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

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘It’s in rags,’ she said, ‘you really must get a new one. You cannot possibly go through the winter with that.’

  ‘No tin,’ he told her.

  ‘I’ll buy you one to-day,’ she announced, for she was in a charitable mood. Her intention was disarming. All the time in his drawer lay the new fawn pull-over that Aunt Blanche had sent him when Jill was away.

  ‘I’d rather choose it for myself,’ he said; ‘I’d like a fawn sort of a one.’

  ‘Yes, that would be all right.’ She agreed and she reached for her bag. ‘I can’t afford more than a pound.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Don’t say “thank you,” ’ she said witheringly. She had a whip-lash of a tongue. It stung him, curled round him, bit into him. He smarted under it. Saying ‘thank you’ stuck in his throat, it made him feel uncomfortable. Besides, Jill expected too much. He had a horrid idea that perhaps he was cheating her and was a little ashamed. During the morning he telephoned to London for the tickets and at lunch he put on Aunt Blanche’s new fawn pull-over for Jill’s edification.

  ‘I thought you meant to buy a cardigan?’ she said.

  ‘This is nicer.’

  ‘I see.’

  Jock came to tea. Twit wanted to escape from this ordeal. He was quite sure that it was a misplaced confidence and that no good would come of it. There was no need to tell Jock anything, it was just Jill’s stupid honesty. Ever since she had taken to reading deeply she had been swayed by impulses of this kind. He felt that she had lost her sense of proportion, and it angered him. Also he did not feel that he should have been dragged into this and he made two or three half-hearted efforts to draw back, but she held him to it. She held him forcefully. Under it all was his desire for her to marry Jock, and to make the way easier to his own freedom, to that partnership that now possessed him and influenced all his actions. His urgent need for freedom was a thrall that rubbed sore places in his soul.

  All through tea they chattered gaily enough. Jock did not notice the strain, he did not sense the tenseness. He was a jolly good fellow and he did not suspect undercurrents. Then Jill made an excuse and went off to her room.

  ‘Don’t be long, Jilly,’ called Jock.

  ‘No,’ she said and she choked. If only he would not use that name! He mustn’t use that name. Dear heart, how it hurt!

  Twit settled himself down to misery. He was more gauche than ever. They stared at each other from either side of the hearth, where the fire burnt over-bright and cast laughing lights on the clean blue china and gay brass. Jock felt sorry for Twit. He felt that perhaps Twit bore some ill-will. After all, they had been so long together, he and Jill, a most devoted brother and sister, and in a sense Jock was coming between them. He could understand that Twit might resent it and be jealous. Why, he’d feel that way himself.

  ‘I feel a bit of a cad coming between you and Jilly,’ he said in a happy, friendly way.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘I’ll try and be sporting. It’ll always be your home and all that. In fact, you’ll see more of Jill than I shall, she’s not coming to Ceylon with me this time.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Wants to stay here and see you safely through your last exam.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Jill’s in the first unselfish team all right. I never met anyone like her before. She’s one in a thousand.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Twit, and he was thinking fiercely to himself, why couldn’t she go to Ceylon? Why couldn’t she leave him to his rotten old exam.? He and Ethel. That was it.

  ‘All my faith is pinned on Jill. She’s had a bad time of it, poor kid. It’s up to me to make her happy. She’s such a lovely child.’

  ‘She’s thirty-two,’ said Twit ungraciously.

  ‘She’s a child for all that. You’re not a bit alike, you two, are you? One would hardly take you for brother and sister.’

  ‘Jill’s got the brains and the looks. I’m just a lout.’

  ‘You’re a stout fellow.’

  Twit did not reply. They might go on talking like this for an hour and it would get them no way. He began uneasily: ‘Jill asked me to tell you something.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘She’s been a widow some years.’

  ‘Yes. I can’t think how she’s done it. A perfect miracle, isn’t it? I bet she turned them down in their ranks.’

  Twit ignored the inference and went on shyly. ‘Once there was another fellow.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jock, with a quick glance, and then, as though to satisfy himself, ‘but that’s all done with now?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. He jilted her.’

  ‘Fancy having that added to her other sufferings. I’ll try and make up for all she’s been through. I thought for a moment you were going to tell me something really nasty.’

  ‘Did you?’

  Twit sat there eyeing Jock. After all, if he told Jill that her fiancé never wanted the subject mentioned again, there would be an end of it. Jock would not know, but then there was no necessity for him to know. None at all. It was only that Jill was so hyper-feminine. That she needed the solace of the confessional. If she believed that Jock knew, she would gain that solace, and Jock would be no whit the wiser. Twit suddenly saw himself in the light of a strategist. He should have been a diplomat. Another of his precious dreams danced in and dazzled him. He would befriend his sister in a new way. He would save her from making a little idiot of herself. This was perhaps the most exquisite dream of all, for in it he was a Perseus. It was prismatic, colourful, glamorous. It attracted him and held him fast to it. Here he was, part of this new dream bubble, and acting upon it a fraternal urge seized him. He protruded his own personality between his sister and this gross error that she would have made. He knew now that he did not intend to tell Jock anything about it. That he had never intended to tell at all really.

