The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Well, thank you very much for helping, Mr Miller,’ said Francis, ‘and now that Mamma has decided to do what she always meant to do, we can go home again. How’s the book, Mr Miller?’

  Mr Miller, slightly self-conscious, said it had gone to his publishers.

  ‘Oh, shan’t I hear any more of it then?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  ‘I was going to ask you a favour, a very great favour,’ said Mr Miller in a lower voice, hitching his chair nearer hers. ‘Will you think me presumptuous if I ask you to allow me to dedicate my little work to you?’

  ‘To me?’ exclaimed Mrs Brandon, in genuine astonishment and delight.

  ‘To whom else?’ asked Mr Miller.

  ‘Well, lots of people,’ said Mrs Brandon, thinking of the Archbishop of Canterbury and Mr Miller’s old stepmother at Harrogate. ‘But to me! Oh Mr Miller, how enchanting of you. I have never had a book dedicated to me before. I couldn’t think of anything nicer happening to me. Thank you so very much.’

  She looked so pleased and happy, like a child with a new toy as Mr Miller in a flight of fancy afterwards put it to himself, that the author really felt for a moment as if he were doing a kindness rather than receiving one.

  ‘And what exactly will you put in the beginning?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  Mr Miller, who had not actually thought of anything except one or two extremely unsuitable lines from Donne’s works, hesitated.

  ‘Why not just “To the Listener”?’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘You might as well say “To the Daily Telegraph”,’ said Francis. ‘Pull yourself together, my boy. What about a spot of Latin, Mr Miller?’

  ‘I think simply “To L. B. in gratitude”,’ said Mr Miller.

  Mrs Brandon’s face assumed such a beatific expression that Mr Miller felt he was already well repaid.

  ‘I was thinking how nice L. B. looked on my dressing case when I was married,’ she explained. ‘My initials used to be L. O., Lavinia Oliver – Francis’s second name is Oliver, you know – and they looked so silly and the girls at school would make jokes about them. L. B. looks much nicer.’

  Having stemmed romance by this piece of reminiscence, she said goodbye to Mr Miller.

  ‘Come to lunch tomorrow, Hilary,’ she said as she left, ‘and we’ll go to the Abbey together. Francis is coming separately, from Barchester, and I’m sure it will be most uncomfortable.’

  Mr Grant and Mr Miller, finding as usual that speech on the one subject of which their hearts and minds were full was difficult, returned to their tennis, where so fired was Mr Grant by the thought of the morrow that he served eight double faults running and lost two of the new balls among the laurestinus. All evening, when he should have been working at Cicero, he was thinking with envy of Mr Miller, who had really finished a book commissioned by a real publisher, and was going to dedicate it to Mrs Brandon. An idea began to float about in his mind and by the time he came down to breakfast next day it had almost assumed the nature of a resolve. If Mr Miller had not been thinking about the Church Fête and how he could, in a spirit consistent with Christianity, keep his parishioners away from the little rock garden which he sometimes felt to be a stumbling block in the way of complete humility, he would have noticed that his pupil was strangely silent and was jotting down notes on a piece of paper in the manner of one who hopes someone will ask him what he is doing.

  The morning passed all too slowly for Mr Grant. At half-past twelve he could contain his impatience no longer and set out for Stories, hoping against hope that by walking slowly he could make the journey last till half-past one, which was Mrs Brandon’s lunch-time. By twenty minutes to one he was at the front gate and in despair sat down on the grassy side of the road to die. Before kindly death could ease his pains Delia came up the road on her bicycle. When she saw Mr Grant she stopped and got off.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘Hullo, Hilary. Feeling sick?’ asked Delia.

  ‘Oh, no. I was a bit early for lunch, that’s all.’

  ‘I should think you were,’ said Delia, ‘it’s only a quarter to one, but I can easily find some biscuits if you’re hungry.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Mr Grant moodily.

  ‘Well, if you are sick, say so,’ said Delia, mistaking the moodiness for nausea. ‘I’d love to hold your head.’

