Brideshead Revisited(17)
‘So you see we mustn’t blame Sebastian if at times he seems a little insipid — but then you don’t blame him, do you, Charles? With that very murky background, what could he do except set up as being simple and charming, particularly as he isn’t very well endowed in the Top Storey. We couldn’t claim that for him, could we, much as we love him?
‘Tell me candidly, have you ever heard Sebastian say anything you have remembered for five minutes? You know, when I hear him talk, I am reminded of that in some ways nauseating picture of “Bubbles”. Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights ‘and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a second and then phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.’
And then Anthony spoke of the proper experiences of an artist, of the appreciation and criticism and stimulus he should expect from his friends, of the hazards he should take in the pursuit of emotion, of one thing and another while I fell drowsy and let my mind wander a little. So we drove home, but his words, as we swung over Magdalen Bridge, recalled the central theme of our dinner. ‘Well, my dear, I’ve no doubt that first thing tomorrow you’ll trot round to Sebastian and tell him everything I’ve said about him. And, I will tell you two things; one, that it will not make the slightest difference to Sebastian’s feeling for me and secondly, my dear — and I beg you to remember this though I have plainly bored you into condition of coma, — that he will immediately start talking about that amusing bear of his. Good night. Sleep innocently.’
But I slept ill. Within an hour of tumbling drowsily to bed I was awake again, thirsty, restless, hot and cold by turns, and unnaturally excited. I had drunk a lot, but neither the mixture nor the Chartreuse, nor the Mavrodaphne Trifle nor even the fact that I had sat immobile and almost silent throughout the evening instead of clearing the fumes, as we normally did, in puppyish romps and tumbles, explains the distress of that hag-ridden night. No dream distorted the images of the evening into horrific shapes. I lay awake and clearheaded. I repeated to myself Anthony’s words, catching his accent, soundlessly, and the stress and cadence of his speech, while under my closed lids I saw his pale, candle-lit face as it had fronted me across the dinner table. Once during the hours of darkness I brought to light the drawings in my sitting-room and sat at the open window, turning them over. Everything was black and dead-still in the quadrangle; only at the quarter-hours the bells awoke and sang over the gables. I drank soda-Water and smoked and fretted, until light began to break and the rustle of a rising breeze turned me back to my bed.
When I awoke Lunt was at the open door. ‘I let you lie,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be going to the Corporate Communion.’
‘You were quite right’
‘Most of the freshmen went and quite a few second and third year men. It’s all on account of the new chaplain. There was never Corporate Communion before just Holy Communion for those that wanted it and Chapel and Evening Chapel.’
It was the last Sunday of term; the last of the year. As I went to my bath, the quad filled with gowned and surpliced undergraduates drifting from chapel to hall. As I came back they standing in groups, smoking; Jasper had bicycled in from his digs to be among them.
I walked down the empty Broad to breakfast as I often did on Sundays at a teashop opposite Balliol. The air was full of bells from the surrounding spires and the sun, casting long shadows across the open spaces, dispelled the fears of night. The teashop was hushed as a library, a few solitary men in bedroom slippers from Balliol and Trinity looked up as I entered, then turned back to their Sunday newspapers. I ate my scrambled eggs and bitter marmalade with the zest which in youth follows a restless night. I lit a cigarette and sat on, while one by one the Balliol and Trinity men paid their bills and shuffled away, slip-slop, across the street to their colleges. It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk I heard the change-ringing cease and, all over the town, give place to the single chime which warned the city that service was about to start.
None but churchgoers seemed abroad that morning; undergraduates and graduates and wives and tradespeople, walking with that unmistakable English churchgoing pace which eschewed equally both haste and idle sauntering; holding, bound in black lambskin and white celluloid, the liturgics of half a dozen conflicting sects; on their way to St Barnabas, St Columba, St Aloysius, St Mary’s, Pusey House, Blackfriars, and heaven knows where besides; to restored Norman and revived Gothic, to travesties of Venice and Athens; all in the summer sunshine going to the temples of their race. Four proud infidels alone proclaimed their dissent, four Indians from the gates of Balliol, in freshly-laundered white flannels and neatly pressed blazers with snow-white turbans on their, heads, and in their plump, brown hands bright cushions, a picnic basket and the Unpleasant Plays of Bernard Shaw, making for the river.
In the Cornmarket a party of tourists stood on the steps of the Clarendon Hotel discussing a road map with their chauffeur, while opposite, through the venerable arch of the Golden Cross, I greeted a group of undergraduates from my college who had breakfasted there and now lingered with their pipes in the creeper-hung courtyard. A troop of boy scouts, church-bound, too, bright with Coloured ribbons and badges, loped past in unmilitary array, and at Carfax I met the Mayor and corporation, in scarlet gowns and gold chains, preceded by wand-bearers and followed by no curious glances, in procession to the preaching at the City Church. In St Aldates I passed a crocodile of choir boys, in starched collars and peculiar caps, on their way to Tom Gate and the Cathedral. So through a world of piety I made my way to Sebastian.