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

by Ursula Bloom

  She was perched on a pouffe in an untidy flat, and her careless skirt showed a great deal of stocking and some silken garments that began lacily where stocking left off. She listened attentively.

  ‘Can’t you make somebody give you a big commission?’

  ‘How can I? Nobody wants the plug. It’s Jill’s attitude that worries me.’

  ‘She’ll give you a home.’

  ‘I hate her giving me a home.’

  ‘But you came back for that,’ reminded Dora. He thought for one frantic second, could he possibly explain that he had come back to protect Jill, he had come back intending to be strong, and had lost himself instantly in her dominant mental strength? He looked into Dora’s pale blue eyes beneath the straight fringe of ash blonde hair, and he decided he could not make her understand.

  ‘What’s Jill doing with Clive?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Twit,’ said Dora, ‘all Morsegate is full of it. Olive has been talking, and her mother too. You know what Mrs. Wilbur is. It isn’t fair to play at baby brother. You ought to warn Jill.’

  ‘I ‒ warn Jill?’ The idea merely amused him.

  ‘Clive does not play straight. Virginity is the shuttlecock to his battledore.’

  Twit wished that Dora would not talk like that. The new frankness embarrassed him. Before the war you could not have made that remark, and it jarred in upon his Edwardian temperament. You could stand it from girls like Rosie and Stebonia, but not from decent women. It was wrong.

  ‘That’s what Clive is after,’ she said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You oughtn’t to just say “Oh.” You are responsible for your sister.’

  ‘I like that! I can’t do a thing with her. She manages me.’

  ‘That’s your fault,’ said Dora promptly, ‘you’re the stronger sex.’

  ‘Not since the war.’

  ‘Darling,’ cooed Dora, ‘you really are perverse with your feminine complex. It’s your duty, Twit.’

  ‘I don’t see it.’

  Grenville warned Twit on the business train to town. Grenville was furiously jealous of Clive, but he realised the futility of argument. Clive was one of those men upon whom reproaches splashed as water, leaving no stain. Grenville believed that if he could bestir Twit to a proper sense of his duty he could successfully oppose Clive’s suit. But he did not know Twit. Twit for his part did not know Jill, the new live Jill. To warn her meant that she would be coldly furious, and in his opinion meddlers were seldom thanked. He was only sullenly resentful that Grenville had approached him. He told himself now that if the King of England came and begged him he would not warn Jill. She who was so capable, so proficient, so well able to see after herself.

  On the Friday Twit was dismissed.

  CHAPTER III

  ‘Woman, at once the apple and the serpent.’ ‒ Heine.

  GREEN ORCHID.

  I

  Jill was going to a dance. She had burst in upon him in the drawing-room when she came in to await Clive’s arrival. Jill, in white satin with a tulle scarf round her shoulders and a green orchid on her breast. Quaintly she reminded Twit of Heine’s lines, ‘Woman, at once the apple and the serpent.’ Jill, so ripe with her innocent temptation, and the green snakish flower in all its arching perfection coiling on her breast. It was a horrible flower. He wanted to pluck it out and cast it aside. He told her haltingly of his dismissal. She stared at him in mild reproach. Catastrophe had lost much of its jar since she had met Clive, for he had altered life’s proportions for her.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I thought I’d use my season ticket out going up to London and trying to find a job.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you qualified for something? You’re untrained. In these days people expect so much.’

  ‘But I don’t know what I could train for,’ he complained.

  ‘What about going on with the Plotherowe works?’

  ‘I shouldn’t care about that.’

  ‘You are being difficult.’

  ‘You asked me what I’d like to be and I haven’t the slightest idea.’ He reminded her of the old days when he had expressed an irrelevant desire to become a paper-hanger.

  ‘But you ought to have some idea.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  She made a little despairing gesture. Twit was always a problem. It was at that moment that Clive opened the door and entered. Clive, looking very tall in a Savile Row evening dress, with his audacious eyes full of twinkles.

