The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ said Mr Grant, inquiringly.

  ‘Francis Brandon,’ said Francis, ‘you remember meeting me at Mr Miller’s last week.’

  ‘Of course, I’m so sorry,’ said Mr Grant, his eyes still wavering towards Mrs Brandon. ‘I mean how do you do.’

  ‘Nicely, thank you,’ said Francis. ‘This is my sister Delia, and Mamma will come to in a minute. Mamma, here is Mr Grant that you met at the Vicarage.’

  Mrs Brandon, who had succumbed for a few seconds to the heat and ante-lunch exhaustion, opened her eyes and gave Mr Grant her hand with a smile. Francis was rather afraid that the shock of waking up might prompt her to one of her worse indiscretions, but luckily lunch was announced, and they all went into the dining-room. This impressive apartment was lined with pitch pine and adorned with pictures by deceased RAs, pictures which, as Mr Brandon had informed every visitor, had all been hung on the line. The lofty ceiling was decorated with strips of pitch pine crossing each other diagonally and at each intersection was fixed a naked electric light in a copper lotus. The dado and the panels of the door were of the finest Lincrusta Walton and the bronze clock on the mantelpiece represented a Knight Templar, with the clock face under his horse’s stomach.

  From the very beginning of lunch it was obvious to Francis and Delia that Mr Grant was in their language a case, and they had the great pleasure of kicking each other under the table whenever he looked at their mother. They were used to her rapid and entirely unconscious conquests, which Francis regarded with malicious enjoyment and Delia with good-humoured contempt. Delia’s heart was so far untouched except by the heroes, whether villain or detective, of thrillers and American gangster films, and as Mr Grant, apart from a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, had nothing in common with these supermen, she mentally labelled him Not Wanted.

  Conversation during lunch was of a disjointed nature. Francis and Delia were consumed with curiosity as to why Mr Miller’s pupil should be lunching at Brandon Abbey. On ordinary occasions they would have had no inhibitions about asking him what he was doing in their aunt’s house, but the presence of the disapproving butler, who never left the room for a moment, not to speak of the two footmen, cramped their style a little. Their mother would have been capable of any indiscretion, but, as her children well saw, she had not yet recovered from her slumber before lunch and although she had grasped the fact that she had met Mr Grant at the Vicarage, she appeared to be under the impression that he was going to be a curate, and was industriously and ignorantly talking on church subjects. Mr Grant was doing his best to second her, but was hampered by an ignorance equal to her own and a tendency to look at her rather than listen to her. Altogether it was a relief to everyone when the butler, as soon as dessert was set on the table, told Mrs Brandon that Miss Brandon would be glad if she would come up and have coffee in her room. Mrs Brandon made a face at her children, sympathetically answered by hideous faces from them, and got up from the table, dropping a pale pink handkerchief as she rose. Mr Grant, who had stood up with her, was about to rescue it when a footman, at a sign from the butler, picked it up and gave it to his superior, who put it on a silver salver and handed it to its owner.

  Mrs Brandon looked at the handkerchief, then looked in her bag, and finding that her handkerchief was not there, seemed surprised.

  ‘I must have dropped it,’ she said, taking it from the salver. ‘Thank you so much.’

  She was then wafted away by the butler, and the three young people were left alone with Miss Brandon’s glasshouse peaches and grapes, besides the less rare products of the kitchen garden. Francis, approaching his subject cautiously, asked Mr Grant what he was reading with old Miller.

  ‘Classics,’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘Is that to go to Oxford, or something?’ asked Francis.

  ‘No, I’m afraid I’m through Oxford,’ said Mr Grant apologetically. ‘Mother thought I’d better read for the bar, and as I did history my classics were a bit sticky, so she sent me here to rub them up. Were you a history man?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I’m only an Old School Tie,’ said Francis in his turn apologetic. ‘I wasn’t very brainy at school and when a good job turned up in Barchester I jumped at it. I rather wish I’d let Mamma send me to a University now, but anyway it’s about five years too late.’

