Fruit on the Bough: A heartfelt family saga about a brother and sister

by Ursula Bloom

  Old Stillmer had a small office, where he did very little work, in Dornington. He was a man who had never been young. Report had it that he had never smiled since his wife had died, which she had done when their daughter Ethel had been born. In that grave, old Stillmer’s youth had been buried. Ethel had grown up in faithful resemblance to her father. She also had never been young. She was a tall, angular woman ‒ she had never been a girl ‒ with dark passionless eyes and a small complaining mouth. She had big bones and was awkward of movement and pitifully self-conscious. Her mother had left her a small legacy of between three and four hundred a year, and it gave her a sense of independence that made her both arbitrary and dictatorial. She ruled her father with a rod of iron, which ill fitted with her attacks of girlishness when she feigned a youthful helplessness in need of protection. In her forty years of life, Ethel had never had a lover. She was disappointed, because she would have enjoyed a home of her own. She also considered the status of a married woman as being infinitely preferable to that of a single woman.

  For all this there was something not altogether unattractive about Ethel Stillmer. Something foreign about the dark lustreless hair closely shingled to her head. There was a personality about the long attenuated line of her body, her too slim breasts and her too long thighs.

  Twit had been articled to Mr. Stillmer for two whole years before he was asked to dine at their house. The invitation included Jill. The Stillmers were snobs, and Ethel thought that it would be nice to say casually in conversation, ‘Lady Shane dined with us last night.’ It would make a good impression, and Ethel liked good impressions, especially when they entailed a title. She resented the fact that Jill should be Lady Shane and she merely Miss Stillmer, but she wanted to know Jill, and therefore devised the dinner as a suitable method of inducing the introduction. However, Jill had other ideas.

  ‘Old Stillmer asked me to dine,’ said Twit, producing the invitation.

  ‘Have you a clean dress-shirt?’

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘For Heaven’s sake, Twit, don’t go in that dreadful affair that once belonged to Dad and has a burst stud-hole, please.’

  ‘I’m not faddy.’

  ‘But you must make a good impression. It’s so important when the host is your business manager.’

  ‘They’ve asked you, too.’

  ‘Me? I can’t come. I’m having a high tea with Dora.’

  ‘That’s a fib,’ said Twit.

  ‘If it is, it’s as good as any other. I’ve seen Ethel Stillmer in the distance and, though I know one should live in love and charity, it doesn’t do to tempt matters too far.’

  Twit sank on to the chesterfield and surveyed her with relief. He had hoped she would not accompany him, for the reason that she made him feel nervous. Her very presence was embarrassing.

  ‘I’ll write and tell her I’ve got a previous engagement,’ said Jill tranquilly.

  She drew out an ornate blue feather pen from the silver ink-pot and scrawled off a few lines. For days after Ethel kept the letter lying on her desk, just in case anyone should see the ‘Jill Shane’ sprawling at the end of it. Jill would have been much amused, for she wrote the letter carelessly and did not trouble to read it. She said as she rose from the desk: ‘I’m just going to wash your socks out. Twit. You’ve got them all dirty at once. I wish you wouldn’t do that. You make such a lot of work.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t wash them.’

  ‘I can’t afford to send them to the laundry.’

  ‘There’s Hilda.’

  ‘Remember ‒’ Jill warned him, and choked back the rest of the sentence. She was recalling the day when Hilda had rebelled over washing the shirt that Twit had worn for the three hottest weeks of the year. Since then she had never dared to ask Hilda to wash anything, for the simple reason that she felt it to be unfair. She preferred to do the work herself.

  ‘You’re faddy,’ said Twit, and went to look out a dress-shirt.

  The drawer was half empty, and he realised with a pang that the only one was that with the broken stud-hole. He told himself that ten to one the Stillmers would not notice, and, anyway, why should he buy a new shirt just for their rotten old dinner? If people wanted his company they must take him as they found him. He did not see why he should dress up for their edification.

