Brideshead Revisited(23)

‘You’re Mr Ryder? Jump in.’ Her voice was Sebastian’s and his her, way of speaking.

‘How is he?’

‘Sebastian? Oh, he’s fine. Have you had dinner? Well, I expect it was beastly. There’s some more at home. Sebastian and I are alone, so we thought we’d wait for you.’

‘What’s happened to him?’

‘Didn’t he say? I expect he thought you wouldn’t come if you knew. He’s cracked a bone in his ankle so small that it hasn’t a name. But they X-rayed it yesterday, and told him to keep it up for a month. It’s a great bore to him, putting out all his plans; he’s been making the most enormous fuss…Everyone else has gone. He tried to make me stay back with him. Well, I expect you know how maddeningly pathetic he can be. I almost gave in, and then I said: “Surely there must be someone you can get hold of,” and he said everybody was away or busy and, anyway, no one else would do. But at last he agreed to try you, and I promised I’d stay if you failed him, so you can imagine how popular you are with me. I must say it’s noble of you to come all this way at a moment’s notice.’ But as she said it, I heard, or thought I heard, a tiny note of contempt in her voice that I should be so readily available.

‘How did he do it?’

‘Believe it or not, playing croquet. He lost his temper and tripped over a hoop. Not a very honourable scar.’

She so much resembled Sebastian that, sitting beside her in the gathering dusk, I was confused by the double illusion of familiarity and strangeness. Thus, looking through strong lenses, one may watch a man approaching from afar, study every detail of his face and clothes, believe one has only to put out a hand to touch him marvel that he does not hear one and look up as one moves, and then, seeing him with the naked eye, suddenly remember that one is to him a distant speck, doubtfully human. I knew her and she did not know me. Her dark hair was scarcely longer than Sebastian’s, and it blew back from her forehead as his did; her eyes on the darkling road were his, but larger; her painted mouth was less friendly to the world. She wore a bangle of charms on her wrist and in her ears little gold rings. Her light coat revealed an inch or two of flowered silk; skirts were short in those days, and her legs, stretched forward to the controls of the car, were spindly, as was also the fashion. Because her sex was the palpable difference between the familiar and the strange it seemed to fill the space between us, so that I felt her to be especially female, as I had felt of no woman before.

‘I’m terrified of driving at this time of the evening,’ she said. ‘There doesn’t seem anyone left at home who can drive a car. Sebastian and I are practically camping out here. I hope you haven’t come expecting a pompous party.’ She leaned forward to the locker for a box of cigarettes.

‘No thanks.’

‘Light one for me, will you?’

It was, the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers, I caught a thin bat’s squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me.

‘Thanks. You’ve been here before. Nanny reported it. We both thought it very odd of you not to stay to tea with me.’

‘That was Sebastian.’

‘You seem to let him boss you about a good deal. You shouldn’t. It’s very bad for him.’

We had turned the corner of the drive now; the colour had died in the woods and sky, and the house seemed painted in grisaille, save for the central golden square at the open doors. A man was waiting to take my luggage.

‘Here we are.’

She led me up the steps and into the hall, flung her coat on a marble table, and stooped to fondle a dog which came to greet her. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Sebastian to have started dinner.’

At that moment he appeared between the pillars at the further end, propelling himself in a wheel-chair. He was in pyjamas and dressing-gown, with one foot heavily bandaged.

‘Well, darling, I have collected your chum,’ she said, again with a barely perceptible note of contempt.

‘I thought you were dying,’ I said, conscious then, as I had been ever since I arrived, of the predominating emotion of vexation, rather than of relief, that I had been bilked of my expectations of a grand tragedy.

‘I thought I was, too. The pain was excruciating. Julia, do you think, if you asked him, Wilcox would give us champagne tonight?’

‘I hate champagne and Mr Ryder has had dinner.’

‘Mister Ryder? Mister Ryder? Charles drinks champagne at all hours. Do you know, seeing this great swaddled foot of mine, I can’t get it out of my mind that I have gout, and that gives me a craving for champagne.’

We dined in a room they called ‘the Painted Parlour’. It was a spacious octagon, later in design than the rest of the house its walls, were adorned with wreathed medallions and across its dome prim Pompeian figures stood pastoral groups. They and the satinwood and ormolu furniture, the carpet, the hanging bronze candelabrum, the mirrors and sconces, were all a single composition, the design of one illustrious hand. ‘We usually eat here when we’re alone,’ said Sebastian, ‘it’s so cosy.’

While they dined I ate a peach and told them of the war with my father.

‘He sounds a perfect poppet,’ said Julia. ‘And now I’m going to leave you boys.’

‘Where are you off to?’