The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Grant, ‘I just happened to be passing and I happened to see you. Could I come in?’

  The thought did just trouble Mrs Brandon’s consciousness that people did not come up the drive, which led nowhere except to her front door, by accident, but as she was quite pleased to see a visitor she invited Mr Grant to join them.

  Instead of going round to the front door Mr Grant stood on one leg and then came nearer to the window.

  ‘It was that book of mine you said you’d like me to read to you,’ he said, leaning his elbows on the window sill.

  ‘I always hope the sash cord won’t break when people do that,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘One of them did break once, and the window came down with such a crash that two panes were broken, but most luckily no one was under it at the time.’

  ‘I just happened to have the manuscript with me if you’d care to hear it,’ said Mr Grant, standing up.

  ‘I’d love to,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘but I don’t see how you could possibly read to me here with the gramophone. I’ll tell Rose to take you to my sitting-room. Ring the front door bell and I’ll catch her in the hall.’

  Mr Grant continued his journey, rang the front door bell and was shown by Rose into Mrs Brandon’s sitting-room. From the drawing-room beyond came the wail of Cash Campo and his Symposium Boys. The door which led into the drawing-room was opened, the wail rose to a nostalgic shriek, Mrs Brandon, carrying an armful of tapestry work and trailing embroidery wool, came in and shut the door behind her. Mr Grant found himself alone with the most exquisite woman in the world and dropped his manuscript, which fluttered down and lay strewn on the floor.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Mrs Brandon sympathetically, as she sat down, shedding her scissors, her gold thimble and several skeins of wool.

  ‘I’ll pick them up,’ said Mr Grant with eager devotion, and leaving his manuscript to its fate he pursued the thimble under a table, retrieved it, collected the scissors and wools, and still on his knees presented them to their owner.

  ‘Hullo, Hilary,’ said Francis, looking in. ‘What are you doing? Don’t propose to Mamma, because I’ve sworn an oath that no home will hold me and a stepfather, and I’d hate to turn you out. I say, Mamma, do you know where that record of “The Surprise in Your Eyes” has got to?’

  ‘I think Nurse borrowed it to play on her little gramophone,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and don’t be so silly. And shut the door, darling, because Hilary is going to read to me.’

  Francis looked with avuncular tolerance at his young friend and went away. Mr Grant sorted his manuscript and put on his spectacles.

  ‘Are yours for long sight or short sight?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Astigmatism,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I squint with one eye and not with the other, or something of the sort. My man says I’ll get over it if I wear glasses for a few years.’

  ‘Mine are for short sight,’ said Mrs Brandon proudly. ‘I can see anything, absolutely anything at a distance, but close to my eyes are quite useless to me.’

  Mr Grant found the thought of Mrs Brandon’s blue eyes, endowed with the eagle’s sight for ranging over the great free distances but betraying their owner for the level of every day’s most quiet needs, so moving that he sat silent. Divine poetry alone could, he felt, deal adequately with the theme, but as the only line which immediately presented itself was ‘Eyeless at Gaza in the mill with slaves,’ which even he recognised to be inappropriate, he gave up the search.

  ‘Now, I am longing to hear about Robert le Diable,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Jehan le Capet,’ Mr Grant corrected her.

  ‘Of course, how silly of me. Tell me, was Laura Morland able to help you about a publisher?’

  Mr Grant said her publisher, Mr Coates, sounded very nice, but he was afraid no one would really want his book very much. He had, he said, a frightful inferiority complex, which came from the way his mother had brought him up.

  ‘Which reminds me,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘that I have never asked your mother to dinner yet. What with one thing coming after another and the days following each other as they do I seem to have got behindhand. I hope she won’t think it rude of me.’

  ‘Of course she won’t. And anyway she’s only been at the Cow a week and I think she is going on to Lady Norton tomorrow. But she’s bound to come back again,’ said Mr Grant gloomily, ‘and spoil everything as usual. I mean she was never unkind to me or anything, but I have never had a real chance. When I was at school and my father was alive we always went to Frinton for the Easter and summer holidays and stayed at home for Christmas, to please Father. Then when he died and I went to Oxford, Mother took to going to Italy and made me spend all my holidays there, so you see it really never gave me a chance at all.’

  Mrs Brandon did not quite follow Mr Grant’s argument, but said soothingly that she was sure he would get his book published at once, and that she for one had never noticed his inferiority complex.

  Mr Grant said in a hushed voice that was just like her. He felt, he added, quite, quite different when he was with her. He had very few real friends, he said, but with the real friends whom he loved he could be himself.

  Mrs Brandon, interested in philosophical discussion, said it was extraordinary how one felt quite different with different people and was going on to instance some of the different people that she felt different with, but Mr Grant, though he adored her and was still quite hot and damp from having mentioned that there were a few real friends whom he loved, alternately hoping and fearing that she would have seized his meaning, took the opportunity of a second’s pause to enlarge upon the abstract theme of how different one felt with different people, which he did for seven or eight minutes.

  ‘When I met you at Miss Brandon’s I was wishing I had never been born,’ said Mr Grant Byronically, ‘but now everything is different.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Now, do read me your book,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and I will fill in some of my background and then I can listen beautifully.’

