‘But it’s so sad for you. We all thought—’
‘Ma!’
Belle put Elinor’s mug on the table in front of her. She said, ‘That explains John.’
‘What does?’
‘Bill offering Ed a job. It completely explains John. I couldn’t think why he was ringing – he never rings – and then I couldn’t think what he was on about, Fanny this, Fanny that, Fanny so hurt and betrayed, and her mother such a marvellous mother, and them both being so brave when they heard about Ed and how we ought to know how brave they were even though we mustn’t even mention the subject because it is so painful for both of them. And d’you know what?’
‘No,’ Elinor said. She blew into her tea.
‘D’you know what John said? What he had the nerve to say?’
‘Nothing’, Elinor said, ‘would surprise me.’
‘He said,’ Belle said, ‘he said that Fanny was so appalled by his choosing the Steele girl that she would have even preferred it to be you! Can you believe it? He said that of course it was all too late for that now, but if she were given the option, Fanny would rather have had you for a sister-in-law. I could hardly believe my ears. I said, “John, you have an absolute nerve to say any such thing after the way you and Fanny behaved to Elinor and me,” but you know what he’s like, he just swept on telling me how brave and wonderful Fanny was, and then said that the only consolation she had was Robert, who finds the whole situation hilarious and did a send-up imitation of Edward dealing with all Bill’s loonies and made her laugh. I suppose he must be very amusing.’
Elinor took a gulp of tea. ‘He’s idiotic.’
‘John said he really took to you!’
‘Maybe.’
‘But he said that Robert didn’t think Ed could cope with Delaford, he’d be completely out of his depth, and in Robert’s view, Lucy is deeply, deeply ordinary.’
‘Ma, I really don’t want to know.’
Belle took the chair next to Elinor’s. ‘And Fanny has invited us all to Norland!’
Elinor turned to stare at her mother. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Not very warmly. In fact, I would describe her invitation as very faint. But she did say it. She did! What an afternoon!’
Elinor said reflectively, ‘I suppose Lucy will run rings round Bill Brandon.’
‘He’ll get wise to her. He’s not a fool. Darling …’
‘What?’
‘Do you – do you think he still carries a bit of a torch for Marianne?’
‘Yes,’ Elinor said shortly.
‘Of course,’ Belle said, ‘I’ve always liked him.’
‘Have you?’
‘Just as I always was a bit wary of Wills. He might have been a god, but there was something about his eyes that I didn’t like. I always said so, didn’t I?’
‘Ma,’ Elinor said, ‘on the subject of Marianne—’
‘I wish she could think of someone like Bill. A good person, a good man, like Bill.’
‘Ma,’ Elinor said again, ‘she is leaving London.’
‘What?’
‘She’s leaving Mrs J.’s. Charlotte’s persuaded her to go to their weekend place. Near Bath or Bristol or something. It – it’ll kind of break her in to coming home.’
Belle regarded her daughter, suddenly sober. ‘Ellie, is that progress?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Poor little Marianne.’
Elinor took one hand away from her mug and put it on her mother’s. ‘She’s changed, Ma. She’s different.’
‘Is she?’
Elinor leaned forward and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘She’s doing things her own way, in her own time. But she’s trying very hard to grow up. You’ll see.’
16
Marianne stood very, very still in the middle of the bedroom at Cleveland that Charlotte had assigned her. It was a pretty room with two beds in it and two windows facing west, through which the April sun was now streaming in all its clear mercilessness: spring light was, in Marianne’s opinion, brilliant but cruel. And it was almost cruel, too, to have to look west out of those windows, west towards Devon, where Barton was, where Allenham was, and where Wills had been born, he’d told her, in a place called Combe Magna.
She crossed the room slowly and stood by one of the windows. She could feel a weight of depression settling on her again, despite the sunshine, and the spring garden below her window, and the domestic sounds of Charlotte and her mother and her baby coming from other parts of the house. It wasn’t really the depression of a broken heart any more, but more the recollection of what she had felt like, what she had been, before she went to London, the memory of that violently happy girl who had been possessed of a complete, untarnished innocence of heart, and who would never be recaptured. The girl who had last looked at the West Country with such rapture did not exist any more, and the one who looked at it now was not just sobered, but somehow diminished, reduced as if a huge emotional lung had been removed and replaced by a grim little nugget of disillusion.
