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

by Ursula Bloom

  VII

  He woke with a pallid dawn creeping into the room through windows greasy with fog. He had but a confused memory. A strangely blurred recollection of flesh on flesh, lip on lip, her eyes bright and compelling, staring up into his own grown languorous with love. He had also a memory of the scintillating sword of Harlequin flashing through it all. Of that cynical face clear cut into his vision. It seemed that the doll which was Harlequin had become a live thing. His slim bloodless lips writhed for devilish joy. His thin arms waved his brittle sword exultingly as he danced from toe to toe. Fickle, delirious, frenzied Harlequin! Then long hours, when he supposed that he slept, to wake again and crush that warmly sensuous beauty to him. To wake again and see fanatical little Harlequin beckoning to him. The curtain still up on this joyous new episode. Then to wake for the last time, with dawn, truthful, irrevocable, throwing his honest light on the whole affair. Twit was alone in the sitting-room, lying uncomfortably on the dishevelled divan. There was a crick in his neck and an ache in his body. There was a gnawing sense of sickness at the pit of his stomach. The dead fire lay a huddle in the ash-choked grate. The room showed dust and its cherry hue was too gaudy in the light of day. It was pantomimic. It was the empty theatre with the limelight dead and day ravaging its allurement. It was an old withered hag hobbling across the bright dream that had epitomised the Columbine of youth. It was day, disastrously truthful.

  Opposite to him on a cushion lay Harlequin, a limp doll, mere puppet. The face was obviously made of pincushion. It was badly stuffed and the mouth sneered horribly. He did not dare pull back the blinds and admit more fully the light that would take no denial. All that he had thought real last night had shown itself sham with the morning. It had been tawdry and shallow, its gold tinsel, its brilliance spangles. Harlequin was nothing more than a puppet; love, nothing more than passion. The emotion was grey ash on the hearth of experience. It had not survived the dawn.

  The door to the bedroom opened and Mercedes came in. She wore a creased nightdress, with too much cheap lace and too great a transparency. Over it she pulled together a staring pink dressing-gown, with more lace tied by a soiled ribbon at the breast. Her eyes were ringed and tired. Her mouth, which had lost its ripeness, drooped peevishly.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ she said abruptly, ‘you’d better be off.’

  He stared at her dully. Mercedes was standing there, with last night’s cocktail glasses each with the last golden drop circling in it, with the dead fire, and the day creeping in with cruel, protesting truth. Mercedes was staring at him with the poor doll of a Harlequin lying limply between them.

  ‘This can’t be the end,’ he said.

  ‘Now don’t start being silly.’

  ‘I want to see you again.’

  She became imperative, for she knew that the morning meant enquiry. Day has its own businesses and they are not of the night. She was anxious for him to go.

  ‘Look here, it’s no good you’re talking silly. If you stay much longer my landlady’ll be up and about, and although she says she “don’t ask no questions,” don’t she just!’

  But Twit clung to his romance.

  ‘We’ve been so much to each other. It can’t end here. I’m poor, I can’t offer you much at the moment.’

  She laughed. It was the bitter laugh of the girl who does not understand.

  ‘Are you suggesting marriage? If that isn’t rich! You’re not my sort. Not really. You’re too posh, just … well, just what Arthur said.’

  ‘What did Arthur say?’

  ‘I dunno. Something none too complimentary, you bet. He said what fun it would be if this happened, and it has happened. That is all there is to it.’

  A bet between them perhaps. A common wager, and he had played into their hands. With Mercedes it had not been love or romance at all, just a bet. He had gained nothing by it. He had not obtained a certain power. He was nothing but a failure.

  She became even more impatient as the day, growing braver, sent a clearer shaft of light through the creased blind.

  ‘It’s no good standing there all stupid like. Get your things together. Mrs. Flushing will be up.’

  He began gathering his things together and straightening his hair with his hand. He was bemused and did not understand, save that she had dealt him a blow. He thought that it was a fatal one.

  ‘You’d like a wash?’ she said a little more kindly. He looked like a man in a dream. Cold water would wake him up.

  ‘No, I’ll be all right.’

