The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  ‘Lady Norton is always busybodying about her nieces,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I certainly shouldn’t dream of letting Miss Morris go to South Africa, though I believe it is quite cold in winter, if one can call it winter when it happens in the summer. I hope very much to find something for her nearer home. That’s partly why I left her with Sir Edmund. I know he particularly wants to speak to her about something, so I thought we might be tactful and keep away.’

  Mrs Brandon smiled mysteriously to herself. Though she had not been feeling very hopeful of Sir Edmund as a wooer for Miss Morris, it seemed to her that a suggestion of his, made to her at tea-time, that he should sound Miss Morris about taking over the secretaryship of the Barsetshire Benevolent Association (founded in 1783), of which he was President, contained the germs of possible romance.

  ‘It would mean,’ she continued, following her own train of thought and quite oblivious of the fact that she had not given the Vicar the slightest indication of what she was talking about, ‘that she would be living not very far away, and even with her new duties we should be seeing quite a lot of her. Don’t you think that would be very nice?’

  Mr Miller said indeed, indeed it would be delightful. And looking at it dispassionately what could be more delightful than that a gifted, attractive woman who had been through many years of poverty and self-suppression, should marry a man of quite suitable age, of excellent family and character, comfortably off, and from his house continue her career of beneficence on a larger scale. As a plan Mr Miller could see no fault in it, which made him blame himself all the more for his unwarrantable dislike of the whole idea. Only a thoroughly selfish person could grudge Miss Morris so eminently desirable a marriage, and Mr Miller suddenly knew that sooner or later he must confess to himself that he was that person. Too shy and too oppressed to ask Mrs Brandon any more about the affair, he walked with her up and down the path under the Vicarage garden wall, looking at the Fête with unseeing eyes, hearing the steam organ without knowing what it was, fighting his own feelings, but fatally certain that in the night they would lie in ambush and fall upon him without pity.

  Mrs Brandon, walking beside him in the sun, reflected placidly upon life and whether the wedding, if she could bring it about, would take place in the winter or the spring. If in the winter, that blue angora frock with her fur coat and perhaps a new hat would do very well. If it was in the spring she really didn’t know. But by that time she would be getting some new clothes. Then she considered what Miss Morris should wear as a bride and decided to take her to town herself and have her suitably dressed. A dark blue tailor-made always looked well, or possibly a wine-coloured dress with a coat to match and a felt hat. Five minutes or so had passed away in these pleasant reflections when Mr Miller, resolutely shaking off the dark cloud that was oppressing him, said he had promised to guide Miss Morris to the roundabout and ought perhaps to be looking for her. Accordingly they went back to the ice-cream stall. Sir Edmund and Miss Morris were nowhere to be seen, but a small boy, who was picking up the uneaten points of larger boys’ cones and making a hearty meal off them, said the lady had gone on the horses.

  ‘I can’t think that Miss Morris has really gone on the roundabout,’ said Mrs Brandon placidly, ‘but we’ll go and look.’

  Sir Edmund, left alone with Miss Morris, lost no time in saying what he had to say. In a very few sentences he put the advantages and disadvantages of the Barsetshire Benevolent Association before Miss Morris, named the salary, the hours, the responsibilities, the opportunities for taking on other work of a similar nature and any other points he considered useful. Miss Morris, pleased with his kind business-like manner, listened attentively and promised to consider the matter and give him an answer as early as possible.

  ‘I would like to mention it to Mrs Brandon if I may,’ she said. ‘She has been so good to me and I would feel ungrateful if I concealed my plans from her.’

  ‘Tell Lavinia by all means,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Woman has less sense for her age than anyone I know, but she doesn’t gabble.’

  ‘I don’t think you are quite fair to her, Sir Edmund,’ said Miss Morris.

  ‘Don’t you?’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Well, look at her now.’

  Miss Morris looked and saw nothing worse than Mrs Brandon and Mr Miller pacing up and down under the Vicarage wall.

