I RETURNED to London in the spring of 1926 for the General Strike. It was the topic of Paris. The French, exultant as always at the discomfiture of their former friends, and transposing into their own precise terms our mistier notions from across the Channel, foretold revolution and civil war. Every evening the kiosks displayed texts of doom, and, in the cafés, acquaintances greeted one half-derisively with: ‘Ha, my friend, you are better off here than at home, are you not?’ until I and several friends in circumstances like my own came seriously to believe that our country was in danger and that our duty lay there. We were joined by a Belgian Futurist, who lived under the, I think, assumed name of Jean de Brissac la Motte, and claimed the right to bear arms in any battle anywhere against the lower classes. We crossed together, in a high-spirited, male party, expecting to find unfolding before us at Dover the history so often repeated of late, with so few variations, from all parts of Europe, that I, at any rate, had formed in my mind a clear, composite picture of ‘Revolution’ - the red flag on the post office, the overturned tram, the drunken N.C.O.s, the gaol open and gangs of released criminals prowling the streets, the train from the capital that did not arrive. One had read it in the papers, seen it in the films, heard it at café tables again and again for six or seven years now, till it had become part of one’s experience, at second hand, like the mud of Flanders and the flies of Mesopotamia. Then we landed and met the old routine of the customs-shed, the punctual boat-train, the porters lining the platform at Victoria and converging on the first-class carriages; the long line of waiting taxis.
We’ll separate,’ we said, and see what’s happening. We’ll meet and compare notes at dinner,’ but we knew already in our hearts that nothing was happening; nothing, at any rate, which needed our presence.
Oh dear, ‘ said my father, meeting me by chance on the stairs, ‘how delightful to see you again so soon.’ (I had been abroad fifteen months.) ‘You’ve come at a very awkward time, you know. They’re having another of those strikes in two days - such a lot of nonsense - and I don’t know when you’ll be able to get away.
I thought of the evening I was forgoing, with the lights coming out along the banks of the Seine, and the company I should have had there - for I was at the time concerned with two emancipated American girls who shared a gar?onnière in Auteuil - and wished I had not come.
We dined that night at the Café Royal. There things were a little more warlike, for the Café was full of undergraduates who had come down for ‘National Service’. One group, from Cambridge, had that afternoon signed on to run messages for Trans-port House, and their table backed on another group’s, who were enrolled as special constables. Now and then one or other party would shout provocatively over the shoulder, but it is hard to come into serious conflict back to back, and the affair ended with their giving each other tall glasses of lager beer.
You should have been in Budapest when Horthy marched in’ said Jean. ‘That was politics.
A party was being given that night in Regent’s Park for the ‘Black Birds’ who had newly arrived in England. One of us had been asked and thither we all went. To us, who frequented Bricktop’s and the Bal Nègre in the Rue Blomet, there was nothing particularly remarkable in the spectacle; I was scarcely inside the door when I heard an unmistakable voice, an echo from what now seemed a distant past. ‘No,’ it said, ‘they are not animals in a zoo, Mulcaster, to be goggled at. They are artists, my dear, very great artists, to be revered.
Anthony Blanche and Boy Mulcaster were at the table where the wine stood. ‘Thank God here’s someone I know,’ said Mulcaster, as I joined them. ‘Girl brought me. Can’t see her anywhere.
She’s given you the slip, my dear, and do you know why? Because you look ridiculously out of place, Mulcaster. It isn’t your kind of party at all; you ought not to be here; you ought to go away, you know, to the Old Hundredth or some lugubrious dance in Belgrave Square.
Just come from one, ‘ said Mulcaster. ‘Too early for the Old Hundredth. I’ll stay on a bit. Things may cheer up.
I spit on you,’ said Anthony. ‘Let me talk to you, Charles.’ We took a bottle and our glasses and found a comer in another room. At our feet five members of the ‘Black Birds’ orchestra squatted on their heels and threw dice. ‘That one, ‘ said Anthony, ‘the rather pale one, my dear, conked Mrs Arnold Frickheimer the other morning on the nut, my dear, with a bottle of milk.’ Almost immediately, inevitably, we began to talk of Sebastian. ‘My dear, he’s such a sot. He came to live with me in Marseille last year when you threw him over, and really it was as much as I could stand. Sip, sip, sip like a dowager all day long. And so sly. I was always missing little things, my dear, things I rather liked; once I lost two suits that had arrived from Lesley and Roberts that morning. Of course, I didn’t know it was Sebastian - there were some rather queer fish, my dear, in and out of my little apartment. Who knows better than you my taste for queer fish? Well, eventually, my dear, we found the pawnshop where Sebastian was p-p-popping them and then he hadn’t got the tickets; there was a market for them, too, at the bistro.
