Sense & Sensibility

‘Yes. It’s – where I live. Or, rather, where I have a flat. It’s a – well, it’s a place I started when I came out of the Army. I wanted to help some of my soldiers who’d got into a bit of trouble with drink and drugs and what have you. The result of what they’d been through, you know, coping mechanisms and all that, never mind not being able to adjust to life outside the Army. And I wanted – well, it’s another story, but I wanted to help addicts in general, really, I wanted—’

‘Addicts?’ Elinor said, startled.

He nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Mostly drugs, but some alcoholics.’

‘So that’s what Sir John meant about your good works!’

‘Jonno’s been wonderful. So supportive, so generous. Our best patron.’

‘That’s wonderful,’ Elinor said seriously. ‘Really wonderful. What you do.’

‘Not really.’

‘We should have asked you, last night, we should have—’

‘No,’ Bill Brandon said, ‘you shouldn’t. I don’t talk about it much. It’s better to do something rather than talk about it. Don’t you think?’

Elinor relaxed her shoulders a little. ‘If you know what to do, it is.’

He moved slightly closer to her. ‘Which is where I came in, I think. What is the matter?’

She looked up at him. He was wearing an expression of the greatest kindness. She said, ‘I’m – just a bit worried. That’s all.’

‘About moving here?’

‘Not – in itself …’

‘Money?’ he said.

She let out a breath. ‘How did you know?’

‘Just a guess.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Money. We’re none of us really fit to work but we’ve got to. At least I have. And I was going to ask Sir John—’ She stopped. Then she said, sadly, ‘I don’t really know what I was going to ask him. For help, I suppose. Unspecified help. Hopeless, really.’

‘Not hopeless.’

‘He’s so busy, he does so much already.’

Bill Brandon looked towards the studio again. And then he looked back at Elinor. ‘He does do a lot, you’re quite right. He’s a mover and shaker by nature. So why don’t you ask someone who isn’t trying to run a business as well as a wife and four children and a sizeable estate in dire economic times? Why don’t you ask me?’

Back at the cottage, Marianne said she felt restless. She said, gazing out of the sitting-room window at the dramatic fall of land below them, ‘We can unpack any time, can’t we? Look at that blue sky.’

Elinor, coming into the room with a stepladder in order to help her mother hang their own curtains, said, ‘And those clouds.’

‘They’re nothing. They’re blowing away. Anyway, what does getting wet matter? We always got wet at Norland.’

Belle was pulling lengths of battered old damask out of a box to replace Sir John’s brightly patterned ready-made curtains. She said to Marianne, ‘What are you suggesting, darling?’

‘A walk.’

‘A walk,’ Margaret said in tones of disgust.

‘Yes,’ Marianne said, ‘a walk. And you’re coming with me.’

‘I hate walks.’

‘Why d’you want to walk?’ Belle said.

‘I want to see the old house Sir John talked about. The old house in the valley where the old lady lives who never goes out. She sounds like Miss Havisham.’

‘I don’t’, Margaret said, ‘want to see anything.’

Belle regarded the damask. It had once been deep burgundy red. It was now, faded by the sun, irregularly striped with the colour of weak tea. But anything was better than bright blue cotton printed with stylised sunflowers. She said, absently, ‘Lovely, darling.’

‘But I—’ began Margaret.

Belle raised her head. ‘I don’t want Marianne walking alone. Not after the other day. And certainly not till we know our way about.’