The window was open, a high sash window between white linen curtains striped in grey and pink. Marianne folded her arms on the sill and leaned out. The gardens below her were extensive, and even if Cleveland Cottage called itself a cottage, it was an affectation, really, because it was a house. A considerable house, with stands of mature trees round it, and a gravel sweep, and a prospect of hills to the south-east with even a little folly as a focal point, some distance away, a faux Greek temple, which Tommy said some ancestor of his had put up when the house was built.
‘In 1808, 1810, thereabouts,’ he said. ‘We Palmers may never win a Nobel Prize, but we have a knack with money.’ He’d glanced at Marianne. ‘I s’pose you think I shouldn’t mention money, let alone boast about it.’
Marianne had given him a small smile by way of reply. As the chief witness of her public humiliation, she could never quite forgive him, nor see in him the good heart and good sense that Elinor insisted were there. It had been a relief to her that Tommy was not coming down to Cleveland until later, bringing, apparently, Bill Brandon as another weekend guest, and by the time they both got there, Elinor would have arrived too, from Barton, and would, as usual, take responsibility for both herself and Marianne, leaving Marianne free to read, or go for a walk, or generally absent herself from the well-fed, deep-drinking jollity that Charlotte was plainly planning.
Marianne turned to face the room again. She would let Elinor choose the bed she preferred; she would let Elinor take the lead, dictate the pace. She was trying very hard – hard enough for Elinor not to fail to see – to adjust herself, to be less self-absorbed, less wilful, more mindful of what other people (Elinor in particular) were bearing with a stoicism she had to acknowledge, even if she didn’t want to imitate it just yet. She was striving to change, she was, but it was hard, all the same, to let go of the glory of her past certainties, of her belief in passion, and surrender, and the seductive power of giving in to inclination. But she was trying, and she would go on trying, and agreeing to a weekend in Charlotte and Tommy’s country house was proof of her real intention to be different. Wasn’t it? She sneezed suddenly, shivering, and looked for a box of tissues. They’d be somewhere. Charlotte was the kind of hostess who, even with a new baby, would never overlook the details.
The tissues were there, of course, hidden in a white wicker cube in the bathroom, beside a graded pile of snowy towels and a new cake of pink soap shaped like an egg. Marianne snatched a handful from the box and blew hard. Maybe it wasn’t depression she was feeling but something altogether simpler. Maybe the aches in her joints and head were not psychological at all, but merely the physical portent of a heavy approaching cold. She blew again and then put her palm against her forehead. Did she, she wondered, have a temperature?
Elinor, driving the seventy miles from Exeter to Cleveland after work, watched the evening deteriorate. She had left Exeter in late-afternoon sunshine, but as she drove up towards Bristol, the clouds ahead da
rkened and lowered, piling up into great bruised masses until, ten miles from her destination, the rain suddenly crashed down on to the motorway as if a bath had been tipped sideways, and she found herself battling both to keep the car steady, and to see. She had Heart FM on the radio – Margaret’s preferred choice – but even that was drowned out by the drumming of rain on the car roof. She leaned forward in an effort to see better, and, not for the first time, wondered what it was in Marianne that made her requests so difficult – even impossible – to refuse.
‘Just a weekend at Cleveland,’ Marianne had said. ‘Two nights. Please. Don’t make me go alone.’
‘But I don’t see why you want to go at all. Why don’t you just come straight home?’
Marianne said, sadly, weakly, ‘I can’t quite do that …’
‘But what’s the difference between coming straight home on Friday or, via a weekend you don’t want to do, on Sunday afternoon?’
There was a pause. Marianne was silent and Elinor, at her desk in Exeter, was in no mood to help her. Then Marianne said, in an even smaller voice, ‘It’s a kind of test.’
‘What? What is?’
‘Going to Charlotte’s. I’ve got to make myself be normal again. I’ve got to – to train myself to be more ordinary. I’ve got to go to Charlotte’s and be a good guest and take notice of the baby and be appreciative.’
