1.
EXT—NIGHT
A long, slow, ear-hurting rip of thunder, as lightning splits the black sky.
The CROSSROADS. A magnificent CARRIAGE, led by six snorting horses, comes to a skidding halt. The carriage door opens, seeming to cue a biblical downpour. Our heroine, eighteen-year-old CATHERINE MORLAND—bewildered, disgraced—steps down into the mud. The carriage veers off, spraying her with slime. Down the road, lit by a faint lantern, is a miserable POST-CHAISE with two starving nags between its poles. Hitching up her coat and dress, she makes her way towards it.
This is a dream and a fantasy—but is also a FLASH FORWARD to Catherine’s climactic expulsion from NORTHANGER ABBEY.
Already drenched, she nears the post-chaise. Its interior is giving off steam: a chicken can be heard flapping around in it. The COACHMAN turns: his face has been eaten away by syphilis or plague.
When Catherine looks behind her, she is assailed by flashed images of recent events at the Abbey: heavy double-doors slamming shut; a furious, shadowed countenance (that of GENERAL TILNEY); the swiftly moving light of a lantern down a secret passage, leading to…
Ahead, the door of the post-chaise yawns open. The chicken struggles and falls silent as we hear its neck being snapped; also the sound of bronchitic coughing and a terrible hoik-phthook! Catherine peers inside: two filthy and thuggish YOUNG DRUNKS and a brutish WHORE leer out at her.
The sound of HORSE’s HOOFS has been building. It now becomes a frightening clatter. She looks up. An improbably enormous horse seems about to trample her, but, in one movement, she is swept up on to the rear of its saddle. She clings to the broad back of her RESCUER. Like the horse, he seems mythically vast; his top hat seems to be ten feet away.
The post-chaise is left behind. Catherine is no longer just clinging on. She embraces her rescuer from behind, with a smile of love.
Up above, the black sky.
2.
EXT—DAY
The black sky lightens, with swimming pixels of red and yellow. We are on the other side of Catherine’s eyelids. The eyes open suddenly, to painfully bright sunshine. She blinks. She is thirteen years old.
An idyll is revealed: a sloping lawn, stout trees, a large Queen Anne house and many, many CHILDREN.
There are ten Morland children—the biggest family in Jane Austen’s corpus. We should use more than ten children, in rotation, so that we never seem to see the same one twice (with the exception of her brother JAMES). NB: the children never speak.
Catherine is on the crest of the slope. She sits up and stretches. Rather guiltily she notices the dog-eared little book that slipped from her lap as she dozed. It is called The Forbidden Chamber, and there is a drawing of a storm-lashed castle on its cover. She stows her book in its hiding place: a hollow in the base of a tree. Then, with a look of pure pleasure, she readies herself to roll down the slope on to the lawn. She rolls. We see the earth, the sky, the trees from her point of view, tumbling, whirling.
3.
INT—DAY
An upstairs playroom. Catherine is having a solemn debate with JAMES (fourteen). He sits at a desk; she lies on a half-collapsed sofa, hugging a pillow. Two little boys are strenuously wrestling on the floor between them.
CATHERINE
So if a man is poor…
JAMES
.. .then he must marry a rich lady.
CATHERINE
And if a man is rich…
JAMES
Then he must marry a rich lady too.
CATHERINE
Then who is to marry the poor ladies?
James frowns (he hasn’t thought of this).
CATHERINE
(cont’d, feelingly)
Oh, these poor, poor girls…
4.
INT—DAY
Catherine’s POV: a tight shot of MRS MORLAND’s comfortable figure, from behind. She is arranging flowers in the drawing room.
CATHERINE
Mama?
MRS MORLAND
(without turning)
Yes, my dear?
CATHERINE
Where do people come from?
A look of panic on Mrs Morland’s face. She turns and we see her in a broader shot. There are four or five children under the table behind her. And she is at least nine months pregnant.
MRS MORLAND
But my dear…
(smiling, floundering)
There aren’t any people!
5.
EXT—DAY
From a variety of angles and elevations, we watch Catherine running the short distance between her own house and that of MR & MRS ALLEN. As she runs, propelled by her eager young heart, she ages, she grows, she blooms.
A: She runs into her own front garden with a little stack of books—already taller, gawkier.
B: She runs into the Allens’ courtyard with two jars of jam—slightly spotty, slightly sweaty.
