The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Angela Thirkell

  But before she could indulge in any more theories, Mrs Grant was upon them, wearing in addition to her usual homespun suit and necklaces a kind of brigand’s cape of coarse blue cloth.

  ‘Addio!’ she exclaimed, halting so suddenly and dramatically that her son nearly banged into her from behind.

  ‘But why?’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘You aren’t going, are you?’

  ‘I will sit down for five minutes,’ said Mrs Grant. ‘I am a gipsy. I come and go as fate wills. I am very glad to have seen my Boy in surroundings which he finds congenial, but for me this life is not possible. I bear no grudge against Amelia Brandon, and there is now nothing to keep me in England. Mrs Spindler, in spite of what Victoria Norton may say, does not wish to learn how to cook macaroni, and I refuse to eat her chops and puddings. I am going up to London at once and shall spend a day at my club, the Hypatia in Gower Street, and probably go to Italy on the following day. I believe there is a pilgrimage going to Rome and by joining it I could go more cheaply. It is quite a mistake to believe that Calabria is hot at this time of year. I am like the lizards, those graceful little creatures. I can spend all day with my brother the sun and feel refreshed. My Boy will join me there.’

  ‘Oh, I say, Mother,’ said Mr Grant, ‘I really can’t. I’ve got heaps of work to do and I’ve got to read seriously all this autumn.’

  ‘We will forget the fogs of London,’ said Mrs Grant, waving them joyously away. ‘Hilary needs the sun.’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry, Mother, but I simply won’t,’ said Mr Grant with such determination that Delia stared at him in surprise. Much as she liked her cousin, it had never before occurred to her that he could assert himself against his mother, and she was at no pains to conceal her admiration.

  ‘Then that is settled,’ said Mrs Grant, rising with a majestic sweep of her cloak and a jingling of all her necklaces. ‘I never fight against destiny. Woman must yield to man. Goodbye, Mrs Brandon. Goodbye, little Delia.’

  Mrs Brandon, guiltily conscious of not having done much for Mrs Grant during her stay at Pomfret Madrigal, threw a passionate regret into her voice, to which Mrs Grant responded with equal fervour, pressing Mrs Brandon to visit her in Calabria at any time.

  ‘I’d simply adore to,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘but somehow I never seem to get abroad. I did go to Cannes once with my husband, but he died there, so I came back.’

  ‘Cannes – Frinton,’ said Mrs Grant musingly. ‘The interweavings of destiny are strange. I shall miss my train. No, Hilary, don’t come with me. Your gipsy mother needs no speeding on her way.’

  With great agility she swept herself and her cloak into Wheeler’s car, crying ‘Avanti’, which Bert from the garage, who was driving, rightly conjectured to mean Barchester Central Station, for such was the destination that Mr Wheeler his employer had mentioned to him when giving him his instructions. The car disappeared down the drive.

  ‘Come in the kitchen garden for a bit,’ said Delia to her cousin. ‘We might get some plums if Turpin isn’t looking. I say, Hilary, you were marvellous with your mother.’

  ‘I felt rather a beast,’ said Mr Grant, ‘but after all I’ve got to work. I mean I’m not going to starve, even without that beastly Abbey which thank goodness I haven’t got, but one feels a frightful rotter doing nothing at my age, and Mother doesn’t understand that.’

  ‘Besides, there’s your novel,’ said Delia.

  ‘If ever my novel comes to anything, it will be all your doing,’ said Mr Grant, finely ignoring the patient listening of Mrs Brandon, Mrs Morland and Mr Miller. ‘If it weren’t for you, I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘But it was Mrs Morland’s idea,’ said Delia, anxious to be quite fair before she could accept this praise.

  ‘Yes, she did suggest it,’ said Mr Grant, ‘but you have been splendid about the whole thing from the beginning. I really feel there is no one I can talk to about myself and my work as well as I can to you. I awfully want to do something, Delia, and I wonder if you’d mind.’

  ‘I’m sure I wouldn’t,’ said Delia. ‘Hullo, Turpin wants to talk to me. What is it, Turpin?’

  ‘I say, he looks dangerous,’ said Mr Grant, for Turpin was advancing towards them from the far end of the grass walk which, with its herbaceous borders, divided the kitchen garden in two, looking like a paralytic old countryman on the stage, shouting angrily and brandishing a fork.