‘If I were Charlotte,’ Elinor said, ‘I’d be pretty insulted by an attitude like that. Luckily for you, she’s too nice and cheerful to care, even if she notices.’
Marianne said, ‘It came out wrong.’
‘Did it?’
‘I didn’t mean to sound superior. I don’t think I’m superior. I think you are superior. I just meant that – that I was trying. Not – to be like I was being.’
Elinor relented a little. ‘OK.’
‘If it’s a big deal when I get home, Ellie, I’ll know it’s because I made it a big deal. I really don’t want melodrama, or even drama drama. I want to get home and plan my future and be – well, something like I should have been. But I would so … value it, if you came to Cleveland.’
So here she was, battling up the motorway in a spring storm with a weekend ahead among people who were all, with the exception of Charlotte’s baby and Marianne, not only older than she was, but who had a completely different take on life. Life, she thought suddenly, and almost bitterly. Is life what I’m having? Even if I fairly powerfully do not want pubs and clubs and getting wasted, surely life for someone of my age should be just slightly more fun?
‘She got soaked,’ Charlotte said. ‘I mean, drowned. She wanted to walk up to the temple and I said, Oh, do wait for Tommy to show it to you, it’s his pride and joy, he’s even had a Wi-Fi connection put in there, but she wouldn’t, she said she had to have some exercise after all those weeks in London, and next thing we knew was this absolutely deafening crash of thunder and the heavens opened and Marianne, of course, was drenched, and then I could not make her take off her jeans and put on something dry, and nor could Mummy, and really, honestly, Ellie, it’s no wonder she feels ghastly. Aren’t these little pea shoots just adorable? I’m going to put them in the salad. I put nasturtium flowers in salad in the summer, and it’s completely worth it, just to see Tommy go ballistic. He can’t bear savoury food with fruit or flowers in. Too funny.’
Elinor was leaning against one of Charlotte’s artfully distressed painted cupboards, nursing a mug of tea. She said, ‘I’ll go and see her. Did she go to bed?’
‘Well, I hope so. I told her to, and so did Mummy, but she waved away Lemsip and Nurofen and, quite frankly, I didn’t want her sneezing all over poor little Tomkins, so I said go to bed and stay there.’
Elinor glanced across the kitchen. Inside a playpen on the carefully flagged floor, little Tom Palmer, dressed in bibbed dungarees and a miniature check shirt, was lying in a bouncing chair, feebly waving his arms and legs like a stranded insect. She said, ‘I do hope she hasn’t given him anything.’
‘Never fear,’ Charlotte said, competently slicing a fennel bulb, ‘I didn’t give her the chance. Bundled her upstairs at the double.’ She looked across at her son. ‘Didn’t we, baby buster? And won’t Daddy go apeshit when he sees you dressed up like that? It’s so funny, but Tommy thinks all babies should be in white nighties for months. So we’ll just hide the new cashmere baby cardi from Daddy, shall we? Ellie, you must be exhausted. Go and have a bath. The men won’t be here till nine and Mummy’s glued to the telly news, as ever. I keep saying to her, Isn’t it better not to know, when it’s all so ghastly, but she says not knowing makes her feel worse. Ellie, what am I going to do with her in London without your sister to fuss over?’
Marianne was lying on her side, on her bed, not in it, with her knees drawn up and her eyes closed. Elinor bent over her. ‘M?’
‘Oh,’ she said, not stirring. ‘Oh, Ellie. I’m so glad you’ve come.’
Elinor put a hand on her sister’s leg. Her jeans were damp, almost wet, and the strands of her hair snaking across the pillow were clearly not dry, either.
She said, almost crossly, ‘What are you doing?’
Marianne said, gritting her teeth against her shivering, ‘I don’t feel too great.’
‘No,’ Elinor said, ‘of course you don’t. You look awful. Have you got a temperature?’
‘Probably.’
‘And you are an asthmatic. And you lie there in wet clothes with a fever. You are not a baby, Marianne.’
Marianne said weakly, ‘Please don’t be cross. I just suddenly felt so awful, and then a bit caged, and I got caught in the rain—’
‘Sit up,’ Elinor said.
