Joanna Trollope: Sense & Sensibility

‘When she married John?’

‘Yes. Well, of course you will have the same.’

‘Wow,’ Edward said, with genuine appreciation.

‘But no more.’

‘I don’t want more, I didn’t even expect—’

‘There’s no one on the planet who doesn’t always want more.’

‘Not me, Mother.’

Mrs Ferrars plainly decided to let this idiocy pass. She said, ‘I never wanted to fall out with my boys.’

‘No, Mother.’

‘I never want to stand in the way of your – happiness.’

‘Good, Mother.’

‘You can’t, of course, go back to where you once were in my estimation, but I am relieved to feel I have at least one of my boys back again.’

Edward said nothing. He put the little mug down among the nearest scattering of china boxes and leaned forward. ‘Come to Delaford, Mother.’

She looked mildly startled. ‘What?’

‘This weekend. Everyone’s coming this weekend, to see our flat. Come too. Come and meet Bill.’

Mrs Ferrars shifted slightly and blew her nose. She said cautiously, ‘Everyone?’

‘Elinor’s family. The Middletons. Mrs J. John and Fanny and Harry.’ He paused and then he said, ‘Ellie’s going to ring Lucy. Lucy and Robert might be there. We’re going to have a sort of picnic. In the grounds if it’s fine; in our flat if it’s not.’

‘A picnic,’ Mrs Ferrars said indistinctly.

‘Yes, Mother. I know you hate picnics, but it’ll be fun. I’ll find you a chair.’

‘I suppose’, Mrs Ferrars said with difficulty, ‘that you leave me no option.’

‘Is that a yes?’

She looked at him, quickly, for the first time since he had arrived. She gave him a gracious little nod. ‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘I must just get used to it, mustn’t I?’

‘My goodness,’ John Dashwood said, swinging the Mercedes four-wheel drive through the gates of Delaford, ‘Elinor must be insane.’

Fanny, tapping out a text on her smartphone, wasn’t paying attention. She said distractedly, ‘Why, sweetheart?’

‘Well, fancy accepting your brother – no offence, my angel – when she might have had all this!’

Fanny looked vaguely about her. Then, realising what she was looking at, her gaze sharpened. She said, ‘It seems very well maintained, I must say.’

‘Wonderful trees.’

‘Not better than Norland, sweetness.’

‘No,’ John said hastily. ‘No, of course not. I was just thinking that it all might have been Elinor’s.’

Fanny gave a little trill of laughter. She said, ‘Well, the fact that she bagged Ed leaves the field open for Marianne.’

‘D’you really think so? My goodness, look at the house!’

Fanny peered. She said, ‘What a pity to use such a gorgeous house for rehabilitation. Such a waste. Yes, I do think if Marianne is waved under Bill Brandon’s nose often enough, he’ll bite. He’s a pushover as far as daffy girls are concerned. You can see that a mile off.’ She twisted round in her seat to give the new au pair girl (Czech, this time) the benefit of a dazzling smile directed at Harry, strapped in his car seat. ‘OK, Harrykins?’

Harry, who was staring out of the window, took no notice. The Czech nanny didn’t lift her eyes from her own phone screen. Fanny twisted back. ‘Let’s hope everyone behaves,’ she said. ‘I simply dread seeing Lucy, I don’t mind telling you. And if she starts smarming all over Mother—’

‘She wouldn’t dare, dearest.’

Fanny took a lipstick out of her handbag and flipped the sun visor down to see in the mirror on the back. ‘There is no limit to her effrontery, Johnnie,’ she said, applying her lipstick. ‘And Mother has no resistance to Robert.’

The car ground on to the gravel in front of the house. It was slightly shabbier close to than it had appeared from a distance, but it was still supremely impressive.

‘It’s a stunner,’ John Dashwood said regretfully, ‘a real stunner.’ He slowed the car to a halt and wrenched on the brake. ‘And I’m telling you, my angel, that I wouldn’t have minded coming here as Bill’s brother-in-law. Think of that! Norland and Delaford.’ He gave a sentimental sigh. ‘My poor old dad would have been so proud of that!’

‘Elinor can’t possibly cook in here,’ Mrs Jennings said to Belle.

They were, on account of Mrs Jennings’s amplitude, almost wedged together into a narrow galley kitchen, whose end was entirely taken up with a window looking out towards the park.

‘Oh, I think Bill’s going to completely redo it for them,’ Belle said. She had drunk a celebratory glass of champagne she had been handed by Sir John, rather fast, and it had made her feel expansive and confident. ‘I think he’s going to knock walls down and everything. Elinor says we won’t recognise the flat in three months’ time.’

Abigail gestured towards the window. ‘Lovely view.’

‘Lovely place,’ Belle said. ‘Lovely people.’

‘Well, dear,’ Mrs Jennings said, ‘I wouldn’t say all of them were.’

‘Today,’ Belle said, ‘everyone seems rather lovely to me. And seeing Ellie so happy, and her and Ed with such a future. And even Marianne—’

‘She could do worse’, Mrs Jennings said, peering into the sink, ‘than set her cap at Bill Brandon—’

‘My girls’, Belle said, ‘never set their caps at anyone. Edward found Elinor in just the way that I hope Bill might find Marianne.’

Mrs Jennings straightened up. ‘Point taken, dear.’

‘He’s the kind of man, Abi, who needs someone to cherish. Like my Henry was.’

‘If you say so, dear.’

‘But I do have hopes.’

‘Well founded, I’d say.’

‘She’s so young yet—’

‘Talking of young,’ Mrs Jennings said suddenly, ‘what about Margaret?’

Belle focused abruptly. ‘Margaret?’

‘Hasn’t she got a boyfriend yet? She’s old enough.’

‘She’s fourteen. Honestly, Abi, it’s all you ever think about. You’re like those nineteenth-century novels where marriage is the only career option for a middle-class girl.’

‘Just like you, then, dear. You and me both. People pretend things have changed, but have they, really? Look at Charlotte. No brains, I admit, but plenty of capability, and how does she use it? Running houses for Tommy and inventing schedules for that baby. Which reminds me. Or rather the mention of Charlotte reminds me. She told me something about Wills—’

Belle said loftily, interrupting, ‘I don’t wish to hear his name, let alone anything about him.’

‘Yes, you do,’ Abigail said. ‘Of course you do. Especially if it reflects well on Marianne.’

Belle gave a little shrug. ‘In that case …’

Abigail Jennings wedged herself into the narrow space between the cooker and the wall. She said, ‘He went to see Jane Smith.’

Belle tried to look indifferent. ‘So?’

‘He told Charlotte, dear. Charlotte has a bit of a soft spot for him because she knows he still adores Marianne. Well, he went to see Jane Smith, thinking she might refuse to see him. But she didn’t, and she let him speak, and tell her why he’d married the Greek girl, and how he felt about Marianne, and all about that awful drama with Marianne in hospital. Everything. And when he’d finished, she let a silence fall, and then she said – quite affectionately, he told Charlotte – that she forgave him. And of course, he could hardly believe what he was hearing, and he was about to cast himself at her feet and tell her how wonderful she was when she stopped him, and said that if he’d done the right thing by Marianne, he could have had hers – Jane’s – money as well as her forgiveness, but as it was, he’d have to make do with just the latter! Charlotte said she expected him to be furiously angry, but she said he was more rueful than angry. He said it was a gamble that hadn’t paid off, but that he wasn’t sorry he’d taken the risk. And …’