‘Well,’ she said, in a voice much like normal. ‘Bridey is one for bombshells, isn’t he?’
I followed her into the house and to her room; she sat at her looking-glass. ‘Considering that I’ve just recovered from a fit of hysteria,’ she said, ‘I don’t call that at all bad.’ Her eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright, her cheeks pale with two spots of high colour, where, as a girl, she used to put a dab of rouge. ‘Most hysterical women look as if they had a bad cold. You’d better change your shirt before going down; it’s all tears and lipstick.’
‘Are we going down?’
‘Of course, we mustn’t leave poor Bridey on his engagement night.’
When I went back to her she said: ‘I’m sorry for that appalling scene, Charles. I can’t explain.’
Brideshead was in the library, smoking his pipe, placidly reading a detective story.
‘Was it nice out? If I’d known you were going I’d have come, too.’
‘Rather cold.’
‘I hope it’s not going to be inconvenient for Rex moving out of here. You see, Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children. Besides, Beryl likes the country. In his letter papa proposed making over the whole estate right away.’
I remembered how Rex had greeted me on my first arrival at Brideshead as Julia’s guest. ‘A very happy arrangement,’ he had said. ‘Suits me down to the ground. The old boy keeps the place up; Bridey does all the feudal stuff with the tenants; I have the run of the house rent free. All it costs me is the food and the wages of the indoor servants. Couldn’t ask fairer than that, could you?’
‘I should think he’ll be sorry to go,’ I said.
‘Oh, he’ll find another bargain somewhere,’ said Julia; ‘trust him.’
‘Beryl’s got some furniture of her own she’s very attached to. I don’t know if it would go very well here. You know, oak dressers and coffin stools and things. I thought she could put it in mummy’s old room.
‘Yes, that would be the place.’
So brother and sister sat and talked about the arrangement of the house until bedtime. ‘An hour ago,’ I thought, ‘in the black refuge in the box hedge, she wept her heart out for the death of her God; now she is discussing whether Beryl’s children shall take the old smoking-room or the school-room for their own.’ I was all at sea.
‘Julia,’ I said later, when Brideshead had gone upstairs, ‘have you ever seen a picture of Holman Hunt’s called “The Awakened Conscience”‘
‘No.’
I had seen a copy of Pre-Raphaelitism in the library some days before; I found it again and read her Ruskin’s description. She laughed quite happily.
‘You’re perfectly right. That’s exactly what I did feel.’
‘But, darling, I won’t believe that great spout of tears came just from a few words of Bridey’s. You must have been thinking about it before.’
‘Hardly at all; now and then; more, lately, with the Last Trump so near.’
‘Of course it’s a thing psychologists could explain; a preconditioning from childhood; feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery. You do know at heart that it’s all bosh, don’t you?’
‘How I wish it was!’
‘Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me.’
‘He’s gone back to the Church, you know. Of course, he never left it as definitely as I did. I’ve gone too far; there’s no turning back now; I know that, if that’s what you mean by thinking it all bosh. All I can hope to do is to put my life in some sort of order in a human way, before all human order comes to an end. That’s why I want to marry you. I should like to have a child. That’s one thing I can do…Let’s go out again. The moon should be up by now.’
The moon was full and high. We walked round the house; under the limes Julia paused and idly snapped off one of the long shoots, last year’s growth, that fringed their boles, and stripped it as she walked, making a switch, as children do, but with petulant movements that were not a child’s, snatching nervously at the leaves and crumbling them between her fingers; she began peeling the bark, scratching it with her nails.
Once more we stood by the fountain.
‘It’s like the setting of a comedy,’ I said. ‘Scene: a Baroque fountain in a nobleman’s grounds. Act one, sunset; act two, dusk; act three, moonlight. The characters keep assembling at the fountain for no very clear reason.’
‘Comedy?’
‘Drama. Tragedy. Farce. What you will. This is the reconciliation scene.’
‘Was there a quarrel?’
‘Estrangement and misunderstanding in act two.’
