Sense & Sensibility Page 2

  And they had. So silly, Fanny said firmly, as if no one could possibly disagree with her, so silly to go on paying rent in London when Norland was simply standing waiting for them. She seemed entirely oblivious to the effect that she was having, and to the utter disregard she displayed for what she was doing to the family for whom Norland had been more home than house for all their childhood years. Her ruthless determination to obliterate the past life of the house and to impose her own expensive and impersonal taste upon it instead was breathtaking. Out with the battered painted furniture, the French armoires, the cascading and faded curtains in ancient brocades, and in with polished granite and stainless steel and state-of-the-art wet rooms. Out with objects of sentimental value and worn Persian rugs and speckled mirrors in dimly gilded frames, and in with modern sculptured ‘pieces’ and stripped-back floors and vast flat television screens over every beautiful Georgian fireplace.

  It was all happening too, it seemed to Belle and her daughters, with an indecent and brutal haste. Fanny arrived with John and Harry and the nanny, and an army of East European workmen, and took over all the best rooms, all the rooms that had once been Uncle Henry’s, and the house resounded to the din of sawing and hammering and drilling. Luckily, Elinor supposed, it was summer, so all the windows and doors could be opened to let out the inevitable dust and the builders’ smells of raw wood and plaster, but the open windows also meant that nothing audible could be concealed, especially not those things which Elinor grew to suspect Fanny of absolutely intending to be overheard.

  They’d heard her, all the last few weeks, talking John out of any generous impulse he might have harboured towards his stepmother and half-sisters. Fanny might be tiny but her voice seemed to carry for miles, even when she was whispering. Usually, they could hear her issuing instructions (‘She never says please,’ Margaret pointed out, ‘does she?’) but if she wanted to get something out of John, she wheedled.

  They could hear her, plainly, in their kitchen from the room she had commandeered as a temporary sitting room – drawing room, she called it – working on John. She was probably on his knee a lot of the time, doing her sex-kitten thing, running her little pointed fingers through his hair and somehow indicating that he would have to forgo a lot of bedroom treats if she didn’t get her way.

  ‘They can’t need that much, Johnnie darling. They really can’t! I mean, I know Mags is still at school – frightfully expensive, her private school, and really such a waste of money when there’s a perfectly adequate state secondary, in Lewes, which is free – but Elinor’s nearly qualified and Marianne jolly well ought to be. And Belle could easily go back to work, teaching art, like she used to.’

  ‘She hasn’t for yonks,’ John said doubtfully. ‘Not for as long as I can remember. Dad liked her at home …’

  ‘Well, darling, we can’t always have what we like, can we? And she’s had years, years, of just wafting about Norland being all daffy and artistic and irresponsible.’

  There was a murmur, and then John said, without much conviction, ‘I promised Dad—’

  ‘Sweetness,’ Fanny said, ‘listen. Listen to me. What about your promises to me? What about Harry? I know you love this place, I know what it means to you even if you’ve never lived here and you know I’ll help you restore it and keep it up. I promised you, didn’t I? I promised when I married you. But it’s going to cost a fortune. It really is. The thing is, Johnnie, that good interior designers don’t come cheap and we agreed, didn’t we, that we were going to go for gold and not cut corners because that’s what a house like this deserves?’

  ‘Well,’ John had said uneasily, ‘I suppose …’

  ‘Poppet,’ said Fanny, ‘just think about us. Think about you and me and Harry. And Norland. Norland is our home.’

  There’d been a long pause then.

  ‘They’re snogging,’ Margaret said disgustedly. ‘She’s sitting on his lap and they’re snogging.’

  It worked, though, the snogging; Elinor had to give Fanny credit for gaining her ends. The house, their beloved home which had acquired the inimitable patina of all houses which have quietly and organically evolved alongside the generations of the family which has inhabited them, was being wrenched into a different and modish incarnation, a sleek and showy new version of itself which Belle declared, contemptuously, to resemble nothing so much as a five-star hotel. ‘And that’s not a compliment. Anyone can pay to stay in a hotel. But you stay in a hotel. You don’t live in one. Fanny is behaving like some ghastly sort of developer. She’s taking all this darling old house’s character away.’

