Joanna Trollope - Sense & Sensibility

Belle drained her coffee. ‘Then he’d be at complete odds with my Marianne. And me for that matter. We believe in the love of a life, you see.’

Mary kissed the baby. ‘Well, I’ve got that, haven’t I, four times over!’

Belle waited a moment. She said, ‘I rather meant men.’

Mary smiled at her. ‘Bill would say that Marianne is young yet. And he loves a young mind. That’s why he adores the children so.’

Belle put her coffee cup down. ‘Well,’ she said, smiling back in a way that was not entirely natural, ‘there’s young and young, isn’t there? And to my mind, the young man who brought Marianne home and wouldn’t be thanked is pretty close to perfection.’

‘And to hers too?’

‘Her what?’

‘Is John Willoughby, in Marianne’s mind, pretty close to perfection?’

Belle got off her stool with less grace than she had intended. She extended a finger to the baby, who regarded it and turned away. ‘I think’, she said in a tone designed to discourage any disagreement, ‘that the feeling between Marianne and John Willoughby is mutual.’

‘After two days!’ Mary cried.

Belle took a step away.

‘Sometimes,’ she said loftily, ‘it is only a matter of recognition. Time means nothing. Nothing at all.’

‘I’ve known Bill Brandon for years,’ Peter Austen said. He had a neat grey beard and was wearing an equally neat open-necked denim shirt. ‘He’s been – well, wonderful to my family.’ He cleared his throat and looked briefly at the smooth white expanse of his desktop. Then he smiled again at Elinor. ‘You probably know what he does. At Delaford.’

‘Yes, a little, he doesn’t really …’

‘No,’ Peter Austen said. ‘He doesn’t talk about it. But he’s helped a lot of us, and saved more than a few. My boy, for one.’

Elinor also looked at the desktop. It was amazing to see so much white surface with so little on it. Even for an architect. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said politely.

‘Yes, well …’ He cleared his throat again. ‘So, any friend of Bill’s …’

‘I hardly know him,’ Elinor said quickly. ‘I mean, we only met a week or so ago, but he said you might be able to help?’

‘I always,’ Peter said, ‘I always like to do anything I can. For Bill.’

Elinor looked round the room. It was on the first floor of a new building on the river estuary, and the light flooding in from the windows and skylights gave it an unearthly brightness.

She said, awkwardly, ‘I feel really shy about all of this, about asking …’

‘Those who don’t ask, don’t get, you know. Especially when we need help.’

Elinor looked ruefully at him. ‘Which I do.’

He smiled again. ‘I know. Bill told me. And I took the precaution of ringing your college tutor before we met.’

‘Oh my goodness!’

He gestured towards the white wall behind him, on which hung huge high-resolution coloured photographs of various dramatic-looking buildings.

‘We are very lucky, Elinor. May I call you Elinor? We are still busy, even in these parlous times. We are diversified, you see. Community projects, education projects, commercial projects, conservation work, private houses: you name it; we do it. All over the county. I’ve even had the diocesan people approach me about the cathedral. We pride ourselves on a healthy team profile of all ages and nationalities.’ He gave his beard a quick appreciative stroke. ‘I’m probably the oldest director and the only one with a B.Sc. Hons and no RIBA qualification, but I have a way with the planning authorities that has proved pretty useful over the years.’

Elinor swallowed. It was hard to tell what was coming, even if the general geniality was hopeful. She said, trying to sound simultaneously modest and confident, ‘I was only a year away from—’

‘I know.’

‘I loved it,’ Elinor said with sudden release, remembering. ‘I really loved it.’

‘Your tutor thought very highly of you.’

‘Did he? Oh, did he?’

Peter Austen leaned forward, resting on his forearms. He linked his hands. ‘But you need the money.’

Elinor swallowed again. ‘Yes. Did Colonel …’

‘He did. Not in so many words. But he did.’

‘The thing is’, Elinor said, ‘that I don’t know if I’m employable. I don’t know if I’d be of any use. I mean, I’d work like anything, and I wouldn’t mind what I did, but I don’t know if—’ She stopped and looked shyly at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I haven’t done anything like this before. I’ve never asked—’

‘And what did I say about asking?’

She relaxed a little.

‘OK.’

‘I’ll be honest with you,’ Peter Austen said. ‘I can’t offer you much but I can offer you something. We were looking for someone to assist our chief designer, someone with graphic abilities even if they don’t have much of a grasp of building technology yet. And from our point of view, you seem good, and you’re cheap. I’m willing to give you a trial. I’m willing to give you three months working with Tony, and see how we all get on. How does that strike you?’

Elinor sat up straight and gazed at him. The light in the room around her seemed suddenly to swell into utter brilliance.

‘It strikes me’, she said, ‘as completely – completely wonderful.’

‘Fifteen hundred a month?’ Belle said. She was ladling out portions of chicken casserole.

Marianne, at the far end of the table, was reading a volume of Pablo Neruda’s love poems. Without looking up, she said, ‘Won’t that work out at below the minimum wage?’

Elinor took a plate of casserole from her mother and passed it to Margaret. She said, steadily, ‘It’s a job. I have a job.’

‘But to work five days a week for—’

‘It’ll pay our rent. And some of the bills.’

‘What bills?’ Belle said vaguely.

Margaret looked at her plate. ‘Do I have to eat the carrots?’

Elinor nodded patiently. ‘Electricity, gas for the cooker – that’s the tank by the washing line – and water rates.’

‘But artistically—’

‘I am a graphic artist, Ma.’

Belle sighed. ‘Well, darling, if it’s what you want …’

‘I do.’

‘I’m sure Jonno—’

‘Ma, I have a job in my own profession. It’s not well paid but I’ll be learning. He was a nice man. And he thinks the world of Bill Brandon.’