‘Oh, don’t talk in that damned bounderish way. Why must you see everything second-hand? Why must this be a play? Why must my conscience be a Pre-Raphaelite picture?’
‘It’s a way I have.’
‘I hate it.’
Her anger was as unexpected as every change on this evening of swift veering moods. Suddenly she cut me across the face with her switch, a vicious, stinging little blow as hard as she could strike.
‘Now do you see how I hate it?’
She hit me again.
‘All right,’ I said ‘go on.’
Then, though her hand was raised, she stopped and threw the half-peeled wand into the water, where it floated white and black in the moonlight.
‘Did that hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did it?…Did I?’
In the instant her rage was gone; her tears, newly flowing, were on my cheek. I held her at arm’s length and she put down her head, stroking my hand on her shoulder with her face, catlike, but, unlike a cat, leaving a tear there.
‘Cat on the roof-top,’ I said.
‘Beast!’
She bit at my hand, but when I did not move it and her teeth touched me, she changed the bite to a kiss, the kiss to a lick of her tongue.
‘Cat in the moonlight.’
This was the mood I knew. We turned towards the house. When we came to the lighted hall she said: ‘Your poor face,’ touching the weals with her fingers. ‘Will there be a mark tomorrow?’
‘I expect so.’
‘Charles, am I going crazy? What’s happened tonight? I’m so tired.’
She yawned; a fit of yawning took her. She sat at her dressing table, head bowed, hair over her face, yawning helplessly; when she looked up I saw over her shoulder in the glass a face that was dazed with weariness like a retreating soldier’s, and beside it my own, streaked with two crimson lines.
‘So tired,’ she repeated,, taking off her gold tunic and letting it fall to the floor, ‘tired and crazy and good for nothing.’
I saw her to bed; the blue lids fell over her eyes; her pale lips moved on the pillow but whether to wish me good night or to murmur a prayer — a jingle of the nursery that came to her now in the twilight world between sorrow and sleep: some ancient pious rhyme that had come down to Nanny Hawkins from centuries of bedtime whispering, through all the changes of language, from the days of pack-horses on the Pilgrim’s Way — I did not know.
Next night Rex and his political associates were with us.
‘They won’t fight.’
‘They can’t fight. They haven’t the money; they haven’t the oil.’
‘They haven’t the wolfram; they haven’t the men.’
‘They haven’t the guts.’
‘They’re afraid.’
‘Scared of the French; scared of the Czechs; scared of the Slovaks; scared of us.’
‘It’s a bluff.’
‘Of course it’s a bluff Where’s their tungsten? Where’s their manganese?’
‘Where’s their chrome?’
‘I’ll tell you a thing…’
‘Listen to this; it’ll be good; Rex will tell you a thing.’
Friend of mine motoring in the Black Forest only the other day, just came back and told me about it while we played a round of golf. Well, this friend driving along, turned down a lane into the high road
. What should he find but a military convoy? Couldn’t stop, drove right into it, smack into a tank, broadside on. Gave himself up for dead…Hold on this is the funny part.’
‘This is the funny part.’
‘Drove clean through it, didn’t scratch his paint;. What do you think? It was made of canvas — a bamboo frame and painted canvas.’
‘They haven’t the steel.’
‘They haven’t the tools. They haven’t the labour. They’re half starving. They haven’t the fats. The children have rickets.’
‘The women are barren.’
‘The men are impotent.’
‘They haven’t the doctors.’
‘The doctors were Jewish.’
‘Now they’ve got consumption.’
‘Now they’ve got syphilis.’
‘Goering told a friend of mine…’
‘Goebbels told a friend of mine…’
‘Ribbentrop told me that the army just kept Hitler in power so long as he was able to get things for nothing. The moment anyone stands up to him, he’s finished. The army will shoot him.’
‘The Liberals will hang him.’
‘The Communists will tear him limb from limb.’
‘He’ll scupper himself.’
‘He’d do it now if it wasn’t for Chamberlain.’
‘If it wasn’t for Halifax.’
‘If it wasn’t for Sir Samuel Hoare.’
‘And the 1922 Committee.’
