Brideshead Revisited

‘A hundred days wasted out of two years and a bit…not a day’s coldness or mistrust or disappointment.’

  ‘Never that.’

  We fell silent; only the birds spoke in a multitude of small, clear voices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among their carved stones.

  Julia took the handkerchief from my breast pocket and dried her hand; then lit a cigarette. I feared to break the spell of memories, but for once our thoughts had not kept pace together, for when at length Julia spoke, she said sadly: ‘How many more? Another hundred?’

  ‘A lifetime.’

  ‘I want to marry you, Charles.’

  ‘One day; why now?’

  ‘War,’ she said, ‘this year, next year, sometime soon. I want a day or two with you of real peace.’

  ‘Isn’t this peace?’

  The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the opposing slope was already in twilight, but the lakes below us were aflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death, drawing long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the rich stone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing on cornices and colonnade and dome, spreading out all the stacked merchandise of colour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me.

  ‘What do you mean by “peace”, if not this?’

  ‘So much more’; and then in a chill, matter-of-fact tone she continued: ‘Marriage isn’t a thing we can take when the impulse moves us. There must be a divorce — two divorces. We must make plans.’

  ‘Plans, divorce, war — on an evening like this.’

  ‘Sometimes said Julia, ‘I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’ Then Wilcox came down the steps into the sunset to tell us that dinner was ready.

  Shutters were up, curtains drawn, candles lit, in the Painted Parlour.

  ‘Hullo, it’s laid for three,’

  ‘Lord Brideshead arrived half an hour ago, my lady. He sent a message would you please not wait dinner for him as he may be a little late.’

  ‘It seems months since he was here last,’ said Julia. ‘What does he do in London?’

  It was often a matter for speculation between us — giving birth to many fantasies, for Bridey was a mystery; a creature from underground; a hard-snouted, burrowing, hibernating animal who shunned the light. He had been completely without action in all his years of adult life; the talk of his going into the army and into parliament and into a monastery, had all come to nothing. All that he was known with certainty to have done and this because in a season of scant news it had formed the subject of a newspaper article entitled ‘Peer’s Unusual Hobby’ — was to form a collection of match-boxes; he kept them mounted on boards, card-indexed, yearly occupying a larger and larger space in his small house in Westminster. At first he was bashful about the notoriety which the newspaper caused, but later greatly pleased, for he found it the means of his getting into touch with other collectors in all parts of the world with whom he now corresponded and swapped duplicates. Other than this he was not known to have any interests. He remained joint Master of the Marchmain and hunted with them dutifully on their two days a week when he was at home; he never hunted with the neighbouring pack, who had the better country. He had no real zest for sport, and had not been out a dozen times that season; he had few friends; he visited his aunts; he went to public dinners held in the Catholic interest. At Brideshead he performed all unavoidable local duties, bringing with him to platform and fête and committee room his own thin mist of clumsiness and aloofness. ‘There was a girl found strangled with a piece of barbed wire at Wandsworth last week,’ I said, reviving an old fantasy.

  ‘That must be Bridey. He is naughty.’

  When we had been a quarter of an hour at the table, he joined us, coming ponderously into the room in the bottle-green velvet smoking suit which he kept at Brideshead and always wore when he was there. At thirty-eight he had grown heavy and bald, and might have been taken for forty-five.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, only you two; I hoped to find Rex here.’ I often wondered what he made of me and of my continual presence; he seemed to accept me, without curiosity, as one of the household. Twice in the past two years he had surprised me by what seemed to be acts of friendship; that Christmas he had sent me a photograph of himself in the robes of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards asked me to go with him to a dining club. Both acts had an explanation: he had had more copies of his portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he was proud of his club. It was a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery; each had his sobriquet Bridey was called ‘Brother Grandee’ — and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches were made. There was plainly some competition to bring guests of distinction and since Bridey had few friends, and since I was tolerably well known, I was invited. Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which, he floated with log-like calm.

  He sat down opposite me and bowed his sparse, pink head over his plate.

  ‘Well, Bridey. What’s the news?’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I have some news. But it can wait.’

  ‘Tell us now.’

  He made a grimace which I took to mean ‘not in front of the servants’, and said, ‘How is the painting, Charles?’

  ‘Which painting?’

  ‘Whatever you have on the stocks.’

  ‘I began a sketch of Julia, but the light was tricky all today.’

  ‘Julia? I thought you’d done her before. I suppose it’s a change from architecture, and much more difficult.’

  His conversation abounded in long pauses during which his mind seemed to remain motionless; he always brought one back with a start to the exact point where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: ‘The world is full of different subjects.’

  ‘Very true, Bridey.’

