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

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘And you looked lovely, too. I wish I’d had a good wool-back satin. Dewdrop chiffon isn’t much when it comes to wearing.’

  ‘He kissed me.’

  ‘Oh, my!’

  ‘We’re meeting on Sunday.’

  ‘Oh!’ Effie came to a standstill under a bubbling street lamp, garish against the stars. ‘You mark my words, I shouldn’t be surprised if it isn’t a case. Indeed I shouldn’t.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Well, you mark my words, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh … Effie … do you think …?’ Words failed her.

  ‘Rather,’ said Effie.

  Jill passed into her own house, letting herself in quietly, and crept up to Isobel’s room. She let the wool-back satin drop to the floor and lie there, a pink pool in the moonlight. She slipped out of her things one by one. She slid her body in between the cool sheets, feeling in a sense ashamed because she could not tell Isobel of this romance. She believed that Isobel would not be able to understand it, just as Isobel had believed Mamma would not understand about George. Just as Emily had thought Great-Granny could not possibly understand about her George. Just as every generation misjudges its predecessor.

  Jill lying there thought of it as an exquisite jewel that had suddenly blazed in upon her existence. It was a flashing, meteoric emotion. It was love!

  III

  They met on the Sunday. She had hoped that daylight would help her to re-establish her standards. At the moment she was conscious that she loved, and it seemed that daylight made no difference. In the interim she had taken the trouble to inspect his father’s works. She had gone that way in the twilight hoping to see great factory chimneys raising themselves like giant pencils against the sky. Instead, in a back alley, she saw a tumbledown building marked unostentatiously ‘A. Buggins and Son.’ A lawn-mower blocked the doorway. There was also a tin notice, which dangled from a rusty nail and chattered against the wall, announcing that A. Buggins and Son swept chimneys. Jill was appalled, but with the optimism of youth chose to believe that it was a mistake. She met Stanley and she loved him more than ever. He spoke queerly at times, especially when he became excited. He affected many little mispronunciations that for a moment jarred her serenity, but nothing could definitely tarnish the brightness of her ardour. They met again and finally she took him home.

  Stanley went to tea with Isobel, wearing his new signet ring, and a dull green suit that his tailor had assured him was fashionable. Jill thought the green suit delightful, and the signet ring the hall-mark of distinction. Isobel took a dislike to both of them. The tea was by no means a happy one. Before it had gone far, Isobel had perceived the state of affairs between Jill and Stanley. She had also realised what Stanley was, and no chattering chimney-sweeping notice would have surprised her in relation to the Buggins family. Stanley for his part had taken a dislike to Twit, who had not troubled to wash for the occasion.

  When Jill returned from the front door after showing Stanley out, the storm burst. Isobel accused her of bringing humiliation upon the house. Jill, her love assailed, adopted the inevitable tactics of all youth under siege. Twit could be a mule, very well, so could she! Twit sided with his mother, believing more would be derived from such strategy.

  ‘He curled his little finger when he drank his tea,’ mocked Twit.

  ‘That’s better than not washing your ears.’

  ‘Jill, don’t be unkind to your brother. It’s difficult for him since he had that accident at school. Twit is right. Mr. Buggins is a dreadful young man.’

  ‘And the name?’ said Twit. ‘Mrs. Buggins! Jill Buggins! Think of it!’

  Jill lost her temper completely. She faced them with flashing eyes and unbridled tongue. She said her say and then crashed out of the sitting-room into the hall. The hall seemed stuffy. She felt as though the walls were hemming her in and she was a soul in prison. In her hot perturbation she went into the front garden for air. It happened that Stanley had returned for his walking-stick, which he had left in error. He saw Jill standing there with over-bright eyes and pouting lips. She was in no mood to attempt evasion, and soon enough he had dragged the truth out of her. Under the rowan tree, sweet with moon wash in the up-rushing scent of jasmine and tea-rose, he offered her his hand and heart.