I can see that puritanical, disapproving look in your eye, dear Charles, as though you thought I had led the boy on. It’s one of Sebastian’s less lovable qualities that he always gives the impression of being l-1-led on - like a little horse at a circus. But I assure you I did everything. I said to him again and again, “Why drink? If you want to be intoxicated there are so many much more delicious things.” I took him to quite the best man; well, you know him as well as I do, Nada Alopov and Jean Luxmore and everyone we know has been to him for years - he’s always in the Regina Bar - and then we had trouble over that because Sebastian gave him a bad cheque - a s-s-stumer, my dear - and a whole lot of very menacing men came round to the flat thugs, my dear - and Sebastian was making no sense at the time and it was all most unpleasant.’ Boy Mulcaster wandered towards us and sat down, without encouragement, by my side.
Drink running short in there,’ he said, helping himself from our bottle and emptying it. ‘Not a soul in the place I ever set eyes on before - all black fellows.’ Anthony ignored him and continued: ‘So then we left Marseille and went to Tangier, and there, my dear, Sebastian took up with his new friend. How can I describe him? He is like the footman in Warning Shadows - a great clod of a German who’d been in the Foreign Legion. He got out by shooting off his great toe. It hadn’t healed yet. Sebastian found him, starving as tout to one of the houses in the Kasbah, and brought him to stay with us. It was too macabre. So back I came, my dear, to good old England - Good old England,’ he repeated, embracing with a flourish of his hand the Negroes gambling at our feet, Mulcaster staring blankly before him, and our hostess who, in pyjamas, now introduced herself to us.
Never seen you before,’ she said. ‘Never asked you. Who are all this white trash, anyway? Seems to me I must be in the wrong house.’ ‘A time of national emergency,’ said Mulcaster. ‘Anything may happen.’ ‘Is the party going well?’ she asked anxiously. ‘D’you think Florence Mills would sing? We’ve met before,’ she added to Anthony.
Often, my dear, but you never asked me tonight.
Oh dear, perhaps I don’t like you. I thought I liked everyone.’ ‘Do you think,’ asked Mulcaster, when our hostess had left us, ‘that it might be witty to give the fire alarm
Yes, Boy, run away and ring it.
Might cheer things up, I mean.
Exactly.
So Mulcaster left us in search of the telephone.
I think Sebastian and his lame chum went to French Morocco,’ continued Anthony. ‘They were in trouble with the Tangier police when I left them. The Marchioness has been a positive pest ever since I came to London, trying to make me get into touch with them. What a time that poor woman’s having! It only shows there’s some justice in life.’ Presently Miss Mills began to sing and everyone, except the crap players, crowded to the next room.
That’s my girl,’ said Mulcaster. ‘Over there, with that black fellow. That’s the girl who brought me.
She seems to have forgotten you now.
Yes. I wish I hadn’t come. Let’s go somewhere.’ Two fire engines drove up as we left and a host of helmeted figures joined the throng upstairs. ‘That chap, Blanche,’ said Mulcaster, ‘not a good fellow. I put him in Mercury once.’ We went to a number of night clubs. In two years Mulcaster seemed to have attained his simple ambition of being known and liked in such places. At the last of them he and I were kindled by a great flame of patriotism.
You and I ‘ he said, ‘were too young to fight in the war. Other chaps fought, millions of them dead. Not us. We’ll show them. We’ll show the dead chaps we can fight, too.’ ‘That’s why I’m here,’ I said. ‘Come from overseas, rallying to old country in hour of need.
Like Australians.
Like the poor dead Australians.
What you in
Nothing yet. War not ready.
Only one thing to join - Bill Meadows’ show Defence Corps. All good chaps. Being fixed in Bratt’s.
I’ll join.