  ‘God! Am I late?’ he gasped.

  Jill said, because for her it was significant of an era in her life, ‘Twit has lost his job with Berners’.’

  ‘Is that all? You looked like Judgment Day. Didn’t you expect that all along?’

  Twit knew that he ought to hit Clive, but he could not summon the energy to hit him. He supposed he must have been born spineless, for he felt only the weary longing to sink down to rest and to dream lovely glittering dreams shining through the opal mists of imagination.

  ‘Seriously, Clive, what can Twit do?’

  Clive was straightening his tie in front of the round gilt mirror at the end of the room. There were gay flowers spattered along its brim, petunia and cobalt and Tyrian. They seemed to stand out distinctly against the plain cream of the wall.

  ‘Has he tried Borstal?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t!’ She choked a little and turned to her brother. ‘How can you let him say things like that?’

  ‘Let me!’ echoed Clive, and laughed. ‘As if I needed letting! Jilly sweet, it’s no good. You mustn’t cry over spilt milk. What about making a start?’

  ‘If I’d been the crying sort,’ said Jill, as she snatched at her cloak, ‘I’d have flooded the world ages ago.’

  Twit sat on.

  He heard the hall door clang to. He heard the muffled drumming of the car as it slid forth into the throbbing night. He sat on, aware that one of those oppressive headaches was swooping down on him, aware that he felt sick, that he ached, and that deep down in his very innermost soul was something that ached more than all the bodies in the world. It was his heart. He was shapelessly huddled in his chair. His whole outlook greyed. A fog of bewildering misery enveloped him, and somehow he associated that fog with Jill. If only she were not so Jillish.

  Then, as he sat drooping there, the first gay sparkle of a dream came to him. He saw himself setting out next day, achieving a magnificent position. It had literally fallen into his lap, a thousand a year and prospects. He heard Clive saying ‘Twit had something in him after all,’ and Jill’s long-drawn ‘Oho’ of joyous acceptance.

  Tiredly he went up to bed.

  II

  The dance was at the Wilburs’ house. It was a large place, standing back from the road, belted by cedars, with a long low hedge of clipped laurel and privet before it. Clive ran the car on to the lawn and left it there just because he knew that it would enrage Mrs. Wilbur. He had a faint idea that the woman was talking about them, and he wished to annoy her. He laughed as he pointed out to Jill how she would try to persuade her husband to remonstrate with him. Colonel Wilbur would be much too drunk to do anything of the sort. Against her better judgment, Jill laughed.

  ‘But she is our hostess,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, and that’s going to spoil what might have been a pleasant party. I hate the woman.’

  ‘Then why accept her hospitality?’

  ‘Because her floor’s good and her cellar’s better.’

  ‘That seems horrid.’

  He patted her hand as they stepped out of the car on to the springy velvet of the turf. ‘Darling Jilly, you’re sometimes a little old-fashioned. Do try and live down the Alexandra fringe and the Langtry shoe.’

  The door stood open and they went in unannounced. Alone she would have rung the bell and waited for an answer, growing shyer every moment. But with him she da
red anything. He was adept in giving her courage. He strode down the hall, long and narrow with a peninsula of crimson carpet in a pale yellow sea of parquet. A grinning dragon of a door porter in jade and royal crouched at the end.

  ‘An ugly-looking devil to meet on a dark night,’ said Clive. ‘Imagine the Colonel when he’s blotto and sees two of them! Oh, hello!’

  For he had discovered Mrs. Wilbur standing icily before him. Mrs. Wilbur wore black taffeta. It billowed round her thin hips and clasped closely her bustless body. Above it was her hard long face, with a big hooked nose and two closely-set eyes. It was a rutted face, from too frequent powderings, hard with the harshness of old rouge. Pearls quivered in her ears and round her thin throat, but even their milkiness could not soften the innate harshness of her expression. There were hollows under the high cheekbones, and skin in sagging dewlaps beneath her chin. You felt intuitively that it ought to be yellowed.

