Next day Lady Marchmain left Oxford, taking Sebastian with her. Brideshead and I went to his rooms to sort out what he would have sent on and what leave behind.
Brideshead was as grave and impersonal as ever. ‘It’s a pity Sebastian doesn’t know Mgr Bell better,’ he said. ‘He’d find him a charming man to live with. I was there my last year. My mother believes Sebastian is a confirmed drunkard. Is he?’
‘He’s in danger of becoming one.’
‘I believe God prefers drunkards to a lot of respectable people.’
‘For God’s sake.’ I said, for I was near to tears that morning, why bring God into everything?’
‘I’m sorry. I forgot. But you know that’s an extremely funny question.’
‘Is it?’
‘To me. Not to you.’
‘No, not to me. It seems to me that without your religion Sebastian would have the chance to be a happy and healthy man.
‘It’s arguable,’ said Brideshead. ‘Do you think he will need this elephant’s foot again?’
That evening I went across the quad to visit Collins. He was alone with his texts, working by the failing light at his open window. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Come in. I haven’t seen you all the term. I’m afraid I’ve nothing to offer you. Why have you deserted the smart set?’
‘I’m the loneliest man in Oxford,’ I said. ‘Sebastian Flyte’s been sent down.’
Presently I asked him what he was doing in the long vacation. He told me; it sounded excruciatingly dull. Then I asked him if he had got digs for next term. Yes, he told me, rather far out but very comfortable. He was sharing with Tyngate, the secretary of the college Essay Society.
.’There’s one room we haven’t filled yet. Barker was coming, but he feels, now he’s standing for president of the Union, he ought to be nearer in.’
It was in both our minds that perhaps I might take that room.
‘Where are you going.?’
‘I was going to Merton Street with Sebastian Flyte. That’s no use now.’
Still neither of us made the suggestion and the moment passed. When I left he said: ‘I hope you find someone for Merton Street,’ and I said, ‘I hope you find someone for the Iffley Road,’ and I never spoke to him again.
There was only ten days of term to go; I got through them somehow and returned to London as I had done in such different circumstances the year before, with no plans made.
‘That very good-looking friend of yours,’ asked my father. ‘Is he not with you?’
‘No.’
‘I quite thought he had taken this over as his home. I’m sorry, I liked him.’
‘Father, do you particularly want me to take my degree?’
‘I want you to? Good gracious, why should I want such a thing? No use to me. Not much use to you either, as far as I’ve seen.’
‘That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. I thought perhaps it was rather a waste of time going back to Oxford.’
Until then my father had taken only a limited interest in what I was saying: now he put down his book, took off his spectacles, and looked at me hard. ‘You’ve been sent down,’ he said. ‘My brother warned me of this.’
‘No, I’ve not.’
‘Well, then, what’s all the talk about? he asked testily, resuming his spectacles, searching for his place on the page. ‘Everyone stays up at least three years. I knew one man who took seven to get a pass degree in theology.’
‘I only thought that if I was not going to take up one of the professions where a degree is necessary, it might be best to start now on what I intend doing. I intend to be a painter.’
But to this my father made no answer at the time.
The idea, however, seemed to take root in his mind; by the time we spoke of the matter again it was firmly established.
‘When you’re a painter,’ he said at Sunday luncheon, ‘You’ll need a studio.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there isn’t a studio here. There isn’t even a room you could use decently as a studio. I’m not going to have you painting in the gallery.’
‘No. I never meant to.’
‘Nor will I have undraped models all over the house, nor critics with their horrible jargon. And I don’t like the smell of turpentine. I presume you intend to do the thing thoroughly and use oil paint?’ My father belonged to a generation which divided painters into the serious and the amateur, according as they used oil or water.
‘I don’t suppose I should do much painting the first year. Anyway, I should be working at a school.’
‘Abroad?’ asked my father hopefully. ‘There are some excellent schools abroad, I believe.’
It was all happening rather faster than I intended.
‘Abroad or here. I should have to look round first.’
