The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  He left the room abruptly and could be heard going up to his room. Mr Miller gazed pensively into the garden thinking what fun it must be to be young, to have something to sacrifice for someone worthy of the renunciation. If he had anything he could sacrifice for Mrs Brandon he would willingly have done so, but his oars and his little library, his most cherished possessions, would obviously be of no use to her. With a sigh he picked up his pipe and resumed Mr Root’s book at the point where the ingenious author would have seen Lenin, had he not been out of Moscow at the moment. If this sentence is a little ambiguous it must in fairness be said that whether it was Lenin or Mr Root who was out of Moscow, the result would have been much the same and equally dull.

  When Delia had finished crying about her Aunt Sissie her spirits began to rise again, and she had a very spirited argument with Nurse about the black georgette frock that was a little too tight for her mother. Nurse, who had an understandable if erroneous belief that Delia, her baby, was still in the nursery, said it made her look much too old and wished to shorten it. Delia, very conscious when it came to a question of good clothes, of her nineteen years, was enchanted by her own imposing appearance and peacocked up and down in front of the glass in her mother’s room till Nurse nearly lost her temper, and told Delia to come along like a good girl and take it off.

  ‘Well, if I do take it off,’ said Delia, unwillingly beginning to pull the frock off over her head, ‘will you swear to shorten it at once, Nurse, so that I can have it on when Miss Morris comes.’

  ‘Certainly not, Miss Delia,’ said Nurse, shocked. ‘It wouldn’t look at all nice to be all in black when poor Miss Morris comes, just as if you’d been Expecting it.’

  Delia, now safely extricated from the georgette, said after all one couldn’t help expecting it when everyone knew Aunt Sissie was about a hundred and Dr Ford had told them she was very ill, but Nurse, suddenly assuming the position of an authority on etiquette, ignored Delia’s protest and carried the dress off to be shortened. Delia got into her ordinary frock again and went into the garden to get flowers for Miss Morris’s room.

  ‘Good morning, Turpin,’ she said to the gardener, who was tying up dahlias. ‘Isn’t it awful, Aunt Sissie is dead.’

  ‘That’s another of them gone,’ said Turpin with gloomy relish. ‘How old was she, miss?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Eighty-something.’

  ‘My father was ninety-three when Mr Moffat – that was the Vicar before Mr Lane, him as was before Mr Miller – took and buried him,’ said Turpin, leaving his hearer to understand that Mr Turpin senior, if not forcibly interred, might have been alive yet. ‘And his father, that was my grandfather in a manner of speaking, was nigh on a hundred and hadn’t had a tooth in his head for forty years. Ah, they didn’t need teeth in those days,’ said Turpin, shaking his head over the degeneracy of modern times.

  ‘Well, Aunt Sissie had false teeth and a wig,’ said Delia, zealous for the honour of the family.

  ‘What did she want with wigs at her age?’ said Turpin. ‘The Lord sends these things to try us and I don’t hold with flying in his face with false hair and false teeth like them as are no better than they should be.’

  With this cruel aspersion on a profession which, whatever its moral status, certainly does not depend on dentures or postiches for its attractions, Turpin pulled a length of bast from the tress that was tucked into his belt, and resumed his labours. Delia, seeing that further conversation was useless, moved away and began to pick carnations.

  ‘Not them red ones, Miss Delia,’ shouted Turpin, who had followed her actions with a suspicious eye. ‘I want them for the Feet.’

  ‘All right,’ said Delia, now goaded beyond bearing, ‘if you think I want red carnations for Miss Morris’s room when Aunt Sissie is only just dead, I don’t. I’m only getting white flowers.’

  So saying she cut two tall white lilies almost viciously, and walked away with them before the outraged Turpin could protest.

  ‘Buds and all!’ he muttered, as Delia went off to another flower bed, and then applied himself afresh to his labours, comforting himself with the thought that one death often brought on another.

