She ran back across the room and leaped into bed, whirling the duvet over her head and letting it settle softly round her. ‘Serve you right,’ she said to herself in the shrouded darkness. ‘Serve you completely right, stupid, stupid Miss Sensible.’
One of the advantages of Barton Cottage was its position. Not only were there spectacular views, but you could see anyone approaching: in fact, nobody could get to the cottage by one of Sir John’s estate roads without being visible for the last mile at least. But that visibility, Belle had decided, after nine months of living without neighbours, noise or light pollution, also served to remind her how astonishingly isolated she was. She remembered once reading an interview with a man who had retreated to live on a remote Hebridean island and who, when asked if he wasn’t lonely, replied robustly that luckily he wasn’t afraid of the inside of his own head. It wasn’t that Belle was exactly afraid of what was inside her head, but more that she was rather bored by it. Life at Norland had always been busy with all those rooms and people to look after. There wasn’t a day, she reflected, without more people to feed than just the family, and if it wasn’t guests, it was the garden. The garden at Norland had been insatiable. The garden here at Barton Cottage was negligible, being laid out with holiday lets in mind, and whatever trimming or mowing needed doing was done by Thomas with a kind of park-keeper’s competence that was not at all to Belle’s taste. Sometimes – and even with a convalescent Marianne in the house – Belle would stand at her sitting-room window, between the old damask curtains brought from Norland, and gaze at Sir John’s well-maintained and virtually empty roads laid out below her in the valley, and feel an isolation so intense that she wondered that a booming voice didn’t issue from the clouds above the hills and ask her if she was all right?
‘I can’t spend all summer doing nothing,’ she said to Marianne. ‘And nor can you.’
Marianne was in a chair by the sitting-room window with her laptop balanced on her knee. ‘I’m not,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I’m checking courses.’
‘Oh, good,’ Belle said. ‘Not—’ She stopped.
‘Not checking Facebook to see what Wills is up to, you mean?’
‘Well, I—’
‘Ma,’ Marianne said, ‘I think I am pretty well over John Willoughby.’
‘Really, darling? Really?’
Marianne raised her head to look at her mother. ‘I’m over him enough to see I had quite a lucky escape, and that just fancying someone isn’t enough, especially if you can’t trust them or respect them. I can’t say I don’t still fancy him a bit, if I’m completely honest, but I do see that he was bad for me, and bad to me, and made me far more miserable than he ever made me happy. So I’ve come a long way, Ma, don’t you think? And don’t start crying. Don’t. Just tell me something nice – like what plans have you been making?’
‘Darling, I never—’
‘Yes, you do, all the time. You’re always planning something. What have you got in your little Ma mind now?’
Belle said, sniffing slightly but with an elaborate air of casualness, ‘I thought we could ask some people to stay.’
‘Like?’
‘Well …’
‘Not like Fanny and John, please, Ma.’
‘No,’ Belle said. ‘Certainly not Fanny and John. More like – Bill, actually.’
‘Bill,’ Marianne echoed, without emphasis.
‘He’d be a lovely guest.’
‘He usually stays at the Park, Ma.’
‘He’s been so sweet, ringing to ask how you are. He was horrified when you came out of hospital, you were so pale and drawn. It was pitiful to see.’
Marianne looked up, smiling. ‘Who was, Ma? Me or him?’
Belle took no notice. ‘Well, I’ve asked him to come and stay, and he hasn’t said he won’t.’
Marianne went on smiling. ‘Good,’ she said.
‘Will you be nice to him, darling?’
‘Of course. As long as you don’t watch us.’
‘Darling! Would I?’
‘Yes,’ Marianne said. She looked back at her screen.
Belle went on staring down the valley. Then she said, ‘That could, of course, be his car.’
Marianne refused to look up. ‘What a surprise.’
‘I thought he drove a Range Rover.’
‘He does,’ Marianne said.
‘Well,’ Belle said, peering, ‘this car coming isn’t a Range Rover, but it’s quite big, bigger than—’
‘Ma,’ Marianne said, ‘I think you knew he was coming all along. He can sleep in Ellie’s room and she can move in with me.’
