The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Francis. ‘We can give you some fairly decent tennis.’

  Mr Merton said he would love to and would write to Mrs Brandon, and so took himself off. Mrs Brandon said to Francis what a charming person that Mr Merton was and no wonder all the Keiths liked him so much. Francis quite agreed and Mr Grant gave a hollow mockery of assent. Mrs Brandon then wondered once more why Aunt Sissie wanted them all, yawned and gave it up. By the time that Francis and Mr Grant had exhausted the pleasures of Doré Miss Morris came down again.

  ‘Miss Brandon would be very glad if you could all come up now,’ she said, ‘and could I speak to you for a moment, Mrs Brandon.’

  Mrs Brandon said she would come up with Miss Morris to the sitting-room and asked Francis to show Mr Grant old Mr Brandon’s cabinet of dried seaweed and come upstairs in ten minutes.

  ‘No, darling, not the seaweed,’ said Francis. ‘Hilary doesn’t look strong enough. I’ll show him the photographs of Venice in the red plush album. They have practically faded altogether so it won’t be a tax on the intellect.’

  When the ladies reached the sitting-room it was obvious to Mrs Brandon that Miss Morris didn’t know how to begin what she wanted to say. It seemed to Mrs Brandon that every friend she had needed winding up before conversation became possible and she kindly applied herself to the task of winding Miss Morris up by asking whether her aunt had been more troublesome than usual. Miss Morris said, No, began to say something else, and stopped.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ asked Mrs Brandon in desperation. ‘Can I help you at all?’

  ‘It seems a shame to trouble you when you have been so very, very kind to me,’ said Miss Morris, ‘but I couldn’t bear you to misunderstand.’

  Visions of Nurse, of Rose, of various holiday governesses, French, German and English, flitted through Mrs Brandon’s mind. All had adored her, all had made her life extremely uncomfortable by being jealous of each other and imagining that they had offended her by mistake, or that she was deliberately neglecting them. Nurse and Rose were made of sterner stuff, but all the governesses had cried and had orgies of reconciliation, and Mrs Brandon had once in a fit of exasperation told Sir Edmund that she intended to go into a monastery. Sir Edmund had said he supposed she meant a nunnery and not to talk nonsense, but the idea of a world without women had often charmed her mind, not of course counting sensible women like herself and Mrs Morland and the Dean’s wife and a good many more. In Miss Morris she now recognised the stereotyped beginnings of a scene of unnecessary self-abasement which would leave the abased refreshed and strengthened and probably drive herself into a headache as bad as those brought on by being read aloud to.

  But she looked at Miss Morris and thought of her dull life, her selfish old father, her poverty, and the really unselfish devotion she had shown to a very tyrannical, self-indulgent, bed-ridden old lady, and her kind heart melted.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a trouble at all,’ she said, wondering whether she would be called upon to compose a misunderstanding between Miss Morris and the butler or the housekeeper, or whether Miss Brandon had for once been more outrageously rude than even a paid companion could bear.

  ‘I don’t know what you thought when you found Mr Merton here,’ said Miss Morris nervously, ‘but I can assure you that I didn’t know till this morning that he was coming. I usually write Miss Brandon’s letters for her, but she must have written to him herself and given it to Sparks to post.’

  ‘It was very nice to see Mr Merton. I have always heard about him from the Keiths at Southbridge and wanted to meet him.’

  ‘But I mean, I hope you didn’t think that I had anything to do with his coming.’

  If Mrs Brandon had spoken the truth she would have said that she hadn’t thought about it at all, but this would have implied an indifference to her anxious companion which she felt would at once be misinterpreted, so she said she was sure Miss Morris had known nothing about it.