  ‘You always listen beautifully,’ said Mr Grant in a hoarse voice, but Mrs Brandon was trying to match some wool and either did not hear or took no notice.

  ‘My great difficulty,’ said Mr Grant, ‘was to know how to approach my subject. As practically nothing is known about le Capet I thought of treating him fictionally, but I thought that treatment would hardly do.’

  He paused, evidently anxious for an opinion. Mrs Brandon said, No, of course it wouldn’t do.

  ‘On the other hand,’ continued Mr Grant, ‘one doesn’t want to be too prosaic and dry, so I have used a method which I think will combine the best elements of both. If you don’t mind, I’ll begin at the beginning.’

  Without waiting for the goddess’s consent to this novel manner of reading a book he plunged recklessly into his first chapter, reading in a quick, unnatural, high-pitched voice and stammering violently, his face very red with mingled emotions. Mrs Brandon, occasionally detaching her thoughts from the apricot slip, a new carpet for the servants’ sitting-room, and other weighty affairs, gathered that le Capet’s chief claim to immortality was that he had just missed meeting everyone of note in Paris and was in bed with a cold on the first night of Hernani. From an altered tone in her young admirer’s voice she presently realised that he was reading some of le Capet’s verses aloud, tried to anchor her drifting attention and just caught the last line of a poem ending

  Sirène, fange, boue, immondices, ordure.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Mr Grant, his voice now itself again, ‘to be able to say that about the woman you love.’

  ‘I don’t think everyone would like it,’ said Mrs Brandon with surprising firmness.

  Mr Grant came to earth with a bang, and realising that he had grossly insulted and offended his hostess, got up and said he must go.

  ‘Oh, don’t go,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  Mr Grant sat down again.

  ‘I simply loved it,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I am sure it is goi
ng to be an enormous success. Let us go and watch Francis and Delia and you must have a drink. You must be thirsty.’

  Mr Grant got up again, moved beyond speech by these exquisite words, and they went into the drawing-room, where Francis dispensed drinks. Mrs Brandon said she was going to bed and held out her hand to Mr Grant who grasped it with fervour.

  ‘Tut, tut,’ said Francis; and bending low over his mother’s hand he kissed it, while Delia giggled.

  ‘Headache, darling?’ he said as he escorted his mother to the door.

  ‘A little,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I find being read aloud to is very exhausting. Mr Miller read to me all afternoon and Hilary all evening and they never seem to get anywhere.’

  ‘You shouldn’t let them,’ said Francis. ‘It’s only vanity that makes you so kind, because you think how nice you look when you listen. I say, what a ripping title for a fox-trot. Good night, Mamma. Now, Hilary, stop being my stepfather and be a man. I’ll do the gramophone and you dance with Delia.’

  Mr Grant did as he was told and enjoyed himself very much, winding up with a tremendous wrestling match with Francis and a race down the drive. Not till the following morning did he remember, with a sense of guilt, that he had not thought of Mrs Brandon for quite nine hours, for eight and a half of which he had been asleep.

  6

  Brandon Abbey Again

  On the following day, much to everyone’s relief, Mrs Grant left the Cow and Sickle to go and stay with her dull friend Lady Norton, for the last two years a widow whose jointure was the despair of the nephew who inherited the title. Mrs Brandon went to say goodbye to her and hoped she had been comfortable.

  ‘Comfort really means nothing to me,’ said Mrs Grant. ‘In Calabria I have often slept on a sack stuffed with chestnut husks.’

  ‘The mattresses at the Cow are pretty uncomfortable, but I don’t think there are husks in them,’ said Mrs Brandon apologetically. ‘Did you manage to get the bedroom window to open?’

  ‘I sleep so well that I hardly notice whether the window is open or shut. In Calabria none of the peasants open their windows. It is an old superstition that evil spirits suck the blood of sleepers if the window is open. Besides they are out all day. There is a proverb which roughly runs in English, “Do not draw the curtain till the sun’s rays are certain.” That does not of course give the real meaning at all.’

  ‘Well, I hope you will have a very nice time with Lady Norton,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I believe her garden is beautiful. And we will all take great care of Hilary for you. What a nice boy he is.’

  ‘He is absolutely devoted to me,’ said Mrs Grant, toying with her heavy amber necklace. ‘Sometimes I almost wish he were less devoted. He never made friends at school and preferred to spend his holidays with me – and his father of course – at Frinton or at home. I always hoped that when he went to Oxford he would make a circle for himself, but he came out to me in Italy every vacation. I loved having him, but he does not understand the Italian mind and cannot get on with my beloved peasants. If only he would marry some nice English girl I should be quite happy, so long as I wasn’t expected to take any interest in my grandchildren.’

  ‘I think I should like grandchildren,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘They would make me feel important. How are you going to Lady Norton?’

  ‘She is sending the car for me. She is very fond of driving, and while I am with her I shall get her to take me over to Brandon Abbey. My husband was anxious for me to see his Aunt Amelia again, and I feel I ought to go while she is still alive.’