  Mr Grant looked up anxiously. The gleam of the Born Nurse was in Delia’s eye and he felt that sooner than forgo her prey she would hypnotise him into feeling ill, so he got up and shook the odds and ends of dry grass and dust off his trousers.

  ‘You’d better come up to the house,’ said Delia, accommodating her pace to the invalid’s. ‘We can eat gooseberries if you’re sure you’re all right.’

  As eating gooseberries appeared to be as good a way as another of passing the time till lunch, Mr Grant accompanied Delia to the kitchen garden where, bent double under the gooseberry nets, torn by the thorny gooseberry bushes, the hot noontide sun beating upon them, they enjoyed a hearty meal of unripe fruit.

  ‘I say,’ said Delia, ‘are you really writing a book?’

  ‘Damn,’ said Mr Grant, as a large and unexpectedly ripe red gooseberry exploded in his hand. ‘Sorry, I mean yes.’

  ‘Mother said you read it to her,’ said Delia. ‘Try this bush, it’s a bit riper. All about absinthe and things, isn’t it?’

  Mr Grant said rather stiffly that it was about a French poet, who had indeed hastened his end by over-indulgence in absinthe, but had produced some very remarkable work.

  ‘There’s a man at Nutfield,’ said Delia, ‘who drinks methylated spirits and power alcohol. Dr Ford says he’ll have spontaneous combustion some day. I’d like to be there. It must be marvellous to see anyone spontaneously combusting. You can’t do anything to stop them and there’s nothing left but a black sticky sort of mess. It must be even more difficult to collect enough to bury than it was with the man who got burned in the motor char-à-banc. Anyway I hope your book will be a best seller. I shall give it to all my friends for Christmas if it isn’t more than three and sixpence.’

  Touched by this kind interest Mr Grant shyly said he had been thinking of dedicating it to her mother.

  ‘Good idea,’ said Delia. ‘Mother will love it. What will you put?’

  Mr Grant said he didn’t know. Something Latin perhaps.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that,’ said Delia. ‘It puts people off buying if they see Latin. Why don’t you say To Cousin Lavinia with Love from Hilary?’

  At this brutal suggestion Mr Grant felt a gulf opening between himself and his cousin Delia which only time could bridge. The gong sounded.

  ‘There; now we’ll be late,’ said Delia. ‘If you are too early for a thing you nearly always get too late. Come on. Careful with that net.’

  Her words came too late. Mr Grant, rather indignantly extricating himself from the gooseberries, found one of his buttons inextricably tangled in the net, wrenched impatiently at it and tore the button together with a strip of grey flannel from his coat. Delia said Now he had done it and they’d better find Nurse. Before he could protest she had hustled him in by the garden door and driven him up two flights of stairs, calling ‘Nurse, Nurse’ at the top of her voice.

  ‘I’m not deaf, Miss Delia,’ said Nurse, appearing at the top of the stairs. ‘Why aren’t you at lunch?’

  ‘Oh, you know Hilary Grant,’ said Delia, leading the way into Nurse’s sitting-room, ‘the one I told you about that’s a sort of cousin. He was eating gooseberries and got his button off. Can you sew it on?’

  ‘And you’ve got a great ladder in your stocking, Miss Delia,’ said Nurse. ‘You know what I said about those gooseberry bushes. Why can’t you wait till Turpin picks them for the table? Go and change them at once.’

  Delia said she hadn’t a pair to wear except her good ones. Nurse with conscious magnanimity pointed to a pile of stockings on her table and said they were all mended and quite good enough for the garden. Delia, to Mr Grant’s embar
rassment, immediately stripped off her stockings and, sitting on the table, put on one of the mended pairs, while, to his even greater embarrassment, Nurse, addressing him as Mr – or possibly, he thought but couldn’t be certain of it, Master – Hilary, told him to take his coat off.

