The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Now don’t try your tricks on me, Lavinia,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘See you again soon. Good night. Good night, Francis.’

  Francis took Sir Edmund to the door. When he got back to the drawing-room he met Rose leaving it with an expression of injured but triumphant virtue.

  ‘Anything up with Rose?’ he asked his mother.

  ‘Yes. Nurse’s sewing machine has gone wrong, and she asked Rose to lend her the kitchen machine and Rose says she supposes Nurse must have it.’

  ‘That’s all right then,’ said Francis.

  ‘Yes, but Nurse won’t come down and fetch it, and Rose won’t carry it up, and the housemaids are out till half-past ten.’

  Francis looked at his mother. Then, for the first time since they left Miss Brandon’s room, he began to laugh. His mother began to laugh too.

  ‘Well, to hell with old Mother Grant for all the trouble she has brought on us today,’ said Francis. ‘Go along to bed, darling, and I’ll put the lights out. What a day! What a day!’

  7

  Bad News at Stories

  By the following morning the storm had rumbled itself away and the weather was as brilliant and hot as ever, though with a pleasant rain-washed freshness. Francis, strolling into the garden before breakfast, was seized by Turpin and taken to admire the giant marrow which had apparently put on several pounds in the night. Turpin expressed the opinion that by the day of the Harvest Festival she would be a whopper.

  ‘When is the Festival?’ Francis asked.

  Turpin told him the date, a few weeks ahead, and said he also intended to send up some flowers and garden produce for the Feet.

  ‘Good Lord, yes, the Feet,’ said Francis. ‘That’s Saturday week, isn’t it? I must lay in some threepences for the coconuts and whatnots.’

  Turpin said he didn’t hold with them new threepennies, characterising them as mucky.

  ‘Hardly the mot juste for a nice new shining threepence,’ said Francis, ‘but never mind. Good luck with the marrow.’

  He went back to the house. His mother was having breakfast in her room and he was able to tell Delia, now happily recovered from the death of the field mouse, all about the scene at the Abbey. Delia listened with great interest.

  ‘I wish I’d been there,’ she said. ‘I’d have asked to look at Aunt Sissie’s legs. That would have calmed her down all right. You haven’t seen them, have you?’

  Francis shudderingly said he hadn’t, and didn’t wish to discuss the matter at breakfast.

  ‘It was the time I went alone with Mother, when you were in France. They were simply ghastly,’ said Delia with simple enthusiasm, ‘and she was ever so bucked at my seeing them. But she had no business to come down on Hilary. If I’d been there I’d have stopped it.’

  ‘Poor old Hilary,’ said Francis. ‘It was tough luck to be told you are frightened of one woman and sheltering behind another. He looked pretty rotten.’

  ‘Poor Hilary,’ Delia echoed, with almost as much compassion as she had shown for the mouse.

  ‘But Mother stood up for him like a Trojan,’ said Francis. ‘I really thought he might be going to faint or something, he looked so queer. He doesn’t know Aunt Sissie as well as we do. I must say I got annoyed myself when she started letting off at Mother. Next time Aunt Sissie wants to be rude she can just be rude to old Sparks, or Miss Morris. I’m not going there again. Well, I must be off.’

  He kissed the top of his sister’s head and went off to Barchester. Delia remained at the breakfast table, considering what Francis had said. The thought of Aunt Sissie bullying Hilary made her unaccountably angry. He was so obviously the sort that couldn’t look after himself. People who wrote books might be brainy, but they were never quite all there in Delia’s opinion, and needed someone with some sense to look after them. It had been just like Mother to try to help anyone who was in trouble, but Delia felt that if she had been there she would not only have protected Hilary just as well, but have carried the war into the enemy’s country and routed Aunt Sissie thoroughly.

  As she was thinking these thoughts she looked up and saw Mr Grant walking about in the drive.

  ‘Hullo, Hilary,’ she yelled out of the window. ‘Hang on a moment and I’ll come out.’

  She bolted the rest of her toast and marmalade, took two peaches and went into the garden.

  ‘Have a peach,’ she said, handing one to Mr Grant. ‘You’d better put your face well forward while you eat it, or it’ll all run down your front.’

  Mr Grant took her advice and the peaches were eaten.

