The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  The noble simplicity of this remark did not appear to affect Miss Brandon, who very disconcertingly shut her eyes and made no reply.

  ‘I was so glad that Hilary had been to see you,’ Mrs Grant continued, ‘and what luck it is to find him here today, and Mrs Brandon and Francis.’

  ‘I said I didn’t want to see you,’ said Miss Brandon, her eyes still tightly shut, ‘and I don’t, and what’s more I won’t.’

  ‘Come, come, Amelia,’ said Lady Norton, who had been talking to Mrs Brandon, but the invalid remained silent and blind, merely expressing her dislike of her visitors by playing five-finger exercises on her sheet. Mrs Brandon and Lady Norton tried to make a little conversation, but the weight of Miss Brandon’s disapproval was too heavy and their voices died away.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Miss Brandon very distinctly.

  Lady Norton said she supposed they had better be going. It was useless to try to shake hands with a hostess who was drumming on the bedclothes with her eyes shut, so Lady Norton, not without dignity, made her farewells to Mrs Brandon and Francis, expressed pleasure at having met Hilary, and retreated in good order, carrying Mrs Grant with her.

  ‘See them out, Sparks,’ said Miss Brandon, and Sparks followed the visitors, shutting the door behind them.

  ‘And now what have you all to say for yourselves?’ said Miss Brandon, opening her eyes and folding her bejewelled hands.

  ‘Well, nothing, Aunt Sissie,’ said Mrs Brandon truthfully. ‘We came because you asked us to, and here we are. I expect you feel a little tired now, so perhaps we’d better go.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Miss Brandon. ‘Put my pillows a little higher, Miss Morris.’

  Miss Morris came forward, rearranged the pillows, and helped her employer to raise her unwieldy bulk. The effort obviously cost Miss Brandon a good deal of pain, but for once she made no complaint. Only when the move was accomplished did she utter a kind of grunt and told Miss Morris to get the brandy quickly. Miss Morris measured a tablespoon in a medicine glass and gave it to Miss Brandon.

  ‘And now,’ said Miss Brandon, handing the glass back to Miss Morris, ‘if you want to know why I asked you to come here it doesn’t matter. Noel Merton knows what I had to say, and that’s quite enough. I’m an ill old woman and if Victoria Norton sees fit to let fools come into my room and upset me, I can’t be blamed for the consequences. Why poor Edward Grant married that woman I never could imagine. A pretentious, selfish woman if ever there was one. I told her I wouldn’t see her and I didn’t. You can blame your fool of a mother, Hilary Grant, for anything that happens now.’

  Mr Grant had been wishing that his mother had never been born, or were a thousand leagues away, but trying as she was, she was still his mother and all the chivalry in him was roused. It was not easy to defend what he secretly felt to be almost indefensible, or to hold his own against a domineering old lady who was quite capable of deliberately having a fit if crossed, and who had also expressed some liking for him. He longed for Francis’s easy assurance, which might have turned the whole thing off as a joke and restored their aunt to some kind of good humour. A thousand years of fright, misery, indecision, seemed to him to have passed before he replied with the slight stammer that nervousness always made him produce.

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Sissie, if Mother coming upset you, but I expect she is pretty upset, too, and I’m going to see if she needs me, so goodbye.’

  ‘I said the boy was frightened of his mother,’ said Miss Brandon.

  If an unseen enemy had suddenly hit Mr Grant in the face he could hardly have suffered more. The knowledge that what his aunt said was partly true, his loyalty to his mother, the extreme distastefulness of the whole scene, the unreality of this half lighted room, the helpless, venomous old lady in the great bed, the consciousness that Mrs Brandon and Francis and Miss Morris were spectators, however unwillingly, of his humiliation, even the increasing sultriness in the atmosphere outside, all were arrayed against him. As he spoke he was facing the window through which Francis had seen Lady Norton’s car. The blind was still drawn up. Mrs Brandon saw him turn so pale and then flush so deeply that she was afraid.

  ‘Goodbye, Aunt Sissie,’ he said again, and made a step towards the door, but Mrs Brandon said ‘Hilary’ and slipped her arm through his, so that he had to stand still.