  In a new steady voice he said, ‘The chap lived here and she wanted you to know, but she doesn’t want it mentioned again. It upset her a good deal.’

  ‘Poor little kid!’

  ‘She felt that you ought to know.’

  ‘She’s marvellous like that, isn’t she?’

  ‘She’s just Jill.’

  Jock nodded. ‘She’s precious.’

  Twit felt that if Jock went on like that he would be reduced to cold sweating fury. Because Jill was not precious at all. He had known her in the glad, mad days with Godfrey. He had known Jill in the home meadows, in her museum, in her fish business, in her hopeless dilemma over arithmetic and counting up by the study clock. She had been a virile, splendid personality with whom you could not cope, but vindictive, defiant, passionate, not precious.

  ‘I’m frightfully lucky, you know,’ said Jock solemnly. ‘I never thought that she’d have me. I just sat and shivered, and when she said “yes” ‒ well ‒’

  ‘It’s time she came down,’ interrupted Twit. What fools love made of men! Jock, a responsible, sane being, talking sentimental tosh.

  ‘Yes, do call her,’ said Jock.

  Twit went upstairs, tapped on her door and opened it. Jill was sitting by the window catching the last rays of the sun filtered through the birch tree. She was mending his socks, and had obviously been crying.

  ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘Twit, I’m so thankful.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to discuss it.’

  ‘Twit!’

  He saw her eyes and somehow they reminded him of wet flowers after a shower. She brushed past him, leaving behind that faint whimsical scent of clover that he hated for its memories. She went downstairs. From his position at the head of the stairs, he could see her as she tumbled into Jock’s arms.

  ‘Oh, Jock!’

  ‘We’ll never talk about it any more ‒’

  ‘I thought you’d hate me.’

  ‘Darling, as if I could!’

  The silence and the knowledge of lip pressed to lip, breast to breast, surrendering femininity, and demanding maleness. Twi
t felt curiously bitter about it, cynical, ashamed. Anyway, he would never feel like that about Ethel. That was one mercy.

  CHAPTER III

  ‘How a little love and conversation improve a woman!’ ‒ Geo. Farquhar.

  APPASSIONATA.

  I

  Everything worked auspiciously for the trip to London. Jill was absorbed in Jock and did not ask too many questions. He satisfied every moment of her time. In between whiles she bought a trousseau and made arrangements. They were the delicious arrangements for the silver web that would enchain her future. She would lie in her room and look into the heart of the birch tree, from which the golden light filtered through thinning yellow leaves. ‘He loves me’ she would tell herself, ‘nothing else matters, nothing else.’

  Twit went off to London joyously, having arranged to meet Ethel at Lyons’ Corner House at two o’clock.

  ‘You can’t miss it,’ he told her, ‘and it isn’t an awkward place to wait in. I hope I shan’t be kept.’

  Twit ate a modest lunch on the second floor and waited until the clock stood at two, to descend upon Ethel. He saw her waiting with her back to him, and rushed out into Rupert Street. By walking very fast round the corner, he turned in at the Coventry Street entrance breathless, giving the appearance of one who has rushed to keep an appointment. Ethel was impressed. Together they walked solemnly out into Piccadilly and along to the theatre. Ethel was wearing what Arthur called the maternity outfit, and Twit thought that she looked rather nice. She was flushed and excited and had an unusual colour, for this was to Ethel, achievement. She had never been out alone with a man like this before. She did not know when she had been prepared to enjoy herself more. She hardly ever came up to Town, although they lived so near, and this in itself was adventure. Passing a shop she saw a hat and half halted.

  ‘What a lovely hat!’ she said.

  ‘Which?’

  ‘That blue one.’

  Twit eyed it as it stood on a stand above a flowing filmy veil. It occupied the main position; the rest of the window was dark curtain, a gardenia, and three gilded poppy heads spiking from a putty-coloured jar. ‘Why not go in and try it on?’ he asked.

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’d love it, of course.’ She hesitated and then admitted her fear. ‘The assistants in London shops are so grand.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘You couldn’t come in to choose a hat!’

  ‘Yes, I could.’

  She made him feel brave and independent and he was stirred by the feeling. It eddied within him and made him strong. He opened the shop door to the clang of a chattering bell, and he pushed Ethel inside, following closely. The shop was small and dark. A very slim, black satin-clad female ‒ Twit had no idea how else to describe her ‒ swam towards them. She was elaborately waved and manicured and much painted. Her smile was glacial as she viewed Ethel’s outfit.

  ‘Yes, moddom?’

  ‘A hat,’ said Ethel, becoming confused.

  ‘The blue hat,’ urged Twit. He was enjoying himself immensely. He was feeling strong again, tremendously strong, and it was good. He escorted the female to the window. She reminded him in figure of a young pliant elm tree buttoned into black satin. He pointed out the hat in question.

  ‘That’s a most expensive model, moddom,’ said the female coldly, as if to imply that Ethel could not afford it.

  ‘I don’t care.’ Ethel was becoming gloriously rash. It was one of those days when anything might happen. ‘I’ll have it,’ she added.