  ‘Miller’s up at Stories pretty often,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Nice fellow, but needs a firm hand. Not Lavinia’s style at all. I’ve known her ever since she married. Brandon was a dull dog. Women don’t seem to know what’s what. What do you say, eh? Clever woman like you ought to notice things.’

  Miss Morris, for perhaps the first time in her quiet competent life, was utterly flabbergasted. Any idea of a possible attachment between Mrs Brandon and Mr Miller had never entered her head. She had seen, as who could help seeing, that Mr Miller found Mrs Brandon’s charm rather overpowering, but then she felt it herself and could fully sympathise. As for Mrs Brandon, it would never have struck her that, beyond her real kindness to all around her and anyone in trouble, she was capable of any feelings stronger than, or indeed so strong as her complete absorption in her children, her house, and her clothes. The whole idea seemed to her so fantastic that she could not dismiss it as she would have done a more reasonable one, and it made her extremely ill at ease, she could not have said why.

  ‘No, I don’t notice anything,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Shall we go to the roundabout, Sir Edmund? I promised Mrs Thatcher that I would send Jimmy to her. It seems he isn’t well and oughtn’t to go on the horses.’

  Sir Edmund accompanied her to the roundabout, giving her as they went an account of the Thatcher family, their numbers, names, accidents and diseases. Miss Morris listened with professional interest, an interest which she found greatly increased when Sir Edmund mentioned how good Mr Miller had been to them.

  ‘Good Samaritan and all that, you know,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Sat up with Thatcher for two nights in the last ’flu scare, so that Mrs Thatcher and the children could get some sleep. Know for a fact he paid for an extra week’s convalescence for Edna Thatcher, that’s the one that had the illegitimate baby – no, that was in ’36 – it was Doris that had one in ’37. Can’t think why he wears those clothes though. No need to go about looking like an old woman, Miller, I say to him. There’s Jimmy, Miss Morris. Doesn’t look too fit, eh?’

  To Miss Morris’s practised eye Jimmy Thatcher looked indeed far from fit. Mounted on the ostrich he was swept past them at regular intervals, his face green and glistening with perspiration. Miss Morris didn’t like the look of it at all, and as the music slowed down she walked quickly round to where Jimmy was convulsively clutching the ostrich’s neck.

  ‘Come along, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Mother wants you.’

  ‘I can’t, miss,’ said Jimmy hoarsely.

  ‘Well, try,’ said Miss Morris.

  ‘I’ll be sick if I do, miss, and it hurts so,’ sobbed Jimmy.

  Miss Morris put down Lydia’s coconut, lifted Jimmy kindly and firmly off his ostrich and sat him down on a chair hastily brought by the proprietress of the shooting gallery.

  ‘Boy been eating too many sweets, eh?’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Better tell his mother. I’ll run them home. She’s been working in the tent all day.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sir Edmund,’ said Miss Morris, ‘but we ought to have a doctor. It’s not my business, but it looks very like appendicitis. I’ve been with several cases. Is there a doctor?’

  ‘Ford isn’t here today,’ said Sir Edmund, who knew everything, ‘and Macfadden’s away on holiday and I’m pretty sure I saw Horton driving over the other side of Barchester as I came. Better get him to the hospital. I’ve got the car here. Get his mother, one of you boys.’

  But Mrs Thatcher, already warned by swift-footed rumour that Jimmy had been taken bad, arrived as he spoke and burst into loud tears. At the same moment Mrs Brandon and Mr Miller came up and learnt what had happened. Mrs Brandon immediately went to find her car w
here there was a rug, and Miss Morris followed carrying Jimmy. In a few moments they were packed into Sir Edmund’s car, Jimmy greener than ever, too much in pain and fright even to cry. Just as they were starting, the proprietress of the shooting gallery came up with Miss Morris’s coconut.

  ‘Here’s something you left behind, dearie,’ she said, thrusting it at its owner.