  IV

  Jill did not for a moment suppose that Isobel would consent to the engagement. They could not elope, because she was under age, also Stanley’s earnings were not sufficient to entertain marriage. He would do better later on. To her nightly prayers she would attach a special petition for foot-and-mouth disease or anthrax to engulf the neighbourhood and make a fortune for him. They plighted a romantic troth and promised to remain true to each other however great the opposition of Isobel or the Buggins family. They kissed. They caressed. The feel of his arms consoled her. There was keen rapture in the pressure of his lips. Jill went back into the house with her anguish assuaged and her temper cooled. Isobel did not refer to the subject until two days later, and then casually. Other matters had suddenly loomed large on Isobel’s horizon. On the Monday night Twit returned from London clasping a cineraria in a plot.

  ‘For you,’ he said, and gave it to his mother.

  ‘But, my dear boy, where did you get the money?’

  ‘I got paid.’

  ‘To-day is not pay day.’

  ‘No-o.’

  She sensed trouble and laid her hand, trembling a little, on his shoulder. ‘What is it, Twit?’

  ‘They didn’t want me any more,’ he said.

  Jill coming into the room caught the last words. ‘What is that? They haven’t dismissed him? They haven’t …’ she relapsed into gibbering incoherence.

  Even a common little vet by the name of Buggins seemed better than this.

  V

  Jill was a diplomat. There is no doubt about it that she played her cards with supreme skill, and deliberately twisted Isobel into accepting the engagement. The incident of Twit’s dismissal from the Bank was a shock to Isobel. She had decided in her own mind that the boy was now settled in life. Then suddenly he was back again on her hands, and with no ideas as to his problematical future. He had no proper sense of perspective, he was not perturbed by the fact that he had been returned to his family; he was merely martyred. He had never wanted to go into the Bank, and therefore it was, he declared, the obvious result of pushing him into the wrong channel. To Isobel’s somewhat frenzied demands as to what he wanted to be he replied after some thought that he had a private passion for paper-hanging. Then it was that Jill delivered herself of her stroke of diplomacy. Stanley needed someone to help with his accounts and to keep records. The employ was to address envelopes and disport himself as a sort of glorified office boy. The pay was far from princely because Stanley was only just struggling on to his feet, but he was willing to give Twit a trial. Jill waited to place this proposition before Isobel until the moment when Twit had been refused a job for which he had applied and no other was in view. He had let loose a schoolboy appetite on the cold beef, and it was discovered that his shoes needed re-soling. Isobel was reduced to tears, and she suddenly clutched at Jill’s suggestion with a last despairing hope.

  It was impossible for her to refuse to acknowledge Stanley after he had been good enough to employ her son. Thus it was that he came into the villa as the accepted fiancé of Jill. He was an amiable young man. He bore Isobel no grudge, he was quiet, and in fact highly respectable.

  Isobel made the grave error of criticising him to Jill. Jill for her part was forced to keep the peace. She made a grim effort to coax Stanley into better English, and Isobel into tolerance. She was working desperately hard, trying to guard against her mother seeing the huddle of small buildings somewhat euphemistically called ‘the works.’

  For two harassing months this condition continued, then Stanley discovered his books to be in an unfathomable mess. His accounts had been made up and sent to entirely the wrong people. Twit being upbraided stared vacantly and was indiffer
ent to reproach. He refused to take offence at the allusions to his dirty neck and ears. He was merely martyrish. Jill made a noble attempt to protect her brother. It was Stanley who pointed out that Twit was menacing their own future by undermining the veterinary surgery with his carelessness. She had to give way. It was broken to Isobel that Stanley could not keep Twit any longer.

  In their bedroom Isobel rounded on Jill. ‘To think that common little beast dare dismiss Twit, who is at least a gentleman!’

  ‘He won’t wash. He doesn’t look a gentleman.’

  ‘I daresay, but he’ll get over that. It’s a phase. All boys go through it.’

  ‘He is too old for it.’

  ‘You’re hard on your poor brother. You can’t imagine the disappointment that my children are to me. Twit being like he is, and you throwing yourself away on Stanley.’

  Jill hated it when her mother put it that way. She distrusted the persuasion that employed spurious sentiment. She was standing before her glass brushing her hair. She brushed it in long emphatic sweeps with the silver brush that she had been made to buy with her birthday money when she was small. She had not wanted to buy the brush, but a bicycle. She had never liked it. Isobel had urged that it would be so useful. Somehow she felt that now there was a certain similarity between the affair of the brush and Stanley.

