Sense & Sensibility

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘She doesn’t know, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, rustling across the room with her Sunday paper in her hands. ‘She’s been so caught up with poor Marianne that she won’t have seen this.’ She thrust a double-page spread under Elinor’s nose. ‘Look at this, dear. The original party boy. He couldn’t be less like his gloomy brother if he tried!’

  ‘And of course,’ Lucy said, moving to stand very close to Elinor once more, ‘that’s all over the social media too. But in a good way. Or at least that’s what Robert will think!’

  Elinor gazed at the newspaper held out to her. Under the headline King Robert – Britain’s Party Royalty was an enormous picture of a good-looking, slightly feminine young man in a tight-fitting grey shirt and trousers, with a fur coat slung over his shoulders, a large silver cross on a chain round his neck, and his arms around two identical girls in cocktail dresses.

  ‘Read on!’ Mrs Jennings commanded.

  Elinor said weakly, ‘I’m not sure I need to …’

  ‘One hundred parties in the last year!’ Mrs Jennings said. ‘Incredible. That’s one party every three nights that wouldn’t have happened without him!’

  ‘Too silly,’ Lucy said, looking straight at Elinor. ‘Brainless. My poor Ed must be cringing.’

  ‘Amaze,’ Nancy said from the sofa. ‘Amazeballs.’

  Elinor took a step back. ‘Well, I suppose it’s good to be good at something.’

  ‘Only if it’s worthwhile,’ Lucy said. ‘Or genuine. Like poor Marianne.’

  ‘She’s much better …’

  ‘Can we see her?’

  ‘Well, I think she’s still fairly—’

  ‘Of course,’ Lucy said earnestly. ‘Oh, of course. I was just going to sit on her bed and have a bit of a girly chat but if you think …’

  ‘I do,’ Elinor said. ‘And’ – glancing at her watch – ‘I’ve got to get the bus, a bus back to Exeter.’

  From the sofa, Nancy Steele erupted into giggles.

  ‘A bus!’

  ‘Good news, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, folding up her paper. ‘Your brother rang, asking how Marianne was. Of course, your sister-in-law had seen everything on this YouTube thing, everything. Never mind her little brother in the papers! How do you have a private life these days, I ask you! But your brother John said he and Fanny happened to be in London for something or other, and he wanted to do something to help, so I said he could come and take you to the bus tonight and have a chat.’ She beamed at Elinor. ‘Wasn’t that sweet?’

  ‘My goodness,’ John Dashwood said, the moment he had Elinor in the car, ‘you have made a useful friend there!’

  Elinor, busy with her seat belt, affected not to understand.

  ‘Abigail Jennings,’ John said. ‘She clearly has a lot of time for you and Marianne, and that’s quite a flat, isn’t it! Penthouse in Portman Square? Not much change out of five or six, I’d say. And charming, I thought her, really charming.’

  ‘She’s very generous,’ Elinor said primly.

  ‘Well,’ John said, turning the car towards Park Lane, ‘for girls in your situation, it never hurts to have someone like her on your side. A sort of patroness, I suppose. What luck, Ellie. You really did fall on your feet, didn’t you, going down to Devon. Lovely cottage, by all accounts, and the Middletons sound delightful. And so supportive of you all. Fanny would really appreciate an introduction to Mary Middleton, you know, both of them with young kids and huge houses to do up and keep up. Could you do something about that?’

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘The thing is, Ellie, we could do with a tip or two. It’s wonderful at Norland, of course it is, but I can’t describe to you what it’s costing me.’ He beat the steering wheel lightly with one hand. ‘I’m telling you, it’s just insatiable. I had to buy old Gibson out – remember him? East Kingham Farm? – and of course he knew I needed the land because it always was Norland’s, in the past, so he had me over an absolute barrel. And what with rewiring and replumbing the whole house, never mind this amazing new reed bed sewage system that Fanny was quite right to insist on – the Prince of Wales has one at Highgrove, you know, state-of-the-art eco everything – it’s been non-stop cheque-writing, I don’t mind telling you.’

  Elinor cleared her throat. She said, ‘How is Harry?’