‘It isn’t a Range Rover,’ Belle said. ‘It’s quite big and dark, one of those four-wheel-drive things.’
‘Maybe it isn’t coming here. Or it’s one of Jonno’s estate people, a surveyor or something.’
‘It is coming here,’ Belle said. ‘It’s coming up the hill, quite fast. It won’t be a woman driving; women don’t drive like that – have you noticed? – they don’t sort of gun the engine.’
Marianne put her laptop on the floor and rose to stand by her mother, peering too. After a few moments she gave a little gasp.
‘Ma!’
‘What, darling?’
‘I – I think it’s Edward!’
‘It can’t be …’
‘I think it is. It’s his hair. And the way he’s sitting. He’s – he’s coming here!’
‘Ellie’s not back from work!’
Marianne drew a huge breath and stared down the valley again.
‘Ed,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Ed. How dare he?’
Edward Ferrars pulled up in front of the cottage and got slowly out of the car. He looked terrible, thinner than ever and as pale as if he’d been under a stone for a month.
Belle said at once, ‘I must go and greet him. Poor boy.’
Marianne tried to clutch her.
‘Ma, don’t—’
But Belle had gone, running out of the room, out of the front door. Marianne saw her go up to Ed and put her hands on his upper arms and look up at him. She was probably, being Ma, saying something sweet, something welcoming. He just stood there and stared down at her, looking wretched. Had he, in a typical, clumsy, good-hearted, wrong-footed Ed way, come to say sorry? If he had, what the hell good would he think it would do, with a ring firmly on Lucy’s finger and Elinor’s heart in pieces on the floor? What was he doing there, what was he thinking, if indeed he was thinking anything at all, having made such a massive mess of so many lives?
A flash of colour caught her eye. Down the valley below the cottage, making its lurid way across the park, was Elinor’s car. Elinor and Margaret were on their way back, would be up the hill and at the cottage within minutes.
Marianne hurried out on to the drive. Ed was still standing gazing distractedly down at Belle, who was saying, in a way that made Marianne briefly despair, ‘Of course we hope you’ll be happy, Ed, of course we don’t wish you anything but a happy future—’
Marianne shouted, ‘Elinor’s coming!’
Ed’s head jerked up. He said, almost gasping, ‘She’s who I came to see.’
Marianne looked at him, unsmiling. She said grimly, ‘I bet you did.’
‘No, I—’
Belle gave him a little pat. ‘I’m sure she won’t be cross with you.’
‘And I’m sure’, Marianne said, ‘that she should be.’
The orange car was climbing up the hill.
‘Just listen to that poor old engine!’ Belle said with determined gaiety.
‘Shush,’ Marianne said. ‘I vote we none of us say anything till Ellie gets here.’
‘But, darling …’
Marianne folded her arms and stared down the hill. Ed glanced at her, stepped away from Belle and looked at his feet. Belle retreated a step or two and put her hands in her trouser pockets. Slowly, unevenly, the orange car toiled up the hill and crunched to a halt beside Ed’s car. Immediately, the passenger door
opened and Margaret climbed out, scattering her possessions. She glared at Ed.
‘Where’s the Sierra?’ she demanded.
‘I – I haven’t got it any more.’
‘New car?’ Margaret said. ‘New wife?’
‘No,’ he said distractedly. ‘No. I – The car’s Bill’s. Bill lent me the car. It’s a Delaford car.’
Elinor had emerged slowly from her side of the car, and now stood with one foot still inside it, looking at Ed across its roof. She said, wonderingly, ‘Ed?’
‘Yes.’
‘What – what are you doing here?’
He shifted a little on the gravel. He said unhappily, ‘All this stupid Twitter stuff …’
‘What of it?’
‘I came …’
‘Yes?’
He took a step forward, and then another, and then, in a stumbling rush, got as far as the orange car and leaned on the roof, stretching out towards Elinor. He said, almost shouting, ‘Ellie, it isn’t me who got married!’
Elinor gave a little cry. She put a hand over her mouth.