  ‘If I were a painter,’ he said, ‘I should choose an entirely different subject every time; subjects with plenty of action in them like…’ Another pause. What, I wondered was coming? The Flying Scotsman? The Charge of the Light Brigade? Henley Regatta? Then surprisingly he said: ‘…like Macbeth.’ There was something supremely preposterous in the idea of Bridey as a painter of action pictures; he was usually preposterous yet somehow achieved a certain dignity by his remoteness and agelessness; he was still half-child, already half-veteran; there seemed no spark of contemporary life in him; he had a kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to the world, which compelled respect. Though we often laughed at him, he was never wholly ridiculous; at times he was even formidable.

  We talked of the news from central Europe until, suddenly cutting across this barren topic, Bridey asked: ‘Where are mummy’s jewels?’

  ‘This was hers,’ said Julia, ‘and this. Cordelia and I had all her own things. The family jewels went to the bank.’

  ‘It’s so long since I’ve seen them — I don’t know that I ever saw them all. What is there? Aren’t there some rather famous rubies, someone was telling me?’

  ‘Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don’t you remember? And there are the pearls — she always had those out. But most of it stayed in the bank year after year. There are some hideous diamond fenders, I remember, and a Victorian diamond collar no one could wear now. There’s a mass of good stones. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to have a look at them some day.’

  ‘I say, papa isn’t going to pop them, is he? He hasn’t got into debt again?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’

  Bridey was a slow and cop
ious eater. Julia and I watched him between the candles. Presently he said: ‘If I was Rex’ — his mind seemed full of such suppositions: ‘If I was Archbishop of Westminster’, ‘If I was head of the Great Western Railway’, ‘If I was an actress’, as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted — ‘if I was Rex I should want to live in my constituency.’

  ‘Rex says it saves four days’ work a week not to.’

  ‘I’m so he’s not here. I have a little announcement to make.’

  ‘Bridey, don’t be so mysterious. Out with it.’

  He made the grimace which seemed to mean ‘not before the servants.’

  Later when port was on the table and we three were alone Julia said: ‘I’m not going till I hear the announcement.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bridey, sitting back in his chair and gazing fixedly at his glass. ‘You have only to wait until Monday to see it in black and white in the newspapers. I am engaged to be married. I hope you are pleased.’

  ‘Bridey. How…how very exciting! Who to?’

  ‘Oh, no one you know.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’

  ‘I don’t think you would exactly call her pretty; “comely” is the word I think of in her connection. She is a big woman.’

  ‘Fat?’

  ‘No, big. She is called Mrs Muspratt; her Christian name is Beryl. I have known her for a long time, but until last year she had a husband; now she is a widow. Why do you laugh?’

  ‘I’m sorry. It isn’t the least funny. It’s just so unexpected. Is she…is she about your own age?’

  ‘Just about, I believe. She has three children, the eldest boy has just gone to Ampleforth. She is not at all well off.’

  ‘But, Bridey, where did you find her?’

  ‘Her late husband, Admiral Muspratt, collected matchboxes he said with complete gravity.

  Julia trembled on the verge of laughter, recovered her self-possession, and asked: ‘You’re not marrying her for her matchboxes?’

  ‘No, no; the whole collection was left to the Falmouth Town Library. I have a great affection for her. In spite of all her difficulties she is a very cheerful woman, very fond of acting. She is connected with the Catholic Players’ Guild.’

  ‘Does papa know?’

  ‘I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval. He has been urging me to marry for some time.’

  It occurred both to Julia and myself simultaneously that we were allowing curiosity and surprise to predominate; now we congratulated him in gentler tones from which mockery was almost excluded.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘thank you. I think I am very fortunate.’

  ‘But when are we going to meet her? I do think you might have brought her down with you.’

  He said nothing, sipped and gazed.

  ‘Bridey,’ said Julia. ‘You sly, smug old brute, why haven’t you brought her here?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, you know.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you? I’m dying to meet her. Let’s ring her up now and invite her. She’ll think us most peculiar leaving her alone at a time like this.’

  ‘She has the children,’ said Brideshead. ‘Besides, you are peculiar, aren’t you?’

  ‘What can you mean?’

  Brideshead raised his head and looked solemnly at his sister, and continued in the same simple way, as though he were saying nothing particularly different from what had gone before, ‘I couldn’t ask her here, as things are. It wouldn’t be suitable. After all, I am a lodger here. This is Rex’s house at the moment, so far as it’s anybody’s. What goes on here is his business. But I couldn’t bring Beryl here.’

  ‘I simply don’t understand,’ said Julia rather sharply. I looked at her. All the gentle mockery had gone; she was alert, almost scared, it seemed. ‘Of course, Rex and I want her to come.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I don’t doubt that. The difficulty is quite otherwise.’

  He finished his port, refilled his glass, and pushed the decanter towards me. ‘You must understand that Beryl is a woman of strict Catholic principle fortified by the prejudices of the middle class. I couldn’t possibly bring her here. It is a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin with Rex or Charles or both — I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your ménage — but in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest.’

  Julia rose. ‘Why, you pompous ass…’ she said, stopped, and turned towards the door.

