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

by Ursula Bloom

  ‘You’re going to-morrow? Why haven’t you told me before?’ she asked dully.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’

  ‘Twit!’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘My dear, haven’t I always had your interest at heart?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘I’ve done a good deal for you,’ she said haltingly.

  ‘Yes, and you’ve rubbed it in.’

  ‘I haven’t meant to. Is it that you are offended with me? Has Ethel turned you against me? What has happened?’ The table seemed to be a world between them, a world with the oak for sea and the silver glittering as islands and gleaming peninsulas.

  ‘It’s nothing. I want to be on my own.’

  ‘You want to be rid of me?’

  ‘No.’

  He saw the tears in her eyes and turned aside, for her weeping hurt him. He remembered times when she had dried his baby tears and yet caused him further sobs when she scolded him. Only he had to live. He had to maintain his liberty. He had to go from her.

  ‘You’re sick of me,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. I’ve given up so much, come to live in this potty little house, sacrificed everything, and what happens? You tire of me.’ She faced him coldly and the thin sword of her scorn cut through him. ‘You men are all the same. It was you who cheated me over Jock.’

  ‘I did what I thought was best.’

  ‘It wasn’t best.’

  ‘As it turned out. Nobody ever thinks I do anything properly. I’ll be better on my own.’

  She shook her head and turned her face away so that he should not see her distress.

  ‘Jock will be back soon,’ he assured her.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I shall be so alone.’

  ‘Well,’ said he, ‘you can’t expect to tie me to your apron strings always.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘I’ll come over and see you.’

  ‘Yes.’ But she was thinking of little Twit tumbling about the garden, of Twit as he used to be. Sentiment drenched her in its despair. ‘I have cared for you,’ she said brokenly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You know I have.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was wondering if he could possibly persuade Mrs. Isleworth to take him in now, to-day instead of to-morrow. Jill would continue to harp in this strain, and he would not be able to fight against it. In the end she would crush his saner judgment. The idea having germinated took form and swelled. He saw now that he must get away to-day. His strength was weakening. He felt that all his capabilities were slipping away from him and he must make a desperate effort.

  He felt that he was a wounded bull fighting a toreador, and the toreador was Jill. She was even more dangerous when she stood still. If he went on his endurance would break down and he would be done for. Little spots of colour danced before him and dazzled his vision. Jill was talking but he did not hear what she said. The one pivot ringed by circumstances stuck through his fancy. He must get away.

  Hilda was clearing the lunch. Jill was standing at the foot of the stairs.

  ‘I think I’ll go and lie down. Let’s talk this thing over, Twit, and make quite sure. I don’t want to do anything to hurt you.’

  ‘We’ll talk it over at tea-time.’

  His mind galloping ahead assured him that he would get away while she was lying down. The coward’s way, perhaps, but only as a coward could he succeed. He was going to run away.

  ‘Yes, dear, let’s.’ She came nearer to him and put out a timid hand. ‘If I’ve been horrid, it isn’t because I have meant it. I love you, Twit, you know that. You mustn’t leave me.’

  He watched her go up to lie down, listened for the wheeze of her door. Then he took down his old coat hanging like a man limply from its peg. He went into his room to collect his shaving things, and rammed them into his pockets until they bulged. He felt guilty and he loathed himself for the feeling, but if he were to achieve Ethel and the partnership and liberty he must make this move. He must go.

  Outside the pale day glinted yellow and grey in a smile threaded wraith-like through the birch tree. As he passed to the shed he noticed it. He took out the old motor-bicycle.

  No more petty restrictions …

  No more being subservient to Jill …

  He chugged away into the distance.

  AFTERMATH

  CHAPTER I

  ‘To live is like to love. All reason is

  Against it, and all healthy instinct for it.’

  ‒ Samuel Butler.

  UNDERSTANDING.