  ‘But you can’t go out like that?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  She eyed him askance. ‘Well, upon my ‒ fancy that!’ She had gone across to the door, and opening it she peered into the duskiness of the landing. ‘If you’re quick you’ll make a get-away before she’s up. The front door’s easy, just a chain and a bolt.’

  ‘But ‒’

  ‘Don’t stand there dithering. She’ll be up in two shakes. You’ve got to go.’ She gave him a little push.

  He had the impression of her standing there pulling the crudely pink dressing-gown across her transparent nightdress. Her hair was tousled, her face ‒ no longer painted ‒ was a common face, sensual and hard. Her eyes were ringed by lust. She was too fat, and the gown gaped, disclosing more than it hid. To-day the rounded flesh of her nauseated him. Harlequinade was over. He was again in the slender hall. It struck him as being very much like a coffin, its walls hemmed you in so. It smelt worse than ever of frowsty air and unwashed humanity. Gratefully he passed into the street.

  Then with the first draught of coldly sweet air he knew that his head ached horribly, and that he was feeling unwell. He went down the street, across the square where a milkman was delivering his milk with an aggressive sprightliness. He clattered noisily, and the bright sun successfully spearing the fog threw rivers of glinting gold in among the dying leaves on the trees. Twit passed on dejectedly, with the waking world bravely meeting the new day. The people were coming out of their houses into the streets. He went on unconscious of his destination, until he heard a woman’s voice shrilling in on his intelligence.

  A woman was calling to him, ‘Tristram, Tristram!’ He had come into the street of ‘The Fernery,’ and there was Ethel standing at the gate which bore the copper plate and the two notices warning off hawkers and circulars. She was beckoning to him.

  ‘What is the matter? Are you ill?’

  He made the first excuse that came into his head. ‘I’ve had a bicycle accident,’ he said; ‘fell off the old motor-bicycle.’

  ‘How dreadful! Come inside and I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘You needn’t worry.’

  He did not want anyone to worry. Why should they? After all, it was his own fault.

  ‘But I do worry.’

  She opened the gate and they went up the neat path and in at the shining front door. If Ethel knew! If only she knew of the night, of Mercedes, and Harlequin glittering in and out of it all, like a live red wire darting through the dull fabric of his life! He followed her through the hall upstairs, those carefully carpeted red Turkey-patterned stairs, into the large bathroom at the top.

  ‘Have a good clean up,’ said Ethel, ‘and I’ll order some coffee for when you are ready.’

  She went out shutting the door after her. He washed then. He washed off the stain of something that was ugly and unclean. He wept as he did it, hysterically like a woman. Life had cheated him. The water and the sweet-smelling soap were comforting after all, and he felt fresher when he had done, and his head ached less. When he came down again into the over-upholstered dining-room he was different. Ethel sat at the head of the table darning her father’s socks. After the peach-bloom of Mercedes, Ethel looked spotty. She was not looking her best at the moment and her environment was unbecoming. There was nothing of Harlequin here, nothing that was not essentially middle-class and comfortable and highly respectable. Before her on the table was the spotless cloth, hot coffee and toast.

 
‘If you’d like an egg?’ she suggested.

  He cut her short. He would hate an egg. He felt that any food other than dry toast and the bitter tang of strong black coffee would make him sick.

  ‘I’d rather have this.’

  ‘What happened? Did you collide with something?’

  Now began the tiresome necessity for inventing an accident. He was fuddled. He stared hopelessly at the bronze equestrian gentlemen and the pampas grasses and the bulrushes on the mantelshelf. He sought aid from the china lion that had suffered an accident and squinted in consequence.

  ‘I’m all woolly. It seems I can’t remember.’

  ‘But where was it?’

  ‘On the road between here and Morsegate. I was riding back last night. I must have struck a brick or something. I don’t know.’

  ‘You’ve been up all night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must feel terrible.’

  He did. But it was not accident. It was disappointment, the realisation that power and possession of a sensuous body had carried him no way. It was the flitting glory of the night before, when he had believed that he had come into his own. It was the cold scorn of the morning, when Mercedes had been scathing.

  Last night he had held her in his arms, had merged his being in hers, drunk of her beauty, been live in her abundant vitality. He had believed that in possessing her he had for ever set seal on his happiness. But he had failed. He felt his eyes filling with tears and his mouth quivering.

