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

committee with Mrs Houghton before was proof of her powerful, if latent, political instinct. Furthermore, realising that it is much easier to steer a committee from below than to order it from above, she had helped elect Mrs Houghton to be president of the newly formed Amateur Dramatics Committee.
    Something very English, the committee felt, would be desirable in the circumstances. Someone promptly suggested Shakespeare. Someone else, perhaps not without a touch of malice, suggested Henry V and the possibility of involving local evacuees. Lady Baverstoke was not the only person with visions of these willing little extras re-enacting the battle of Agincourt through her drawing room. Some kind soul pointed out that the imminent film, with its rather superior resources made a play rather unnecessary just now. No one could remember just who it had been who suggested Jane Austen but everyone, without quite explaining how, felt that she struck the right note; highbrow but not too difficult to understand, obviously. Very English, of course, and perfect for acting in a large drawing room.
    Getting enough men for the play had been a problem; nothing but Christian fortitude, patriotic duty and fear of his wife would have made the Reverend Gerald Houghton take to the stage as Mr Bennet. He could now be observed getting in to character for the Netherfield ball scene by showing the greatest possible reluctance. His wife’s glance swept proprietarily over the cast as the Bennet girls trooped in.
    ‘Lizzy!’ admonished Mrs Bennet, ‘wipe that lipstick off. It’s far too bright anyway, not right for the period at all.’
    ‘Mrs Houghton’s quite right, dear,’ urged Lady Baverstoke.
    ‘But we’ll look such frights,’ protested Lizzy. ‘We’re all wearing modern evening dresses and you can’t then say that everything else has to be Regency, it doesn’t make sense.’ She rolled her eyes and gave her mouth a desultory wipe. ‘There, will that do?’
    ‘For now,’ agreed Mrs Bennet. Now line up for the dance; chaps on one side…oh dear, oh dear we do need more men.’
    ‘There’ll be two more on the night,’ pointed out Polly, ‘me and Rosalind—’
    ‘Rosalind and I, dear,’ interposed Lady Baverstoke.
    ‘Rosalind and I in our hunting kit. The others will just have to dance with each other.’
    ‘Polly will you dance now?’
    ‘All right, come on, Alice.’ Alice bounced forward but Mrs Bennet swooped.
    ‘No, no, Alice must dance with Mr Bingley. It says so in the book. He dances first with Charlotte Lucas. Come along Henry.’ (Mr Bingley was her nephew.) He shuffled forward. Charlotte and Mr Bingley, being sixteen and seventeen respectively, turned scarlet. They were hustled to the front of the stage, touching each other only when and where strictly necessary.
    ‘Now is everyone ready?’ A figure drifted to the edge of the stage with an expression of nervous inquiry. ‘No, Mr Darcy, off stage, we don’t need you yet, not until your grand entrance.’ The figure vanished with alacrity.
    ‘Now,’ to Lady Baverstoke, ‘could we have a waltz please? We begin the dancing and Mr Darcy comes in.’
    Lady Baverstoke smiled and obliged, with the ‘Blue Danube’. To Mrs Bennet’s irritation she was very good but in her role as director she had more pressing concerns. After a few bars she began to glare towards the wings. The second time she waltzed past she risked a gesticulation and Mr Darcy, accompanied by Miss Bingley, moved to the centre of the stage with the high-shouldered, stork-legged gait of a man who fears that his breeches are going to fall down. He had been outvoted by the females of the cast who were quite determined that Mr Darcy should wear breeches. (Mr Bingley was luckier; simply appearing in his Eton tails which had been deemed quite suitable.) Lady Baverstoke had donated her late husband’s court dress but the late Lord Baverstoke had been cheerfully corpulent and the current Mr Darcy was not.