  ‘Oh, on top form. Absolutely jet-propelled. We took him to the zoo and then he had a day with Granny. Well, we all had a day with Granny because he’s a bit of a handful on his own, and if you hadn’t been going back tonight – what is this job thing you’ve got in Exeter, anyway? – I’d have asked you to give Fanny a bit of a break from Harry because she is simply exhausted, being such a completely hands-on, conscientious mum.’

  ‘I’d love to see him.’

  ‘Talking of seeing people,’ John said, swerving round Hyde Park Corner, ‘I hear you are very definitely seeing someone!’

  Elinor tensed. ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Not what I hear!’ John said triumphantly. ‘I hear that not only have you and Marianne – I do wish she hadn’t made an ass of herself over that Willoughby boy – managed to get your knees very well under Abigail Jennings’s table but that you’ve hooked an extremely satisfactory fish. Big estate in Somerset, never been married, solid business going, good age—’

  ‘No, John,’ Elinor said firmly.

  ‘Now, I know your modesty …’

  To Elinor’s relief, they were now approaching Buckingham Palace Road. John looked fretfully ahead. ‘Do you have to travel by bus?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elinor said, ‘I do.’

  He slowed the car to a gradual standstill under some plane trees. Then he switched off the engine and turned to look sternly and directly straight at her. He said, almost threateningly, ‘Elinor.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want to say something very seriously to you. You may have got very lucky in Devon with all your new connections, but do not be an idiot. If this Brandon fellow comes good, take him. Because it’s no good hoping for Fanny’s brother. None at all. Ever. Do you hear me? Just please use the good sense you at least were born with and put Ed right out of your mind. He is not for you, or the likes of you, most definitely. OK?’

  12

  Belle Dashwood had resolved, as one of many New Year resolutions, that while she had the cottage to herself during the day, she would not turn on the central heating, but would instead light the fire – logs generously supplied by Sir John, and replenished by Thomas – in the sitting room, and add extra sweaters. It was not only, as she pointed out to Elinor, a material contribution to their situation, but was also, she felt, an almost spiritual acknowledgement of Marianne’s suffering and Elinor’s quiet stoicism. It seemed to her that it was somehow fitting to be cold, and that she was acknowledging a need for mild sacrifice that the whole family appeared to feel, even Margaret, who was currently astonishingly biddable and amenable and had, that morning, actually thanked her mother for breakfast, and put her cereal bowl in the sink without being reminded at least four times.

  Kneeling in front of the fireplace – and noticing in what immaculate order Thomas laid the logs for her; well, for Marianne, really, even in her absence – Belle made an effort not to remember Wills standing on that very spot, so magnificent, so gallant, in his damp clothes, towelling his hair. How excited they’d all been, how trusting, how full of hope and expectation, and now all of it was over, dashed to the ground, trampled on. Wills had, quite simply, broken Marianne’s heart, not just by throwing her over – and so brutally! In public! – but also by turning out to be such a worthless person. Belle turned the word over in her mouth. Worthless. Without worth. No worth of any kind, beyond his beauty, and that turned out to be part of the wickedness of him, because it was a deception, wasn’t it, to look so good and to be so bad?

  And he was bad. Elinor had told her something of his badness when she got back from London, about the Greek girl and the money, and she had hinted that there was more, which she might divulge later, but Belle was
n’t sure she wanted to hear any more. She had, as she told Elinor, heard quite enough to convince her that Wills’s beauty was, as she’d always hinted – hadn’t she? – only skin deep. Elinor had looked at her with the kind of affectionate scepticism she’d sometimes caught on Henry’s face, a sort of fond tolerance, which had made her most indignant and extra determined to assert her mistrust of Wills from the very beginning. She was equally assertive in her conviction that Marianne must stay away from everything that might remind her of happier and more hopeful times.

  ‘I’m glad you think that, Ma,’ Elinor had said that morning before she went to work, ‘because I don’t think I could persuade Marianne to move just now, whatever I did. It’s probably shock, the effect of shock. There’s so much for her to come to terms with.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Belle said. ‘Just what I said to her. Poor darling. But she wouldn’t be warned.’

