The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘“If hate killed men, brother Lawrence,

  God’s blood, would not mine kill you?”’

  said Tony approvingly.

  ‘But Browning was speaking of a Spanish cloister,’ said Mrs Grant, laughingly.

  ‘That’s the marvellous part of Browning,’ said Lydia. ‘I mean he sees human nature everywhere, like Shakespeare, but the Italians haven’t got that. Of course St Francis was perfectly marvellous, but he hadn’t that deep kind of understanding of people that Browning and Shakespeare have. Of course he was a good bit earlier and I daresay people weren’t so developed then.’

  She looked round, pleased with herself.

  ‘One only understands St Francis after long study and suffering in the stern school of life,’ said Mrs Grant with an annoying and tolerant condescension. ‘When you have lived in Italy as much as I have, Miss Keith, you will understand how St Francis’s love of animals has become part of daily life now.’

  ‘I read a book about animals in Italy,’ said Delia, her eyes gleaming as Tony’s had gleamed. ‘It was by a clergyman who lived at Genoa or somewhere and it was perfectly ghastly. What do you think he saw a man do to a horse in Pisa? He had a great knife, and he —’

  ‘Delia,’ said Miss Morris.

  There was a tone in her voice, as of a very competent governess, that made Delia much to everyone’s relief stop short and say, ‘Yes, Miss Morris,’ exactly as if she had been at school.

  ‘I think I see Mr Miller looking for us,’ said Miss Morris, ‘and I can’t shout up the table at your mother. Could you rescue him?’

  Delia, who was seated nearest the door of the tent, got up and rescued Mr Miller who, confused by the dimmer light of the tent after the glare outside and all the noise of talk and crash of crockery, was peering wretchedly about, unable to find his tea-party. Francis admired Miss Morris’s well-timed interruption and couldn’t make up his mind whether it was deliberate or not. Mr Merton with the utmost good-humour gave up his seat next to Mrs Brandon to the Vicar and came and sat by Lydia on a stool lent by the Badgers’ Patrol of the Boy Scouts.

  It was very lucky for Mr Grant that he had so kind an audience as Mrs Morland. That worthy creature had a trick of appearing deeply absorbed in what her friends said which was often her undoing, but for the moment she was genuinely amused by what Mr Grant was telling her about his hero and neither of them took any notice of the argument between Lydia and Mrs Grant, which was just as well, or Mr Grant would have been more than usually ashamed of his mother.

  ‘I think le Capet was a genius to have so many mistresses all at once,’ said Mrs Morland. ‘How on earth did he manage it?’

  ‘He needed them,’ said Mr Grant. ‘No, I don’t mean like that, but he was very poor and very extravagant and they were mostly pretty poor too, so it took several to support him. It was to them that he wrote his poem “Les mains qui donnent”, which some people consider his best.’

  It was then that Mrs Morland, putting a stray piece of hair away behind her ear and frowning, made the suggestion that, as Mr Grant subsequently said, changed his whole life.

  ‘Why don’t you make a novel of it, Mr Grant,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of very good material, simply asking to be used. All that Vie de Bohème stuff goes down very well and with a good jacket you ought to get real sales. I’ll talk to my publisher, Adrian Coates, about it if you like.’

  ‘I couldn’t,’ said Mr Grant, shocked, yet agreeably flattered. ‘So little is really known about him. In fact I believe I’m about the only person that has done any work on him.’

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Mrs Morland. ‘If you are the only one that knows, you can write the book. If you called it something rather vulgar, like A Poet of the Gutters, or A Minstrel of Montmartre, it would be a help.’

  Mr Grant, throwing himself into the spirit of the thing, then suggested several extremely unsuitable titles which made him and Mrs Morland laugh so much that three of her tortoiseshell hairpins fell under the table, and had to be rescued.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Mrs Morland as Mr Grant, rather red in the face, surged up again bearing the hairpins in triumph.

