The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Read online

  She rang the bell and asked Rose to ask Nurse to bring the children down.

  ‘I see you are determined not to give Henry away,’ said Miss Brandon, not disapprovingly. ‘But when is it? I see no other reason for wearing white so soon.’

  Her gaze was again so meaningly fixed upon her niece’s white dress that Mrs Brandon began to blush violently.

  ‘I don’t think I understand,’ she faltered, ‘but if that is what you mean of course it isn’t. I just thought white was less depressing for the children.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it. That I could not have forgiven Henry,’ said the disconcerting Miss Brandon, and then the children were brought down, approved, and taken away again.

  ‘Now you can ring for my second chauffeur, Lavinia,’ said Miss Brandon. ‘He always comes with me to help me in and out of the car. I prefer to have the first chauffeur remain at the wheel, for one never knows.’

  She then expounded to Mrs Brandon in the hall, unmoved by the presence of her chauffeur and the parlour-maid, her plans for the disposal of her affairs. As far as Mrs Brandon, shaken by Rose’s presence, could understand, Francis and Delia were to be the heirs of their aunt’s large fortune, unless she saw fit to leave it to a cousin whom she had never seen. She was then hoisted into her car, the second chauffeur got into his place, the first chauffeur put in the clutch and the equipage moved away. Mrs Brandon, much the worse for her aunt’s visit, declined Rose’s suggestion of an early cup of tea and went up to the nursery for comfort. Here she found Francis and Delia already having tea. Francis was sitting on a nursery chair with a fat cushion on it. He was wearing a green linen suit with a green linen feeder tied round his neck, and was covered with apricot jam from his large smiling mouth to the roots of his yellow hair. Delia, in a yellow muslin frock with a feeder of yellow towelling, and a yellow ribbon in her brown curls, was being fed with strips of bread and butter by Nurse.

  ‘Don’t move, Nurse,’ said Mrs Brandon, as Nurse sketched the gesture of one who has no intention of getting up. ‘Can I have tea with you?’

  ‘If we had known Mummie was coming, we’d have had our clean pinny on,’ said Nurse severely to Delia.

  ‘Pinny,’ said Delia.

  ‘You’d hardly believe the words she picks up, madam,’ said Nurse with quite unjustifiable pride considering how many times a day the words clean pinny were said by her. ‘We’ll get another cup and saucer out of the cupboard, won’t we, baby, a nice cup and saucer with a duck on it for Mummie. Would you like the duck, madam, or the moo-cow?’

  Mrs Brandon expressed a preference for the moo-cow, on hearing which Delia, who was holding a mug of milk to her mouth with both hands, said ‘Moo-cow’ into it. The milk spluttered all over her face, Francis began to laugh and choked on a piece of bread and butter and jam, Nurse dashed with first aid from one to another, and Mrs Brandon found herself laughing till suddenly she was crying and couldn’t stop. Her children, deeply interested, stopped choking to stare.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter, Nurse,’ said Mrs Brandon through her sobs. ‘An aunt of Mr Brandon’s came to call and it was very upsetting.’

  ‘I don’t wonder, madam,’ said Nurse, deeply approving her mistress’s show of feeling as suitable to a young widow. ‘Suppose you go and lie down and I’ll bring you the tea in your room. We’ll give Mummie the nice moo-cow cup of tea, won’t we baby? Francis, wipe your mouth on your feeder and say your grace and get down and Nurse will come and wash your hands as soon as she has taken Mummie some tea.’

  Thanks to the tea and a rest Mrs Brandon quite soon recovered from her mild hysterics, but the affair was not at an end. On Thursdays, which this day happened to be, the nursery-maid had her half-day out; by a great oversight the kitchen-maid who took Nurse’s supper tray up when the nursery-maid was out, had been given special leave to go and see her married sister who had had triplets. On any ordinary occasion Nurse would have gone supperless sooner than condescend to go downstairs, just as the second housemaid would sooner have lost her place than deputised for the kitchen-maid, but the urgent need of communicating gossip drove both sides into some semblance of humanity. As soon as Francis and Delia were asleep Nurse went down to the kitchen and there found the second housemaid talking to Rose.

