The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘I wanted Miss Morris to come for a picnic with us on Friday,’ she said.

  ‘Well, she can’t,’ said the invalid, who seemed to be imbibing fresh strength as she dipped plum cake into her tea and mumbled it.

  ‘But she said she wouldn’t,’ Mrs Brandon continued, with great cunning.

  ‘She wouldn’t!’ said Miss Brandon. ‘I don’t know why girls are so ungrateful now. I never could stand a proud stomach. I suppose you wanted her to help with the sandwiches, Lavinia. Something for nothing.’

  Having thus satisfactorily attributed the lowest of motives to her niece and her companion, Miss Brandon drank the rest of her tea and rang the handbell violently. Sparks appeared and was ordered to fetch Miss Morris, while Miss Brandon ate lumps of sugar in a state of mental abstraction which her niece thought it better not to disturb.

  ‘I want you to go with Mrs Brandon on Friday and help with the sandwiches,’ said the invalid, as soon as Miss Morris appeared. ‘The car will take you, and tell Simmonds to put up some of her potted salmon and crab apple jelly and make some cakes. And you’d better take some of the marsala. You can read to me all Friday evening to make up. Goodbye, Lavinia.’

  ‘Goodbye, Aunt Sissie, and thank you very much for the ring. It is the loveliest diamond I’ve ever seen,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Fred liked pretty women to have jewellery,’ said Miss Brandon with a surprising chuckle. ‘It was the diamond bracelet he gave to Mrs Colonel Arbuthnot that made him have to exchange – that was at Poona in seventy-six. I was only a young woman then, but Fred told me everything. Come again, soon, but I don’t want to see all those young people. Come alone, and I’ll show you my legs.’

  Taking this as permission to retire, and seeing no means of reaching her aunt across the tea-things, Mrs Brandon repeated her farewell and went out, followed by Miss Morris.

  ‘Is it all right for Miss Brandon to eat so much?’ she inquired as they went downstairs. ‘I thought she was on a diet.’

  ‘So she is, but she doesn’t take any notice of it. She told Dr Ford last time he came that she was going to die in her own way and he needn’t come again if he didn’t like it, so he just comes and talks to her occasionally. She likes it. Mrs Brandon, I can’t thank you enough, but do you really want me?’

  At this slavish question, which no one should ever ask, Mrs Brandon almost felt she didn’t. But she looked at Miss Morris’s thin shoulders and her worn face and decided that she did.

  ‘I do want you,’ she said, ‘but I’m not sure if I really want Aunt Sissie’s car. Anyway, Francis shall drive you back.’

  Then they all got into the car. Curwen asked with long-suffering if he should go by the downs, and on receiving the order to go by Barchester managed to express by the set of his shoulders his opinion of employers, their children, and their guest. Francis chose to ride inside, so he and Delia continued their plans for remaking Brandon Abbey, while Mrs Brandon thought of nothing in particular and Mr Grant felt that he now knew what true religion was like. As they approached Pomfret Madrigal, Mrs Brandon told Curwen to drive first to the Vicarage. Francis protested that there was no need to change, and Hilary might as well come straight to Stories and have a singles with him before dinner. But Mr Grant, increasingly conscious of his unsuccessful shave that morning, said he would really like to go to the Vicarage first if nobody minded, and, as an afterthought, that he might as well change. Mrs Brandon smiled approval, Mr Grant was decanted at the Vicarage, the car rolled away and darkness fell on the world.

  3

  Under the Spanish Chestnut

  The darkness which had covered the universe was not apparent to anyone else. The Vicarage cook was sitting at the kitchen door in the sunshine, knitting a jacket for her married sister’s latest; Hettie, the friend of spiders, was in the pantry reading a very nice book in a twopenny edition called Pure as the Lily, with the sun glancing on her spectacles; while Mr Miller, reclining in a deck chair under the beech on the lawn, was reading the Bishop of Barchester’s pastoral charge, bathed in the late afternoon light. Cook shouted to Hettie that she didn’t remember a summer like that, not since her aunt died; Hettie yelled back to Cook that she must hurry up with her voyle for the Feet, it was that hot, a statement which Cook rightly interpreted as a wise decision of Hettie’s to get her new cotton voile dress finished before the annual Church Fête, which took place, with Mr Miller’s resigned permission, in the Vicarage grounds; while Mr Miller thought that if there were a hotter place than his garden he wished the Bishop were in it. Seeing his pupil approach he dashed his Bishop’s letter to the ground and asked Mr Grant how he had got on at Brandon Abbey.

