and help with these books?’
Sir John sent the handyman from Barton Park to Norland, with Sir John’s own Range Rover, to drive the Dashwoods down to Devon. He also organised a removal company from Exeter to come and collect their books and pictures, and their china and glass, and Belle had the exquisite satisfaction of seeing the Provençal plates disappearing into paper-filled boxes, and in then labelling those boxes with a bold black marker pen so that Fanny, monitoring the whole packing-up procedure, could not fail to observe the china’s departure.
John Dashwood was very uneasy around the whole process. When he returned each day from the notional job of running the Ferrarses’ commercial property empire – he was regarded as an inevitable and unwelcome nuisance by the man who actually did the work – he hovered in Belle’s sitting room or kitchen, mournfully reciting the expenses that made Norland such an exhausting drain upon his wallet and energies, and pointing out how lucky Belle was to be exchanging life at Norland for one of such carefree simplicity and frugality in Devon. Only once did Belle grow so exasperated by his perpetual litany of complaints that she was driven to point out quite sharply that the promise of generosity made in that room at Haywards Heath Hospital had never actually been adhered to. John Dashwood had been deeply wounded by her accusation that he had been other than both honourable and generous, and said so. ‘It’s too bad of you, Belle. It really is. You and the girls have had absolutely the run of the house and garden since Henry died, the complete run. It’s been really inconvenient for Fanny, having you here and having to put all her decorating plans on hold, but of course she’s been angelic about that. As she has about everything. I sometimes wonder, Belle, if Henry didn’t spoil you, I really do. You don’t seem to have the first idea about recognising or acknowledging generosity. I’m really quite shocked. I just hope poor old John Middleton knows what he’s in for, trying to help someone who appears not to have the first idea of even how to say thank you.’ He’d peered at her, cradling his whisky and soda. ‘Just a “thank you, John” would be nice. Don’t you think? It’s all I’m asking, after everything you’ve been given. Just a thank you, Belle.’
It was a relief, in the end, to see Sir John’s car. Belle climbed in beside young Thomas, the handyman, who had put on his new jeans in honour of this important commission from his employer, and the girls got into the back seat behind her, Margaret clutching her iPod, her childhood Nintendo DS and her pocketbook laptop, as if they represented her only frail remaining link to civilised or social life as she knew it. Behind the girls Thomas stacked their suitcases and, on top of that, Marianne’s guitar case, which she had held in her arms all the time she was saying goodbye to John and Fanny. Fanny had been holding Harry’s hand, as if he were a trump card that she needed to flourish at the final moment of victory. In the hand not gripped by his mother, Harry was clutching a giant American-style cookie which seemed to absorb too much of his attention for there to be any to spare for his cousins’ departure. Elinor had knelt in front of him, and smiled. ‘Bye, bye, Harry.’
He regarded her, chewing. She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘You smell of biscuit.’
He frowned.
‘It’s a cookie,’ he said reprovingly, and wedged it in his mouth again.
‘Poor little boy,’ Elinor said, later, in the car.
‘Is he?’
‘Course he is. Having Fanny for a mother …’
Belle turned in her seat. She said, rolling her eyes slightly in the direction of Thomas, ‘Let’s not talk about Fanny.’
‘She didn’t wave,’ Marianne said. She gazed out of the window, as if devouring what she saw as it sped past her.
‘No.’
‘She turned her face so that I kind of got her ear when I kissed her.’
‘Yuck, having to kiss her at all …’
‘She was pretty well smirking!’
‘She’s horrible.’
‘She’s over,’ Belle said firmly. ‘Over.’ Then she turned and smiled brightly at Thomas, who was driving with elaborate professionalism, and exclaimed, almost theatrically, ‘And we are starting a new life, in Devon!’
In the bright, small kitchen at Barton Cottage, with its immediate view of a rotary washing line planted in a square of paving, Elinor surveyed the unpacked boxes. She had said that she would sort the kitchen not just out of altruism, but also so that she could have time to herself, time to try and retrieve her mind and spirit, neither of which had yet made the journey with her body, from Norland to Barton.
It had been quite a good journey for the first few hours. Everyone was slightly hysterical with the immediate relief of escaping the pressure of living in a house with other people who so openly wanted them gone, but then Marianne had gone suddenly very quiet and then very pale and when Elinor, trained by long practice to be alert to her sister’s symptoms, asked if she was OK, she had begun to wheeze and gasp alarmingly, and Belle had ordered Thomas, in a voice urgent with panic, to stop the car.
They had tumbled out on to the verge of the A31 somewhere west of Southampton, and Elinor had been intensely grateful to Thomas, who quietly established himself beside Marianne as they all crouched on the tired grass by a litter bin in a parking place, and supported her while Elinor held her blue inhaler to her mouth and talked to her steadily and quietly, as she had so often done before.
‘Poor darling,’ Belle said, over and over. ‘Poor darling. It’ll be the stress of leaving Norland.’
‘Or the dogs, miss,’ Thomas said matter-of-factly.
‘What dogs? There aren’t any dogs.’
‘In the car,’ Thomas said. He was watching Marianne with a practical eye that was infinitely comforting to Elinor. ‘Sir John’s dogs is always in the car. Doesn’t matter how often we hoover it, we never get all the hairs out. My nan had asthma. Couldn’t even have a budgie in the house, never mind dogs and cats.’
‘Sorry,’ Marianne said, between breaths. ‘Sorry.’
‘Never be sorry …’
‘Just say, a bit earlier, next time.’
‘It won’t be an omen, will it?’
Margaret said, ‘We did omens at school and the Greeks thought—’
‘Shut up, Mags.’
‘But—’
‘We’ll put you in the front seat,’ Thomas said to Marianne, ‘with the window open.’
She nodded. Elinor looked at him. He was wearing the expression of fierce protectiveness that so many men seemed to adopt round Marianne. Solicitously, with Elinor’s assistance, he lifted Marianne to her feet.
‘Thank you,’ Elinor said.
He began to guide Marianne back to the car, his arm round her shoulders. ‘Nothing to thank me for,’ he said, and his voice was proud.
The rest of the journey had passed almost in silence. Thomas drove soberly and steadily, with Marianne leaning her head back in the seat beside him, her face turned towards the open window, her inhaler on her lap. Behind them, Elinor gripped Margaret’s hand
