Brideshead Revisited(27)

‘You started the subject. I was just getting interested.’

‘I’ll never mention it again…thirty-eight other cases were taken into consideration in sentencing her to six months — golly!’ But he did mention it again, some ten days later, as we were lying on the roof of the house, sunbathing and watching through a telescope the Agricultural Show which was in progress in the park below us. It was a modest two-day show serving the neighbouring parishes, and surviving more as a fair and social gathering than as a centre of serious competition. A ring was marked out in flags, and round it had been pitched half a dozen tents of varying size; there was a judges’ box and some pens for livestock; the largest marquee was for refreshments, and there the farmers congregated in numbers. Preparations had been going on for a week. ‘We shall have to hide,’ said Sebastian as the day approached. ‘My brother will be here. He’s a big part of the Agricultural Show.’ So we lay on the roof under the balustrade.

Brideshead came down by train in the morning and lunched with Colonel Fender, the agent. I met him for five minutes on his arrival. Anthony Blanche’s description was peculiarly apt; he had the Flyte face, carved by an Aztec. We could see him now, through the telescope, moving awkwardly among the tenants, stopping to greet the judges in their box, leaning over a pen gazing seriously at the cattle.

‘Queer fellow, my brother,’ said Sebastian.

‘He looks normal enough.’

‘Oh, but he’s not. If you only knew, he’s much the craziest of us, only it doesn’t come out at all. He’s all twisted inside. He wanted to be a priest, you know.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight from Stonyhurst. It was awful for mummy. She couldn’t exactly try and stop him, but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what people would have said — the eldest son; it’s not as if it had been me. And poor papa. The Church has been enough trouble to him without that happening. There was a frightful to do — monks and monsignori running round the house like mice, and Brideshead just sitting glum and talking about the will of God. He was the most upset, you see, when papa went abroad — much more than mummy really. Finally they persuaded him to go to Oxford and think it over for three years. Now he’s trying to make up his mind. He talks of going into the Guards and into the House of Commons and of marrying. He doesn’t know what he wants. I wonder if I should have been like that, if I’d gone to Stonyhurst. I should have gone, only papa went abroad before I was old enough, and the first thing he insisted on was my going to Eton.

‘Has your father given up religion?’

‘Well, he’s had to in a way; he only took to it when he married mummy. When he went off, he left that behind with the rest of us. You must meet him. He’s a very nice man.’

Sebastian had never spoken seriously of his father before.

I said: ‘It must have upset you all when your father went a way.’

‘All but Cordelia. She was too young. It upset me at the time. Mummy tried to explain it to the three eldest of us so that we wouldn’t hate papa. I was the only one who didn’t. I believe she wishes I did. I was always his favourite. I should be staying with him now, if it wasn’t for this foot. I’m the only one who goes. Why don’t you come too? You’d like him.’

A man with a megaphone was shouting the results of the last event in the field below; his voice came faintly to us.

‘So you see we’re a mixed family religiously. Brideshead and Cordelia are both fervent, Catholics; he’s miserable, she’s bird-happy; Julia and I are half-heathen; I am happy, I rather think Julia isn’t; mummy is popularly believed to be a saint and papa is excommunicated — and I wouldn’t know which of them was happy. Anyway, however you look at it, happiness doesn’t seem to have much to do with it, and that’s all I want I wish I liked Catholics more.’

‘They seem just like other people.’

‘My dear Charles, that’s exactly what they’re not particularly in this country, where they’re so few. It’s not just that they’re a clique — as a matter of fact, they’re at least four cliques all blackguarding each other half the time — but they’ve got an entirely different outlook on life; everything they think important is different from other people. They try and hide it as much as they can, but it comes out all the time. It’s quite natural, really, that they should. But you see it’s difficult for semi-heathens like Julia and me.’

We were interrupted in this unusually grave conversation by loud, childish cries from beyond the chimneystacks, ‘Sebastian, Sebastian.’

‘Good heavens!’ said Sebastian, reaching for a blanket. ‘That sounds like my sister Cordelia. Cover yourself up.’

‘Where are you?’

There came into view a robust child of ten or eleven; she had the unmistakable family characteristics, but had them ill-arranged in a frank and chubby plainness; two thick old fashioned pigtails hung down her back.

‘Go away, Cordelia. We’ve got no clothes on.’

‘Why? You’re quite decent. I guessed you were here. You didn’t know I was about, did you? I came down with Bridey and stopped to see Francis Xavier.’ (To me) ‘He’s my pig. Then we had lunch with Colonel Fender and then the show. Francis Xavier got a special mention. That beast Randal got first with a mangy animal. Darling Sebastian, I am pleased to see you again. How’s your poor foot?’