  ‘I think you’re jolly lucky,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I wanted to go into a publisher’s office when I left school, but I’d got a mouldy kind of scholarship by mistake so they made me take it up, and then Mother made me go abroad, and here I am at twenty-three only just beginning.’

  ‘That’s exactly as old as Francis,’ said Delia. ‘When’s your birthday?’

  Mr Grant said March.

  ‘Well, I’m February and Francis is April,’ said Delia, ‘so that’s rather funny. Do you go to the movies much? There’s not a bad cinema at Barchester.’

  Mr Grant said he didn’t go very much, but he had seen Descente de lit in which Zizi Pavois was superb, and Menschen ohne Knochen which, even allowing for propaganda, was an astoundingly moving affair.

  Delia said she meant films and there was going to be an awfully good one at Barchester next week called Going for a Ride with Garstin Hermon as the villain and she had been told it was absolutely ghastly. As she said these words her pretty brown eyes sparkled, her cheeks flushed in a most becoming way and her hair seemed to curl even more than usual. Mr Grant looked at these phenomena with an historian’s appraising eye and thought how much lovelier gentle blue eyes were than bold brown, how preferable was a soft pale skin to the rude glow of health, and how infinitely more touching were loose waves of hair, a little touched with grey, than a mop of corkscrews. Thinking these chivalrous thoughts he said, with the annoyingly tolerant manner that Oxford is apt to stamp upon her sons, that it sounded very exciting.

  ‘Look here, Delia, that’s your fourth peach,’ said Francis. ‘You’ll be sick. Let’s come out in the garden.’

  Accordingly the three young people strolled out into the terrace and sat on the broad balustrade, looking at the foolish peacocks. At the end of the yew avenue the former stewpond, now a formal basin, gleamed among the leaves of the water lilies. The one white peacock, white by courtesy but really looking rather grey, posed self-consciously against the yews. It was all very peaceful and for a time no one had anything to say.

  ‘I’m afraid my aunt’s in rather a bad mood today,’ said Mr Grant at last. ‘I do hope she isn’t giving Mrs Brandon a bad time.’

  ‘Your aunt?’ said Delia.

  ‘Aunt Sissie. She’s an aunt of yours too, isn’t she?’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Francis, ‘you are our long-lost rival. I’m jolly glad to meet you. Aunt Sissie is always ramming you down our throats and I thought you were an old man with a beard. And I jolly well hope you do get this foul Abbey – I mean if you’d like it.’

  Mr Grant looked so uncomfortable that even Delia felt that her brother might have been more tactful.

  ‘You see, Aunt Sissie is a bit of a bully,’ she said, ‘and she thinks she can frighten us by saying she’ll leave the money to you, but we really don’t care two hoots.’

  Mr Grant looked more uncomfortable than ever after this explanation.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Francis, vaguely feeling that some reparation was necessary.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Mr Grant. ‘But it’s rather a shock. I knew practically nothing about Aunt Sissie till Father died, and then she wrote to Mother and said she was a very old woman whose relatives neglected her and would I come and visit her. She didn’t say anything about leaving this place or anything. I only came over here yesterday afternoon and I had an awful night in a four-poster stuffed with knobs, and there was a marble bath with a mahogany surround about three hundred yards down the passage, and Aunt Sissie was rather unpleasant, and thank goodness I’m going back to the Vicarage. If I hadn’t promised Aunt Sissie I’d stay to tea I’d go at once. I can’t stand this.’

  He spoke with such vehemence tha
t his hearers were surprised, not understanding that in his mind’s eye he saw himself depriving that wonderful Mrs Brandon of her birthright and turning her out into the snow while he lived among peacocks and butlers.

  ‘All right,’ said Francis. ‘If I get it I’ll give it to you and if you get it you give it to me. If I had it I’d sell it for a lunatic asylum. Anyhow it’s almost one now.’

  ‘If it were mine I’d burn the damned thing down,’ said Mr Grant, toying with the idea of handing over the insurance money to Mrs Brandon anonymously.

