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

Author:Bloom, Ursula [Bloom, Ursula]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: brother anfd sister, coming of age, family saga, early nineteenth century, Great War, Victorian, historical fiction, First World War, siblings, WWI, 1800s
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Family Saga)
Published: 2018-02-10T16:00:00+00:00

(II) TWIT

CHAPTER I

‘Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.’ ‒ Emerson.

ATMOSPHERE.

I

In nineteen twenty-five Twit met Ethel Stillmer. There had been a passage of years between then and nineteen twenty-one, and perhaps he and his sister had grown a little apart. Certainly he did not understand her any more, and she understood him less than ever. He had attempted different means of livelihood and had failed in most of them. Finally, Jill had settled his fortunes.

It was a new Jill, a Jill who steered her course by a star. She looked neither to right nor to left, but she went her own way and abided by her own standards. She found help within herself. She had urged that it was necessary that Twit should train for something and start at the beginning. There had been so many beginnings in his life that Twit was loath to have any more, but Jill drove him on. He was a fluid that she poured into a mould. Ruthlessly she demanded his likes and dislikes, determined to make him do what he could. He wanted to tell her of his dreams, those radiant, iridescent bubbles, but somehow, when it came to words, he could not find them. He groped helplessly with self-expression and was entirely unable to cope with it.

He still believed that perhaps some long-forgotten relative would one day leave him a fortune. It mattered not in the least that there were no long-forgotten relatives in his family. Aunt Blanche had died and had left seventy pounds, a Sealyham, and a small villa full of Victorian furniture. Uncle Henry had married an amazing woman and had two fat children, who were undoubtedly his heirs, if he had anything to leave, which was extremely doubtful. All the members of the Grimshaw family were nicely ticketed and docketed, and such a dream could not possibly materialise. The old myth of the uncle in Australia tickled Twit’s fancy, and he allowed it to be tickled. The uncle had always distinctly appealed to his lively imagination. But somehow he dared not bring up this Aladdin-like apparition before Jill.

Jill enumerated the careers into which she could afford to put him, and they decided in favour of architecture. He had inclinations towards dentistry, but Jill could not afford the money for that. Twit left it to her to make the enquiries as to the best way of setting about architecture, for he had but little interest. Twit was martyrish. He supposed that she could not be expected to view matters from his angle, nor to admit that he had an angle. He wished now that he had never returned from India. He would have stayed where he was as a Bombardier. Or he thought covetously of springs in Malta, with the clover fields redly in bloom. There would have been evenings in Strada Forni with Stebonia and Rosie. He wished now that he had stayed there, that he had turned with the great war tide, a shifting sand upon the beach of circumstance.

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