  In this sentiment Mrs Brandon fully acquiesced, feeling that a visit after Miss Brandon’s death would not be the same thing. She wondered whether she ought to hint at Miss Brandon’s disinclination to see her niece by marriage, but came to the conclusion that she had better not interfere. Lady Norton’s car then arrived and Mrs Grant’s rather shameful luggage, consisting largely of gaily striped bags and baskets, was indignantly put into it by the chauffeur.

  ‘No, no, put my things inside,’ said Mrs Grant, coming out to superintend. ‘I will go in front with you. They are all human, if we treat them as human beings,’ she added in far too audible an aside to Mrs Brandon, who made no comment, knowing well that Lady Norton’s chauffeur would die sooner than be human.

  Mrs Grant bade embarrassingly affectionate farewells to the staff of the Cow and Sickle, bestowing handsome largesse at the same time, and got up beside the unwilling chauffeur, whose face of rigid disapproval boded ill for human relationships. Mrs Brandon walked homewards, considering the matter of the apricot slip. It had come to her in a flash while doing her hair that morning that perhaps Miss Morris would like it and she was determined to leave no stone unturned, although she knew that Nurse, who wanted the slip for Delia, would strongly disapprove. Accordingly she wrote to Miss Morris to ask if the gift would be acceptable. Two or three days passed without an answer, and she was beginning to wonder whether Miss Morris was offended, when after lunch Rose announced a telephone call from Brandon Abbey. It was Miss Morris herself, who told Mrs Brandon that her aunt was not at all well and had expressed a desire to see her.

  ‘She wants to know,’ said Miss Morris, ‘if you will come over tomorrow afternoon and bring your son and Mr Grant. I understand that her solicitor is also coming, and I can’t tell you anything more, because I don’t know anything. And I would simply love to have the apricot slip. It is too good of you to think of me.’

  ‘It all sounds extremely uncomfortable,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘but of course I’ll come if she really wants me, though if it is business I simply cannot understand it ever. I’ll bring Hilary and I’ll see if Francis can get off work early. How are you?’

  Miss Morris said she was quite well, thanked Mrs Brandon again for the slip, and rang off.

  As soon as Francis came back his mother told him what Miss Morris had said and they agreed that if the solicitor was coming it must be something to do with legal matters. Francis was at first extremely unwilling to go, feeling that the whole affair savoured of fortune-hunting, and when his mother pressed the point he suggested that they should walk over to the Vicarage and see Mr Grant, who was equally involved.

  Mrs Brandon, though she was as disinterested as anyone can possibly be when a large inheritance is in question, did feel that it would not only be unkind to her old aunt, but a really foolish flying in the face of Providence if this invitation were neglected, and said so with unusual energy. When they got to the Vicarage they found Mr Grant playing tennis with his coach and looked on till the set was finished. Mr Miller, who looked much nicer in flannels than in his clerical garb, or so Mrs Brandon privately thought, came and sat beside her, while Mr Grant and Francis had a little horseplay, but finding it too hot, soon came and sat down on the grass. Mr Grant complained bitterly that Mr Miller always beat him. Mr Miller looked gratified, remembered that pride is sinful, and said he hoped it would be fine for the Harvest Festival. Francis said he was all with them there except that they wanted a little rain at Stories to bring their giant gooseberry on that they were saving up to decorate the font. Mrs Brandon said Francis oughtn’t to say things like that, and it was something quite different that she had come to talk about, something that Hilary ought to know. On hearing this Mr Miller offered to go away, but Mrs Brandon begged him not to, saying that his advice would be of the greatest value, and that though luckily Francis and Delia would be quite comfortably off when she was dead, that was no reason for not being polite to people. To this, as a general axiom, Mr Miller gave his approval and asked if she would tell him what the circumstances were that called for his advice; advice, he added, which was ever at her disposal if it could be of any service.

  ‘But I told you,’ said Mrs Brandon plaintively. ‘About Miss Brandon. After all she is a relation.’

  ‘Well, you know, darling,’ said Francis, ‘that listening is your strong suit, not explaining. Leave this to your able and business-like son.’

  He then told Mr Grant about Miss M
orris’s telephone message and said it was all extraordinarily uncomfortable, but he thought they ought to go. It might look like fortune-hunting if they did, but it would be rude and unkind to an old lady if they didn’t, and what did Hilary think. Mr Grant said with some vehemence that he loathed the Abbey and never wanted to hear of it again, but if Mrs Brandon thought he ought to go, he would.

  ‘Well, she is our relation,’ said Mrs Brandon, sticking firmly to her original point. ‘What do you think, Mr Miller?’

  Mr Miller, who was not quite sure whether he was being appealed to as pastor or neighbour, said visiting the sick was undoubtedly one of the duties laid upon us, a duty from which no material considerations should deter us, and he was sure Mrs Brandon would judge for the best.

  ‘Well, I really hardly come into it, because Cousin Amelia never threatened to leave me anything,’ said Mrs Brandon with great candour, ‘but it would be very silly of Hilary and Francis not to go, and very inconsiderate. And the solicitor may be coming about something quite different, like drains, or the kitchen chimney,’ said Mrs Brandon, who appeared to confuse solicitors with plumbers and builders. ‘You never know.’