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

by Ursula Bloom

  Twit worried Jill. She reviewed her feelings, knowing that they were all wrong. It was Twit’s attitude that prevented her from ending the tie with Stanley. Twit would say things. He would side with Isobel. Jill felt that she and Twit were the young generation and they should cleave together. They should not relinquish their hold upon each other. Yet all the while she knew that they were out of touch. It was a debatable point as to whether they had ever really been in touch.

  Jill was an idealist, and she valiantly struggled to believe in fraternal love. Sitting in the ditch bordering the may field, tangled with seeding grasses and rivered rustily with sorrel, Jill contemplated her two ill-shod feet. She really must afford a new pair of shoes soon! She earned thirty shillings a week at the Hippodrome, and there was threepence to be deducted for her health insurance stamp. It left her with little, for she liked to give Twit pocket money and to buy Isobel presents.

  She opened the papery handbag made of imitation leather, and she counted out her money, although she knew the total before she started. She did not see how the shoes could be managed. Stanley would have a birthday next month, and that would mean a present. Still, if she broke off her engagement that would be the obvious solution of the difficulty. But would she break it off? She could not tell.

  She wished to marry. There was enough Victorianism in her to regard the position of the old maid as one of shame. She thought it would be horrible to be like Aunt Blanche. Stanley might constitute her only chance, and in that case was division wise?

  She snuggled back among the uncurling green leaves of bracken and the tassels of clover. She tried to think sanely and sensibly. Jill’s mind went wandering back into all that had happened …

  II

  Twit was working at his lathe.

  It was two years since he had come as an apprentice to the engineering works. Before, there had been the deplorable fiasco of the bank, and Stanley’s office, and old Mr. Tompkins’ printing works. He had at first resented the fact that he was leaning on Jill for the weekly five shillings. Later, a little of George had asserted itself. If Jill was earning, why should he worry? It seemed to satisfy her to give it to him. Twit had reached the despondent break in the teens, and now he did not care much what might happen.

  He had been a fool at school. He could not pass examinations. The other boys had hated him because of his delicacy, and they had teased him with a most exquisite torture. They had broken the heart within him. That was it! Twit was a husk with no heart left. He had never been able to stand alone and, after all, with Jill in the house there was no need to stand alone. Jill was so strong. Her proficiency grated on his inability, and although he admired her intensely, he was inordinately jealous of her.

  Very well! Let Jill shine and absorb all into her own radiance! While she held the centre of the picture, as she invariably did, there was no room on the canvas for him. He felt that it was useless to try.

  To-day up in Highgate they were burying his grandmother. It did not concern him. He had only seen her twice in his life, and he had never cared for her. The first time she had given him a glass trumpet, which he had inadvertently bitten, cutting his mouth severely. The second time had been when he had gastritis, and she had brought him some cakes that he couldn’t eat. Jill had eaten them for him. He thought of it with irritation, for it was typical of their lives. Jill had also retrieved the broken trumpet and utilised it as a chandelier in her doll’s house. You could not compete with her. She had ideas. She had personality. Into that personality she sucked him.

  He admired her tremendously, but he knew that her very strength weakened him. He was dulled by her brilliance.

  Working at the lathe, he began one of those halcyon daydreams of which she had never been able to deprive him. She had never suspected them. What a wonderful thing it would be if his grandmother had left him a fortune! The drone of the machinery seemed to die down as he pictured it. It would be delightful. He would say good-bye to everybody and everything; he would cut himself adrift.

  Poor Twit! He little knew that Emily had died in poverty. She had until the last frequented her boarding-houses and had indulged in her ‘conquests of gentlemen.’ She had become an old harridan of a woman, with absurd baby talk and goggling blue eyes. When the funeral was paid for, and the boxes of rubbish at the warehouse examined, there would be nothing left.

  But Twit had buoyed himself up from his infancy with the hope of some nebulous occurrence, and, although each dream died in turn, he continued with the quest.

  He was absorbed in self-pity. He had not had a fair start in life. He had been cheated by reason of his ill-health, and by his people’s lack of money. Later by his father’s outrageous treatment of his mother, and their separation.