  ‘Well, Nurse,’ said the second housemaid, ‘I was just going to take your tray up as Gladys is out.’

  ‘Thanks, Grace,’ said Nurse with the courtesy that a superior should always show to an inferior, ‘that is very obliging of you, but I hardly feel like touching a thing. Just the bread and butter and that bloater paste and a bit of cheese and a cup of tea.’

  She assumed an interesting pallor and smiled faintly.

  ‘Rose feels just like you do, Nurse,’ said Grace. ‘It’s all that upset this afternoon.’

  ‘Madam did mention that she was upset,’ said Nurse, exploring the ground, but careful to give nothing away.

  ‘I couldn’t hardly touch my own tea,’ said Rose. ‘That Miss Brandon talking of making her will with Mr Brandon only four months buried and all. No wonder madam didn’t fancy her tea after that.’

  Cook, who had come in as Rose was speaking, said those chauffeurs were nice young fellers and the young one with the little moustache had worked in the works where her brother was, and there were twenty indoors and out at Miss Brandon’s place, and didn’t Nurse want a bit of that cold pork.

  ‘Thanks, Cook, ever so,’ said Nurse, ‘but it would go against my feelings. It gave me quite a turn seeing madam so upset. Seeing Master Francis and baby having their tea seemed to bring it all home as you might say. So I said to madam, If you was to have a nice lay down, madam, you’d feel much better.’

  She paused.

  ‘No wonder she was upset,’ said Rose. ‘I knew she was reel upset because I said If you was to have a cup of tea, madam, now, it would do you good, because it was only half-past four and drawing-room tea isn’t till five.’

  ‘My nursery kettle was just on the boil,’ said Nurse airily, ‘so I took madam a cup of tea and she seemed ever so much better when she’d drunk it.’

  This was an appalling piece of provocation on Nurse’s part, carefully led up to and deliberately uttered. Between her and Rose there was an unspoken rivalry for the possession of their mistress. Rose had been with Mrs Brandon since her marriage and was therefore the senior, besides holding the important position of unofficial lady’s maid, but Nurse had through the children an unassailable hold over the household. Rose might be able to bully her mistress about the hour for tea, or the evening dress she should wear, but it was with Nurse that Mrs Brandon spent an hour or two in the nursery or the garden every day, Nurse that she allowed to help her to get flowers for the church, or to finish the half-dozen hideous and badly cut flannelette nightgowns that were her forced contribution to a thing called Personal Service that levied blackmail on the gentry. Rose knew in her heart that if it came to a showdown Nurse would win, for Mrs Brandon as a mother was as incapable as she was adoring, and this did not improve her feelings. Nurse, equally conscious of this vital fact, was more polite to Rose than anyone could be expected to bear. Today she had made an incursion into the enemy’s territory that would not easily be forgiven. If Mrs Brandon chose to demean herself to have tea in the nursery, Rose could but pity her, while admitting that she had a perfect right to have tea with her own children. But that her mistress should refuse the cup of tea she had so kindly offered and then accept the offering from Nurse, not even in the nursery but in her own room, sacred to Rose’s ministrations, that was an insult Rose would not readily forget, and for which she chose to put the entire blame on her rival. So she said, in a general way, that Indian tea wasn’t no good for the headache.

  Nurse said in an equally general and equally offensive way that so long as tea was made with boiling water, it didn’t matter if it was Indian or China.

  Cook said she found a good dose was the best thing for the headache, but it must be a good dose, to which both house
maids added a graphic description of the effect a good dose had on (a) a bed-ridden aunt, and (b) a cousin who had fits.

  Rose said to Cook it was no wonder madam didn’t have no appetite for her dinner, poor thing, to which Nurse was just preparing a barbed reply when to everyone’s mingled disappointment and relief the kitchen-maid suddenly appeared, and by sitting down and bursting into tears at once became the centre of interest. Cook at once provided a cup of very strong tea and while drinking it the kitchen-maid explained with sobs and gulps that two of the triplets were dead and looked that beautiful that you wouldn’t credit it. Everyone applauded her display of feeling and a delightful conversation took place about similar events in everyone’s own family circle. Nurse, who only recognised the children of the gentry, circles in which triplets are for some obscure social or economic reason practically unknown, came off poorly in this contest and retired quietly with her tray.

