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

by Ursula Bloom

  Full age indeed! He became vigorously alive to the deception, curious as to what her right age might be. He’d have to find that out. It was ridiculous to marry a woman and not to know how old she was.

  Then he gave a last thought to Mercedes, with the black wisp of a veil about her head, and her languorous eyes and her ripe mulberry of a mouth. He thrust the vision aside. Glowing, sensuous desire for Mercedes, glorious, glamorous grisette. He tore her up fiercely like a rank weed from the garden of his heart and consigned her to the torturing flame of his hate. Mercedes who had bet with Arthur Simpson and had won her bet. What did he really impute to her? Beastliness. Bawdiness. That was all. Lure of the harlot. Flashing, transitory desire for the Harlequinade.

  He went up to bed. A widower bridegroom!

  As he undressed he whistled cheerfully, for after all he was glad that he had got through with the day’s work.

  He heard David Wright, the other lodger, coming up the stairs. He was complaining bitterly about the bath-water being cold again.

  It never mattered to Twit whether the bath-water was cold or not.

  CHAPTER II

  ‘And there shall be for thee all soft delight

  That shadowy thought can win,

  A bright torch, and a casement ope at night

  To let the warm love in.’

  ‒ Keats.

  ROMANCE.

  I

  Jock had not written to her lately. Jill did not know whether this was a good or bad sign, for he had promised her that he would return in February and in his last letter he had not mentioned sailing. At moments she hoped that this meant a surprise visit. Sometimes when she sat alone, she tried to imagine his step ringing on the crazy paving without, where the first blue of aubretia was already blurring. The Spring had come, though perhaps the outer world was as yet unaware of it. The first tremble of snowdrops white in the biting wind; the first spearing of crocus and daffodil leaves through the still frost-bound earth. The first thickening of the birch tree. No longer was it the film of black lace on the nude flesh of the dawn sky, but rather it was a dark woollen shawl flung about soft shoulders and revealing little.

  It had been a warm year that launched itself into the elusive loveliness of early Spring. A Spring that, although mere February, yet held the rosy snows of almond blossom, and the faint yellowing down of pussy willow. The grass had taken on a new greenness. The sun cast a brighter light. She felt that one of these days he would come home and life would start again, love would rise rapturous from the Spring.

  She had thought much of him, argued with her soul, and out of the thought and argument had risen a new logic. After her lone winter she knew that if Jock did not come to her, if his convention still held him fast, then it would be best. The world works for the right end, though we in our blindness cannot see it. It would mean that she must accomplish her course alone, steer to her star with no hand holding hers, only the indomitable courage of her convictions.

  She had become fatalistic. She believed now in the destiny that shapes our ends, and she no longer quarrelled with it. Destiny drives life’s caravan however much we cajole him. He has but one road, and one star. He has but one destination, at which he will arrive whatever we do or say to him.

  Time had been when she had hated Fate for bringing Clive into her life. Now she understood the lesson that he had taught her. The lesson that it had been necessary for her to learn before she could go further. As you grow older you become accustomed to life. She understood now the futility of rebellion against it. The finite body cannot war with that which is infinite spirit, and to succeed is to acquiesce, to respect decree. Jill had struggled through the miasma of misery and despair and was rising, a new and splendid being.

  Twit had written to her once since Christmas. There had been no warmth of feeling in his letter, it had been merely an ill-spelt chronicle of his life at Mrs. Isleworth’s and at old Stillmer’s. Jill still could not believe that he wished to abandon her. She could not convince herself that after the years of devotion he wished to be rid of her. She told herself that there had been a mistake, a misunderstanding, and it would all come right in the end. That was how she was thinking. That was how she chose to think of her brother.

  The telephone bell jarred in upon her thought. She took up the receiver listlessly. It was Olive Wilbur who demanded in her lethargic voice if Twit were better.

  ‘Better?’ queried Jill, bewildered.