You remember Bratt’s
No. I’ll join that, too.
That’s right. All good chaps like the dead chaps.
So I joined Bill Meadows’ show, which was a flying squad, protecting food deliveries in the poorest parts of London. First I was enrolled in the Defence Corps, took an oath of loyalty, and was given a helmet and truncheon; then I was put up for Bratt’s Club and, with a number of other recruits, elected at a committee meeting specially called for the occasion. For a week we sat under orders in Bratt’s and thrice a day we drove out in a lorry at the head of a convoy of milk vans. We were jeered at and sometimes pelted with muck but only once did we go into action.
We were sitting round after luncheon that day when Bill Meadows came back from the telephone in high spirits.
Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s a perfectly good battle in the Commercial Road.’ We drove at great speed and arrived to find a steel hawser stretched between lamp posts, an overturned truck and a policeman, alone on the pavement, being kicked by half a dozen youths. On either side of this centre of disturbance, and at a little distance from it, two opposing parties had formed. Near us, as we disembarked, a second policeman was sitting on the pavement, dazed, with his head in his hands and blood running through his fingers; two or three sympathizers were standing over him; on the other side of the hawser was a hostile knot of young dockers. We charged in cheerfully, relieved the policeman, and were just falling upon the main body of the enemy when we came into collision with a party of local clergy and town councillors who arrived simultaneously by another route to try persuasion. They were our only victims, for just as they went down there was a cry of ‘Look out. The coppers,’ and a lorry-load of police drew up in our rear.
The crowd broke and disappeared. We picked up the peace-makers (only one of whom was seriously hurt), patrolled some of the side streets looking for trouble and finding none, and at length returned to Bratt’s. Next day the General Strike was called off and the country everywhere, except in the coal fields, returned to normal. It was as though a beast long fabled for its ferocity had emerged for an hour, scented danger, and slunk back to its lair. It had not been worth leaving Paris. Jean, who joined another company, had a pot of ferns dropped on his head by an elderly widow in Camden Town and was in hospital for a week.
It was through my membership of Bill Meadows’ squad that Julia learned I was in England. She telephoned to say her mother was anxious to see me. ‘You’ll find her terribly ill,’ she said.
I went to Marchmain House on the first morning of peace. Sir Adrian Porson passed me in the hall, leaving, as I arrived; he held a bandanna handkerchief to his face and felt blindly for his hat and stick; he was in tears.
I was shown into the library and in less than a minute Julia joined me. She shook hands with a gentleness and gravity of a ghost.
It’s sweet of you to come. Mummy has kept asking for you, but I don’t know if she’ll be able to see you now, after all. She’s just said “good-bye” to Adrian Porson and it’s tired her.
Good-bye
Yes. She’s dying. She may live a week or two or she may go at any minute. She’s so weak. I’ll go and ask nurse.
The stillness of death seemed in the house already. No one ever sat in the library at Marchmain House. It was the one ugly room in either of their houses. The bookcases of Victorian oak held volumes of Hansard and obsolete encyclopedias that were never opened; the bare mahogany table seemed set for the meeting of a committee; the place had the air of being both public and unfrequented; outside lay the forecourt, the railings, the quiet cul-de-sac.
Presently Julia returned.
No, I’m afraid you can’t see her. She’s asleep. She may lie like that for hours; I can tell you what she wanted. Let’s go somewhere else. I hate this room.’ We went across the hall to the small drawing-room where luncheon parties used to assemble, and sat on either side of the fireplace. Julia seemed to reflect the crimson and gold of the walls and lose some of her warmness.
First, I know, mummy wanted to say how sorry she is she was so beastly to you last time you met. She’s spoken of it often. She knows now she was wrong about you. I’m quite sure you understood and put it out of your mind immediately, but it’s the kind of thing mummy can never forgive herself - it’s the kind of thing she so seldom did.’ ‘Do tell her I understood completely.
The other thing, of course, you have guessed - Sebastian. She wants him. I don’t know if that’s possible. Is it
I hear he’s in a very bad way.
We heard that, too. We cabled to the last address we had, but there was no answer. There still may be time for him to see her. I thought of you as the only hope, as soon, as I heard you were in England. Will you try and get him? It’s an awful lot to ask, but I think Sebastian would want it, too, if he realized.
