Joanna Trollope - Sense & Sensibility

Elinor said, trying to sound light-hearted, ‘You’re being pretty unfair.’

‘No, he’s not,’ Marianne said. ‘It’s just that you feel you owe Bill something. Look at him. Look at him now, on his mobile. He can’t even talk on a mobile without looking weird.’

‘The hero of Herzegovina.’

‘The Balkan bulldog.’

‘And master of the monosyllable.’

‘Stop it,’ Elinor said. ‘Stop it—’

‘Oh, look,’ Margaret said suddenly. ‘Look! He’s running! What’s happened? What’s happened?’

Wills slipped an arm around Marianne. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘whatever it is, at least he looks vaguely alive, at last.’

And they laughed together. Elinor watched Bill Brandon reach Sir John, put a hand on his arm to get his attention, and then have to persist as Sir John, far more intent upon the arranging of everything in the back of his car, failed to respond. Then she saw Bill Brandon grasp Sir John’s shoulders and turn him forcibly and say something very earnestly to him, his face very close to Sir John’s. Sir John’s hearty countenance abruptly altered from one of irritation at being interrupted to one of real concern. He put an arm up and grasped Bill Brandon’s sleeve, and then, with the other hand, patted his shoulder. It looked like reassurance.

‘It’s something serious,’ Elinor said.

‘Bill Brandon only knows how to do serious. Serious is his default mode.’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘No. Really serious. You can see.’

‘Then don’t look,’ Wills said fondly to Marianne, his arm firmly round her. ‘It might be catching.’

Bill Brandon was now climbing into the driver’s seat of his car while Sir John and Thomas, with much show of speed and importance, unloaded all the things that had, only moments before, been so carefully loaded in.

‘Go and see, Ellie,’ Marianne said lazily, heavy against Wills.

‘No. No, I can’t. Everyone looks really upset.’

‘I’ll go,’ Margaret said. She glanced at Wills. ‘Don’t you dare go without me,’ she added, and then she dashed across the gravel, towards Sir John.

‘Perhaps,’ Wills said, his voice as light as ever, ‘there’s been a mutiny at Delaford?’

Marianne gave a little giggle. Elinor shot her a look of reproof.

‘Well, if there has been …’

Sir John was saying something gravely to Margaret. He wasn’t smiling. He gestured at all the rugs and folding chairs dumped on the drive, and then he raised one arm and beckoned to Elinor, calling out, ‘Picnic’s off! Some bloody crisis, poor fellow! Crying shame, really it is. Come here while I decide what to do instead!’

Elinor glanced at Marianne. She said, ‘Go on, Ellie. He’s summoning you.’

Elinor began to cross the drive towards him. The moment she was no more than two metres away, Wills slid his arm down Marianne’s back and said, in a stage whisper, ‘Jump in.’

‘What?’

‘Jump in. Get in the car. Ghastly outing off, wonderful reprieve and alternative on.’

Marianne stood slowly upright. She was smiling delightedly at him. ‘What alternative?’

He came swiftly round the car and opened the passenger door. ‘Hop in. Like I said. Quickly!’

She still paused in front of him. He was looking down at her with the mixture of intensity and merriment that made her feel she could never refuse him anything. ‘Wills? What—’

He leaned forward and brushed his mouth across hers. And then he said, his face only an inch away, ‘We’re going to Allenham. And we are going alone.’

‘Now,’ Abigail Jennings said to Elinor, ‘I am not one for gossip, and I don’t want to upset your mother …’

Elinor looked down at her right arm, which was in Mrs Jennings’s firm grasp. She had seized it as they all assembled in Sir John’s library (‘The question is,’ Marianne had said of it, ‘not does he read, but can he?’) at the end of a fretful and unsatisfactory day which had never regained its impetus after Bill Brandon’s sudden departure. Elinor had tried to return home with Margaret, but Sir John, baulked of his original barbecue plans, had insisted that they all stay on right through the day, until supper at Barton Park, as if eventual success could be wrenched from the day through sheer force of will.

Elinor was very tired. The day had required enormous effort to fend off roguish assumptions about what Wills and Marianne might be up to, and to restrain Margaret’s fury at being deprived of a ride in Wills’s car and then offered a dank picnic in Sir John’s own woods, standing on wet leaves under gently dripping trees, by way of a substitute. She would have given anything not to be faced with an evening of determined jollity, but Marianne’s glaring absence had left her with no courteous option.

She tried to disengage her arm. ‘Please …’

Abigail Jennings was smiling, but her grip was firm. ‘Where do you suppose your sister is?’

Elinor said wearily, ‘I have no idea.’

‘You must do.’

Elinor gave her arm another half-hearted tug. ‘None.’

‘Hasn’t she texted you, at least?’

Elinor looked down at her arm. ‘Please let me go.’

Mrs Jennings leaned closer. There was no one else in the library – Margaret had been inveigled upstairs to play table football with the two older children – but that didn’t stop her almost whispering, with a vehemence Elinor tried not to see as triumph, ‘They’re at Allenham!’

‘Who are?’

‘Don’t be silly, dear. Don’t play dumb with me. Your sister and Wills have been at Allenham all day!’

Elinor tried not to show the dislike she felt. ‘Why shouldn’t they be there?’

Mrs Jennings let go of Elinor’s arm at last. ‘No reason, dear. If they’d done it openly.’

Elinor took a small step away. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘I mean’, Mrs Jennings said, ‘that Jane Smith doesn’t know that they’ve been.’

Elinor looked at her with real distaste. ‘Nonsense,’ she said.

