Sense & Sensibility Read online

  ‘We’ll put you in the front seat,’ Thomas said to Marianne, ‘with the window open.’

  She nodded. Elinor looked at him. He was wearing the expression of fierce protectiveness that so many men seemed to adopt round Marianne. Solicitously, with Elinor’s assistance, he lifted Marianne to her feet.

  ‘Thank you,’ Elinor said.

  He began to guide Marianne back to the car, his arm round her shoulders. ‘Nothing to thank me for,’ he said, and his voice was proud.

  The rest of the journey had passed almost in silence. Thomas drove soberly and steadily, with Marianne leaning her head back in the seat beside him, her face turned towards the open window, her inhaler on her lap. Behind them, Elinor gripped Margaret’s hand and Belle sat with her eyes closed (in a way that suggested crowding memories rather than repose) as Hampshire gave way to Dorset, and Dorset, in its turn and after seemingly endless hours, to Devon.

  It was only in the last five miles or so, as the countryside grew increasingly beautiful and spectacular, that they began to rouse themselves from the aftermath of shock and exclaim at what they were passing.

  ‘Oh, look.’

  ‘This is amazing!’

  ‘Gosh, Thomas, is Barton going to be this good?’

  It was. They left the road and turned in between stone gateposts crowned with urns that heralded a series of drives curving away around a smooth hillside crowned with trees. There were freshly painted signs planted alongside the drives, indicating the directions to the main house, to the offices, to visitors’ parking and, with a right-angled arrow, to Barton Cottage. And there, after a further few minutes, it was, as raw and new looking as it had been on Sir John’s laptop, but set on a pleasing slope, with woods climbing up behind it, and the forked valleys falling away dramatically in front. They had gasped when they saw it, as much for its astonishing situation as for its uncompromising banality of design.

  Thomas had looked at it with satisfaction.

  ‘We never thought he’d get planning permission,’ he said. ‘We all bet he wouldn’t. But he managed to prove there’d been a shepherd’s cottage up there once, so there’d been a residence. If he wants something, he doesn’t give up. That’s Sir John.’

  Sir John had left wine and a note of welcome in the kitchen, and a basket of logs by the sitting-room fireplace. Someone had also put milk and bread and eggs in the fridge, and a bowl of apples on the new yellow-wood kitchen table, and Margaret reported, after inspecting the bathroom, that there was also a full roll of toilet paper and a new shower curtain, printed with goldfish. Elinor could not think why, confronted both with the kindness of almost strangers, and a practical little house in a magnificent place, she should feel like doing nothing so much as taking herself off somewhere private and quiet, to cry. But she did – and there was no immediate opportunity, what with Marianne needing to be assisted into the house, and Belle and Margaret exclaiming at the advantages (Margaret) and disadvantages (Belle) of their new home, to indulge herself. The luxury of being alone and able to look at and begin to arrange her thoughts would have, as it so often did, to wait.

  And now, here was her chance, by herself in the kitchen, with unpacked boxes of saucepans and plates. It was comical, really, the way she’d ended up with unpacking all the practical stuff, while the others, ably and eagerly assisted by Thomas, decided where the pictures should hang and which window gave on to the right prospect to be conducive to guitar practice. Margaret had found a tree outside where she could get five whole signal bars on her mobile phone, if she climbed up into the lowest branches, and Thomas had immediately said that he would make her a tree house, just as he had agreed with Belle that the cottage could be easily improved by extending the main sitting room into a conservatory on the southern side. He had said he would bring brochures. Elinor had said quietly, ‘What about me?’

  Belle went on looking at the space where the conservatory might stand. ‘What about you, darling?’

  ‘Well,’ Elinor said, ‘most architects get their first break designing extensions for family houses. Even Richard Rogers—’

  Belle gave her a quick glance. ‘But you’re not qualified, darling.’

  ‘I nearly am. I’m qualified enough.’

  Belle smiled, but not at Elinor. ‘I don’t think so, darling. I’d be happier with professionals who do thousands of conservatories a year.’

  Elinor closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten. Then she opened them and said, in as level a voice as she could manage, ‘There’s another thing.’

  Belle was gazing at the view again. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elinor said, more firmly. ‘Yes. What about the money?’