  Warming to the theme the two heirs, ably supported by Delia, began to alter the house according to their individual tastes, turning the pond into a swimming pool, the enormous servants’ hall into a squash court, and the drawing-room into a dance room with bar. By the time they had decided to make their aunt’s room into a Chamber of Horrors, charging half a crown for admission, they were all laughing so much that even when Delia suddenly uttered one of her celebrated screams, it was hardly heard above the noise the men were making. Her shriek was merely a prelude to the announcement that if Aunt Sissie was everybody’s aunt they must be Hilary’s cousins, adding that she hoped he didn’t mind her calling him Hilary, but she always did. On inquiry it turned out that Mr Grant’s father and the Brandons’ father were connected with Miss Brandon’s family on quite different sides and no relationship existed, but it was agreed that a state of cousinship should be established.

  When Mrs Brandon left the dining-room she found Miss Brandon’s maid waiting for her in the hall.

  ‘Good afternoon, Sparks,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘How is Miss Brandon today?’

  ‘Thank you, madam, a little on the edge,’ said Sparks. ‘Young Mr Grant’s visit seemed to upset her a good deal, being as he reminded her of her brother, Captain Brandon, the one that was killed by a pig in India, madam.’

  At any other moment Mrs Brandon might have wondered why Mr Miller’s pupil should remind her Aunt Sissie of Captain Frederick Brandon who was killed while pig-sticking in Jubilee year, but her whole attention was concentrated on getting upstairs. The great staircase at Brandon Abbey, square, made of solid oak, had been taken from an Elizabethan house that was being demolished. Mr Brandon, after taking one look at its rich natural colour, had decided that it did not look worth the considerable sum he had given for it, so he dismissed his architect who had advised the purchase and had the whole staircase painted and grained to resemble the oak of which it was made. Having done this he admired the result so much that, with a taste far in advance of his time, he left it bare, instead of covering it as the hall and corridors were covered with a layer of felt, a rich Kidderminster carpet, and a drugget above all. He then gave orders that it was to be waxed and polished twice a week, which had been faithfully carried out ever since, even after Mr Brandon had slipped and broken his ankle and a second footman (who should have been using the back stairs and was at once dismissed) had crashed down the final flight carrying six empty brass water cans.

  Knowing the dangers, Mrs Brandon clung to the banisters and went slowly upstairs. Safely arrived on the landing she followed Sparks along the gloomy corridor to the door that led to Miss Brandon’s sitting-room. This door was guarded by two life-size and highly varnished black wooden statues of gorillas, wearing hats and holding out trays for visiting cards, which images had been the terror of Francis and Delia’s childhood. Delia, always the bolder of the two, had only suspected that they would claw her as she went into her aunt’s room, but Francis knew, with the deadly certainty of childhood, that they came over the downs to Stories every Friday night, when Nurse was out, and got under his bed. Perhaps the happiest day of his life was when he was taken to Brandon Abbey in his first prep school holidays, and fresh from a world of men suddenly realised that the gorillas were nothing but very hideous wooden figures, which knowledge he imparted to Delia in a lofty and offhand way, as one who had always known the truth but had not troubled to mention it.

  Sparks left Mrs Brandon in the sitting-room while she went to prepare her mistress. Mrs Brandon walked about the room, idly looking at the many faded photographs of old Mr and Mrs Brandon at all stages, of Captain Brandon with military moustache and whiskers, of Miss Brandon from a plump, pretty child with ringlets to a well-corseted young woman in a bustle, after which epoch she had apparently never been photographed again. She wondered idly, not for the first time, what Amelia Brandon’s life had been, what secrets her heart might have held, before she became the immense, terrifying old lady whom she had always known. These unprofitable reflections were interrupted by the door into Miss Brandon’s room being opened and Mrs Brandon, turning to face Sparks, saw a stranger. It was a woman no longer young, with greying hair and a rather worn face, neatly dressed in dark blue silk.

  ‘Mrs Brandon?’ said the stranger. ‘I am Ella Morris, Miss Brandon’s companion.’