Mrs Jennings smiled. ‘No, dear. Not nonsense at all.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Well, dear. Jonno knows everything that goes on round here, and I know nearly everything. Mary knows what she wants to know – so wise of her, I always think. But Nina, who looks after the children here, is a friend of Thandie, who is looking after Jane Smith just now, and Nina had a text from Thandie this afternoon to say that she caught your sister and Wills upstairs at Allenham and Wills made her promise not to tell his aunt that they’d been. Poor Jane’s so deaf now that she wouldn’t hear a brass band playing in the same room, bless her.’

Elinor stared at her. ‘Caught them?’

Mrs Jennings laughed. ‘Well, they wouldn’t have been playing cards, dear, would they?’

Elinor stepped back. ‘It doesn’t sound like Marianne, like the kind of thing she’d do.’

‘Doesn’t it, dear?’ With a boy like Wills? They’re all mad about Wills. Thandie’ll never say a word if he’s asked her not to. But your mother …’

‘What about my mother?’

‘It might worry her.’

Elinor took a further step away. She said, unhappily, ‘Please don’t mention this.’

‘Oh, I won’t, dear.’

‘I’m going to find Margaret.’

‘Oh, don’t do that, dear. Jonno was so hoping—’

‘We should get back,’ Elinor said with decision.

Mrs Jennings nodded. Her expression sobered. ‘Maybe you should.’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell you what, though …’

Elinor paused. ‘What?’

Mrs Jennings gave her a sudden conspiratorial smile. ‘Allenham’s a lovely house. But so dated. Modernised, it would be a dream. A dream. And I know Mary would be happy to help – she’s so good at houses. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

‘Don’t lecture me,’ Marianne said indignantly.

Elinor moved to close the kitchen door. Margaret was already asleep upstairs, and Belle was in the bathroom with the radio on.

‘I’m not.’

‘You’re so priggish,’ Marianne said. ‘You’re such a prude. Just because you only let Edward kiss you if he’s brushed his teeth.’

‘It’s not that.’

‘Not what? Not what? Say it, Ellie, say it. Say, “You, Marianne, should not have sex with Wills in the house that’s going to be his anyway, one day.” Just say it.’

Elinor said angrily, ‘Stop showing off. I don’t care about the sex.’

‘Oh, don’t you? Don’t you? We’ve been down here for weeks and not a word from Ed, not a flicker, nothing. And I meet someone really special and you don’t mind at all, do you, you don’t mind that he adores me like I adore him, and that he’s going to inherit this amazing house and that we had this incredible—’

‘No, I don’t!’ Elinor shouted.

The comforting rumble of the radio from the floor above stopped abruptly.

Elinor leaned towards her sister. In a furious whisper she said, ‘I don’t give a stuff what you and Wills do or where you do it. I don’t envy you being almost off your head about someone. I really don’t. What I object to is that you did it behind his aunt’s back, and he knows she’s deaf. I object to the fact that you sneaked.’

The kitchen door opened. Belle stood there wearing an old towelling robe of Henry’s, with her hair scooped up on top of her head in a pink plastic clip. ‘Not fighting, I hope,’ she said severely.

Marianne shrugged. ‘No.’

Elinor said, looking at Marianne, ‘I was defending Bill Brandon.’

‘Good for you, darling.’

Marianne didn’t look at her sister. She said, ‘I said it must have been a crisis about this mystery daughter. And Ellie said it would be something at Delaford, someone broken out or something …’

‘Enough’, Belle enquired, ‘to raise your voices?’

Elinor said, ‘It’s been a long day.’

Belle advanced into the room. ‘Has he really got a mystery daughter?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s just gossip.’

Belle looked at Marianne. ‘What does Wills say? Wills knows everything about everyone round here.’

Marianne leaned against the kitchen table. ‘Wills thinks Bill Brandon is a joke.’

‘That’s not very kind.’

‘But it’s accurate.’

‘My darling,’ Belle said directly to Marianne, ‘is there anything you want to tell me about today?’

Marianne looked up at her mother. Her eyes were shining. ‘Nothing, thank you, Ma. But everything is good. No, that’s not accurate. Everything is wonderful.’ She came round the table and stood in front of her mother. ‘Ma,’ she said, ‘isn’t it just fantastic? It feels so right. I’ve never felt anything so right before.’ She looked round the kitchen. ‘D’you know what he said today? He said that although he knew Allenham was historic and amazing and all that, he really loved this cottage. He said he hoped you’d never change it, even all the awful Middletonisms. He said he just loved it and that he’d been happier in the last few weeks than he’d ever been in his life.’ She clasped her arms around herself in a close embrace, and closed her eyes. ‘He said that, Ma. He said he’d never, ever felt like this before and he’s coming over tomorrow to say it all over again.’

And then she opened her eyes and went off into a peal of laughter. ‘Tomorrow!’ she said, ‘If I can wait that long!’

It was difficult to persuade Margaret to leave Marianne on her own at Barton Cottage the next morning.

‘But he promised I could go in his car. And he didn’t take me yesterday because of all that hoo-ha with Bill and everything, so he will today. He promised!’

‘I don’t think it was actually a promise.’

‘It was! It was! I told everyone at school I knew someone with an Aston Martin.’

Marianne stopped brushing her hair long enough to say, ‘No, Mags.’

Margaret stuck her lower lip out. ‘Why d’you have to see him so specially today, anyway? You see him all the time, all the time, so what’s so—’

Belle said firmly, ‘He asked to see her today. He made an appointment.’

‘What d’you mean? He isn’t a dentist, or something.’

‘Maybe’, Belle said, ‘he wants to say something very particular.’

‘Well, he could say that anywhere. He could—’

‘Mags!’

‘You’, Belle said to Margaret, ‘are coming to church with Elinor and me.’

Margaret looked appalled. ‘Church!’

‘Harvest festival, darling. Barton Church, small community, joining, all that sort of thing.’