  I

  That was a dark winter for Jill, but out of its loneliness she found herself. The real Jill emerged radiant from the trial. Self-communion teaches us as nothing else. Alone, faced by those long introspective hours, she had time to concentrate upon situations that had not held her before. She had time to learn more of life.

  Twit came over once. He came early in December, when he found that he had left his bedroom slippers behind. He gave no explanation of his conduct, though she begged him for one. He was gauche, a stranger whom she had never known, and she could not pierce through the thick wall of his indifference. He promised that he would come over on Christmas Day.

  Jill placed Christmas Day far ahead of her as a bright oasis dividing the dark desert-like monotony of her winter and the coming Spring. Twit had gone, and ahead lay Christmas. Beyond, on the other side, there might be the return of her love, or there might be the end.

  She had never dared to confess in her weekly letters to Jock that Twit had left her. In a sense she felt ashamed. She knew of the promise that he had flung aside and she knew how Jock would feel about it. Besides, she did not wish to appeal to his pity. If Jock came back to her, he must come unbiased, of his own free will, not because he was sorry for her. These days his letters were kinder. In truth Jock was beginning to realise that he had jumped at a conclusion and had allowed convention to override his inner feelings. He admitted that he was longing for February. Would she come and meet him, or would she prefer him to come to the cottage? She could not express the joy that such a suggestion gave her. She decided that she would not meet him. Docks were such unfriendly, impersonal affairs, crammed by people, cluttered up by luggage. Public welcomes and farewells were to be avoided.

  But she was harassed by Twit, concerned for him. He did not write. He had only come for his bedroom slippers. He said briefly that he was busy, but she knew that it was Ethel who held him back. Ethel shackling Twit with futurism, and china lions and plush. He was deserving of something better, so much better. She racked her brain for an explanation, but she could not find one. Only that Twit had grown up. It was his life and she must give him his lead. He had a right to the ownership of his destiny.

  Christmas Eve she decorated and, because Twit had always had a tree as a little boy, she stuck a fir branch in a pot and hung it with the pretty bright baubles of childhood. She bought his gifts, tying them with gaily hollied ribbon. She smiled as she did it all. Christmas is always enchanting. It has a bright and gleaming appeal of its own and its joy is infectious. She had sent Ethel a kimono. It had been an effort to buy it, because she still felt that such a code of honour was unworthy of reconciliation, but if Ethel was to be Twit’s wife, then they could not continue foes.

  Jill had chosen the very garment that she herself would have liked. Soft blue silk, with sprigs of may in white starry boughs all over it. In between the blossoms soft amber humming-birds flashed hither and thither. Her sense of humour and perhaps a little of Great-Granny had cleaved to the petunia silk, embroidered with bulrushes, but she had made a creditable effort and had held herself well in check. She packed up the kimono and sent it with her love.

  But it was a lie. She could not love Ethel. Could anyone? She did not believe that Twit cared really. It was his old desire for position, for security, for the partnership, and he acc
epted Ethel as part of the bargain.

  His things she was keeping for him. Christmas would not be Christmas without dear Twit. Outside a flake or two of snow fell and a little boy suffering from a bad cold in his head bleated ‘Noel’ untunefully on her doorstep. But Jill lived on her memories. She loved all that savoured of Christmas, old ties and old pursuits. She even loved the halting ‘First Noel,’ indifferently as it was sung. The snowflakes, were they not the dearest of them all?

  With a smile she remembered old Christmases. Twit in a brave new suit, singing carols with him outside Isobel’s door in the early morning. Going to church. Eating glacé fruits after dinner by the fireside. That awful sick feeling afterwards, but the persistence of youth going on. She remembered all the little cruelties of Christmas, for is it not for ever a knife thrust into memories? and it hurts. Because we were so happy once. Because this day a Child was born. Because we remember this or that and torture ourselves in the memory. Oh, Christmas is not sweet really.

