Elinor said nothing.
He said, ‘I can’t hope that she’d ever forgive me—’
Elinor said quietly, ‘She already has. That’s another reason why you never deserved her.’
He almost sprang to his feet. ‘She has? She’s forgiven me?’
Elinor looked away again. ‘Long ago.’
He said fervently, ‘She’s amazing. I’ve never known anyone like her. And I never will.’ He said, almost desperately, ‘You must believe me. Your sister is the most wonderful person I have ever known, or ever will.’
Elinor turned her head again and looked at him, stonily. He was still beautiful, but he looked disreputable today, slightly jowly, unshaven, with his hair straggling over his collar and bloodshot eyes. She said coldly, ‘What about the others?’
‘Others?’
‘Little Eliza,’ Elinor said, enunciating with deliberation. ‘And I bet she wasn’t the only one.’
He said with difficulty, ‘No.’
‘Busted by the police, in a pub lavatory.’
‘I didn’t know that, till after it happened.’
‘Which absolves you?’
‘No. No, of course it doesn’t. But it doesn’t make me culpable—’
‘You started it. You gave her drugs, in the beginning.’
He winced. He said, ‘You sound like Aunt Jane.’
‘Good,’ Elinor said, ‘I mean to. And she was pregnant.’
‘Not by me.’
‘Huh!’
He said sadly, ‘Would it satisfy you to know that that’s why Aunt Jane threw me out and changed her will? I always thought Bill Brandon had—’
‘Leave him out of it!’
Wills licked his lips. He said, ‘I was in such debt. Utterly maxed. Every card.’
Elinor said tartly, ‘Well, you aren’t now, are you. You dug for gold, and’ – she glanced pointedly at his wedding ring – ‘you found it.’
‘I was in real trouble. I had to.’
‘Like you had to publicly humiliate my sister? Like you had to send back everything she had given you as if it was the contents of a – of a waste-paper basket?’
He said, in a low voice, ‘That was Ally.’
‘So none of this is your fault really. Your godmother, your wife – your poor wife – they’re all instruments of your great misfortune, are they?’
He raised his head and looked at her. He said, ‘I’ve only been in love, truly in love, once, and that was with M – with your sister.’
Elinor said nothing.
He said pleadingly, ‘Will you tell her that? Will you tell her, when she’s better, that I came and that – that she wasn’t wrong. I did care. I do care. And Ally knows that. Ally knows why I married her.’ He stood up and looked down at Elinor. ‘Will you tell her that?’
‘I might.’
‘Do – do you still think I’m a shit?’
Elinor sighed. ‘I think you’re a car crash. A destructive car crash.’
‘I’ll take that as one degree more approving than a complete shit.’
She shrugged. He bent over her. He said, ‘Can I ask you one more thing?’
‘One more.’
‘Is – is there anyone else in Marianne’s life? Anyone else will be bad enough, but there’s a particular person—’
Elinor stood too. ‘Get out,’ she said.
He said, persisting, ‘You know I’ll never forgive myself, don’t you? You know I’ll be punished all my life—’
Elinor looked at him. She said, ‘If your worst punishment is Marianne never giving you another thought, as long as she lives, then yes, you will,’ and then she turned on her heel, marched down the corridor to the visitors’ room and shut the door of it behind her with a bang.
17
Belle Dashwood came out of Marianne’s bedroom and closed the door quietly behind her. Elinor was halfway down the stairs. She turned. ‘Is she—?’
Belle put her finger to her lips. ‘Sleeping. Or on the verge of it. D’you know, she nearly has pink cheeks?’
Elinor smiled. They had been back at Barton for a week now, and, after an initially tearful response to being home among everything that was familiar – and painful, for the very reason of being familiar – Marianne had set herself to recover with a purposefulness that astonished all of them. She had even, Elinor discovered, been online, researching a guitar foundation course at the Bristol branch of the Brighton Institute for Modern Music.
‘I could even apply for a scholarship, Ellie. Your family income has to be below forty thousand pounds, and ours easily is.’