  ‘Come and look, Miss Delia,’ said Turpin, trembling with rage, ‘come and look!’

  He led the way towards the rich bed of manure where sprawled his beloved vegetable marrows. With a threatening gesture he jabbed his fork into the ground, stooped, and with infinite reverence turned the fattest marrow gently on one side. On its under surface, in misshapen letters, was too plainly visible the word HILARY.

  ‘That’s my name!’ said Mr Grant.

  ‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,’ said Turpin. ‘What I want to know is who done it. I’ve laid awake thinking of that marrow, and now Sir Edmund’s man’ll have the laugh over me at the Flower Show. I’d have the laugh over the one that done it if I knowed who it was.’

  ‘Well, I’m awfully sorry, Turpin, but I did it,’ said Delia.

  ‘You cut this young gentleman’s name on my marrow, miss?’ said Turpin. ‘Of all the —’

  But instead of finishing whatever dire thing it was he was going to say, Turpin began to chuckle in such a coughing and rumbling way that Delia and her cousin were alarmed.

  ‘Do you think he’ll burst?’ Mr Grant whispered nervously to Delia.

  But Turpin, his good temper miraculously recovered, was already moving away towards the tool-shed with his fork, chuckling to himself as he went, ‘cut a young gentleman’s name on my marrow, cut a young gentleman’s name on my marrow,’ until he was out of sight.

  ‘That was the day we picked the gooseberries,’ said Delia, not so much giving an explanation as a statement. ‘I always frightfully wanted to carve something on that marrow, and I thought it would be nice for you to have your name on a prize marrow.’

  Mr Grant was silent.

  ‘Would you rather not?’ said Delia.

  ‘No, I like it immensely,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I was never allowed to carve my name on anything at home, not even on a pumpkin that we had in a little glasshouse, so I know exactly how you felt. I was only wondering if what I wanted to tell you would be a good sort of thanking you.’

  ‘What was it?’ said Delia. ‘I’m sure it would.’

  ‘I thought I might dedicate Jehan le Capet to you,’ said Mr Grant, trying to sound like a person who is in the habit of dedicating novels every day.

  ‘Oh!’ said Delia. ‘But I thought you were going to dedicate him to Mother.’

  ‘That was when he was just a critical study,’ said Mr Grant. ‘But a novel is different, and I don’t think your mother would understand about le Capet’s sex life, not really. So I thought I’d dedicate him to you.’

  ‘What would you say?’ asked Delia eagerly.

  ‘I might just say “To Delia”.’

  ‘How marvellous,’ said Delia.

  ‘Or “To Delia Who Helped”. Or I did think of “For Delia”, but I think “For” is a little affected.’

  ‘It would be rather nice to have something about the marrow,’ said Delia wistfully. ‘I mean, the book and the marrow do make a good sort of exchange, don’t they?’

  ‘“By just exchange one for the other given”,’ said Mr Grant musingly. ‘You do hold mine dear, and yours, considering its size, I simply cannot miss; but that’s affected too. I’ll tell you what. I’ll put simply “To Delia Who Understood”.’

  ‘Oh!!’ Delia said again. ‘Oh, Hilary, do you think you could possibly make it “Understands”?’

  In her earnestness she stopped short and laid her hand on her cousin’s arm.

  ‘Of course I could,’ he said, looking down with some pride at the intellect which, so he felt, he was calling into being. ‘And what’s more, I will.’

  Fo
r gratitude Delia rubbed her head violently against his shoulder. Then they pursued their way towards the house and were soon laughing about nothing again in the sunshine.

  In the drawing-room all was a cool, delicious, scented repose. Mrs Brandon, reclining elegantly on the sofa, flowers massed on a table behind her, flowers on a table by her side, was pensively doing nothing at all. On her face was an expression of amused and slightly guilty anticipation which her son Francis would have recognised at once.

  Shortly after six o’clock she heard a car come up the drive, and a moment later Rose announced Mr Merton. Mrs Brandon, who was discovered working at her tapestry, looked up with a face of pleased surprise.

  ‘How nice of you to come on this hot day,’ she said to Mr Merton, holding out her hand with appealing lassitude.

  Mr Merton held it for a second longer than was necessary and restored it to her with great care.