  ‘But’, Elinor said quietly, ‘that’s what Fanny wants. She wants a sort of showcase. And she’ll get it. We heard her. She’s got John just where she wants him. And, because of him, she’s got Norland. She can do what she likes with it. And she will.’

  An uneasy forced bonhomie hung over the house for days afterwards until yesterday, when John had come into their kitchen rather defiantly and put a bottle of supermarket white wine down on the table with the kind of flourish only champagne would have merited and announced that actually, as it turned out, all things being considered, and after much thought and discussion and many sleepless nights, especially on Fanny’s part, her being so sensitive and affectionate a person, they had come to the conclusion that they – he, Fanny, Harry and the live-in nanny – were going to need Norland to themselves.

  There’d been a stunned silence. Then Margaret said loudly, ‘All fifteen bedrooms?’

  John had nodded gravely. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘But why – how—’

  ‘Fanny has ideas of running Norland as a business, you see. An upmarket bed and breakfast. Or something. To help pay for the upkeep, which will be’ – he rolled his eyes to the ceiling – ‘unending. Paying to keep Norland going will need a bottomless pit of money.’

  Belle gazed at him, her eyes enormous. ‘But what about us?’

  ‘I’ll help you find somewhere.’

  ‘Near?’

  ‘It has to be near!’ Marianne cried, almost gasping. ‘It has to, it has to, I can’t live away from here, I can’t—’

  Elinor took her sister’s nearest hand and gripped it.

  ‘A cottage,’ John suggested.

  ‘A cottage!’

  ‘There are some adorable Sussex cottages.’

  ‘But they’ll need paying for,’ Belle said despairingly, ‘and I haven’t a bean.’

  John looked at her. He seemed a little more collected. ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘No,’ Belle said. ‘No.’ She felt for a chairback and held on to it. ‘We were going to have plans. To make some money to pay for living here. We had schemes for the house and estate, maybe using it as a wedding venue or something, after Uncle Henry died, but there wasn’t time, there was only a year, before – before …’

  Elinor moved to stand beside her mother.

  ‘There’s the legacies,’ John said.

  Belle flapped a hand, as though swatting away a fly. ‘Oh, those …’

  ‘Two hundred thousand pounds is not nothing, my dear Belle. Two hundred thousand is a considerable sum of money.’

  ‘For four women! For four women to live on forever! Four women without even a roof over their heads?’

  John looked stricken for a moment and then rallied. He indicated the bottle on the table. ‘I brought you some wine.’

  Margaret inspected the bottle. She said to no one in particular, ‘I don’t expect we’ll even cook with that.’

  ‘Shush,’ Elinor said, automatically.

  Belle surveyed her stepson. ‘You promised your father.’

  John looked back at her. ‘I promised I’d look after you. I will. I’ll help you find a house to rent.’

  ‘Too kind,’ Marianne said fiercely.

  ‘The interest on—’

  ‘Interest rates are hopeless, John.’

  ‘I’m amazed you know about such things.’

  ‘And I’m amazed at your blithe breakin
g of sacred promises.’

  Elinor put a hand on her mother’s arm. She said to her brother, ‘Please.’ Then she said, in a lower tone, ‘We’ll find a way.’

  John looked relieved. ‘That’s more like it. Good girl.’

  Marianne shouted suddenly, ‘You are really wicked, do you hear me? Wicked! What’s the word, what is it, the Shakespeare word? It’s – it’s – yes, John, yes, you are perfidious.’

  There was a brief, horrified silence. Belle put a hand out towards Marianne and Elinor was afraid they’d put their arms round each other, as they often did, for solidarity, in extravagant reaction.

  She said to John, ‘I think you had better go.’

  He nodded thankfully, and took a step back.