C: She is running home, carrying a tennis racket and being chased by two evil-looking brothers. By now she has become the ardent, wide-eyed beauty whom we saw in Scene 1. Her parents are watching her approach from their garden chairs.
MRS MORLAND
Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl. Why, she is almost pretty.
The brothers are closing in and Catherine is heaving with laughter and breathlessness.
MR MORLAND
Indeed. And her figure has more…
MRS MORLAND
More…
MR MORLAND
More…
MRS MORLAND
More consequence.
MR MORLAND
Precisely, my dear. More consequence.
Catherine is viciously rugby-tackled by the brothers. As they roll around, she gives as good as she gets. She is still a tomboy—but only just.
6.
INT—DAY
James’s bedroom. He stands before the mirror, admiring his scholar’s gown. Catherine is on her haunches, looking through a stack of books. They barely notice the children that cannon in and out of the room.
CATHERINE
Well I hope you know how wretched you are making me.
JAMES
Oh, I do. You may assure yourself of that.
CATHERINE
Is there a ball every day at Oxford?
JAMES
Yes, every day. The May Ball, the Summer Ball, the Michaelmas Ball.
CATHERINE
(standing)
I have reached the age of seventeen without having glimpsed one amiable youth.
JAMES
Some young duke will move into the parish, ere long.
CATHERINE
(raptly quoting)
‘Many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air…’
JAMES
(embracing her)
Come Catherine. You have your novels—your Pamela, your Shamela. And I shall write volumes by every post.
He turns: the brats have been at his dressing table and are now fleeing the room. He hurries after them.
JAMES
(OS)
Bring it back, George. Sally, don’t you dare. Edmund!
Catherine remains. She folds her arms and looks away.
7.
INT—DAY
And now she is alone again, in the dining room. Behind her, through the partly curtained windows, we can see a cart being loaded up with baggage by James and a SERVANT. The cart is covered in children.
MRS MORLAND
(OS)
Elizabeth, get out from under—Francis, no!
MR MORLAND
(OS)
Jane, put that back. Stay, Fitzwilliam! Charlotte: Off!
MRS MORLAND
(OS)
Har-ree…
The voices fade.
Catherine is looking listlessly through a stack of solid, rectangular table mats: scenes of Bath. Some are architectural, showing the striking symmetries of the spa’s design. Some are social: assemblies, figures in formal dance.
The external noises resume; but the family is now dispersing. James has gone.
MR MORLAND
(OS)
Cheer up, Liddy. Oh don’t be an idiot, John.
We study the vacant Catherine. Pause. And then she makes a strangely modern face, expressing something beyond boredom: inanity. Then she lifts her head and gives a courageous sniff.
8.
INT—EVENING
CU of a small white feather, rockabying slowly downwards through the air. It lands on a surface of black crushed velvet.
MR ALLEN
(OS)
Feather.
The black velvet belongs to the large sock (the size of a pillowslip) covering MR ALLEN’s heavily bandaged right foot. Three brats hover over it. One of them removes the feather and puts a pin in its place; another is ready with a tiny button.
MR ALLEN
(eyes closed)
Pin. Ooh: button. Feather. Pin.
The Morland drawing room. All are present except Catherine.
MR & MRS ALLEN (middle-aged, childless) are the local grandees. He is droll and obliging, and likes his port. She is empty-headed, and always comically overdressed (with a succession of outrageous hats).
MR ALLEN
(OS)
Oof: button. Feather.
Mrs Allen and Mrs Morland sit erect at a small table. Mr Morland stands before the fireplace.
Catherine enters discreetly. The book she carries has a home-made cover of soft cardboard, adorned with garlands and crosses. Meanwhile:
MRS ALLEN
It’s Mr Allen’s constitution, d’you see.
MR ALLEN
(waving the brats away)
The demon gout has stolen into Fullerton Court and seized me by the ankle.
Catherine has seated herself a little apart. She opens her book with furtive curiosity. On the cover she has written, in a flowery script, Oughtred’s Life of Bede, but it is clear from her flushed throat, her swelling eyes, that she isn’t reading about the Church. The adults’ voices are muted, barely audible.
MR ALLEN
Jenkins is packing me off to Bath.
MRS ALLEN
(OS)
The waters, d’you see.