‘Look round abroad,’ he said.
‘Then you agree to my leaving Oxford?’
‘Agree? Agree? My dear boy, you’re twenty-two.’
‘Twenty,’ I said, ‘twenty-one in October.’
‘Is that all? It seems much longer.’
A letter from Lady Marchmain completes this episode.
‘My dear Charles,’ she wrote, ‘Sebastian left me this morning to join his father abroad. Before he went I asked him if he had written to you. He said no, so I must write, tho’ I can hardly hope to say in a letter what I could not say on our last walk. But you must not be left in silence.
‘The college has sent Sebastian down for a term only, and will take him back after Christmas on condition he goes to live with Mgr Bell. It is for him to decide. Meanwhile Mr Samgrass has very kindly consented to take charge of him. As soon as his visit to his father is over Mr Samgrass will pick him up and the will go together to the Levant, where Mr Samgrass has long been anxious to investigate a number of orthodox monasteries. He hopes this may be a new interest for Sebastian.
‘Sebastian’s stay here has not been happy.
‘When they come home at Christmas I know Sebastian will want to see you, and so shall we all. I hope your arrangements for next term have not been too much upset and that everything will go well with you.
Yours sincerely,
Teresa Marchmain.
‘I went to the garden-room this morning and was so very sorry.’
BOOK TWO
BRIDESHEAD DESERTED
CHAPTER 1
Samgrass revealed — I take leave of Brideshead — Rex revealed
‘AND when we reached the top of the pass,’ said Mr Samgrass, we heard the galloping horses behind, and two soldiers rode up to the head of the caravan and turned us back. The General had sent them, and they reached us only just in time. There was a Band, not a mile ahead.’
He paused, and his small audience sat silent, conscious that he had sought, to impress them but in doubt as to how they could politely show their interest.
‘A Band?’ said Julia. ‘Goodness!’
Still he seemed to expect more. At last Lady Marchmain said, ‘I suppose the sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous.’
‘Dear Lady Marchmain, a Band of Brigands. Cordelia, beside me on the sofa, began to giggle noiselessly. ‘The mountains are full of them. Stragglers from Kemal’s army; Greeks who got cut off in, the retreat. Very desperate fellows, I assure you.’
‘Do pinch me’,’ whispered Cordelia.
I pinched her and the agitation of the sofa-springs ceased. ‘Thanks,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
‘So you never got to wherever-it-was,’ said Julia. ‘Weren’t you terribly disappointed, Sebastian?’
‘Me?’ said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamplight, beyond the warmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle, and the photographs spread out on the card-table. ‘Me? Oh, I don’t think I was there that day, was I, Sammy?’
‘That was the day you were ill.’
‘I was ill,’ he repeated like an echo, ‘so I never should have got to wherever-it-was, should I, Sammy?’
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‘Now this, Lady Marchmain, is the caravan at Aleppo in the courtyard of the inn. That’s our Armenian cook, Begedbian; that’s me on the pony; that’s the tent folded up; that’s a rather tiresome Kurd who would follow us about at the time…Here I am in Pontus, Ephesus, Trebizond, Krak-des-chevaliers, Samothrace, Batum — of course, I haven’t got them in chronological order yet.’
‘All guides and ruins and mules,’ said Cordelia. ‘Where’s Sebastian?’
‘He,’ said Mr Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though he had expected the question and prepared the answer, ‘he held the camera. He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put his hand over the lens, didn’t you, Sebastian?’ There was no answer from the shadows. Mr Samgrass delved again into his pigskin satchel.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘is a group taken by a street photographer on the terrace of the St George Hotel at Beirut. There’s Sebastian.’
‘Why,’ I said, ‘there’s Anthony Blanche surely?’
‘Yes, we saw quite a lot of him; met him by chance at Constantinople.’ A delightful companion. I can’t think how I missed knowing him. He came with us all the way to Beirut.’
Tea had been cleared away and the curtains drawn. It was two days after Christmas, the first evening of my visit; the first, too, of Sebastian’s and Mr Samgrass’s, whom to my surprise I had found on the platform when I arrived.