‘Peace Pledge.’
‘Foreign Office.’
‘New York Banks.’
‘All that’s wanted is a good strong line.’
‘A line from Rex.’
‘We’ll give Europe a good strong line. Europe is waiting for a speech from Rex.’
‘And a speech from me.’
‘And a speech from me. Rally the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Germany will rise; Austria will rise. The Czechs and the Slovaks are bound to rise.’
‘To a speech from Rex and a speech from me.’
‘What about a rubber? How about a whisky? Which of you chaps will have a big cigar? Hullo, you two going out?’
‘Yes, Rex,’ said Julia. ‘Charles and I are going into the moonlight.’
We shut the windows behind us and the voices ceased; the moonlight lay like hoarfrost on the terrace and the music of the fountain crept in our ears — the stone balustrade of the terrace might have been the Trojan walls, and in the silent park might have stood the Grecian tents where Cressid lay that night.
‘A few days, a few months.’
‘No time to be lost.’
‘A lifetime between the rising of the moon and its setting. Then the dark.’
CHAPTER 4
Sebastian contra mundum
‘AND of course Celia will have custody of the children.’
‘Of course.’
‘Then what about the Old Rectory? I don’t imagine you’ll want to settle down with Julia bang at our gates. The children look on it as their home, you know. Robin’s got no place of his own till his uncle dies. After all, you never used the studio, did You? Robin was saying only the other day what a good playroom it would make — big enough for Badminton.’
‘Robin can have the Old Rectory.’
‘Now with regard to money, Celia and Robin naturally don’t want to accept anything for themselves, but there’s the question of the children’s education.’
‘That will be all right. I’ll see the lawyers about it.’
‘Well, I think that’s everything,’ said Mulcaster. ‘You know, I’ve seen a few divorces in my time, and I’ve never known one work out so happily for all concerned. Almost always, however matey people are at the start, bad blood crops up when they get down to detail. Mind you, I don’t mind saying there have been times in the last two years when I thought you were treating Celia a bit rough. It’s hard to tell with one’s own sister, but I’ve always thought her a jolly attractive girl, the sort of girl any chap would be glad to have — artistic, too, just down your street. But I must admit you’re a good picker. I’ve always had a soft spot for Julia. Anyway, as things have turned out everyone seems satisfied. Robin’s been mad about Celia for a year or more. D’you know him?’
‘Vaguely. A half-baked, pimply youth as I remember him.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t quite say that. He’s rather young, of course, but the great thing is that Johnjohn and Caroline adore him. You’ve got two grand kids there, Charles. Remember me to Julia; wish her all the best for old times’ sake.’
‘So you’re being divorced,’ said my father. ‘Isn’t that rather unnecessary, after you’ve been happy together all these years?’
‘We weren’t particularly happy, you know.’
‘Weren’t you? Were you not? I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why. You’ll find it very disturbing, you know, starting off again. How old are you — thirty-four? That’s no age to be starting. You ought to be settling down. Have you made any plans?’
‘Yes. I’m marrying again as soon as the divorce is through.’
‘Well, I do call that a lot of nonsense. I can understand a man, wishing he hadn’t married and trying to get out of it — though I never felt anything of the kind myself — but to get rid of one wife and take up with another immediately, is beyond all reason. Celia was always perfectly civil to me. I had quite a liking for her, in a way. If you couldn’t be happy with her, why on earth should you expect to be happy with anyone else? Take my advice, my dear boy, and give up the whole idea.’
‘Why bring Julia and me into this?’ asked Rex. ‘If Celia wants to marry again, well and good; let her. That’s your business and hers. But I should have thought Julia and I were quite happy as we are. You can’t say I’ve been difficult. Lots of chaps would have cut up nasty. I hope I’m a man of the world. I’ve had my own fish to fry, too. But a divorce is a different thing altogether; I’ve never known a divorce do anyone any good.’
‘That’s your affair and Julia’s.’
