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He smiled at her again. ‘Exactly.’
‘When what you want to do,’ Belle said, picking up the slicer again and putting it back gently into his hand, ‘is really …?’
Edward selected another bean. ‘I want to do community work of some kind. I know it sounds a bit wet, but I don’t want houses and cars and money and all the stuff my family seems so keen on. My brother Robert seems to be able to get away with anything just because he isn’t the eldest. My mother – well, it’s weird. Robert’s a kind of upmarket party planner, huge rich parties in London, the sort of thing I hate, and my mother turns a completely blind eye to that hardly being a career of distinction. But when it comes to me, she goes on and on about visibility and money and power. She doesn’t even seem to look at the kind of person I am. I just want to do something quiet and sort of – sort of …’
‘Helpful?’ Elinor said.
Edward got off the table and turned so that he could look at her with pure undiluted appreciation. ‘Yes,’ he said with emphasis.
Later that night, jostling in front of the bathroom mirror with their toothbrushes and dental floss, Marianne said to Elinor, ‘He likes you.’
Elinor spat a mouthful of toothpaste foam into the basin. ‘No, he doesn’t. He just likes being around us all, because Ma’s cosy with him and we don’t pick on him and tell him to smarten up and sharpen up all the time, like Fanny does.’
Marianne took a length of floss out of her mouth. ‘Ellie, he likes us all. But he likes you in particular.’
Elinor didn’t reply. She began to brush her hair vigorously, upside down, to forestall further conversation.
Marianne reangled the floss across her lower jaw. Round it she said indistinctly, ‘D’you like him?’
‘Can’t hear you.’
‘Yes, you can. Do you, Elinor Dashwood, picky spinster of this parish for whom no man so far seems to be remotely good enough, fancy this very appealing basket case called Edward Ferrars?’
Elinor stood upright and pushed the hair off her face. ‘No.’
‘Liar.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, a bit,’ Elinor said.
Marianne leaned forward and peered into the mirror. ‘He’s perfect for you, Ellie. You’re such a missionary, you’d have to have someone to rescue. Ed is ripe for rescue. And he’s the sweetest guy.’
‘I’m not interested. The last thing I want right now is anyone else who needs sorting.’
‘Bollocks,’ Marianne said.
‘It’s not—’
‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you tonight. You only had to say the dullest thing and he was all over you, like a Labrador puppy.’
‘Stop it.’
‘But it’s lovely, Ellie! It’s lovely, in the midst of everything that’s so awful, to have Edward thinking you’re wonderful.’
Elinor began to smooth her hair back into a ponytail, severely. ‘It’s all wrong, M. It’s all wrong at the moment with all this uncertainty and worrying about money, and where we’ll go and everything. It’s all wrong to be thinking about whether I like Edward.’
Marianne turned to her sister, suddenly grinning. ‘Tell you what …’
‘What?’
‘Wouldn’t it just completely piss off Fanny if you and Ed got together?’
The next day, Edward borrowed Fanny’s car and asked Elinor to go to Brighton with him.
‘Does she know?’ Elinor said.
He smiled at her. He had beautiful teeth, she noticed, even if nobody could exactly call him handsome. ‘Does who know what?’
‘Does – does Fanny know you are going to Brighton?’
‘Oh yes,’ Edward said easily, ‘I’ve got a huge list of things to pick up for her: bath taps and theatre tickets and wallpaper samples from—’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ Elinor said. ‘I meant, does Fanny know you were going to ask me to go with you?’
‘No,’ Edward said. ‘And she needn’t. I have her great bus for the day, I have her shopping list, and nothing else is any of her business.’
Elinor looked doubtful.
‘He’s absolutely right,’ Belle said. ‘She’ll never know and it won’t affect her, knowing or not knowing.’
‘But—’
‘Get in, darling.’
‘Yes, get in.’
‘Come on,’ Edward said, opening the passenger door and smiling again. ‘Come on. Please. Please. We’ll have fish and chips on the beach. Don’t make me go alone.’
‘I should be working …’ Elinor said faintly.
She glanced at Edward. He bent slightly and, with the hand not holding the door, gave her a small, decisive shove into the passenger seat. Then he closed the door firmly behind her. He was beaming broadly, and went back round to the driver’s side at a run.
‘Look at that,’ Marianne said approvingly. ‘Who’s the dog with two tails?’
‘Both wagging.’
The car lurched off at speed, in a spray of gravel.
‘He’s a dear,’ Belle said.
‘You’d like anyone who liked Ellie.’
‘I would. Of course I would. But he’s a dear in his own right.’
‘And rich. The Ferrarses are stinking—’
‘I don’t’, Belle said, putting her arm round Marianne, ‘give a stuff about that. Any more than you do. If he’s a dear boy and he likes Ellie and she likes him, that is more than good enough for me. And for you too, I bet.’
Marianne said seriously, watching the car speeding down the faraway sweep of the drive, ‘He wouldn’t be good enough for me.’
‘Darling!’
Marianne leaned into her mother’s embrace.
‘Ma, you know he wouldn’t do for me. I’m not looking for a nice guy; I’m looking for the guy. I don’t want someone who thinks I’m clever to play the guitar like I do, I want someone who knows why I play so well, who understands what I’m playing, like I do, who understands me for what I am and values that. Values me.’ She paused and straightened a little. Then she said, ‘Ma, I’d rather have nothing ever than just anything. Much rather.’