  But from that day the silent struggle for the soul of the unconscious Mrs Brandon became the ruling passion in Nurse and Rose. If Nurse brushed and twisted Delia’s curls with absent-minded ferocity, or Rose cleaned the silver ornaments in the drawing-room till they were severely dented and had to go to Barchester to be repaired, they were not thinking of their respective charges, but of an enemy above and below stairs. When Francis went to school and Delia had a French governess, Rose’s hopes soared high. Mrs Brandon had intended to give Nurse notice, with a huge tip and glowing recommendations, but from day to day she found that she dared not do it, from month to month Nurse’s position became stronger, and from year to year Nurse stayed on, partly as maid to Delia, partly as general utility, always in a state of armed neutrality towards Rose.

  After this terrifying visit, nearly seventeen years ago, Miss Brandon had never visited Stories again, but from time to time had summoned her niece and her children to Brandon Abbey. These visits seemed to Mrs Brandon to have been the inevitable occasion for some outburst from her offspring. It was here that Francis had fallen through a hot-house roof, where he had no business to be, cutting his leg to the bone and bringing down the best grape vine in his fall; here that he had laboriously baled all the water out of the small lily-pond with one of the best copper preserving pans, abstracted no one ever discovered how from the kitchen regions, leaving all the high-bred goldfish to die in the mud. Here it was that Delia, usually so good, had been found in Miss Brandon’s dressing-room, that Holy of Holies, peacocking before the glass in her great-aunt’s mantle and bonnet. Here it was that Francis, at a later age, had learnt to drive a car with the connivance of the second chauffeur and run over one of Miss Brandon’s peacocks, while on the same ill-omened visit Delia had broken the jug and basin in the best spare bedroom where she had been sent to wash her hands, and flooded the Turkey carpet.

  Miss Brandon had made very little comment on these misfortunes, but her niece noticed that after each of them she had talked a good deal about the cousin she had never seen, the possible inheritor of her money. Mrs Brandon, who did not care in the least what her aunt’s plans might be, but was genuinely sorry for the indomitable old lady, yearly becoming more bed-ridden as she had predicted, was at last goaded into a mild remonstrance, pointing out to Miss Brandon that if it had not been for her nephew Henry, the children would never have existed, to which Miss Brandon had replied cryptically that it took two to make a quarrel.

  Thinking of all this and of her aunt’s letter, Mrs Brandon carried her flowers into the little room known as the flower room, along one wall of which ran a long marble slab with four basins in it, relics of a former Brandon with four gardening daughters. She then fetched yesterday’s flowers from the hall and living-rooms, refilled the vases, and began to arrange her flowers. This she always called ‘my housekeeping’, adding that it took more time than all her other duties put together, but she couldn’t bear anyone else to do it, thus giving the impression of one who was a martyr to her feeling for beauty. As a matter of fact she spoke no more than the truth, for Cook arranged the menus, and Nurse looked after the linen and did all the sewing and darning, so that Mrs Brandon would have been hard put to it to find anything useful to do.

  Presently Delia’s voice at the telephone in the hall penetrated her consciousness, and she called her daughter’s name.

  ‘Oh, bother,’ said Delia’s voice to her unknown correspondent, ‘Mummie’s yelling for me. Hang on a moment. What is it, Mummie?’ she inquired, looking into the flower room.

  ‘It’s about Aunt Sissie, darling. She said Wednesday, so don’t arrange the picnic that day.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, any day would do for Aunt Sissie. We must have Wednesday for the picnic or the Morlands can’t come.’

  ‘I can’t help it,’ said Mrs Brandon, massing sweet peas in a bowl. ‘We haven’t been for ages and she’s all alone, poor old thing.’

  ‘Don’t be so mercenary, Mother,’ said Delia. ‘Here, Francis, come here a moment.’

  Francis, who was passing through the hall, came to the flower room door and asked what the matter was.