  ‘You’re sure you’re not hurt?’ she asked.

  ‘Quite sure.’

  Then his head dropped to his hands. The grim tears oozed between his fingers and fell to the spotless napery and the delicately browned toast. She came round to him, laying her hands on his shoulders, giving him that sympathy he needed so much.

  ‘What is the matter, Tristram?’

  ‘I’m a failure.’

  ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I’m thirty. A mere clerk. I’ve never done anything, never got anywhere.’

  ‘You’ll be father’s partner,’ she said hopefully.

  ‘He’ll never have me.’

  ‘He will. I’ll make him.’

  But again the misery tumbled over him in a crashing wave. ‘Nobody cares for me,’ he said wretchedly.

  ‘I do. I care for you, Tristram. You’ve made a new woman of me. You’re splendid.’

  The mausoleum of a clock struck the hour and he remembered that this was the time when men died. When cowards were shot, back to the wall. When prison bells tolled and guilty men were hanged. He thought of the mockery, ‘the condemned man walked to the scaffold unaided.’ Ghastly statement. He hated the clock for striking, and reminding him of this. He hated his jesting memory for recalling such details.

  ‘If I could believe that you would always think that!’ he said.

  ‘I shall, Tristram.’

  It was no good. He could not fight on alone, not after last night. He must have sympathy. He must have protection. He must have someone.

  ‘I’ve little to offer,’ he said at last, for he knew that he coveted the safe anchorage of Ethel; he wanted the surety, the insurance of his comfort, the propping in a new form. Jill had propped, but she had absorbed.

  ‘You’ve everything.’

  ‘Ethel, do you mean that? Would you really consider marrying me?’

  Had she not been considering it night after night, turning it over in her own mind, wondering if he would or if he wouldn’t? Had she not been passion-driven? Palpitated by the ardour of it? At one moment high on the mountain top of achievement, her emotions inflamed by the rarefied air? At another lost in the valley of despond? Now it had happened. She felt herself ready to burst into tears from relief.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘Ethel, we’re fortunate in each other,’ he said, and he kissed her with none of the fervour that he had bestowed on Mercedes a few hours before, but with a rather sweet peace.

  ‘I can hardly believe it,’ she declared. ‘It’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened.’

  Then, after all, he found that he felt hungry. ‘I think I will change my mind,’ he said, ‘and have an egg.’

  Ethel rang the bell.

  VIII

  In the office Arthur eyed him sheepishly. Twit had raced home to the cottage before the office opened, to relieve Hilda’s mind. Hilda had been worried. She was a chaste female, and she announced that her young man would not have approved of her being by herself all night. It was on the tip of Twit’s tongue to retort that the young man might be very glad that she was by herself and not with any gentleman friend, but he refrained. Hilda, like most of her class, had an idea that if she slept alone in a house, death, fire, pestilence and famine must occur. She gorged herself on cheap literature to the extent that she saw a seducer in every man whom she met. She had an implicit faith in robbery with violence, and in spite of the face with which Fate had safeguarded her, she considered that she was lucky in having escaped rape in her twenty years of life. In a few words, Hilda was shocked, and she did not believe the story of the accident.

  Hilda, as she told her young man later, thought that Mr. Twit had been up to ‘a drop of no good.’

  In the office, Arthur met him warily. He also enquired as to what had happened. On the principle that it is better to tell one good lie and stick to it, Twit repeated the story of the accident with the motor-bicycle. Arthur had unfortunately seen the bicycle standing in the garage, precisely as it had been left overnight.

  ‘You may come that across old Ethel,’ said he jocosely, ‘but I’m damned if you put it across me.’

  ‘Well, I did.’

  ‘That’s a lie! You spent the night with Mercedes. She told me so.’

  It was an uncomfortable day. Arthur was suspicious and inclined to be amused. Hilda was angry, and would probably write to Jill. Ethel was engaged to him and he would have to buy her a ring. The ring weighed heavily on his conscience because he was in financial straits and Jill would probably hate paying for Ethel’s ring. He would have to deceive her, calling it a coat or boots or something for himself. Although he was used to deceit, he was honest enough to find it trying. He left the office early, saying that the accident had shaken him up badly. He rode home slowly and got in just as the sun had set in a bed of crimson over the western horizon. It was a glorious sunset, far fairer than the dawn had been, that callous dawn of disillusion. He entered the cottage. He heard the faint jerky sound of someone sobbing.