  Miss Morris looked grateful, said she couldn’t bear to be misjudged, and stopped short, evidently in need of winding up again. Mrs Brandon looked out of the window. The heat of the long summer afternoon had turned to an oppressive sultriness. The deep unclouded blue of the sky had changed to a fierce copper and though the sun was shining as brightly as ever the sunlight looked baleful. The great trees that surrounded the Abbey and clothed the rising ground before it stood out with unnatural clearness and above them a heavy mass of cloud was slowly rising. A spirt of wind, come and gone in the twinkling of an eye, troubled the tops of the high beeches, and Mrs Brandon wondered whether that was a shiver of lightning that ran through the sky, just above the massing clouds. It appeared to her that storm outside and inside the house was to be expected, and with her instinct for making things as pleasant as possible she left the elements, which she could not control, to look after themselves, and turned to Miss Morris.

  ‘This is quite an uncomfortable day for everyone,’ she said, ‘and I expect Aunt Sissie will make it even more uncomfortable, but it is a great comfort to have you here and we are all so grateful to you for being so good to Aunt Sissie.’

  This, she hoped, would be enough to stem Miss Morris’s uneasy desire to grovel, but Miss Morris, with a woman’s passion for saying what is far better not put into words, could not be restrained.

  ‘Of course I don’t know why Miss Brandon wanted to see Mr Merton,’ she said, ‘but I do know that his father is her lawyer, and I couldn’t bear it if you imagined – people in my position are exposed to all sorts of imaginings – it has happened before when my old ladies have been ill and relations are anxious about things – but I couldn’t bear you to think anything like that.’

  ‘But I don’t,’ said Mrs Brandon, concealing her irritation quite heroically. ‘I am perfectly sure that Aunt Sissie will always do exactly what she likes, and in any case what she does is her own affair and none of us will mind in the least what it is. If,’ she continued, plunging to the heart of the subject as she heard the voices of the young men in the corridor, ‘Aunt Sissie had just made a will and left the Abbey to you, or the Dean of Barchester, or the Salvation Army, we should be perfectly happy.’

  ‘Of course Miss Brandon wouldn’t do that,’ said Miss Morris, flushing, ‘but I did want you to feel that if she did consult Mr Merton about any kind of change in her arrangements I knew nothing about it.’

  ‘No one ever has known anything about Aunt Sissie’s wills,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘if that is what you mean by arrangements, and I don’t suppose they ever will. And now we will forget all about it.’

  ‘I shan’t forget your kindness,’ said Miss Morris, and was so obviously about to say again that she couldn’t bear Mrs Brandon to think what she wasn’t thinking, that it was a great relief when Francis and Mr Grant came in. Miss Morris cast one look of slavish devotion towards Mrs Brandon and disappeared into Miss Brandon’s room.

  ‘Hilary and I have been admiring the gorillas,’ said Francis. ‘They wear remarkably well. Do you remember when I put Aunt Sissie’s Sunday hat on one of them and how furious she was? She ought to have one of them put up over her tomb; it would look very handsome. And don’t tell me not to say that, Mamma, because I have said it.’

  ‘There is going to be a storm,’ said Mrs Brandon, looking again at the uneasy sky.

  ‘Not just yet,’ said Francis. ‘It may even be one of those affairs that go rumble-bumbling all round the hills and then go off and blast an oak at the other end of the county and never come here at all. When does the fun begin?’

  ‘If you mean Aunt Sissie, I don’t suppose it will be very funny,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘From the state of poor Miss Morris’s nerves I should think Aunt Sissie was in one of her bad moods. I only hope we shall get away before the storm, because I do hate noise.’

  Miss Morris now reappeared and said Miss Brandon would like to see them, so they passed into the next room. As usual the blinds were lowered and the curtains half drawn, but Mrs Brandon could see, even in that dim light,
that her aunt was greatly changed. The old lady looked as indomitable as ever, but the marks of pain were very evident on her face and she was making an effort to sit up among her pillows. Mrs Brandon took her aunt’s hand which lay cold and unresponsive in her own, and said how do you do.

  ‘How do you expect me to do at my age?’ said Miss Brandon. ‘No, don’t go away, Miss Morris. Didn’t you hear me say I wanted you. Who is that there? Don’t all stand where I can’t see you. Oh, Francis. You get more like your father every time I see you, and a poor creature he was. And who is that? Here, young man, which of them are you?’