Marianne, her eyes still on her book, gave a faint snort.

‘And,’ Elinor said, ‘I can meet Margaret after school and we can come home together.’

Margaret was carefully lining her carrots up around the rim of her plate. She said, ‘Suppose I want to see my friends after school and not my sister?’

Elinor reached across to put a baked potato on her plate. ‘I thought you hated your new school.’

‘I do. But I might not hate all the people.’

‘I see.’

Marianne raised her eyes from her book. ‘Good on you, Ellie,’ she said unexpectedly.

‘Goodness. Thank you.’

‘She’s right,’ Marianne said to Belle. ‘She’s got a job. She’s doing something for us all.’

Margaret jabbed a knife into her potato. She said to Marianne, ‘Well, I suppose you can’t really, can you?’

Marianne let a brief pause fall, and then she said nonchalantly, ‘Well, actually, I can. As it happens.’

Belle stopped ladling. She looked at Marianne, the spoon suspended. ‘What do you mean, darling?’

Marianne let go of the book and stretched her arms lazily above her head. She said carelessly, ‘I saw Wills today.’

‘Oh, we know …’

‘You amaze me!’

‘What a surprise, darling.’

‘And he said—’ Marianne stopped.

‘What? What did he say?’

‘And he said,’ Marianne repeated, her head thrown back, gazing at her raised hands, ‘he said – that he was going to give me a car.’

Margaret dropped her knife with a clatter. ‘Wow!’

‘A car!’

‘M,’ Elinor said earnestly, leaning forward, ‘he can’t. You can’t—’

Marianne lowered her arms and regarded her sister. ‘Why can’t we?’

‘You can’t drive,’ Margaret said.

‘I can learn.’

‘You can’t accept a car from Wills,’ Elinor said.

Belle put the spoon down. ‘So romantic,’ she said, ‘but he shouldn’t. Really, he shouldn’t.’

Margaret picked up her knife again and reached for the butter. ‘What kind of car?’

‘An Alfa Romeo Spider,’ Marianne said airily. ‘Series 4. A design classic.’

Margaret jumped to her feet. ‘I’m going to look it up. I bet it’s worth megabucks.’

‘Sit down, darling!’ Belle said sharply. Then she looked at Marianne. ‘It’s very sweet of him …’

Marianne smiled to herself. She said, ‘Typical, really, the grand gesture but something that we really need, too. It was his twenty-first present from Aunt Jane. So sweet! It’s been on blocks in the garage at Allenham for ages, ever since he got the Aston. He says it’s perfect for me.’

Belle glanced at Elinor. Then she said to Marianne, ‘Dear one …’

‘He’s so wonderful,’ Marianne said.

‘Yes, darling. Yes, he is. But before Elinor says it, I have to put a bit of a dampener on things and say we can’t afford it.’

Marianne’s head jerked up. ‘What’s to afford? He’s giving me a car!’

‘We’d have to insure it,’ Elinor said. ‘And tax it and fuel it. And you would need driving lessons.’

‘Thomas will teach me!’

‘No,’ Belle said, quietly but firmly.

‘But we need a car!’

‘A sensible, dull car,’ Elinor said. ‘Not a sports car that only fits two people and no luggage.’

‘You are just so sad,’ Margaret said crossly.

Marianne bit her lip. She looked at her mother and her older sister. She said quietly, to Elinor, ‘What would it cost?’

Elinor reached along the table to take her hand. ‘Don’t know. But maybe a couple of thousand. A year, I mean.’

Marianne squeezed her sister’s hand briefly and let it go. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I can’t have it then, can I?’

‘No. Sorry, babe.’

Marianne sat up straighter. ‘If we can’t afford it …’

‘And’, Belle said unwisely, ‘it might be a bit much, you know. As a present, I mean. It’s the kind of thing you get given when – well, when you get engaged, or something.’

Marianne stood up slowly, ignoring her supper, and picked up her phone, holding it hard against her. She moved towards the door and, as she left the room, she turned long enough to say, almost triumphantly, ‘Well, what would you know, anyway, about that?’

Margaret could see, from the line of light visible under her door, that Marianne was not yet asleep. She herself had been doing what was strictly forbidden after bedtime, which was going online, with her laptop under the duvet, and looking up all the random things that suggested themselves to her, so seductively beyond the confines of her own circumstances. Tonight, fired up and fed up with her family’s attitude to Wills’s glittering offer – much enhanced, in Margaret’s eyes, by the forceful glamour of his personality – she had found a website which gave valuations for, it said, cars for the connoisseurs.

She tapped with one fingernail on Marianne’s door. Marianne called, ‘Ellie?’

Margaret pushed the door open far enough to reveal her face. ‘It’s me.’

Marianne was sitting up in bed with her phone, her thumbs poised, mid text. She said sternly, ‘Mags, you should be asleep.’

Margaret eeled into the room and settled on Marianne’s bed. ‘Who are you texting?’

‘Guess.’

‘Why don’t you ring him?’

‘I do.’

‘Does he ring you?’

‘He can’t, staying with Aunt Jane.’

‘Yes, he can – he can go somewhere.’

‘Mags,’ Marianne said loftily, ‘he’s very respectful of Aunt Jane and what he owes her and how he has to give her his company and attention. So it’s better for me to text him while he’s at Allenham.’

Margaret craned to see the screen on Marianne’s phone. ‘That’s more like an essay than a text.’

Marianne laid the phone face down on her duvet. ‘Why, exactly, did you come in?’ she said.

Margaret wriggled a little. ‘That car …’

‘What car?’

‘The one you can’t have.’

Marianne tried to look indifferent. ‘What of it?’

Margaret leaned forward. ‘It’s worth over seven thousand pounds!’

‘How do you know?’