MR ALLEN
Now. Is Miss Morland ‘out’, madam? She looks ‘out’.
Mr and Mrs Morland exchange glances.
And would you entrust her to us for a month or so?
All eyes on Catherine, who is reading with a hand raised to her lips.
MR MORLAND
Do you not hear, Miss Morland? Or have you no taste for teases and waltzes and handsome young men?
Catherine looks blank.
MRS MORLAND
Catherine. You are to go to Bath.
She jumps to her feet and throws her hands in the air. The book within the book-cover flies from her grasp. She looks with horror at the empty shell of Oughtred’s Life of Bede. SLOW-MOTION. A series of aghast CU’s as it becomes clear that the book within the cover is destined to land on Mr Allen’s foot. At the last instant, a brat seizes the book in both hands. It is a penny dreadful, a (mild) bodice-ripper entitled Leonora’s Night of Shame; on the tatty cover a long-necked beauty, dressed in black, is fleeing along castle battlements… Again, all eyes on Catherine, who swoons.
9.
INT—NIGHT
Catherine’s room. She is in bed, ready for sleep. Mrs Morland stands with a lantern, silently counting Catherine’s bags, packed for the following day.
Mrs Morland sits on the bed looking anxious.
MRS MORLAND
Catherine…
CATHERINE
(tiredly)
Yes, mother…
MRS MORLAND
Now Catherine, dear.
CATHERINE
(suddenly interested)
Yes, mother?
MRS MORLAND
Bath is not without its dangers… My dear, I should like you to make me a promise.
CATHERINE
(alarmed)
Mama, what is it?
MRS MORLAND
I beg, Catherine, that when you come from the Rooms, at night, you will always wrap yourself up very warm. About the throat.
CATHERINE
About the throat. Yes, Mama.
They kiss.
A while later. CU on Catherine in the dark. She shuts her eyes. We see a highwayman, with an eyepatch and a pistol, rearing on a black horse.
She opens her eyes. She shuts them. We see a carriage crashing sideways into a flooded river.
She opens her eyes. She shuts them. We see her thrown over the back of a horse, trussed and gagged, and ridden off to the sound of wild male laughter. She opens her eyes.
10.
INT—DAY
The Allens’ carriage.
Catherine’s eyes: they are now glazed with perfect boredom. Mrs Allen sits beside her, looking contentedly vapid. Opposite, a MAID sits staring into space next to the dozing Mr Allen, who has his leg up in its sock.
Catherine’s nostrils broaden as she suppresses a yawn. Mrs Allen turns to look past her out of the window. Now Mrs Allen’s expression is taken over by sudden and total terror. She inhales violently, waking her husband and causing everyone to start.
CATHERINE
Pray what is it?
MRS ALLEN
I left my clogs at the inn!
MAID
(in urgent reassurance)
No, ma’am! They are stowed.
Mrs Allen flops back into her seat, as if after a major ordeal. Catherine suppresses another yawn. Catherine looks at the maid, who is staring at her and making what seems to be a very frightening face, with much writhing of the mouth and nose. The maid duly sneezes.
Catherine collects herself. She looks out of the window; then she smiles with anticipation and profound hopes, and slightly shivers.
11.
EXT—DAY
The architectural plan of Bath (glimpsed on the table mats in Scene 7) is slowly transformed into the spa itself, from high above. We start to descend, steadily gaining speed.
12.
EXT—DAY
Kaleidoscopic shots of crowded arcades, squares, crescents…from Catherine’s POV. A melee of traps and carriages, many opulent ladies and fine gentlemen, but also flower-sellers, hawkers, delivery-men, urchins, vagabonds, louts, tarts… Catherine struggles to keep up with Mrs Allen, who is as determined as grim death, powering her way down the street. She looks like Mary Queen of Scots as it is, and yet:
MRS ALLEN
How will we show ourselves tonight when we haven’t a stitch to wear?
13.
EXT—DAY
Mrs Allen stares lustfully in through the bay window of a fashionable DRESSMAKER’S SHOP and turns to Catherine with an evil smile.
14.
INT DAY
A FITTING ROOM within. Sitting in a sea of unfurled silks and linens, Mrs Allen gloats over a bolt of muslin. Catherine stands on a shallow platform, being taped and pinned by a young female assistant. Catherine looks stimulated, as always; but she seems vulnerably young in her petticoat.