  At first I thought she was overcome by laughter; then, as I opened the door to her, I saw with consternation that she was in tears. I hesitated. She slipped past me without a glance.

  ‘I may have given the impression that this was a marriage of convenience’ Brideshead continued placidly. I cannot speak for Beryl; no doubt the security of my position has some influence on her. Indeed, she has said as much. But for myself, let me emphasize, I am ardently attracted.’

  ‘Bridey, what a bloody offensive thing to say to Julia!’

  ‘There was nothing she should object to. I was merely stating a fact well known to her.’

  She was not in the library; I mounted to her room, but she was not there. I paused by her laden dressing table wondering if she would come. Then through the open window, as the light streamed out across the terrace into the dusk, to the fountain which in that house seemed always to draw us to itself for comfort and refreshment I caught the glimpse of a white skirt against the stones. It was nearly night. I found her in the darkest refuge, on a wooden seat, in a bay of the clipped box which encircled the basin. I took her in my arms and she pressed her face to my heart.

  ‘Aren’t you cold out here?’

  She did not answer, only clung closer to me, and shook with sobs.

  ‘My darling, what is it? Why do you mind? What does it matter what that old booby says?’

  ‘I don’t; it doesn’t. It’s just the shock. Don’t laugh at me.’ In the two years of our love, which seemed a lifetime, I had not seen her so moved or felt so powerless to help.

  ‘How dare he speak to you like that?’ I said. ‘The cold-blooded old humbug…’ But I was failing her in sympathy.

  ‘No,’ she said ‘it’s not that. He’s quite right. They know all about it, Bridey and his widow; they’ve got it in black and white; they bought it for a penny at the church door. You can get anything there for a penny, in black and white, and nobody to see that you pay; only an old woman with a broom at the other end, rattling round the confessionals, and a young woman lighting a candle at the Seven Dolours. Put a penny in the box, or not, just as you like; take your tract. There you’ve got it, in black and white.

  ‘All in one word, too, one little, flat, deadly word that covers a lifetime.

  ‘“Living in sin”; not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America; doing wrong, knowing it is wrong, stopping doing it, forgetting. That’s not what they mean. That’s not Bridey’s pennyworth. He means just what it says in black and white.

  ‘Living in sin, with sin, always the same, like an idiot child carefully nursed, guarded from the world. “Poor Julia,” they say, “she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of her sin. A pity it ever lived,” they say, “but it’s so strong. Children like that always are. Julia’s so good to her little, mad sin.”‘

  ‘An hour ago,’ I thought, ‘under the sunset, she sat turning her ring in the water and counting the days of happiness; now under the first stars and the last grey whisper of day, all this mysterious tumult of sorrow! What had happened to us in the Painted Parlour? What shadow had fallen in the candlelight? Two rough sentences and a trite phrase.’ She was beside herself; her voice, now muffled in my breast, now clear and anguished, came to me in single words and broken sentences.

  ‘Past and future; the years when I was trying to be a good wife, in the cigar smoke, while the counters clicked on the backgammon board, and the man who was “dummy” at the men’s table filled the glasses; when I was trying to b
ear his child, torn in pieces by something already dead; putting him away, forgetting him, finding you, the past two years with you, all the future with you, all the future with or without you, war coming, world ending — sin.

  ‘A word from so long ago, from Nanny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart. Cordelia and me with the catechism, in mummy’s room, before luncheon on Sundays. Mummy carrying my sin with her to church, bowed under it and the black lace veil, in the chapel; slipping out with it in London before the fires were lit; taking it with her through the empty streets, where the milkman’s ponies stood with their forefeet on the pavement; mummy dying with my sin eating at her, more cruelly than her own deadly illness.

  ‘Mummy dying with it; Christ dying with it, nailed hand and foot; hanging over the bed in the night-nursery; hanging year after year in the dark little study at Farm Street with the shining oilcloth hanging in the dark church where only the old char-woman raises the dust and one candle burns; hanging at noon high among the crowds and the soldiers; no comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief; hanging for ever; never the cool sepulchre and the grave clothes spread on the stone slab, never the oil and spices in the dark cave; always the midday sun and the dice clicking for the seamless coat.

  ‘No way back; the gates barred; all the saints and angels posted along the walls. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down; the old man with lupus and the forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn the rubbish, hoping for something to put in his sack, something marketable, turns away with disgust.

  ‘Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had seen her.’

  Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; I was adrift in a strange sea; my hands on the metal-spun threads of her tunic were cold and stiff, my eyes dry; I was as far from her in spirit, as she clung to me in the darkness, as when years ago I had lit her cigarette on the way from the station; as far as when she was out of mind, in the dry, empty years at the Old Rectory, and in the jungle.

  Tears spring from speech; presently in her silence her weeping stopped. She sat up, away from me, took my handkerchief, shivered, rose to her feet.