Joanna Trollope - Sense & Sensibility

Elinor looked down into her coffee. ‘I’ll text him. I’ll text him your number and tell him to ring you.’

‘And Mrs J.?’

‘What about Mrs J.?’

‘Will you tell her that even if I haven’t proposed to you, I have made a proposal that might benefit her goddaughter?’

Elinor smiled broadly at him. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes. I’d like to do that.’

‘It’s Ed,’ Edward Ferrars said Elinor, sitting in the orange car waiting for Margaret to come out of school, her phone clamped to her ear, stared straight ahead.

‘Hello,’ she said flatly.

‘I got your text.’

‘Yes.’

‘Something – something about ringing Bill Brandon?’

Elinor tried not to sound too wooden. ‘Yes. He asked me to give you his number. He asked me to ask you to call him.’

Edward said diffidently, ‘Do – do you know why?’

She let a small pause fall, and then she said, ‘Yes.’

‘Elinor?’ he said. ‘Elinor, can you tell me why?’

She closed her eyes briefly. Then she opened them and made herself smile, so that he would hear the warmth in her voice. ‘He wants to offer you a job.’

There was a stunned silence.

Then Edward said, incredulously, ‘He wants to offer me a job?’

‘Yes. At Delaford.’

Edward said, with real feeling, ‘I would adore to work at Delaford.’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said, ‘I know.’

‘But I – I’m not really qualified.’

‘I think he’s looking for qualities not qualifications.’

‘Oh, wow,’ Edward said. His voice was shaking. ‘Oh, wow. Did he say—’

‘Ring him. Ring him and ask.’

‘Ellie?’

She put a hand up to her mouth. He’d called her ‘Ellie’. ‘Ellie,’ Edward said again, ‘did – did Bill talk to you about this?’

She took her hand away. ‘Yes.’

‘Did he ask you if – if you thought I’d like it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And he knew, and so did you, that I don’t have a job and nor does Lucy, really?’

‘Yes.’

‘And – and you – you didn’t stand in my way? You said you’d pass his number on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh my God,’ Edward said. His voice was now really unsteady. ‘Oh, Ellie.’

She could see Margaret now, dawdling out of the school gates, fifty yards away, bent sideways by the weight of her bag.

‘You’d have done the same,’ Elinor said. ‘Get on and ring him.’

‘He’s so generous. He’s amazing. So – so are you.’

‘Get on and thank him, Edward.’

‘Ellie—’

‘I’ve got to go. Margaret’s here, I’m picking her up.’

‘Mags?’ Edward said, almost longingly.

The car door opened. ‘Bye,’ Elinor said. ‘Bye. Good luck,’ and clicked her phone off.

Margaret crashed into the passenger seat. ‘I hate this car.’

‘I know.’

‘Who were you talking to?’

Elinor leaned across to drop her phone into her bag in the well by Margaret’s feet. ‘Someone who I won’t see again, till he’s married,’ she said. ‘And I do not, not, want to talk about it.’

Margaret put her seat belt on. She gave a theatrical shrug. ‘Whatever,’ she said.

‘Now,’ Belle said, folding her arms. ‘Now. What is going on?’

Elinor busied herself with the kettle, her back to her mother.

‘And don’t say nothing,’ Belle said.

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘I have Abi on the phone saying Bill is fantastic and Lucy is so happy, and then John saying Fanny is too upset still to be happy about anything, and they think Bill’s offer is very strange, to say the least, and then Jonno rings to say Mary saw Robert Ferrars having a very cosy dinner with the Morton girl Ed was supposed to marry, and then you come in, cool as a cucumber, and won’t tell me anything!’

Elinor began to look for mugs. She said steadily, ‘I will tell you. I was going to. I just need tea.’

‘I’ll make tea,’ Belle said. ‘You talk. Where’s Mags?’

‘She went up to her room.’

‘Is she all right?’

‘She got seventy per cent for her biology.’

‘But that’s wonderful!’

‘Ma—’

‘Sit down. Tell me. Tea tea or a herbal?’

Elinor sat down by the kitchen table and leaned on it. She said, ‘Ma, Bill’s offered Ed a job at Delaford.’

Belle swung round from the kettle, her mouth agape. ‘Darling! He never! How wonderful. Or is it?’

‘Oh, I think it is. It’s the kind of human, helpful job he might be just brilliant at.’

‘And Miss Lucy?’

‘Well,’ Elinor said, ‘I don’t imagine either human or helpful is exactly on her wish list, do you? But she’d like the status of the house and Bill’s connections and all that.’

Belle poured boiling water into Elinor’s mug. ‘And you, darling?’

‘I’m fine with it, Ma. I told you I am OK and I am not discussing it further.’

‘But it’s so sad for you. We all thought—’

‘Ma!’

Belle put Elinor’s mug on the table in front of her. She said, ‘That explains John.’

‘What does?’

‘Bill offering Ed a job. It completely explains John. I couldn’t think why he was ringing – he never rings – and then I couldn’t think what he was on about, Fanny this, Fanny that, Fanny so hurt and betrayed, and her mother such a marvellous mother, and them both being so brave when they heard about Ed and how we ought to know how brave they were even though we mustn’t even mention the subject because it is so painful for both of them. And d’you know what?’

‘No,’ Elinor said. She blew into her tea.

‘D’you know what John said? What he had the nerve to say?’

‘Nothing’, Elinor said, ‘would surprise me.’

