Charlotte gave a little smirk. She did not seem remotely abashed.
‘Put that away,’ Mrs Jennings commanded her son-in-law, indicating the BlackBerry. Sir John waved an arm at her.
‘Come on, Mrs J., leave him be.’
The man in the doorway appeared to take no notice of either his mother-in-law or his brother-in-law, but instead put the BlackBerry to his ear and strolled back into the room, talking into it as he went.
‘So rude!’ Charlotte said happily. ‘He’s an absolute nightmare! Don’t ask me what he does! I haven’t a clue. It’s all screens and figures and his BlackBerry is simply welded to him. He never tells me a thing. And it’ll be a million times worse when he’s an MP.’
‘Goodness,’ Belle said almost inaudibly. ‘An MP.’
‘I know!’ Charlotte said. ‘It’s insane, isn’t it? Especially when you consider Tommy. I mean, he hates people, simply hates them, doesn’t he, Mummy?’
‘Too true,’ Mrs Jennings said, roaring with laughter. ‘Simply loathes me, especially now he’s saddled with Charlotte!’
Charlotte leaned slightly forward, her face alight with pleasure. ‘And the funny thing is, isn’t it, Mummy, that he’s got to pretend he likes people if he wants them to vote for him! It’s hilarious. Just imagine’ – she held out a plump little hand as if writing in the air – ‘Thomas Palmer, MP on the Houses of Commons writing paper. It’s a scream, isn’t it? But he says there won’t be one single perk for me, not one. He’s not letting me anywhere near the place. It’s just too funny, don’t you think?’
Elinor nodded, dumbly. Margaret was fidgeting beside her. ‘Can I – Can I—’
‘Can you what?’ Sir John said jovially. ‘Escape?’
Margaret nodded. ‘Baggage,’ he said, ‘Complete baggage. Go on then, go upstairs and find the children. Good God, Belle, you’re as hopeless with her as Mary is with ours. Now then, everyone. What d’you say to a spot of dinner?’
‘Well,’ Charlotte Palmer said to Elinor after supper, ‘you drew the long straw, didn’t you! Jonno on one side, Tommy on the other. Lucky you!’
‘Oh,’ Elinor said, slightly flustered. ‘It was fine, he—’
‘He’s really taken a shine to you,’ Charlotte said. ‘Next thing is, he’ll be asking you all for Christmas!’
‘I don’t think so, I wouldn’t—’
‘He adores having the right people. Adores it. I can’t have you breaking his heart too, not with so many broken hearts already round here.’
Elinor leaned forward. She said, almost in a whisper, ‘Do – do you know Wills?’
Charlotte beamed at her. ‘Everybody knows Wills.’
‘Do they?’
‘But I know why you asked me, don’t I! You didn’t ask me just because he’s the hottest—’
‘I asked’, Elinor said firmly, interrupting, ‘because I’d like to know a bit more about him.’
‘Of course you would,’ Charlotte said, laughing. ‘You’d want to know everything about anyone who’s such an item with your sister!’
Elinor glanced across the table to where her mother was drinking coffee with the Middletons and Mrs Jennings. ‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to them, and what they say.’
‘Oh, I don’t!’ Charlotte said airily. ‘I’ve lived with my mother for nearly thirty years, don’t forget! No, it wasn’t them who told me first, it was Bill Brandon. You know Bill Brandon.’
Elinor was truly shocked. ‘Bill Brandon told you …’
‘Oh yes! In London. On Monday. I just happened to see him because I was picking up something in Bond Street and he was doing something pompous like going to the Royal Academy, and we were talking about Barton and all of you lot were mentioned and I said, Oh, Mummy says they’re all so pretty and one of them has already got off seriously with Wills and he said—’ She broke off abruptly.
‘What? What did he say?’
Charlotte put her hand over her mouth as if to stifle a new burst of giggles. ‘D’you know – I can’t remember! Maybe he didn’t speak! Maybe he didn’t say anything, maybe he just sort of looked as if he knew it was true? Whatever. Does it matter? Course not! Well, only to him, of course, poor old thing.’
Elinor said, with difficulty, ‘Why?’