  She put two frying pans down on the kitchen table, now, beside three mugs and a handful of wooden spoons, which had been wrapped, in the universal manner of removal men, as solicitously in new white paper as if they had been Meissen shepherdesses. Money was haunting her. Money to buy and run a car – how else was Margaret to get to her new school in Exeter? Money to pay the rent, money for electricity and water, money to pay for food and clothes and even tiny amounts of fun, when all they had in the world was, when invested, going to produce under seven hundred pounds a month, or less than two hundred pounds a week. Which was, she calculated, banging Belle’s battered old stockpot down beside the frying pans, not quite thirty pounds a day. For four women with laughable earning power, one of whom is still at school, one is unused to work, and one is both physically unfit and as yet unqualified to work. Which leaves me! Me, Elinor Dashwood, who has been living in the cloud cuckoo land of Norland and idiotic, impractical dreams of architecture. She straightened up and looked round the kitchen. The prospect – bright new units overlaid with a chaos of unarranged shabby old possessions – was sobering. It was also, if she didn’t keep the tightest of grip on herself, frightening. She was not equipped for this. None of them were. They had fled to Devon on an impulse, reacting against the grief and rejection they had been through, surrendering to the first hand held out to them without considering the true extent or consequences of that surrender.

  Elinor closed her eyes. She mustn’t panic. She mustn’t. There would be a way to make this work; there had to be. Perhaps she could appeal to Sir John, perhaps he had already guessed, perhaps he … Her eye was caught by a movement outside the kitchen window. It was Thomas carrying planks of wood towards Margaret’s communications tree. Already! They had been in the cottage one night and a tree house was under way. Elinor seized a saucepan lid out of the open box in front of her and flung it wildly in frustration across the kitchen. Who was going to pay for a tree house, please?

  ‘Wonderful,’ Sir John said. He was standing holding open the immense front door to Barton Park and beaming at them all. ‘Come in, come in. I wanted you for supper last night, you know, but Mary wouldn’t let me. Said you’d be exhausted. Probably right. Usually is.’ He plunged forward, bent on heartily kissing all of them. ‘She’s upstairs now with the rug rats. Bedtime. Complete mayhem, every night, goes on for hours. And then they trickle down all evening under one transparent pretext or another. Nil discipline. Nil. Bless them. Fantastic children.’

  Belle said, emerging from his embrace, ‘Don’t you get involved?’

  ‘With bedtime? No fear. I do Tintin on Saturdays with the boys. I’m a wholly unreconstructed male, I’m happy to say. Now then.’ He swung round, closing the door and gesturing lavishly with his free hand. ‘What do you think of my old gaff?’

  The girls gazed about them in silence. The hall was huge, larger than Norland, with niches for statues and an elaborate plaster frieze of gilded swags. It was as grandly chilly and unlike Norland in spirit or appearance as it possibly could have been. It resembled some kind of museum, a public space dedicated to the formal past. Elinor saw Marianne give an involuntary little shiver.

  ‘Frightful, isn’t it?’ Sir John said jovially. ‘Tarted up for a visit from Queen Victoria, all this marble nonsense. It’s an idiotic house. Dining room seats th
irty-six. Thirty-six!’

  Margaret stopped swivelling her head in amazement. She said, ‘Well, why do you live here, then?’

  Sir John gave a gust of laughter. ‘It’s in my bones. Inheritance and all that. Can’t live with it or without it.’

  Marianne said tightly, ‘We know about all that.’

  ‘Course you do. Course you do. Just consider yourselves lucky to be well out of it, tucked up in the cottage with all mod cons. Now come on in and have a drink.’ He paused in the doorway to an immense, bright room full of sofas and said, conspiratorially, ‘And meet the mother-in-law.’

  ‘Well,’ Abigail Jennings said, rising from one of the sofas in a flurry of scarves and small dogs, ‘if it isn’t the famous Dashwood girls!’ She flung her arms wide and laughed merrily. ‘Jonno said you were all gorgeous and he isn’t wrong! He’s wrong about most things, bless him, being only a man and therefore by definition in the wrong, but he said you were gorgeous and you are. My goodness, you are.’ She turned to a tall, lean man beside her and dug her elbow playfully into his ribs. ‘Don’t you think so, Bill?’