  Mrs Brandon found Miss Morris’s voice very pleasant.

  ‘Oh, how do you do,’ said she, shaking hands. ‘Thank you so much for writing for Aunt Sissie and I do hope you aren’t having a dreadful time.’

  ‘Nothing to what I have had with my other old ladies,’ said Miss Morris composedly. ‘I was so sorry not to be down when you came, but Miss Brandon wanted me to read some old letters to her. I hope everything was all right at lunch.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘And forgive my asking, but knowing Aunt Sissie as I do, have you had any lunch?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Miss Morris as composedly as ever. ‘Miss Brandon likes me to read to her while she is lunching. She has a remarkably good appetite. I shall have mine now. Will you come in?’

  ‘How many days a week is she in bed now?’ Mrs Brandon asked softly, as they approached the door.

  ‘Six and a half, since Whitsun when I came,’ said Miss Morris. ‘She gets up on Tuesday for the afternoon, and that is why she is always a little fatigued on Wednesday.’

  With these ominous words she opened the door, saying, ‘Miss Brandon, here is Mrs Brandon.’ She then went away and Sparks, who had been keeping guard at the bedside, got up and followed her.

  In the huge room, hung with dark tapestries, filled with heavy mahogany furniture, there was very little light. The blinds were drawn against the westering sun and Mrs Brandon, dazzled by the gloom, could only advance slowly towards the four-poster with its embroidered canopy, below which her husband’s aunt lay propped upon pillows.

  Miss Brandon in a state of nature bore a striking resemblance, with her almost bald head and her massive jowl, to the more decadent of the Roman Emperors. To conceal her baldness she had taken of late years to a rather cheap wig, whose canvas parting was of absorbing interest to the young Brandons as they grew tall enough to look down on it, but when in bed she preferred to discard the wig, and wore white bonnets, exquisitely hand-sewn by Sparks, frilled, plaited and goffered, in which she looked like an elderly Caligula disguised as Elizabeth Fry. Round her shoulders she had a white cashmere shawl, fine enough to draw through a wedding ring, and about her throat swathes of rich, yellowing lace, pinned with hideous and valuable diamond brooches. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds sparkled in the creases of her swollen fingers, and in the watch pocket above her head was the cheap steel-framed watch that her father had bought as a young man with his first earnings.

  ‘Stand still and shut your eyes for a moment,’ commanded Miss Brandon’s voice from the bed, ‘and then you’ll be able to see. I can’t have the blinds up. My eyes are bad.’

  Mrs Brandon obediently halted, shut her eyes, and presently opened them again. The gloom was now less dense to her sight and without difficulty she reached the chair placed by the bedside.

  ‘How are you, Aunt Sissie,’ she said, taking her aunt’s unresponsive hand, and then sat down.

  Miss Brandon said that her legs were more swollen than ever and it was only a question of Time. Her niece, she added, could look at them if she liked.

  ‘Oh, thank you very much, Aunt Sissie, but I don’t think
I could bear it,’ said Mrs Brandon truthfully.

  ‘You don’t have much to bear, Lavinia,’ said her aunt grimly, ‘and I think you might take a little interest in my sufferings. Even my father’s legs weren’t as bad as mine. But all you young people are selfish. Hilary wouldn’t look at them. What do you think of him?’

  ‘Of whom?’ Mrs Brandon asked, a little bewildered.

  ‘Hilary Grant. My nephew. First cousin once removed to be exact, as his father was a son of my youngest aunt. Same relation your children are.’

  ‘Do you mean Mr Grant?’ faltered Mrs Brandon. ‘I thought he was going to be a clergyman.’

  Miss Brandon almost reared in bed.

  ‘I have always been sorry for you, Lavinia, as Henry’s wife,’ she announced, ‘but I am beginning to be sorry for Henry. Have you no intelligence?’

  ‘Not much,’ said her niece meekly.

  ‘None of you have,’ said the invalid. ‘Four people having lunch together and can’t find out who they are. Why didn’t Miss Morris tell you?’