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

by Ursula Bloom

  There was an ostrich egg, and a small looking-glass framed in red plush and standing on a little bamboo easel. The chairs and uncomfortable sofa were upholstered in a good tapestry, and every table was littered with ornaments and photographs. The grand piano wore a Chinese shawl sprawled across it, and the door was draped in a heavy portière of blue plush. Everything was clothed and looked miserably self-conscious at its effort at decency. As to the window, it seemed inconceivable that anyone could ever look out, and undoubtedly nobody ever looked in. Old Stillmer had taken every precaution against that event. Not only were there the laurels and the short blinds with Ethel’s massive crochet borders, the result of laborious toil with a steel hook and ecru cotton, but there were the Venetian blinds too. Old Stillmer believed that these gave a certain attractive foreign air to the place. There were also long veilings of Madras muslin, looped back with crochet loops, and then long blue plush curtains to match the portière. They were all drawn back, much as a woman’s hair, from a centre parting in matching loops. ‘Good for the drapery trade, I suppose,’ thought Twit as he fingered them, and then, fired with a bright idea, wiped off the remains of the mud from his wrists on their blue sateen linings.

  Ethel came in. Ethel was a little late, because she had had trouble in dressing. She had been harassed as to her choice, though her wardrobe only boasted one real evening dress and one semi-evening attire. The Stillmers never dressed unless they were going out or had people in to dine, which was seldom. At home Twit did not dress, it was Jill who made a habit of it. She had learnt the habit from Edward, and, even if the evening meal were merely a boiled egg or baked beans, Jill would appear beautifully garbed and brushed for the occasion. Twit disliked this routine. Ethel believed that Twit probably looked on changing as a matter of course, and was anxious to give him a good impression.

  She was afraid that her new beige evening frock would be a little too dressy, and equally alarmed that the black georgette might prove too ordinary. The black georgette, her dressmaker had assured her, would serve many purposes. It was simple. It had long flowing sleeves, and its sole ornament was the nice paste buckle at the low waist. ‘A dress like that will be no end useful to you, miss,’ the dressmaker had said; and, in truth, it had been. Ethel had worn it at the Rectory tea-party, and at the prize-giving at the Home for Orphan Girls. She had found it just the thing for the Freemasons’ dinner, and the Social got up in aid of the Blind School. Now the beige dress was different. It was made of lace. It had been described in Barker’s catalogue as ‘giving a very youthful line to the figure.’ It was the youthful line that Ethel coveted. She knew that Twit was thirty and she was forty, and that forty was the border line between attractiveness and indifference to a woman’s charms. Ethel had remembered the coy figure in the pictured dress from the catalogue, and she had decided in its favour. Its sleevelessness was alarming, but she had to admit that it did make her hips look slender. To conform to the Spanish outlook she fixed a red flower on her shoulder. The flower happened to be the spray of Flanders poppies that she had bought last Armistice Day. She added the earrings and a string of red beads. ‘If only I had red shoes!’ she thought; ‘black patents aren’t right.’ But she had no red shoes, therefore she had to wear the black patents. She consoled herself by remembering that anyway her stockings were real silk, which made such a difference.

  She came into the drawing-room with a run, and then stopped short.

  ‘Oh, isn’t Mr. Simpson here?’

  Twit had not known that Arthur Simpson had been asked. He was not pleased now that he learnt that Arthur was expected. In truth, when Jill had fallen out, Ethel had said to her father, ‘We shall have to have a chicken anyhow, so we may as well ask a fourth to take Lady Shane’s place. It will be killing two birds with one stone.’ She was not being funny about the chicken. Ethel was never funny. She had no sense of humour whatever. Old Stillmer could think of no one better than Arthur Simpson, to whom they had been owing an invitation some eighteen months. Ethel had despatched the note, and had said to herself as she stamped it, ‘That will impress him. Dinner always sounds so grand.’ It had impressed Arthur so much that he had said to his mother, ‘I wonder if the old buffer’s got an eye on me as a possible son-in-law. He’s put his money on the wrong horse if he has, but he must be up to something to part with a dinner.’ Arthur had accepted out of curiosity. Just as Ethel and Twit stood staring at each other uncomfortably, the raucous electric bell pinged violently.