  Jimmy’s eyes brightened for a moment.

  ‘Be a good boy, Jimmy, and you can have my coconut,’ said Miss Morris.

  Jimmy’s face assumed the expression of a martyr who sees the gates of heaven beyond the tormentors’ swords, as he feebly clutched the prize.

  ‘We’ll telephone to you from Barchester, Mrs Brandon,’ said Sir Edmund. ‘Can you manage, Miss Morris?’

  Miss Morris said she thought so, and then caught sight of Delia.

  ‘May Delia come, Mrs Brandon?’ she said. ‘I’d be rather glad of someone that can keep her head.’

  Delia did not wait for her mother’s permission. Her face lighted at the idea of going to a hospital with a possible appendix patient, even as Jimmy’s had lighted at the coconut. She got into the back seat with Miss Morris and the patient, and the car drove off.

  ‘That was ripping of you,’ she said to Miss Morris. ‘Gosh, doesn’t poor Jimmy look ghastly.’

  There was in her voice and air a mixture of true compassion for the invalid and what almost might be called gloating over the illness, that convinced Miss Morris she couldn’t have made a better choice of a companion, who would not only be a support to her, but derive infinite satisfaction from the circumstances of the journey.

  ‘I say, Mrs Thatcher was howling like anything,’ said Delia, ‘but Mr Miller was awfully nice to her and he was taking her up to the Vicarage to have a good cry and he said he’d keep her there till we telephoned. He’s a good old sort for a parson.’

  Miss Morris did not even think of chiding Delia for her language. She felt an unreasonable pride that her father’s old pupil should have been so kind and thoughtful to the unhappy Mrs Thatcher. Then she remembered what Sir Edmund had said about Mr Miller and Mrs Brandon and told herself that Mr Miller deserved anything good, anything that heaven saw fit to send him. The journey to Barchester was soon over.

  12

  Mr Merton Explains

  Everyone was agreeably excited by Jimmy’s sudden appearance as News, some saying that they could see he would die on the way and the Panel ought to do something about it, others maintaining that he would be operated upon at once and die under the operation and the Government ought to do something about it. The crowd had now thinned and gone home to its tea, and the proprietors of the various shows were taking it easy till the evening rush began again about seven o’clock.

  Mrs Brandon collected Francis and went home, where she was soon joined by Mr Merton and Lydia. Francis distributed sherry and the peace of Stories fell on the party.

  ‘Excuse me, madam,’ said Nurse, appearing in the doorway, ‘but is Miss Delia back? I wanted her to try on that slip that I’ve been altering.’

  ‘She’s been taken to the Barchester Hospital,’ said Francis.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Francis,’ said his mother, and explained to Nurse the circumstance under which Delia had gone.

  But even this delightful news did not appease Nurse, who said in a chilly way that she couldn’t get on with the slip without Miss Delia, and then remained silent in the doorway like a hovering Nemesis.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Nurse,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Could you mend Miss Keith’s frock? She tore it at the Fête and her mother was rather upset.’

  ‘Oh, I say, don’t bother,’ said Lydia, backing. ‘It’s a foul frock anyway, Mrs Brandon, and I always tear my things.’

  ‘You have torn it, miss,’ said Nurse, combining approval of the magnificence of the job on hand with deep disapproval of the frock’s owner. ‘If you come upstairs with me, miss, I’ll stitch it up. You can’t go back like that, and with a gentleman.’

  As she spoke she cast a disapproving look at Noel Merton which made him feel that she probably regarded him as a professional seducer, who began his ravishing by tearing the sleeves of his victims’ frocks. Lydia, her bold spirit for once outmatched, followed Nurse meekly from the room.

  ‘That is a remarkable woman,’ said Mr Merton. ‘I have never known anyone who had the faintest effect on Lydia before.’

  ‘It’s nothing to the effect she has on us,’ said Francis. ‘Have some more sherry?’

  Mr Merton said he would.