  ‘Really, Aunt Sissie,’ she said, ‘Mrs Grant may be a little trying, but after all if Lady Norton brought her she couldn’t very well help it, and she is just as much a relation of yours as I am. It was nothing to do with Hilary at all. In fact it was really more Lady Norton’s fault. So perhaps we had better all go now.’

  No one in the room could quite appreciate the heroism underlying this unnecessary, muddle-headed and on the whole quite unhelpful speech. Francis thought, with amusement, that Mother was trying to see everything in as pleasant a light as possible by burying her head in the sand. Mr Grant, wishing that he could have a whole bottle of champagne, or mercifully faint, was only conscious that Mrs Brandon was trying to defend him, and despised himself more than ever. Miss Morris was divided between anxiety for her difficult employer and nervousness at finding herself assisting at a family scene and it is probable that Miss Brandon herself was the only member of the party to appreciate her niece’s courage, though she had no intention of admitting it.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Lavinia,’ she said sharply. ‘Hilary is quite old enough to look after himself. He doesn’t need a woman old enough to be his mother hanging round his neck.’

  At these words Mr Grant felt the hand that was laid on his arm tremble, though ever so slightly. He took it, pressed it in gratitude, and let Mrs Brandon withdraw it. There was a moment’s tense, uncomfortable silence, not improved by a sudden, aimless flash of lightning from the livid sky. Then Francis in a detached voice that barely concealed a white-hot fury said, ‘I had better take Mother home, Aunt Sissie, and I think it will be better if none of us come here again for the present. Do you agree, Hilary?’

  Mr Grant uttered a strangled Yes.

  ‘Goodbye, Aunt Sissie,’ said Francis. ‘Goodbye, Miss Morris,’ and he herded his mother and his cousin out of the room.

  ‘Oh, Miss Morris, I left the apricot slip in a parcel on the hall table,’ said Mrs Brandon, turning in the doorway. ‘It might just need taking up a little on the shoulders, but I do hope you’ll like it.’

  Miss Morris made a step towards Mrs Brandon but a call from her employer stopped her, and Francis hustled his mother out and shut the door.

  ‘Help me to lie down again,’ said Miss Brandon.

  With some difficulty the old lady was rearranged in bed.

  ‘Pull that blind down again,’ she said to her companion, ‘and read to me for a little.’

  Miss Morris took up the book on which they were engaged and began to read. Her employer lay very still and Miss Morris hoped she might be sleeping. When she came to the end of a chapter she paused. Miss Brandon still lay quiet and Miss Morris was assailed by a sudden fear that she might be in a faint, or even dying, after the conditions of the afternoon.

  ‘I suppose you think I am a wicked old woman,’ said Miss Brandon, without heat.

  ‘I am afraid Mrs Brandon will be very unhappy,’ said Miss Morris.

  ‘Not she,’ said Miss Brandon. ‘She has a mind like a feather-bed, always had. I wish I could think Edward’s wife would be unhappy. What a conceited fool that woman is. I feel really sorry for Hilary.’

  ‘Mr Grant is very nice,’ said Miss Morris non-committally, ‘and so is Mr Francis Brandon.’

  ‘Oh, you are taking sides too, are you,’ said Miss Brandon. ‘Well, you can think what you like, but I have spoken my mind to Noel Merton and that’s the end. Shut the window and turn the lights on. I can’t bear thunder.’

  Miss Morris did as she was told and came back to the bed. Her employer, her frilled nightcap a little askew, looked at her with an expression that she could not fathom, a compound of secrecy, amusement, and a toleranc
e that she was not used to.

  ‘So you stick up for the Brandons, do you?’ said the old lady. ‘Very well, very well. You’re not the first one that has liked Lavinia Brandon, though she is nearly as big a fool as Edward’s wife. Fred would have liked Lavinia. That’s why I gave her his diamond ring. She is like Mrs Colonel Arbuthnot that Fred got into such hot water over. She was a fool too, but as pretty as they make them. Yes, Fred would have liked her to have the ring and a good deal more besides,’ said Miss Brandon with a chuckle of terrifying archness. ‘Go on reading. It keeps the thunder out of my head. Fred wouldn’t have looked at you.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ said Miss Morris.

