Castaway

Chapter 2: Charlotte Heywood's exciting adventures (or not)

At the end of the summer of 1817, Charlotte Heywood left Sanditon, heartbroken, crying in the carriage, and returned to the village of Willingden where she was absorbed into the loving bosom of her family. She never left Willingden again, at least not for many years.

She was not summoned to London to be the companion of Lady Susan Worcester. The good lady did indeed write her a letter of sincere commiseration, but Lady Worcester had no wish to be connected with the grubby monetary dealings of a provincial seaside town. Why would she? She did not invite Charlotte or any of her sisters to town to sponsor them for a season. The Heywoods were mere farmers, gentleman farmers it is true, but of little consequence. They could not reasonably expect any of their daughters to make an advantageous match. There were simply too many of them and not nearly enough dowry to go round. Sadly, one year later, poor Lady Susan caught the pox and died within a week. It is said that the Prince Regent mourned her for a short period, before moving on to a younger, more flattering companion.

Neither was Charlotte ever invited back to Sanditon. Why would she be? Now that Tom Parker's grand town project was sponsored by one of the wealthiest widows in the land, he had no need for a mere country mouse (even a pretty one) to be an extra burden on their hospitality, not to mention the embarrassment of the occasions on which she had been seen, unchaperoned, in the company of his brother. His good wife Mary, it is true, felt some pangs of guilt and regret where Charlotte was concerned, but she too saw the need to focus on the future prosperity of the town, and therefore subjugated her own desires in the service of her dear husband's happiness.

As for Miss Georgiana, once she was safely back in London, she swiftly forgot all about her erstwhile friend. She was having far too much of a good time attending balls and parties, lapping up the fawning attention she received from every quarter (Otis who? Thoughts of him were long gone). Luckily, most members of the ton seemed perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to the colour of her skin. She was, after all, an heiress with £100,000. Can you blame them?

Poor Charlotte. She did receive one or two kind-hearted letters from Mr James Stringer after her departure from Sanditon, written in his large, untutored hand, and littered with spelling mistakes. It most certainly lifted her spirits to know that at least one person cared how she was and had taken the trouble to enquire. Sadly, however, six months later, James Stringer was killed when a barrowload of bricks toppled onto him, knocked by the elbow of a careless workman from the top of a ladder (Health and Safety was never Mr Tom Parker's strong point). Even so, it was some months before Mary Parker thought to inform Charlotte of this unfortunate event, in one of her infrequent letters.

Charlotte was restless. Although she scorned a life of idleness and dissipation, she was simply bored to tears on her parents' farm. Now that she was of marrying age, in fact creeping past marrying age, her mother disapproved of her running about the countryside all day, shooting hares and rabbits, and she was expected to stay in the farmhouse, help with the domestic chores and care for her younger siblings. There were so many younger siblings (twelve by now) that Charlotte decided to set up a makeshift school in the drawing room where, on bad weather days (of which there were many) she taught them reading, writing and arithmetic, much as her father had once taught her, in the days when he had the leisure to do so.

One day the vicar of Willingden, a Reverend Collins, was taking tea with her mother and observed the home classroom in action. The very next day, he dispatched his curate, a Mr Bartholomew Grant, to make the young lady a proposal. Mr Grant, a forward-thinking, progressive young man, had a notion to set up a village school and, naturally, he wished Miss Heywood to become the schoolmistress. A delighted Charlotte readily agreed, all the more so when Mr Grant offered her the tenancy of a small cottage within easy walking distance of the schoolhouse. Here, she could be close to her place of work at all times, without having to trudge the two or three miles into the village each day, and here she could at last breathe and enjoy some peace and solitude, alone with her thoughts and her books. An earnest life of bookish spinsterhood beckoned.

It was not the life Charlotte had once dreamed of for herself, but nevertheless she welcomed it with open arms. At last she would have gainful employment and intellectual distraction, to occupy her ever-enquiring mind. And to quell those dark thoughts that sometimes arose in her memory at night. The feeling of being held in his arms. The remembrance of that kiss. It was hard to imagine now that she had once gaily twirled around the floor of a London ballroom, or even a Sanditon ballroom, mixing with lords and ladies, counts and countesses. She now realised she had been little more than an amusement, a pretty young adornment. None of these people now paid her a second thought. Except one, she hoped, but that thought was too painful to dwell upon.

Her new abode was dirty and dusty, so Charlotte, aided by two or three of her sisters, busied herself with making the little cottage spick and span, hanging drapes at the windows, sweeping out the chimney, weeding the small garden at the back and planting flowers and vegetables. She adored her employment in the new village school and her pupils adored her. The boys and girls of the village – some in rags – would form a line at the gate every morning, clutching the requisite penny in their small, grubby hands. Some of them did not always have the penny, but Charlotte let them into the classroom anyway. Fortunately, her salary was paid by a philanthropic member of the local aristocracy and every week she squirrelled away her savings in a small box. For what purpose, she did not know, but she was glad to have a little money of her own. While in another age she might have had dreams of becoming an architect or a doctor, it was 1818 and already extremely rare for a woman to even be a schoolmistress. And an unmarried woman living alone, at that.

Charlotte's youthful bloom had faded a little and there was now a pronounced worry line on her forehead, from countless nights spent reading by dim candlelight, but she was still very beautiful. Many a young man in the village cast her an admiring glance as she passed by, but most were too intimidated to talk to her, too in awe of her fierce intellect and keen wit. Her younger sisters were luckier in this regard, or not, depending on your perspective. Alison, the next in age, found herself with child following a tumble in the haystack after a country dance. After some time spent tracking down the culprit, she was hastily married to a young farmer and is now a rather plump, apple-cheeked mother of five. Her other sisters soon followed her shining example and all three elder girls were married within a year.

But not Charlotte. She felt lonely at times, it is true, but decided it was a price worth paying for her independence. However, Bartholomew Grant, the young, but rather earnest curate, paid her frequent visits at the schoolhouse, teaching her lessons for her when she was indisposed, and was soon calling at her cottage once a week, when they would take tea together and discuss the parish news and the books they had been reading. Charlotte looked forward to his visits, even if his conversation was a little on the dull side. Soon his visits became more and more frequent, and at the end of six months he made her a proposal of marriage. It was not a terribly romantic proposal, conducted as it was over tea and biscuits, and laying out the advantages to both parties of the match, but Charlotte accepted, well aware by now that this was most probably the one and only proposal she was ever likely to receive. She was a doting aunt to her nieces and nephews, but she wanted a child of her own. Someone to love, who loved her unconditionally, someone who might fill the still gaping hole in her fractured heart.

The couple were married by Reverend Collins in the local parish church in the month of July 1818. There was no honeymoon, but it was agreed that Mr Grant, who had previously lived in lodgings in the village, would move into Charlotte's rented cottage. Within a very short space of time, the new Mrs Grant was with child, and was delivered of a daughter, Molly, ten months to the day from her marriage. Her happiness was now complete.