The Elderbrook Brothers (2 page)

Emily thought sometimes of her past but hardly ever of her future. She knew, inarticulately, that whether you like it or not life has to be lived but will seldom bear thinking about; and by consistently applying this piece of knowledge, which she was not aware of possessing, she had become in her late forties a woman more given to rejoicing in the good things of her existence than to brooding over disillusionments or to meeting troubles half way. She had got through difficult times with
Joe Elderbrook; she had learned to understand his moods and to avoid exacerbating his temper; and he for his part had learned to forgive her for having been, when he married her, a cut above him in the scale of, snobbery. When she remembered that it was almost by accident that he had wooed her, and for no better reason than to get even with her mother that she had said yes to him, she had reason enough to be thankful for the good husband she had got. No husband is a good husband all the time; and if there
were
such a paragon what woman could live up to him? With five children growing up around her, the best children in the world and all in good health (though Faith sometimes gave cause for anxiety), Emily accounted herself blessed. Disappointments there had been in plenty, and often a sense of something lost or missed, something gone mysteriously awry; but oftener still there came flashes—visitations from heaven knows where—of quite causeless delight, when suddenly, and for no reason, this moment of time, here and now and unrepeatable, would take on an immortal bloom, and she, in the middle of talk, would become unaccountably silent, or—as occasionally happened—she would draw laughter from a secret spring within her and brim over into gaiety, making everyone happy and surprised. Though she seldom put herself into any picture of the future, she could hardly avoid some wishing and wondering about what might be in store for the children. She looked forward, conscientiously, to seeing her daughters married to good men; and she steeled her heart against the inevitable time when her sons, forgetting their mother, would be captured in marriage by women unworthy of them.

Joe Elderbrook chose Sunday teatime for his surprising announcement. The whole household was gathered round the table. To voice a decision in the children's presence was tantamount to publishing a decree: there could be no going
back on it. Elderbrook had the knack of knowing these things without thinking of them: a fact for which Emily did not always make sufficient allowance.

‘Well, Felix boy! How will you like going to Keyborough next term?'

Felix sat dumb. He looked at his father with wondering, startled eyes. He didn't need to ask himself whether his father was friendly this time or angry. It was always one or the other, always either impatience or a double dose of geniality, that made him raise his voice like that, as if addressing someone across the width of a narrow river or a not so narrow road; but this time the friendliness was unmistakable, and as usual a kind of banter, Father's special brand, was among its ingredients. But the question seemed to need no answer beyond the shy grin which Felix after a bewildered moment gave to it. Keyborough? Next term? The conjunction of words had no meaning for the boy.

‘Come, speak up, boy!' cried Joe Elderbrook.

He was aware of Emily's astonished look, but would not meet it. He knew that all the family was pricking up its ears. Talk, and the clink of tea-cups, had come to a sudden stop. The collective excitement was not lost on him, and it affected him not unpleasantly.

‘ I don't know,' said Felix.

He blushed to be suddenly the centre of attention. His voice was very small. Without in the least knowing why, he was a little frightened.

‘He doesn't know what you're talking about, Father.'

It was Faith who spoke, and a hint of reproach lent unwonted colour to her voice. Faith at seventeen was serious beyond her years: a sweet-natured girl, but so unassertive, so immoderately endowed with the virtue of unselfishness, as to be easily over-looked, except when her services were in request. To Felix, the apple of her eye, she had always been something more than a sister; for after his birth Emily had been bedridden for six months, and seven-year-old Faith had promptly put away her
dolls and set about playing mother in earnest, standing resolutely between Felix and the casual stupidities of a hastily engaged young woman-of-all-work. Because of the arduous devotion she had lavished upon him then and since, Faith was unappeasably grateful to Felix. She was therefore quick in his defence, as she seldom was in her own.

‘Doesn't know what I'm talking about?' her father echoed.

‘No,' said Emily, softly and quickly. ‘Nor do I, Joe. Are you having a joke with him?'