I’ll try.
There’s no one else we can ask. Rex is so busy.
Yes. I heard reports of all he’s been doing organizing the gas works.’ ‘Oh yes,’ Julia said with a touch of her old dryness. ‘He’s made a lot of kudos out of the strike.
Then we talked for a few minutes about the Bratt’s squad. She told me Brideshead had refused to take any public service because he was not satisfied with the justice of the cause; Cordelia was in London, in bed now, as she had been watching by her mother all night. I told her I had taken up architectural painting and that I enjoyed it. All this talk was nothing; we had said all we had to say in the first two minutes; I stayed for tea and then left her.
Air France ran a service of a kind to Casablanca; there I took the bus to Fez, starting at dawn and arriving in the new town at evening. I telephoned from the hotel to the British Consul and dined with him that evening, in his charming house by the walls of the old town. He was a kind, serious man.
I’m delighted someone has come to took after young Flyte at last,’ he said. ‘He’s been something of a thorn in our sides here. This is no place for a remittance man. The French don’t understand him at all. They think everyone who’s not engaged in trade is a spy. It’s not as though he lived like a Milord. Things aren’t easy here. There’s war going on not thirty miles from this house, though you might not think it. We had some young fools on bicycles only last week who’d come to volunteer for Abdul Krim’s army.
Then the Moors are a tricky lot; they don’t hold with drink and our young friend, as you may know, spends most of his day drinking. What does he want to come here for? There’s plenty of room for him at Rabat or Tangier, where they cater for tourists. He’s taken a house in the native town, you know. I tried to stop him, but he got it from a Frenchman in the Department of Arts. I don’t say there’s any harm in him, but he’s an anxiety. There’s an awful fellow sponging on him - a German out of the Foreign Legion. A thoroughly bad hat by all accounts. There’s bound to be trouble. ‘Mind you, I like Flyte. I don’t see much of him. He used to come here for baths until he got fixed up at his house. He was always perfectly charming, and my wife took a great fancy to him. What he needs is occupation.
I explained my errand.
You’ll probably find him at home now. Goodness knows there’s nowhere to go in the evenings in the old town. If you like I’ll send the porter to show you the way.’ So I set out after dinner, with the consular porter going ahead lantern in hand. Morocco was a new and strange country to me. Driving that day, mile after mile, up the smooth, strategic road, past the vineyards and military posts and the new, white settlements and the early crops already standing high in the vast, open fields, and the hoardings advertising the staples of France - Dubonnet, Michelin, Magasin du Louvre - I had thought it all very suburban and up-to-date; now, under the stars, in the walled city, whose streets were gentle, dusty stairways, and whose walls rose windowless on either side, closed overhead, then opened again to the stars; where the dust lay thick among the smooth paving stones and figures passed silently, robed in white, on soft slippers or hard, bare soles; where the air was scented with cloves and incense and wood smoke - now I knew what had drawn- Sebastian here and held him so long. The consular porter strode arrogantly ahead with his light swinging and his tall cane banging; sometimes an open doorway revealed a silent group seated in golden lamplight round a brazier.
Very dirty peoples,’ the porter said scornfully, over his shoulder. ‘No education. French leave them dirty. Not like British peoples. My peoples,’ he said, ‘always very British peoples.
For he was from the Sudan Police, and regarded this ancient centre of his culture as a New Zealander might regard Rome.
At length we came to the last of many studded doors, and the porter beat on it with his stick.
British Lord’s house,’ he said.
Lamplight and a dark face appeared at the grating. The consular porter spoke peremptorily; bolts were withdrawn and we entered a small courtyard with a well in its centre and a vine trained overhead.