‘Well,’ Charlotte said happily, ‘Mummy says he’s a bit gone on your sister too. He’s such a romantic sweetie, even if he’s a bit of an old stick.’ She leaned forward herself now, as far as her belly would allow. ‘Tell you what: Mummy and Jonno really tried to cook something up between me and Bill when Jonno married Mary until Mummy realised that being Mrs B. would be less than no fun for me! Yikes, just think of it!’
‘Did you,’ Elinor said, hardly able to utter the words by now, ‘go out with him? With Bill?’
Charlotte stared at her for a moment and then fell back into her chair with squeals of laughter. ‘Oh my God, no! He never even asked me to sit next to him! Though I bet he’d have liked me to. But I’m fine with Tommy. He’s such a hoot. Even if he never tells me anything.’
Tommy Palmer materialised beside them, his BlackBerry still in his hand. He said to his wife, ignoring Elinor, ‘If I did, you’d never listen to a word I said to you—’
‘See?’ Charlotte said delightedly to Elinor. ‘See?’
‘—so why bother, I ask myself. So I don’t.’ He held out an empty whisky tumbler. ‘Get us a refill, Char. I didn’t marry you for your brains. I married you for your body. As is evident.’
Charlotte heaved herself out of her chair and took the whisky glass. She gave Tommy a resounding kiss. ‘See?’ she said again to Elinor. ‘Isn’t he the absolute end?’
Tommy Palmer didn’t look at his wife. Instead he glanced across at Elinor. His look was surprisingly kind. ‘You OK?’ he said.
She was startled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Thank you, yes, we—’
He smiled. He said, indicating his wife, ‘They’ve got hearts of gold, these Jenningses, but as much sensitivity as hippos in season. It might not occur to any of them that jolly evenings at Barton Park aren’t exactly up your alley.’
Elinor shot a look at Charlotte. She was gazing up at her husband and laughing, with every appearance of sheer delight. Elinor said, uncertainly, ‘Thank you. Everyone’s so kind, I mean …’ She stopped.
Tommy Palmer put the hand not holding his BlackBerry on his wife’s head. He said, ‘They do kind as naturally as breathing. But imagination wasn’t what their fairy godmothers brought to their christenings.’ He winked, very slightly and entirely unflirtatiously, at Elinor. ‘So I’m just saying that you’ve got an ally. Should you ever need one.’
She was stammering. ‘Th-thank you.’
He took his hand off Charlotte’s head and gestured airily with it. ‘No thanks in order. Just remember. Now, Char, where’s my drink?’
From her bedroom, where she was playing a Villa-Lobos Prelude – very haunting, very melancholy – on her guitar, Marianne could hear her mother on the telephone. She was probably talking to Jonno, who, despite having a business to run, rang most mornings to relay and pick up gossip. It was a habit Marianne herself found close to contemptible, and she couldn’t help but remind herself that even if Wills did have a penchant for observations about other people – always redeemed, of course, by their being so funny – he more than counterbalanced it by his intense capacity to share all the cultural elements of life that mattered so much to her: the poetry and the landscape and the romance of history – and the music. Oh, the music! He’d picked her guitar up one day – he didn’t play as well as Ed or as Bill Brandon, if she was honest, but he had such feeling for music – and said, ‘D’you play the piano?’
She’d been startled. ‘Well, I can. But I’d rather play the guitar.’
He’d looked straight at her, very seriously. ‘I’m so glad.’
‘Are you?’
‘The piano seems so much more – more distant, to me. I love the way guitars are so passionate, so involved.’ He’d
bent towards her. ‘Can you feel the vibration when you’re playing?’
She’d nodded. She’d said softly, ‘Of course I can. I can feel the tone.’
His face had been so close to hers. He’d said, almost in a whisper, ‘So sensual. So sexy.’
Marianne gave a little gasp now, and checked herself. It was blissful and simultaneously agonising to remember such moments. Recalling them made her unable to sink into the music as she used to, because the only sinking she longed for these days was into Wills’s arms. She stopped playing and bent her head over her guitar. Here came the tears again, a release but also accompanied by waves of misery, waves of memory, waves of—‘Marianne!’ Belle called up the stairs.
Marianne raised her head, sniffing. ‘Coming.’
She laid the guitar on her bed, snatched a handful of tissues from the box on the floor and blew her nose. Then she rubbed the balled-up tissues across her eyes and crossed the room to open the door.
‘Yes, Ma?’