‘Oh, Julia’s set on it. What I hoped was, you might be able to talk her round. I’ve tried to keep out of the way as much as I could; if I’ve been around too much, just tell me; I shan’t mind. But there’s too much going on altogether at the moment, what with Bridey wanting me to clear out of the house; it’s disturbing, and I’ve got a lot on my mind.’
Rex’s public life was approaching a climacteric. Things had not gone as smoothly with him as he had planned. I knew nothing of finance, but I heard it said that his dealings were badly looked on by orthodox Conservatives; even his good qualities of geniality and impetuosity counted against him, for his parties at Brideshead got talked about. There was always too much about him in the papers; he was one with the Press lords and their sad-eyed, smiling hangers-on; in his speeches he said the sort of thing which ‘made a story’ in Fleet Street, and that did him no good with his party chiefs; only war could put Rex’s fortunes right and carry him into power. A divorce would do him no great harm; it was rather that with a big bank running he could not look up from the table.
‘If Julia insists on a divorce, I suppose she must have it,’ he said. ‘But she couldn’t have chosen a worse time. Tell her to hang on a bit, Charles, there’s a good fellow.’
‘Bridey’s widow said: “So you’re divorcing one divorced man and marrying another. It sounds rather complicated, but my dear” — she called me “my dear” about twenty times — “I’ve usually found every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it’s often the nicest.”‘
Julia had just returned from a luncheon party given by Lady Rosscommon in honour of Brideshead’s engagement.
‘What’s she like?’
‘Majestic and voluptuous; common, of course; husky voice, big mouth, small eyes, dyed hair — I’ll tell you one thing, she’s lied to Bridey about her age. She’s a good forty-five. I don’t see her providing an heir. Bridey can’t take his eyes off her. He was gloating on
her in the most revolting way all through luncheon.’
‘Friendly?’
‘Goodness, yes, in a condescending way. You see, I imagine she’s been used to bossing things rather in naval circles, with flag-lieutenants trotting round and young officers on-the-make sucking up to her. Well, she clearly couldn’t do a great deal of bossing at Aunt Fanny’s, so it put her rather at ease to have me there as the black sheep. She concentrated on me in fact, asked my advice about shops and things, said, rather pointedly, she hoped to see me often in London. I think Bridey’s scruples only extend to her sleeping under the same roof with me. Apparently I can do her no serious harm in a hat-shop or hairdresser’s or lunching at the Ritz. The scruples are all on Bridey’s part, anyway; the widow is madly tough.’
‘Does she boss him?’
‘Not yet, much. He’s in an amorous stupor, poor beast, and doesn’t quite know where he is. She’s just a good-hearted woman who wants a good home for her children and isn’t going to let anything get in her way. She’s playing up the religious stuff at the moment for all it’s worth. I daresay she’ll go easier when she’s settled.’
The divorces were much talked of among our friends; even in that summer of general alarm there were still corners where private affairs commanded first attention. My wife was able to make it understood that the business was at the same time a matter of congratulation for her and reproach for me; that she had behaved wonderfully, had stood it longer than anyone but she would have done. Robin was seven years younger and a little immature for his age, they whispered in their private corners, but he was absolutely devoted to poor Celia, and really she deserved it after all she had been through. As for Julia and me, that was an old story. ‘To put it crudely,’ said my cousin Jasper, as though he had ever in his life put anything otherwise: ‘I don’t see why you bother to marry.’
Summer passed; delirious crowds cheered Neville Chamberlain’s return from Munich; Rex made a rabid speech in the House of Commons which sealed his fate one way or the other; sealed it, as is sometimes done with naval orders, to be opened later at sea. Julia’s family lawyers, whose black, tin boxes, painted ‘Marquis of Marchmain’, seemed to fill a room, began the slow process of her divorce; my own, brisker firm, two doors down, were weeks ahead with my affairs. It was necessary for Rex and Julia to separate formally, and since, for the time being, Brideshead was still her home, she remained there and Rex removed his trunks and valet to their house in London. Evidence was taken against Julia and me in my flat. A date was fixed for Brideshead’s wedding, early in the Christmas holidays, so that his future step-children might take part.