  ‘She’ll be looking for you,’ Margaret said. ‘Has she got a dog whistle she can blow to get you to come running?’

  Marianne stopped looking tragic and gave a snort of laughter. So, a second later, did Belle. John glanced at them both and then looked past them at the Welsh dresser where all the plates were displayed, the pretty, scallop-edged plates that Henry and Belle had collected from Provençal holidays over the years, and lovingly brought back, two or three at a time.

  John moved towards the door. With his hand on the handle, he turned and briefly indicated the dresser. ‘Fanny adores those plates, you know.’

  And now, only a day later, here they were, grouped round the table yet again, exhausted by a further calamity, by rage at Fanny’s malevolence and John’s feebleness, terrified at the prospect of a future in which they did not even know where they were going to lay their heads, let alone how they were going to pay for the privilege of laying them anywhere.

  ‘I will of course be qualified in a year,’ Elinor said.

  Belle gave her a tired smile. ‘Darling, what use will that be? You draw beautifully but how many architects are unemployed right now?’

  ‘Thank you, Ma.’

  Marianne put a hand on Elinor’s. ‘She’s right. You do draw beautifully.’

  Elinor tried to smile at her sister. She said, bravely, ‘She’s also right that there are no jobs for architects, especially newly qualified ones.’ She looked at her mother. ‘Could you get a teaching job again?’

  Belle flung her hands wide. ‘Darling, it’s been forever!’

  ‘This is extreme, Ma.’

  Marianne said to Margaret, ‘You’ll have to go to state school.’

  Margaret’s face froze. ‘I won’t.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘Mags, you may just have to—’

  ‘I won’t!’ Margaret shouted.

  She ripped her earphones out of her ears and stamped to the window, standing there with her back to the room and her shoulders hunched. Then her shoulders abruptly relaxed. ‘Hey!’ she said, in quite a different voice.

  Elinor half rose. ‘Hey what?’

  Margaret didn’t turn. Instead she leaned out of the window and began to wave furiously. ‘Edward!’ she shouted. ‘Edward!’ And then she turned back long enough to say, unnecessarily, over her shoulder, ‘Edward’s coming!’

  2

  However detestable Fanny had made herself since she arrived at Norland, all the Dashwoods were agreed that she had one redeeming attribute, which was the possession of her brother Edward.

  He had arrived at the Park soon after his sister moved in, and everyone had initially assumed that this tallish, darkish, diffident young man – so unlike his dangerous little dynamo of a sister – had come to admire the place and the situation that had fallen so magnificently into Fanny’s lap. But after only a day or so, it became plain to the Dashwoods that the perpetual, slightly needy presence of Edward in their kitchen was certainly because he liked it there, and felt comfortable, but also because he had nowhere much else to go, and nothing much else to occupy himself with. He was even, it appeared, perfectly prepared to confess to being at a directionless loose end.

  ‘I’m a bit of a failure, I’m afraid,’ he said quite soon after his arrival. He was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, his hair flopping in his eyes, pushing runner beans through a slicer, as instructed by Belle.

  ‘Oh no,’ Belle said at once, and warmly, ‘I’m sure you aren’t. I’m sure you’re just not very good at self-promotion.’

  Edward stopped slicing to extract a large, mottled pink bean that had jammed the blades. He said, slightly challengingly, ‘Well, I was thrown out of Eton.’

  ‘Were you?’ they all said.

  Margaret took one earphone out. She said, with real interest, ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was lookout for some up-to-no-good people.’

  ‘What people? Real bad guys?’

  ‘Other boys.’

  Margaret leaned closer. She said, conspiratorially, ‘Druggies?’

  Edward grinned at his beans. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Did you take any?’

  ‘Shut up, Mags,’ Elinor said from the far side of the room.

  Edward looked up at her for a moment, with a look she would have interpreted as pure gratitude if she thought she’d done anything to be thanked for, and then he said, ‘No, Mags. I didn’t even have the guts to join in. I was lookout for the others, and I messed up that, too, big time, and we were all expelled. Mum has never forgiven me. Not to this day.’