  ‘It’s my own life,’ she declared mulishly.

  That argument did not apply in pre-war days. ‘Yes,’ said Isobel emphatically, ‘and you’re spoiling it.’

  ‘You had your chance, let me have mine.’

  Isobel sobbed into the already wet pillow. ‘I’ve put up with too much. It goes on and on, and I can’t bear much more. Oh, the dreadful disappointment of you both!’

  VI

  Stanley had promised to get Twit a job. He made the young man answer all the advertisements in a morning paper taken in for the purpose. Twit showed visible signs of contact with the ink-pot for several subsequent days. He bore Stanley a grudge and he never missed an opportunity of showing his sister’s fiancé in the worst light. At tea he emphasized Stanley’s little habits.

  ‘He calls engine “ingin,” and talks about a “cup o’ tea,” and he’s awfully refined.’

  ‘I know,’ said Isobel.

  ‘He’s a proper little counter-jumper. He’ll end his days in a stocking department, you’ll see. He’ll be saying “This way, Moddom,” and that will be jolly for Jill, won’t it?’

  Isobel was trying to read the paper. Jill eyed her brother under slanting lids. Twit was good at this game of working his mother up into a temper. It was despicable.

  ‘He talks about “quaite” and “naice”.’

  ‘Shut up, Twit.’

  ‘Anyway, Jill, you just watch. He’ll make you a “naice cup o’ tea” in the mornings. He’s that sort.’

  ‘It’s awful’ ‒ Isobel laid the paper aside and entered into the argument ‒ ‘Jill throwing herself away like this. You needn’t keep on reminding me, Twit.’

  In her heart Jill knew that Isobel was quite correct in her opinion of Stanley, but to Jill he stood for the flame of youth. She was singularly alone in life, and until now she had supposed that her mother loved her. But Stanley had come inevitably between them. If she broke off her engagement it would not re-establish her position in the home. Twit would taunt her, her mother would be triumphant. The criticism was easier to bear than the triumph would be. She took out the tea-things and washed them in the kitchen sink. Her mother, who had been entering up her diary with meticulous care, came out to help her. They bickered as one washed and the other wiped. It was only Jill’s keen sense of loyalty that forced her to endure. Duty had always been the rein upon her inclination. It was her duty to abide by these two people who tormented her. There was something abnormal in Jill’s sense of protection. It was more than maternal, it was almost male.

  Beyond the window autumn-tousled trees blew yellow and russet. Hollyhocks peered over the fence, with round, cheerful faces, pink, prune, and claret. They were tangled with the heavy heads of old-fashioned sunflowers, drooping a little and warped away from their roundness. As she glanced across to them there came a tap at the door.

  ‘Perhaps it is Effie,’ she said.

  Isobel rinsed a fetid dishcloth and, wringing it out, hung it on the brass tap to dry. ‘That dreadful girl! How we’ve sunk! You keep on dragging us down, Jill.’

  VII

  Next morning Stanley found a postcard for Twit in the letterbox. It was from a firm in London with regard to a post for which he had applied. It requested that he might come at midday for an interview. Twit turned up late and Stanley, pressing the train fare into his hand, advised him to dash home and change into his best suit, not forgetting to wash his neck.

  ‘I don’t think I’d like a job in London,’ said Twit dubiously.

  ‘Don’t be an ass. Take what you can get. You can’t go on living on a couple of women. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  With an ill grace Twit returned home. Later in the day, Stanley, calling, found Twit in bed with toothache, which he had given as the reason for his return from the office. He had made no mention of the firm in London who had been desirous of interviewing him. As it was now four o’clock, it was far too late for even Jill to push Twit into making a move. Stanley opened Isobel’s eyes. He gave her his opinion in extremely bad English but in no measured terms. He declared that Twit must leave his office now instead of at the end of the month as had been originally arranged.

  Three weeks later Jill contrived to place her brother in a printing office at a salary of five shillings a week, but he left at the end of the first week. The sound of the presses hurt his eardrum, and it seemed to be a legitimate excuse. Once more Twit was returned to the bosom of his family.

