Brideshead Revisited(102)
‘Matchboxes,’ he said. ‘Matchboxes. I think she’s past childbearing.’
Tea was brought us at the hall fireplace.
‘In Italy,’ he said, ‘no one believes there will be a war. They think it will all be “arranged”. I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access to political information? Cara, here, is fortunately a British subject by marriage. It is not a thing she customarily mentions, but it may prove valuable. She is legally Mrs Hicks, are you not, my dear? We know little of Hicks, but we shall be grateful to him, none the less, if it comes to war. And you,’ he said, turning the attack to me, ‘you will no doubt become an official artist?’
‘No. As a matter of fact I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve.’
‘Oh, but you should be an artist. I had one with my squadron during the last war, for weeks — until we went up to the line.’ This waspishness was new. I had always been aware of a frame of malevolence under his urbanity; now it protruded like his own sharp bones through the sunken skin.
It was dark before the bed was finished; we went to see it, Lord Marchmain stepping quite briskly now through the intervening rooms.
‘I congratulate you. It really looks remarkably well. Wilcox, I seem to remember a silver basin and ewer — they stood in a room we called “the Cardinal’s dressing-room”, I think — suppose we had them here on the console. Then if you will send Plender and Gaston to me, the luggage can wait till tomorrow — simply the dressing case and what I need for the night. Plender will know. If you will leave me with Plender and Gaston, I will go to bed. We will meet later; you will dine here and keep me amused.’
We turned to go; as I was at the door he called me back.
‘It looks very well, does it not?’
‘Very well.’
‘You might paint it, eh — and call it the Death Bed?’
‘Yes,’ said Cara, ‘he has come home to die.’
‘But when he first arrived he was talking so confidently of recovery.
‘That was because he was so ill. When he is himself, he knows he is dying and accepts it. His sickness is up and down, one day, sometimes for several days on end, he is strong and lively and then he is ready for death, then he is down and afraid. I do not know how it will be when he is more and more down. That must come in good time. The doctors in Rome gave him less than a year. There is someone coming from London, I think tomorrow, who will tell us more.’
‘What is it?’
‘His heart; some long word at the heart. He is dying of a long word.’
That evening Lord Marchmain was in good spirits; the room had a Hogarthian aspect, with the dinner-table set for the four of us by the grotesque, chinoiserie chimney-piece, and the old man propped among his pillows, sipping champagne, tasting, praising, and failing to eat, the succession of dishes which had been prepared for his homecoming. Wilcox had brought out for the occasion the gold plate, which I had not before seen in use; that, the gilt mirrors, and the lacquer and the drapery of the great bed and Julia’s mandarin coat gave the scene an air of pantomime, of Aladdin’s cave.
Just at the end, when the time came for us to go, his spirits flagged.
‘I shall not sleep,’ he said. ‘Who is going to sit with me? Cara, carissima, you are fatigued. Cordelia, will you watch for an hour in this Gethsemane?’
Next morning I asked her how the night had passed.
‘He went to sleep almost at once. I came in to see him at two to make up the fire; the lights were on, but he was asleep again. He must have woken up and turned them on; he had to get out of bed to do that. I think perhaps he is afraid of the dark.’
It was natural, with her hospital experience, that Cordelia should take charge of her father. When the doctors came that day they gave their instructions to her, instinctively.
‘Until he gets worse,’ she said, ‘I and the valet can look after him. We don’t want nurses in the house before they are needed.’ At this stage the doctors had nothing to recommend except to keep him comfortable and administer certain drugs when his attacks came on.
‘How long will it be?’
‘Lady Cordelia, there are men walking about in hearty old age whom their doctors gave a week to live. I have learned one thing in medicine; never prophesy.’
These two men had made a long journey to tell her this; the local doctor was there to accept the same advice in technical phrases.
That night Lord Marchmain reverted to the topic of his new daughter-in-law; it had never been long out of his mind, finding expression in various sly hints throughout the day; now he lay back in his pillows and talked of her at length.
‘I have never been much moved by family piety until now,’ he said, ‘but I am frankly appalled at the prospect of — of Beryl taking what was once my mother’s place in this house. Why should that uncouth pair sit here childless while the place crumbles about their ears? I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.
‘Perhaps it was unfortunate that we met in Rome. Anywhere else might have been more sympathetic. And yet, if one comes to consider it, where could I have met her without repugnance? We dined at Ranieri’s; it is a quiet little restaurant I have frequented for years — no doubt you know it. Beryl seemed to fill the place. I, of course, was host, though to hear Beryl press my son with food you might have thought otherwise. Brideshead was always a greedy boy a wife who has his best interests at heart should seek to restrain him. However, that is a matter of small importance.