  ‘I know,’ said Jill to Clive later, ‘she reminds me of a plucked chicken on a cold marble slab.’

  ‘Jilly sweet,’ he exclaimed, ‘not that! A hen, yes. A very tough hen, a hard-boiled hen, I can assure you.’

  She left her cloak in Olive’s bedroom, sped down the stairs furtively. She could never feel truly happy away from this love of hers. She was always anxious to return to him. She heard the gramophone drumming out ‘Oh Hel …’ Her feet tattooed. In the doorway Colonel Wilbur leant heavily against the lintel; his red face and neck all merged into one fatty pumpkin of a mahogany whole, and bulged over his collar.

  ‘Ah, m’shweet l’il lady,’ he purred helplessly, as she passed him with a quick nod.

  Clive’s arm slid round her, drew her close against his own lithe attractive body. Until she had met him she had not believed that bodies could be so attractive, but now she knew. She hardly dared look into his eyes as she danced, knowing the mesmeric effect that they would have on her. Now she could understand how it was that girls went to the bad. She could understand the dreadful unconsciousness of all save the demanding present. She knew how sex taking possession of you could dominate over sanity; scorch, like a flame, the cold, unfired chastity of yourself. It was the cuckoo in the nest of your heart ousting all the others by reason of its Goliath stature. She hated herself that she had come to see it like this.

  ‘Oh Hel … Oh Hel …

  Oh Helen do be mine!

  Your feat … your feat …

  Your features are divine …’

  She was thinking that it would have been better to have left off a month or so ago, when she believed that all carnal love was disgusting, and that passion was a horse you could harness as you willed. Did Clive know that he had her in the hollow of his hand? That if he willed it she could not stay herself? She ought to put him out of her life, to draw up before it was too late. But no, she could not part with him. If it were a sin, it was nectar-sweet. Mortals cannot ruthlessly thrust the cup of the gods from their parched lips. She felt that even now if Pegasus offered her escape, she could not take it, not while she danced and languished and loved this man. The music whirled her on to the vortex of her emotions. It might be a new music that had lost the old serene harmonies, but the very jarring of it was pleasant. You needed it. It levelled matters up.

  ‘Oh dam … Oh dam …

  Oh damsel do be true;

  Oh Hel … Oh Hel …

  Oh Helen I love you.’

  Tinkle of strings plucked by demanding fingers, chatter of gay drums, castanets and cymbals. Blare!

  Her feet sped with his. His firm hand in the middle of her back guided her, she could feel his hips against her own steering her, so that they moved as one body.

  ‘Life was meant for this,’ he said.

  ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten about that ass Twit now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She had not meant to look up, but somehow she had to. Her eyes, impelled by his, were young, glamorous eyes of promise. They danced, looking at each other, and she was but dimly aware of couples moving about them ‒ couples in gay colours like a rotating rainbow. She heard the sweet and heady music, and saw only Clive, compelled by his eyes, full of the fervent meaning that his lips had never expressed. His eyes told her so much. They were the torch to her understanding. She was terribly afraid of herself, but it was a thrilling and exquisite fear, all part of the thrilling and exquisite experience. The gramophone ended its tune abruptly. Dora Hine was passing with Nigel’s arm about her. They cast apprehensive glances at Jill and she knew that they discussed her. Grenville, who had been sulking glumly in a corner, advanced to her side.

  ‘What about the next dance?’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ said Clive abruptly.

  ‘Damn it all! Just one dance?’

  Grenville felt that if he could get the girl alone he might warn her of the dangerous ground she was treading. It was easy to see by the rapturous look on her face that the thing had gone to her head. But she passed on to a seat by the wall side, and Clive’s too bright eyes met Grenville’s challengingly. They sat on chairs arranged round the square room, all except Colonel Wilbur, who still occupied most of the space in the doorway. She did not like sitting there, because she was acutely conscious of the critical stare of the people opposite. Her hands suddenly became conspicuous.