  The lathe purred a lullaby. Twit went wandering back into all that had happened …

  III

  In the nursery there were Twit, Jill, and Minnie. Minnie was the nurse of the epoch. She knew all about coughs and colds and croup and nothing about mentalities. She was full of an adoring passion for Twit, nursing him with a praiseworthy devotion through his innumerable illnesses. It is thanks to Minnie that to-day Twit is alive. It is thanks to Minnie’s indifference that Jill is so individual, and steers her own wise course. Minnie, concerning herself solely with the body, had no idea of the importance of the mind. She was amazingly ignorant.

  George grumbled at the wages that Minnie demanded. Twenty pounds a year was too much for any nurse. Isobel was torn between her desire to be rid of Minnie and the haunting problem of whether Twit would cry himself sick without his nurse. In his first five years Twit’s frail constitution had been undermined. It would stand no more. He was a fragile little child, with a down of pale yellow hair. He had two dark eyes, strangely old with pain, and he was pathetically wizened.

  On Twit’s sixth birthday Isobel plucked up courage and gave Minnie notice.

  ‘You will find,’ said Minnie primly, ‘the little chap will fret his heart out. You’ll have to have me back.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Isobel, outwardly firm but with inward misgivings.

  Downstairs she discussed the matter with George.

  ‘Probably she’s right, but she’s ruining Twit. She spoils him,’ she declared.

  ‘One thing is certain. Jill won’t regret it.’

  ‘No. I always have an idea that Minnie isn’t nice to Jill. Jill won’t fret.’

  But there they were wrong. On the bleak March day when the carrier’s cart bore Minnie away Birmingham-wards, it was Jill who wept. Twit was so proud in the possession of a box of tin-tacks and a hammer that he did not give a second glance after the departing carrier’s cart. Even at six, Twit was devoid of sentiment. Jill suddenly burst into agonised tears as the cart lurched round the corner of the drive, and out of the ill-painted gate into the lane beyond. She saw it lumbering away between trees swollen with buds.

  ‘She’ll never come back. Minnie’ll never come back,’ wept Jill. They tried to comfort her with a new doll’s feeding-bottle hastily fetched by Mabel, the housemaid, from the village shop. But Jill was not to be comforted. In her own strange way she had loved Minnie.

  IV

  Emancipated from Minnie’s thrall, Twit and Jill emerged into the first stage of childhood. It was an ecstatic stage of development. Although these two had the same upbringing in the same environment, they were enormously different. Whereas Jill possessed a rude and buoyant health, Twit’s delicacy had shadowed his mentality. When Minnie left they were thrown more together. Twit began to interfere with Jill’s adventurous existence. As she could not leave him behind she attempted to carry him along with her on the tremendous tide of enthusiasm. George was busy with his pupils. He also had an affair of the heart that enthralled him. He had never cared for children and he did not trouble about them save when they demanded his attention. Jill learnt early that her father was to be avoided. She never troubled him much.

  Isobel was engaged in that difficult pursuit known as ‘making end
s meet.’ George had very definite ideas about housekeeping allowances. It was a cold mutton and ginger pudding manage. If the pupils grumbled, George remarked that they ought not to think of their stomachs. His stomach had never worried him. He disliked greediness. Isobel fetched provisions from the nearest town, six miles distant, or relied on the vagaries of the carrier’s cart. George was too poor to afford a pony and trap, so that she toiled painfully on a bicycle. In the summer, as she pedalled along, the dust rose and gritted her throat; in winter her numb hands were almost frozen to the handlebars. In upon her banal ruminations as to whether the cook would remember the mint sauce with the lamb for lunch, or why the last stone of sugar had gone so quickly, she must have thrust regrets. She must have remembered those earlier years. Lucerne, lying like a lapis lazuli puddle at the foot of the rose-peaked mountains. The Wilhelmstrasse, greenly blue, with the vineyards reaching down to the silvered majesty of the Rhine flowing past. The Rue Faubourg, on a gay May morning, with carriages driving jauntily by the boulevards newly green. The Buitenhof in the Hague, eternally leafy, with drowned trees in its islanded lake. Such visions did not fit in with six miles on a bicycle to fetch the chops for lunch.