Belle came down the stairs towards Elinor. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘Nor me.’
‘That drive. That ghastly drive to the hospital – till your text came, of course. And the waiting for Bill, before, and feeling I shouldn’t ring you again, because I’d only howl. Mags was so brave. Every time I looked at her, she smiled even though her poor face was a mask of tragedy. Thank God she isn’t asthmatic. Or you, darling.’
‘Ma?’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Can we talk?’
‘Of course! But maybe not on the stairs. Shall we even open some wine? Jonno’s sent enough to float a ship. He thinks red wine is an absolute cure-all and I haven’t the heart to tell him that Marianne doesn’t really like it.’
‘But Bill sent some white, didn’t he?’
Belle smiled fondly at the thought. ‘Darling Bill. I’ve never met a man so thoughtful.’
In the kitchen, Margaret had left her school bag on the table. She herself was nowhere to be seen, and was no doubt in her Thomas-made tree house, messaging her friends. Since Marianne’s recovery, her relief had manifested itself in a permanent state of contempt for her family, and every time she was asked not to do something – play her music at anti-social volume, monopolise the bathroom for hours, stare mutely and moodily at whatever was on her plate at mealtimes – was inclined to shout, ‘Ruin my life, why don’t you?’ and stamp out of the room.
‘Ought she to be doing her homework?’ Belle said now.
‘Probably.’
‘Shall we – not make her, just for the moment?’
Elinor subsided into a kitchen chair. ‘Oh, please yes,’ she said tiredly.
Belle opened the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. She put it on the table and glanced at Elinor.
‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘Yes. I’m fine. I just wanted to tell you that – Wills came to the hospital. Just before you did.’
Belle seemed neither surprised nor especially interested to hear this. She inserted a corkscrew into the neck of the bottle. She said, non-committally, ‘Did he now.’
‘Yes, Ma. He drove down from London because Charlotte alerted him to Marianne’s asthma attack.’
Belle wound the screw in with great concentration. She said, ‘That was very silly of her.’
‘I know. I’ve told her so. But she says he’s still mad about Marianne, and always was, and never stopped being, and she thought he ought to be allowed to say that in such a crisis, and even more that Marianne ought to know it.’
Belle drew the cork out very slowly. She said, almost dismissively, ‘Water under the bridge, darling.’
‘Ma. Should I tell Marianne?’
‘Why bother?’
‘Well,’ Elinor said, pushing the two glasses Belle had put on the table towards her mother, ‘might it not be a bit consoling for M to know that he did mean it, and that she was right to insist that he did?’
Belle began to pour the wine carefully into the glasses.
‘Lovely colour. Look at that! We’re so lucky that Bill knows about wine. D’you know, darling, I don’t think we need bother Marianne about Wills any more. That’s history. He’s history. She’s got far better fish to fry now.’ She stopped pouring and pushed a glass back towards Elinor. ‘I didn’t tell you …’
‘Didn’t tell me what?’
Belle sat
down on the opposite side of the table. She took a deep and appreciative swallow of wine. ‘My journey with Bill. We were all in such a state at the beginning, of course we were, and I thought he was just being grim and silent because he was respecting how upset we were, but then your text came, and I suddenly saw that he was fighting back tears, real tears, and I didn’t actually mean to say anything specific but before I could help myself, I said, Oh, Bill dear, are you more than just relieved for the girls and me? And he nodded and couldn’t speak and then he suddenly swerved the car on to the hard shoulder and put his arms on the steering wheel and his head on his arms and honestly, Ellie, he just wept like a baby. And Mags and I patted him a bit, like you do, and then he gave a kind of gasp and said it was hopeless, he was so boring and why would anyone like Marianne ever even think of an old fossil like him, and we said, There, there, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he said we weren’t to mention it to anyone, ever, and blew his nose, and off we went again. But wouldn’t it be wonderful?’
‘He’s the nicest man.’
‘I know. And very attractive.’
‘You mean well-off.’
