Joanna Trollope: Sense & Sensibility

Sir John gawped at her. ‘Several hundred per cent, I’d say.’

‘Well,’ Abigail said, ‘I need to know because you see, he utterly adored Lucy.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘My dear Jonno, she broke his heart!’

Sir John stood up, for emphasis. ‘Rubbish,’ he said.

She stood too, uncertainly.

‘He was trying to do the right thing,’ Sir John said. ‘He felt obliged to her family, having a mother like he’s got. That’s all.’

‘But she said—’

Sir John strode over to his office door and opened it. ‘Out, Abi.’

‘Yes, dear.’

She trotted over, and paused in front of him. She said, defensively, ‘I like to think the best of people, Jonno.’

He bent towards her. He said firmly, ‘Then don’t waste your time on the worst ones, Abi,’ and pushed her out of the room.

Edward was lying on the sofa at Barton Cottage. He had spent the day at Delaford with Bill Brandon, being shown round the place and meeting the people, and had come back to Barton with the contented and slightly disbelieving feeling that he had at last found a work environment that chimed amazingly with his own temperament and beliefs. He was waiting now, his head on a cushion and his feet dangling over the arm at the end of the sofa, for Elinor to come home from work in Exeter.

He could not believe the depth of his contentment, nor the height of his optimism. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt either, before, and certainly never to such a degree. Everywhere he looked seemed bathed in light, and every time he thought of Elinor, something inside him felt as if it was simply dissolving in rapture. He lay there, looking at a faint crack in the ceiling and watching a very small spider venturing out along its length, and thought that if this was happiness, then it ought to be bottled and fed intravenously to every single patient of the National Health Service.

‘Gosh, you look down,’ Marianne said, approvingly, from the doorway.

He turned his head and waved at her. ‘Never been more miserable,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see?’

She held out the phone in her hand. She said, smiling, ‘Call for you.’

He swung himself upright. ‘For me? On your phone?’

Marianne made a slight face.

‘It’s brother John. He wants to talk to you.’

‘Yikes.’

Marianne put the phone to her ear. She said, ‘I’ve found him, John. Hard at work on the sofa. I’ll hand you over.’

Edward took the phone and held it gingerly against his head. ‘John?’

The other end of the line, John Dashwood sounded very grave.

‘I imagine, Edward, it’s a bit late for recriminations—’

‘Much too late,’ Edward said cheerfully, ‘and completely pointless, as I have never, ever, in my whole life been so—’

‘Edward,’ John Dashwood said majestically.

‘What?’

‘Your mother is heartbroken. Your sister is feeling, naturally, completely betrayed. It is, in fact, astonishing that either of them are still functioning, let alone as well as they are.’

Edward looked back at the spider. ‘Oh,’ he said.

‘I would have hoped, Edward, for a much more concerned response. Your mother, your sister—’

‘Sorry, John,’ Edward said, ‘but you should be ringing Robert, not me.’

John Dashwood took a steadying breath. He said, ‘Do you realise, Edward, that your mother has not actually mentioned your name since this whole disgraceful business began?’

Edward aimed an imaginary gun at the spider and fired. He said, with one eye shut, ‘No change there, then.’

John Dashwood sounded outraged. ‘Edward!’

Edward said nothing. He got up and stood looking out of the window. Soon, Elinor’s car would come into view.

‘Are you still there?’ John Dashwood said.

‘I am.’

‘Will you please listen to me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Your sister and I – Fanny and I – think you could very easily do something to ease the situation. Your own, as well as your mother’s.’

‘Which is?’ Edward said guardedly.

‘You should write to her. You should write and say how sorry you are for upsetting her.’

‘Why?’ Edward demanded.

‘Because she wants nothing so much as for her children to be happy. Because she has been badly wounded by her sons’ conduct just recently.’

Edward ran his hand through his hair. He said incredulously, ‘Are you saying I should write to my mother and say sorry for Robert?’

‘Well, it would be very much to your advantage—’

‘No.’

‘Edward—’

‘No. Absolutely not. Never. I wish I hadn’t had all that nonsense with Lucy, but I am so certain, so certain about Elinor that I don’t give one single stuff about what any of you think. I’m not sorry. I’m not humble. I might talk to Mother about all this, one day, if she’ll ever listen, but I absolutely refuse to write a letter that I don’t mean and for something I haven’t done. Right?’

John said stiffly, ‘You are making a big mistake.’

‘Not as big as my mother’s!’ Edward shouted.

There was silence. Then John said, with elaborate dignity, ‘I shall go and convey this to your sister.’

‘You do that,’ Edward said rudely. ‘How does it feel to be pussy-whipped by two women in your life?’

There was shocked silence at the other end of the line. An orange car was creeping along the valley floor, and Edward felt his heart lift in his chest, like a bird.

‘Bye,’ he said, into the phone, carelessly, ‘bye,’ and tossed it on to the dented cushions of the sofa.

Marianne was sitting on the ridge above the valley where Allenham lay. She was sitting upright, her hands round her knees, and a yard away, Bill Brandon lay on his elbow in the grass and watched her. Her hair was loose down her back and, every so often, a breath of breeze lifted a strand or two and he watched them float and then settle again.

She was not, he observed, looking tense or strained. She was gazing down at the old house, at its eccentric Tudor chimneys and neat hedge-partitioned gardens, and her expression was one of dreamy half-interest, rather than one of any intensity. It was strangely comfortable, being up there with her, in silence, and he found he was in no hurry to break it, or to know what she was thinking as she looked down, not just on a place she knew, but a place she had hoped to know so much better.

It had, after all, been astonishing to him that she should ask him to walk with her at all. Of course, Belle didn’t want her going anywhere alone for the moment, and he had been conveniently lounging about in the garden, ostensibly waiting for Edward, when Marianne had come right up to him, and looked straight at him, and said she needed to go and have a look at Allenham, and would he go with her?

They’d climbed up, companionably enough, through the woods, across the lane and he’d made her, without fuss, stop to catch her breath before they set out across the ridge itself. He’d offered to carry the sweater she’d taken off, and she’d said, ‘No,’ and he’d calmly said, ‘Don’t be silly,’ and taken it, and she’d turned to him, laughing, and let him. And now here they were, on the rough, tussocky grass high above Allenham, in easy silence, a yard apart. Only a yard, Bill thought, but it’s a distance. And I’ve made it, because I am desperate not to push her. And, actually, it’s more than enough, it’s wonderful to lie here and watch her able to look down at that house without it distressing her. She’s not indifferent – that would be too much to hope for – but she’s not yearning, either.

As if she’d read his thoughts. Marianne turned and smiled at him.

She said, ‘It’s OK.’

‘Is it?’

She nodded.