Lydia Read online

  A MESSAGE FROM CHICKEN HOUSE

  It’s no secret that Pride and Prejudice has captured the hearts of readers for centuries. But what’s been under wraps, until now, is the life and voice of one of its more minor characters – Lydia, the youngest Bennet sister – who’s anything but minor in this funny and fresh reimagining of the beloved novel.

  Lydia is spirited, witty and independent – a modern girl before her time. Through her diary entries and letters, we see a young woman trying to break free, trying to get what she wants, but who just . . . CAN’T. But there’s romance and adventure on her horizon, and with it a life that she would have never thought possible.

  Not to be too Austentatious, but I think there’s a lot of Lydia in me. The author has told me she thinks there’s a lot of Wickham in her. And I KNOW that readers will love seeing themselves in these much-loved characters . . . brought to life in the modern age in a way like never before.

  BARRY CUNNINGHAM

  Publisher

  Chicken House

  Contents

  Hertfordshire

  Thursday, 13th June

  Thursday, 5th September

  Friday, 6th September

  Wednesday, 11th September

  Wednesday, 16th October

  Thursday, 14th November

  Monday, 18th November

  Tuesday, 19th November

  Wednesday, 20th November

  Monday, 25th November

  Wednesday, 27th November

  Thursday, 28th November

  Saturday, 30th November

  Tuesday, 17th December

  Sunday, 22nd December

  Sunday, 29th December

  Monday, 30th December

  Monday, 6th January

  Thursday, 6th February

  Friday, 7th February

  Monday, 10th February

  Thursday, 30th April

  Sunday, 10th May

  Sunday, 17th May

  Sunday, 24th May

  Brighton

  Saturday, 6th June

  Sunday, 7th June

  Monday, 8th June

  Tuesday, 9th June

  Saturday, 13th June

  Sunday, 14th June

  Tuesday, 16th June

  Wednesday, 17th June

  Saturday, 20th June

  Sunday, 21st June

  Wednesday, 24th June

  Thursday, 25th June

  Thursday, 2nd July

  Friday, 3rd July

  Saturday, 4th July

  Thursday, 9th July

  Friday, 10th July

  Sunday, 12th July

  Monday, 13th July

  Tuesday, 14th July

  Wednesday, 15th July

  Thursday, 16th July

  Friday, 17th July

  Sunday, 19th July

  Friday, 24th July

  Saturday, 25th July

  Friday, 31st July

  Monday, 3rd August

  Monday, 17th August

  Copyright

  For Elinor

  ALSO BY NATASHA FARRANT

  For younger teens:

  In the Bluebell Gadsby series (Faber)

  After Iris

  Flora in Love

  All About Pumpkin

  Time for Jas

  For older teens:

  The Things We Did For Love (Faber)

  For adults:

  Diving into Light (Transworld)

  Some Other Eden (Transworld)

  Thursday, 13th June

  I am fifteen years old today, and this journal was a present from Mary. She says I must write in it every day to improve my mind.

  “Whatever for,” Mamma cried, “when she is so pretty?”

  Father asked, “Are we even certain Lydia has a mind?”

  “Of course she does!” Mary said. “It’s just not very developed.”

  “Excuse me!” I tried to look down my nose at her, which was not easy because I was sitting and she was standing. “Right now, my undeveloped mind thinks you are extremely rude.”

  Mamma snatched the diary out of my hand and waved it about like a murder weapon. “You had much better have given her some ribbon! She is so clever at making things.”

  “What should I write about?” I asked, retrieving the diary.

  “Reflections and meditations,” Mary murmured. “Prayers. Observations. The opposite of your usual frivolities.”

  “I am not frivolous,” I snarled.

  Father cried, “Ha!” and left the room.

  “You are a bit,” Kitty said.

  “Just write down what you do each day, dear.” Jane frowned at Kitty and Mary, urging them to be nice.

  “And how it makes you feel,” Lizzy added.

  So, to begin!