  All day she waited for him. It was a dull day, rising leaden in the east, thick with its promise of more snow. A dark sky against which the twigs of the birch tree were etched blackly. The sky was heavy as a pregnant woman, soon it would give birth to the storm. Soon Twit would come. She sat there very still, waiting to catch the first sound of his motor-bicycle chuffing along. As the clock swung round, guiding the hours from three to four, and again ruthlessly on, and as the hurt of the thrusting memories assailed her, a tear stole down her cheek. Hilda had gone home. All the world was merry-making. It was a hard thought that when the rest of the world was merry you were alone, exile from the happiness of a whole Christian world.

  She was dreadfully alone. She switched on the electric light, and pulled down the curtains across the lattice windows to shut out the greyness and the rattling boughs of the skeleton tree. There had been a mistake. He had been delayed. He would be here soon, quite soon now. He would never be so heartless as to leave her alone at Christmas.

  The light dazzled on the pitiful little tree with its gaudy strings of tinsel and its spun-glass balls, emerald, coral and gold. Around her, ancestors looked down from under their crowns of holly and mistletoe. They had painted, mask-like faces with stiff smiles and uncaring eyes. The Christmas cake stood uncut.

  Still hopefully she took up the telephone, and rang through to Mrs. Isleworth. She would explain. The voice that answered was bibulous. No, Mr. Grimshaw wasn’t there. He was spending the day along of Mr. Stillmer. A wavering voice, with a strange and intermingling background of cheap gramophone and raucous laughter and the gay snapping of crackers.

  Jill rang through to the Stillmers’. It was Ethel who answered.

  ‘Yes, who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Ethel ‒ Jill. Is Twit there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m expecting him to tea.’

  ‘We’ve had our tea.’

  ‘But he promised. Can I speak to him?’

  There was silence, only the plopping of the inconsequent wire, then Ethel’s voice again. ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘I see.’ Jill felt the sagging of her own body as of strings suddenly relaxed, as of spent strength.

  ‘Can I give him a message?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She hung up the telephone receiver.

  II

  She told herself that he had never cared ‒ not really ‒ not with the same savage, caressing love that she had experienced. She had been a fool to waste the precious filaments of her love on a man who did not want it. He had been her little brother whom she had carried in her arms, scolded and petted. She had sheltered him, spoilt him, stood between him and the world. She had enslaved him to her personality, and now he had seen it and broken the shackles. But surely he could have been kinder about it? Surely they could have talked this thing over and arrived at a different conclusion? He had never really loved her and she knew it now. He had admired her, leant on her, basked in the easiness of the life with which she had supplied him, but that had never been love. She hated the cowardice that had run away from her. She hated the limpness of him. Suddenly she saw him as he had always been, and hated the weaknesses. If you could only strip him, and get to his naked soul, flood that soul with manliness, infuse it with being. But you could not.

  He had gone, well, she must abide by it. She would not call him back again. Slowly and alone she cultivated her personality, her outlook, and learnt to know herself.

  If she had sucked Twit dry then also he had demanded more than his share from her. No longer did she cling tenaciously to him. They did not see each other through the January, and during that time she grew strong. She managed to submerge her sentimentality and to promise herself that when Jock came back to her she would abandon the cottage and all these shackles that had kept her bound to a spurious sentiment twisted about Twit. They would sail to a new world together, man and wife. It was the most exquisite tie of all.

  Brother and sister was a shackle made to be broken. It seldom survived the childish years. It was not intended to grow into an old love. The animals who grow forget the petty relationship of youth and birth; are they not far wiser? Nature works for the best. She was standing free at last. Only her love for Jock should hold her now, and that was growing, it was growing tremendously within her every hour.

  He must come back to her. He must waive his conventionality in understanding. He would. She would make him.

  Things had not been going too well with Twit.