  ‘Thank you as we say,’ said Mr Grant. ‘You can’t think what fun it is to talk to you. You are really the only person I can talk to about myself and my work.’

  On hearing this frightful disloyalty to Mrs Brandon the heavens should have sent a thunderbolt straight through the tent onto Mr Grant’s head, but they refrained.

  ‘You ought to meet my old friend George Knox, the biographer,’ said Mrs Morland. ‘He talks about himself more than anyone I know, but he’s very nice. Tony! I think we ought to be going.’

  ‘Oh Mother, must we?’ said her son. ‘I’ve eaten twenty sandwiches and three slices of cherry cake and I promised Lydia I’d have a sixpenny ice.’

  ‘Very well. After the ice,’ said Mrs Morland getting up.

  A general move was now being made. Mrs Morland said goodbye to her hostess and seized the opportunity of asking Miss Morris to come to see her at High Rising some day.

  ‘I could easily come over and fetch you and take you back,’ she said. ‘And I would like you to meet my old friend George Knox, the biographer you know. His mother who is French and very nice and has always been very kind to me lives alone, and her companion, Miss Grey, a very nice girl but a little peculiar, has just married a naval man after great exertions, and I know Mrs Knox would be extremely grateful to anyone who would come and live with her. Of course I don’t want to bother you, but if you did feel like Mrs Knox and cared to talk to me and George Knox about it, it would be a real kindness.’

  ‘That is very kind indeed of you, Mrs Morland,’ said Miss Morris. ‘I have no plans at all for the moment, but I can’t go on trespassing on Mrs Brandon’s kindness and shall be glad to find a place where I can be of use.’

  ‘Then I’ll ring you up in about a week, when George Knox is back from visiting his mother,’ said Mrs Morland, ‘and you shall come to lunch and meet him. Now I have lost Tony. If you see him will you tell him that I have gone to get the car. There is such a jam in the car park.’

  She shook Miss Morris warmly by the hand and hurried away. Lady Norton now advanced majestically upon Miss Morris.

  ‘You must get Mrs Brandon to bring you over to see my garden while you are staying with her,’ said her ladyship.

  Miss Morris, fully realising that this was not only a royal command but a piece of benevolent condescension, made suitable acknowledgements.

  ‘My eldest niece, who works among diseased half-castes at Cape Town, has written to me that she needs a secretary,’ said Lady Norton. ‘It is most interesting work, and hearing from Mrs Brandon that you might be available for a new post, I thought it might interest you, especially as I understand that you have been used to parish work. Some of them are discharged lepers,’ said Lady Norton by way of making the position sound more attractive.

  Miss Morris, who had been offered just as unattractive jobs by people far less well-meaning than Lady Norton, again made suitable acknowledgements and her ladyship passed on. She was closely followed by Mr and Mrs Keith, lamenting the disappearance of their daughter Lydia.

  ‘I think,’ said Miss Morris, ‘that she may have gone to the ice-cream tent with Mrs Morland’s son. They were talking about it.’

  Even as she spoke the two reprobates came up.

  ‘Lydia, what have you done to your dress?’ said Mrs Keith. ‘She tears everything, Miss Morris, and now that her sister, my elder girl, is married we never seem to be able to keep her tidy.’

  ‘It was only hitting the weight, Mother,’ said Lydia, craning her neck as far round as possible and casting an approving eye on the ever-widening rent. ‘And it’s a foul dress anyway.’

  ‘And where is your hat?’ asked her mother helplessly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lydia indifferently. ‘The ribbon got broken when I was carrying the coconut.’

  ‘You were sitting on it a
t tea-time,’ said Tony.

  ‘Bother, so I was,’ said Lydia, and went back to the tea table.

  ‘Goodbye, Tony,’ said Miss Morris.

  Tony took her hand and bowed with an awkward young grace that suddenly touched her.