  The four servants had their duties to fulfil, and, although Mabel the housemaid was supposed to keep an eye on the children, she seldom found the time. By her eleventh year Jill had explored every nook and cranny of the wild Cotswold country for miles around. She had dragged the reluctant Twit after her. She made friends with a couple of boys who stayed at the farm for holiday periods; in their company a ragged and torn Jill tramped in tomboy enthusiasm. She climbed trees, she dredged in pools, she fished in the river. Through it all she insisted that Twit should accompany her, for she had the fraternity complex. He often objected. He tired more easily than she did. He was lacking that same vital fluid health, and he could not wax as enthusiastic. But he accompanied all the expeditions, undoubtedly holding the master-key to the situation by threatening to tell his mother.

  ‘Little sneak!’ blazed Godfrey.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it like that,’ Jill carefully explained; ‘he does not realise that it is sneaking.’

  ‘He is old enough.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s ill.’

  The reason for the argument was that Twit had been dragged too far. In pursuit of a barn owl’s nest, they had tramped a good four miles, and the ailing Twit could go no further. His small legs were crumpling up under him, his head lolled. He insisted that he must be carried. It was a hot spring day, and nobody was too anxious to carry Twit. Jill debated the point. Twit, realising his need, and recalling that at breakfast Isobel had told Jill that she was not to go out with the boys, produced his trump card. He had to do something to ensure a commodious journey home. Frankly, he could go no further. To Twit it was not sneaking, because he had been brought up with Minnie’s code, and this was part of the code.

  ‘There he goes,’ said Godfrey.

  Mournfully Jill prepared to shoulder Twit pick-a-back. Impregnated within her was the belief that she must be good to her little brother; she must shelter and protect him. Therefore she still valiantly persisted that he did not mean it.

  V

  George had long ago decided that the educational needs of his family were small. He considered expensive schools to be swindles. He did not see why he should waste his good money on them. Jill would marry; Twit would shift out into the world with some sort of a career.

  ‘But what sort of a career?’ asked Isobel. ‘He’ll need a start.’

  ‘What sort of a start did I have?’

  ‘You were rather different. I don’t think Twit is clever. Standards are changing too. In our day examinations were not so important.’

  ‘You would try and run me into further expense,’ said George darkly.

  He always chose to believe that Isobel was extravagant. Last spring it had been the matter of the new drawing-room carpet. Then the damp-course had given in the corner of the room and the wall had been disfigured by greenish-blue splotches. As the pupils used it as a sitting-room, and it was advertised in the circular as ‘a charming old-world room of pleasant outlook,’ he had realised that something would have to be done. The greenish-blue splotches were not charming, and they spoilt the pleasant outlook. That had meant re-papering. He had had to buy twenty rolls of a pale yellow paper with impossible chrysanthemums on it.

  Isobel had asked Blanche to stay, hoping that she would help with the papering. Blanche would not help. She did not feel that paper-hanging was quite ladylike; her nicer friends didn’t do it. Isobel had had to do it herself with the aid of Mabel, while Blanche, indulging in the invalid complex, occupied the dining-room sofa and complained about the food.

  In the early autumn the back garden wall had blown down. Unfortunately they rented the property cheaply on a repairing lease. The repairing lease demanded blood money from them. The wall was additionally expensive, for when it was half way up, the carrier’s cart ran into it. It was a Saturday night when Deacon, who drove it, was drunk. That meant that it had to be started all over again. After the drawing-room paper and the back garden wall, Twit contracted a peculiar form of jaundice. That started the doctor coming on a daily visit for some weeks.

  Finally, at Christmas, George’s most paying pupil left, owing to a slight accident with the garden roller. The tennis court was raised. Steep green banks sloped three to four feet on either side of it. The pupils were willing enough to help roll the lawn, seeing that in the summer they used it. Mr. Guest was a young man of few brains but much imagination. He suffered from poetic inspiration. He may have been composing a sonnet, or involved in an epic, but certain it is that he went too near the edge. He had not the sense to let the roller, which had started going, go. He remained faithful to his poesy and he went with it. There was the terrible moment when Mr. Guest and the roller went over the top together. The roller won.