Lady Marchmain had written three weeks before: ‘I have just heard from Mr Samgrass that he and Sebastian will be home for Christmas as we hoped. I had not heard from them for so long that I was afraid they were lost and did not want to make any arrangements until I knew. Sebastian will be longing to see you. Do come to us for Christmas if you can manage it, or as soon after as you can.’
Christmas with my uncle was an engagement I could not break, so I travelled across country and joined the local train midway, expecting to find Sebastian already established; there he was, however, in the next carriage to mine, and when I asked him what he was doing, Mr Samgrass replied with such glibness and at such length, telling me of mislaid luggage and of Cook’s being shut over the holidays, that I was at once aware of some other explanation which was being withheld.
Mr Samgrass was not at ease; he maintained all the physical habits of self-confidence, but guilt hung about him like stale cigar smoke, and in Lady Marchmain’s greeting of him I caught a note of anticipation. He kept up a lively account of his tour during tea, and then Lady Marchmain drew him away with her, upstairs, for a ‘little talk’. I watched him go with something near compassion; it was plain to anyone with a poker sense that Mr Samgrass held a very imperfect hand and, as I watched him at tea, I began to suspect that he was not only bluffing but cheating. There was something he must say, did not want to say, and did not quite know how to say to Lady Marchmain about his doings over Christmas, but, more than that, I guessed, there was a great deal he ought to say and had no intention at all of saying, about the whole Levantine tour.
‘Come and see nanny,’ said Sebastian.
‘Please, can I come, too?’ said Cordelia.
‘Come on.’
We climbed to the nursery in the dome. On the way Cordelia said: ‘Aren’t you at all pleased to be home?’
‘Of course I’m pleased,’ said Sebastian.
‘Well, you might show it a bit. I’ve been looking forward to it so much.’
Nanny did not particularly wish to be talked to; she liked visitors best when they paid no attention to her and let her knit away, and watch their faces and think of them as she had known them as small children; their present goings-on did not, signify much beside those early illnesses and crimes.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you are looking peaky. I expect it’s all that foreign food doesn’t agree with you. You must fatten up now you’re back. Looks as though you’d been having some late nights, too, by the look of your eyes — dancing, I suppose.’ (It was ever Nanny Hawkins’s belief that the upper classes spent most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom.) ‘And that shirt wants darning. Bring it to me before it goes to the wash.’
Sebastian certainly did look ill; five months had wrought the change of years in him. He was paler, thinner, pouchy under the eyes, drooping in, the corners of his mouth, and he showed the scars of a boil on the side of his chin; his voice seemed flatter and his movements alternately listless and jumpy; he looked down-at-heel, too, with clothes and hair, which formerly had been happily negligent now unkempt; worst of all there was a wariness in his eye which I had surprised there at Easter, and which now seemed habitual to him.
Restrained by this wariness I asked him nothing of himself, but told him, instead about my autumn and winter. I told him about my rooms in the Ile Saint-Louis and the art school, and how good the old teachers were and how bad the students.
‘They never go near the Louvre,’ I said, ‘or, if they do, it’s only because one of their absurd reviews has suddenly “discovered” a master who fits in with that month’s aesthetic theory. Half of them are out to make a popular splash like Picabia; the other half quite simply want to earn their living doing advertisements for Vogue and decorating night clubs. And the teachers still go on trying to make them paint like Delacroix.’
‘Charles,’ said Cordelia, ‘Modern Art is all bosh, isn’t it?’
‘Great bosh.’
‘Oh, I’m so glad. I had an argument with one of our nuns and she said we shouldn’t try and criticize what we didn’t understand. Now I shall tell her I have had it straight from a real artist, and snubs to her.’
Presently it was time for Cordelia to go to her supper, and for Sebastian and me to go down to the drawing-room for our cocktails. Brideshead was there alone, but Wilcox followed on our heels to say to him: ‘Her Ladyship would like to speak to you upstairs, my Lord.’