  Mr Grant, struck by the beauty of Mrs Brandon’s child-like fear of storms, had been plunged in an exquisite reverie, in the course of which he had been protecting his goddess from the bolts of Jove and she had hidden her lovely face against his shoulder as the thunder crackled and boomed around them. Just as he was saying to her, ‘You have nothing to fear, Mrs Brandon, while I am here,’ he was rudely awoken by his cousin Francis hitting him in the ribs with his elbow and saying, ‘It’s Hilary, Aunt Sissie,’ and in a lower voice, ‘Wake up, you chump.’

  ‘Hilary?’ said the old lady. ‘Edward Grant’s son. Your mother has been writing to me, Hilary. She wants to come and see me. Tell her I won’t see her. All I want is to die in peace, and you all come crowding into my bedroom.’

  Each of Miss Brandon’s visitors felt that this remark was very unfair. They had come at her summons, unwillingly, to satisfy the whim of an ill, lonely aunt, and to be accused of crowding her bedroom was hard to bear.

  ‘I don’t very well see how Hilary can tell his mother that,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Let him say that you aren’t well.’

  ‘I was never better in my life,’ said Miss Brandon angrily. ‘I suppose the boy is frightened of his mother. Why don’t you all sit down.’

  Mrs Brandon took an armchair near her redoubtable aunt’s bed and the young men sat a little further away, Francis amused and already a little bored, Mr Grant in a very uncomfortable turmoil of emotions. His aunt’s words had gone too near the mark to be pleasant. If he dared to face facts he had to admit this, his mother had more power over him than he liked.

  It was not that she made any very unreasonable demands, but her whole attitude to him was that any work he was doing was unimportant and he never felt safe from her unless she were abroad. His visits to Italy were a sacrifice, for he knew that he would never be allowed to work in peace, but with the good nature that he inherited from his easy-going father he gave in to his mother’s exigencies and managed to get his reading done early in the morning and late at night, and took a very tolerable degree. There had been one moment, at the memory of which he still was shaken with fear, when Mrs Grant, after a quarrel with some Italian authorities, had thought of settling in Oxford, imagining that Hilary could live with her and as it were do his homework under her eye. Luckily this scheme had come to nothing and she had remained abroad, but in her short visit to Pomfret Madrigal she had managed to devastate his working hours with her demands that Hilary should walk with her, give her advice that she never took on her Italian affairs, tell her all about what he was reading, and worst of all dine with her at the Cow and Sickle and sit talking or rather being talked to, till the small hours of the morning. He had managed to get through these evenings by withdrawing his mind into itself and indulging in dreams of Mrs Brandon, but he could not master the growing irritation that assailed him whenever he heard the clash of his mother’s necklaces, or her voice calling gaily from the garden below his window with some caressing Italian diminutive, which would, he was sure, afford far too much pleasure to Mr Miller’s staff.

  Again and again he blamed himself for these feelings of irritation, for ingratitude towards a mother who was very fond of him and supported him in comfort; repeatedly did he make good resolutions of patience and forbearance and self-control which broke down as soon as they were made. By the end of the week that his mother spent at the Cow and Sickle he was barely able to control his annoyance and had indeed so far forgotten himself once or twice as to give a snappy or sulky answer, which had caused him subsequent agonies of remorse and even indigestion. To all these emotions his mother was sublimely unconscious, and had now gone off to Lady Norton with the happy assurance that she had cheered up her son in his dull country retreat. As for his Aunt Sissie’s remark he could only hope that neither of the Brandons would notice it, and went hot with shame and misery in the darkened room.

  ‘Well,’ continued the old lady, ‘I suppose you all want to know why I sent for Noel Merton.’

  Mr Grant was too far sunk in misery to care. Francis said under his breath that he was damned if he did. Mrs Brandon, with some vague, amorphous idea of saving the situation, was the only one with courage to answer.