  ‘Nothing would have kept me from coming,’ he said, in his deep agreeable voice. ‘The only thing that might have detained me was Lydia, who is so unacquainted with man that her tameness is occasionally quite shocking to me, but luckily she had got Tony Morland for the day and they have gone up the river.’

  ‘She is such a nice girl,’ said Mrs Brandon.

  ‘I do love the entire lack of interest with which you made that remark,’ said Mr Merton.

  Mrs Brandon made no reply, but raised her eyes slowly from her work and looked at her guest with an air of complete candour.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ said Mr Merton, who was already enjoying himself immensely, ‘how much I hoped I might find you alone.’

  ‘I thought we could talk so much more comfortably,’ said Mrs Brandon, again darting at her guest a soft glance, to which he delightedly attached its exact value.

  After a little more desultory fencing, conducted with great skill on both sides, Mrs Brandon asked after Miss Brandon’s maid.

  ‘She has gone to a married sister at Swanage, so my father’s clerk tells me,’ said Mr Merton. ‘She had fifty pounds a year left her by Miss Brandon, and all the contents of the sitting-room including the photographs. Also the gorillas.’

  Mrs Brandon was silent for a moment, thinking of Sparks in a room at Swanage, furnished from the Abbey, full of the Brandon family photographs, guarded by the gorillas, and hardly knew whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘You feel things more deeply than other people,’ said Mr Merton.

  ‘I know I do,’ sighed Mrs Brandon. ‘It’s so stupid.’

  ‘Not stupid at all. You can’t help being sensitive,’ said Mr Merton. ‘Tell me – and then we will forget all these painful subjects – how is Miss Morris?’

  ‘I don’t exactly know,’ said Mrs Brandon, suddenly becoming quite natural, ‘but I hope very much she is engaged by now. Our Vicar, a delightful person, is a very old friend of hers, and I think used to admire her. He is very unworldly and when he heard of her legacy he wanted to withdraw, but it would be so foolish of him to spoil her chance of happiness because she has a little money, so I arranged for them to meet this afternoon, and as that was at half-past three and it is half-past six now, I really feel that something may have happened.’

  ‘How like you,’ said Mr Merton.

  ‘One is so very grateful for any chance of making people happy,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘One hasn’t always been very happy oneself, so one does want it desperately for others.’

  ‘I don’t like to think that you have been unhappy,’ said Mr Merton, throwing exactly the right shade of chivalrous admiration into his tone and look. So much indeed did he throw that his guardian angel, who was on the roof talking to Mrs Brandon’s guardian angel, came hurriedly down through the ceiling to see if he was safe.

  ‘I wouldn’t trouble if I were you,’ said Mrs Brandon’s angel, following him. ‘Mine can look after herself perfectly and I should say yours could too.’

  ‘I daresay he can, but it’s my duty to listen to everything,’ said Mr Merton’s angel firmly. ‘Go back again, there’s an angel, and I’ll join you in a minute.’

  ‘You’ll find me somewhere upstairs,’ said Mrs Brandon’s angel and sped on strong wings into the cloudless blue sky.

  Mrs Brandon laid down her work and looked at her hands.

  ‘I was married very young,’ she said simply, ‘and knew very little. It’s a stupid story; but there are things one doesn’t forget.’

  ‘I wish,’ said Mr Merton, ‘I could help you to forget them.’

  ‘You do,’ murmured Mrs Brandon, but couldn’t help giving Mr Merton a conspirator’s glance as she spoke.

  ‘How charming of you to say so,’ said Mr Merton. ‘And how I hope that you will look on me as a real friend, as one who would do a great deal to make things easier for you.’

  At this point Mr Merton’s guardian angel nearly fell down off the ceiling in his anxiety to miss nothing.

  ‘A friend,’ said Mrs Brandon in a low thrilling voice. ‘A friend. I feel about that word as Shelley felt about love. “One word is too often profaned —”’

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Mr Merton, in tones that matched her own. ‘But you must also remember that one feeling is too falsely disclaimed for me, if I may be allowed to alter the poet’s choice of pronoun, to disclaim it.’

  He looked deeply into Mrs Brandon’s eyes and she looked deeply into his. What they saw there amused them so much that they began to laugh.

  Mr Merton’s guardian angel, puzzled but on the whole satisfied, spread his wings and soon his path was vague in distant spheres.