  ‘But someone else might,’ said Miss Brandon, ‘when I’m dead. Go on with the book. I think I shall fancy my dinner tonight.’

  Miss Morris, puzzled, but resigned to the ways of her old ladies, went on reading. Outside the lightning leapt, the thunder crackled and boomed, the rain came down in torrents.

  The Brandons and Mr Grant found speech extremely difficult as they went downstairs and into the drawing-room. Mrs Brandon didn’t really mind being called a fool, a name which her aunt had freely bestowed upon her on various occasions, and confessed very simply in her own heart that she was one. But to see poor Hilary, who was already so nervous that one often couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, and stammered so much over reading his book aloud that one often thought of other things, so baited and badgered, was more than one could bear. Aunt Sissie calling one old enough to be his mother didn’t matter, because one was, and the statement was perfectly reasonable, but that he should hear himself accused of sheltering behind her and feeling it with all his sensitiveness made her really angry. In fact when Aunt Sissie let loose those words she had been so shaken by sudden anger that it took Hilary’s kind pressure of her hand to make her control herself. Such fresh annoyance surged up in her that she felt she would like to be very cross with someone, a feeling very alien to her gentle nature.

  Nor was Mr Grant less furious. His mother had been insulted, not but what she jolly well deserved it for coming meddling with everyone and he wished fervently for the hundredth time that she had stayed in Calabria, but still she was his mother. And far, far worse, Mrs Brandon had been insulted. She had tried to prevent his leaving his aunt in anger, she had taken his arm, she had said ‘Hilary’, enduing his name with a magic that he had never before known it to possess, she had tried to protect him, she, an exquisite delicate creature, unfitted for harshness and brutal words. When Miss Brandon called her a fool, he had felt her hand tremble. Good God! that such a woman should be tortured on his account. Blast Aunt Sissie! Blast his mother for bringing shame on him and shame on the woman he respectfully adored! Blast everything! He kicked violently at a hassock, which hit a hideous vase that stood against the wall with peacocks’ feathers in it and knocked it over.

  ‘Here, look out,’ said Francis sharply, for in spite of his assurance he was still fuming with suppressed rage at his aunt’s rudeness to his mother and ready to fall foul of anyone. ‘Look out. You needn’t break Aunt Sissie’s things, even if she is an old devil. Yes, Mother, I said devil and I meant it, and if you don’t like it I can’t help it.’

  ‘Oh, all right, all right,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I haven’t broken the beastly thing and I don’t want to. I wouldn’t touch anything in this house with a barge pole.’

  ‘Well, no one asked you to,’ said Francis, and then the heavens suddenly opened and the thunder resounded from the roof-tree, the lightning looked as if it were going to shrivel every tree in the garden, and rain came down hissing and bubbling and steaming.

  ‘Shall we have to drive home through this?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Well, there isn’t any other way,’ said Francis, ‘and I’m not going to stop in this house if I were paid for it. Isn’t Curwen round with the car? I told them to tell him.’

  He rang the bell impatiently and repeated his inquiry. It was then revealed by the butler that Curwen had understood Mr Francis to say he was going to drive Mrs Brandon and Mr Grant back in his own car, and so had taken Mrs Brandon’s car home.

  ‘All right,’ said Francis. ‘Of course the roof leaks and I haven’t got a spare tyre, but that’s all part of the fun. Come along, Mother.’

  Mr Grant rushed into the hall, wildly hoping to put a coat about Mrs Brandon and shelter her from the storm as she went down the steps, or perish in the attempt, but was immediately frustrated by the butler, who produced an enormous carriage umbrella and held it over her head.

  ‘You’d better get in behind, Mother,’ said Francis, ‘it doesn’t leak so much there. You come in front, Hilary, and keep the windscreen wiper going, because it usually sticks.’