I wait here,’ said the porter. ‘You go with this native fellow.’ I entered the house, down a step and into the living-room I found a gramophone, an oil-stove and, between them, a young man. Later, when I looked about me, I noticed other, more agreeable things - the rugs on the floor, the embroidered silk on the walls, the carved and painted beams of the ceiling, the heavy, pierced lamp that hung from a chain and cast soft shadows of its own tracery about the room. But on first entering these three things, the gramophone for its noise - it was playing a French record of jazz band - the stove for its smell, and the young man for his wolfish look, struck my senses. He was lolling in a basket chair, with a bandaged foot stuck forward on a box; he was dressed in a kind of thin, mid-European imitation tweed with a tennis shirt open at the neck; the unwounded foot wore a brown canvas shoe. There was a brass tray by his side on wooden legs, and on it were two beer bottles, a dirty plate, and a saucer full of cigarette ends; he held a glass of beer in his hand and a cigarette lay on his lower lip and stuck there when he spoke. He had long fair hair combed back without a parting and a face that was unnaturally lined for a man of his obvious youth; one of his front teeth was missing, so that his sibilants came sometimes with a lisp, sometimes with a disconcerting whistle, which he covered with a giggle; the teeth he had were stained with tobacco and set far apart.
This was plainly the ‘thoroughly bad hat’ of the consul’s description, the film footman of Anthony’s.
I’m looking for Sebastian Flyte. This is his house, is it not?’ I spoke loudly to make myself heard above the dance music, but he answered softly in English fluent enough to suggest that it was now habitual to him.
Yeth. But he isn’t here. There’s no one but me.
I’ve come from England to see him on important business. Can you tell me where I can find him
The record came to its end. The German turned it over, wound up the machine and started it playing again before answering.
Sebastian’s sick. The brothers took him away to the Infirmary. Maybe they’ll let you thee him, maybe not. I got to go there myself one day thoon to have my foot dressed. I’ll ask them then. When he’s better they’ll let you thee him, maybe.’ There was another chair and I sat down on it. Seeing that I meant to stay, the German offered me some beer.
You’re not Thebastian’s brother?’ he said. ‘Cousin maybe? Maybe you married hith thister
I’m only a friend. We were at the university together.’ ‘I had a friend at the university. We studied History. My friend was cleverer than me; a little weak fellow - I used to pick him up and shake him when I was angry - but tho clever. Then one day we said: “What the hell? There is no work in Germany. Germany is down the drain,” so we said good-bye to our professors, and they said: “Yes, Germany is down the drain. There is nothing for a student to do here now,” and we went away and walked and walked and at last we came here. Then we said, “There is no army in Germany now, but we must be tholdiers,” so we joined the Legion. My friend died of dysentery last year, campaigning in the Atlas. When he was dead, I said, “What the hell?” so I shot my foot. It is now full of pus, though I have done it one year.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s very interesting. But my immediate concern is with Sebastian.
Perhaps you would tell me about him.
He is a very good fellow, Sebastian. He is all right for me. Tangier was a stinking place. He brought me here - nice house, nice food, nice servant - everything is all right for me here, I reckon. I like it all right.
His mother is very ill,’ I said. ‘I have come to tell him.
She rich
Yes.
Why don’t she give him more money? Then we could live at Casablanca, maybe, in a nice flat. You know her well.? You could make her give him more money?’ ‘What’s the matter with him
I don’t know. I reckon maybe he drink too much. The brothers will look after him.
It’s all right for him there. The brothers are good fellows. Very cheap there.
He clapped his hands and ordered more beer.
You thee? A nice thervant to look after me. It is all right.’ When I had got the name of the hospital I left.
Tell Thebastian I am still here and all right. I reckon he’s worrying about me, maybe.
The hospital, where I went next morning, was a collection of bungalows, between the old and the new towns. It was kept by Franciscans. I made my way through a crowd of diseased Moors to the doctor’s room. He was a layman, clean shaven, dressed in white, starched overalls. We spoke in French, and he told me Sebastian was in no danger, but quite unfit to travel. He had had the grippe, with one lung slightly affected; he was very weak; he lacked resistance; what could one expect? He was an alcoholic. The doctor spoke dispassionately, almost brutally, with the relish men of science sometimes have for limiting themselves to inessentials, for pruning back their work to the point of sterility; but the bearded, barefooted brother in whose charge he put me, the man of no scientific pretensions who did the dirty jobs of the ward, had a different story. ‘He’s so patient. Not like a young man at all. He ties there and never complains - and there is much to complain of. We have no facilities. The Government give us what they can spare from kind. There is a poor German boy with the soldiers. And he is so kind. There is a poor German boy with a foot that will not heal and secondary syphilis, who comes here for treatment. Lord Flyte found him starving in Tangier and took him in and gave him a home. A real Samaritan.