‘He said,’ Belle said, ‘he said that Fanny was so appalled by his choosing the Steele girl that she would have even preferred it to be you! Can you believe it? He said that of course it was all too late for that now, but if she were given the option, Fanny would rather have had you for a sister-in-law. I could hardly believe my ears. I said, “John, you have an absolute nerve to say any such thing after the way you and Fanny behaved to Elinor and me,” but you know what he’s like, he just swept on telling me how brave and wonderful Fanny was, and then said that the only consolation she had was Robert, who finds the whole situation hilarious and did a send-up imitation of Edward dealing with all Bill’s loonies and made her laugh. I suppose he must be very amusing.’

Elinor took a gulp of tea. ‘He’s idiotic.’

‘John said he really took to you!’

‘Maybe.’

‘But he said that Robert didn’t think Ed could cope with Delaford, he’d be completely out of his depth, and in Robert’s view, Lucy is deeply, deeply ordinary.’

‘Ma, I really don’t want to know.’

Belle took the chair next to Elinor’s. ‘And Fanny has invited us all to Norland!’

Elinor turned to stare at her mother. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Not very warmly. In fact, I would describe her invitation as very faint. But she did say it. She did! What an afternoon!’

Elinor said reflectively, ‘I suppose Lucy will run rings round Bill Brandon.’

‘He’ll get wise to her. He’s not a fool. Darling …’

‘What?’

‘Do you – do you think he still carries a bit of a torch for Marianne?’

‘Yes,’ Elinor said shortly.

‘Of course,’ Belle said, ‘I’ve always liked him.’

‘Have you?’

‘Just as I always was a bit wary of Wills. He might have been a god, but there was something about his eyes that I didn’t like. I always said so, didn’t I?’

‘Ma,’ Elinor said, ‘on the subject of Marianne—’

‘I wish she could think of someone like Bill. A good person, a good man, like Bill.’

‘Ma,’ Elinor said again, ‘she is leaving London.’

‘What?’

‘She’s leaving Mrs J.’s. Charlotte’s persuaded her to go to their weekend place. Near Bath or Bristol or something. It – it’ll kind of break her in to coming home.’

Belle regarded her daughter, suddenly sober. ‘Ellie, is that progress?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Poor little Marianne.’

Elinor took one hand away from her mug and put it on her mother’s. ‘She’s changed, Ma. She’s different.’

‘Is she?’

Elinor leaned forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘She’s doing things her own way, in her own time. But she’s trying very hard to grow up. You’ll see.’

Marianne stood very, very still in the middle of the bedroom at Cleveland that Charlotte had assigned her. It was a pretty room with two beds in it and two windows facing west, through which the April sun was now streaming in all its clear mercilessness: spring light was, in Marianne’s opinion, brilliant but cruel. And it was almost cruel, too, to have to look west out of those windows, west towards Devon, where Barton was, where Allenham was, and where Wills had been born, he’d told her, in a place called Combe Magna.

She crossed the room slowly and stood by one of the windows. She could feel a weight of depression settling on her again, despite the sunshine, and the spring garden below her window, and the domestic sounds of Charlotte and her mother and her baby coming from other parts of the house. It wasn’t really the depression of a broken heart any more, but more the recollection of what she had felt like, what she had been, before she went to London, the memory of that violently happy girl who had been possessed of a complete, untarnished innocence of heart, and who would never be recaptured. The girl who had last looked at the West Country with such rapture did not exist any more, and the one who looked at it now was not just sobered, but somehow diminished, reduced as if a huge emotional lung had been removed and replaced by a grim little nugget of disillusion.

The window was open, a high sash window between white linen curtains striped in grey and pink. Marianne folded her arms on the sill and leaned out. The gardens below her were extensive, and even if Cleveland Cottage called itself a cottage, it was an affectation, really, because it was a house. A considerable house, with stands of mature trees round it, and a gravel sweep, and a prospect of hills to the south-east with even a little folly as a focal point, some distance away, a faux Greek temple, which Tommy said some ancestor of his had put up when the house was built.

‘In 1808, 1810, thereabouts,’ he said. ‘We Palmers may never win a Nobel Prize, but we have a knack with money.’ He’d glanced at Marianne. ‘I s’pose you think I shouldn’t mention money, let alone boast about it.’

Marianne had given him a small smile by way of reply. As the chief witness of her public humiliation, she could never quite forgive him, nor see in him the good heart and good sense that Elinor insisted were there. It had been a relief to her that Tommy was not coming down to Cleveland until later, bringing, apparently, Bill Brandon as another weekend guest, and by the time they both got there, Elinor would have arrived too, from Barton, and would, as usual, take responsibility for both herself and Marianne, leaving Marianne free to read, or go for a walk, or generally absent herself from the well-fed, deep-drinking jollity that Charlotte was plainly planning.

Marianne turned to face the room again. She would let Elinor choose the bed she preferred; she would let Elinor take the lead, dictate the pace. She was trying very hard – hard enough for Elinor not to fail to see – to adjust herself, to be less self-absorbed, less wilful, more mindful of what other people (Elinor in particular) were bearing with a stoicism she had to acknowledge, even if she didn’t want to imitate it just yet. She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination. But she was trying, and she would go on trying, and agreeing to a weekend in Charlotte and Tommy’s country house was proof of her real intention to be different. Wasn’t it? She sneezed suddenly, shivering, and looked for a box of tissues. They’d be somewhere. Charlotte was the kind of hostess who, even with a new baby, would never overlook the details.

The tissues were there, of course, hidden in a white wicker cube in the bathroom, beside a graded pile of snowy towels and a new cake of pink soap shaped like an egg. Marianne snatched a handful from the box and blew hard. Maybe it wasn’t depression she was feeling but something altogether simpler. Maybe the aches in her joints and head were not psychological at all, but merely the physical portent of a heavy approaching cold. She blew again and then put her palm against her forehead. Did she, she wondered, have a temperature?