  ‘I’ll get you one of Mr Francis’s to wear,’ she said, ‘and when you’ve finished lunch I’ll have this nice and ready for you. You can wash in the bathroom here and there’s a nail-brush on the shelf.’

  With these humiliating words she drove Mr Grant into a bathroom, doled him out a clean towel, and left him in such a state of terror that he spent two long minutes sitting on the side of the bath in case Nurse should think he wasn’t having a thorough wash. When at last he ventured out he found Delia waiting for him with one of Francis’s coats, and they ran downstairs together.

  ‘Sorry we’re late, Mother,’ said Delia. ‘Hilary felt sick, and we ate such a lot of gooseberries his buttons came off, so Nurse is mending them.’

  Much to Mr Grant’s relief his hostess took no notice of this misleading statement and asked after his mother. As Mr Grant had not heard from her since she went to Lady Norton this subject dropped at once.

  ‘I say, Mother,’ said Delia, ‘you know that book Hilary was reading to you? Who do you think he’s going to dedicate it to?’

  On hearing this blatant exposition of his heart’s secret, Mr Grant went cold with anger and looked at Delia in a way intended to express his disapproval. Delia, a past mistress owing to long practice with her brother Francis in the art of making faces, took his look as a sign of friendliness and made a hideous face back at him.

  ‘I can’t think,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  In despair Mr Grant kicked Delia under the table, forming at the same time the word ‘No’ with his lips. Delia, realising at last what he meant, said with great presence of mind that it was a deadly secret.

  ‘Then I won’t ask,’ said Mrs Brandon, including Mr Grant in a motherly tolerance that made him wince. ‘You must read some more to me, Hilary, as soon as we have a free evening.’

  After lunch Mrs Brandon went to rest, leaving Mr Grant a prey to Delia, who challenged him to play croquet with some balls she had found in an old set of bowls, and they both laughed so much that Mr Grant quite forgot literature and his consuming passion. Delia, while assuming airs of authority over him in ordinary life, showed a respect for his position as an author which made him feel delightfully grown-up, and he was almost sorry when the car came.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ he asked her.

  Delia said she loathed the old Abbey and hoped they’d have a jolly time. Mr Grant was getting into the car where Mrs Brandon was already seated, when Nurse came to the front door.

  ‘Your coat, Mr Hilary,’ she said reproachfully.

  ‘You’ll hardly want another coat,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘It’s such a hot day.’

  Mr Grant then had to explain that he had torn the button off his coat on the gooseberry bushes, and had furthermore to humiliate himself by getting out of the car, taking off Francis’s coat and appearing in his shirt sleeves before his hostess and putting his own coat on again with Nurse’s kind help.

  ‘Thanks awfully,’ he said, backing away from Nurse, who might, he felt, want to look at his nails, and got back into the car, all his grown-up self-confidence crushed. Mrs Brandon, who was still sleepy after her rest, didn’t talk much, and her unhappy young cousin, taking her silence for scorn, wished he were in the Foreign Legion.

  When they got to Brandon Abbey they found Miss Morris in the drawing-room giving tea to a stranger whom she introduced as Mr Merton.

  ‘I’ve heard about you so much from the Keiths,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Isn’t Lydia rather a friend of yours? How is she?’

  ‘Very well, I believe,’ said Mr Merton. ‘I was down there for Kate’s wedding, and Lydia trod on her own dress in church and ripped a large piece out of it just as the blessing was being given.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Kate nearly didn’t get married at all,’ said Mr Merton, ‘because she heard the noise and knew what had happened and wanted to mend it, but luckily she was kneeling down and it all passed over.’

  ‘I wish I had been there,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘but I was away. I adore weddings. They always make me cry.’

  ‘Lydia cried like anything,’ said Mr Merton proudly. ‘In fact she cried so much that I had to take her to see the Barchester Amateur Dramatic Society act Ghosts, and that cheered her up.’