‘That’s unlike mummy, sending for anyone. She usually lures them up herself.’
There was no sign of the cocktail tray. After a few minutes Sebastian rang the bell. A footman answered. ‘Mr Wilcox is upstairs with her Ladyship.’
‘Well, never mind, bring in the cocktail things.’
‘Mr Wilcox has the keys, my Lord.’
‘Oh…well, send him in with them when he comes down.’
We talked a little about Anthony Blanche — ‘He had a beard in Istanbul, but I made him take it off’ — and after ten minutes Sebastian said: ‘Well, I don’t want a cocktail anyway; I’m off to my bath,’ and left the room.
It was half past seven; I supposed the others had gone to dress, but, as I was going to follow them, I met Brideshead coming down.
‘Just a moment, Charles, there’s something I’ve got to explain. My mother has given orders that no drinks are to be left in any of the rooms. You’ll understand why. If you want anything, ring and ask Wilcox — only better wait until you’re alone. I’m sorry, but there it is.’
‘Is that necessary?’
‘I gather very necessary. You may or may not have heard, Sebastian had another outbreak as soon as he got back to England. He was lost over Christmas. Mr Samgrass only found him yesterday evening.’
‘I guessed something of the kind had happened. Are you sure this is the best way of dealing with it?’
‘It’s my mother’s way. Will you have a cocktail, now that he’s gone upstairs?’
‘It would choke me.’
I was always given the room I had on my first visit; it was next to Sebastian’s, and we shared what had once been a dressing-room and had been changed to a bathroom twenty years back by the substitution for the bed, of a deep, copper, mahogany-framed bath, that was filled by pulling a brass lever heavy as a piece of marine engineering; the rest of the room remained unchanged; a coal fire always burned there in winter. I often think of that bathroom — the water colours dimmed by steam and the huge towel warming on the back of the chintz armchair — and contrast it with the uniform, clinical, little chambers, glittering with chromium-plate and looking-glass, which pass for luxury in the m
odern world.
I lay in the bath and then dried slowly by the fire, thinking all the time of my friend’s black home-coming. Then I put on my dressing gown and went to Sebastian’s room, entering, as I always did, without knocking. He was sitting by his fire half-dressed, and he started angrily when he heard me and put down a tooth glass.
‘Oh, it’s you. You gave me a fright.’
‘So you got a drink,’ I said.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to pretend with me! ‘You might offer me some.’
‘It’s just something I had in my flask. I’ve finished it now.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. A lot. I’ll tell you some time.’
I dressed and called in for Sebastian, but found him still sitting as I had left him, half-dressed over his fire.
Julia was alone in the drawing-room.
‘Well,’ I asked, ‘what’s going on?’
‘Oh, just another boring family potin. Sebastian got tight again, so we’ve all got to keep an eye on him. It’s too tedious.’
‘It’s pretty boring for him, too.’
‘Well, it’s his fault. Why can’t he behave like anyone else? Talking of keeping an eye on people) what about Mr Samgrass? Charles, do you notice anything at all fishy about that man?’
‘Very fishy. Do you think your mother saw it?’
‘Mummy only sees what suits her. She can’t have the whole household under surveillance. I’m causing anxiety, too, you know.’
‘I didn’t know’ I said, adding humbly, ‘I’ve only just come from Paris.’ so as to avoid giving the impression that any trouble she might be in was not widely notorious.
It was an evening of peculiar gloom. We dined in the Painted Parlour. Sebastian was late, and so painfully excited were we that I think it was in all our minds that he would make some sort of low-comedy entrance, reeling and hiccuping. When he came it was, of course, with perfect propriety; he apologized, sat in the empty place, and allowed Mr Samgrass to resume his monologue, uninterrupted and, it seemed, unheard. Druses, patriarchs, icons, bed-bugs, Romanesque remains, curious dishes of goat and sheeps’ eyes, French and Turkish officials all the catalogue of Near Eastern travel was provided for our amusement.