Tea was brought and, soon after it, Sebastian returned; he had lost the hunt early, he said, and hacked home; the others were not long after him, having been fetched by car at the end of the day; Brideshead was absent; he had business at the kennels and Cordelia had gone with him. The rest filled the hall and were soon eating scrambled eggs and crumpets; and Mr Samgrass, who had lunched at home and dozed all the afternoon before the fire, ate eggs and crumpets with them. Presently Lady Marchmain’s party returned, and when, before we went upstairs to dress for dinner, she said ‘Who’s coming to chapel for the Rosary?’ and Sebastian and Julia said they must have their baths at once, Mr Samgrass went with her and the friar.
‘I wish Mr Samgrass would go,’ said Sebastian, in his bath; ‘I’m sick of being grateful to him.’
In the course of the next fortnight distaste for Mr Samgrass came to be a little unspoken secret throughout the house; in his presence Sir Adrian Porson’s fine old eyes seemed to search a distant horizon and his lips set in classic pessimism. Only the Hungarian cousins who, mistaking the status of tutor, took him for an unusually privileged upper servant, were unaffected by his presence.
Mr Samgrass, Sir Adrian Porson, the Hungarians, the friar, Brideshead, Sebastian, Cordelia were all who remained of the Christmas party.
Religion predominated in-the house; not only in its practices — the daily mass and Rosary, morning and evening in the chapel — but in all its intercourse. ‘We must make a Catholic of Charles,’ Lady Marchmain said, and we had many little talks together during my visits when she delicately steered the subject into a holy quarter. After the first of these Sebastian said: ‘Has mummy been having one of her “little talks” with you? She’s always doing it. I wish to hell she wouldn’t.’
One was never summoned for a little talk, or consciously led to it; it merely happened, when she wished to speak intimately, that one found oneself alone with her, if it was summer, in a secluded walk by the lakes or in a corner of the walled rose-gardens; if it was winter, in her sitting-room on the first floor.
This room was all her own; she had taken it for herself and changed it so that, entering, one seemed to be in another house. She had lowered the ceiling and the elaborate cornice which, in one form or another, graced every room was lost to view; the walls, one panelled in brocade, were stripped and washed blue and spotted with innumerable little water-colours of fond association; the air was sweet with the fresh scent of flowers and musty potpourri; her library in soft leather covers, well-read works of poetry and piety, filled a small rosewood bookcase; the chimney-piece was covered with small personal treasures — an ivory Madonna, a plaster St Joseph, posthumous miniatures of her three soldier brothers. When Sebastian and I lived alone at Brideshead during that brilliant August we had kept out of his mother’s room.
Scraps of conversation come back to me with the memory of her room. I remember her saying: ‘When I was a girl we were comparatively poor, but still richer than most of the world, and when I married I became very rich. It used to worry me, and I thought it wrong to have so many beautiful things when others had nothing. Now I realize that it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor. The poor have always been the favourites of God and his saints, but I believe that it is one of the special achievements of Grace to sanctify the whole of life, riches included. Wealth in pagan Rome was necessarily something cruel; it’s not any more.’
I said something about a camel and the eye of a needle and she rose happily to the point.
‘But of course,’ she said, ‘it’s very unexpected for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but the gospel is simply a catalogue of unexpected things. It’s not to be expected that an ox and an ass should worship at the crib. Animals are always doing the oddest things in the lives of the saints. It’s all part of the poetry, the Alice-in-Wonderland side, of religion.’
But I was as untouched by her faith as I was by her charm: or, rather, I was touched by both alike. I had no mind then for anything except Sebastian, and I saw him already as being threatened, though I did not yet know how black was the threat. His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the slope that had never known the print of a boot, there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary, and tourist — only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain and cough his heart out among the rum bottles.
And, since Sebastian counted among the intruders his own conscience and all claims of human affection, his days in Arcadia were numbered. For in this, to me, tranquil time Sebastian took fright. I knew him well in that mood of alertness and suspicion, like a deer suddenly lifting his head at the far notes of the hunt; I had seen him grow wary at the thought of his family or his religion, now I found I, too, was suspect. He did not fail in love, but he lost his joy of it, for I was no longer part of his solitude. As my intimacy with his family grew, I became part of the world which he sought to escape; I became one of the bonds which held him. That was the part for which his mother, in all our little talks, was seeking to fit me. Everything was left unsaid. It was only dimly and at rare moments that I suspected what was afoot.
Outwardly Mr Samgrass was the only enemy. For a fortnight Sebastian and I remained at Brideshead, leading our own life. His brother was engaged in sport and estate management; Mr Samgrass was at work in the library on Lady Marchmain’s book; Sir Adrian Porson demanded most of Lady Marchmain’s time. We saw little of them except in the evenings; there was room under that wide roof for a wide variety of independent lives.
After a fortnight Sebastian said: ‘I can’t stand Mr Samgrass any more. Let’s go to London,’ so he came to stay with me and now began to use my home in preference to ‘Marchers’. My father liked him. ‘I think your friend very amusing,’ he said. ‘Ask him often.’