  ‘If ever you come to Southbridge,’ he said, looking up at her from under his dark lashes, ‘please come and have tea in my study. I’ve got matron under my thumb and she’ll let us have heaps of scones and things.’

  Before Miss Morris could answer he had given her one more of his inscrutable, flickering looks and gone after his mother. Lydia returned from her quest, her hat a good deal the worse for wear in one hand, the coconut in the other.

  ‘I thought you’d like this,’ she announced, thrusting it at Miss Morris. ‘Some people like the milk. I think it’s beastly myself, but it isn’t so bad if you smash it to bits and eat the white stuff, only I always spit it out when I’ve chewed it a bit because you don’t seem to get any further.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Miss Morris gratefully.

  Mrs Grant, who had just finished her goodbyes to Lady Norton, inquired anxiously if Miss Morris really needed the coconut. If not, she said, she would gladly take it to the Cow and get Mr Spindler to cut it in two and hang the halves up for St Francis’s little feathered brothers and sisters. Miss Morris, realising that Lydia was about to say what she thought of feathered brothers and sisters having the coconut that she had bestowed upon a friend, hastened to assure Mrs Grant that she had a peculiar affection for both the milk and the edible parts of that unwholesome fruit. Mrs Grant smiled pityingly and passed on.

  ‘Anyway St Francis didn’t have coconuts,’ said Lydia scornfully. ‘Goodbye, Miss Morris. Thanks awfully for having the coconut. Tony told me what a rotten time you’d had, and I wanted you to. I hope you’ll have awfully good luck now.’

  She hurt Miss Morris’s hand, and banging into the canvas in a way that nearly shattered it, left the marquee in search of her friend Noel Merton.

  ‘I do apologise for Lydia,’ said Mrs Keith as she shook hands. ‘I thought Paris would improve her.’

  ‘She seems to me a delightful girl,’ said Miss Morris warmly.

  ‘Everyone likes her,’ said Mrs Keith, ‘but I do wish she wouldn’t split all her clothes. If you are staying on in this part of the country, I do wish you would come to us for a few days. I feel certain that Lydia would pay attention to you, and my husband never notices the guests much.’

  Miss Morris, who secretly felt that Lydia was quite perfect in her own way, and did not in the least wish that ingenuous young lady to look upon her in the light of a mentor or improver, made some suitably civil remark, said goodbye to Mr Keith, and found herself for a moment alone. She was a little dizzy after the hot tea in the tent and the unusual amount of company she had been seeing, not to speak of the kindness, whether suitable or not, that everyone had shown, and glad to sit on a packing case near the tea-urns and rest. Not one of the offers of posts that had been made to her was in the least what she wanted, yet she felt she ought to examine the possibility of them all. She could not live with Mrs Brandon indefinitely. Every day that she spent in the easy, luxurious atmosphere of Stories seemed to her to be sapping her initiative. It was a fresh daily pleasure to have morning tea and often breakfast in bed, her own bathroom, towels changed nearly every day, leisurely meals, a comfortable bed, lazy quiet afternoons and evenings. Independent as she was, she could not refuse the presents that Mrs Brandon and Delia were always giving her, of stockings, scarves, underthings, a frock, a coat, all offered with such charming goodwill that she could not bring herself to deny the affectionate givers the pleasure they took in giving. Every day she stayed was going to make it harder to go. Today would make it harder than ever. For the first time for many years she had come into her own kingdom again and ruled part of a parish, if only for an afternoon. The blood of generations of vicarage ancestors sang in her veins as she looked upon the tea-urns, the tin loaves, the slabs of cake, the crockery, now all empty, destroyed, dirty but none the less a symbol. She thanked Mr Miller in her heart for having had the Fête on a day when she could be there. Mrs Spindler and her assistants were tidying and packing up. Miss Morris rose and went over to them.

  ‘Thank you so much for letting me help, Mrs Spindler,’ she said. ‘It has been a most enjoyable experience.’

