‘Edward,’ his mother said without inflection, opening the door. She held up her powdery cheek for a kiss.
He bent obediently. He was aware that she had instantly observed and judged his clothes, and found them to fall short of the standard set by her formal day dress and expensive jewellery.
‘Hello, Mother.’
‘I imagine you’ve had lunch?’
‘Well, I—’
‘I’ll make coffee, then. Or you could make yourself useful, and make it for us?’
He said truthfully, ‘It’s never right for you when I make it.’
She surveyed him again, without, somehow, looking at him in the face. It struck him for the first time how alike she and Fanny were. In a few years’ time, they would be indistinguishable: tiny, immaculate, forceful and hard.
In her drawing room, with its elaborate curtains and draped tables bearing rafts of china boxes and silver frames, Mrs Ferrars wasted no time.
‘I have had a terrible time recently,’ she informed Edward. ‘As the mother of a family, I have suffered acutely. I feel, I don’t mind telling you, as if I have had no sons at all.’
Edward cleared his throat. He was holding the small bone-china mug she had handed him, a puddle of lukewarm coffee at the bottom.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I am here. I have come to see you.’
‘And what do you mean by that?’
He made an effort, remembering what Elinor had urged him to do. ‘I mean’, he said, ‘that whatever either of us has done, or not done, I am your son and I don’t want to be estranged from you.’
Mrs Ferrars considered this. She was perched on the edge of one of her upright sofas, her patent-clad feet neatly together. She didn’t look across at him. She said, ‘I hear you aren’t going to marry that girl.’
‘Not Lucy—’
‘Well, what was all that about then?’
‘It was a mistake, Mother. I’m just amazingly lucky that it wasn’t a worse one.’
She raised her chin. She said disapprovingly, ‘A fortune-hunter.’
Edward ignored her. He had no wish to discuss Lucy, or to go anywhere near the topic of his brother. He said, instead, ‘But you should know something, Mother. You should know that I am getting married.’
Mrs Ferrars turned to scowl at him. ‘Sensibly, I do hope.’
‘I’ve never done anything more sensible in my life.’
‘The Mortons are nice people,’ Mrs Ferrars said. ‘Scaffolding has proved—’
‘I’m not marrying a Morton,’ Edward said, ‘I hardly know them. I have no interest in them. I am marrying Elinor Dashwood. I have asked her, and she has said yes. I absolutely cannot believe that she said yes.’
There was a prolonged silence. Mrs Ferrars looked into the middle distance and Edward looked at his feet. Then she said, ‘Even you, with your over-developed sentimental side, must see the sheer folly of doing that. Tassy Morton is worth seven figures now, and will be worth many times that in the future. The Dashwood girl hasn’t a penny.’
Edward raised his eyes and looked steadily at his mother. He said, ‘I love her.’
Mrs Ferrars made an impatient gesture and clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I am not being ridiculous,’ Edward said. ‘I have never been less ridiculous. Elinor is the most wonderful person I have ever come across, and it will be your loss if you don’t try and get to know her. I wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t for her. She told me that I must make things up with you because, to be honest with you, Mother, three days ago I didn’t care if I never saw you again.’
Mrs Ferrars gave a little jump. She fished about in her sleeve and brought out a small lawn handkerchief, which she pressed to the skin under her eyes. She said unsteadily, ‘You must see the force of what I say. About the discrepancy in their wealth.’
‘I do,’ Edward said. ‘Of course I do. But the thing is, I don’t care. I only care about living with the best person I’ve ever met, for the rest of my life. I’ll be earning at Delaford. Elinor will earn more when she’s qualified. We get a flat thrown in. It’s perfect.’
Mrs Ferrars sniffed. She appeared, if no warmer, at least not to be rallying for further attack. After another pause, she said, ‘You know what I gave Fanny …’
‘When she married John?’
‘Yes. Well, of course you will have the same.’
‘Wow,’ Edward said, with genuine appreciation.
‘But no more.’
‘I don’t want more, I didn’t even expect—’
‘There’s no one on the planet who doesn’t always want more.’
