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

by Ursula Bloom

  II

  Twit was kept late at the office. Arthur had gone out once more to see a lady friend, and Ethel, taking advantage of the emptiness of the place, had stayed talking to Twit. He was helping her with her clothes. She had consulted him about the Spanish aureole and he had not agreed. He thought that she was more futurist. The Spanish compliment had flattered Ethel, but she did not know whether she was not more flattered by the suggestion of futurism. She had a longing for something vivid and gay, something not entirely boundaried by russets and golds, by red roses and castanets. Twit initiated her further. It was under his guidance that Ethel came out in a long dark cloak capped by a small close-fitting green hat. Arthur, seeing her in it for the first time, ushered her into old Stillmer’s holy of holies, and, bobbing back on Twit, demanded, ‘Have you seen my new maternity outfit? Fancy you’re doing the dirty on the old woman!’

  Twit had got to put up with that kind of merry jest. He hated the taste that inspired such ribaldry, but he knew that he could not say so. Ethel felt young in the grip of futurism. She began to lean on Twit for guidance, which was all according to his plan. In the inner sanctity of her prim bedroom, she began to wonder whether such a passion were quite hopeless. Where she had once thought of the two of them in terms of May and December, she now changed it to June and September, a very different proposition, for September has a St. Martin’s summer. She began to think of him a great deal more that she should have done, and she budded out into a different woman in the throes of this attachment. Her St. Martin’s summer circumfused her being. Dreams were beginning to divert Ethel as Twit meant that they should divert her. She was beginning to see the gleam of his intentions lying under the habit of his behaviour. They met quite casually in the office, but they talked as people talk who have definitely formed friendship and are keenly aware of its joy. Twit was being drawn to her as any man is drawn who, having had no other love in his life, recognises the magnetism of admiration and affection. He began to look forward to seeing her. For the first time in his existence he shone in the shrine of somebody’s heart and it was a heady feeling.

  He arrived home to find Jill and Jock sitting on the sofa embracing each other. Not knowing how to treat this, he deemed it wiser to pretend that he had not seen. Jock, however, did not sneak away. He boldly continued his hold round Jill’s lithe waist, and swept her hair with his hand. The brownness of his skin made her hair glow like sulphur. She was very golden.

  ‘Hello, Twit!’ said Jock. ‘I’ve joined up with the brother-in-law team.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Twit.

  Jock thought that possibly Twit was nervous about his own future, so he said hurriedly, ‘You needn’t think that it is going to affect your position here, old chap. I shall dash to and fro, between here and Ceylon. Jill’s going to keep the house on here and you’ll be just the same. You need not think that I am trying to come between you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Aren’t you glad?’ asked Jill.

  He was glad that she was to marry, because he wanted her to be happy. He would have been gladder had they suggested an allowance and literally flung him forth. That would have given him a martyrish feeling, which always satisfied him, and with it he would have gone to Ethel. As it was, it did not strike him as being satisfactory. Jock was taking Jill out to dine. Jill turned back from the door to face her brother. She came into the room and stood before the fire. He saw that her eyes were deep with emotion and that her mouth was quivering.

  ‘Twit, you do think it is a good plan?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  Jill, with the blue china and the gleaming brass behind her, the warm glow of oak and the leaping threads of flame darting through the coal; Jill, avid for emotion.

  ‘Can’t you say any more? It’s my life.’

  ‘I know it’s your life.’

  ‘You know me. You know what I’m like. I’m pigheaded and I always think that I know best. Do you think we shall get on? Marriage is such a big thing. I’ve made one mistake, and I’m frightened of making another.’

  ‘You mustn’t be frightened of making another.’

  ‘You’re not helping me. You’re only repeating everything I am saying.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Twit, I want help.’ She stood there with something tragic about her. She added in a fluttering whisper, ‘I’m frightened.’ It sounded like the soft brushing of bird wings against the birch tree in April.

  ‘I think he’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, he is splendid,’ she said with shining eyes. ‘It isn’t that. It’s me. Do you think I ought to marry again?’

  ‘Yes, I think you ought to marry again.’