  ‘Thank you, miss, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Spindler, forgetting in her enthusiasm to assert her gentility by using Miss Morris’s name. ‘As I was saying to Mrs Thatcher just now, it’s a real pleasure to have a lady that knows how things should be done and what a pity, I said to Mrs Thatcher, there isn’t one at the Vicarage. The dirt and waste there you wouldn’t believe, miss. Not that the girls mean anything, but it stands to reason you don’t get things done the way you do with a good mistress over them. I was passing the remark to Mrs Thatcher that I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr Miller hadn’t had a drop of hot food today, with Cook and that Hettie down here since before lunch, wasn’t I, Mrs Thatcher?’

  Mrs Thatcher, a handsome draggled woman, the mother of Jimmy Thatcher and his four brothers and three sisters, said that was right, and she hoped Jimmy wasn’t at the ice-cream stall, as he’d been sick today twice.

  Miss Morris volunteered to go and look for him, an offer that Mrs Thatcher accepted with embarrassed relief, begging her to tell Jimmy to come straight along to the tent like a good boy or he’d get the strap when his dad got back. Armed with a description of the afflicted Jimmy, Miss Morris went out of the stuffy marquee into the grounds. There the heat and noise were rather overpowering, but it was good to be in the fresh air again. She went over to the ice-cream stall. Here she found not Jimmy but Mr Miller, giving pennies to small boys to buy a slice of frozen custard-powder and condensed milk between two synthetic wafers apparently made of compressed shavings.

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Miller,’ said Miss Morris, ‘but have you seen Jimmy Thatcher? His mother wants him.’

  ‘I believe he is at the roundabout,’ said Mr Miller, bestowing his last penny. ‘May I help you to find him?’

  ‘There is no need,’ said Miss Morris, but quite kindly.

  ‘Oh, but do let me,’ said Mr Miller. ‘No, Herb, you’ve had one penny and so has Les.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Miss Morris, remembering that it was the duty of young clergymen – for as such she still considered Mr Miller – to assist vicars’ daughters.

  But just as Mr Miller had freed himself from the last of the little boys, Mrs Brandon accompanied by Sir Edmund came up.

  ‘Oh, Mr Miller,’ she said, ‘I did so want a word with you. Could you possibly spare a moment?’

  ‘Would you excuse me, Miss Morris?’ said Mr Miller.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Sir Edmund, you’ll take care of Miss Morris while I talk to Mr Miller, won’t you?’

  Without waiting for an answer she carried Mr Miller off.

  ‘I only wanted to consult you about church tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I had got a kind of idea that Miss Morris doesn’t like our kind of service and I wondered if you knew what she does like. I suppose I oughtn’t to ask you,’ said Mrs Brandon, suddenly showing a late-flowering tact, ‘when it’s your service, but somehow I always look upon you as a friend more than a Vicar.’

  With which quite idiotic remark she turned her blue eyes on him with such an air of confidence in his understanding and sympathy that he said, Of course, of course, and he had himself had a little talk with Miss Morris on the matter and had suggested that she should go to Tompion at Little Misfit, or Carson at Nutfield, delightful fellows both, even if a little evangelical in their outlook.

  ‘Then that’s all right,’ said Mrs Brandon, evidently much relieved.

  ‘I wish I could drive her over myself,’ said Mr Miller, quite sincerely, ‘but the hours of our services make it impossible.’

  Mrs Brandon said he mustn’t dream of suggesting such a thing and Curwen, who only went to a
n evening service at the Methodist chapel, could easily take her over.

  ‘While we are on the subject, I should be glad to know if anything suitable has offered itself in the way of a post. Lady Norton kindly mentioned a niece of hers in Cape Town, but the work, largely among Unfortunates,’ said Mr Miller, hoping that Mrs Brandon in her heavenly innocence would not know or ask what he meant, ‘seems to me hardly suitable for a lady of Miss Morris’s gifts, and in a hot climate.’