  Quite well, said Mr Grant. His aunt was a peculiar old lady, but quite kind, only he did wish she wouldn’t make hints about leaving things to him, because the Abbey was a ghastly place and he would hate to have anything to do with it. Her companion, Miss Morris, was very nice too. And, he added, speaking with some difficulty, Mrs Brandon was there.

  ‘Mrs Brandon. Ah, yes,’ said Mr Miller.

  There was a silence.

  ‘It’s a most extraordinary thing,’ said Mr Grant, ‘but she is a sort of cousin of mine. I never knew about it till today.’

  Mr Miller found himself indulging in the sin of envy. To be Mrs Brandon’s cousin must be in itself a state of grace to be envied by anyone. Then he rebuked himself, and concentrated on thinking how glad he was that his pupil, whom he already liked, should have this great happiness.

  Silence fell again, till Mr Miller, hearing the church clock strike seven, said he supposed they must be thinking of dressing. So they thought about it very comfortably till half-past and then there was rather a scurry. Mr Grant, getting into his white shirt, was for the sixth or seventh time suddenly struck hot with shame and remorse as he remembered the various bricks he had dropped that afternoon. His stud fell from his nerveless hands, rolled across the sloping oak floor and disappeared in the gap under the skirting board. Mr Grant knew he had another stud somewhere, but where he couldn’t think. After untidying all his drawers he went down the passage and knocked at Mr Miller’s door.

  ‘I say, I’m awfully sorry, Mr Miller,’ he said, putting his head in, ‘but one of my studs has got down a hole in the wall and I can’t find my spare one. Could you possibly lend me one? It’s only an ordinary gold one.’

  ‘The worst of my profession is that one doesn’t have much to do with studs,’ said Mr Miller, who was in his trousers and vest and preparing to put his collar on. ‘Wait a minute and I’ll see.’

  He hunted in a box and found a stud which was just sufficiently unlike Mr Grant’s to make that young gentleman conscious of it for the whole evening. He handed it to Mr Grant, and seeing him look with furtive curiosity at his clerical collar, kindly offered to show him how it did up.

  ‘Oh, thanks most awfully,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I’ve always wanted to know how that gadget worked. I say, that’s awfully interesting. Thanks most awfully.’

  He dashed back to his bedroom, hated his own face, hair and tie, wondered if Mrs Brandon would notice a small spot of grease on one of the lapels of his dinner jacket, wished his evening shoes were newer, and hurried downstairs and into Mr Miller’s little open car, in which his tutor was already waiting.

  ‘You will enjoy dining at Stories,’ said Mr Miller, as they drove along the lane. ‘The house is a delightful example of early Georgian; about 1720 I think.’

  Mr Grant said that would be awfully jolly and wished his throat were not so dry, nor his heart banging so absurdly against his ribs.

  ‘And Mrs Brandon is a most charming hostess,’ Mr Miller continued.

  This understatement could only be met with silence, and nothing more was said till they drew up at the front door.

  When Mrs Brandon got home she went upstairs to rest a little before dinner. Not that she was in need of rest, but she vastly enjoyed the ritual of leisurely bath, lying on her sofa in a becoming wrap, and slowly dressing. Francis and Delia
went off to play tennis before their skimpier toilets, and their fraternal yells came sweetly to her ears from beyond the walled garden. She took off her hat and rang.

  ‘Did you ring, madam?’ said Rose, appearing with great celerity.

  ‘My bath please, Rose, and I’ll wear that old pink thing,’ said Mrs Brandon, recognising with some trepidation that Rose had a grievance, and suddenly realising that she shouldn’t have been there at all, as it was her afternoon out.

  ‘I thought you would prefer the black or the mauve tonight, madam,’ said Rose, so meaningly that her mistress had to ask her why.