  II

  Twit was working hard these days and it seemed that the end of the goal was in sight. Indulging in his dreams, he had a vague idea that there might be a partnership going in old Stillmer’s office. The place had been let down. In view of the boom in building since the war, Dornington could well support a good architect and estate office. But old Stillmer was antiquated. He held County Council appointments, and they sufficed. He was not competitive. In his dreams, Twit thought of making himself so useful to old Stillmer that, on the day of his release, the old man would advance and burble, ‘Dear boy! I cannot do without your splendid assistance. Come into partnership.’ Then Twit would work up a flourishing business. He would win the Daily Mail prize, and be the pride of the Ideal Home Exhibition. Old Stillmer would speak of him with tears of gratitude in his rheumy eyes. Twit would be responsible for a regular bungalow town beyond Dornington, nothing of the asbestos tiles and stucco persuasion, but a more artistic concern. There would be timber work and American loggias, sun parlours, cornerless rooms, and Vita glass windows. All the clients would be rich and would pay well. Builders would bless the name of Twit Grimshaw, who had started the ball rolling. Undoubtedly architecture was his forte, and it was a pity that Jill should have been the one to discover it, but that could not be helped now. But there was an element of doubt that lay at the root of the future.

  As he squirmed into the dress-shirt with the broken stud-hole on the eventful night, he remembered this coldly. Old Stillmer had shown no absorbing passion for Twit. In fact it was extremely doubtful as to whether he even liked him. The articles had been entered into at a time when a rash investment had proved itself to be folly. Twit’s, or rather Jill’s, money had been as good as anyone else’s, in fact a little better. It sounded well saying, ‘We have young Grimshaw in the office, you know, Lady Shane’s brother.’ Ethel could bring it out at tea parties, and had done so. Ethel had urged that her father should have Twit in the office for social reasons, none of which had matured. She had been a little disgusted to hear that Jill had moved to a cottage, because, in her opinion, it was undignified. Old Stillmer found later that, to pay the sum required for her brother, the move had been necessary, and he despised the family for such a financial disadvantage. Twit had come into his office, an untidy, gauche young man. Old Stillmer believed Twit to be a hard worker.

  There was a certain commendably dogged endurance about Twit that old Stillmer admired, but the exterior was uncouth. Twit, bundled into the office, had held a grudge against life and had not troubled to be anything but ungracious. Within six months his whole feelings were revolutionised, but he had unfortunately sown the first seeds of a steady dislike in old Stillmer’s bosom. One or two of the clients had said amusedly, ‘Who is the unbrushed young man?’ and even the cold reply that he was Lady Shane’s brother had failed to impress them. Once old Stillmer had even suggested to Twit that he should use more soap and water. That was when some would-be wit had sent the young man a tin of boot polish as a gentle hint. Twit had not been mortally offended. He had suspected the office boy and had been amused. He had confided this to Arthur Simpson, his fellow clerk in the outer office at Stillmer’s. Arthur had agreed and suggested that Twit should kick the office boy. Arthur did not care for this curious little individual because he knew that some of his private letters, directed to the office, were mysteriously opened. It was Arthur who had sent the tin, spending half the previous evening in trying to pierce it with a hot skewer, so that he might attach a label and send it unwrapped through the post. He had broken three skewers, and the smell of hot boot-polish had brought his mother out to enquire. But Twit was not the sort that kicks office boys, so a sec
ond good purpose could not be served by Arthur’s little joke. As the weeks had gone on, Twit had decided that old Stillmer must be propitiated. His first dislike must be changed to amiable liking.