  For breakfast, Hill made my favourite sweet rolls, with fresh cream and raspberry jam, which made me happy. Then my sisters gave me my presents in order of age, as always, from the oldest to the youngest.

  Jane gave me some lace to trim my new sprigged muslin. This also made me happy. Jane always gives the prettiest things.

  Lizzy gave me a yellow ribbon for my bonnet, which made me cross because she knows I wanted the lilac.

  Mary gave me this journal (and I have already said quite enough about that).

  Kitty gave me a needlepoint cushion. “Lord knows what you will do with it,” she said, “but cushions are the only thing I know how to make. You needn’t pretend to like it.” So I didn’t, but then one of the new tabby kittens kneaded it with his tiny claws, clambered on to it with his tiny legs, and fell asleep with tiny snores. It is a perfect kitten bed. Kitty and I carried him up to our room. We have called him Napoleon, because he is small but already tyrannical. And so the cushion was good, too.

  My father gave me five shillings and my mother gave me her jade earrings, the ones I have wanted for ever, and these made me feel almost rich.

  “The earrings were to be yours after I am gone,” Mamma said. “Lord knows your inheritance will be small enough, but you are growing up so fast, my Lydia! And even though everyone knows how I suffer from my nerves, the doctor assures me that I am unlikely to die for years. You had much better enjoy the earrings now while you are young and beautiful.”

  This afternoon I wanted to walk to Meryton, as with Father’s shillings and my savings I finally have enough for the lavender gloves with grey pearl buttons in Savill’s, but it rained and I am reduced to writing, which is even harder work than I expected and is making my hand ache. This evening, my aunt and uncle Philips come to dinner with the Lucases, if the rain does not cause them all to cancel. Lord, how I wish we lived in a town like them! It may be only a mile away, but it might as well be twenty. It is too dull, being stuck out here in the country.

  I showed my journal to Mary, and asked if my mind was improved yet. She said that it was not.

  “Just try to write one thing each day that is sensible,” she said. “Or are you afraid someone will read it and discover you do have a brain after all?”

  I grabbed the diary back from her.

  “I am not afraid of anything,” I told her. “But Mamma was right. I would much sooner you had given me ribbons.”

  Thursday, 5th September

  THREE MONTHS since I wrote in this diary, but at last something interesting has happened! I could hardly contain myself when we came back from Meryton, but skipped singing about the house until Father burst out of his office and shouted at me to be quiet.

  “But it is so exciting!” I cried.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, find another expression for your emotions. The racket!”

  Jane suggested the diary instead. She said if I sat quietly to write, she would even do my share of this week’s mending. It is not easy to sit still for so long, but I mean to try.
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br />   So.

  Meryton has grown! Overnight, it has been transformed, from DULLEST TOWN IN THE WORLD to a positive DEN OF EXCITEMENT.

  We had heard rumours, but at last it has happened! A militia regiment is come to Meryton and plans to winter here. We missed their entry into town (obviously – out here, we always miss everything), but Maria and Charlotte Lucas were there on errands for their mother and Maria ran all the way home to tell us.

  Panting like an excited puppy, she burst into the drawing room, where the others were reading and Kitty and I were playing with Napoleon. “Scarlet coats!” she cried. “Gold buttons and swords and all marching in time! One of them winked at me, I am quite certain of it! Winked at me! I nearly swooned!”

  Lizzy raised one eyebrow the way she does that I wish I could imitate. Jane smiled, Kitty gaped, and Mary said she hoped Maria wasn’t going to become silly because of a few uniforms.

  “Don’t be such a spoilsport!” I cried. “Maria, ignore her. Tell us everything!”

  As Maria spoke, I could almost see the parade. The coats and the buttons and the bright eyes of the men, the proud horses of the officers, the pirouette of a young stallion, the crowds lining the street . . . Oh, I couldn’t bear to be missing it!

  “We have to go!” I ran to fetch my cloak.