‘It's plain enough,' retorted Elderbrook. ‘You've all heard of Keyborough, haven't ye? Well, that's where the boy's going. And where should a boy be going to at Keyborough but the grammar school, hey?' he went on, his speech roughening as his excitement grew. ‘I've come to a settlement with the Reverend Williams, and he'll take ‘un next term, he says.'

‘You've done
what
, Joe?'

Emily's eyebrows had risen high, and there was offended pride in the poise of her small neat person. For an instant all eyes were drawn to her. Elderbrook, giving her a glance, both admired and resented that indefinable touch of difference in her. Fine little filly: too blessed ladylike for a plain chap. These judgments came like echoes from twenty years ago. But, damn it all!—she was only Emily, for all her airs; the woman he'd bedded and boarded with for as many years as made no matter. With deliberate aggressiveness he stared her down, smiling still, but with a hint of anger in the smile.

‘Hard of hearing today, aint ye, Mother?' He looked round on the company. ‘Am I talking too soft, or what is it?'

Made aware, more by Emily's behaviour than his, that an earth-shaking disaster was in the air, a quarrel between Father and Mother, the children avoided looking at either parent, and Joe's idle, angry question went unanswered. Matthew, taking the line that it was no business of his anyhow, munched on at his doorstep of bread and dripping, with no sign of knowing that anything unusual was afoot; Felix, red to the ears, stared timidly at his plate, afraid even to swallow what was in his
mouth, lest tears should take him unawares; Guy, with an uneasy polite smile, had chosen a particular square inch of the low ceiling to stare at; Faith could not take her eyes off Emily's hands, which rested lightly and expressively on the table edge, as though their owner were on the point of rising; and the younger girl, Nancy, red-cheeked and plump as a robin, with bright eyes and a shock of black hair, sat with hands clasped as though holding herself together, and stared blankly ahead.

‘Here's how it is,' said their father, with a sidelong glance at Emily, whose eyes alone were still attentive to him. ‘He's a very easy, how-d'yer-do, affable sort of man, is the grammar school master. A reverend too, with letters after his name, plenty of ‘em——'

Emily timed her interruption with extraordinary precision.

‘Shall we talk about it afterwards, Joe?'

Her apparent meekness did not deceive him. This was an Emily he seldom saw nowadays and had almost forgotten. He grunted acquiescence, cursing the weak scruple that prevented his boxing her ears as she deserved, the baggage! I'll teach you to come the grand lady over me, my girl! And yet …

Emily had risen from her seat.

‘You can go now, children. You've all finished but Matthew, and you can take yours along with you, Matt. Nancy'll help Faith with the clearing, won't you, dear? Father and I want to talk.'

There was a scraping of chairs on the tiled floor. The two girls began dexterously collecting the crocks, and the boys shuffled to their feet. Their father, however, was the first to leave the table. With a half-sulky, half-satirical glance at Emily, then from Emily to the rest, then back again to Emily, with a sulky smirk and a shrug of his high square shoulders, he stamped his way to the outer door.

They heard the scrape of his hobnails as, in the outer kitchen, he paused to shout back:

‘Come along, Matthew! House afire simmingly. Better get out before you're burnt, boy!'

This heavy, this homely piece of sarcasm, designed to annoy Emily, had the opposite effect: by its sheer simplicity it disarmed her indignation for the moment, making her soften towards Joe just when she wanted above all things to steel herself against him. But only for the moment. For his walking away was a pointed affront to her. She had a code: she would not quarrel in front of the children. But Joe, while not openly flouting the code, had contrived to snub her in their presence; and at the same time he was calculating, so she guessed, on her being unable to keep her grievance warm till bedtime, when at last, and perhaps not till then, they would be alone together and secure from interruption.

Early to bed was a rule in the Elderbrook household, and soon after nine o'clock Emily sat in the conjugal bedroom waiting for Joe to appear. She was fully dressed; her hands rested in her lap; the light of one tall candle and its reflection in the dressing-table glass showed her softly illumined and mysteriously shadowed, giving her gentle face a gaunt and sculptured quality. She sat drooping slightly, a patient weary figure, utterly unaware of herself.

When Joe came stamping into the room she said: ‘I've been waiting for you, Joe.'