Belle surveyed her woebegone face. ‘Oh, darling …’
‘I’m OK.’
‘You’ve been crying again. You poor lamb.’
‘Why doesn’t he ring?’ Marianne wailed. ‘Why doesn’t he answer my emails? Or my texts, even? Why doesn’t he at least let me know he’s alive?’
Belle came two steps up the staircase. ‘He will, darling. I’m sure he will. It must be something very serious, something he wants to protect you from.’
Marianne sniffed again. ‘Sorry. Sorry to go on about it.’
‘I just wish I could help.’
‘You do,’ Marianne said. ‘By being nice to me. Everyone’s nice to me. Even those morons up at the Park who don’t know when to stop teasing. I know they mean to be nice because they’re too stupid to see how clumsy they are.’
‘That was Jonno on the phone just now.’
Marianne sat down on the top step of the stairs. She said, wearily, ‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘He is inexhaustibly jolly. No sooner do the Palmers go – they left this morning – than he invites someone else to stay. Mrs J.’s late husband’s goddaughter or something. And her sister. They are your sort of age, and Jonno wants us to go up for dinner, on Saturday.’
‘No,’ Marianne said.
Belle smiled. ‘That’s what I told him. I mean I didn’t put it like that. I didn’t say none of us could bear another meal at the Park. I said that we absolutely could not accept any more hospitality from them until we had repaid some of it here.’
‘Oh, Ma …’
‘So,’ said Belle triumphantly, ‘they are all coming to lunch on Saturday – minus the children, thank goodness – including these two girls.’
Marianne sighed. ‘I can imagine them.’
‘No, darling,’ Belle said, ‘you can’t. You might love them. They might be just what you need to – to distract you. They are called Lucy and Nancy. Lucy and Nancy Steele.’
Margaret was going home with a new school friend and would not, she said with emphasis, need picking up by Elinor. There had been a good deal of telephoning and need for reassurance about this arrangement, but Elinor had finally prevailed over all Belle’s anxieties by using her lunch break to visit the friend’s mother and see for herself the absolute reliability of the situation: a semi-detached house in a suburban street, unmistakably inhabited by a family of unimpeachable orthodoxy. She had even felt impelled to half apologise to Margaret’s friend’s mother.
‘It’s just that we’re a bit new to round here and Mags has only been at the school a few weeks and …’
The woman was laughing. She patted Elinor’s hand. ‘I get it, dear. No hard feelings.’
But even that confirmation of respectability didn’t stop Belle from ringing Elinor’s mobile several times during the afternoon, so that when it rang, yet again, Elinor snatched it up without glancing at the screen and said almost crossly into it, ‘What now, Ma?’
‘It’s Jonno,’ Sir John said.
‘Help. Sorry. So sorry. Family stuff.’
‘Tell me about it. Just tell me about it. That’s why I’m ringing.’ Elinor felt an instant clutch of alarm.
‘What, what—’
‘I’ve been turned down,’ Sir John said. ‘By your mother.’
‘Turned down?’
‘I’ve got a brace of lovely girls here and your mother has declined to bring you all here to supper to meet them.’
Elinor swallowed. ‘But you’re too good to us. We were with you only—’
‘Listen,’ Sir John said, ‘I’d have you to supper every night if I had my way, promise you. But I can’t shift your mother. And it’s dull for these lasses, stuck with us, although I have to say that they are brilliant with the kids, brilliant. They said they adored nippers and they really do seem to. Amazing. But look. I rang you because even if I can’t shift your mother and Marianne, why don’t you drop by on your way home?’
Elinor closed her eyes. ‘That’s sweet of you, but—’
‘Don’t but me. Don’t.’
‘Jonno,’ Elinor said, opening her eyes, ‘it’s really nice of you, and I’d really like to meet them. But I’m tired. I—’
‘It’ll perk you up to come to supper!’
‘No,’ Elinor said, with more force than she intended. ‘No.’
There was a brief and startled pause. She could hear Sir John giving some instruction or other to his secretary. Then his voice boomed in her ear again.
‘Just a drink, then.’
‘Well …’
‘Great,’ he said. ‘Splendid. Settled. We’ll see you for a drink on your way home.’
Elinor sighed. He had already put the phone down. She laid hers down too, slowly, on the bottom rim of her drawing board.