  ‘That’s him,’ said Twit grimly.

  ‘Yes. You’re friends?’ she asked, looking at him with her mournful dark eyes.

  ‘We work together.’

  ‘You don’t like him?’ She sensed it, because she did not like Arthur either. She felt suddenly pleased. A warm vibrant emotion attracted her to Twit. ‘I don’t either. I think he is common. It was really Father’s idea.’

  ‘Well, let Father talk to him.’

  Ethel took this as a personal compliment, and she flushed, for she was not used to compliments.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she confessed. ‘I did so enjoy our chat in the office. We’ll have a nice talk together?’

  Into the room burst Arthur, irrepressibly cheery, obviously arrived with the horrid intention of being the life and soul of the party.

  ‘Well, how’s everybody?’ he enquired. ‘I took the liberty of bringing along a little music. I’ve left it in the hall.’

  ‘That will be delightful,’ said Ethel, not alluding to the fact that he had left it in the hall.

  Twit thought to himself, ‘If Arthur’s going to sing, I shall go home. There are some things I can’t and won’t bear.’

  Ethel was obviously uncomfortable. There they all three stood on the fur rug in awkward attitudes, with the pink and gilt clock and the ostrich egg and the photograph of Ethel as a gaudy background.

  At last she said, ‘Father’s late. I think if you’ll excuse me, I will just go and hurry him up.’

  She thought to herself that she could glance in on the browning chicken, and see that Maud was dishing up the soup properly. She slipped out. Arthur turned on Twit.

  ‘Rum show the old geeser putting up a dinner for us. But it’ll be pretty frightful, I bet. I say, your stud-hole’s broken.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘Why don’t you get your shirts from Bliss? They’ve got a good one at eight-and-six ‒ look at this.’ He tapped his chest clippingly. ‘This is an eight-and-six one.’

  ‘It looks it,’ said Twit.

  But nothing repressed Arthur.

  ‘I think it looks good, and it fits too. Yours doesn’t fit. It might have been your father’s.’

  ‘It was once.’

  ‘Lord, now, fancy that! Right first shot. Ah, here comes the old buffer.’

  The old buffer came in with a bad grace. Ethel had made him change, and he had not wanted to change. He had wanted Jill to be there and she had refused the invitation. Two of his clerks might afford Ethel attractions, but they offered him none at all. He saw enough of them in office hours and he did not care about them. He stood talking a few moments, almost as gauche as Twit himself, with Arthur chattering too noisily at ease. Then Ethel came in, and hot on her heels, very obviously as instructed, Maud to announce the dinner.

  ‘Oh,’ said Ethel with properly feigned surprise, ‘oh, fancy?’

  ‘Well, let’s go in,’ said the old man, and he led the way.

  Grimly they went in to dinner.

  IV

  The dining-room was a little worse than the drawing-room. It suffered from the same complaint of over-upholstering and over-curtaining. The carpet was too thick, the furniture too solid, the curtains too substantial. The warm red paper was too liberally hung with oil paintings in gilt frames. There was a picture of Ethel at eight, a prim little girl with a white frock, good black stockings and a red hair-ribbon. Beside her was a debauched-looking doll with a doltish face and pale blue eyes. On the red tapestry mantel border pranced bronze h
orses ridden by equestrian gentlemen in shamelessly scant attire. A black marble clock was flanked by tall red vases, in which was exhibited a brave display of last year’s pampas and bulrushes. Twit sat with his back to it, for which he was grateful. But opposite him, on the sideboard behind Arthur Simpson, was a display of silver ‒ or so-called silver ‒ that was dazzling. It was reflected in the plate-glass mirrors let into the carved back of the sideboard in all manner of unexpected places. There was also a lion, a massive affair in black and white china. The lion had at some time suffered an accident and had been chipped in one eye, which gave it the appearance of squinting. The lion was the last straw.