  ‘You wore the pink if you remember, madam, the last time Sir Edmund dined here.’

  ‘Sir Edmund? But he isn’t coming here tonight.’

  ‘I am sorry, I am sure, madam, but understanding from Nurse that Sir Edmund had rung up I thought I had better stay in and take My Afternoon on Friday. If I had taken the message, madam, I should have written it down on the pad, but of course with Nurse taking it I did not wish to interfere, not being any business of mine.’

  Without giving her mistress time to answer she disappeared into the bathroom and drowned all attempts at conversation in a roaring of taps, so that she did not hear a knock on the bedroom door.

  ‘Come in,’ cried Mrs Brandon, shutting the bathroom door to lessen the noise.

  Nurse came in.

  ‘It’s about Miss Delia’s tennis frock, madam,’ she began. ‘I’m sure I am ready to work at it all night if need be, but I can’t finish it without a fitting, and Miss Delia is playing tennis.’

  ‘Then you’d better tell her to come up to you before she dresses for dinner,’ said Mrs Brandon, knowing well that Delia always obeyed Nurse and that this complaint was but a preface to further wrongs.

  ‘Just as you say, madam,’ said Nurse, ‘and I am sure I am sorry if I have stepped out of my place, but when the telephone rings for quite three minutes, as I said to Cook, being downstairs at the moment, and the other girls upstairs tidying themselves after lunch, and it being Rose’s afternoon off and she happened to pass the remark quite distinctly before lunch that she was going to Southbridge on her bike as soon as she had set the dinner table, it is hardly to be surprised at that I went to the phone. Let me take your stockings off, madam, I’m sure you are tired.’

  ‘What is all this about the telephone?’ asked Mrs Brandon, sinking into a chair.

  ‘Sir Edmund, madam,’ replied Nurse, suddenly becoming brisk and business-like. ‘He rang up to ask if he could come to dinner and I said you were out all day, madam, so he said he would come at eight and hoped it was all right.’

  ‘Oh well, I suppose he must,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Thanks, Nurse.’

  At this minute Rose emerged from the steaming bathroom and saw her rival in the act of putting the bedroom slippers on her mistress’s feet. She controlled herself very well, merely saying in an icy voice that she supposed there was nothing more.

  ‘Yes, my old pink dress,’ said Mrs Brandon, goaded to defiance. ‘Thanks, Nurse. You’d better go and catch Miss Delia before dinner. Now Rose, what is this about Sir Edmund?’

  ‘I understood, madam, from something Nurse let slip,’ said Rose coldly, ‘that Sir Edmund was coming to dinner, so not being sure what you wished I changed My Afternoon back to Friday.’

  In face of this revolting and quite unnecessary self-sacrifice Mrs Brandon could say nothing. She escaped into the bathroom, but not before she had seen Rose pick up the stockings that Nurse had folded and carry them ostentatiously away to be washed. In the bath her spirits revived a good deal. The worst of the interview with Rose and Nurse was over, and she understood her staff well enough to know that they would mobilise and rise to a crisis, and that she could count upon a good dinner. So she finished dressing with a fairly light heart and came downstairs. For a moment she thought of asking Rose if she had remembered the special port for Sir Edmund, but feeling that she could better face her guest’s disappointment than her parlour-maid’s displeasure she refrained.

  Sir Edmund Pridham was an old friend of the Brandons’, Mrs Brandon’s trustee, and one of those useful middle-aged men who appear to have no particular business but do a hundred unpaid jobs with no thought of the sacrifice of their own time and strength. The Pridhams had lived at Pomfret Madrigal for at least two hundred years, always doing their duty to their tenants, to the church, being Justices of the Peace, sitting on and controlling local committees, once or twice sitting unwillingly but efficiently in Parliament because no one else would contest the seat. The present baronet, a childless widower, had commanded the Barsetshire Yeomanry for two years of the War and when he was invalided with a permanently crippled leg had run the whole county, even bullying the Matron of the Barchester War Hospital and the terrifying head of the Waacs. He knew the country and the people almost as well as old Lord Pomfret, and was entirely unmoved by their affection or dislike. His relations with Mrs Brandon as trustee had always been very pleasant, as he managed her affairs with the same diligence that he applied to everything else and she always signed everything he told her to without asking why. Of late he had insisted that Francis should go thoroughly into his mother’s money matters and the two had got on well together.