  Tea was an extra at Mrs. Isleworth’s, with the result that he had made it a habit to drop in for a five o’clock repast with Ethel. Old Stillmer, who was obstinate as a mule, had not overcome his early dislike of Twit, and did not hesitate to express his rather acid opinions. He thought it expedient for Ethel to marry, but he did not like the intended bridegroom. On one or two occasions they had come to high words, and had it not been for the interposition of Ethel there might have been a serious breach. Ethel had her father under her thumb, but in this affair he was proving himself exceedingly trying. The promised partnership was not materialising, in fact there were horrid signs that old Stillmer did not intend to go any further with it. The old man did not care for Twit’s eternal presence at tea. It was Stillmer’s staple meal of the day and he did not like it interrupted. Also he thought that Twit might wash more often. He was a tidy man himself and he expected tidiness from those with whom he associated.

  Ethel broke the news to Twit that the partnership was delayed. The only solution she could suggest was that they should be secretly married. The moment the ring was on, her father could hardly withhold what was his daughter’s bread and butter. Twit agreed half-heartedly.

  Somewhere hovering in the back of his brain there had been a plan whereby he could arrange the partnership and yet not marry Ethel. He was well aware of the disloyalty of such a move, but he was growing desperate. He had to do something of a surety, and he was beginning to have qualms that he might once more find himself without employment unless things straightened themselves out. He had hoped that Fate might adapt itself to circumstances, but evidently the gods were against him.

  It was not that he did not appreciate Ethel nor that he actually wanted to back out of it, but he was finding the chaff of the world trying. He was finding the path bestrewn with difficulties.

  There was a lot about Ethel that grated. He had got to admit that too. She had a trick of gushing; she fussed over him when he did not want to be fussed over. She would look old, far older than she was, though he still did not know exactly how old she was. He felt that now she was looking worse than she had done when he had proposed to her. There were new lines, or they might be lines, that he had failed to notice then. There were wrinkles round her eyes and heavy indents from nostril to lip corner. Her taste, too; try as he would to coax it, he could do little with her. Jill had been right when she had classified it as plush and bulrush. There had been her keen admiration for a butterfly-wing brooch, which disturbed his peace of mind. Her likin
g for heavy gold settings, for Goss china and knick-knacks. She wore Twit’s picture in a locket round her neck. It hung in the locket set with imitation pearls which were deeply sunk in the wrong coloured gold. The picture was a coloured photograph aping at miniature, but still very much photograph. Every time when he saw it lying on the taut skin stretched over Ethel’s clavicle, with two deep pits of salt-cellars just above it, it irritated him. Yet, for all this, there was every reason to marry her for the partnership. If he broke it off now old Stillmer would turn him out. He would have to go back to Jill. She would say, ‘What did I tell you?’ They would be no further than before and he would continue as the man in bondage, a soul in chains. That was unthinkable.

  Twit clenched his teeth and determined that it should not happen. He had been a little ashamed about Christmas but he had been unable to get away. Ethel had purposely kept him with her. ‘The Fernery’ had been made grotesque with paper chains and red tissue paper bells. It had been garlanded with pink tissue roses irrespective of the snowy season. It had been a travesty of Christmas, with Twit solemnly kissing Ethel under the mistletoe, and old Stillmer nodding over the best port. Twit had thought in a shamed way of Jill. When the pudding came in without the brandy sauce, in deference to Ethel’s economical instinct, he had remembered how lonely she would be.

  Christmas in a charnel-house might have been more inspiring. This was a heavy, glowering festival at ‘The Fernery,’ and it ate into his heart. Ethel and her father were death’s-heads at the feast. Ethel claimed the ring out of the pudding, and Twit received the button, which must have been defeating. He had thought … Heavens, what had he thought? He had thought of Mercedes and her thick dark curls against that tempting, sensuous flesh. Harlequin, light of toe; fantastic, leaping, devilish Harlequin! In his fight for liberty perhaps after all he had only made a bad exchange. Jill, or Ethel. Absorbing personality, or china lions and chenille. Oh God, he prayed, what was a man to do?