  ‘Please, Twit, don’t repeat what I say. It’s maddening.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem as if I could do the right thing.’ He was vexed because in his heart he was trying to ferret this thing out to see how it would affect his position with Ethel.

  She went to the foot of the stairs.

  ‘I’ll go up and change.’

  She went upstairs. She was disappointed in his attitude towards her. She realised that, after all, perhaps her happiness did not concern him. Poor Twit! He could not express himself. As she drew the soft curtains and shut out the green and yellowness of the birch brushing the window without, there was a moist regret in her eyes. When she came down Twit was curled up by the fire reading. He hastily dropped the evening paper over the ash-tray which he had upset as she came down. Jill, in bluish green, long floating trails of it, looking rather nereidic and exquisite.

  ‘I’m sorry I was cross, Twit. I’m vilely irritable.’

  ‘No, you aren’t vilely irritable.’

  She checked the inclination to choke at his repetition, and tried to adopt a remonstrative tone.

  ‘What’s all this about you and your old woman?’

  ‘My old woman?’

  ‘Ethel Stillmer. Grenville told me. They say she is running after you. You’ve never told me a thing?’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to tell.’

  ‘What’s been happening?’

  ‘Nothing. Just the rotten gossips of the place. Grenville is like that. Why, she’s old.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Absolutely nothing in it.’

  She surveyed him carefully. ‘It would be so dreadful if, just as you were qualifying, you had to leave because of her running after you,’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes, but I shan’t.’

  ‘Women of her age are dangerous.’

  ‘I know they’re dangerous.’

  ‘You’d better be careful.’

  ‘I know I’d better be careful.’ By the very repetition he aided his cause. Like this he was safeguarding himself. She could not get anything out of him either one way or the other. He could see that she was becoming irritated and it amused him.

  ‘I think you might tell me,’ she said at last.

  ‘I am telling you.’

  But of course he wasn’t. He was telling her nothing more than he chose. There came the sharply impatient ring of Jock at the door.

  III

  Late that night Jill returned. Twit had spent a most glorious evening on his own. It was very seldom that he got such an opportunity, because Jill was a friendly soul, and she believed in doing things together. The moment she had departed Twit devoted himself to the Evening News crossword puzzle. Jill generally did this, and he had a secret and consuming passion for cross-word puzzles. By the time he had finished, Hilda was bringing in the meal. He allowed himself to eat this in unusual and complete bliss, deposited on a tray by the fireside. He did not wash his hands, although his fountain pen had leaked over the puzzle, and he did not brush his hair, although he had returned hatless from the office on his motor-bike. After dinner he consumed half a pound of peppermints and read Jill’s library book. He trailed off to bed at nine-thirty in comfort. There was no sisterly voice to remind him that there was a good hot bath awaiting him. It was, in fact, a delightful evening. Three ap
ples, eaten in between the sheets and the cores of two only being found, as the third had somehow got into the bed, completed the bliss. He fell asleep.

  Jill awakened him soon after midnight. All the evening Jill had been thinking about Twit, and longing to come to him, a penitent to father confessor.

  It had been exquisite sitting there and viewing Jock across the small hotel table. An orange-shaded lamp glowed between them. An orchid in a slender vase reminded her hurtfully of that other orchid that other night. Until now she had been only aware of a keen affection for Jock. Now she was aware of the approach of an enduring love. But every moment with him stung. It tore at her, savaged her, left her pale and bewildered by its pain. Every word he spoke conveyed the fact that he was candid with her. He was too honest to suspect her of a past passion. Being orthodox he would probably only see the sin and not the lesson behind that sin. Jock had led a very simple life. Country bred, he had loved school and delighted in his holidays. His people had been simple kindly people, unharassed by modern changes. She visualised them as mignonette blooming in an unsophisticated garden. Jock had passed on into his career, untroubled by passion, untouched by sex. He had pre-war standards of sin. His little life had unwrapped itself as a happy ribbon. He had never been obliged to concern himself with the problems that had offered themselves to Jill, and the man who has not met temptation eye to eye in a hand-grip is inclined to underrate it. It was a lovely evening but it hurt. Perhaps it would be their last evening together, and she would for ever remember him with an orange-shaded light and a brown serpent of an orchid in its silver vase between them. That was it. The orchid came between them. They were man and woman in Eden, and this writhed between them and their exquisite emotion. It was temptation.