  Luckily the temperature had not dropped with the rising storm and Mrs Brandon in the back seat of the car, where the leak was barely perceptible, was warm enough, and would have been quite comfortable had not her jangled nerves decided that Francis was driving too fast and taking unnecessary risks. In a crescendo of hysteria she gave instructions to her son which though they drove him nearly mad he bore very well. Even Mr Grant, occupied as he was in pushing the reluctant windscreen wiper to do its duty, in avoiding the steady drip that fell onto the seat between him and Francis, felt a slight irritation mingle with his adoration. By the time they had got through Barchester, skidding on the tram lines, both young men were with difficulty restraining their temper. At Stories Mr Grant got quickly out and ran round to open the car door, but again was thwarted by Rose, who descended, umbrella and raincoat in hand, and assisted her mistress into the house.

  ‘I don’t suppose you mind if I don’t drive you home,’ said Francis. ‘I want to put my car away and blow Curwen up. I’m sopped as it is. Why you couldn’t catch some of that drip in your hat or something I don’t know. And Mother cackling like a hen all the time. She’s as bad as yours.’

  Without a word Mr Grant turned away and walked into the rainy evening, with such thoughts in his mind as he did not care to examine. He found that Mr Miller was dining at the Deanery and Cook, misunderstanding his instructions, had let the kitchen fire out, and Hettie had gone home. Mr Grant said he didn’t want any dinner and banged out of the house again. Cook with kindly tolerance put the cold ham and the loaf and butter in the dining-room, and when Mr Grant came in a little later, defeated by the weather and wetter than ever, he was glad to partake of it. When Mr Miller came back at eleven o’clock he found his pupil so hard at work that he very kindly didn’t tell him how he had put the Dean down on a quotation from St Augustine, and went rather disappointed to bed, hoping that his unselfishness might be counted to him for righteousness and then reproaching himself for the hope.

  Meanwhile Francis, having failed to find Curwen, who was at the Cow and Sickle playing darts with Mr Spindler and Wheeler from the garage, dressed very crossly for dinner, at which meal Delia appeared with red eyes and a swollen face. She had, she explained, been over to Grumper’s End to see how the chickenpox was getting on, and on the way back a field mouse had somehow got under her bicycle and been killed. First Aid was of no avail for a squashed mouse, and she said, and indeed looked it, that she had been crying ever since. Mrs Brandon was very sorry about the mouse, but felt compelled to speak to her son Francis again about his driving, thus causing Francis, who hardly ever lost his temper, to have the sulks. Any discussion of the dreadful afternoon they had gone through became impossible and when after dinner Delia, to show her grief, put on all the most depressing crooners’ records, it seemed a suitable end to a very unsuccessful day. About half-past nine Sir Edmund looked in and Delia was told to stop playing the gramophone.

  ‘Well, Lavinia,’ said Sir Edmund, ‘had a good day, eh? How’s Amelia Brandon?’

  To the best of her ability Mrs Brandon described the scene in Miss Brandon’s bedroom and expressed the view that if Miss Brandon ever was going to leave anyone anything she now wouldn’t, and that she, Mrs Brandon, would be very glad if the Abbey
and all the money went to the Salvation Army, so long as she might never hear of it again.

  ‘Mustn’t say that, Lavinia. Not the way to talk at all,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘And what’s the matter with Delia, eh? Got a cold? Nasty things colds at this time of year.’

  Mrs Brandon was just going to explain what had happened when Nurse appeared at the door. Seeing Sir Edmund she prepared to withdraw with such ostentatious discretion that her mistress was obliged to ask what the matter was.

  ‘It’s only Miss Delia’s knickers, madam,’ said Nurse in a stage whisper. ‘I’d be glad if she could come and try them on before she goes to bed so that I can finish them tonight.’

  ‘Go along then, darling,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and perhaps you’d better not come down again if you are too unhappy.’

  Delia, sniffing loudly, left the room in Nurse’s wake.

  ‘Well, I won’t be staying,’ said Sir Edmund, not enjoying this depressing domestic atmosphere. ‘Good night, Lavinia.’

  ‘Need you go?’ said Mrs Brandon, stretching out a hand towards Sir Edmund.