‘What?’ Margaret said.
Edward said, ‘I was worried you’d think from Lucy’s tweets that it was me she’d married. It’s not me. It – it was Robert.’
Elinor’s face was as white as paper. She whispered, ‘But I thought Robert was – is …’
‘He is,’ Ed said. ‘He wanted a beard, or whatever you call it, for some reason. No, not for some reason. Because – because, oh, I’ll tell you. Another time. And Lucy doesn’t care. Lucy wanted money. They just did it, on impulse, like – like celebrity kids do. For a sort of laugh.’
‘Oh, Ed …’
He put his foot on the sill of the passenger door and stepped up, so that he could almost touch Elinor across the car roof.
He said, ‘I’m so relieved. I was in such a state in case you thought—’
Elinor stretched a hand out to meet his. She said, shakily, ‘So – so you aren’t with Lucy, you aren’t married—’
‘No,’ he said, and his face broke into a wide smile. He made a kind of dive across the car roof so that he could grasp both her hands. ‘No. Thank all the gods. But, Ellie – Ellie, I really would like to be. Please?’
18
Margaret stood in the landing window of Barton Cottage, looking out into the dark garden. She was supposed to be in bed – she was wearing the T-shirt and American flannel pull-on trousers she slept in – and had done a lot of door-banging and lavatory-flushing and shouting, in order to convince everyone downstairs that she was on her way to bed, but had actually crept out on to the landing again, so that she could look out at her tree house for a bit longer.
It was softly illuminated by several candles in old jam jars, illuminated enough, anyway, for her to see Ed and Elinor up there, huddled together under a blanket. She couldn’t quite see their faces, but sometimes she caught the gleam of Elinor’s hair, or the shine of the wine glasses they had taken up there, and if she leaned out of the window, she could hear the murmur of their voices and occasional little bursts of laughter. They sounded very happy.
Margaret felt rather proud of their happiness. They had been absolutely glowing with it at supper – Ed was like a different man: he said he’d been so sure Elinor would send him away with a flea in his ear that he’d felt extremely sick when he first arrived – and Margaret had found herself wanting somehow to augment all this joy and so she’d said, out of the blue, ‘Why don’t you two go up to my tree house? There’s masses of space now.’
Elinor had beamed at her. ‘Oh, Mags! Could we?’
And Ed had looked as if she’d given him a present or something, and had got up, and come round the table to hug her, and said, ‘You’re a complete star, Mags Dashwood. D’you know that?’
Margaret had felt not only a glow of satisfaction, but also a novel sense of having done something both good and useful. She’d got up from the table then and found a basket, and Belle had put a bottle of wine in it, and glasses, and a new packet of chocolate biscuits, and some apples, and a piece of cheese, and they had all processed out into the dusky garden and helped the two of them climb up the ladder Thomas had made. It was Marianne who put the candles in the jars, and Belle who produced the old rug from the back of the sofa, and then they’d left them there, on the platform in the tree, with each other and their future and the ring Ed had actually had, all along, in his pocket.
It wasn’t a diamond, Margaret was told, it was an aquamarine. Same difference, Margaret thought, except it was sort of blue, not white, but it sparkled, and it made Elinor cry, even if in a way Margaret could see was very different from the kind of crying they usually went in for. Elinor kept looking at it, on her hand, kissing Ed, and then laughing. Ed had talked more at supper than Margaret had ever heard him, describing how he’d kept going back to Lucy’s family when he was a teenager, because they were cosy and welcoming, and didn’t make him feel an utter failure, like his mother and sister did, and he’d thought Lucy was quite pretty, then, because he didn’t know any better – ‘Only a moron would think that,’ Margaret interrupted, and he’d laughed and said, ‘Moron’s the word, Mags!’ – and how he’d got so defeated by his mother insisting on him training to be things he couldn’t bear to be that he’d got himself in a hopeless state, on the very edge of doing something that would cause him the keenest regret all the rest of his life.