  ‘When I accepted your kind invitation,’ he said to Mrs Brandon, ‘I did so with the express intention of betraying a confidence, and propose to do so at once, before Lydia comes back and stuns us all. You know my father did Miss Brandon’s business. Well he has told me something about her will and I propose to tell it to you because I know how pleased you will be. His professional letters about it are already in the post and everyone concerned will get them on Monday, so it isn’t really a breach of confidence at all.’

  ‘Well, hurry up,’ said Francis. ‘I’m not a fortune hunter, but I would like to know the worst.’

  But before Mr Merton could begin to say whatever it was, Rose announced Mrs Grant and Mr Grant, who had never aroused such annoyance before.

  ‘You will be quite surprised to see us again,’ said Mrs Grant, while Francis murmured to Mr Grant that surprised wasn’t the word and Mr Grant looked miserable. ‘I went up to the Vicarage with my Boy, but there was such confusione, a woman in tears, the parroco consoling her, so different from our dear Calabrian peasants who seek the confessional in the church, never in the presbiterio, that sono rimasta stupefatta. Hilary said you were having a little sherry party and I thought I might be allowed to accompany him as I shall not be here much longer.’

  On hearing this delightful news everyone became almost cordial. Mrs Grant refused sherry and asked for lemonade.

  ‘And when do you really have to go?’ asked Mrs Brandon.

  ‘Who knows?’ replied Mrs Grant. ‘There is a proverb in Calabria which runs roughly, “Tomorrow has also its own evil —”’

  Francis said aloud to himself that today had it too and Mr Merton exchanged a glance of sympathy with him.

  ‘— and che sarà sarà. If I go tomorrow, I go; if not, it is for later,’ said Mrs Grant gaily. ‘As long as my Boy needs me, I shall be here.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid I’ll have to be getting back to Southbridge,’ said Mr Merton to his hostess in amused despair.

  ‘Look here, Mr Merton, it isn’t fair to leave us all in this shattering state of suspense,’ said Francis. ‘After all, Hilary is just as much interested as we are.’

  Mr Grant, deeply oppressed by his mother’s presence, looked incapable of interest in anything. Mrs Brandon said Francis was perfectly right, though she wasn’t sure if one ought to talk about these things.

  ‘Anyway you can’t go till Nurse releases Lydia, so you might as well come clean, if you’ll excuse the revolting expression,’ said Francis to Mr Merton.

  ‘I must explain,’ said Mr Merton to the Grants, ‘that I was just going to tell Mrs Brandon something about her aunt’s will, that I know will interest you all. It will be common property on Monday, but I thought Mrs Brandon would have a particular interest in knowing it now. By a codicil, made just before her death, Miss Brandon has left her companion Miss Morris ten thousand pounds, with some very appreciative remarks about her patience and kindness.’

  He finished his sherry, with the consciousness of having made a good point.

  ‘I am very glad,’ said Mrs Brandon with all the enthusiasm of her kind nature.

  ‘Good old Aunt Sissie,’ said Francis. ‘Now I can propose to Miss Morris, unless it means cutting you out, Hilary.’

  ‘Good luck,’ said Mr Grant, brightening up for the first time since his arrival. ‘I’ll be best man.’

  These expressions of pleasure were genuine and unforced, but Mr Merton, sensitive by nature and train
ing to changes of voice and atmosphere, felt that something was wanting, though he couldn’t tell what. Mrs Brandon, Francis and Mr Grant were indeed enchanted to find that Miss Morris had been remembered, but it was impossible for them not to wonder about the rest of the property. There was an uncomfortable pause and silence.

  ‘There was another legacy that my father couldn’t quite understand,’ said Mr Merton. ‘May I help myself to some more sherry?’

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Francis getting up. ‘Hilary?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘It was ten thousand pounds to a Captain Arbuthnot,’ said Mr Merton. ‘He exists all right, but he doesn’t seem to be any relation. All we know is that it’s an Indian Army family.’