  She hated to take from him the exquisite illusion he held about her. Perhaps he would never see her again as the sylvan nymph that he supposed her to be. He loved her. If you knew and loved, surely you were capable of understanding? But were you? The question was a knife-thrust driven into her soul and twisted this way and that.

  As she had no one else to approach she came to Twit, apologising humbly, no longer the mulish, determined Jill with the absorbing personality that sucked the life blood out of him, but a timorous, gentle Jill. She sat down on the end of the bed.

  ‘You’ve got to help me,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s about Jock.’

  He supposed all pretty women got themselves into messes with their lovers. Jill was usually most unfortunate. As he lay there sleepily blinking at the light he thought vaguely of the long lines of beautiful women who had not found happiness in love. Moths round the cruel candle flame. Caught by the glitter, charred by it, seared, broken by it. The Helen, Cleopatra, Juliet, Nell Gwynne, Emma Hamilton … they passed through his brain in a confused pattern. Loveliness which was a masked trap, its steel teeth bit into the naked flesh of itself. They suffered, these women. Jill suffered too.

  Dispassionately he asked, ‘Now what’s the trouble?’

  ‘I feel ‒’ she broke off and began again humbly. ‘I hate raking up the past.’

  ‘You haven’t got to rake up the past.’

  ‘I’m going to marry Jock.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Quite soon. If I don’t marry him soon, I’ll never dare.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He ought to know about Clive.’

  Twit, blinking over the bedclothes and the firm thick ridges of eider-down quilt, stared at her. Suddenly he saw her as a new Jill, a fool Jill, hopelessly, stupidly honest. He was angry with her and the anger made him challenge her sharply.

  ‘You’re not going to be such an ass as to tell him?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be honest not to tell him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He ought to know the risk he is taking in marrying me.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘But,’ said Twit, and he sat up in bed and grabbed at the clothes, ‘but ‒’

  She cut him short. ‘Just look at your hands, you’ve never washed them. They’re all over ink.’

  He ignored the challenge. It seemed ridiculous at such a vital moment that such a banality should creep in. Jill did not realise that she was juggling with her happiness, that Jock would probably refuse to marry her. Then Twit’s own dreams would not materialise. The office and Ethel and the partnership and success. They all seemed receding from him. ‘You’ll be a fool if you tell him,’ he said.

  ‘I shall at least be an honest fool.’

  ‘He’d never know.’

  ‘That’s my reason for telling him. I’m sorry, but I can’t cheat.’ She sat there demurely. Part of him admired her, but the other, the worldly part, despised her. On these points they had never seen eye to eye, they never could. She ought not to risk sacrificing her happiness; she ought not to be such a fool. If she did not marry Jock he felt that he would never be able to escape from her and the cottage and the shackles of environment.

  ‘The awful part is that I am not brave enough to tell him,’ said the wretched Jill. ‘I told one man once, and I can’t forget the way that he looked at me. It was as if I were dirt. All the evening I’ve been trying to tell Jock. I can’t. I want you to tell him, Twit; it is easier for a third person.’

  ‘Yes, and then if he hates it, both of you blame me. No, thanks. Besides, there’s no need to tell him at all.’

  ‘I won’t marry him unless he knows.’

  ‘Then you’re a little fool.’

  He was surprised at the way he could talk to her when she was in this quiet, demure mood. Her humility gave him strength. Besides, she had got to marry Jock. She would upset all his plans if she didn’t. He would make her. Jock was a good fellow and they would be happy if only Jill would let the past rest.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ she said, ‘only when I start the words won’t come. Spoken, it sounds so much worse than it was.’

  ‘That’s just it. You mustn’t tell him.’

  But Jill was only half listening. She was recalling the past with misty eyes, and her mouth was quivering with pain.

  ‘At the time I felt wicked, but now I’m older, and looking back I see the whole thing as a natural reaction. If I had not had the reaction, I should have hated men all my life. It gave me a normal outlook. Looking at it now, I see nothing but a transition stage, but will Jock see it like that?’