  ‘Francis was telling me about Aunt Sissie,’ said Delia. ‘What a beast she must have been. Francis said he thought you were going to pass out.’

  ‘I simply couldn’t bear her being so rude to your mother,’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘Oh, Mother’s all right,’ said Delia, with the fine confidence of the young that their elders have no feelings at all. ‘She never much notices what Aunt Sissie says.’

  Mr Grant felt sorry that Mrs Brandon’s daughter should be so entirely destitute of sensibility.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I wish,’ said Delia. ‘I wish Aunt Sissie had thrown her stick at you and broken your arm or your leg. Then they’d have had to send for Dr Ford to set it, and I’d have come and helped him. I’m awfully good at that sort of thing. And then I’d have told Aunt Sissie exactly what we all thought of her.’

  She gazed at her cousin with an intensity which made him feel that she might rush at him and fracture one of his limbs for the sheer pleasure of helping Dr Ford to set it.

  ‘When Herb Thatcher, that’s Jimmy Thatcher’s brother down at Grumper’s End, broke his arm, I was there and made a splint till the doctor came. It was splendid. But it wasn’t Dr Ford, and the other man set it wrong and I got Mrs Thatcher to let Dr Ford see it, and they had to take Herb to the Barchester Hospital and break it again and re-set it, and they wouldn’t let me come and see,’ said Delia with sad indignation.

  ‘Do you think your mother is in?’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘Of course,’ said Delia, not at all surprised that her cousin wanted her mother rather than herself. ‘I expect she’s up now. Come and look.’

  She led the way into the hall. Mrs Brandon was just hanging up the telephone receiver. There was on her face a peculiar expression of self-consciousness and amusement and a little pride which Mr Grant couldn’t understand, but which if Sir Edmund had been there, he would infallibly have diagnosed as Lavinia up to her tricks again.

  ‘Good morning, Hilary,’ she said. ‘I do hope you didn’t get wet last night.’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Mr Grant untruthfully.

  ‘That was Mr Merton, that we met at the Abbey,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘He rang up to say how sorry he was he couldn’t get over to see us, but he wants to come next time he is at the Deanery or the Keiths’. You’d like him, Delia.’

  ‘Well, I think I’d better go back and do some work,’ said Mr Grant, hating people who rang people up and said they would come and see them.

  ‘Oh, must you?’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I thought perhaps you were going to read to me.’

  ‘Well, I had got a few pages on me,’ said Mr Grant, going scarlet. ‘I was just walking about a bit and saw Delia, so I came in. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Always come in,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I’ve got to see Cook and do a few things, but do read to Delia, and then I’ll join you later.’

  So saying she drifted away to her sitting-room, still wearing her peculiar happy, mischievous smile. Mr Grant gazed longingly after her.

  ‘Will you really read me some of your book?’ asked Delia humbly.

  ‘Would you really like it?’ asked Mr Grant, with almost equal diffidence.

  ‘Rather. I’ve never had a real book read to me,’ said Delia, apparently thinking that manuscript made a book more real than print.

  ‘Well, it isn’t exactly a real book,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I mean it hasn’t been published or anything and I daresay it never
will be.’

  ‘Of course it will,’ said Delia. ‘All books get published. Just look what loads there are of them.’

  On hearing these encouraging words Mr Grant’s opinion of his cousin rose considerably, and accompanying her to a bench in the garden he began reading. Curiously enough it seemed easier to read to Delia than to her mother. Although he missed Mrs Brandon’s inspiration he found that it was pleasant not to be interrupted and pleasant to have an audience that paid attention to what one was reading. He also discovered that Delia, who had spent a year in Paris with a family, had read a great deal of the romantic school of poetry and actually knew one poem of Jehan le Capet’s which was in an anthology. All this was balm to an author and disposed him to regard his cousin even more favourably.

  Delia, flattered beyond words at Hilary’s condescension, drank in every sentence, admired Hilary’s French accent, which was indeed very good, and secretly determined to boast to her friend Lydia Keith when next they met of how her cousin who was an author had read aloud a real book to her that no one else had heard.

  ‘Shall I go on?’ asked Mr Grant when he had come to the end of the third chapter.

  ‘I’d love it, but I don’t think I could bear it,’ said Delia, who was nearly bursting with admiration of the writing and sentimental pity for le Capet, whose fourth mistress had just abandoned him for an elderly commis voyageur, taking with her his mother’s portrait and ninety francs. And Mr Grant not only understood this peculiar tribute, but was pleased by it.