  When Twit had started out from home he had been in a temper. He had been furious when he tripped over the aspidistra, and was ushered into that dreadful drawing-room. He had felt sorry for Ethel, so obviously ill at ease, but he had been indignant that Arthur should have been asked to meet him. Arthur was just the type of young man that Twit hated most. He was piqued. He flattered himself that he had made a good impression on Ethel and that he had been asked because she wanted the friendship to go further. Jill had been included for the sake of convention, and had obligingly dropped out of the affair. In truth, Twit’s propensity for dreams had led him to conjure up a golden and fantastic castle, wherein he reigned as the star of the whole evening. Now he was convinced that the whole party had been got up out of politeness, and not because Ethel favoured him. He was annoyed.

  Actually he had got mixed, for Ethel had favoured him; it was only her predominant sense of economy that had induced her to include Arthur to eat the fourth portion of fowl. She suffered over the soup because Maud had forgotten the toast. When the chicken appeared, bearing its blackened gizzard in one wing and its liver in the other, she suffered more. The bread sauce was lumpy, and the chicken, urged by the hacking carving-knife of old Stillmer, proved itself to be an extremely muscular old fowl. Arthur, who complained that he had weak internals and never fancied too much, could only eat breast, and ate the entire white meat, unashamedly proffering his plate for more. Aside, Ethel said to Twit, ‘I wish we’d never asked him.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Twit.

  ‘He’s taken the last potato. I hate dinners, don’t you? Supper’s so much nicer. Less grand, but nicer.’

  ‘I do hate dinner,’ said Twit. ‘Here am I trussed up like a fowl myself in my father’s shirt, and I loathe it. Jill likes it, but I am a simple sort of fellow.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Ethel, ‘you would come in one night quite simply, to Welsh rarebit or fried fish?’

  ‘I’d like it a lot better.’

  ‘And to think that we dressed up for you!’ she sighed.

  ‘I can’t think why you did.’

  ‘We judged you by Lady Shane.’

  ‘That’s just it. There’s much too much of the Lady Shane about Jill. She’s all Lady Shane. I’m just Twit Grimshaw.’

  ‘Lady Shane’s brother,’ she corrected, because she liked the title.

  ‘I hate it. If I had my own way I wouldn’t bother.’

  ‘Why need you bother, Mr. Grimshaw?’

  ‘Don’t call me that. Nobody calls me that. My name is Tristram. Twit, for short.’

  ‘But I couldn’t call you that.’

  ‘Yes, you could. I shan’t like it if you call me anything else.’

  ‘I’ll call you Tristram,’ she said, flushing a little, ‘Twit sounds too much like a little boy. I could never call anybody Twit. Why need you bother?’

  ‘I shan’t, once I am earning my own living.’

  ‘Your articles finish soon?’

  ‘Yes, but even then I’ve got no job.’

  ‘Father will take you into the office, I should think,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t like me,’ said Twit savagely.

  Ethel gave him an amazed look. ‘Not like you? What put that idea into your head? Of course he likes you. I’ll make him like you.’

  At that moment Maud appeared with the pudding. It had been the subject of much cogitation for the last two days, and it was a plum pie with cream. The plum pie had caught a little on the top, and Maud in her efforts to cover the discrepancy had dusted it amply with sugar. It appeared like a young bungalow after a snowstorm.

  ‘Whatever ‒?’ began Ethel; and then to Twit: ‘Just look at that tart!’

  ‘What tart?’ demanded he, unhappily reminded of Arthur’s peccadilloes.

  ‘It’s just drenched in sugar.’ She cast Maud a reproving look. Maud coming round to her side murmured an explanation.

  ‘The top’s got burnt, miss. I couldn’t bring it on to the table like that nohow.’

  Ethel was ashamed of the audibility of Maud’s conversation, and more so because she saw that Arthur Simpson was laughing. Also now came the critical moment when Arthur would be trusted with the cream jug. Seeing that cream was expensive, Ethel had purchased to the extreme of economy. The one-and-sixpenny carton she had brought home from the dairy had struck her as being small, but she had determined to make it suffice. She accepted the merest spot herself, and handed it to Arthur, much as she would have given not to have had to do so. Somehow the sight of the thick white stream from the lip of the best silver jug fascinated her. Arthur went on and on. He was talking to old Stillmer.

