Brideshead Revisited(29)

‘Must digest first,’ she said. ‘I’m not used to gorging like this at night. I’ll talk to Charles.’

‘“Charles?”‘ said Sebastian. ‘“Charles?”‘ “Mr Ryder” to you, child.’

‘Come on Charles.’

When we were alone: she said: ‘Are you really an agnostic?’

‘Does your family always talk about religion all the time?’

‘Not all the time. It’s a subject that just comes up naturally, doesn’t-it?’

‘Does it? It never has with me before.’

‘Then perhaps you are an agnostic. I’ll pray for you.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’

‘I can’t spare you a whole rosary you know. Just a decade. I’ve got such a long list of people. I take them in order and they get a decade about once a week.’

‘I’m sure it’s more than I deserve.’

‘Oh, I’ve got some harder cases than you. Lloyd George and the Kaiser and Olive Banks.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She was bunked from the convent last term. I don’t quite know what for. Reverend Mother found something she’d been writing. D’you know, if you weren’t an agnostic, I should ask you for five shillings to buy a black god-daughter.’

‘Nothing will surprise me about your religion.’

‘It’s a new thing a missionary priest started last term. You send five bob to some nuns in Africa and they christen a baby and name her after you. I’ve got six black Cordelias already. Isn’t it lovely?’

When Brideshead and Sebastian returned, Cordelia was sent to bed. Brideshead began again on our discussion.

‘Of course, you are right really,’ he said. ‘You take art as a means not as an end. That is strict theology, but it’s unusual to find an agnostic believing it.’

‘Cordelia has promised to pray for me,’ I said.

‘She made a novena I for her pig’ said Sebastian.

‘You know all this is very puzzling to me,’ I said.

‘I think we’re causing scandal, said Brideshead.

That night I began to realize how little I really knew of Sebastian, and to understand why he had always sought to keep me apart from the rest of his life. He was like a friend made on board ship, on the high seas; now we had come to his home port.



Brideshead and Cordelia went away; the tents were struck on the show ground, the flags uprooted; the trampled grass began to regain its colour; the month that had started in leisurely fashion came swiftly to its end. Sebastian walked without a stick now and had forgotten his injury.

‘I think you’d better come with me to Venice,’ he said.

‘No money.’

‘I thought of that. We live on papa when we get there. The lawyers pay my fare — first class and sleeper. We can both travel third for that.’

And so we went; first by the long, cheap sea-crossing to Dunkirk, sitting all night on deck under a clear sky, watching the grey dawn break over the sand dunes; then to Paris, on wooden seats, where we drove to the Lotti, had baths and shaved, lunched at Foyot’s, which was hot and half-empty, loitered sleepily among the shops, and sat long in a café waiting till the time of our train; then in the warm, dusty evening to the Gare de Lyon, to the slow train south, again the wooden seats, a carriage full of the poor, visiting their families — travelling, as the poor do in Northern countries, with a multitude of small bundles and an air of patient submission to authority — and sailors returning from leave. We slept fitfully, jolting and stopping, changed once in the night, slept again and awoke in an empty carriage, with pine woods passing the windows and the distant view of mountain peaks. New uniforms at the frontier, coffee and bread at the station buffet, people round us of Southern grace and gaiety; on again into the plains, conifers changing to vine and olive, a change of trains at Milan; garlic sausage, bread, and a flask of Orvieto bought from a trolley (we had spent all our money save for a few francs, in Paris); the sun mounted high and the country glowed with heat; the carriage filled with peasants, ebbing and flowing at each station, the smell of garlic was overwhelming in the hot carriage. At last in the evening we arrived at Venice.

A sombre figure was there to meet us. ‘Papa’s valet, Plender.’

‘I met the express,’ said Plender. ‘His Lordship thought you must have looked up the train wrong. This seemed only to come from Milan.’

‘We travelled third.’

Plender tittered politely. ‘I have the gondola here’. I shall follow with the luggage in the vaporetto. His Lordship had gone to the Lido. He was not sure he would be home before you — that was when we expected you on the Express. He should be there by now.’

He led us to the waiting boat. The gondoliers wore green and white livery and silver plaques on their chests; they smiled and bowed.

‘Palazzo. Pronto.’

‘Si, signore Plender.’

And we floated away.

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘No.’

‘I came once before — from the sea. This is the way to arrive.’

‘Ecco ci siamo, signori.’

The palace was a little less than it sounded, a narrow Palladian facade, mossy steps, a dark archway of rusticated stone. One boatman leapt ashore, made fast to the post, rang the bell; the other stood on the prow keeping the craft in to the steps. The doors opened; a man in rather raffish summer livery of striped linen led us up the stairs from shadow into light; the piano nobile was in full sunshine, ablaze with frescoes of the school of Tintoretto.