Poor simple monk,’ I thought, ‘poor booby.’ God forgive me! Sebastian was in the wing kept for Europeans, where the beds were divided by low partitions into cubicles with some air of privacy. He was lying with his hands on the quilt staring at the wall, where the only ornament was a religious oleograph. ‘Your friend,’ said the brother.
He looked round slowly.
Oh, I thought he meant Kurt. What are you doing here, Charles?’ He was more than ever emaciated; drink, which made others fat and red, seemed to wither Sebastian. The brother left us, and I sat by his bed and talked about his illness. ‘I was out of my mind for a day or two,’ he said. ‘I kept thinking I was back in Oxford. You went to my house? Did you like it? Is Kurt still there? I won’t ask you if you liked Kurt; no one does. It’s funny - I couldn’t get on without him, you know.
Then I told him about his mother. He said nothing for some time, but lay gazing at the oleograph of the Seven Dolours. Then
Poor mummy. She really was a femme fatale, wasn’t she? She killed at a touch.’ I telegraphed to Julia that Sebastian was unable to travel and stayed a week at Fez, visiting the hospital daily until he was well enough to move. His first sign of returning strength, on the second day of my visit, was to ask for brandy. By next day he had got some, some how, and kept it under the bedclothes.
The doctor said: ‘Your friend is drinking again. It is forbidden here. What can I do? This is not a reformatory school. I cannot police the wards. I am here to cure people, not to protect them from vicious habits, or teach them self-control. Cognac will not hurt him now. It will make him weaker for the next time he is ill, and then one day some little trouble will carry him off, pouff. This is not a home for inebriates. He must go at the end of the week.
The lay-brother said: ‘Your friend is so much happier today, it is like one transfigured.
Poor simple monk,’ I thought, ‘poor booby’; but he added, ‘You know why? He has a bottle of cognac in bed with him. It is the second I have found. No sooner do I take one away than he gets another. He is so naughty. It is the Arab boys who fetch it for him. But it is good to see him happy again when he has been so sad.
On my last afternoon I said, ‘Sebastian, now your mother’s dead’ - for the news had reached us that morning - ‘do you think of going back to England?’ ‘It would be lovely, in some ways,’ he said, ‘but do you think Kurt would like it
For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘you don’t mean to spend your life with Kurt, do you?’ ‘I don’t know. He seems to mean to spend it with me. “It’th all right for him, I reckon, maybe,”’ he said, mimicking Kurt’s accent, and then he added what, if I had paid more attention, should have given me the key I lacked; at the time I heard and remembered it, without taking notice. ‘You know, Charles,’ he said, ‘it’s rather a pleasant change when all your life you’ve had people looking after you, to have someone to look after yourself. Only of course it has to be someone pretty hopeless to need looking after by me.’ I was able to straighten his money affairs before I left. He had lived till then by getting into difficulties and then telegraphing for odd sums to his lawyers. I saw the branch manager of the bank and arranged for him, if funds were forthcoming from London, to receive Sebastian’s quarterly allowance and pay him a weekly sum of pocket money with a reserve to be drawn in emergencies. This sum was only to be given to Sebastian personally, and only when the manager was satisfied that he had a proper use for it. Sebastian agreed readily to all this.
Otherwise,’ he said, ‘Kurt will get me to sign a cheque for the whole lot when I’m tight and then he’ll go off and get into all kinds of trouble.’ I saw Sebastian home from the hospital. He seemed weaker in his basket chair than he had been in bed. The two sick men, he and Kurt, sat opposite one another with the gramophone between them.
It was time you came back, ‘ said Kurt. ‘I need you.
Do you, Kurt
I reckon so. It’s not so good being alone when you’re sick. That boy’s a lazy fellow - always slipping off when I want him. Once he stayed out all night and there was no one to make my coffee when I woke up. It’s no good having a foot full of pus. Times I can’t sleep good. Maybe another time I shall slip off, too, and go where I can be looked after.’ He clapped his hands but no servant came. ‘You see?’ he said.
What d’you want
Cigarettes. I got some in the bag under my bed.
Sebastian began painfully to rise from his chair.
I’ll get them,’ I said. ‘Where’s his bed
No, that’s my job,’ said Sebastian.