Then, back at Oxford, we took up again the life that seemed to be shrinking in the cold air. The sadness that had been strong in Sebastian the term before gave place to kind of sullenness, even towards me. He was sick at heart somewhere, I did not know how, and I grieved for him, unable to help.
When he was gay now it was usually because he was drunk, and when drunk he developed an obsession of ‘mocking Mr Samgrass’. He composed a ditty of which the refrain was, ‘Green arse, Samgrass — Samgrass green arse’, sung to the tune of St Mary’s chime, and he would thus serenade him, perhaps once a week, under his windows. Mr Samgrass was distinguished as being the first don to have a private telephone installed in his rooms. Sebastian in his cups used to ring him up and sing him this simple song. And all this Mr Samgrass took in good part, as it is called, smiling obsequiously when we met, but with growing confidence, as though each outrage in some way strengthened his hold on Sebastian.
It was during this term that I began to realize that Sebastian was a drunkard in quite a different sense to myself I got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in the love of the moment, and the wish to prolong and enhance it; Sebastian drank to escape. As we together grew older and more serious I drank less, he more. I found that sometimes after I had gone back to my college, he sat up late and alone, soaking. A succession of disasters came on him so swiftly and with such unexpected violence that it is hard to say when exactly I recognized that my friend was in deep trouble. I knew it well enough in the Easter vacation.
Julia used to say, ‘Poor Sebastian. It’s something chemical in him.’
That was the cant phrase of the time, derived from heaven knows what misconception of popular science. ‘There’s something chemical between them’ was used to explain the over-mastering hate or love of any two people. It was the old concept in a new form. I do not be
lieve there was anything chemical in my friend.
The Easter party at Brideshead was a bitter time, culminating in a small but unforgettably painful incident. Sebastian got very drunk before dinner in his mother’s house, and thus marked the beginning of a new epoch in his melancholy record, another stride in the flight from his family which brought him to ruin.
It was at the end of the day when the large Easter party left Brideshead. It was called the Easter party, though in fact it began on the Tuesday of Easter Week, for the Flytes all went into retreat at the guest-house of a monastery from Maundy Thursday until Easter. This year Sebastian had said he would not go, but at the last moment had yielded, and came home in a state of acute depression from which I totally failed to raise him.
He had been drinking very hard for a week — only I knew how hard — and drinking in a nervous, surreptitious way, totally unlike his old habit. During the party there was always a grog tray in the library, and Sebastian took to slipping in there at odd moments during the day without saying anything even to me. The house was largely deserted during the day. I was at work painting another panel in the little garden-room in the colonnade. Sebastian complained of a cold, stayed in, and during all that time was never quite sober; he escaped attention by being silent. Now and then I noticed him attract curious glances, but most of the party knew him too slightly to see the change in him, while his own family were occupied, each with their particular guests.
When I remonstrated he said, ‘I can’t stand all these people about,” but it was when they finally left and he had to face his family at close quarters that he broke down.
The normal practice was for a cocktail tray to be brought into the drawing-room at six; we mixed our own drinks and the bottles were removed when we went to dress; later, just before dinner, cocktails appeared again, this time handed round by the footmen.
Sebastian disappeared after tea; the light had gone and I spent the next hour playing mah-jongg with Cordelia. At six I was alone in the drawing-room, when he returned; he was frowning in a way I knew all too well, and when he spoke I recognized the drunken thickening in his voice.
‘Haven’t they brought the cocktails yet?’ He pulled clumsily on the bell-rope.
I said, ‘Where have you been?’
‘Up with nanny.’
‘I don’t believe it. You’ve been drinking somewhere.’
‘I’ve been reading in my room. My cold’s worse today.’ When the tray arrived he slopped gin and vermouth into a tumbler and carried it out of the room with him. I followed him upstairs, where he shut his bedroom door in my face and turned the key.
I returned to the drawing-room full of dismay and foreboding.
The family assembled. Lady Marchmain said: ‘What’s become of Sebastian?’
‘He’s gone to lie down. His cold is worse.’
‘Oh dear, I hope he isn’t getting flu. I thought he had a feverish look once or twice lately. Is there anything he wants?’
‘No, he particularly asked not to be disturbed.’
I wondered whether I ought to speak to Brideshead, but that grim, rock-crystal mask forbade all confidence. Instead, on the way upstairs to dress, I told Julia.
‘Sebastian’s drunk.’
‘He can’t be. He didn’t even come for a cocktail.’
‘He’s been drinking in. his room all the afternoon.’
‘How very peculiar! What a bore he is! Will he be all right for dinner?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you must deal with him. It’s no business of mine. Does he often do this?’
‘He has lately.’
‘How very boring.’
I tried Sebastian’s door, found it locked, and hoped he was sleeping, but, when I came back from my bath, I found him sitting in the chair before my fire; he was dressed for dinner, all but his shoes, but his tie was awry and his hair on end; he was very red in the face and squinting slightly. He spoke indistinctly.