  ‘I have never met Mr Merton before, Aunt Sissie,’ she said, ‘but I had heard about him a great deal from the Keiths at Southbridge. Young Colin Keith is reading law with him, and he was down there for Kate Keith’s wedding. He was very amusing about Lydia. He really seems very delightful and I have asked him to come to Stories next time he is at the Deanery.’

  During this quite unnecessary speech Miss Brandon had been eyeing her niece by marriage with a stony intensity that penetrated even Mrs Brandon’s placid mind. Her voice faltered and trailed away and she sat silent.

  ‘I have said before and shall say it again,’ said Miss Brandon, ‘that you are one of the silliest women I know, Lavinia, and if Henry were here I should say there were a couple of you. I didn’t send for you to hear about the wedding of some young woman in whom I have no interest at all. I have something to tell you and propose to tell it without further interruption.’ She picked up some papers from the table by her bed and began sorting them. ‘I can’t see,’ she said angrily. ‘Pull the blind up, Miss Morris. How do you expect me to see in the dark?’

  Miss Morris began to walk round the great bed to get to the window, but Francis, who was sitting near it, got up and pulled the blind cord.

  ‘Not too much,’ said his aunt warningly.

  ‘Of course not, Aunt Sissie,’ he said kindly. ‘I think just like this will be enough for you. Hullo, there’s a car at the front door.’

  ‘A car?’ said the invalid. ‘Whose car? No one has any business to bring cars here.’

  ‘I can’t see whose, Aunt Sissie,’ said Francis, ‘except that it’s a Rolls, but the county is rather well off in Rollses, so it might be anyone. I think cars ought to have the names of their owners painted very large on the roof so that one could see who is there and not open the front door.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ said the old lady. ‘Cars indeed! When I was younger we knew all our friends’ carriages by sight, and their horses and their coachmen and footmen. Go and see whose car it is, Miss Morris. I will not have cars in my drive.’

  Miss Morris again started on her errand, but again was interrupted. There was a knock at the door and Sparks came in.

  ‘Who is that?’ said Miss Brandon. ‘Oh you, Sparks. Well, go and see what all this fuss is about a car at the front door. I will not have strange cars at the front door.’

  ‘It is Lady Norton, miss,’ said Sparks, ‘and she wants to know how you are, and would like to come up and see you.’

  ‘Tell her I’m quite well and seeing nobody,’ said the invalid.

  ‘I did, miss,’ said Sparks, ‘but there was another lady with her, miss, and she said she must see you because she wasn’t in England for long.’

  Mr Grant knew that Providence had now reached the end of its tether. Nothing it chose to do to him in the future would have the slightest effect. Let it heap thunders, cataracts, mountains, whirlwinds on his devoted head, he would stand erect, shrug his shoulders and simply say ‘Ha-ha.’ Meanwhile he greatly wished that he could get under the bed or into a wardrobe, and become practically unconscious. Francis murmured ‘Golly’ in tones of deep appreciation and prepared himself to enjoy the scene.

  ‘Tell Mrs Grant I c
an’t see anyone. I am very ill,’ said Miss Brandon. ‘Tell her at once, Sparks, and don’t be a fool.’

  Sparks looked nervously over her shoulder, opened her mouth, but never got as far as speech, for a noise was heard in the sitting-room, the door was opened, a voice said, ‘I have come to see how you are, Amelia,’ and in came a tall middle-aged woman in black, with the face of a distinguished horse and the unmistakable air of authority that the best garden in the county gives. Mrs Brandon recognised Lady Norton and felt that events were entirely out of control.

  ‘Well, here I am, a dying old woman, Victoria,’ said Miss Brandon, ‘and now you can go away again.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Norton. ‘You need cheering up, Amelia. I see you have some visitors. That’s very sensible. And I have brought one of my visitors over to see you; Felicia Grant, poor Edward’s widow.’

  Mrs Grant, who had been almost hidden behind Lady Norton’s imposing bulk, came forward with a rattle of coral and amber.

  ‘I have been looking forward to seeing you for a long time, Cousin Sissie,’ she said. ‘Edward always wanted me to. So when Lady Norton offered to bring me over, I came.’