  Until about this time, both Isobel and Jill had cherished the hope that one day Twit might do something worthy of note. They believed that he would wake from his lethargy and bestir his scattered senses. Isobel imagined that he was a child who would develop late, but that he would be no worse for it in the long run.

  Then one day he marched into the sitting-room where they were both of them engaged in crochet work before the fire. He announced that he had got a job at last. Isobel sprang out of the easy chair which had been Mamma’s before her, and kissed him, with tears in her eyes.

  ‘What is it, my dear boy?’

  ‘It’s engineering. I’ve articled myself for three years.’

  Jill felt herself suddenly attracted to Twit with a new and strange affection. How splendid of him to do this on his own! The picture of the red-papered dining-room with its green and terra-cotta carpet swam before her.

  ‘At the end of three years I’ll be qualified,’ he declared.

  ‘Twit, where is it?’

  ‘The Plotherowe works.’

  ‘Splendid!’

  Isobel gulped down her maternal pride in the prowess of her son, and she inquired, ‘What is the pay?’

  ‘There isn’t any pay,’ he told her.

  VIII

  Three years! Jill wondered mechanically, how much can a man eat in three years? When you came to reckon it in three slices of cold meat a day, and in quarts of macaroni pudding and pounds of treacle roll, it was alarming. How much would he cost? She folded up her crochet and thrust it into the small velvet bag dangling from the arm of her chair.

  ‘I’m going out to get a job,’ she said.

  Even Isobel could not deny the necessity for it. There was not much in the way of employment that Jill was qualified to undertake. She hopefully answered three advertisements for visiting governesses, only to find that she was inadequately educated to teach. Her secretarial accomplishments were equally indifferent. She could not start a fish business, nor run a museum, again, but her old initiative came to her aid. Passing the Hippodrome one afternoon she noticed that they were advertising for a girl in the booking-office. She crossed the wide veranda with its notice boards and be-glassed pay-desk, into the foyer b
ehind. There was much tasselled red plush and three sickly palms, there was also a large and garish picture of some well-known star hanging over the radiator. From the interior came the brassy insistence of indifferent music. Jill interviewed Mr. Cox, the proprietor, a Jewish little man who seemed impressed by her. He liked her because, as he said, ‘she was a good-looker.’ He offered her thirty shillings a week, less ninepence for her insurance stamp, and Jill, who had thought ten shillings to be riches, jumped at the offer. She went home as some conquering gladiator, dreaming the roll of chariot wheels.

  She broke in upon Isobel and Twit, who were playing Patience in front of the fire. She burst out the glad tidings. The idea of the salary appealed to Isobel, but the indignity of such a position appalled her.

  ‘No one must ever know. You mustn’t ever tell a soul.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s so infra dig.’

  ‘Why? It’s honest money, and there is no need to be ashamed. Somebody has got to earn, and this is one of the things that I can do.’

  ‘But, Jill, I never thought you’d take on such a … such a …’

  ‘If I’d been a governess I’d have got twenty pounds a year,’ she announced with her mouth set obstinately. ‘Here is a whole seventy-five literally chucked at me.’

  ‘But the hours?’

  ‘Six-thirty till ten. One matinee a week, two-thirty to four. I’ll soon get used to it.’

  She crossed to the old piano in the corner of the room. It was placed where it would conveniently hide the patches of damp where the pipe outside was broken. She sat down before it, strumming joyously her hymn of victory, the first thing that she could think of, Les Cloches de Corneville. She was very pleased with her afternoon’s work. When Stanley called he could see nothing undignified about it. His mother had been cashier in a butcher’s shop, which had meant long hours. It had also been chilly in the winter, as you could have no heating in case you sent the meat ‘off.’ He had not got the pre-war prudishness in relation to women earning. All his women had earned. He could not understand why Isobel should be so indignant with him for his attitude. He added to her fury by inquiring why she should suppose that it was unladylike of Jill? Unladylike! The very word that Stanley would use, thought poor Isobel in desperation. Jill won her day. Somebody had got to earn and Isobel was faced with this most obvious necessity. She gave her consent reluctantly enough, feeling that in so doing she left herself but the merest shred of respectability.