‘No, darling. Of course, it’s lovely he’s got money and a house and a business and all that, but it’s beside the point. The point is that when you look at him, you think, Oh, very attractive. A very, very attractive man. What does Marianne think?’
Elinor ran a finger round the rim of her glass. ‘I don’t think she’s thinking about men just now—’
The door to the hall opened.
‘I might be,’ Marianne said.
‘Darling!’
She came into the room in her rosebud and plaid pyjamas, pulled out a chair and sat down. She looked at the wine.
‘Can I have some of that?’
Elinor said, ‘Were you listening at the door?’
Marianne smiled at her. ‘Yes, I was.’
‘For how long?’
‘To hear enough,’ Marianne said. She looked at the wine again. ‘No sharing?’
Elinor regarded her. She said coolly, ‘Get a glass.’
‘Darling,’ Belle said, ‘I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. Especially Bill’s.’
Marianne got up and went round behind Elinor’s chair to the cupboard where the glasses were kept. She said casually, ‘He’s a lovely man. A really lovely man. And you’re quite right, he’s attractive.’
‘And’, Elinor demanded, ‘Wills? Is he attractive?’
Marianne went back to her seat and put the wine glass on the table.
‘I – I can’t answer that,’ she said quietly. ‘Not yet. You shouldn’t ask me.’
There was silence. Belle pushed the wine bottle towards Marianne. She picked it up, poured, and put it down again. Then she said, more hesitantly, ‘What would make a difference to how I think about all that is just to know that I wasn’t duped, that I didn’t imagine it all, that I didn’t make something up because I so wanted it to be true. I would love to know he wasn’t cynical, on top of everything else.’
She stopped. Belle looked at Elinor. Elinor leaned towards her sister.
‘You didn’t overhear that bit, then. He wasn’t cynical.’
Marianne took a sip of her wine. ‘How d’you know?’
‘Because he came to the hospital.’
Marianne put her glass down with a small bang. Her cheeks suddenly flamed and she put her hands up against them.
‘He – he what?’
‘He dashed down from London, the day you were in hospital.’
‘But – but how did he know?’
‘Charlotte rang him. She thought he deserved to know because he’s still crazy about you. Always has been. He asked me to tell you.’
Marianne took her hands away from her face and laid them on the table. She sighed. She said simply, ‘Oh.’
Belle leaned forward. She said, ‘It’s what I always said, darling. That he wasn’t to be trusted.’
‘Ellie,’ Marianne said, as if her mother hadn’t spoken, ‘why didn’t you tell me he’d been?’
‘I was going to—’
‘Did you think it would start me up again?’
Elinor said hesitantly, ‘Well, I did wonder.’
Marianne smiled at her a little sadly. She said, ‘So you could say, like Mags, that he is just a shagbandit?’
Belle gave a little jump. ‘Where does she get such language?’
‘School, Ma.’
Belle looked round. ‘I suppose I should summon her out of her tree …’
‘In a minute,’ Elinor said. She leaned towards her sister.
‘M. M – are you OK?’
Marianne nodded vehemently. ‘I am. I am. I’m – going to be.’
‘Don’t force yourself,’ Elinor said.
Marianne said a little desperately, ‘Believing in a bastard takes a bit of getting over.’
‘Of course.’
‘But I’ll do it, Ellie. I’ll get there. It just – just shakes your self-belief a bit, doesn’t it?’
There was a flash of someone running past the kitchen window.
‘She’s coming.’
The door flew open. Margaret stood on the threshold, panting, her school tie, with its carefully uneven ends, under one ear.
‘You’ll never guess …’
‘What, Mags?’
‘I just saw Thomas,’ Margaret said. ‘He came to put that other plank in, so I’ve got more floor space, and he said he’d seen Lucy in Exeter today, all dolled up and stuff, and she flashed a ring at him, a wedding ring.’ She paused, and then looked at Elinor, and her expression was one of intense distress. ‘Ellie,’ she said, ‘Ellie, I’m so sorry. I really am – but they’re married.’