  Of course the county had married him to Mrs Brandon again and again in the last eighteen years or so, but nothing was further from their thoughts. Sir Edmund looked upon Mrs Brandon as what a woman should be, good-looking, docile, not too intelligent, always charming. Her flashes of insight he completely ignored, but he saw through all her self-deceptions with a ruthless though admiring eye, and never missed an opportunity of pointing them out to her. Mrs Brandon liked him very much, accepted his homage and his scorn with equal placidity, consulted him about everything, and except on money matters rarely took his advice.

  Presently Rose, her voice divided between the deference due to a baronet and the resentment she was still feeling against Nurse and in a lesser degree against her innocent mistress, announced Sir Edmund. At the sight of his tall figure, which almost filled the drawing-room door, Mrs Brandon felt very comfortable. For years his broad shoulders, straining to the uttermost stitch the well-cut coats that he would not take the trouble to renew, his red neck rigidly confined by a stiff collar and overlapping a little behind, his close-cropped sandy-grizzling hair and moustache, his angry but equitable blue eyes, had represented the safe background of her life. After outraging Rose by asking after her mother’s leg, Sir Edmund bore down upon his hostess, who rose to greet him.

  ‘Out to kill, Lavinia,’ said Sir Edmund, eyeing her dress with interest. ‘Who is it this time?’

  ‘Mr Miller is coming to dinner,’ said Mrs Brandon, ignoring her guest’s question, ‘and Mr Grant who is a cousin of ours, at least he seems to be a cousin of Henry’s, and a cousin of Miss Brandon’s. We met him there today and he is delightful.’

  ‘A cousin of Amelia Brandon’s?’ said Sir Edmund, who prided himself on knowing the genealogies of the whole county. ‘Grant, eh? Now, let’s see. Old Mrs Brandon’s sister – Mortons they were from Cheshire and a good family, Miss Morton was considered to have thrown herself away on Brandon, till he made all his money – married a man called Grant in the Barsetshire Regiment, met him at the Barsetshire Hunt Ball when she was down here staying with her sister at Brandon Abbey. Their son was born the year Lord Pomfret was made Lord Lieutenant, now what the devil was his name? Edward. That’s it. Called after someone – can’t think who at the moment. Edward married a damn silly woman and this must be their boy. Hope you’ve got a good dinner, Lavinia. I’m hungry. Been out all day about those drains.’

  ‘Have some sherry then,’ said Mrs Brandon, going to the table where Rose had put the decanter. She certainly looked very agreeable in the old pink rag, what she herself called a soft elderly pink, and no wonder that Mr Grant, looking from his considerable height over Mr Miller’s shoulder as they came in, was again transfixed by arrows of very respectful desire.

  �
�Well, Miller,’ said Sir Edmund, who was Vicar’s Churchwarden, read the lessons on Sundays and while supporting all the Vicar’s doings in public, bullied him a good deal in private, ‘everything all right, eh?’

  To this comprehensive question Mr Miller could but answer weakly that it was. Mr Grant bowed rather low over Mrs Brandon’s hand, thus affording exquisite pleasure to Francis and Delia who followed hard upon him, and was introduced to Sir Edmund.

  ‘So you are Edward’s son,’ said Sir Edmund, shaking hands. ‘What’s your name? Robert?’

  Mr Grant, feeling that an apology was necessary, said he was sorry but his name was Hilary.

  ‘Hilary, eh? Oh, well, nothing wrong with that. There was a saint called Hilary, a bishop; more in Miller’s line than mine. But I should have thought your father would have called you Robert, after your grandfather,’ said Sir Edmund, more in sorrow than in anger.

  Luckily dinner was coldly announced by Rose and the party drifted into the dining-room. Sir Edmund, lingering behind with his hostess, remarked, in a voice of whose carrying powers he was quite unconscious, that he was sorry he had told young Grant that he thought he should have been called Robert, because he remembered now that there had been the deuce of a row between young Grant’s father and grandfather on the occasion of young Grant’s father’s marriage.