  ‘It’s shyness,’ she explained.

  ‘You’re only a schoolgirl really.’

  Again her pathetically virginal loveliness attracted him. He had organised affairs with many married women before, but never with a widow. He cast a covetous glance at Jill, with the green orchid arching in the tulle at her breast. An orchid gave a woman a certain distinction. It gave her an atmosphere of luxury which Clive considered right and proper. It did not remind him of Heine’s apple and serpent, but it gave him a sense of personality, a something to be proud of.

  ‘Though really,’ he admitted, ‘you’re moss rosebuds and forget-me-nots. Rather Greuze, but more late Vic. and early Edward. You’re Marcus Adams.’

  ‘Don’t make me feel old.’

  ‘You aren’t old. You’ve never been young, that’s all. You’re going to be young now with me.’

  ‘Listen! They’re playing “Peaches down in Georgia.” ’

  ‘With a peach of a Pa

  And a peach of a Ma,

  Gee, what a couple of peaches they are?’

  She got up to dance again. She felt his hands cool on her flesh, his body close, she knew that his eyes were bent on her. This dancing was all wrong. She liked to blame it for making her feel like that. She was convinced that it was the dancing that did it. The music was all wrong, too, heady, clashing discords that throbbed through you.

  Everything is peaches down in Georgia.

  She remembered in vivid contrast her early music lessons from Isobel. The gentle harmonies of Handel and Schubert, those peaceful chords, those passionless threnodies, so unlike this strumming, strutting, plucking tune. Clive felt her going a little limp in his arms.

  ‘You’re tired?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘We’ll tap old Wilbur’s cellar.’

  Mechanically she followed him out of the room. In the doorway her eyes met the merciless inquiring gaze of Mrs. Wilbur. The woman was jealous. Her own marriage had been a failure and she was embittered. She resented the romance that was shining like a lustrous star in Jill’s face; she resented the lovely curve of the provocative mouth. She could only remember that Jill was considered to be some little upstart whom Lord Shane had married in a foolish moment. She liked to classify her as a little upstart, though the tranquil beauty of Jill’s expression denied the suggestion. The girl knew what the older woman was thinking, and her very soul sickened. No, not that! She wasn’t that sort of person.

  ‘I’ll wait here,’ she said, and, just to prove Mrs. Wilbur wrong in her conjectures, she sat down in full view of everyone.

  ‘There? Why? Far too light.’

  ‘Because it is light. Didn’t you see the look on M
rs. Wilbur’s face?’

  ‘God, no! She’s probably jealous. She can’t have had much fun, married to that drunken old fool. Once I thought she wanted me for Olive, always asking me here and bothering me.’

  ‘Olive isn’t the marrying sort.’

  He thought quickly, ‘Neither am I,’ but he bit back the retort. Then he said:

  ‘What’s it to be?’

  ‘Still lemonade.’

  ‘Darling Jilly sweet, you’re pale as a white rose already. Certainly not a lemonade.’

  ‘Don’t be strong,’ she suggested with a faint smile.

  ‘You need somebody strong. You need someone to lift you in his arms and carry you off your feet. You need protecting.’

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I do.’

  ‘You want someone to supply Twit with a long piece of string and an outsize in bricks and a really deep pond. To take you into his arms and love you like Hell.’

  His voice had dropped to that throaty whisper. The glow suffused her, stole up, and drowned her neck and cheeks in rosiness. Through the open door she saw Mrs. Wilbur watching her intently, and heard the jangle of jazz music. The stare was disturbing, the music jarred. Why had she sat here? It was a noticeable spot, and she was sure that Mrs. Wilbur guessed every word that Clive was uttering.

  ‘Go and get the lemonade,’ she said.

  He came back with sherry, amber brown in a crystal glass.

  ‘But you know I never drink?’

  ‘You’re going to to-night.’

  ‘I hate the taste of it and it makes my head ache.’

  ‘But it’s good for you, Jilly sweet. You imagine the headache.’