Joe answered, clumsily attempting conciliation: ‘Not undressed yet?'

He at once began taking off his clothes.

‘I've been waiting for you,' she repeated. ‘This talk about Felix going to Keyborough … what does it all mean?'

‘Just that, my girl. I'm sending him to the grammar school. Boys aren't all alike. What suits some don't suit others.'

‘I think you're forgetting something,' said Emily, after a pause.

She spoke without emphasis or heat, but her tone compelled attention.

‘Huh?' said he. ‘What's that, pray?'

‘He's my son,' said Emily, ‘as well as yours.'

‘Tcha!' said Joe angrily. ‘Stuff and nonsense, girl! What's come to you? Don't you want your son to grow up a gennelman?'

Emily said simply, with no heightening of tone: ‘Fair's fair, Joe.
I
ought to have a say, as well as you, about what's to happen to Felix. He's only a little boy, and I'm not sure I want him away from home. Besides, if Felix goes, why not Guy? I say nothing about Matthew, because you'll tell me his schooling's over and done with. But Guy has some years to go yet, and he's as much right to a good education as Felix has.'

In the act of stepping out of his trousers Joe paused to stare at her indignantly.

‘So that ‘s it! I'm to send Guy to grammar school as well, am I? Anything more for your ladyship? D' ye think I'm
made
of money?'

‘We've got to be fair, Joe.'

‘What did I tell you just now?' Joe demanded. ‘What suits some boys, I said, don't suit others. Guy's not a boy for book-learning. I want him on the farm with me, same as Matt. Us three'll show ‘em what farming is—mark my words.'

He flung his trousers on a chair. ‘Now Felix,' he went on, ‘is—what?—ten, ainta? He's not set in his ways yet, like Guy. He'll take to it—grammar and such—like duck to water. You'll see. And maybe he'll turn into a clergyman and be a real credit to us. What d' ye say to that?'

Clothed in nothing but his shirt, his naked hairy legs striking a note oddly at variance with his grave square-cut sidewhiskered face, he stood eyeing her confidently, waiting for her answer. Having talked himself back into a good humour, he was prepared to be indulgent with a mother's whims; but he felt, none the less, that Emily could hardly be less than grateful for the golden prospect he offered her.

‘You're stubborn, I know that,' said Emily, rising with a sigh, ‘and you'll not listen to reason once you've set your mind on a thing: I know that too. But this I
will
tell you. He'll
feel it, the boy will.' Turning her back on him, she began taking the pins out of her hair. ‘And it'll rankle.'

‘Felix, d' ye mean?' Joe asked.

‘Oh!' cried Emily, and suddenly her voice was sharp with impatience. ‘It's waste of time talking. I mean Guy, of course. Guy.'

To reach Keyborough from Upmarden you took train at Lutterthorpe, travelled as far as Byford Junction, which is on the way to Mercester, and there changed, to be carried outwards, on another spoke of the wheel, to Keyborough itself. Because there would be a long wait at Byford it was necessary for Felix to leave home soon after a late breakfast, and to take some luncheon with him in a paper bag. The morning was cold and bright, and all the family, except Guy and Felix himself, had put on faces of extra cheerfulness. These two boys were thoughtful and silent, as if still puzzled by the unaccountable thing that was happening. They sat, all of them except Father, round the kitchen table, enjoying—or not enjoying— a breakfast that was for most of them a supplementary meal; for the elders of the household had been up and about for hours.

Now that this odd exciting morning was here at last, so long looked for (it seemed) yet so suddenly come, Felix had lost all capacity for peering ahead. His imagination was numb, his mind unknowingly suspended between opposite poles of feeling. The world about him, the familiar world of family breakfast, was only vaguely present to his consciousness, except such parts of it as came within a narrow intense focus, and these—his plate, his porridge spoon, the ticking clock, the pattern of the tablecloth, and indeed anything his glance happened to rest upon— had a strange new character, and a clarity, an individual emphasis, that made him feel slightly, very slightly, sick. The voices of his family, heard distantly as through a dream, became loud and near the moment he noticed them.