  By this time Delia’s blood was up. She stripped the garden of practically every white flower she could find and arranged them all in the Green Room, choosing several rather valuable white Chinese vases that were kept in a cabinet and never used. By the time she had decorated the dressing table, the writing table and the mantelpiece, and massed white phlox in the fender, the room with its pale green curtains and chintzes and its pale green walls, with the light filtering through the half-drawn white blinds, was like a dwelling under a glassy, cool, translucent wave, and Delia was filled with admiration for her own work.

  Presently she heard the car come back, so she tidied away all the debris of stalks and leaves, washed her hands, and ran down to the drawing-room where she found her mother and Miss Morris seated in calm and amicable converse. Concealing her disappointment, for she, like Sparks, had hoped at least to see an almost inanimate corpse, she stood on one leg in the doorway.

  ‘Come in, darling,’ said her mother. ‘You remember Delia, don’t you, Miss Morris?’

  Miss Morris said of course and shook hands. Then Mrs Brandon said it was nearly lunch-time and she expected Miss Morris would like to see her room.

  ‘Will you take Miss Morris up,’ she said to Delia, ‘while I write a couple of letters.’

  Rather nervously Delia led the way, wondering if it was etiquette to talk about people who were dead, or if she ought to let Miss Morris do it first. She opened the door of the Green Room and stood outside for Miss Morris to go in. Her things were already unpacked and laid out, and Ethel was taking her suitcase away, having as a matter of fact delayed to so do till she heard her coming upstairs, so that she might with her own highly favoured eyes gaze upon one who had so lately been near a death-bed and tell the kitchen about it. The account which she gave in the kitchen of Miss Morris looking as pale as chalk and obviously not long for this world was so much the product of her own film-fed mind that we need pay no attention to it, except to remark that it spurred Cook on in her kind preparation of beef tea and calves’ foot jelly and so made lunch seven minutes late.

  Miss Morris thanked Ethel and stood looking about her. It was perhaps the first time since she had embarked upon her life as a companion that she had been in any bedroom but such as were just too good for the servants. She knew it could not last, that she would probably wake up in a third floor back in Birmingham, or an attic at Droitwich, and hear a bell ringing to summon her to read aloud, or take a little dog for a walk, or pick up stitches in knitting, but until that waking came she was going to be perfectly happy.

  ‘Is it all right?’ said Delia anxiously.

  ‘Those flowers!’ said Miss Morris, almost with a gasp.

  ‘I did them. Do you like them?’ asked Delia, anxious for praise.

  ‘I have never seen anything so lovely in my life,’ said Miss Morris, with such sincerity that Delia felt a glow, that is not always given to benefactresses. ‘They remind me of my father’s garden at home.’

  This was not strictly true, for Mr Morris was interested in nothing but chrysanthemums, but Delia did not know this, and Miss Morris was seeing everything through a haze of grateful sentiment, so both were happy. Miss Morris then opened a very shabby little leather box and took out a photograph which she placed on the table, by her bed. Delia looked at it with interest. It was a middle-aged man in a clerical collar with a thin face, across which his mouth made a tight, hard line, drawn down at the corners.

  ‘Is that your father?’ Delia asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Morris. ‘It was taken just before he became so ill. He always liked it and it was reproduced in the Parish Magazine after his death.’

  If it had been anyone else’s father Delia would have thought it looked like a horrid old parson, but being Miss Morris’s she looked at it respectfully, while Miss Morris put
away her outdoor things and washed her hands in the green basin with green soap and dried them on a green towel. Then they went down and had lunch, which was duck and green peas and potato croquettes, followed by gooseberry fool and cream (which every house in Barsetshire was having that week because of not letting the gooseberries be wasted) and home-made sponge fingers. As Miss Morris ate her lunch and drank half a glass of white wine, Rose’s opinion of her went down by leaps and bounds. If, she confided to Cook, her late mistress had been lying stiff, she was sure she would never have been able to touch a thing. But Cook darkly hinting at delayed shock, though in other words, never ceased in the preparation of calves’ foot jelly.

