Brideshead Revisited(19)

Dinner was announced. My father from long habit took a book with him to the table and then, remembering my presence, furtively dropped it under his chair. ‘What do you like to drink? Hayter, what have we for Mr Charles to drink?’

‘There’s some whisky.’

‘There’s whisky. Perhaps you like something, else? What else have we?’

‘There isn’t anything else in the house, sir.’

‘There’s nothing else. You must tell Hayter what you would like and he will get it in. I never keep any wine now. I am forbidden it and no one comes to see me. But while you are here, you must have what you like. You are here for long.?’

‘I’m not quite sure, father.’

‘It’s a very long vacation,’ he said wistfully. ‘In my day we used to go on what were called reading parties, always in mountainous areas. Why?. Why,’ he repeated petulantly, ‘should alpine scenery be thought conducive to study?’

‘I thought of putting in some time at an art school — in the life class.’

‘My dear boy, you’ll find them all shut. The students go to Barbizon or such places and paint in the open air. There was an institution in my day called a “sketching club”‘ — mixed sexes’ (snuffle), ‘bicycles’ (snuffle), ‘pepper-and-salt knickerbockers, holland umbrellas, and, it was popularly thought, free love’ (snuffle), such a lot of nonsense. I expect they still go on. You might try that.’

‘One of the problems of the vacation is money, father.’

‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about a thing like that at your age.’

‘You see, I’ve run rather short.’

‘Yes?’ said my father without any sound of interest.

‘In fact I don’t quite know how I’m going to get through the next two months.’

‘Well, I’m the worst person to come to for advice. I’ve never been “short” as you so painfully call it. And yet what else could you say? Hard up? Penurious? Distressed? Embarrassed? Stony-broke?’ (snuffle). ‘On the rocks? In Queer Street? Let us say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that. Your grandfather once said to me, “Live within your means, but if you do get into difficulties, come to me. Don’t go to the Jews.” Such a lot of nonsense. You try. Go to those gentlemen in Jermyn Street who offer advances on note of hand only. My dear boy, they won’t give you a sovereign.’

‘Then what do you suggest my doing?’

‘Your cousin Melchior was imprudent with his investments and got into a very queer street. He went to Australia.’

I had not seen my father so gleeful since he found two pages of second-century papyrus between the leaves of a Lombardic breviary.

‘Hayter, I’ve dropped my book.’

It was recovered for him from under his feet and propped against the epergne. For the rest of dinner he was silent save for an occasional snuffle of merriment which could not, I thought be provoked by the work he read.

Presently we left the table and sat in I the garden-room; and there, plainly, he put me out of his mind; his thoughts, I knew, were far away, in those distant ages where he moved at ease, where time passed in centuries and all the figures were defaced and the names of his companions were corrupt readings of words of quite other meaning. He sat in an attitude which to anyone else would have been one of extreme discomfort, askew in his upright armchair, with his book held high and obliquely to the light. Now and then he took a gold pencil-case from his watchchain and made an entry in the margin. The windows were open to the summer night; the ticking of the clocks, the distant murmur of traffic on the Bayswater Road, and my-father’s regular turning of the pages were the only sounds. I had thought it impolitic to smoke a cigar while pleading poverty; now in desperation I went to my room and fetched one. My father did not look up. I pierced it, lit it, and with renewed confidence said, ‘Father, you surely don’t want me to spend the whole vacation here with you?’

‘Eh?’

‘Won’t you find it rather a bore having me at home for so long?’

‘I trust I should not betray such an emotion even if I felt it, said my father mildly and turned back to his book.

The evening passed. Eventually all over the room clocks of diverse pattern musically chimed eleven. My, father closed his book and removed his spectacles. ‘You are very welcome, my dear boy,’ he said. ‘Stay as long as you find it convenient.’ At the door he paused and turned back. ‘Your cousin Melchior worked his passage to Australia before the mast.’ (Snuffle.) ‘What, I wonder, is “before the mast”?’



During the sultry week that followed, my relations with my father deteriorated sharply. I saw little of him during the day; he spent hours on end in the library; now and then he emerged and I would hear him calling over the banisters: ‘Hayter, get me a cab.’ Then he would be away, sometimes for half an hour or less, sometimes a whole day; his errands were never explained. Often I saw trays going up to him at odd hours, laden with meagre nursery snacks — rusks, glasses of milk, bananas, and so forth. If we met in a passage or on the stairs he would look at me vacantly and say ‘Ah-ha,’ or ‘Very warm,’ or ‘Splendid, splendid,’ but in the evening, when he came to the garden-room in his velvet smoking suit, he always greeted me formally.