Brand X

by Christianna Brand

Jenina was plonking pots and bottles at her side of the dressing-table. ‘I’m terribly in love and it’s all going wrong. Because I’m an actress, you see, and I’ve simply got to get this part but he doesn’t want me to, he thinks it’ll mean more to me than he does, because he’s, well a bit old, you know, and he’s always afraid I’ll stop loving him. But you don’t know what it means to me, my first great break at last.’

  Elizabeth fished in her washbag for her own modest pot of cleansing cream, the pan-cake make-up, the smudgy box of mascara. ‘I was in the profession myself countless years ago. But only on the stage management side, of course.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Jenina vaguely. But you could see her mind registering: What else?—with a dumpy little figure like that and, gosh!—hasn’t she let herself go?

  Elizabeth felt no resentment. After all, why else had she come here?—under a false name, carefully concealing her whereabouts from family and friends. Because over the difficult, hard-up, stay-at-home early years, when the children were too small to be left and before there was all this money to buy people to look after them—she had indeed let herself go. At her height, even the careless stone or stone-and-a-half made an awful lot of difference, soon it hadn’t seemed worth doing more than just comb back her hair, slap on a bit of powder, slash on some too-bright lipstick; what did it matter what a fat girl looked like? It had done well enough at first; her hair was curly, her skin was good, it had all been easy; but, filled with household cares, she had forgotten that with the years, aids to all these things became increasingly necessary. And now here she was at—be honest!—thirty-four: a dowdy little tub whose husband was leaving her for Another Woman. At least, she had thought, I won’t let them say, Well, no wonder—look at her! So down to the Health Farm. If nothing else, she could lose some weight. It was extraordinary how defenceless you felt in competition with other women, if they were thin and you were fat.

  And for a bet, Edward’s Other Woman wouldn’t be fat.

  The one concession to ordinary life at the Health Farm was the afternoon cup of tea; if they denied you that, the authorities well knew, you would all troop down to the village and get it there, and only too surely accompany it with something to eat. So by four o’clock noses were pressing against the dining-room door and there was a mad rush for the tables. Conversation was general. Everyone, it seemed to Jenina and Elizabeth, talked exclusively and with unlovely frankness about their insides. There was a good deal of comparison of diets—the less you had to eat, the more impressive you were. The words, colonic irrigation, sitz bath, tensions, filled the air. Everyone had been told that his or her shoulders were as stiff as cardboard and seemed filled with illogical pride at the thought of it.

  Afterwards they walked in the grounds with a new acquaintance picked up at the tea table, ‘I’ll take you to see the vegetable gardens, the Grazing Grounds we call them. It’s wonderful what a few raw green beans and a handful of peas will do for you when you’re at the last ebb. There’s a man here,’ said the woman—Mrs. Green Top they came to call her later; it was odd how few people’s names one knew—‘who’s found out how to get into the tomato house; but he won’t tell a soul, the wretch!’ She added that he was a magistrate, perhaps that was why.

  ‘Anyone else interesting?’ said Jenina in a casual voice.

  ‘Well, there’s an authoress, at least we think so, she’s always scribbling things on odd bits of paper. And a charming Persian who tells everyone’s fortunes, but is he fat?—you should see him doing the exercises on the lawn in the mornings: we all lean out of our windows and die with laughter. Of course we ought to be out there doing exercises ourselves,’ admitted Mrs. Green Top. She added that she believed an actor was arriving today. William Something.

  ‘William Lawrence,’ said Jenina in a voice of immense satisfaction.

  At six you went down to the Light Diet Room and collected your exceedingly light diet from suspicious young ladies convinced that you were pinching someone else’s. Elizabeth detached herself from Jenina—who surely must make younger and gayer friends—and sat down next to a formidable lady, in the glassed-in Vinery. A giggle of stout matrons were comparing the nearby delicatessens. ‘But we were terribly good, we only bought a chicken, which after all can’t put anything on you? We drove to that little wood down by the golf course and tore it apart with our hands. The heaven of it!’

  ‘How can people be so uncontrolled and childish?’ said the formidable lady. ‘All this money—and then like a pack of schoolgirls—!’

  ‘Well, they seem to have had fun,’ said Elizabeth, rather wistfully.