Margaret strained her eyes to see them both in her tree. She thought she could make out that Ed had his arm round Elinor, and that their heads were very close together, probably touching. It was so great, it really was. Not just because it was what Ellie had wanted all along, but because Edward would be very susceptible to her, Margaret’s, nagging him to teach her to drive. After all, if he was part of the family, he’d have no escape.
‘Are you cold?’ Edward said.
‘I’m too happy to be cold.’
‘Me too. It’s like paradise here, in Mags’s tree, with you. I can’t believe it, I can’t believe my luck, I can’t believe you said yes.’
‘You knew I’d say yes.’
‘I didn’t, I was terrified.’
‘You had the ring in your pocket.’
‘I wanted you to know I meant it; I wanted to prove to you that you were it. For me. If you’d have me.’
‘I’ll have you,’ Elinor said.
‘That’s what I can’t believe.’
Elinor shifted a little, so that her left shoulder was tucked right under Edward’s arm. ‘What I can’t believe’, she said, ‘is Lucy.’
‘Do we have to talk about her?’
‘Only enough to satisfy my curiosity.’
‘About what?’
‘About’, Elinor said, ‘what she was doing, marrying your brother Robert, who is—’ She stopped.
He kissed her nose. ‘Gay,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘He knew he was gay when he was tiny. I remember him coming down to breakfast once, when he was about seven, in a necklace of Fanny’s and a huge hat with a feather. And my parents didn’t blink. Did not blink. They used to describe him to other people as being very much his own person. That was their phrase. Very much his own person.’
‘So – your mother doesn’t know?’
Edward captured Elinor’s left hand and held it out to see the ring glinting by the light of the nearest candle.
‘I have no idea if she knows. But she won’t acknowledge it if she does. She won’t discuss it. She just says he’s unusual.’
‘So – he can’t talk about it, with her?’
Edward raised her hand to kiss it. ‘You can’t talk to her about anything. Except money. Stocks and shares and house prices.’
‘Poor Robert.’
‘He doesn’t care. He lives his own life and milks her for money when he needs it.’
‘But Lucy,’ Elinor said, ‘Lucy must know he’s gay, she must have known all along.’
‘She won’t care, either,’ Edward said.
&
nbsp; ‘She must, she can’t not mind that her husband is just using her as a shield—’
Edward said flatly, ‘She’ll be fine with it.’
Elinor turned to look at his shadowed face. ‘But—’
‘Ellie,’ Edward said, ‘don’t judge everyone else by your lovely and right standards. Lucy is only out for Lucy. If there isn’t trouble, she makes it, like snowballing me with texts threatening to tell my mother we were an item, as she put it, so that I had to text her back saying please don’t, please, please don’t. God, Ellie, I was so drunk that night, and of course that played right into her hands. She’s got exactly what she set out to get, even if not with the brother she first thought of. Don’t waste an iota of concern on her. Lucy’s got her hands on a pile of money, and Robert’s got a cover as far as my mother is concerned to do whatever he wants. They’ve done a deal. It suits them both. They’re as selfish as each other. They’ll live their own lives and probably enjoy the joke of being married. And I – lucky, lucky me – have got you.’
‘But—’
‘I want to kiss you, Ellie, I want to just—’
‘One more thing,’ Elinor said.
‘What?’
‘How did you know you were off the hook with Lucy?’
Edward gave a bark of laughter. He said, ‘You’ll never believe it. An email.’
‘An email?’
‘Yes.’ He looked back down at her, and bent so that he could kiss her on the mouth. ‘She wrote me an email,’ he said, his face almost touching Elinor’s, ‘saying that she couldn’t marry me when she was in love, actually, with someone else. Who just happened to be my gay brother. Who, I wonder, did she think she had a vestige of a hope of fooling?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t care?’
He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up to his.
‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I don’t care about her or Robert or my family or anybody. I can’t tell you how much I don’t care about them. All I care about, lovely Elinor with my ring on your finger, is you.’
‘What?’ Mrs Ferrars said. She held the telephone a little distance from her ear, as if it might scorch her.
Fanny Dashwood, ringing her mother from her new sitting room cum office at Norland Park, raised her voice even further.
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