  Last Easter Twit had bought a new suit, in the hope that this might simplify matters. Jill had purred her approval, and her keen disapproval later when she found that he never troubled to fold it at night. The new suit had won a grunt from the old man, and a ‘not before you wanted it.’ It had been noticed, and that was one step in the right direction. You could not expect to run before you could walk. Only last week Ethel Stillmer had called in at the office for her father. Oddly enough, in the whole two years this was the first time that she and Twit had met. The old man happened to be out, seeing about some plans for the sanitation in the Morsegate Road that the Council were questioning. There was trouble over the big sewer and the connections. Ethel came in, tall and angular, in a thoroughly dowdy hat and a brown coat and skirt. Ethel was suffering from an art craze. Unfortunately, some few months previously an artist friend had in the course of conversation pronounced her to be the Spanish type. Ethel at forty, who had never had any admiration, any love, any of the needful emotional crises in rational girlhood and normal womanhood, had seized upon this crumb from the table of flattery and had devoured it. Surreptitiously next day she had bought herself a pair of gipsy earrings and in the privacy of her own room had tried them. She had caught back her dark lustreless hair and tied it on the nape of her neck. The glass gave her a truthful and unkind impression, but Ethel was blind to its unkindness. She suddenly believed that she had committed the fault of being untrue to type. Personality counted. She had allowed herself to be dowdy. She had not taken to herself a definite colour scheme in keeping with her type. Because of this she had missed opportunities. Warm browns, russets and oranges, Spanish combs and red roses, were her type. Ethel felt that she must create atmosphere if she were to succeed. The suggestion of castanets and tangoes. Something virile and fierce, yet languishing and lovely. Ethel had flung herself into the Spanish aureole with a fever of impetuosity. It was the product of this atmosphere that walked into the office and faced Twit. Arthur Simpson had gone out to tea. It was expressly forbidden, but (as he told Twit) ‘the old man’s out, and my special little tart is pining.’ Twit had been disgusted.

  It was all very well everybody condemning him because he was not dressy and showy, but he did work and he did not cultivate ‘tarts.’ Ethel had come in, in her long brown coat with the daring orange buttonhole, and the new gipsy earrings dangling from under her hat. The hat was a travesty. ‘God knows where she bought it,’ thought Twit, and sighed. Ethel had bought a green velour hat, small in shape, autumnal in outlook, the sort of hat that sometimes has a bright bird’s wing tucked unto its petersham band. Ethel had removed the jay’s mount, because it did not coincide with the Spanish outlook, and she had replaced it with a dark red rose, bought cheaply because the season was over. She had twisted a string of red and gold beads round her throat. Above it all and from under her hat looked out her mournful face with the eyes that had never sparkled, and the faded skin, and the complaining, colourless mouth.

  Ethel had talked to Twit and she had liked him. She saw him as a misunderstood young man. What were people about, to think of Twit in the way they did? It was quite true that his suit was shabby and his hair rough, but she believed that he hadn’t the heart to keep himself tidy. That heart had been broken within him. She had heard of Jill as being rather brilliant, shining in any circle, and, oddly enough, Ethel saw that Twit was submerged in Jill’s shining. She suspected Jill of being a vampire, who sucked the blood out of Twit’s broken heart. But although Ethel got far nearer the truth than most people, she got it wrong. There was nothing deliberate about Jill. There never had been. She did not mean to absorb, but rather to urge forward. Jill had made every conscientious effort to help Twit, and, although she was unaware of it, she had only succeeded in confusing him.

  Ethel had spent a breathless ten minutes in the office with Twit before Arthur returned from his unchaste tea party.

  The upshot of it all had been the invitation to dine.

  III

  Twit dressed himself and went downstairs. In the one big room Jill was powdering her nose, preparatory to going out to Dora’s. Jill wore green, vivid tree-green, like the spring rippling in light veins along the dark branches of a wood. At her waist was a single petunia. There was something desperately gay about Jill in her live green, with the petunia that matched her mouth. Something abrupt and audacious and not a little barbarian. Nobody but Jill would have dared to wear it, and Twit could feel the subtle attraction of it. There was something naïadic about her. She was a green pool of water with a scarlet lotus flung into its unrippled surface.

  ‘Hello!’ She looked up. ‘Darling, you’ve got that awful old shirt on!’

  ‘It’s the only one I’ve got. It’s this or a pink one. Shall I put on the pink one?’

  ‘What will the Stillmers think?’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’ll notice.’

  ‘Couldn’t you borrow one?’ she suggested.

  Twit turned savagely to the door. ‘Let my shirt alone. I’m damned if I’ll take anybody else’s,’ and he went out.