  To add to all these mounting expenses, the thought of educating his children was a painful one to George.

  Be it said to his credit, he set them lessons himself. He was an unhappy man, for all his life was spent in teaching. His pupils were anxious to learn, his children were not. Twit set his nose stubbornly against the elements. He could not read and he would not write. Jill, who had the feminine sharpness balanced against inherent laziness, scraped along. The lessons demanded of her were not difficult. She read English history and she rather liked geographical maps. It was in arithmetic that she met her lifelong foe, but Twit liked sums, and he obligingly did hers for her.

  It was a fair deal, for in return Jill did Latin exercises for him. Thinking it over in bed at night, she became uncertain as to the fairness of it. She did his Latin exercises correctly, whereas more often than not he did her sums incorrectly.

  ‘It would be almost wiser to fag to learn the beastly muck myself,’ she thought, ‘only it is such rot.’

  Jill was in the unhappy position of being scolded both for her own and Twit’s mistakes. George dared not scold his son, because instantly Twit would go sick. George, fuming against these puerile lessons, hating the fact that a pedantic law insisted upon children being educated at all, had to scold someone. Jill came in for it. If Twit had done her sums overnight, she was invariably trapped in her oral work. On the library mantelshelf was a black marble clock. It was a dismal affair of Parthenon design, with a small engraved plate stating that it had been presented to George and Isobel by appreciative pupils. Jill could not count unless she could see the clock. With the clock you could split up twelve into four lots of threes, called quarters, or three lots of fours, called thirds ‒ possibly to make it more perplexing! When the number went beyond twelve she was done! Jill hoped that no one knew of her weakness; then she discovered that Twit knew. He had detected it by an uncanny intuition, and he persisted in getting his tousled head between her and the clock. Twit didn’t see why he shouldn’t. After all, he could not read, and he hated the fact that reading presented no difficulty to Jill. He hated lesson
s altogether, and could see no rhyme nor reason in them. He was antagonistic to Jill and the ease with which she acquired knowledge.

  Once she had hurried Twit’s Latin exercise overnight, because she wanted to go fishing. During this epoch she made her pocket-money by fishing for gudgeon. She sold them to Isobel, to be cooked as sardines on toast for supper. The rate of pay was six for a halfpenny. Jill was a business woman, and the nominal penny a week was not her idea of prosperity. She was dealing in a promising fish business with no small success. Twit, trying to copy her, as he habitually tried to copy her, fell into the river and lost his father’s best pike line as a result. No one scolded Twit for the occurrence, because they dared not. The Latin exercise was inexorable. George glared as he read it. His angry eyes encountered the sullen gaze of Twit, over the open exercise-book.

  ‘Sum, es, est,’ said George, ‘sumus … now what comes next?’

  Twit had no idea what might come next. He made a random shot. ‘Sutis,’ he said unconcernedly.

  George ground his teeth.

  ‘But you did it right yesterday, and the day before. You know you did, you little fool. I’ve a good mind to send you to bed.’

  This was unusual, and Twit hurriedly prepared to shift the blame on to someone else.

  ‘Jill does my Latin for me,’ he explained.

  Across the table, her eyes met his. She was thinking, ‘Sneaking is the most filthy, rotten, putrid thing you can do. It’s only beaten by murder.’ She supposed that her father would be furious with Twit, but George knew better than that. He believed that his son was possessed of diabolical powers to develop any named illness at any specified moment. He turned hotly on Jill.

  CHAPTER II

  ‘Nothing can exist from itself, but must exist from something prior to itself.’ ‒ Swedenborg.

  GARÇON.

  I

  Isobel was responsible for Twit’s departure to Whoreham. It happened when he was twelve years old. The child was still unable to read, and was sadly behind in other subjects. George was vague about the boy’s future. He had ‘something in the Civil Service ’ in mind, but was very uncertain about it. Jill would marry. Isobel was by this time getting wearied with George. She was sick of his poverty complex. He was one of those men who could never afford anything and who made no effort towards affording things. His argument that, because he had had a mere smattering of an education himself, he could see no necessity for Twit and Jill to be educated, struck Isobel as being illogical. George had been clever. Twit showed no sign of having inherited his father’s brain.