  Jane and Lizzy protested. It’s not proper . . . running to gawp at soldiers . . . we’ll see them soon enough, I’m sure . . .

  I jammed my bonnet on my head.

  “What a good thing, Lizzy, I traded that awful yellow ribbon you gave me for the lilac,” I cried as I ran from the house. “It matches my new gloves! How elegant the officers shall think me!”

  They laughed and followed, just as I knew they would, but they could not catch me.

  *

  We called on my aunt Philips when we arrived in Meryton. She rushed downstairs to greet us, skipping like a girl (which anyone who knows my aunt would agree was a fearsome sight – she has grown even fatter since the last time I saw her, and wobbles when she moves like one of Hill’s legendary jellies).

  “My dears!” She reached out to embrace us all at once, smothering us in powder and the scent of lavender water. “Isn’t it thrilling? Isn’t it grand? All winter! A whole regiment! Your uncle has already called on their colonel and invited him to dinner! In all my days I never saw such a body of men as their officers. Such fine athletic figures, such noble countenances! How much jollier our assembly balls shall be! How merry our evenings! Look through the window, girls. There are two of them now, walking past! Are not they the handsomest men you ever saw?”

  Kitty rushed to the window. “So handsome,” she cooed.

  “Go, out to the street! You will see them better that way.”

  She pushed us out of the front door, gaily exhorting us to report on all we saw when we returned. I took Kitty’s arm. Lizzy took Jane’s. Mary went to the library to get some books.

  “No talking, Lydia,” Lizzy warned me. “No rushing up to unknown officers to introduce yourself.”

  “What do you take me for?” I responded.

  Everything has changed in Meryton, everything! Townsmen walk taller to make up for their lack of uniform. Ladies look more elegant, and even the shops have perked up with the promise of more trade. Jane and Lizzy soon went back to my aunt’s, but Kitty and I walked six times up and down the street. One of the younger officers, a shy-looking boy with sandy hair, blushed and nodded as we passed. His friend, a little older and darker, bowed and clicked his heels. I wanted to die then and there, but managed to contain myself until I was safely indoors.

  “His face!” I howled. “The same colour as his coat!”

  “He was lovely though,” Kitty sighed. “The way he tried to hide his blushing!”

  “His friend was handsomer,” I said. “The one who bowed. More . . . manly.”

  We laughed so hard Kitty had a coughing fit.

  Mary just came in. She stood over my shoulder to read what I was writing and announced that she despaired.

  “But Liddy is using your present at last!” Kitty told her. “Why aren’t you pleased?”

  “Mary does not approve of my choice of subject matter,” I said without looking up.

  “Parading before strange men!” Mary cried. “Going wild for a few scarlet coats! Is there really nothing else to write about?”

  Jane came in to say good night, and tried to make peace as usual. “Those strange men have a purpose, Mary,” she said. “There is a reason they wear that uniform. Remember, we are at war. If the French invade . . .”

  “As if any of you thought for one minute today about the French!”

  Jane murmured what an excellent thing it was to have Mary here to remind us (even though she, not Mary, is the one who brought up the war and the French). Mary, who is extremely conceited, agreed. Jane hugged her, and they both left smiling. Kitty finished brushing her hair and climbed into bed, but I stayed at my table.

  My candle is almost out, or I could carry on writing all night. The things we saw today – the world will never be the same!

  It is so much easier to write when you have something to write about.

  Friday, 6th September

  Aunt Philips came to spend the day with us, and so today we did not return to Meryton. I had hoped she would take us back with her in her carriage, but she stayed and stayed, and the fact that she talked of nothing but the regiment only made it more excruciating.

  “The colonel is a fine man – served in Spain! His face is badly scarred but it hardly matters, he is so noble and manly. The regiment is come from Derbyshire. Derbyshire, sister! I have heard our brother’s wife talk very fondly of that county, and indeed the officers are all most agreeable and gentlemanly. They are lodging in town. Some are married, and their wives – delightful creatures! Though it is not the married officers who interest us, eh, sister?” She nudged Mamma and looked meaningfully at all of us.