‘Not me, Mother.’
Mrs Ferrars plainly decided to let this idiocy pass. She said, ‘I never wanted to fall out with my boys.’
‘No, Mother.’
‘I never want to stand in the way of your – happiness.’
‘Good, Mother.’
‘You can’t, of course, go back to where you once were in my estimation, but I am relieved to feel I have at least one of my boys back again.’
Edward said nothing. He put the little mug down among the nearest scattering of china boxes and leaned forward. ‘Come to Delaford, Mother.’
She looked mildly startled. ‘What?’
‘This weekend. Everyone’s coming this weekend, to see our flat. Come too. Come and meet Bill.’
Mrs Ferrars shifted slightly and blew her nose. She said cautiously, ‘Everyone?’
‘Elinor’s family. The Middletons. Mrs J. John and Fanny and Harry.’ He paused and then he said, ‘Ellie’s going to ring Lucy. Lucy and Robert might be there. We’re going to have a sort of picnic. In the grounds if it’s fine; in our flat if it’s not.’
‘A picnic,’ Mrs Ferrars said indistinctly.
‘Yes, Mother. I know you hate picnics, but it’ll be fun. I’ll find you a chair.’
‘I suppose’, Mrs Ferrars said with difficulty, ‘that you leave me no option.’
‘Is that a yes?’
She looked at him, quickly, for the first time since he had arrived. She gave him a gracious little nod. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I must just get used to it, mustn’t I?’
‘My goodness,’ John Dashwood said, swinging the Mercedes four-wheel drive through the gates of Delaford, ‘Elinor must be insane.’
Fanny, tapping out a text on her smartphone, wasn’t paying attention. She said distractedly, ‘Why, sweetheart?’
‘Well, fancy accepting your brother – no offence, my angel – when she might have had all this!’
Fanny looked vaguely about her. Then, realising what she was looking at, her gaze sharpened. She said, ‘It seems very well maintained, I must say.’
‘Wonderful trees.’
‘Not better than Norland, sweetness.’
‘No,’ John said hastily. ‘No, of course not. I was just thinking that it all might have been Elinor’s.’
Fanny gave a little trill of laughter. She said, ‘Well, the fact that she bagged Ed leaves the field open for Marianne.’
‘D’you really think so? My goodness, look at the house!’
Fanny peered. She said, ‘What a pity to use such a gorgeous house for rehabilitation. Such a waste. Yes, I do think if Marianne is waved under Bill Brandon’s nose often enough, he’ll bite. He’s a pushover as far as daffy girls are concerned. You can see that a mile off.’ She twisted round in her seat to give the new au pair girl (Czech, this time) the benefit of a dazzling smile directed at Harry, strapped in his car seat. ‘OK, Harrykins?’
Harry, who was staring out of the window, took no notice. The Czech nanny didn’t lift her eyes from her own phone screen. Fanny twisted back. ‘Let’s hope everyone behaves,’ she said. ‘I simply dread seeing Lucy, I don’t mind telling you. And if she starts smarming all over Mother—’
‘She wouldn’t dare, dearest.’
Fanny took a lipstick out of her handbag and flipped the sun visor down to see in the mirror on the back. ‘There is no limit to he
r effrontery, Johnnie,’ she said, applying her lipstick. ‘And Mother has no resistance to Robert.’
The car ground on to the gravel in front of the house. It was slightly shabbier close to than it had appeared from a distance, but it was still supremely impressive.
‘It’s a stunner,’ John Dashwood said regretfully, ‘a real stunner.’ He slowed the car to a halt and wrenched on the brake. ‘And I’m telling you, my angel, that I wouldn’t have minded coming here as Bill’s brother-in-law. Think of that! Norland and Delaford.’ He gave a sentimental sigh. ‘My poor old dad would have been so proud of that!’
‘Elinor can’t possibly cook in here,’ Mrs Jennings said to Belle.
They were, on account of Mrs Jennings’s amplitude, almost wedged together into a narrow galley kitchen, whose end was entirely taken up with a window looking out towards the park.