  She was lying on her bed watching television when Jenina appeared. ‘It’s true—he’s here!’ She had christened Elizabeth ‘Mrs. Mini-Mop’, on account of the curls; presumably in a rather delicate distinction between the formal surname and embarking straightway upon her Christian name. ‘William Lawrence! He’s here.’ And she confessed: ‘You see, he’s playing the lead in this thing I want the part in and when I heard he was coming here—lots of people come and just unwind, goodness knows he doesn’t need to get thin—I thought if I could get to meet him he might put in a good word for me. They’re auditioning in the first week of September.’

  ‘What part is it?’ said Elizabeth, watching with a sort of indulgent affection the young, eager face, and the flying hands making each point as the sweet, husky voice hurried on.

  ‘Well, it’s a revival, really. Prudence, in The Nectarine.’

  ‘Good heavens—dear old Nectarine! I worked on the original production.’

  ‘You didn’t?’ Jenina, delicately creaming her face, paused with the pot held in mid-air.

  ‘Yes, I did. Prudence. Let’s see. You enter carrying the nectarine…’ And as Jenina automatically moved forward holding out the pot of cleansing cream, she as automatically cried out: ‘No, no, she holds it close to her, sort of—protecting it. It’s precious to her, it’s—well, symbolical of her love. She doesn’t want to give her heart away.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jenina. ‘Good lord! I hadn’t read it like that at all.’

  ‘But, yes, the whole thing’s symbolical, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, gosh, yes—I suppose it is. I wondered why she made such a fuss over this silly old nectarine.’ She begged: ‘You wouldn’t—?’

  ‘Go to bed now and let’s get some sleep,’ said Elizabeth. ‘All this talk about nectarines has set my tummy rumbling again. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.’

  Next morning at what seemed like dawn, came their lemon and hot water followed by a deeply serious young man in a white coat who asked some highly personal questions, issued alarming instructions and went away leaving them with little squares of paper with appointments written all over them. They presented themselves accordingly at nine-thirty in the treatment rooms, and Elizabeth, lapped in plastic and hot blankets was left to lie and rather dreadfully sweat, while Jenina was flung on to a bench and covered with a sheet, from beneath which a young woman fished out her limbs in turn and vigorously massaged them. From large tubs of steam poked the flushed faces of the matrons who had secretly consumed the cold chicken, Mrs. Green-Top now reduced to Mrs. Pink-all-Over was standing on the scales proudly proclaiming a weight loss of a pound a day; the formidable lady was marching off resolutely to the colonic irrigation department. Both Elizabeth and Jenina had firmly rejected all such indignities; it was bad enough to stand like docile mares beneath the shower, being rubbed down with great handfuls of cooking salt. Famished, on wobbly legs, they toiled up the stairs and flopped on to their beds. The telephone rang. ‘Oh, dear!—that’ll be for me,’ said Jenina.

  And so it was. ‘Oh, Mr. Bear, how lovely to hear from you! Where are you, in the office? Well, all right I’ll be tactful.’ And she put on a portentous voice. ‘The goods are in excellent order, sir: rather reduced in size owing to application of hot air and lemon juice. What? Oh, yes, pretty tough, dreadful smackings and punches, but nothing to the sitz baths, oh, darling—sir, I mean—y
ou should just hear the squeals from the sitz baths! Well, dipping one’s bottom into hot water, it seems, and then into ice, they say, and then back into boiling… What? Oh yes, she’s nice; Mrs. Mini-Mop I call her because of her hair, and she’s smiling at me now from her bed. What?—Yes, yes of course I do, darling, you know I do. Oh, and darling, I don’t know if I should tell you or not but he’s here, William Lawrence is here… Good gracious no, it’s only because of the play, you know it is. Oh, darling, for goodness sake, no I won’t get all carried away…’ And she made a face at Elizabeth and suddenly announced that there was someone beating at the door and she must go now, terribly sorry, darling, and do ring again…‘One can’t go on and on,’ she said, excusing herself to Elizabeth, for there had been no one at the door. ‘He gets into such a Thing; of course he’s in terror of me getting to know William Lawrence and wangling this part.’ She thought it all over, rather miserably. ‘Do you think in all honesty, the world can be well lost for love?’