  After lunch Miss Morris, on Mrs Brandon’s instructions, had a rest in her room on the green chintz sofa, with a Shetland shawl on her feet and a very nice novel of Mrs Morland’s to read. She still found it impossible to believe that she was herself. Only a few hours ago she had been the companion, lying exhausted on an iron bedstead with a knobbly mattress, wondering how soon she would be adrift on the world again with a month’s not very good wages. Now she was a guest, lying on a sofa in a room full of flowers, among kind, pleasant people whose one wish seemed to be to put her at her ease. She wished she had some pretty frocks to do them honour and some better underclothes to please the housemaid, but otherwise her cup was full to the brim with happiness. Companions must not cry, so Miss Morris shed no tears, but it was not quite easy to see some of the pages in Mrs Morland’s book.

  She must have gone to sleep without knowing it for presently the light had crept round and was shining on the white lilies on the mantelpiece and Delia was standing by her side, looking at her with interest.

  ‘I say,’ said Delia, her eyes shining with the inspiration of a great plan, ‘I thought I’d better tell you it’s nearly tea-time.’

  Miss Morris thanked her and got up.

  ‘I say,’ said Delia again, ‘I don’t know if you believe in wearing mourning or anything.’

  ‘I suppose I shall have to if I go to the funeral,’ said Miss Morris. ‘I’ve got a black coat and skirt and I suppose that would do.’

  ‘You’d be awfully hot in a coat and skirt,’ said Delia. ‘I’ve got an awfully good idea. There’s a black frock of Mother’s that’s a bit too tight for her and Nurse has been shortening it for me, but if you’d like it I’d awfully like you to have it. I mean you’re smaller than I am, so if it’s the right length for me it’ll be about right for you, I mean the right sort of longness for a person —’

  ‘For someone of my age,’ said Miss Morris, kindly finishing the sentence for her. ‘Thank you very much, Miss Brandon. I would really be grateful.’

  Delia heaved a sigh, partly of relief that her offer had not given offence, partly of regret for what she dearly loved and was only giving up after a severe mental struggle, and produced from behind her back the black frock.

  ‘Could you try it on now!’ she said.

  Miss Morris was perfectly ready to do so.

  ‘Hang on a minute and I’ll get Nurse,’ said Delia and rushed upstairs to drag Nurse down and explain the situation to her all in one breath, thus giving her no chance to grumble or expostulate.

  ‘Here’s Nurse,’ she said, breathless.

  ‘How do you do, Nurse,’ said Miss Morris, coming forward and giving her hand with what Nurse considered exactly the right nuance of deference as from an unplaced companion to a pillar of the house, equality as from employee to employee, and proper condescension as from a clergyman’s daughter to a children’s nurse, which won her complete approval.

  ‘I say, Nurse,’ said Delia, ‘be an angel and see if that dress fits Miss Morris.’

  Nurse helped Miss Morris to take off her well-worn blue dress and slip on the georgette, and approved the result. Delia, fired by the pleasure of doing good and now quite reconciled to her sacrifice, insisted on adding a pair of very thin silk stockings to the toilet, and Miss Morris, accepting calmly and gratefully, really looked extremely distinguished, and promised to wear the dress that night. Nurse took it away to press, and on her way upstairs went down to the kitchen, nominally to ask if those pillow slips were back from the wash yet, but really to make easy allusion to what had just passed and to stamp Miss Morris with her official sanction, while Delia took her guest down to tea. Miss Morris, secretly intoxicated by the thought of a dress which she mentally (and correctly) priced at about twenty guineas when new, looked almost sparkling and made her hostess and Delia laugh by describing some of her experiences with old ladies. Mrs Brandon, who had been a little nervous of gratitude, found to her relief that Miss Morris was not showing any symptoms of adoration and everything was going very well when Mr Miller was announced.