‘Oh, I think Bill’s going to completely redo it for them,’ Belle said. She had drunk a celebratory glass of champagne she had been handed by Sir John, rather fast, and it had made her feel expansive and confident. ‘I think he’s going to knock walls down and everything. Elinor says we won’t recognise the flat in three months’ time.’
Abigail gestured towards the window. ‘Lovely view.’
‘Lovely place,’ Belle said. ‘Lovely people.’
‘Well, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, ‘I wouldn’t say all of them were.’
‘Today,’ Belle said, ‘everyone seems rather lovely to me. And seeing Ellie so happy, and her and Ed with such a future. And even Marianne—’
‘She could do worse’, Mrs Jennings said, peering into the sink, ‘than set her cap at Bill Brandon—’
‘My girls’, Belle said, ‘never set their caps at anyone. Edward found Elinor in just the way that I hope Bill might find Marianne.’
Mrs Jennings straightened up. ‘Point taken, dear.’
‘He’s the kind of man, Abi, who needs someone to cherish. Like my Henry was.’
‘If you say so, dear.’
‘But I do have hopes.’
‘Well founded, I’d say.’
‘She’s so young yet—’
‘Talking of young,’ Mrs Jennings said suddenly, ‘what about Margaret?’
Belle focused abruptly. ‘Margaret?’
‘Hasn’t she got a boyfriend yet? She’s old enough.’
‘She’s fourteen. Honestly, Abi, it’s all you ever think about. You’re like those nineteenth-century novels where marriage is the only career option for a middle-class girl.’
‘Just like you, then, dear. You and me both. People pretend things have changed, but have they, really? Look at Charlotte. No brains, I admit, but plenty of capability, and how does she use it? Running houses for Tommy and inventing schedules for that baby. Which reminds me. Or rather the mention of Charlotte reminds me. She told me something about Wills—’
Belle said loftily, interrupting, ‘I don’t wish to hear his name, let alone anything about him.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Abigail said. ‘Of course you do. Especially if it reflects well on Marianne.’
Belle gave a little shrug. ‘In that case …’
Abigail Jennings wedged herself into the narrow space between the cooker and the wall. She said, ‘He went to see Jane Smith.’
Belle tried to look indifferent. ‘So?’
‘He told Charlotte, dear. Charlotte has a bit of a soft spot for him because she knows he still adores Marianne. Well, he went to see Jane Smith, thinking she might refuse to see him. But she didn’t, and she let him speak, and tell her why he’d married the Greek girl, and how he felt about Marianne, and all about that awful drama with Marianne in hospital. Everything. And when he’d finished, she let a silence fall, and then she said – quite affectionately, he told Charlotte – that she forgave him. And of course, he could hardly believe what he was hearing, and he was about to cast himself at her feet and tell her how wonderful she was when she stopped him, and said that if he’d done the right thing by Marianne, he could have had hers – Jane’s – money as well as her forgiveness, but as it was, he’d have to make do with just the latter! Charlotte said she expected him to be furiously angry, but she said he was more rueful than angry. He said it was a gamble that hadn’t paid off, but that he wasn’t sorry he’d taken the risk. And …’
She paused and looked at Belle with significance.
‘And’, she went on, ‘he said to Charlotte that although he didn’t love his wife, he didn’t think his life would be all dark, either, that he’d probably salvage something out of it one way or another. But that he’d never feel about anyone the way he felt about Marianne, and if he heard that she’d married Bill Brandon, he’d be gutted. That was the word he used to Charlotte, dear. Gutted.’
Belle took a deep breath and edged herself past Abigail to the doorway. ‘I never trusted him, you know,’ she said. ‘It was something about his eyes.’
‘Holy smoke,’ Sir John Middleton said to his wife, ‘will you look at those two?’
Across the lawn, to the south of Delaford House, came Mr and Mrs Robert Ferrars. They were dressed alike, in cream cutaway coats over skinny jeans and cowboy boots. Lucy’s hair was in long ringlets down her back, and Robert’s was crowned with a cream trilby hat. They wore sunglasses, and they were holding hands.