  The tall man smiled, but said nothing. The girls stood in a row, just inside the door, with Belle slightly ahead of them, and looked at the floor.

  ‘Can’t stand this,’ Marianne said to Elinor between clenched teeth.

  ‘Sh.’

  ‘She’s fat,’ Margaret hissed vengefully, ‘as well as obviously being a sick bitch—’

  ‘Mags!’

  ‘I didn’t want to come out to supper, I wanted to watch—’

  Elinor lifted her head. ‘Sorry.’

  The tall man was looking at her sympathetically. Then his gaze shifted to Marianne, and Elinor saw something familiar happen, a startled arrested something that had everything to do with the arrangement of Marianne’s extraordinary features, and nothing whatsoever to do with her current expression of pure mulishness.

  Sir John was pulling his mother-in-law forward like a prize exhibit, the dogs yapping round their feet. ‘Belle. Meet Abigail, my monster-in-law. Bane of my life, who, as you see, I adore. Mrs Jennings to you, girls. She’s pretty well a fixture here, I can tell you. The nippers adore her too. When she’s here, the gin goes down like bath water.’ He put an arm affectionately round Abigail’s shoulders. ‘Isn’t that true, Abi?’

  ‘If you left any, it would be!’ Abigail cried.

  She extricated herself and came forward to kiss them all warmly. ‘Belle, welcome, dear. And girls. Lovely girls. Now, let me get you sorted. Elinor, you must be Elinor. And Marianne of the famous guitar? Oh, it is famous, dear, it is. Bill over there plays it, too. We know all about guitars at Barton – you’ll see! And this is Margaret. Don’t scowl, dear, I’m not a witch. Far too fat for any self-respecting broomstick. Now, Jonno, aren’t you going to introduce Bill?’

  Sir John flung out an arm in the direction of the tall man, who had stood quietly by the immense marble fireplace without moving or uttering a word since they came in. ‘Meet my old mucker, girls. Belle, this is William Brandon. Late of the Light Dragoons. My regiment. My old dad’s regiment.’ He glanced at the tall man with sudden seriousness. ‘We were in Bosnia together, Bill and me. Weren’t we?’ He turned back to Belle. ‘And then he stayed in, and rose to command the regiment and now he devotes himself to good works, God help us, and comes here for a bit of normality and a decent claret. It’s his second home, eh Bill?’ He gestured to the tall man to come forward. ‘Come on, Bill, come on. That’s better. Now then, this is Colonel Brandon, Belle.’

  She held out her hand, smiling. William Brandon stepped forward and took it, bowing a little. ‘Welcome to Devon.’

  ‘He’s so old,’ Marianne muttered to Elinor.

  ‘No, he isn’t, he looks—’

  ‘They’re all old. Old and old-fashioned and—’

  ‘Boring,’ Margaret said.

  Mrs Jennings turned towards them. She looked at Margaret. She was laughing again. ‘What wouldn’t bore you, dear? Boys?’

  Margaret went scarlet. Marianne put an arm round her.

  ‘Come on now,’ Abigail said. ‘There must be boys in your lives!’

  Marianne stared at her. ‘None,’ she said.

  ‘One!’ Margaret blurted out.

  ‘Oh? Oh?’

  ‘Shut up, Mags.’

  Colonel Brandon stepped forward and put a restraining hand on Abigail’s arm. He said to everyone else, soothingly, ‘How about I get everyone a drink?’

  Belle looked at him gratefully. ‘I’d love one. And – and you play the guitar?’

  ‘Badly.’

  ‘Brilliantly!’ Sir John shouted. ‘He’s a complete pain in the arse!’

  ‘Would you play later?’ Colonel Brandon asked Marianne.

  She didn’t look at him. She said, unhelpfully, ‘I didn’t bring my guitar.’

  ‘We could fetch it!’ Abigail said.

  ‘Another time, perhaps?’ Colonel Brandon said.

  Marianne gave a ghost of a smile. ‘Yes, please, another time.’

  ‘Too bad,’ Abigail said. ‘Too bad. We were looking forward to a party. Weren’t we, Jonno? No boys, no music …’

  Sir John moved round the group so that he could put an arm round Margaret. ‘We’ll soon remedy that, won’t we?’ He bent, beaming, so that his nose was almost touching hers. ‘Won’t we? We can start by christening your tree house!’