  He was ashamed of himself, because she meant well, but well-meaning people are so trying. He was angry that he had let himself rise to the bait, but the thing was done. He got out the motor-bike and started her up. Unfortunately he had difficulties, which he attributed to the fact that he was already late. His hands became smudged with oil. He knew that if Jill could see him now she would be horrified. ‘They’ll have to take me as they find me,’ he assured himself.

  The motor-bicycle chugged along towards Dornington. It had begun to rain a little, in thin transparent threads against the darkness, and, the wind having blown his old mackintosh apart, the drops spattered in. He could hear them spitting on his stiff shirt-front. Hurriedly, with an oily hand, he pulled the mackintosh together, leaving a dark impress where he had clutched at it. Riding into the night he felt alone, he felt his isolation to be emphasized. The mud spurted up under the wheel, it regurgitated, an ugly dark stream of it against the bright-work of the bicycle. The wet wind beat in his face. He was an individual with no one to care whether he lived or died. He wished that he were riding out never to return, that he could cut himself free from all these devastating surroundings. If only he could leave Jill and the hard, bright young people with their sharp wit and cold hearts! If only he could go back to India where at least he had been a man! Here he was not a man. He was a poor entity, enchained to Jill’s brilliance. He might struggle against her personality, but in the end it always bound him down again. And he loved her! That was the terrible part. He loved her and worried for her, and could not show that love because of his gaucherie and shyness. It was all hateful and confining and he could not escape. He saw ahead no prospect and no outlet. He was thirty. He had made no headway, and why? Because Jill had held him back and bound him down with the chains of her amiable intentions. He could not leave her because she would be alone, and because he had not a farthing in the world. She had done everything for him and he was ashamed that his gratitude should be mere resentment. Jill was a tyrant. A darling tyrant, but she held him to her will. He could not gainsay her.

  He chuffed into the small moist town, with the gas lamps alight and shining with a dirty yellow. There was a not unpleasant smell of wet tar and dying leaves and rain in choked gutters, all blent together. The house was the very old house that he had expected old Stillmer to choose. It was large and pretentious. It was in the best road and was more a residence than a house. It stood up warm and red against glistening dark shrubberies, beyond a wide gate. On the gate was a copper plaque emblazoned with the words ‘The Fernery.’ He wheeled the dripping motor-bicycle inside. It was a short, sharp path, flanked with laurels and euonymus, and never the glimpse of a fern. Beside the wide white step was an aspidistra set out to benefit by the rain. Twit c
rashed into it, gave a wry smile and classified the aspidistra with The Fernery. Two bells bewildered him, both in very clean brass. He rang the first, only to find that it was marked ‘Tradesmen.’ Ringing the second just for luck, he was petrified to find that it was attached to an electric bell fixed behind the front door. It shrilled defiantly in his very ear. An indignant maid opened the door in response to it, and admitted him. There was a small lobby, and he left his mackintosh and leggings on the ornate chair provided. The leggings were muddy and soiled his hands more; he looked round for somewhere to wash and, seeing nowhere, tried to remedy matters by wiping them, without the maid seeing, on the skirt part of the mackintosh. The maid was disturbing because she surveyed him placidly through her steel-rimmed glasses until he had finished. Next day she told a friend that ‘she had never seed nothink like it, not never in all me borned days.’ Twit thus ill caparisoned for conquest was ushered into the empty drawing-room.

  The drawing-room was more Stillmer than ever. It had a good Brussels carpet and a dark fur rug before the low fire. The shining brass fender and fire-irons hanging on a slim brass maypole at the side, flanked a fireplace of heavily-carved marble. It was tiled with cerise and yellow tiles. ‘Anyone who had seen old Stillmer’s fireplace would never want one of his houses,’ thought Twit hurriedly. A round gilt mirror topped it, and on the mantelshelf was set a large gilt clock with a lot of pink china facing, and cupped by a glass dome. There were two matching ornaments of more pink china, and lesser domes, and a photograph of Ethel before she had adopted the Spanish pose.