  She twisted newspaper pages into spirals, now, and laid them in the fireplace; then she added kindling, which Thomas had left arranged as carefully as breadsticks in a wicker basket. Marianne was impulsive to the point of wilfulness, entirely certain that what had captured her imagination needed no other justification for providing the obvious, indeed the only, course of action. It was wonderful and terrible to see the consequences of Marianne’s predilection for allowing emotion to prevail over everything, and it was also alarmingly familiar. Belle leaned forward to place a few small, split logs on to her wigwam of paper and wood. Marianne was just as she had been, and, if she was truthful with herself, was still very capable of being. She sat back on her heels and dusted her hands off against one another. But admitting that, she assured herself stoutly, did not in any way diminish the fact that she had been suspicious of Wills from the start. Who wouldn’t be, faced with such utter male glory? It wasn’t natural, it really wasn’t, for a man to be as good-looking as that.

  The landline telephone began to ring from the kitchen. Belle scrambled to her feet and hurried to answer it.

  ‘It’s Mary,’ Mary Middleton said in her unengaged way.

  ‘Oh, Mary.’

  ‘Awful day.’

  ‘Well, I suppose—’

  ‘I hate this time of year in the country. Thank goodness the boys are all at day school now, and Anna-Maria’s doing three days at nursery. It means Baby and I can keep scooting up to London. A lifesaver.’

  Belle leaned against the kitchen table. Outside the window, the rain fell noisily into the small paved yard in which the rotary clothesline was planted, and dripping. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘I thought I’d better ring you,’ Mary said. ‘To let you know that I’ve met your sister-in-law, in London.’

  ‘Fanny!’

  ‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘Her Harry and my William are about the same age. And of course, she’s got Norland.’

  Belle straightened a little. She said crisply, ‘Indeed she has.’

  ‘It sounds lovely.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Well,’ Mary said, in the tone of one who had been instructed to pass on information which they, personally, saw no need to share, ‘we’ve all been asked to dinner at Fanny’s, next weekend. Jonno thought you should know, for some reason. Perhaps because the girls have been asked too.’

  ‘The girls?’

  ‘Elinor,’ Mary said, ‘and Marianne. And Lucy and Nancy. We’ll be swamped with girls. At least Bill’s coming too. It’s so great he can be relied on not to mind being the universal man.’

  Belle closed her eyes. She took a deep breath. She said, ‘I’m not sure Marianne will be well enough.’

  ‘Oh?’ Mary said. ‘Won’t she? Isn’t the best remedy for a broken heart to accept every invitation going?’

  ‘It’s not her heart, Mary, it’s her asthma.’

  ‘I don’t think the Dashwoods have any dogs in London. It’s a house somewhere near Harley Street.’

  ‘I know perfectly well where my stepson and his wife live in London, Mary, thank you. And dogs are not, this time, the problem.’

  ‘Oh, I thought—’

  ‘Mary,’ Belle demanded, ‘have you any idea of the complete waste of space that John Willoughby has turned out to be?’

  There was short a silence on the other end of the line, and then Mary said, ‘Jonno says he’ll never speak to him again, and he never says that about anyone.’

  ‘Good. And you?’

  Mary said, with more energy, ‘He never took any notice of the children when he was here. He paid more attention to the dogs than my children, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  ‘Will you tell Elinor?’

  ‘Tell her what?’

  ‘Will you tell Elinor’, Mary said, ‘that John and Fanny expect her for dinner, in London, on Saturday? But you’d better not tell her that Edward won’t be there.’

  ‘Mary—’

  ‘Lucy told me that he won’t. I don’t know why she should know where he is, but she seems to. He can’t stand his mother, or something.’

  ‘His mother!’ Belle exclaimed.

  ‘It’s weird, when her house is the only home he’s got, according to everyone. But I expect it’s to do with her wanting to marry him off to some heiress or other, so he won’t be pounced on by a gold-digger. She sounds quite something, Mrs Ferrars.’

  ‘But why’, Belle said, bewildered by Mary’s stream of consciousness, ‘does it matter where Ed’s mother is?’

  ‘Oh,’ Mary said, ‘Fanny said her mother would be there at dinner. Won’t that be interesting? The dragon who guards the cave to the Ferrarses’ millions. Mrs F., and Fanny’s other brother. The one who was in the paper. Belle, I’ve got to dash. Baby wake-up time and we do not like it if the first thing we see when we open our eyes isn’t Mumma.’