‘I can’t …’
‘Sit up!’
Marianne, her eyes still closed, struggled into a sitting position.
Elinor grasped the hem of her sweater and began to pull it over her head. She said, ‘Help me.’
‘I’m trying …’
‘Now your shirt.’
‘Ellie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just can’t—’
‘Jeans,’ Elinor said. ‘Socks. Everything. God, you are so clueless.’
‘I didn’t want it to be like this.’
‘Have you got your inhaler?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where?’
‘In my bag,’ Marianne said. She crouched on the edge of the bed in her underwear, shaking. Elinor dug her own pyjamas out of her case and held them out.
‘Put these on. I’ll get your puffer.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘M,’ Elinor almost shouted, ‘if you have a cold and it’s anywhere near your chest, what will happen? What? What?’
‘I didn’t want it to be a drama—’
‘There’s always a drama round you!’
‘I’m really sorry,’ Marianne said. ‘I am, I am. I needed you to come, I wanted you to come, but I didn’t mean this to happen.’
‘I’ll get you a hot-water bottle.’
‘Ellie?’
‘What?’
‘Have Bill and Tommy come?’
Elinor paused by the door. ‘Why should that make any difference?’
‘I don’t know. It’s – it just seems to be a bit reassuring when Bill’s around, doesn’t it …?’
‘Heavens,’ Elinor said tartly, ‘there’s a change of tune. I thought you thought he was old and boring.’
Marianne said, with as much dignity as she could muster struggling into Ellie’s pyjamas, ‘I’m – trying to think differently. I was trying to be different. I don’t want to have a cold. I’m sorry, Ellie. I’m sorry.’
Elinor looked across at her. The pyjamas were very old, made of brushed cotton and patterned with teapots. They had always been too big. But even dressed in them, with her hair in damp ropes on her shoulders, and her eyes circled with fatigue, Marianne looked, well, outstanding. Elinor sighed.
‘Get into bed,’ she said. ‘Right in. Properly. I’m going to get a hot-water bottle and some paracetam
ol and you are going to swallow it.’
Marianne attempted a smile.
‘Of course,’ she said.
Bill Brandon tried to make Elinor have some whisky. ‘Just a weak one. Medicinal. You look worn out.’
‘I don’t really like it.’
‘Even if I add ginger ale?’
‘Even then.’
‘I suppose I couldn’t take some up to Marianne …’
Elinor smiled at him. She said, ‘I hope she’s asleep.’
Bill Brandon said, ‘I don’t want to fuss but shouldn’t we get a doctor? Or ring NHS Direct or something?’
‘She’s got a cold,’ Charlotte called from the other side of the kitchen, where she was feeding the baby, a cream pashmina shawl draped decorously over the child and one shoulder. ‘She’s not dying, you old fusspot.’
‘She’s asthmatic.’
Tommy came across the room, put a glass of wine into Elinor’s hand and clumped Bill Brandon on the shoulder. ‘Don’t be an old woman, Bill. She’s got a cold. Listen to the sister lady.’
Elinor took a sip. She said to Bill, ‘I’ve lived with asthmatics all my life. Honestly. She’s got a cold because I expect her immune system’s a bit shot after everything this winter, and she just needs to sleep. She’ll be fine in the morning.’
‘I still think—’
‘Too awful,’ Mrs Jennings said, sweeping into the room. ‘Why do I watch the news when it just makes me despair? I’m sure the Greeks hate austerity but your father, Charlotte, always maintained that if you haven’t got it, you shouldn’t borrow to spend it. I’m with Mrs Merkel, all the way. Now, Tommy, it’s a Friday night so I think something serious is called for.’
‘Gin and serious?’
She gave him a wide smile.
‘Lovely. Just go easy on the serious. Elinor dear, you look a wreck. How is that sister of yours?’
‘I want them to get a doctor,’ Bill said. ‘She’s asthmatic.’
‘She’s OK,’ Elinor said. ‘She’s asleep. She’ll be fine by the morning.’
Mrs Jennings nodded towards her grandson. ‘Let’s hope she hasn’t given him her lurgy, poor mite.’
Sense & Sensibility Page 23
