Joanna Trollope - Sense & Sensibility

Elinor had by now got her hands on both Marianne’s arms. ‘Let him go now.’

‘Please,’ Wills said, ‘just get her away from me.’

‘And fetch a doctor,’ the blonde girl said again. ‘This is crazy.’

Tommy Palmer was suddenly beside them again, both hands empty. He gave Elinor a quick pat. ‘Let me.’

‘But—’

‘No,’ he said. His voice was quite steady. ‘No. Leave her to me.’

Elinor let her hands slip from Marianne’s shoulders. Tommy Palmer took hold of Marianne’s arms, gently and inexorably pulled them from around Wills’s neck. Then, his own arms still round her, he turned her and guided her steadily through the crowd, out on to the landing by the great staircase, and to a group of empty chairs. Elinor, dazed and horrified, followed them.

‘There,’ Tommy Palmer said. He pushed Marianne down into one of the chairs. She was sobbing and shaking, her hair in a tangle over her face and shoulders. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

‘Get him,’ Marianne wept. ‘Get him to come to me, get him to come and tell me what’s going on …’

Elinor threw Tommy a grateful glance. She sank into the chair next to Marianne’s and took her nearest hand.

‘We can’t do that, M. We can’t make him come.’

‘Why was he like that? Why was he so horrible? Why did he behave as if he didn’t know me?’

‘I don’t know, babe. I don’t know any more than you do.’

Marianne took her hand back and put both over her face, beginning to rock backwards and forwards. Her breath was coming in little gasps. Elinor leaned closer. ‘M, have you got your inhaler?’

Marianne took no notice but went on rocking and sobbing. Elinor put a helpless hand on her back and, raising her eyes above her sister’s heaving shoulders, saw Wills and the blonde girl coming hastily out of the reception room, hand in hand, and then begin to race down the staircase, him tugging her behind him as fast as her towering heels would allow. Elinor bent towards Marianne. She said urgently, ‘He’s gone.’

Marianne’s head flew up. She said hoarsely, ‘What?’

‘He’s gone. Wills has just gone. With—’ She stopped.

Marianne looked wildly at Elinor. ‘Who was she?’

‘M, I don’t know—’

‘But he had his arm round her! Who was she?’

‘Here,’ Tommy Palmer said. He was holding out a tumbler of water. ‘Drink this, and I’ll get you a taxi.’

‘Thank you,’ Elinor said.

Marianne leaped to her feet and rushed towards the staircase. Tommy, in a flash, was beside her and in front of her. He held out his arms to stop her flying down the stairs.

She glared at him. ‘Who’, she screamed again, ‘was she?’

Late that night, after the doctor had gone, and the fear of having to admit Marianne to hospital had abated, Elinor went quietly into Mrs Jennings’s kitchen to make tea. The doctor had given Marianne a thorough check and a sleeping pill, and it was the first moment since the awful events of the afternoon that Elinor had been free to collect her breath and her thoughts.

The episode in the Cavalry Club had only been the beginning. It had been followed by a terrible taxi journey back to Mrs Jennings’s flat with Marianne alternately ranting and gasping, followed by an ill-timed and unintentionally tactless call from Belle asking cheerfully if they had seen Wills at the wedding – ‘Mrs J. was sure he’d be there!’ – and then a full-blown asthma attack which initially looked as if it would end nowhere but in hospital. But Mrs Jennings, entirely practical in an emergency, tracked down her own doctor peacefully choosing a new sofa on a Saturday afternoon, with his wife, in Tottenham Court Road, and had him at Marianne’s side within half an hour. He had closed the spare bedroom door firmly, on both Elinor and Mrs Jennings.

‘P and q are what we need in here, thank you both very much.’

They had fidgeted about in Mrs Jennings’s over-stuffed sitting room.

‘You poor dear,’ Abigail had said to Elinor. ‘It always comes back to you, doesn’t it? The price of having your head screwed on the right way.’