Yeth, ‘ said Kurt, ‘I reckon that’s Sebastian’s job.
So I left him with his friend in the little enclosed house at the end of the alley. There was nothing more I could do for Sebastian.
I had meant to return direct to Paris, but this business of Sebastian’s allowance meant that I must go to London and see Brideshead. I travelled by sea, taking the P. & 0. from Tangier, and was home in early June.
Do you consider,’ asked Brideshead, ‘that there is anything vicious in my brother’s connection with this German
No. I’m sure not. It’s simply a case of two waifs coming together.
You say he is a criminal
I said “a criminal type”. He’s been in the military prison and was dishonourably discharged.
And the doctor says Sebastian is killing himself with drink
Weakening himself. He hasn’t D.T.s or cirrhosis.
He’s not insane
Certainly not. He’s found a companion he happens to like and a place where he happens to like living.
Then he must have his allowance as you suggest. The thing is quite clear.’ In some ways Brideshead was an easy man to deal with. He had a kind of mad certainty about everything which made his decisions swift and easy. ‘Would you like to paint this house?’ he asked suddenly. ‘A picture of the front, another of the back on the park, another of the staircase, another of the big drawing-room? Four small oils; that is what my father wants done for a record, to keep at Brideshead. I don’t know any painters. Julia said you specialized in architecture.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should like to very much.
You know it’s being pulled down? My father’s selling it. They are going to put up a block of flats here. They’re keeping the name - we can’t stop them apparently.’ ‘What a sad thing.
Well, I’m sorry of course. But you think it good architecturally
One of the most beautiful houses I know.
Can’t see it. I’ve always thought it rather ugly. Perhaps your pictures will make me see it differently.
This was my first commission; I had to work against time, for the contractors were only waiting for the final signature to start their work of destruction. In spite, or perhaps, because, of that for it is my vice to spend too long on a canvas, never content to leave well alone - those four paintings are particular favourites of mine, and it was their success, both with myself and others, that confirmed me in what has since been my career.
I began in the long drawing-room, for they were anxious to shift the furniture, which had stood there since it was built. It was a long, elaborate, symmetrical Adam room, with two bays of windows opening into Green Park. The light, streaming in from the west on the afternoon when I began to paint there, was fresh green from the young trees outside.
I had the perspective set out in pencil and the detail carefully placed. I held back from painting, like a diver on the water’s edge; once in I found myself buoyed and exhilarated. I was normally a slow and deliberate painter; that afternoon and all next day, and the day after, I worked fast. I could do nothing wrong. At the end of each passage I paused, tense, afraid to start the next, fearing, like a gambler, that luck must turn and the pile be lost. Bit by bit, minute by minute, the thing came into being. There were no difficulties; the intricate multiplicity of light and colour became a whole; the right colour was where I wanted it, on the palette; each brush stroke, as soon as it was complete, seemed to have been there always.
Presently on the last afternoon I heard a voice behind me say: ‘May I stay here and watch
I turned and found Cordelia.
Yes,’ I said, ‘if you don’t talk,’ and I worked on, oblivious of her, until the failing sun made me put up my brushes.
It must be lovely to be able to do that.
I had forgotten she was there.
It is.
I could not even now leave my picture, although the sun was down and the room fading to monochrome. I took it from the easel and held it up to the windows, put it back and lightened a shadow. Then, suddenly weary in head and eyes and back and arm, I gave it up for the evening and turned to Cordelia.
She was now fifteen and had grown tall, nearly to her full height, in the last eighteen months. She had not the promise of Julia’s full quattrocento loveliness; there was a touch of Brideshead already in her length of nose and high cheekbone; she was in black, mourning for her mother.
I’m tired,’ I said.
I bet you are. Is it finished
Practically. I must go over it again tomorrow.
D’you know it’s long past dinner time? There’s no one here to cook anything now. I only came up today, and didn’t realize how far the decay had gone. You wouldn’t like to take me out to dinner, would, you
We left by the garden door, into the park, and walked in the twilight to the Ritz Grill.