Tony Musgrove looked at her over the top of his reading glasses. ‘Boyfriend trouble?’ he said.
Elinor made a face. ‘I wish.’
The sitting room at Barton Park was in uproar. It seemed to Elinor to be too hot, too bright and too full of charging children, never mind the noise. There were two young women – dressed, Elinor couldn’t help noticing, with elaborate modishness – on the floor, trying to field a child or two as it hurtled past, and, on a sofa at a slight distance, surveying the scene with every evidence of satisfaction, was Mary Middleton, placid in cream cashmere.
Sir John sprang forward to greet her, a glass in his hand. ‘Hello, lovely girl. Welcome to the usual madness. G and T?’
‘Actually,’ Elinor said, ‘could I have something soft?’
‘No!’ Sir John said. ‘No! Don’t be such a party pooper. Wine, at least, if you won’t have any gin! I shall get you wine. Don’t argue. You know I can’t bear to be argued with.’
Elinor shrugged, resignedly. ‘OK.’
‘Good girl. That’s more like it. Shan’t be a tick.’
Elinor looked back at the riot in the room. One of the girls on the floor, with a sharp, pretty face and tumble of carefully arranged long glossy curls, caught her eye, got to her feet and came towards her, her hand out ready, and smiling. The hand, Elinor observed, was encircled with charm bracelets and carefully manicured.
‘You have to be Elinor!’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Lucy. Lucy Steele.’ She turned and pointed towards the floor again. ‘That’s my sister. She was Mr J.’s goddaughter.’
Elinor nodded.
‘We’ve come for the weekend,’ Lucy said. ‘Amazing house! You should see my bedroom. You could put our whole flat into my bedroom! And the children are so cute, really lively.’
‘Certainly lively.’
‘And she’s just amazing, too,’ Lucy said. ‘Isn’t she? I mean Lady M. Awesome clothes, and her figure! You’d never think she’d had four children, would you? Amazing.’
Elinor looked across the room. Mary Middleton was watching the two older boys pushing Lucy’s sister down on to her back on the carpet, one of them using her hair to speed the process, with no sign that she was other than c
ompletely oblivious to the need for discipline.
Elinor said anxiously, ‘Is your sister all right, d’you think?
Lucy glanced across, almost casually. ‘Oh, Nancy’s fine. She can take care of herself.’
Nancy gave a faint but distinct cry of pain and put her hands to her head. Mary roused herself, without urgency, from her sofa. She said lovingly, ‘Be careful, boys.’
‘Get off!’ Sir John roared at his children, returning with wine for Elinor in a glass as big as a small bucket. ‘Get off the poor girl, this instant!’
‘Jonno,’ Mary said reproachfully, ‘they’re only playing, bless them.’
Nancy Steele struggled to her feet and adjusted her clothing. She smiled bravely, showing long, unnaturally white teeth.
‘It’s fine,’ she said, ‘I’m OK. Totes OK. Mos def.’
‘Nancy,’ Sir John said, ‘come and meet Elinor. Elinor lives—’
‘Oh,’ Nancy said, advancing on Elinor and thrusting out a hand adorned with long, acrylic nails, ‘I know about you! Don’t we, Luce? You lived at Norland, didn’t you? We know all about Norland.’
Elinor took her hand for as brief a moment as possible. ‘Oh?’
Nancy looked significantly at Sir John. She said, nodding, ‘Oh yeah. We know all about the F-word guy! Fo sho we do!’
‘Nancy,’ her sister said tensely.
Elinor looked steadfastly into her drink.
‘We know it all!’ Nancy said. She ran a hand through her visibly straightened hair, letting it fall back into exactly the same shape as it had been before she touched it. ‘We know that your sister’s made it with a really cute guy, and that you’ll be next! Scream!’ She gave Sir John a nudge with her elbow. ‘We even know the F-word guy! Don’t we, Luce?’
Lucy shifted slightly and examined her bracelets. ‘Well, only slightly.’
‘Luce! We do! At Uncle Peter’s!’
There was a sudden squeal of pain and rage from across the room. They all swung round. Mary Middleton was holding her kicking three-year-old, Anna-Maria, and saying urgently, ‘So sorry, darling, careless Mumma, silly Mumma, horrid Mumma’s brooch to hurt poor baby Anna, sorry, sweetie, sorry, poppet.’
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