Belle was laughing. ‘Darling, don’t despair. You only left school a year ago, you’re hardly—’
Marianne stepped sideways so that Belle’s arm slipped from her waist. ‘I mean it,’ she said fiercely. ‘I mean it. I don’t want just a man, Ma. I want a soulmate. And if I can’t have one, I’d rather have nobody. See?’
Belle was silent. She was looking into the middle distance now, plainly not really seeing anything.
‘Ma?’ Marianne said.
Belle shook her head very slightly. Marianne moved closer again.
‘Ma, are you thinking about Daddy?’
Belle gave a small sigh.
‘If you are – and you are, aren’t you? – then you’ll know what I’m talking about,’ Marianne said. ‘If I didn’t get this belief in having, one day, a love of my life from you, who did I get it from?’
Belle turned very slightly and gave Marianne a misty smile. ‘Touché, darling,’ she said.
From her bedroom windows – three bays looking south and two facing west – Fanny could see across the immense lawn to the walled vegetable garden, whose glasshouses were so badly in need of repair, never mind the state of the beds themselves, or the unpruned fruit trees and general neglect visible everywhere. And there, in the decayed soft-fruit cage, with its sagging wire and crooked posts, she could see Belle, in one of her arty smock things and jeans, picking raspberries.
Of course, in a way, Belle was perfectly entitled to pick Norland raspberries. The canes themselves probably dated from Uncle Henry’s time, and in their well-meaning, amateur way, Belle and Henry had tried to look after the garden all the years they had lived at Norland. But the fact was that Norland now belonged to John. And because of John, to Fanny. Which meant that everything about it and pertaining to it was not only Fanny’s responsibility now, but her possession. Staring out of the window at her husband’s (by courtesy, only) stepmother, it came to Fanny quite forcibly that Belle was, without asking, picking Fanny’s raspberries.
It took her three minutes to cross her bedroom, traverse the landing, descend the stairs, march down the black and white floored hall to the garden door and make her way at speed across the lawn to the kitchen garden. She let the door in the wall to the kitchen garden close behind her with enough of a slam to alert Belle to the fact that she had arrived, and with a purpose.
Belle looked up, slightly dazedly. She had been thinking about something quite else, mentally arranging the furniture in a cottage she had seen, for rent, near Barcombe Cross, which she had thought might be a distinct possibility even though Elinor insisted that they couldn’t possibly afford it, and she had been picking almost mechanically while she dreamed.
‘Good morning,’ Fanny said.
Belle managed a smile. ‘Good morning, Fanny.’
Fanny stepped into the fruit cage through a torn gap in the netting. She was wearing patent-leather ballet slippers with gold discs on the toes. She looked round her. ‘This is in an awful state.’
Belle said mildly, ‘The raspberries don’t seem to mind. Look at this crop!’
She held her bowl out. Fanny gave a small dismissive sniff. ‘You’ve got a huge amount.’
‘We grew them, Fanny.’
‘All the same …’
‘I’d be happy to pick some for you, Fanny. I offered some to Harry – I thought he might like to pick them with me, but he said he didn’t like raspberries.’
Fanny said carefully, ‘We are very – selective in the fruit we give Harry.’
Belle resumed her picking. ‘Bananas,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Only bananas, we hear. Can that be good for him, not even to eat apples?’
There was short, highly charged pause. Then Fanny said, ‘Isn’t Elinor helping you?’
‘You can see that she isn’t.’
‘Because she isn’t here,’ Fanny said.
Belle said nothing. Fanny threaded her way through the raspberry canes until she was once again in Belle’s sightline.
‘Elinor isn’t here,’ Fanny said clearly, ‘because she is in my car, isn’t she, being driven by my brother, on her way to Brighton.’
‘And if she is?’
‘I wouldn’t want you to think I hadn’t noticed. I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t know. I wasn’t asked. I saw them. I saw them drive away.’
Belle said defiantly, ‘Edward invited her!’
Fanny leaned forward to pick a large, ripe raspberry very precisely out of Belle’s bowl. ‘He may have done. But she had no business accepting.’
Belle stepped back so that the bowl of raspberries was just out of Fanny’s reach. ‘I beg your pardon!’ she said indignantly.
Fanny looked at the raspberry in her fingers and then she looked at Belle. ‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she said.
‘But—’
‘Look,’ Fanny said. ‘Look. My father came from nowhere and ended up somewhere very successful, all through his own efforts. He was ambitious, quite rightly, and he was ambitious for his children, too. He’d be thrilled about Norland. But he wouldn’t be thrilled at all about his eldest son being – being ensnared by his son-in-law’s illegitimate half-sister with not a bean to her name. Any more than my mother would be, if she knew.’ Fanny paused, and then she said, ‘Any more than I am.’
Belle stared at her. ‘I cannot believe this, Fanny.’
Fanny waved the hand holding the raspberry. ‘It doesn’t matter what you can or can’t believe, Belle. It doesn’t matter a jot. All that matters is that when Elinor gets back from her jaunt in my car with my brother, you have just two words to say to her. Two words. Hands off. Do you get it, Belle? Hands off Edward.’
And then she dropped the raspberry on to the earth, and ground it down under her patent-leather toecap.
Edward held out a crumple of white paper. ‘Have another chip.’
Elinor was lying on her back on Edward’s battered cotton jacket, which he had spread for her on the shingle. She waved a hand. ‘Couldn’t.’
‘Just one.’
‘Not even that. They were delicious. The fish was perfect. Thank you for holding back on the vinegar.’
Edward put another chip in his mouth. ‘I have a thing for vinegar.’
Elinor snorted faintly.
‘I mean,’ Edward said, laughing too, ‘I mean vinegar in vinegar. Not in people.’