  ‘It’s Mummie, going all horse-leechy,’ said Delia. ‘Wednesday’s the only possible day for the picnic and now Mummie says we must go and be dutiful to Aunt Sissie. I wish Aunt Sissie would give all her money to that cousin of hers straight away and leave us in peace. Oh, Mummie, do be sensible.’

  ‘I am,’ said Mrs Brandon, ‘and I don’t see why we shouldn’t be kind to poor Aunt Sissie even if she is rich. If I were very old and alone and spent most of my time in bed, I would be very glad when people visited me.’

  At this both her children laughed loudly.

  Nurse, on her way upstairs with an armful of sewing, stopped to interfere.

  ‘Oh, Nurse —’ said all three at once.

  ‘I want you, Miss Delia, so I can try on your tennis frock,’ said she. ‘Come up with me now.’

  ‘Oh, Nurse, any time will do. I’m telephoning now. Be an angel and I’ll come up presently. Mummie wants us to go over to Aunt Sissie on Wednesday, and that’s the only good day for the picnic.’

  ‘Nonsense, Miss Delia,’ said Nurse. ‘There’s plenty of other days in the week. Now come straight up with me and try that dress on.’

  Delia followed her old Nurse mutinously upstairs, making faces, till Nurse, who appeared to have, as she had often told the children when they were small thus frightening them horribly, eyes in the back of her head, said sharply that that was enough, and so they vanished.

  ‘Francis, darling,’ said Mrs Brandon, who had collected another great bunch of sweet peas and was holding them thoughtfully to her face, ‘we must go to Aunt Sissie on Wednesday.’

  ‘Yes, I think we must,’ said Francis. ‘Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were mercenary, darling, but I know you haven’t the wits to concentrate. You’ve got a kind heart, though, and anyone who looked at you sympathising with people would think you really cared. Give me a smell of those sweet peas.’

  Mrs Brandon held up the flowers and Francis sniffed them violently.

  ‘There are few pleasures like really burrowing one’s nose into sweet peas,’ he said, much refreshed. ‘You’re a bit like them, darling, all soft pinky-purply colours and a nice smell. Do you want your tall handsome son to help you to take the flowers to the church? It will look so well if we go together, and everyone will say what a comfort I am to you and what a wonderful mother you have been.’

  Mrs Brandon laughed with great good humour and gave Francis a long basket to fill with tall flowers. Then they walked across the garden, up a lane, past the Cow and Sickle, and so into the churchyard by the side gate.

  Mrs Brandon could never be thankful enough that her husband had died at Cannes and been decently buried in the English cemetery. If he had been buried in Pomfret Madrigal church she would have had to keep his grave and memory decorated with flowers. If she had undertaken this pious duty herself she would certainly have forgotten it and left the flowers, a wet mush of decay, to scandalise the village. If she had told T
urpin the gardener to look after it, not only would the village have been scandalised, but he would have chosen the stiffest asters and dahlias like rosettes, bedded out begonias, even cultivated immortelles for the purpose, and given the little plot the air of a County Council Park. The only alternative Mrs Brandon could imagine was to have what might be called an all-weather grave, sprinkled with chips from the stone-mason’s yard, or battened down under a granite slab, and to do this to the unconscious Mr Brandon would have seemed to his widow a little unkind. So Mr Brandon reposed at Cannes and a sum of money was paid yearly to keep his memory as green as the climate allowed, while a neat tablet in Pomfret Madrigal church bore witness in excellent lettering to the dates of his birth and death.

  Pomfret Madrigal church was of great antiquity, being the remains of the former Abbey of that name. Part of it was supposed to date from the reign of King John, but as that particular part was considered by archaeologists to be buried in the thick chancel walls, everyone was at liberty to have his own opinion. A few years previously the Vicar, Mr Miller, a newcomer and an ardent enthusiast for his new church, had discovered faint traces of colour in a very dark corner high up on the south wall. Mrs Brandon, always pleased to give pleasure, had made a handsome contribution towards a fund for church restoration, a learned professor famed for extracting mural paintings from apparently blank walls had visited the church, and the work had been put in hand.