  ‘It is a bit powerful,’ he admitted. ‘Perhaps a bit too powerful. I wonder if the public will stand it. But one must tell the truth at all costs.’

  Delia said one must, and both young people fell silent, reflecting upon the beauty of this axiom, till Mrs Brandon drifted out to them and asked if the reading had begun. On hearing that it was over she sat down on the bench and said how nice and wouldn’t they like to get some gooseberries.

  Mr Grant was just elaborating in his mind a plan for picking a dozen of the largest and ripest gooseberries and bringing them to Mrs Brandon on a particularly fine rhubarb leaf, when Rose came out to say that Dr Ford wanted to speak to Mrs Brandon. She was closely followed by Dr Ford himself, whose determination to go and find Mrs Brandon in the rose garden was as great as Rose’s determination to keep the flag of convention flying by announcing him properly.

  ‘Come and have some gooseberries, Dr Ford,’ said Delia. ‘There are some lovely red ones that burst all over you.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Dr Ford. ‘I’ve been at the Abbey this morning and as I had to go over to Southbridge I thought I’d look in and tell you I don’t like the look of things.’

  ‘Do you mean Aunt Sissie is worse?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  Dr Ford said he had sent for a nurse and wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t last out the night.

  ‘How dreadful,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘You don’t think we killed her, do you, Dr Ford?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Dr Ford. ‘Did you try to?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘but we were there yesterday and she was very mysterious, and when Lady Norton and Mrs Grant came it was really quite unpleasant, and Hilary really behaved very well, with the storm working up all the time, and I was afraid she might feel it.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not having to cross-examine you, Mrs Brandon,’ said Dr Ford. ‘Grant, you seem to have been there. Can you tell me what really happened?’

  Mr Grant explained that Miss Brandon had apparently been going to tell them something about her testamentary dispositions when Lady Norton and his mother, for whom Miss Brandon had a strong dislike, had more or less forced their way in and been summarily ejected.

  ‘And then Aunt Sissie was beastly to Hilary,’ Delia broke in indignantly. ‘Francis told me, and he said Hilary behaved splendidly.’

  ‘You needn’t be alarmed,’ said Dr Ford. ‘The old lady thrives on rows, and one more or less wouldn’t hurt her, in fact it probably bucked her up. Judging from what Miss Morris told me about the supper she insisted on eating last night I should say it was the effect of acute indigestion on a weak heart. I’m going to see her again this evening and I’ll ring you up.’

  He then departed as unceremoniously as he had arrived, followed by Rose’s silent scorn.

  The immediate and peculiar effect of this news was to make Mrs Brandon suddenly become an invalid and the centre of attraction. Mr Grant and Delia didn’t know what to say, both secretly feeling the deep resentment of the young that their elders should do anything disturbing or unusual. This sentiment in Delia’s case was complicated by a burning desire to be in at the death, if death there was to be, combined with a certain diffidence in mentioning her wish and the conviction that her mother would not allow it. The tension was broken by the arrival of Nurse, holding something pink.

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t know you weren’t alone, madam,’ she said, looking right through Mr Grant in a disconcerting way, ‘or I wouldn’t have come out. I saw Dr Ford with you and I said to myself I won’t go down just now as Dr Ford is with madam and then I saw him go so I said, Well, now madam is alone it will be a good chance to show her Miss Delia’s —’

  ‘Dr Ford brought some very upsetting news, Nurse,’ said Mrs Brandon, automatically drooping like the flower which the rough ploughshare has touched. ‘Miss Brandon is very ill again and he is afraid she won’t last out the night.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am shocked about that,’ said Nurse, in intense enjoyment. ‘Shall I get you a cushion, madam?’

  ‘Thank you so much, Nurse,’ said Mrs Brandon in a dying voice.

  ‘Couldn’t I go and get it?’ asked Mr Grant, longing to be of some use and atone for his share in yesterday’s crime.

  ‘No, I’ll look after madam,’ said Nurse in her most nurseish voice. ‘You and Miss Delia go along now, Mr Hilary. There’s some nice gooseberries ripe under the nets.’