  ‘No, he won’t.’

  ‘He is conventional. Very much C. of E. C. of E. is fine, but it isn’t broad. What I should call episodic he will call adultery. That’s the difference.’

  ‘Therefore, as he can never find out, don’t tell him.’

  ‘I don’t think I can write it either.’

  ‘For God’s sake don’t try writing it. That would be a confounded muck up.’

  ‘Then you must tell him.’

  ‘I?’ said the bewildered Twit.

  ‘Yes, Twit, you must. If you love me at all, you will.’

  ‘But the risk?’

  ‘I’ll stand the risk. Jock’s got to know.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Twit, but his brain was hammering hard within him, and it told him that this business would be far safer in his hands than in hers.

  She came to the head of the bed, and bent over him. He could smell the perfume that she wore, the faint fresh scent of clover, reminding him of Malta on an early spring morning, its red life-blood spilled on its crimson clover fields.

  ‘For my sake, Twit, you must do it.’ Then she found the apple core, withered to a speckled brown, pulped by contact with Twit’s body, and lying in a bed of stain between linen pillow-slip and sheet. ‘Look there,’ she said. ‘How did that get there?’

  She was Jill again. She was mulish and defiant and he knew that he was afraid of her. She was the little girl who had said that he was a cad, and the grown girl who had hit him full in the face when she was indignant over Stanley. He glared at her resentfully.

&
nbsp; ‘I give you a wastepaper basket to have by the bed and this is what you do. It’s perfectly beastly of you. You might at least be more careful of other people’s things. Look at your hands. Half of that dirt is on the sheet.’

  ‘Oh hell.’

  ‘Yes, it is “Oh hell,” and it is I that ought to be saying “Oh hell,” seeing that it is my things you are always spoiling.’

  ‘I’ll get out.’

  ‘And where could you go? Don’t be silly. This is your home.’

  ‘It seems that I can do nothing right in it.’

  ‘If only you’d be cleaner! I don’t believe you had a bath to-night?’

  ‘The water wasn’t hot.’

  ‘It was hot enough when I left. It doesn’t cool as quickly as all that.’ She jerked herself to a standstill, aware of the futility of such discord. It was so pointless to stand here quarrelling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she ended lamely.

  Twit glowered from the bed.

  ‘You will help me with Jock?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ he promised.

  ‘To-morrow?’

  ‘All right.’

  Of course he could not get out of it. She was compelling him into it. He could sense her insistence, and he had to do as she wished when she looked at him like that. She sucked the very power of self-defence from him.

  ‘And there isn’t any truth about you and that awful Ethel?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot.’

  She went out of the room, switching off the light. She went into the bathroom and turned on the tap so that the water flowed in a wide flat colourless ribbon on to the porcelain below. It was of course boiling hot.

  IV

  Jill staged the affair for Twit with her love of managing. Jock would be coming to tea. After tea she would withdraw and then Twit would tell him. She would wait in her bedroom and as soon as possible Twit would come up and put her out of her agony of apprehension. Twit listened to the arrangements with indifference. He was angry that he had been compelled to take a hand in this. He was indignant that she should dare risk her happiness in this stupid manner. Confession could not change the past, but it could menace the future. Also that very morning he had been seized with a brilliant idea. He was considering the possibility of taking Ethel up to London to a matinee. He had a notion that it would make a very good impression on her. He had got the whole thing worked out very neatly in his own brain. He would tell her that he had business in Town, and had to go up early in the day, which would be the easiest method of escaping from paying for her train ticket. The business would keep him until two o’clock and again free him from the thraldom of taking her out to lunch. He would explain his own meal airily, by stating that he had had a snack at an oyster bar. Again he had an idea that this would impress her. Ethel was not the sort that has an intimate acquaintance with oyster bars, and she would glean the notion that Twit had knowledge of the gay, fast London life that she thought so wicked and yet envied so deeply. The question of the theatre tickets harassed him, but he had a scheme that he hoped would answer. When he came down to breakfast he wore an old yellow cardigan, and prayed for the best. The best happened. Jill noticed it.