  ‘Damn that girl,’ he said to himself and went upstairs, ‘Hilda? What’s the matter now?’

  But the sound did not come from Hilda’s room. He turned the handle of Jill’s door. Jill was lying face down on the bed, weeping bitterly.

  CHAPTER IV

  ‘In all things throughout the world the man who looks for the crooked will see the crooked, and the man who looks for the straight will see the straight.’ ‒ John Ruskin.

  ACHIEVEMENT.

  I

  Jill married Jock that morning. She went to the church across the fields alone. In this the great adventure she wished to be alone. It was a grey battlemented church, the limes yellowing about it, and the grass standing bleached and tall like threads of silk against the up-pointing tombstones. It was a pretty day rising out of a blanket of white mist. One of those days when the chestnuts are a little more golden, and the beeches a little more copper. When the world is lovelier than it has been before, far too full of beauty to die.

  As she went along it seemed that the star of her soul came down and danced before her. Life was not meant to be lived alone. Man is individual, woman is individual, but each is imperfect without the other. Together they are whole. The years between had been lonely, and she had felt the need of Jock. Hers was not only the marriage of a body but the marriage of a mind. With him she would think differently. Clive had broadened her outlook, but with him there had been a certain bitterness. Bitterness is not good. It has no part of God in its bein
g, it is for ever straining against the inevitable, it has no soul, it has no star. She could feel the influence of Jock surging within her. She could feel herself merging into him. Their love would burn as a lambent flame upon the still cold beauty of her heart. Flame of remembrance immortal in their souls. She was his and he was hers for ever.

  In the church she put her small hand in Jock’s capable clasp.

  ‘I’m not frightened any more,’ she whispered, as they knelt together.

  It was unlike a wedding. The sunlight streaming in through the stained-glass windows tipped them with sapphire and citron and deep rufous light. It was vigorous sunlight. It speared the little church and wrought within it the golden havoc of the day. It deified the dead that lay dust in dust within their mouldering tombs. It seemed to cry with a savage bravery, ‘I am life, I am love. Ye pass, but I live!’

  Afterwards they walked home across the field, wet and dewy, the turf springing under their feet. There was something essentially simple but essentially beautiful in that walk together. The day lit the golden world. There were flying leaves here and there, splashes of amber and pale ruby. There was the wildwood smell of sopping moss and full gutters through which water rippled over decaying leaves. There was a proximity to the heart of things, a nearness to grasses and trees and pale humid mushrooms growing in a single night through the lush-tangled verdure. It was the splendid new day of a matured year, full-bosomed, over-ripe, purple, red and golden, a year over-caparisoned in its autumn.

  They breakfasted at a small country inn, the very usual yet most unusual breakfast, in an oak parlour, smelling of old wine and wormy panelling. Somehow the crisp toast and white and yellow curl of fried eggs among the bacon had never seemed more inviting. They sat there a long time. The table was drawn close to the leaping fire, the vigorous sun peered in curiously upon them through lattice windows. It was for them a new world. Jill knew that she had closed the gates upon fear, and saw ahead of her only the radiance of the new day. It was not a marriage morning any more. It was the morning of birth. They were two children sitting staring into life, which spread itself in a gay fan for their survey. They were reviewing its pleasant prospects, its sweet promise, all that it offered them. There were shady lawns and long lanes. There were light summer seas and a sweet promising companionship. She had done with passion. That twisted, distorted, perverted thing lay in Edward Shane’s grave somewhere in France. Physical surrender lay with Clive. But the bright star that burnt now promised deep affection. It was allied to the old glad days, when she had fished and gathered flowers and ridden old Rodney in the flower-sweet meadows at Greenley. It was something born of girlhood, of gladness, of the days with Godfrey before Isobel and George and Twit had thrust hideous responsibilities on her. It was not an admittance to a new life, this marriage of hers, but rather the going back into an old one. Re-entering some dear old room and finding it unchanged. It seemed to Jill that there in the church and here in the inn Fate called a halt. They were taking stock of their emotions before passing again to the burden of everyday affairs.