  While this innocent conversation was going on, Mr Grant was a prey to black fury and despair. Here was a man, not more than a few years older than himself, talking away on terms of friendly intimacy to Mrs Brandon, all because he knew some people called Keith, while he was despised and ignored and treated as a child. Probably this Mr Merton, or whatever his name was, had come down to persuade Miss Brandon to make a new will leaving everything away from her niece, or to embezzle her money, or fraudulently convert, or one of those things that solicitors were always being had up for doing.

  ‘Are you making a new will for Aunt Sissie?’ asked Mrs Brandon, with superb disregard of professional feeling. ‘You are a lawyer, aren’t you?’

  ‘Only a barrister unfortunately,’ said Mr Merton, ‘and as such not entitled to make people’s wills. No, Miss Brandon is an old friend of my father’s who is a solicitor, and has an annoying way of summoning me to give her advice that she never takes. What she wants me for this time I don’t know. I’m staying with the Dean at Barchester. I hope she won’t want to keep me long as I have to get back for tennis at six. How is the old lady?’

  Mrs Brandon appealed to Miss Morris, who said Miss Brandon had not been at all well, but seemed better today and would like to see Mr Merton as soon as he had had tea.

  ‘It seems very rude to keep you waiting, Mrs Brandon,’ she said, ‘but Dr Ford said she must be humoured as much as possible.’

  Mrs Brandon said she was in no hurry and as Francis had not yet come she would wait comfortably. So Miss Morris took Mr Merton upstairs and Mrs Brandon, lulled by tea and the hot afternoon, relapsed into a state of semi-consciousness, while the unhappy Mr Grant, torn by hatred of Mr Merton, looked at several large books illustrated by the late Gustave Doré, wishing for the first time in his life that he were an artist, so that he might express his feelings about his rival in an adequate manner. Presently Francis arrived and his mother partially woke up to tell him about Mr Merton. Francis said he remembered him quite well at the Keiths, a very decent sort of fellow.

  ‘And I hope he’ll make Aunt Sissie leave everything to the Cats’ Home,’ he said, ‘and serve us all right. What’s that you’re reading, Hilary? Doré? Those books used to frighten me out of my wits when I was small. There’s a lovely one of Arachne turning into a spider with legs simply sprouting out of her. Let’s look!’

  ‘Do you remember that spider at Mr Miller’s?’ said his mother, suddenly regaining complete consciousness.

  ‘A fine British matron she was, too,’ said Francis. ‘I wonder what happened to her when you threw her out of the window. I expect she walked up the drain pipe and is lurking in your bedroom, Hilary. If she lets herself down from the ceiling onto your face one night, blame Mamma.’

  ‘That was the day we first met you, Hilary,’ said Mrs Brandon, turning her eyes upon her young relative, who could hardly restrain himself from crying aloud ‘God bless you, Mrs Brandon, for remembering that day’. But as Francis was in the room he did restrain himself, though for many days to come the mention of the word spider sent the blood coursing wildly through his veins.

  ‘I can’t think what Aunt Sissie wants to talk to Mr Merton about,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  ‘You aren’t meant to, darling,’ said Francis. ‘That’s why she had Merton to herself instead of having us all in the room at once. You can ask him if you like, but you won’t get much change. Hullo, Merton,’ he said, as that gentleman came in, ‘here you are again. My dear mam
ma wants to know what devil’s work you’ve been up to with the old lady.’

  ‘Francis, you mustn’t say things like that,’ said his mother, roused and indignant.

  ‘I am sure that Mrs Brandon hasn’t the faintest curiosity about our interview,’ said Mr Merton, with a kind of gallantry as from a man of the world to a woman of the world, over the heads of the youngsters, which Mr Grant found inexpressibly galling. ‘It was a small matter of business. Mrs Brandon, I am so sorry to have to say goodbye, but I must go back to the Deanery.’

  Mrs Brandon shook hands and expressed the hope that Mr Merton would come over and see her one day, an invitation which Mr Grant considered, though showing a divine charity and tolerance, to be entirely misplaced.