MRS ALLEN
Yes, but will it fray?
15.
EXT—DAY
A couple approach the dressmaker’s shop, arm in arm: HENRY and ELEANOR TILNEY.
Eleanor is twenty-three years old: elegant, assured, with an air of intelligent melancholy.
Henry will only gradually come to resemble a romantic hero. He is not tall and his face is no more than averagely pleasant. His strength lies in a combination not found elsewhere in Jane Austen’s males: a combination of integrity and wit.
They make to enter. Henry, who has his fob watch out, will see Eleanor in, but he doesn’t mean to stay.
HENRY
Sister. Do not be many hours…
16.
INT—DAY
Within, the Tilneys survey the scene: fine ladies pollinate the bolts and racks. They move further in and pause. Henry has his back to the curtain that shields Catherine and Mrs Allen.
The Tilneys exchange smiles of intimate warmth as Henry speaks. They have had this argument before.
HENRY
A woman dresses only for herself. No man will admire her the more…
Catherine, behind her screen, half-listens to these words.
HENRY
(cont’d)
No woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and shape are enough for the former; something of shabbiness or vulgarity will be most endearing to the latter—
Inside the fitting room. Mrs Allen’s face is again filling with horror.
MRS ALLEN
My gloves!
She lurches through the curtain, leaving it half-drawn. Henry turns (Eleanor does not).
Catherine is not so underdressed that she feels the need to cover herself with her arms, but her vulnerability is clear; it is an unsettling moment—no more than that.
Henry drops his gaze in a hesitant bow.
Mrs Allen, gripping her gloves, interposes herself and indignantly yanks the curtain shut.
ELEANOR
(heading off)
I know how little the heart of man is moved by the texture of our muslin.
HENRY
(following)
…no, sister, you cannot be made to understand it. I could…
The voice fades. Catherine, still a little startled, gives a facial shrug.
17.
INT—EVENING
The sitting room at the Allens’ lodgings.
Mr Allen is alone. He puts down his book and his glass and limps to the foot of the staircase.
MR ALLEN
Do you suppose we will leave before dawn?
18.
INT—EVENING
Mrs Allen’s face in the mirror, under an omelette of make-up, A maid is finalizing her hair. Catherine paces in the background.
MR ALLEN
(OS)
Or do you require a further se’ennight?
MRS ALLEN
(in a fierce whisper)
Oh Mr Allen.
The maid is about to position Mrs Allen’s hat. It is the shape (and apparently the weight) of an inverted bidet.
MRS ALLEN
Yarely now, Susan. Yarely.
19.
INT—NIGHT
The Assembly Rooms and a punishing collage of discomfort and boredom.
Mrs Allen and Catherine squirm through a press of finery into the Ballroom. They can see nothing but the high feathers of the lady dancers. They find a cramped bench. Their view of the floor is largely obscured by a Doric pillar.
MRS ALLEN
I wish you could get a partner, my dear. Would we had a larger acquaintance in Bath. Last year the Skinners were here.
Henry Tilney moves past behind them. He sees Catherine, in quarter-profile, and moves on.
They squirm into the Tea Room. They find chairs, but there are no cups and saucers.
MRS ALLEN
How disagreeable to have no acquaintance.
CATHERINE
Had we better not move on? There are no tea things here.
MRS ALLEN
No more there are, indeed. How provoking! What an odd gown that woman has got on. How old-fashioned it is. Look at the back. Last year, of course, the Skinners were here…
Henry, sitting with his back to them, has been listening. He gives a smile of sympathy. They squirm into the Lower Rooms. Mrs Allen guards her dress against the thick crowd around the dance floor.
MRS ALLEN
Methought I saw Lydia Skinner by the door. I was mistaken however. Same hat. Well, my dear, you shall have no want of company in Bath.
CATHERINE
…Whose?
MRS ALLEN
Mine.
Catherine is feeling the likelihood of this. But now, the blue-sashed MASTER OF CEREMONIES appears, bows and reads from a scrolled sheet.
MASTER OF CEREMONIES
Mrs Allen, Miss Morland: may I present Mr Henry Tilney?
The Master of Ceremonies steps aside, fully revealing Henry, who bows to each in turn. Catherine fears she will blush, but his expression is so sensible, so reassuring—so protective.