Elinor was standing by the window, swinging the wooden acorn at the end of a blind cord against the glass. She said tensely, ‘As long as she’s OK.’

‘She’ll be fine, dear. Gordon’s so experienced. He’s been in practice for over forty years, I should think. Long enough, anyway, to have seen hundreds of asthma attacks.’ She looked across the room at Elinor. ‘I was so hoping it wasn’t true. I just kept telling myself that the moment he saw her again, he’d remember what he felt for her in Devon. He’d realise that there’s no substitute for true love, however big your bills.’

Elinor turned round. She said sharply, ‘What d’you mean?’

Mrs Jennings spread her hands. She was sitting balanced on the edge of one of her huge sofas, as if she couldn’t quite settle to sitting properly. She said, ‘Wills.’

‘What about Wills?’

‘That girl, dear. The Greek girl.’

Elinor came away from the window. She said loudly, ‘Tall? Blonde?’

‘Dyed blonde,’ Abigail Jennings said. She looked at the carpet. ‘Rich as Croesus. Aglaia Callianos. Aglaia means splendid or beautiful or something, in Greek. Their family comes from Cephalonia. Shipping.’

Elinor shouted, ‘I don’t care where they come from.’

Abigail gave a little jump. ‘Don’t shout, dear. It’s not my fault he’s followed the money.’

‘What?’

‘He brokered a deal about a flat. Her father. That girl’s father. Wills met that girl when he managed to get her father to buy this wildly expensive flat. There’s talk of it costing over a hundred million, would you believe.’

Elinor sat down hard next to Mrs Jennings. She said, ‘You’re telling me that Wills has dumped Marianne for the daughter of a rich Greek he hardly knows?’

Mrs Jennings sighed gustily. ‘Yes, dear.’

‘I can’t believe it.’

Mrs Jennings looked at her. ‘That’s life, dear. That’s men.’

‘Not all men!’

‘Well, men like John Willoughby with fancy tastes.’

‘But he’s going to inherit money from Jane Smith at Allenham.’

‘I don’t think so, dear.’

‘But—’

‘He’s upset her. I don’t know the details, but Mary tells me that she’s very angry, and it takes a lot to make Jane Smith angry, especially when it comes to that boy.’

Elinor said, in a whisper, ‘Poor, poor Marianne.’

‘I know, dear.’

‘I want to kill him.’

‘You won’t be the first, dear.’

‘He just led her on …’

‘Typical, I’m afraid.’

Elinor stood up, abruptly. ‘I’ll have to tell Ma.’

‘Leave it till the morning, dear.’

‘No, I ought—’

‘Leave it, dear,’ Abigail said firmly. ‘Leave it till you’re all calmer. Leave it till tomorrow.’

Elinor closed her eyes briefly. She said, ‘I saw all her texts. I saw all her messages to him. It was heartbreaking; she never doubted him, she never—’ She broke off and gave something like a sob.

Mrs Jennings got up and put an arm round her.

‘I know, dear. It’s all wrong. He’s all wrong. It’s a bad, bad business. That Callianos girl has her car shipped into London for the winters, I’m told. A Porsche, with her own number plates. No change out of twenty grand for that sort of nonsense.’

The door opened. Mrs Jennings’s doctor, in his weekend cords and urban waxed jacket, leaned into the room.

‘All quiet,’ he said, smiling. ‘Good as gold. Fast asleep and breathing like a baby. I’ll be back in the morning to check on her and you’re to ring me any time if you’re worried.’