  Belle patted his hand. ‘I’m sure she has.’

  Edward said, ‘You don’t know my mother.’

  ‘I think’, said Marianne from the window seat where she was curled up, reading, ‘that it’s brilliant to be expelled. Especially from anywhere as utterly conventional as Eton.’

  ‘But maybe,’ Elinor said quietly, ‘it isn’t very convenient.’

  Edward looked at her intently again. He said, ‘I was sent to a crammer instead. In disgrace. In Plymouth.’

  ‘My goodness,’ Belle said, ‘that was drastic. Plymouth!’

  Margaret put her earphone back in. The conversation had gone back to boring.

  Elinor said encouragingly, ‘So you got all your A levels and things?’

  ‘Sort of,’ Edward said. ‘Not very well. I did a lot of – messing around. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I’d paid more attention. I’d really apply myself to it now, but it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s never too late!’ Belle declared.

  Edward put the bean slicer down. He said, again to Elinor, as if she would understand him better than anyone, ‘Mum wants me to go and work for an MP.’

  ‘Does she?’

  ‘Or do a law degree and read for the Bar. She wants me to do something – something …’

  ‘Showy,’ Elinor said.

  He smiled at her again. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘When what you want to do,’ Belle said, picking up the slicer again and putting it back gently into his hand, ‘is really …?’

  Edward selected another bean. ‘I want to do community work of some kind. I know it sounds a bit wet, but I don’t want houses and cars and money and all the stuff my family seems so keen on. My brother Robert seems to be able to get away with anything just because he isn’t the eldest. My mother – well, it’s weird. Robert’s a kind of upmarket party planner, huge rich parties in London, the sort of thing I hate, and my mother turns a completely blind eye to that hardly being a career of distinction. But when it comes to me, she goes on and on about visibility and money and power. She doesn’t even seem to look at the kind of person I am. I just want to do something quiet and sort of – sort of …’

  ‘Helpful?’ Elinor said.

  Edward got off the table and turned so that he could look at her with pure undiluted appreciation. ‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis.

  Later that night, jostling in front of the bathroom mirror with their toothbrushes and dental floss, Marianne said to Elinor, ‘He likes you.’

  Elinor spat a mouthful of toothpaste foam into the basin. ‘No, he doesn’t. He just likes being around us all, because Ma’s cosy with him and we don’t pick on him and tell him to smarten up and sharpen up all the ti
me, like Fanny does.’

  Marianne took a length of floss out of her mouth. ‘Ellie, he likes us all. But he likes you in particular.’

  Elinor didn’t reply. She began to brush her hair vigorously, upside down, to forestall further conversation.

  Marianne reangled the floss across her lower jaw. Round it she said indistinctly, ‘D’you like him?’

  ‘Can’t hear you.’

  ‘Yes, you can. Do you, Elinor Dashwood, picky spinster of this parish for whom no man so far seems to be remotely good enough, fancy this very appealing basket case called Edward Ferrars?’

  Elinor stood upright and pushed the hair off her face. ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Well, a bit,’ Elinor said.

  Marianne leaned forward and peered into the mirror. ‘He’s perfect for you, Ellie. You’re such a missionary, you’d have to have someone to rescue. Ed is ripe for rescue. And he’s the sweetest guy.’

  ‘I’m not interested. The last thing I want right now is anyone else who needs sorting.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ Marianne said.

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you tonight. You only had to say the dullest thing and he was all over you, like a Labrador puppy.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘But it’s lovely, Ellie! It’s lovely, in the midst of everything that’s so awful, to have Edward thinking you’re wonderful.’

  Elinor began to smooth her hair back into a ponytail, severely. ‘It’s all wrong, M. It’s all wrong at the moment with all this uncertainty and worrying about money, and where we’ll go and everything. It’s all wrong to be thinking about whether I like Edward.’

  Marianne turned to her sister, suddenly grinning. ‘Tell you what …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it just completely piss off Fanny if you and Ed got together?’