  ‘Yes, I told them they couldn’t lay drains like that, all anyhow. Why, there’d be typhoid in no time. I said to the foreman, “All that’ll have to come up.” He wanted to be offensive. I wasn’t having any, though. I said, “I know my job and you don’t know yours.” ’

  On and on he went, with a complete one-and-sixpenny pool of cream on his pie. Even Maud looked horrified as she waited to receive the empty jug back on the best salver. Twit could have laughed.

  ‘It’s awful,’ said Ethel in a low voice; ‘he’s taken it all.’

  ‘That’s all right. I never take cream.’

  ‘But ‒’ She looked as if she were going to cry. Her mouth puckered, her eyes were smarting with tears. Twit was really sorry for her.

  ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘let’s laugh at the whole thing. It’s the only way. There is really something humorous about it, you know.’

  Then he did not know that Ethel had no sense of humour whatsoever. She raised a tragic face to him.

  ‘It’s so dreadful. There’s none to offer you. Father’s sure to draw attention to it, too.’

  ‘Let him. It doesn’t matter a bit. I only hope that it makes that swine uncomfortable. I hate him for upsetting you.’

  ‘How good you are!’

  ‘It’s a shame.’

  She flushed. Perhaps it was the Spanish pose coming into its own. It was personality, atmosphere, the Latin aureole. She wondered if she were in love to dare to think in such a vein. She felt herself growing warmly passionate, thinking in a new glowing flood of thought. It was confusing, but delicious. Then she heard her father booming forth a stentorian demand for cream.

  ‘There isn’t any, sir,’ said Maud, flushed and uncomfortable at his elbow.

  ‘No cream?’ Old Stillmer was eyeing the one-and-six-penny pool that Arthur had managed to transfer to his plate. The old man was cold and accusing in his disapproval.

  ‘He’s took it all, sir,’ explained Maud, before Ethel had time to stop her.

  ‘Took it all?’

  Arthur looked up. ‘Oh, I say, I’m awfully sorry. I didn’t know. Brought up on a farm, you know, always been used to lashings of cream, and no stinting. I’m frightfully sorry, sir.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Ethel and her father together in the icy voice that conveys very definitely that it is anything but all right. Twit was thankful to see that Arthur had the grace to look a little disturbed. Cheese was refused.

  ‘We’ll have coffee in the drawing-room,’ said Ethel as she rose. She spoke with the air of a great lady who has coffee where and as she fancies it. In reality, it was a hint to Maud,
who might otherwise have forgotten her instructions.

  She went ahead to await the men.

  V

  Arthur brought his music into the drawing-room with him, and proceeded to unpack it, regardless of the fact that no one had asked him to sing. Twit had seated himself beside Ethel on a small sofa, popular in his great-aunt’s time and called a ‘sociable.’ In reality, it was the most unsociable affair. Two completely round hassocks, rather painfully buttoned, were arranged with a small handrail separating them. On the top of the handrail was more tapestry and more buttoning. Sit however you might, it was impossible to converse with your neighbour in any degree of comfort, as one hassock faced east, and the other west. Having suffered a stiff neck, Twit tried to curl himself gracefully and got cramp in his calves. He wondered if it would be possible to defy convention and sit facing the same way as Ethel, with legs dangling over the handrail. He decided that it would not be possible. Now that he sat so closely to Ethel he noticed her hirsute tendencies and wondered if she had done anything about it. Arthur, seated before the piano, banged away at ‘Ukelele Lady.’ He whistled faintly between his teeth, believing that it gave an American atmosphere to the tune.

  ‘She’s my Ukelele lady ’

  and, having forgotten the words,

  ‘Pom te om pom pom pom Pom.

  She’s my Ukelele lady,

  Ta la la la la la Pom.’

  Arthur was thinking, ‘This infernal party wants waking up. Dull as ditch-water. Old Stillmer looking like potted death. Grimshaw like a dog with a sore tail. And that Ethel ‒ oh, my God!’

  Then he gave up ‘Ukelele Lady,’ and tried ‘It’s Quiet Down Here,’ singing it very slowly, and putting down both pedals, which gave quite a Vox Humana effect. This was very touching.