  ‘It depends upon which is the more important to you,’ said Elizabeth. She herself had thought it well lost, and look where that had got her: a fat little frump, living on lemon juice and hot water for no reason more romantic than that she might at least lose her husband with dignity.

  To say that Jenina’s methods were subtle would have been to exaggerate. Seeing the great Mr. Lawrence tucked away in a corner of the Vinery, glowering at his apple juice in the intervals of very pointedly reading a book, she trotted over and joined him. ‘Oh, Mr. Lawrence, can we come and suffer beside you?’

  He stood up, not too enthusiastically, Elizabeth thought. ‘Yes, of course, do.’

  ‘And this is my mate, Mrs. Mop,’ said Jenina. ‘At least that’s what I call her, because of her hair. We’re sharing a room, only we didn’t know each other before, we’re just sort of blind dates.’

  ‘You seem both to have been very fortunate,’ said William Lawrence civilly.

  ‘You looked so miserable, we thought we ought to tell you about the Grazing Grounds,’ said Jenina, most unfairly including Elizabeth in her shameless pursuit. She embarked upon the history of the magistrate who refused to divulge the secret of the tomato house. ‘I’m taking bets all round that I’ll get it out of him.’

  ‘If you can’t nobody will;’ said William Lawrence. ‘I had made up my mind to refuse all acquaintance, but it’s taken you one minute flat to break down my resistance.’

  ‘Ah, that’s because I want a part in Nectarine and I’m dying for you to help me…’

  But guileless impertinence could go a little too far. ‘I have come here for no other purpose than to forget all that,’ he said and stood up and closed the book and bowed to them both, not very warmly, and walked away.

  ‘Now you’ve done it,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Well, at least he’s seen me. That’s better than not noticing me at all.’

  ‘You’re one up on me there, I admit,’ said Elizabeth, for if one thing were certain, it was that he had not noticed her at all. And dammit, she thought, what is he? Just a man and not even a young man with an eye for nothing but bosoms and bottoms. How dare he just remain oblivious of one’s very existence? ‘And yet,’ she said to Jenina, laughing, ‘there’s enough of me. You wouldn’t say that I was exactly invisible.’

  ‘It’s your face that’s invisible,’ said Jenina, frankly. And she offered a bargain. ‘You coach me in The Nectarine and I’ll give you a face that no one won’t see.’

  So that night there was a tremendous creaming and the next morning, after the rigours of the treatment rooms, a tremendous bracing and tautening and moisturising and smoothing on of colours, lovingly chosen and blended; and blue for the lids above the blue eyes and a rather scratching pencilling-in of the eyebrows with a 6B pencil. The mop of curls was brushed out ruthlessly and swept back and up into an ordered cone, as smooth as silk. ‘It makes you look taller and that takes away from your—well, anyway, you’re getting rid of all that.’

  ‘This afternoon,’ promised Elizabeth, grateful if slightly bemused and self-conscious, ‘we’ll do Nectarine for simply hours.’

  But first a visit to the Grazing Grounds. Jenina, hoping vaguely to find William Lawrence disporting himself there, had decided on a visit to the swimming pool, so Elizabeth went alone, guiltily nipping off young pea-pods from the tall plants and tipping the contents, green and delicious, from the palm of her hand into her up-turned mouth. And the broad beans in their pale, silvery, soft green pods: how could one ever have cooked them? But as she reached for a particularly plump one, a hand came up from the other side and got to it first; and a voice said, ‘Oh, sorry—that’s yours really,’ and, guiltily also, William Lawrence appeared at the top of the path. He said again: ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Good gracious,’ she said, ‘never mind! There are lots more—thank goodness.’

  He had evidently been about to pass on but now he paused, actually smiling. ‘Have you considered the sweet corn? I think if one got them sufficiently young—?’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare?’ she said. ‘What if they caught us?’

  ‘Double duty in the treatment rooms, I dare say. But worth it? Only, the thing is—where could we go to eat them?’

  ‘Behind the manure heap would be safe but not exactly inviting.’

