Brideshead Revisited(12)
‘Golly,’ I said.
‘It was papa’s wedding present to mama. Now, if you’ve seen enough, we’ll go.’
On the drive we passed a closed Rolls-Royce driven by a chauffeur; in the back was a vague, girlish figure who looked round at us through the window.
‘Julia,’ said Sebastian. ‘We only just got away in time.’
We stopped to speak to a man with a bicycle — ‘That was old Bat,’ said Sebastian — and then were away, past the wrought-iron gates, past the lodges, and out on the road heading back to Oxford.
‘I’m sorry said Sebastian after a time. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice this afternoon. Brideshead often has that effect on me. But I had to take you to see nanny.’
Why? I wondered; but said nothing — Sebastian’s life was governed by a code of such imperatives. ‘I must have pillar-box red pyjamas,’ ‘I have to stay in bed until the sun works round to the windows,’ ‘I’ve absolutely got to drink champagne tonight!’ — except, ‘It had quite the reverse effect on me.’
After a long pause he said petulantly, ‘I don’t keep asking you questions about your family.’
‘Neither do I about yours.’
‘But you look inquisitive.’
‘Well, you’re so mysterious about them.’
‘I hoped I was mysterious about ‘everything.’
‘Perhaps I am rather curious about people’s families — you see, it’s not a thing I know about. There is only my father and myself. An aunt kept an eye on me for a time but my father drove her abroad. My mother was killed in the war.’
‘Oh…how very unusual.’
‘She went to Serbia with the Red Cross. My father has been rather odd in the head ever since. He just lives alone in London with no friends and footles about collecting things.’
Sebastian said, ‘You don’t know what you’ve been saved. There are lots of us. Look them up in Debrett.’
His mood was lightening, now. The further we drove from Brideshead, the more he seemed to cast off his uneasiness — the almost furtive restlessness and irritability that had possessed him. The sun was behind us as we drove, so that we seemed to be in pursuit of our own shadows.
‘It’s half past five. We’ll get to Godstow in time for dinner, drink at the Trout, leave Hardcastle’s motorcar, and walk back by the river. Wouldn’t that be best?’
That is the full account of my first brief visit to Brideshead; could I have known then that it, would one day be remembered with tears by a middle-aged captain of infantry?
CHAPTER II
My cousin Jasper’s Grand Remonstrance — a warning against — Sunday morning in Oxford
TOWARDS the end of that summer term I received the last visit and Grand Remonstrance of my cousin Jasper. I was just free of the schools, having taken the last paper of History Previous on the afternoon before; Jasper’s subfusc suit and white tie proclaimed him still in the thick of it; he had, too, the exhausted but resentful air of one who fears he has failed to do himself full justice on the subject of Pindar’s Orphism. Duty alone had brought him to my rooms, that afternoon at great inconvenience to himself and, as it happened, to me, who, when he caught me in the door, was on my way to make final arrangements about a dinner I was giving that evening. It was one of several parties designed to comfort Hardcastle — one of the tasks that had lately fallen to Sebastian and me since, by leaving his car out, we had got him into grave trouble with the proctors.
Jasper would not sit down; this was to be no cosy chat; he stood with his back to the fireplace and, in his own phrase, talked to me ‘like an uncle’. ‘…I’ve tried to get in touch with you several times in the last week or two. In fact, I have the impression you are avoiding me. If that is so, Charles, I can’t say I’m surprised.
‘You may think it none of my business, but I feel a sense of responsibility. You know as well as I do that since your — well, since the war, your father has not been really in touch with things lives in his own world. I don’t want to sit back and see you making mistakes which a word in season might save you from.
‘I expected you to make mistakes your first year. We all do. I got in with some thoroughly objectionable O.S.C.U. men who ran a mission to hop-pickers during the long vac. But you, my dear Charles, whether you realize it or not, have gone straight, hook line and sinker, into the very worst set in the University. You may think that, living in digs, I don’t know what goes on in college; but I hear things. In fact, I hear all too much. I find that I’ve become a figure of mockery on your account at the Dining Club. There’s that chap Sebastian Flyte you seem inseparable from. He may be all right, I don’t know. His brother Brideshead was a very sound fellow. But this friend of yours looks odd to me and he gets himself talked about. Of course, they’re an odd family. The Marchmains have lived apart since the war, you know. An extraordinary thing; everyone thought they were a devoted couple. Then he went off to France with his Yeomanry and just never came, back. It was as if he’d been killed. She’s a Roman Catholic, so she can’t get a divorce — or won’t, I expect. You can do anything at Rome with money, and they’re enormously rich. Flyte, may be all right, but Anthony Blanche — now there’s a man there’s absolutely no excuse for.’