  Margaret pulled her head back as far as Sir John’s embrace would allow. ‘How d’you know about that?’

  He laid a finger of his free hand against his nose. ‘Nothing at Barton escapes me. Nothing.’ He winked at his mother-in-law and they both went off into peals of laughter. ‘Does it?’

  ‘I can’t do this,’ Marianne said later.

  She was sitting on the end of her mother’s bed, in the muddle of half-unpacked boxes, nursing a mug of peppermint tea.

  Belle put down her book. ‘It was rather awful.’

  ‘It was very awful. All that canned laughter. All the jokes. None of them funny—’

  ‘They’re so good-hearted. And well meaning, Marianne.’

  ‘It’s fatal to be well meaning.’

  Belle laughed. ‘But, darling, it’s where kindness comes from.’

  Marianne took a swallow of tea. ‘I don’t think her ladyship is kind.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. She was perfectly nice to us.’

  Marianne looked up. She said, ‘She wasn’t interested in us. She just went through the motions. She only got a bit animated when the children came down.’

  ‘So sweet.’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘Oh, M,’ Belle said, ‘of course they were sweet, like Harry is sweet. It’s not their fault if they are hopelessly mothered!’

  Marianne sighed. ‘It’s just depressing’, she said, ‘to spend a whole evening with people who are all so – utterly uncongenial.’

  ‘Bill Brandon wasn’t, was he? I thought he was charming.’

  ‘Of course you did, Ma. He’d be perfect for you. Right age, nice manners, even reads—’

  ‘Stop it. He’s much younger than me!’

  Marianne tweaked her mother’s toes under the duvet. ‘No one is younger than you, Ma.’

  Belle ignored her. She leaned forward. ‘Darling.’

  ‘What?’

  Belle lowered her voice. ‘Any – sign of Edward?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘Has she said anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘Ma,’ Marianne said, reprovingly, ‘I wouldn’t. Would I?’

  ‘But it’s so odd.’

  ‘He is odd.’

  ‘I thought …’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘D’you think Fanny’s stopping him?’

  Marianne got slowly to her feet. ‘I doubt it. He’s quite stubborn in his quiet way.’

  ‘Well?’

  Marianne looked down at her. ‘We can’t do anyth
ing, Ma.’

  ‘Couldn’t you text him?’

  ‘No, Ma, I could not.’

  Belle picked up her book again. ‘Your sister is a mystery to me. It breaks my heart to leave Norland but not, apparently, hers. We are completely thrown by arriving here and finding ourselves miles from anywhere and she just goes on putting the herbs and spices in alphabetical order as if nothing is any different except the layout of the cupboards. And now Edward. Does she really not care about Edward?’

  Marianne looked down at her mug again. ‘She’s made up her mind about missing him, like she’s made up her mind about giving up her course. She won’t let herself despair about things she can’t have, and doesn’t waste her energies longing for things like I do. She thinks before she feels, Ma, you know she does. I expect she does sort of miss Ed, in her way.’

  ‘Her way?’

  Marianne moved towards the door. She said, decisively, ‘But her way isn’t my way. Any more than those stupid people tonight were my kind of people. I want – I want …’

  She stopped. Belle let a beat fall, and then she said, ‘What do you want, darling?’

  Marianne put her hand on the doorknob, and turned to face her mother. ‘I want to be overwhelmed,’ she said.

  5

  The following morning Sir John, blithely oblivious to any reservations his guests might have had about their evening at Barton Park, sent Thomas in the Range Rover to collect them all for a tour of his offices and design studio. Margaret, in particular, was appalled.

  ‘I’m not looking at pictures of those gross clothes!’

  ‘And I’, Marianne said, loudly enough for Thomas not to mistake her distaste, ‘am not modelling them either, thank you very much.’

  Thomas, who was leaning against a kitchen counter with the tea Belle had made him, said imperturbably, ‘I don’t think you have an option.’

  They all stared at him.

  ‘You mean we have to?’

  ‘Yup,’ Thomas said. He grinned at Margaret. ‘He’s the boss round here. Lady M. and Mrs J. make a fair bit of noise but they end up doing what they’re told.’ He took a gulp of tea. ‘We all do.’