‘Charles, what you said was quite true. Not with nanny. Been drinking whisky up here. None in the library now party’s gone. Now party’s gone and only mummy. Feeling rather drunk. Think I’d better have something-on-a-tray up here. Not dinner with mummy.’
‘Go to bed,’ I told him. ‘I’ll say your cold’s worse.’
‘Much worse.’
I took him to his room which was next to mine and tried to get him to bed, but he sat in front of his dressing table squinnying at himself in the glass, trying to remake his bow-tie. On the writing table by the fire was a half-empty decanter of whisky. I took it up, thinking he would not see, but he spun round from the mirror and said: ‘You put that down.’
‘Don’t be an ass, Sebastian. You’ve had enough.’
‘What the devil’s it got to do with you? You’re only a guest here — my guest. I drink what I want to in my own house.’ He would have fought me for it at that moment.
‘Very well,’ I said, putting the decanter back, ‘Only for God’s sake keep out of sight.’
‘Oh, mind your own business. You came here as my friend; now you’re spying on me for my mother, I know. Well, you can get out and tell her from me that I’ll choose my friends and she her spies in future.’
So I left him and went down to dinner.
‘I’ve been in to Sebastian,’ I said. ‘His cold has come on rather badly. He’s gone to bed and says he doesn’t want anything.’
‘Poor Sebastian,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘He’d better have a glass of hot whisky. I’ll go and have a look at him.’
‘Don’t mummy, I’ll go,’ said Julia rising.
‘I’ll go,’ said Cordelia, who was dining down that night, for a treat to celebrate the departure of the guests. She was at the door and through it before anyone could stop her. Julia caught my eye and gave a tiny, sad shrug.
In a few minutes Cordelia was back, looking grave. ‘No, he doesn’t seem to want anything,’ she said.
‘How was he?’
‘Well, I don’t know, but I think he’s very drunk’ she said.
‘Cordelia.’
Suddenly the child began to giggle. ‘“Marquis’s Son Unused to Wine”,’ she quoted. “‘Model Student’s Career Threatened”.’
‘Charles, is this true?’ asked Lady Marchmain.
‘Yes.’
Then dinner was announced, and we went to the dining-room where the subject was not mentioned.
When, Brideshead and I were left alone he said: ‘Did you say Sebastian was drunk?’
‘Yes.’
‘Extraordinary time to choose. Couldn’t you stop him?’
‘No.’
‘No,’ said Brideshead, ‘I don’t suppose you could. I once saw my father drunk, in this room. I wasn’t more than about ten at the time. You can’t stop people if they want to get drunk. My mother couldn’t stop my father, you know.’
He spoke in his odd, impersonal way. The more I saw of this family, I reflected, the more singular I found them. ‘I shall ask my mother to read to us tonight.’
It was the custom, I learned later, always to ask Lady Marchmain to read aloud on evenings of family tension. She had a beautiful voice and great humour of expression. That night she read part of the Wisdom of Father Brown. Julia sat with a stool covered with manicure things and carefully revarnished her nails; Cordelia nursed Julia’s Pekinese; Brideshead played patience; I sat unoccupied studying the pretty group they made, and mourning my friend upstairs.
But the horrors of that evening were not yet over.
It was sometimes Lady Marchmain’s practice, when the family were alone, to visit the chapel before going to bed. She had just closed her book and proposed going there when the door opened and Sebastian appeared. He was dressed as I had last seen him, but now instead of being flushed he was deathly pale.
‘Come to apologize,’ he said.
‘Sebastian, dear, do go back to your room,’ said Lady Marchmain. ‘We can talk about it in the morning.’
‘Not to you. Come to ap
ologize to Charles. I was bloody to him and he’s my guest. He’s my guest and my only friend and I was bloody to him.’
A chill spread over us. I led him back to his room; his family went to their prayers. I noticed when we got upstairs that the decanter was now empty. ‘It’s time you were in bed,’ I said.
Sebastian began to weep. ‘Why do you take their side against me? I knew you would if I let you meet them. Why do you spy on me?’
He said more than 1 can bear to remember, even at twenty years’ distance. At last I got him to sleep and very sadly went to bed myself.
Next morning, he came to my room very early, while the house still slept; he drew the curtains and the sound of it woke me, to find him there fully dressed, smoking, with his back to me, looking out of the windows to where the long dawn-shadows lay across the dew and the first birds were chattering in the budding tree-tops. When I spoke he turned a face which showed no ravages of the evening before, but was fresh and sullen as a disappointed child’s.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Rather odd. I think perhaps I’m still a little drunk. I’ve just been down to the stables trying to get a car but everything was locked. We’re off.’
He drank from the water-bottle by my pillow, threw his cigarette from the window, and lit another with hands which trembled like an old man’s.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know. London, I suppose. Can I come and stay with you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, get dressed. They can send our luggage on by train.’
‘We can’t just go like this.’
‘We can’t stay.’
He sat on the window seat looking away from me, out of the window. Presently he said: ‘There’s smoke coming from some of the chimneys. They must have opened the stables now. Come on.’
I can’t go,’ I said. ‘I must say good-bye to your mother.’