  ‘Of course,’ Belle said faintly.

  ‘And you’ll tell Ellie? Smart casual, Saturday night.’

  ‘Yes,’ Belle said. ‘Yes. Goodbye.’

  She put the handset back into its cradle with elaborate care in order not to slam it. No Edward, but instead, Edward’s mother, Fanny, John, those gruesome Steele girls, smart casual … Poor Elinor. Poor, poor Marianne. Why was the world so intent on pretending that nothing had happened?

  The phone rang again. She snatched it up. Before she could utter a word, Mary said, ‘Completely forgot to say that Wills is getting married, or something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t know the details, just heard that he’s gone to Athens. Must fly, really, really loud baby noises from on high now!’

  And she was gone.

  From her sitting room, Abigail Jennings could hear the sounds of Marianne’s guitar. It was, she had said to Charlotte on the telephone that morning – Charlotte’s baby was late now, by five days, and therefore constant encouraging telephoning was required, on both sides – such a relief to hear. Even the dirgeful, gloomy things she seemed to want to play were better than all that sighing or silence. Thank goodness, she’d said to Charlotte, for Bill Brandon’s besottedness. He’d said he’d bring the guitar up to London on his next trip from Delaford, and she was sure he’d made a special journey to collect it, but who cared, really, as long as Marianne had the thing in her hands and could play some of her misery out, at least.

  ‘I never cease to be thankful, dear,’ Abigail said to her younger daughter, ‘that you never went in for having your heart broken.’

  Charlotte gave a squeal of laughter. ‘No fear!’

  ‘These Dashwood girls, Char, such sweeties, but really hopeless. So emotional. I suppose you only have to look at their mother, don’t you?’

  ‘Now, now, Mummy.’

  ‘Well,’ Abigail said, ‘she was all over Wills like a rash. And now the Ferrars boy, for Elinor …’

  ‘Don’t think so, Mummy.’

  ‘Char dear, he went to stay; there’s all that mystery about him just coming and going—’

  Charlotte’s voice dropped to confidential. She said quietly but emphatically, ‘
He’ll do as he’s told.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mummy, there’s squillions in that family. Just loadsa money. His father made an absolute pile, you know that, and Mrs F. will be very picky about the girls those boys end up with. They won’t be allowed to choose, Mummy, or if they do, there’ll be awful consequences. Ellie can moon about after Ed till she’s blue in the face but he’s got to marry where he’s told, which is Tassy Morton.’

  ‘Tassy?’

  ‘Of course!’ Charlotte exclaimed. ‘It makes absolute sense. Property prince marries scaffolding heiress, it’s perfect! And she’s really sweet. She’ll do anything Daddy tells her, so if he says marry Ed Ferrars, she’ll do it. I don’t suppose she’s ever had an opinion of her own in her life!’

  ‘My dear,’ Abigail said with satisfaction, ‘you do know everything, don’t you?’

  ‘Chip off the old block!’ Charlotte said gaily.

  ‘Just think …’ Abigail said musingly. ‘Just think how very, very fascinating this supper party of Fanny Dashwood’s is going to be …’

  ‘Is it on Saturday?’

  ‘It is, dear.’

  ‘If this baby hasn’t come by Saturday,’ Charlotte said, ‘I shall just come with you and have it right in front of everyone. Do you think I’m going to be pregnant for ever?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Lucy hissed to Elinor as they got out of the taxi on Saturday night, ‘because of me.’

  Elinor, focusing on managing the descent from a taxi in unaccustomed high heels, said nothing.

  Lucy put a hand under Elinor’s elbow to steady her. She said, close to Elinor’s ear, ‘I mean, it would completely give the game away. You know Ed. He simply can’t hide his feelings. One look at me and it would be completely evident to everyone.’

  Elinor removed her elbow. She said, straightening up and trying not to sound cross, ‘Would it matter?’

  ‘Oh, Ellie,’ Lucy said reproachfully, ‘you know we’ve got to play the long game!’ She looked up at the façade of the house they were outside. ‘I thought it was all doctors and stuff in Harley Street.’