  ‘Don’t say you didn’t know.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t. Is he ill?’

  ‘There’s been an accident.’

  She felt her hand shake on the receiver, and when she spoke again her voice had taken on a changed tone.

  ‘Olive! It isn’t something awful?’

  ‘His arm was hurt. He is in Dornington Cottage Hospital. But you must have known?’

  ‘I’ll go at once. When did it happen?’

  ‘The day before yesterday.’

  ‘Why didn’t somebody tell me?’ she asked desperately.

  ‘But surely you knew?’

  She did not waste time in contradicting, but said, half to herself, ‘I’ll go now,’ and hung up the receiver.

  Mechanically she sent for a car and stood there suddenly aware of a weakness at her knees, and a terrible outpouring of defence for Twit. Why hadn’t she been told? She was fiercely antagonistic to the world in general. Why hadn’t he been brought home? He ought to have been brought here. It was his home, and she was his sister. It seemed an eternity as she stood waiting for the car, listening, with senses grown more acute, for the purr of it on the road without.

  She must not think, or her thoughts would drive her distracted. They were crowding in upon her brain. She felt that it would burst in her anxiety. In her mind she was seeing all manner of terribly tragic pictures of what might have happened to him. He might be dying. If so every moment was of vital importance. His arm indeed! How could one be sure that Olive knew the truth?

  Jill crammed a cheque-book into her bag. Until now she had not realised that she loved him so well that, in spite of his strangeness, he still stood in her life as a being of whom she was passionately fond.

  Beyond the window noon died in aftermath, and the west was already reddening for sunset. She felt that every detail of the room was stamped in upon her perception; the gleam of the floor and the blurred hues of the rugs. Brass, china, oak, flowers, all blended together, yet each distinct in some incomprehensible way. Her mother’s diary lying on a creased sofa cushion, for she had been reading it when the message came.

  As she stood waiting, she took it up again, in the vain hope that it would help her by taking firm hold on her thoughts. But she read as one who does not see, and the brain did not absorb it.

  March 2nd, 1893.

  I wish I dare make a clean breast of everything, but I cannot. It is all wrong, wicked, terrible, yet, in spite of its very sin, it is precious. Alan means everything to me. I cannot believe that what is so lovely can be labelled by such an unlovely name. Alan …

  This could not interrupt her anxiety. This could not help her. She closed the book and left it face down on the cushion.

  The fire leapt in little vivid threads of flame among the logs. She heard the first throb of a motor-engine, and ran out to the gate to greet the car.

  ‘The Cottage Hospital,’ she said as she got inside.

  II

  Twit saw her come in and his heart sank. The accident had precipitated matters. Old Stillmer had had to be told of the marriage, and when Ethel came to visit Twit it was as his wife. Not only had the whole thing been hurried but it had become more entangled. For old Stillmer was indignant that he had been so deceived. He had announced that as Ethel had three hundred a year of her own, let her abide by it, and the chances of the partnership had at the moment faded into the thinnest air.

  The secret of his marriage had leaked out. When he saw Jill coming into the ward he believed that she had got to learn of it in some roundabout fashi
on and was furious. Now the sword of Damocles was about to descend upon him from that quarter.

  He had suffered quite a nasty accident in the dusk two nights before. He had been trying to get back to Dornington before lighting-up time. In his hurry he had failed to observe a lorry backing out of a narrow turning until it was too late. At the last moment he had tried to avoid it and swerved, but his back wheel had been caught by the tail-board. He had been flung into the hedge, which had received him mercifully, though he believed that every thorn in the United Kingdom had pierced his flesh. His left arm was damaged.