  Not otherwise had Mr Grant been addressed in his early youth by his own Nannie when she told him not to bother her asking questions but run along and play. Bitterly did he resent the implication that he was worse than useless in a moment of crisis, but realising that the rites of the Bona Dea were about to be accomplished he felt he would be safer elsewhere and looked at Delia for help.

  ‘You can just stay here a minute while I get a cushion,’ said Nurse, and sped away to the house.

  ‘I say, I’m awfully sorry,’ said Mr Grant.

  Mrs Brandon closed her eyes, looking, as Mr Grant put it to himself, like a martyred saint, and murmured: ‘Come and see me this afternoon, Hilary. I shan’t be so silly then.’

  At these beautiful and unselfish words Mr Grant’s heart swelled to such an extent that he was nearly choked, but Nurse’s return dispelled romance and he gladly followed Delia to the gooseberry nets.

  ‘It seems so sudden,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Thank you, Nurse, that cushion is just what I wanted.’

  As her aunt had been bed-ridden with a weak heart and might have died at any moment for several years, this remark was a tribute rather to her own imagination than to any actual fact, but Nurse thoroughly agreed with her, adding that her own stepsister, who was thirty years older than she was, had been taken just like that.

  ‘I’d like to get you some sherry or something, madam,’ said Nurse, ‘but I don’t like to leave you.’

  Mrs Brandon with rare heroism said she was all right and only needed to pull herself together and get over it, when by a heaven-sent chance Cook came into the garden to speak to her mistress about making some gooseberry jam.

  ‘Oh, Cook,’ said Nurse, who was surveying her cushion-supported mistress with the air of an artist, ‘I’m so glad you’re come. Dr Ford had some shocking news. It seems poor Miss Brandon is taken worse and they don’t expect she’ll last the night. I was just going to ask Rose to get a glass of sherry for madam, but I didn’t like to leave her.’

  ‘Well, I am sorry, mum,’ said Cook, who had never seen Miss Brandon an
d only heard of her as a paragon of bad temper. ‘The poor old lady. That’s what my tea-leaves meant last night. You remember, Nurse, when you was in the kitchen about Rose’s machine, I said there was a funeral in my cup.’

  Nurse said she well remembered, and how it had given her quite a funny feeling, for which she could not at the moment account, but which in the light of subsequent events was all too clear, and that they did say the tea-leaves never lied. But there she was standing chattering, she exclaimed, suddenly taking on the bright air of the professional nurse, when what madam needed was a glass of sherry.

  ‘I couldn’t touch sherry,’ said Mrs Brandon weakly. ‘Do you think, Cook, I could have a cup of tea?’

  Cook, seeing the chance of a lifetime to get in first with a really exciting piece of news, said she would have the kettle boiling in a moment and tell Rose to get the tray ready. She had left the kettle, she said, nearly on the boil, because she was going to scald the tomatoes for the salad which was much the easiest way to get their skins off, so if she ran back it would be just on the boil, only she must hurry, because when a kettle had come to the boil the water wasn’t the same and she wouldn’t like to keep madam waiting while she filled the kettle and brought it up to the boil again. Nurse, who had been torn between a wish to be the first to bear the glad tidings to the kitchen and a feeling that she would have scored heavily against Rose by being the first to succour her mistress, decided to keep her position of vantage, and encouraged Cook to go back and get the tea as soon as possible. The kettle must have been exactly on the boil, for in an incredibly short space of time Rose appeared, carrying a tray. Sinking their differences in the face of the common danger, she and Nurse united in tending their mistress, sparing her every effort except that of actually swallowing the tea. Mrs Brandon, who was very much enjoying the fuss and feeling extremely well, then dismissed her attendants and went back to the house. Both the handmaids besought her to have a nice lay down before lunch, but finding her obdurate they retired to the kitchen, loud in praise of her courage. Class distinctions were for once entirely broken down and the whole staff discussed the enthralling news over cups of tea and jam tarts. The general opinion was that Mrs Brandon would immediately inherit a sum varying from two to twenty millions and go to live at the Abbey. If this happened, said Cook, she would give notice, because there were no buses within half a mile and they said the bedrooms were shocking. The kitchen-maid said she had heard that if you hadn’t any near relations the Government took it all, but otherwise no untoward incident marred the general excitement and content till a quarter past twelve, when Cook said What about her lunch and what a mercy it was cutlets.