  “The lower ranks camp, of course,” Aunt continued. “But they do not interest us either. The encampment is on the other side of town, a little out of the way by the river. The colonel says we shall hardly know they are there, but I do confess . . .” She leaned in towards Mamma but whispered loud enough for us all to hear, “Soldiers, sister! Remember the Atwood girl?”

  “How could I forget?” Mamma gasped, rolling her eyes towards us. “Sister, do not speak of such things!”

  “Who was the Atwood girl?” Kitty asked, and after a flurry of “My dears, I couldn’t possibly say,” Aunt did say, because she always does, and told us the story of poor Annie Atwood, a girl they once knew, who ran off with a soldier and was never spoken of again, not even by her own family.

  “How do you know her family never spoke of her?” I asked. Aunt said it was common knowledge she never darkened their door again.

  “It is a salutary tale, to be sure,” she sighed, and then she and Mamma broke into giggles like a pair of girls.

  I tried to ignore them, and thought instead of the camp. I imagine it smells something like the stables, all horses and dung and hay and sweat. There would be wood smoke, too, from the fires, and the smell of cooking, and bustle and shouting and noise. If I were a man, I wouldn’t waste my time sitting about on sofas listening to Aunt Philips and Mamma giggle away about the past, and I wouldn’t be like Father either, forever in his library, or like Uncle Philips or Maria’s father, Sir William Lucas, lounging about indoors getting fat. I would live outside always, and have a splendid horse and gallop from one end of the country to the next, jumping hedges and fording rivers, and I would have a greatcoat with pockets full of useful things like knives and string, which I could wrap around myself at night when I slept under the stars, and I would have a gun across my back to catch the dinner I would roast over a fire, and have adventure after adventure, and one day when I had grandchildren their eyes would pop clean out of their heads with the excitement of listening to me.

  As it is, being a girl, I can barely even ride.


  “Lydia, are you quite well?” Mamma’s voice brought me back to the drawing room.

  “What did you say, Mamma?” I asked.

  “You are quite flushed! Move away from the fire, child.”

  “Please may I be excused?”

  I slipped out before Mamma could reply, and ran all the way to the Waire.

  It is really only a small stream, but when I was a little girl I thought it a great river. There is a sort of beach by the bridge, where once when I was eight I tried to swim like the village boys do. I hid in a tree and spied on them for a week to understand how they floated, and one afternoon when they had gone I stripped down to my shift and waded in.

  For a few seconds – maybe even a minute – it was marvellous. My toes curled in soft sand, my shift floated about my waist, and my whole body burned with cold. I lay on my back as I had seen the boys do, and water rushed over my head, and the world was full of bubbles, and it was absolutely splendid. Then the current swept me away and I nearly drowned.

  A farmhand found me clinging to a rock in the middle of the water and carried me home, and it was all vastly dramatic. Mamma almost fainted at the sight of me, all wet and covered in mud and bleeding a bit, and Father actually smacked me. My sisters couldn’t believe what I had done. They tried to make me promise I wouldn’t do it again, but I refused. I said nothing in my life had ever been so wonderful, and I never admitted to a single soul how frightened I had been.

  I still love the Waire, despite it trying to kill me. I haven’t tried to swim again, but I do paddle sometimes, and I always go to it when I feel like I did today. Even though here it is only a stream, Mary says that about fifteen miles away it flows into the Lea, which flows into the Thames, which goes through London and then into the sea, and that must be quite something.

  Wednesday, 11th September

  We have a new neighbour. His name is Mr. Bingley, and he is young, single and rich – four or five thousand pounds a year, if my mother is to be believed. He is to rent Netherfield Park and will move in by the end of the month. Mamma is beside herself with the excitement of it.

  “What a fine thing for our girls!” she cried, following my father into his library. Kitty and I crouched by the door.