And now, Elinor thought, filling the kettle as quietly as she could, in Mrs Jennings’s kitchen, I would like to think that sleep is possible for me, too. I would like to think that when I lie down, after this unspeakable day, I won’t be so filled with fury at Wills and despair for Marianne that I just lie there and toss and turn and fret and rage and worry. What will she be like when she wakes up? What can I say to her? How do I tell her that that vile, vile complete shit of a man has thrown her over for money? You couldn’t make it up. You couldn’t. Not in this day and age. I have never wanted just to eliminate anyone before but I do him. And I want him to suffer while I do it. I want him—In her cardigan pocket – her father’s reassuringly familiar old cardigan – her phone began to vibrate. It would be Belle, from Barton, still in ignorance of Wills’s terrible conduct; and needing to be told, as calmly as Elinor could, what had happened, not just today, but to all Marianne’s most passionate hopes and desires for the future. She pulled her phone out and looked at the screen. ‘Bill Brandon’, it said. Elinor felt a sudden rush of pure relief that she couldn’t at all account for. She said, thankfully, into her phone, ‘Oh, Bill …’

‘Are you all right? You sound—’

‘I’m fine, I’m fine. And so is she, so is Marianne, now. I mean, she’s OK. It’s OK.’

‘Elinor,’ Bill said, his voice suddenly alarmed, ‘what’s happened? I was ringing to see how the wedding went, whether—’

‘I can’t tell you over the phone.’

‘Why not, what’s—’

‘It’s all right now,’ Elinor said. ‘It really is. She’s fine. She’s sleeping. But I wonder …’

‘What?’ he said. His voice was sharp with anxiety. ‘What?’

She swallowed. She could feel more tears thickening in her throat. She said, ‘Can – can you come?’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dear girl, I’m down at Delaford. But of course, if it’s really urgent—’

‘No. No, of course not. Not now. Just – just soon, Bill. Please. I’ll be in London for a few days.’

‘I’ll come tomorrow. Are you sure she’s—’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said, tears now sliding down her face. ‘Yes. She’s fine. Thank you. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

‘You wouldn’t believe,’ Charlotte Palmer said, ‘but it’s all over YouTube already! Someone must have been filming, on their phone, at the wedding. Aren’t people just the end?’

She was standing in her mother’s sitting room, as round as a robin, her mobile in her hand.

‘I mean, I wasn’t going to look at it, I really wasn’t, even though absolutely everybody was sending me the link, but then I thought, Well, I can’t defend poor Marianne if I don’t know what I’m defending, can I?’ She glanced at Elinor. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘No,’ Elinor said. ‘And I don’t want to.’

‘It really isn’t too bad,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean Marianne looks really pretty even if she is crying and you can’t see Wills’s face that well—’

Elinor put her hands over her ears. ‘Please stop.’

Charlotte gave a little shrug. She said, ‘Of course, everyone’s siding with Marianne. I mean, they’re all sick of girls like Aggy Cally just buying up our hottest men like this.’

‘Charlotte dear,’ her mother said, not raising her eyes from her Sunday newspaper, ‘enough, don’t you think? However riveting?’

Charlotte looked intently at her phone, as if deaf to any implied reprimand. She said brightly, ‘Tommy was a bit of a star, wasn’t he? I just adore it when he gets all masterful like that and strides about knowing what to do!’

Elinor said faintly, ‘He was great.’

‘God,’ Charlotte said, stabbing at the keys on her phone, ‘he loved it. He thinks you are just fantastic. He adores brainy girls even if he couldn’t be married to one for a minute. Hey, Mummy?’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Jennings said, still not looking up.

‘Did you say Bill was coming?’

Mrs Jennings raised her head and looked knowingly at Elinor. ‘So I gather.’

Charlotte beamed at Elinor. ‘So adorable. He’s got a sporting chance now Wills is out of the picture.’

‘She’s very frail,’ Elinor said. ‘And broken-hearted. Completely.’

‘Fabby Delaford,’ Charlotte said to her mother. ‘I know it’s full of all Bill’s crazies, but he’s got that separate house that could be so gorgeous if it was done up, and of course the landscape’s divine.’

‘And’, Mrs Jennings said, taking her reading glasses off, ‘he has money and he’s sensible with it. He’s the only ex-soldier I’ve ever known who has a cool head about money.’ She looked directly at Elinor. ‘He’s doing the usual idiot man thing round your sister, of course he is, they all seem to need to, but he’s clearly got a very soft spot for you.’