Elinor lay wakefully in the dark. Marianne had wanted to stay with her and be comforting, but Elinor had said that she needed to be alone, quite alone, and Marianne hadn’t persisted but had simply slipped back to her own room without saying anything further, just squeezing Elinor’s shoulder as she left.
So, Elinor thought, here I am, here we are, all of us, roughly where we were when we left Norland, except that Marianne has survived an adventure – or, you could say, had an amazingly lucky escape – and I have had my hopes raised and lowered so many times that now that they are finally dashed, I’m so battered by the seesaw that I hardly know what I feel. Except I do. If I’m honest, I know that I went on hoping, hoping and hoping, that Edward’s good conduct would finally see a bit of good sense too, and he wouldn’t actually marry her. Of course, she’d want to marry him, as fast as possible, in case he got away, but I really thought – no, I really hoped – that he would realise that if he went through with it, he was committing an act of utterly idiotic nobility, and the end result would be misery all round. A gigantic pratfall, and the biggest prat would be him.
I don’t want him, Elinor thought, twisting restlessly on to her side, to look a prat. I don’t want him to be miserable. I don’t want him and Lucy all mixed up with Bill and Delaford and everything, so that I can’t avoid them, and have to go on pretending I’m OK. I’m not OK. Even Ma saw I wasn’t OK tonight and made a very un-Ma-like speech about taking me for granted and how sorry she was. I don’t think I was very graceful about what she said. I think I just grunted. I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t quite summon up the energy to behave as I ought to have done. Poor Ma. I’ll say sorry tomorrow. I’ll do a lot of things tomorrow, like starting to emulate Marianne in putting loving a waste-of-space man behind me. It’s so – so disappointing. Disappointment is so hard to bear – why don’t we make more allowance for it? Dashed hopes, resigning oneself, learning to bear, to endure – why is there so much of it, all the time?
Sleep was clearly out of the question. She got out of bed and went to the window. It was completely dark at Barton at night-time, and the only lights she could see now were the security ones in the stable yard down at the Park, no doubt triggered by a passing fox. They’d been so concerned, everyone at the Park, about Marianne, sen
ding flowers, and a basket of mini muffins, and the children had drawn pictures for her, and signed them with hearts and smiley faces. And when Elinor had gone to find Thomas at suppertime to ask him the details of meeting Lucy in Exeter, he’d looked so grave and sorry, and told her what had happened with the most profound reluctance.
‘I didn’t want you to know,’ he said. He was holding the high-pressure hose he used to wash mud off Sir John’s Range Rover. ‘But I didn’t want you not to know, either.’
Elinor looked away. She said, with difficulty, ‘Did you see him?’
‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘To be honest, I was glad not to. She said he was waiting in the car. I don’t know where they were going. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.’
Elinor wrapped her arms round herself for consolation. She said sadly, ‘Thank you for telling me.’
He sighed. He yanked out a length of hose and let it slap on to the garage floor.
‘I wouldn’t have,’ he said, ‘if she hadn’t shown me her ring. I wouldn’t have believed her. But there was the ring, and her saying – laughing, she was – that she was Lucy Ferrars now.’ He’d glanced up at Elinor. ‘Pardon my French, but he’s a bloody idiot.’
And that, Elinor thought, will be the general opinion. That gormless Ferrars boy, captured by a gold-digger. Those silly Dashwood girls, blighted by a universally hopeless taste in men. No wonder they’re single. Their poor mother. The lights in the stable yard went out suddenly and the whole valley below vanished into darkness. Elinor shivered. It might be almost early summer, but the night air was still quite sharp. Was it easier to detach yourself emotionally from a real bastard, like Wills, or from a basically lovely man who’d got so screwed up by his childhood that he persisted in doing the wonderfully right thing in the totally wrong way? Whichever, it hurt. It hurt and hurt. And she was going to have to get used to living with that hurt because she was not the kind of person who gave her heart away at all easily. Damn him. Damn them all. Instead of lecturing Marianne about facing herself rather than seeking a rescuing soulmate, she was going to have to eat her own patronising words, syllable by syllable.
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