You’ve seen Sebastian? He won’t come home, even now?’ I did not realize till then that she had understood so much. I said so ‘Well, I love him more than anyone,’ she said. ‘It’s sad about Marchers, isn’t it? Do you know they’re going to build a block of flats, and that Rex wanted to take I what he called a “penthouse” at the top. Isn’t it like him? Poor Julia. That was too much for her. He couldn’t understand at all; he thought she would like to keep up with her old home. Things have all come to an end very quickly, haven’t they? Apparently papa has been terribly in debt for a long time. Selling Marchers has put him straight again and saved I don’t know how much a year in rates. But it seems a shame to pull it down. Julia says she’d sooner that than to have someone else live there.’ ‘What’s going to happen to you
What, indeed? There are all kinds of suggestions. Aunt Fanny Rosscommon wants me to live with her. Then Rex and Julia talk of taking over half Brideshead and living there. Papa won’t come back. We thought he might, but no. ‘They’ve closed the chapel at Brideshead, Bridey and the Bishop; mummy’s Requiem was the last mass said there. After she was buried the priest came in - I was there alone. I don’t think he saw me - and took out the altar stone and put it in his bag; then he burned the wads of wool with the holy oil on them and threw the ash outside; he emptied the holy-water stoop and blew out the lamp in the sanctuary, and left the tabernacle open, and empty, as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday. I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles, poor agnostic. I stayed there till he was gone, and then, suddenly, there wasn’t any chapel there any more, just an oddly decorated room. I can’t tell you what it felt like. You’ve.never been to Tenebrae, I suppose
Never.
Well, if you had you’d know what the Jews felt about their temple. Quomodo sedet sola civitas...it’s a beautiful chant. You ought to go once, just to hear it.’ ‘Still trying to convert me, Cordelia
Oh, no. That’s all over, too. D’you know what papa said when he became a Catholic? Mummy told me once. He said to her: “You have brought back my family to the faith of their ancestors.” Pompous, you know. It takes people different ways. Anyhow, the family haven’t been very constant, have they? There’s him gone and Sebastian gone and Julia gone. But God won’t let them go for long, you know. I wonder if you remember the story mummy read us the evening Sebastian first got drunk I mean the bad evening. “Father Brown” said something like “I caught him” (the thief) “with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”’ We scarcely mentioned her mother. All the time we talked, she ate voraciously. Once she said
Did you see Sir Adrian Porson’s poem in The Times? It’s funny: he knew her best of anyone - he loved her all his life, you know - and yet it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with her at all.
I got on best with her of any of us, but I don’t believe I ever really loved her. Not as she wanted or deserved. It’s odd I didn’t, because I’m full of natural affections.’ ‘I never really knew your Mother,’ I said.
You didn’t like her. I sometimes think when people wanted to hate God they hated mummy.
What do you mean by that, Cordelia
Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn’t a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can’t really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints, they have to find something like themselves and pretend it’s God and hate that. I suppose you think that’s all bosh.
I heard almost the same thing once before - from someone very different.
Oh, I’m quite serious. I’ve thought about it a lot. It seems to explain poor mummy.’ Then this odd child tucked into her dinner with renewed relish. ‘First time I’ve ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant,’ she said. Later: ‘When Julia heard they were selling Marchers she said: “Poor Cordelia. She won’t have her coming-out ball there after all.” It’s a thing we used to talk about - like my being her bridesmaid. That didn’t come off either. When Julia had her ball I was allowed down for an hour, to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny, and she said, “In six years’ time you’ll have all this.”...I hope I’ve got a vocation.’ ‘I don’t know what that means.
It means you can be a nun. If you haven’t a vocation it’s no good however much you want to be; and if you have a vocation, you can’t get away from it, however much you hate it. Bridey thinks he has a vocation and hasn’t. I used to think Sebastian had and hated it - but I don’t know now. Everything has changed so much suddenly.’ But I had no patience with this convent chatter. I had felt the brush take life in my hand that afternoon; I had had my finger in the great, succulent pie of creation. I was a man of the Renaissance that evening - of Browning’s renaissance. I, who had walked the streets of Rome in Genoa velvet and had seen the stars through Galileo’s tube, spurned the friars, with their dusty tomes and their sunken, jealous eyes and their crabbed hairsplitting speech.
You’ll fall in love,’ I said.
Oh, pray not. I say, do you think I could have another of those scrumptious meringues