Mary Ann tells all at last and Wickham learns the truth about Mr Darcy. Or at least some of the truth, because as we saw in episode forty-five, things are not quite always as they seem.
[Technical note: on the day that this episode appeared, I had to go into London for the day job and as I was strolling through St Pancras (where I’d stopped off in order to grab a couple more copies of Litro 95 from Foyles – yes, that’s where they’ve all gone) it suddenly struck me that I’d cocked up the point of view in the final paragraph. So yesterday’s readers will have seen this:
The two men left the room, speaking to each other in furtive whispers.
“Oi!” said Mary Ann Nicholls, pointing at the cage on the desk next to her. “You two! What about my baby?”
I’ve now changed this to
The two men left the room, speaking to each other in furtive whispers. As they did so, they were both completely oblivious to Mary Ann’s gesticulations towards the cage on the desk, as well as her cry of “Oi! You two! What about my baby?”
which sort of fixes it. Almost. OK, it’s not perfect, but I didn’t want to lose that last joke.
Then again, when I took a close look at “Pride and Prejudice” recently, I was startled to find that Jane Austen’s point of view was all over the shop. You really would have thought that an editor would have picked up that kind of shoddy writing 🙂 And it turns out there aren’t any aliens in it, either.]