  The lorry driver had taken him unconscious to the Cottage Hospital and he had woken up to find himself lying in a ward of seven beds. Next door to him was a gentleman groaningly recovering from a hernia operation. On the other side was a man suspected of fits. Three empty beds and at the far end an asthmatical gentleman who wheezed all night. Twit had a blurred impression of the room as he came to. It swung about him, white lean beds, the groaning hernia case, the owlish gaze of the suspect who was enraged at the suggestion that he suffered from fits. Twit, coming round, imagined that he was in a morgue. Grim fantasy assailed him. He dreamt water dripping from his person, the stiffness of death shackling his limbs, weights on his eyes, cold discs of coins. Recovering more he associated the dripping of water with the groans of the hernia case. The stiffness with the numerous thorns that had pierced his body. The coldness with the bandage placed about his head. It was not morgue at all, just hospital.

  ‘Now it’s quite all right,’ a nurse assured him.

  Twit knew that it was quite all wrong, by the very fact of his presence there at all, but he lay passive. It was too painful to do anything else.

  In the centre of the room was a closed-in pattern stove, and a very large and very frightening sister, accompanied by a very small and very frightened probationer. The sister was starched. She rustled when she walked. She breathed heavily, because she was tight-laced. She was purple, because she was tight-laced. She was a most alarming amazon of a woman.

  Twit directed that Ethel was to be sent for. Ethel came, hurriedly bundled into her clothes. She was tearful and for the moment she was oblivious of the futurist cult. She was mottled with tears and looked singularly unattractive in her dilemma. She was afraid for Twit. She was nervous and anxious and she did not believe the amazon of a sister who assured her that it was nothing much. Why, it must be something for him to look like that. It must be something dreadful.

  When she got home she told her father the truth. Old Stillmer had lumbago at the time and he was cross before he heard the news. He was much crosser afterwards. He was a man who disliked secrecy and intrigue and he refused to abide by it. As they had made their bed let them lie in it. Partnership indeed! He snorted and gave Ethel to believe very firmly that there would be nothing of that sort forthcoming. And although she had always supposed that she had the old man under her thumb, now she was not so sure. She had never seen him so obstinate before, so angry, so immovable.

  Ethel returned to the hospital carrying an enormous pot plant, much like Macduff advancing behind the forest. The hospital scented a romance. Sister thought that it was very suitable, but the little probationer thought it was a pity; she looked so much older than Twit and was so prim. The hernia patient, concerned only with his own affairs, did not think about it at all.

  Then, just when the X-rays had proved that Twit’s arm was not so seriously damaged as at first supposed, but was merely badly bruised, and when he himself was recovering from one of the vilest headaches that he had ever suffered, in walked Jill.

  III

  Sister rose in rustling majesty. She was very regal-looking as she towered over the visitor.

  ‘Lady Shane?’ said Sister. She liked to think of Jill like that. It gave the ward tone.

  Jill looked past Sister at the hospital bed where Twit lay, looking weak and helpless, his face seared by pain.

  ‘You poor darling!’ she cried, and her lips trembled.

  She had stopped at a greengrocer’s and bought fruit. However ill he was, surely he would be allowed fruit? Those lemon-warm peaches and fat grapes and great mellow pears. She laid them beside him, and sat down in the uncomfortable chair that the hospital provided for guests. The medical board and the nursing staff did not welcome visitors. The chairs brought that point home to people who sat in them over long.

  ‘My dear, why didn’t you let me know?’ asked Jill.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Olive rang up. It gave me a dreadful shock.’

  He said nothing at all.

  ‘You are better?’ She turned questioningly to the sister: ‘He is better?’

  ‘Much better. Why, he is going out the day after to-morrow.’

  She felt a thrill suffuse her being. She glanced round the ward at the other patients, who were listening at the sister, at the publicity of it all. ‘Can he be moved into a private ward until then? The account will be my affair.’

  ‘I’m quite all right where I am,’ came a muffled voice from the bed.

  If Jill was going to start interfering it would drive him mad. He wished she had never come. He eyed her distrustfully from above the sheets and blankets.

  ‘We’ll get an ambulance to bring you home,’ suggested Jill. ‘It’ll be nice to have you back again.’