  Poor Mr Miller had not at all wished to come to Stories that afternoon, but his conscience had told him that if there was anyone in sadness or trouble he ought to see if his help was wanted, so not stopping to consider whether Miss Morris was likely to be sad or troubled about the death of a very irritable old lady, he had put on his Panama and walked over. At his entrance Miss Morris stiffened and became the companion again.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Brandon,’ said the caller. ‘And Delia. I have just called to express my sincere sympathy, Mrs Brandon. And may I say how glad I am to see you among us, Miss Morris.’

  Miss Morris said thank you in a correct, toneless voice. Conversation flagged and became so difficult that Mrs Brandon was reduced to asking Mr Miller when he was going to read some more of his book to her. Mr Miller, in his really single-minded wish to do his duty by the afflicted, had given no thought to himself, and the typescript was in a drawer in his writing table. It had indeed been a source of inward conflict to him, for he had managed quite unnecessarily to persuade himself that to read it aloud to someone as delightful, cultivated and sympathetic as Mrs Brandon, was perhaps in the nature of a sensual gratification and should be discouraged. While putting it away he had come upon a bundle of old papers, and going through them had wondered, as we all do, why on earth he had kept most of them and what practical, emotional, or spiritual value they could ever have had, and had put most of them into the waste-paper basket. Among them were two numbers of the Parish Magazine for 1913 edited by the Rev. Justin Morris, and these Mr Miller had saved, because he thought Miss Morris might care to have them, and these he now took from his pocket.

  ‘I was looking over some papers today,’ he said to Miss Morris, thinking it better not to say throwing some papers away, ‘and found these numbers of your Parish Magazine, which I thought you might care to see. There is a delightful contribution by Mr Morris on some local customs, and a little article by myself which I thought good at the time, but now realise to be a very immature production. But setting that aside, I thought you might possibly care to have the magazines. They remind me of some very happy days in the past.’

  It was evident that Mr Miller was getting more and more nervous and talking without knowing really what he was saying. When he had come to an end, Miss Morris replied politely that she had a complete set of the Parish Magazine and would not like to deprive Mr Miller of the numbers in which his own contributions appeared. Mrs Brandon and Delia sat for a moment in horrified silence and then plunged simultaneously into an incoherent conversation about the forthcoming Fête. Mr Miller tried to bear his part in this, but under Miss Morris’s silence he became so uneasy that both his hostesses were extremely glad when he said he must go. With great courage he took Miss Morris’s ungracious hand, begged her to let him know if he could ever do anything for her and got away.

  ‘I think,’ said Miss Morris, as Rose came in to clear away tea, ‘I will go upstairs if you don’t mind, Mrs Brandon.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and have a good rest. And would you care for dinner in bed? It would be quite easy and perhaps you would be glad to be alone for a bit.’

  ‘I am afraid I am a stupid sort of guest,’ said Miss Morris, forcing a smile.

  ‘Indeed you aren’t,’ sa
id Mrs Brandon warmly, hoping to fend off the attack of self-depreciation which she saw in her guest’s eye. ‘You must do just as you like about dinner. We shall love to see you if you do feel like coming down. If not, you shall have a tray in bed and be as quiet as you like.’

  But Miss Morris was not to be baulked.

  ‘I am afraid I behaved unpardonably just now,’ she said. ‘It was more than kind of Mr Miller to come over, and I am sure his wish to give me those magazines was well meant, but you know what my feeling is about the way he hurt my dear father.’

  ‘What did he do?’ asked Delia eagerly, rather hoping for news of some bloody assault with a flat iron or a carving knife.

  ‘Mr Miller and Miss Morris’s father did not agree on certain points,’ said Mrs Brandon in rather a hurried way. Delia recognised a danger signal, but did not see where the danger was coming from, so she stood by.

  ‘There was no question of agreement. It was a matter of right or wrong,’ said Miss Morris, her pale cheeks flushing.

  ‘Well,’ said the practical Delia, ‘Mr Miller did say that was a jolly good article of your father’s and he said those were the good old times or something of the sort. He’s awfully nice really, Miss Morris, and we never take any notice of him.’