‘It’s jaw-dropping,’ Sir John said.
Mary Middleton put her own sunglasses on so that she could scrutinise them less conspicuously. She said, ‘What do they think they’re doing?’
Sir John took her arm. ‘Watch,’ he said.
Halfway across the lawn, Bill Brandon had set up tables, under sun umbrellas, laden with food and drinks. People had gathered there, in companionable groups, among them Edward and Elinor. He had his arm firmly around her shoulders and they looked, as Mary had pointed out to her husband, as delighted with themselves and their situation as a newly engaged couple ought to be.
They were not, plainly, aware of Lucy and Robert advancing towards them, but were instead talking to John Dashwood, who, since he was facing the direction of the house, saw the newly married couple before Edward and Elinor did. He not only saw them, but was utterly astonished by what he saw, and broke off what he was saying to stand there, his mouth half open, and his arm, clutching a tumbler of Pimm’s, outstretched in a gesture of amazement.
‘Ellie!’ Lucy Ferrars cried, loud enough to be heard across the lawn. ‘This is so fab!’
She flung her arms out wide, and then swooped forward and wrapped them round Elinor.
‘Big brother!’ Robert exclaimed to Edward, who was standing stunned by what had happened to Elinor, and did the same.
‘They planned it!’ Mary Middleton exclaimed to her husband.
‘She’s a baggage, that girl,’ Sir John said.
‘You didn’t think so once.’
‘Neither of us did, my duck. We were completely taken in.’
‘Well,’ Mary said, ‘that’s not happening now! Look at Ellie!’
Elinor had stepped smartly back out of Lucy’s embrace, and taken Edward’s hand to help him do the same. Lucy and Robert exchanged glances and took another step forward. Elinor held up a hand.
‘No!’ she said warningly.
Sir John shook his wife’s arm. ‘Good girl,’ he said approvingly. ‘Good for Elinor.’
There was a small stir in another group across the lawn, and from it emerged Mrs Ferrars, diminutive and upright in a linen coat dress, her handbag over her arm. She marched determinedly across the grass until she was standing beside Elinor.
‘It might be’, she said to Elinor in carrying tones, ‘how you go on in your family. But it’s not the case in ours. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water. This party is, I believe, to celebrate your engagement to my son. It was at your instigation that my younger son and his wife were invited. So I think it hardly behoves you not to welcome them when they do come, do you?’
There was an appalled silence. Edward and Elinor stared at his mother, mute
with surprise. And then Lucy Ferrars, tearing off her sunglasses and uttering a theatrical sob, tottered forward and put her arms round her new mother-in-law instead. ‘Oh, thank you!’ she said tremulously. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
The sun was setting. From the window of the room that would be their future sitting room, Edward and Elinor watched the shadow of the house inch its way over the grass to where the trees began, on the edge of the park. Elinor said, ‘It makes me think of Norland.’
He put an arm round her. He said, ‘If it wasn’t for Norland …’
‘I know.’
He kissed the side of her head. He said, ‘We pulled it off today, you know.’
‘Even your mother’s little moment?’
‘Even that. Lucy won’t get very far. My mother will do almost anything for Robert, but she won’t let anyone else have first call on him. It might have looked like a little triumph for Lucy today, but it won’t last. Mother has a hair-trigger response to exploitation.’
‘And Fanny—’
Edward laughed. ‘Fanny won’t forgive Lucy.’
‘She was quite nice to me today.’
He kissed her again. He said, ‘No one can resist being nice to you. In the end.’
Elinor leaned against him. She said, ‘D’you think Ma means it, about moving into Exeter?’
Edward said, ‘At least she’s got the good sense not to try and move here.’
‘It would be better for Mags, in Exeter,’ Elinor said. ‘Barton Cottage will be unbearable for Mags if I’m not there, and Marianne’s in Bristol much of the time. And if Ma actually gets this little teaching job she’s after—’
Sense & Sensibility Page 28