In the novel Henry is twenty-five. Our Henry should be nearer thirty, so that he doesn’t immediately consider Catherine his peer. The journey of his affection is from cordial protectiveness to passionate, all-consuming protectiveness, as Catherine goes further and further astray. Similarly she is pleased with his attention—but not yet stirred. He holds out a hand to her.
HENRY
Would you do me the honour, Miss Morland?
They join the dance: formal, correct. Henry’s banter is charming but unflirtatious (with a little eye contact, and no stray hands). At first he assumes a set smile and a simpering air.
HENRY
Pray, satisfy me in these particulars. Have you been long in Bath, madam?
CATHERINE
We are but newly come, sir.
HENRY
(feigning astonishment)
Really!
Catherine is amused, but she is unused to such spirited banter.
CATHERINE
Why should you be surprised, sir?
HENRY
(in his natural tone)
Why indeed? But some emotion must greet your reply, and surprise is more easily assumed, and no less unreasonable, than any other. Now let us go on. Were you never here before, madam?
CATHERINE
Never in my life, sir.
HENRY
Quite astonishing. It scarcely credits belief. And does Bath altogether enchant you?
CATHERINE
I like it very well.
HENRY
Now I must give one more smirk, and then we may be rational again.
His smile encourages her, and she laughs, childishly, with a hand raised over her nose.
Mrs Allen is watching them idly, fiddling with her sleeve. Now Mr Allen looms over her and bends, with his eye on the dancers, to say some words into her ear. She gives a satisfied cluck.
HENRY
I fear I shall cut but a sorry figure in your journal.
CATHERINE
My journal! But perhaps I keep no journal.
HENRY
Perhaps you are not dancing in this room. This is a point in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a journal? My dear madam, I am hardly so ignorant of young ladies’ ways as you wish to believe me.
CATHERINE
And if I do keep a journal, what would I say?
HENRY
‘Wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings, plain black shoes; appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by an elderly fool, who would make me dance with him and distressed me with his vulgar rot.’
CATHERINE
Indeed I shall say no such thing.
HENRY
(leading her from the floor)
I am happy to hear it. For now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet.
MRS ALLEN
Catherine!… My dear, do take this pin out. I fear it has already gashed my sleeve. I shall be quite sorry, though the gown cost but nine shillings a yard.
Catherine attends to the sleeve.
HENRY
A prodigious bargain, madam, at nine shillings a yard.
MRS ALLEN
Do you understand muslins, sir?
HENRY
Particularly well. I always buy my own cravats and am allowed to be an excellent judge. And my sister has often trusted me in the choice of a gown.
Catherine listens, pausing, as she tries to free the pin. She feels there is something disrespectful in Henry’s ironical tone; but she is actually being intimidated by the irony, the brightness, the flow.
MRS ALLEN
I can never get Mr Allen to know one of my gowns from the other. You must be a great comfort to your sister, sir.
HENRY
I believe I am, madam.
MRS ALLEN
And what do you say to Miss Morland’s gown?
Catherine frees the pin.
CATHERINE
There.
HENRY
(gravely)
It is very pretty, madam.
Catherine is half-distracted by a hush in the room, which is thinning out (the hour is late).
HENRY
(cont’d)
I fear for its delicacy…
CATHERINE
How can you be so—?
Austen writes: ‘she had almost said “strange”,’ Catherine mouths it: ‘strange’.
But now the cause of the hush is revealed: the imposing figure of JOHN THORPE is touring the room. Thorpe, in appearance at least, is all romantic hero: high, wide, handsome, but also artistic, his long hair dishevelled, his eyes bright with a glint of wildness.
With a succession of thoughts and emotions, Henry watches Catherine as her jaw starts to drop. Well, he is thinking, she is seventeen. Then he frowns, inspecting himself for a pang of jealousy; he dismisses this, and his expression becomes wry and resigned.
Still referring to Catherine’s gown, and still nominally addressing Mrs Allen, Henry continues (and Catherine half-listens).
HENRY
So delicate—I fear it will not withstand a full season at Bath…
MRS ALLEN
I am quite of your opinion, sir, and so I told Miss Morland when she bought it.
Thorpe recedes from view, and Catherine ‘returns’. She glances at Henry, colours, smiles. As Mrs Allen rattles on, Henry, with a minute roll of the eyes, smiles back. The scene starts to fade.
Image © Jongsma