  Already her mind was racing ahead to the welcome that she would prepare for him. It would be like nineteen-nineteen when he had come back from the war.

  ‘I’m not coming back.’

  Sister, who had overheard this remark, could not resist the thrust. ‘There is his wife,’ she said primly.

  Jill stared at her as one who does not understand. Yet faintly under it all she did understand. The understanding pricked into her. Her colour ebbed, she felt a faintness threatening her and gripped the bed-rail for support.

  ‘I’m married,’ announced Twit, and he set his chin doggedly against any argument.

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘I’m married.’

  There seemed an eternity of silence punctuated only by the groans of the hernia patient. He had been the hero of the ward ever since his operation, and he did not see why he should move from the centre of the picture for anybody. He tried to draw attention to himself by the best possible method. Sister went across to him in all her starched glory.

  ‘Twit, you can’t be married?’ demanded Jill.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

  He made no answer, merely staring at her in the mute way of some animal that expects it is going to be hit.

  ‘We are brother and sister,’ she urged gently; ‘we have been so much to each other. When was it?’

  ‘About a fortnight ago.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘Then you’re never coming back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But, Twit dear ‒’

  ‘I don’t want to come back,’ he said thickly. She would have to understand. He could not go through this again. The split had been forced upon him. He tried to blind himself to the anguish of her mouth. He adopted a stoicism that he did not really feel.

  ‘What have I done that you should turn against me like this?’ she asked.

  ‘I haven’t turned against you. I want my independence, that’s all.’

  ‘I haven’t stopped your independence,’ she said, amazed.

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘I haven’t meant to.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The asthmatical patient began to cough. He coughed distractedly, wheezing like an unoiled car. It was irritating for the rest of the ward, who were interested in the argument, all save the hernia patient who was interested in nobody but himself. She found that she was going rigid.

  ‘You are not being fair to me, Twit. You have taken everything from me. Now, because we do not see eye to eye over Ethel, you fling me aside.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You sneaked
out of my house. You sneaked off and married her.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Because you are too much that type to do anything else,’ she said grimly, and there was no resentment in her tone. ‘Only the horrible part is that I happen to have loved you. I have always loved you, from the time you were a weak cowardly little boy, to the weak cowardly man that you are to-day.’

  She paused.

  ‘Don’t you love me, Twit?’

  He maintained a stony silence. She got up, aware of a queer pricking feeling down her limbs. This was all then. It was the end of a love that had on her side been a great one.

  ‘If I go now, Twit, it is the end. The end of our being anything to each other. You understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want me to go?’

  He thought of the partnership that had flickered out, of how he had staked his all on a gamble and had lost the toss. He had got Ethel, and nothing else. Stay, there was the three hundred a year; he was qualified, he could do something about it. Anyway, he had Ethel to lean on. He said wretchedly, ‘My wife will be here at five.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘She won’t meet you.’

  ‘I am hardly likely to want to meet her.’

  If she stayed any longer he would give way to her. He would admit that she was right. He was weak and cowardly and bitterly ashamed of it all. He said irritably, ‘I wish you’d go.’

  ‘I see.’

  She went. Her limbs sagged, it was with difficulty that she held her head high and met unflinchingly the challenge in the sister’s eyes. Then it was that the gentleman suspected of epilepsy obliged with his first fit. She went out of the ward with the gurgling, throaty noise of it in her ears.

  IV

  She drove home too numbed to cry. He had never cared for her, not as she had cared for him, not with the same passionate virility. There was something aloof about him, mechanical, something that no love could wear down. She sat there feeling suddenly orphaned. She had not felt so singularly alone when Jock and she had divided. This was a different aloneness. It was a tearing up of part of her being that had always grown beside her, within her. It was the plucking of fruit off the self-same bough. It was terrifying in its void. Something that had gone out of her life, without which the world seemed incomplete.