  ‘Let’s get over the fence and go to that little copse.’ And he nipped off like a naughty schoolboy and came back with two young heads of sweet corn, pearly pale in their pale green wrappings with their tassels of brown silk. ‘There are gorgeous radishes, but I don’t see how we could get the earth off. Next time, we’ll bring some paper tissues.’ He helped her wriggle through the fence, hopping over it himself with his long, elegant legs ludicrously angled, and led the way to the clump of trees. ‘What a bit of fun!’ he said. ‘I was dying already of starvation and boredom and I don’t know which was worse.’

  ‘Have you found out yet the secret of the tomato house?’

  ‘The tomato house?’ And he swung round upon her. ‘Good heavens, it’s you!’

  ‘What do you mean, it’s me?’ she said, laughing.

  ‘It was you yesterday with that little puss.’ He mimicked: ‘“All I want is a part in The Nectarine.” What a bore they all are!’

  ‘Ah, no, she’s very sweet really,’ said Elizabeth, loyally. ‘And she’s really serious, it wasn’t just out of the blue. She’s auditioning for the part. Prudence.’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!—don’t tell me. The Perpetual Ingenue!’ He mimicked again, on a high, feminine, level note: ‘“Aaoh, the nectarine’s steel waarm, steel waarm from the sun…” And absolutely twanging with symbolism, how well I know it!’

  ‘On the contrary, she was reading it straight, without any symbolism at all.’

  ‘Well, that’s even worse, what a dumb little cluck she must be.’ They had come to the trees and he sat down, perching his narrow behind on a fallen log, and caught at her hand and pulled her to sit down beside him: releasing it immediately and yet, she could not help feeling with a tiny leap of her heart, just a little bit reluctantly. ‘Here’s yours,’ he said, sharing out the sweet corn heads. ‘Being a gentleman I’ve given you the biggest one.’

  ‘And that’s a fraud. It’s longer, but yours is miles fatter.’

  ‘Well, of all the ungrateful females!’ And he put out his hand and took hers and gave it a sort of a shake and once again released it immediately. ‘How nice you are!’ he said.

  Jenina was not very flatteringly astonished. ‘A whole hour! How extraordinary! I mean, he’s supposed to be a terrific womaniser and absolutely heartless. His wife’s always ill or dotty or something, so he has to be. Only he usually goes for terrifically glamorous people—’ She broke off, a trifle confused. ‘It must have been your make-up that did it,’ said Elizabeth, comfortingly.

  ‘And you couldn’t get him to talk about The Nectarine?’

  ‘No, he utterly refused. But I’ll try again next time.’

  ‘You seem very sure
there’ll be a next time,’ said Jenina, torn between respect and envy and a touch of resentment

  Radishes tomorrow,’ said Elizabeth; and her starved heart gave another of those little leaps.

  Next morning a torturer in a white coat flung them each in turn upon a rack and took great handfuls of the famous cardboard at the backs of their necks and pummelled and kneaded it; yanked their arms and legs out of the sockets and eased them back in again, tore their heads from their bodies and replaced them at odd angles. And after it all, there he was waiting for her, the great, the unattainable William Lawrence, sitting over his apple juice, surreptitiously displaying a handful of toilet tissues for removing the earth from radishes. ‘Jenina has discovered,’ said Elizabeth as they settled down on their log, ‘that there’s quite a little meal to be made out of bamboo shoots. You pull out the little sort of branch thing at the top and nibble off the ends. She says they’re delicious.’

  ‘Don’t keep dragging the conversation back to Jenina,’ he said. ‘I want to just go on talking.’

  And they talked. About the poor, sad wife, always ailing, disturbed in her mind, sick, irritable, aggressive. ‘I have to keep reminding myself that she’s the one that does the real suffering. So I try to make a home for her, keep her as happy as she can ever let herself be. After all, what have I got to complain of by comparison? I’ve got my work, which I love; I can make my own amusements…’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard about your amusements,’ she could not help saying.

  He eyed her wryly. ‘Have you, love? Well then, I’ll tell you and only you, something about my amusements, and that is that they’re not really all that amusing. They have this one great drawback, you see—they mustn’t include ever giving my heart away.’ And, confidence for confidence, he asked: ‘What about you?’

  ‘I couldn’t give away mine if I wished,’ she said. ‘And I do wish: since it’s no longer wanted where it belongs.’ And she sang in her low, sweet voice, the old sweet song: ‘One man only—in the world for me!’ And added: ‘Worse luck! Poor me!’