. From the front of the room, a dim figure rose from a pew, Heathcliff hiding in the dark. I scooted closer to the wall, bumping an overhanging hymnal on the shelf in front of me, sending it to the floor with a mighty resounding thud. He looked over at the disturbance and our eyes met. Young and serious, thirty by my guess, wearing jeans and T-shirt, probably frightened by my chanting and afraid to be in the same dark church with me. He had been lying on the pew. Now he stepped over the dead interred in the stone floor, in a church where protagonists had brooded for centuries, their rich stories lingering in the damp fertile air, encouraging all forms of yearning and despair, perhaps in my very pew.
I'd arrived at a place in the cosmos where I could connect, at last.
Five
Those arriving at the orientation meeting were forced to squint as morning sun cast white rectangles of light on the wall above the massive stone fireplace. As they squinted, I took a good look at their name tags, bracing myself for the possible arrival of Miss Banks. Urns of coffee exhaled a cozy morning smell and green plastic yard chairs crowded around small tables facing the stage where, in a few days, actors would perform for the public. A staff person tested a microphone while someone placed water bottles at each place on the table behind her. So far, no Banks.
I'd been awake since 3:10 A.M., impatient to begin my new life. I couldn't wait for costumes and scripts so I could start protagonizing in a British accent. My Texas life seemed so far away, and I wondered if the man from the church would be at the meeting. Vera waved to me from her table across the room where she sat with a group of seniors. A man with billowing gray hair and hiking boots, his collar turned up rakishly as if he might be famous in literary or academic circles, sat next to a woman in a flowery skirt, a dog at her sandaled feet. Perhaps these were the founding board members Vera had mentioned. They drank coffee and gazed fondly at the arriving participants. Surely each board member held a position on Fanny Price.
The noise grew as more people arrived consulting their orientation packets, fetching coffee, and settling at tables where one person talked and the others nodded or expressed amazement. A ponytailed guy with a clipboard approached and asked, "Are you Anne?" A flustered woman dropped a heavy book bag on the floor at the table next to me and told her companion, "I looked everywhere." Accumulated sound traveled up to the top of the high ceiling, and then down again. I wished people would settle so we could get started. Everyone had an orientation folder except me. Was it obvious I wasn't a real actress?
I scrunched a plastic chair into the circle around a table, having recognized Pork Chop from last night's improv at the pub. Her name tag said Nikki. My chair arms touched chairs on both sides of me as I listened to the conversation concerning the lease renewal, and how someone believed Philippa Lockwood, Lady Weston's granddaughter, held all the cards regarding the festival's future at Newton Priors. Nikki consulted her watch. "Wasn't this meeting set for half eight?" she asked the group.
"My schedule said eight-thirty," I said.
They all looked at me; no one blinked or smiled.
"Oh," I said, "right."
A group of excited children sat together, three girls and two boys, and none of their name tags said Banks. Proud mothers hovered over the child actors who surely played the young cousins in early scenes. Gary the Middle Eastern driver brought more plastic chairs and Omar appeared in the doorway. I wished I could sit with him.
The people on the stage greeted each other and stalled. Sixby sat next to the tango dancer he'd kissed in the pub. Hard to believe he asked me to perform in the follies with him. Magda wore not just a scarf, but an entire full-length caftan and black robe. She and the staff person huddled over an enormous key ring like characters from Tolkien's Middle Earth.
"Why is Magda dressed like that?" I asked Nikki, who maneuvered her chair to face the stage. I could understand wearing it if you had to, but she'd been dressed in jeans last night.
Nikki frowned as if this was something I should have known. "She wears the abaya to be in solidarity with women who are forced to wear such attire in the Middle East and North Africa—and to raise our consciousness of that fact."
I nodded.
"Actually, her university is considering her proposal for a seminar on Islamic feminism." Nikki unscrewed her water bottle. "You've met Gary? Her brother," she said. "Real name's Gamal and he's seeking a visa extension"—Nikki smiled—"in case you didn't know."
The sound of metal against glass caught our attention and the buzz of conversation faded. My stomach jumped; the moment had arrived at last. This was it. I wanted to listen. I wanted to know everything all at once.
"Good morning, and welcome to the thirty-first season of Literature Live. For those of you I've not met, my name is Nigel Saintsbury, and I am the founder and executive director of Literature Live." So this was Vera's husband, a white-haired man in patched tweeds who looked as though he might don wellies and walk the moors with hunting dogs. He winked at Vera—The Look. They were fond of each other. Why didn't they live together? "You are very welcome here," he told us. "We know your work: actors, writers, and teachers."
They must have some kind of atypical marriage. Vera visits Nigel in the summer.
"You are the cream of the crop. We had to turn away people we'd like to work with."