  The satin-clad lady proffered the hat in one hand and a mirror in the other. ‘Not quite your colour, moddom,’ she suggested disparagingly.

  It seemed that she did not wish to sell the hat. She was indifferent to the fact that Ethel had six whole pounds in her cheap little leather handbag saved from last quarter’s allowance, and that she was burning to do something rash with it.

  ‘I like it on you,’ said Twit.

  ‘I’ll have it.’

  ‘Four guineas,’ said the black-satined one, and intuitively they felt that she waited for Ethel to flinch. It was a wicked price for a wisp of felt cunningly twisted, and for the small arrow shot jauntily through the side. It was preposterous, but Ethel liked the hat; it made her look younger, and, what was even more important, Twit liked it too. Ethel felt that four guineas was a dreadful price for it, but might it not be money well invested? Many a man has been led into matrimonial harness by a becoming hat. Besides, it gave her a sense of daring. She felt that she was an impulsive, extravagant, girlish creature who could afford to throw away money for a whim.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

  ‘Keep it on,’ suggested Twit.

  ‘Could I?’ She giggled, nervously hesitant. The idea was all part of the new mood. It intrigued her.

  ‘Certainly, moddom.’ The sleek person took Ethel’s plum-coloured velvet toque into some hidden holy of holies, whence it emerged done up in a bag. The new hat gave Ethel courage. There is nothing like a hat for inspiring a woman. In the plum-coloured velvet she had been merely an ordinary person who had come up to London for an outing. In the new blue hat with its wicked little arrow flashing through the cunning folds, she was roguish. She was elfin. Creature of whim and fantasy. She was impulse. She was youth.

  She took Twit’s arm as they went up the street, he carrying the plum hat in its paper bag. They were no longer conventional people, but two voyagers out for fun and determined to find that fun. They laughed a little more gaily. They talked a little more quickly. It was the atmosphere caused by the new hat on Ethel’s head. The street had taken on an altogether altered demeanour, it was brighter. It was no longer drab London but deliciously adventurous London.

  II

  They passed into the theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue with groups of people standing about it, on to a curtained doorway. Even the majesty of the icy gentleman who received their tickets could not quell them. They went on and into the front row to the stalls.

  ‘Programme?’ said the bored attendant, much ribboned about the head, and sagging about the ankles. ‘Sixpence, please. Will you be requiring tea in the interval?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Twit.

  ‘First or second interval? Three-thirty and four-fifteen.’

  ‘Four-fifteen.’

  She made a note of it and moved off again to greet newcomers. Twit folded his overcoat and thrust it in a bundle under the seat. Other people might not do that, but he wasn’t going to pay sixpence for it in any cloak-room. He did not tell Ethel that he had put it on the top of her plum-coloured hat! He felt, by way of comfort, that nothing could make that hat more dreadful, and he settled himself in his seat to enjoy the show. Ethel took off the blue hat and held it on her knee. Her hair was wispy. It had been shingled against her better judgment, and stuck out where it should have clung, and clung where it should have stuck out. He wished now that she had been persuaded to keep her hat on, for in it she had been that new personality. Laying the hat aside she had lapsed into being just Ethel. But here for the first time he shone; he led; he had but to remark for her to agree, and he sensed her keen admiration for him. The predominant factor of her approval incited him to shine.

  At the end of the first act the intimacy of the play ‒ it was The Green Hat ‒ had brought them closer together.

  ‘Now what do you suppose happens next?’ demanded Ethel.

  ‘I don’t know. Have you read the book?’

  ‘No,’ said she.

  ‘I’ve read Piracy. But I haven’t read The Green Hat.’

  ‘He says such very straightforward things.’

  ‘People are straightforward these days,’ said Twit, ‘and I for one don’t like it.’

  ‘Don’t you? I don’t either, but I didn’t know that it was anything but my old maidishness.’

  ‘You’re not an old maid.’ He stared straight into her eyes as he said it. He meant it too. He meant to marry her and she would not be a
n old maid at all. For one exquisite moment they sat looking into each other’s eyes. She read unfathomable things in his and her heart leapt. She felt quivers run down her limbs like little pricking fires. To cover her nervousness, she giggled a little.

  ‘I’m getting on.’

  ‘Everybody is young these days. It’s short skirts and things. The war had that advantage, it gave us youth,’ he told her.

  ‘I feel young. As young as ever I did, only I’ve had a rather old youth.’

  ‘You’ll get your good time,’ prophesied Twit; ‘we all do some time in our lives. I’ve got mine to come yet, perhaps we’ll get it together.’

  He became conscious of the interest of the man sitting next to him. He was a large Jewish-looking man with a waisted suit which he had no business to wear, and a vulgar tie. His interest embarrassed Twit, though usually it took a good deal to do that. He had an irritated idea that there was something ludicrous about his making love to Ethel, that the world might laugh, as it usually laughs at things of this sort, being unable to pierce surfaces and to penetrate beneath appearances. He returned the stare of the Jewish-looking man, who immediately set himself diligently to the cross-word puzzle in the magazine programme. But Twit could not go back to the conversation with the same zest. It had made him awkward. He could not continue. They talked in platitudes.