Brideshead Revisited(45)

‘Have you been doing that a lot,’ I asked, ‘drinking by yourself after I’ve gone?’

‘About twice; perhaps four times. It’s only when they start bothering me. I’d be all right if they’d only leave me alone.’

‘They won’t now,’ I said.

‘I know.’

We both knew that this was a crisis. I had no love for Sebastian that morning; he needed it, but I had none to give.

‘Really,’ I said, ‘if you are going to embark on a solitary bout of drinking every time you see a member of your family, it’s perfectly hopeless.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sebastian with great sadness. ‘I know. It’s hopeless.’

But my pride was stung because I had been made to look a liar and I could not respond to his need.

‘Well, what do you propose to do?’

‘I shan’t do anything. They’ll do it all.’

And I let him go without comfort.

Then the machinery began to move again, and I saw it all repeated as it had happened in December; Mr Samgrass and Mgr Bell saw the Dean of Christ Church; Brideshead came up for a night; the heavy wheels stirred and the small wheels spun. Everyone was exceedingly sorry for Lady Marchmain, whose brothers’ names stood in letters of gold on the war memorial, whose brothers’ memory was fresh in many breasts.

She came to see me and, again, I must reduce to a few words a conversation which took us from Holywell to the Parks, through Mesopotamia, and over the ferry to north Oxford, where she was staying the night with a houseful of nuns who were in some way under her protection.

‘You must believe,’ I said, ‘that when I told you Sebastian was not drinking, I was telling you the truth, as I knew it.’

‘I know you wish to be a good friend to him.’

‘That is not what I mean. I believed what I told you. I still believe it to some extent. I believe he has been drunk two or three times before, not more.’

‘It’s no good, Charles,’ she said. ‘All you can mean is that you have not as much influence or knowledge of him as I thought. It is no good either of us trying to believe him. I’ve known drunkards before. One of the most terrible things about them is their deceit. Love of truth is the first thing that goes.

‘After that happy luncheon together. When you left he was so sweet to me, just as he used to be as a little boy, and I agreed to all he wanted. You know I had been doubtful about his sharing rooms with you. I know you’ll understand me, when I say that. You know that we are all fond of you apart from your being Sebastian’s friend. We should miss you so much if you ever stopped coming to stay with us. But I want Sebastian to have all sorts of friends, not just one. Mgr Bell tells me he never mixes with the other Catholics, never goes to the Newman, very rarely goes to mass even. Heaven forbid that he should only know Catholics, but he must know some. It needs a very strong faith to stand entirely alone and Sebastian’s isn’t strong.

‘But I was so happy at luncheon on Tuesday that I gave up all my objections; I went round with him and saw the rooms you had chosen. They are charming. And we decided on some furniture you could have from London to make them nicer. And then, on the very night after I had seen him! — No Charles, it is not in the Logic of the Thing.’

As she said it I thought, ‘That’s a phrase she’s picked up from one of her intellectual hangers-on.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘have you a remedy?’

‘The college are being extraordinarily kind. They say they will not send him down provided he goes to live with Mgr Bell. It’s not a thing I could have suggested myself, but it was the Monsignor’s own idea. He specially sent a message to you to say how welcome you would always be. There’s not room for you actually in the Old Palace, but I daresay you wouldn’t want that yourself’

‘Lady Marchmain, if you want to make him a drunkard that’s the way to do it. Don’t you see that any idea of his being watched would be fatal?’

‘Oh, dear, it’s no good trying to explain. Protestants always think Catholic priests are spies.’

‘I don’t mean that.’ I tried to explain but made a poor business of it. ‘He must feel free.’

‘But he’s been free, always, up till now, and look at the result.’ We had reached the ferry; we had reached a deadlock. With scarcely another word I saw her to the convent, then took the bus back to Carfax.

Sebastian was in my rooms waiting for me. ‘I’m going to cable to papa,’ he said. ‘He won’t let them force me into this priest’s house.’

‘But if they make it a condition of your coming up?’

‘I shan’t come up. Can you imagine me — serving mass twice a week, helping at tea parties for shy Catholic freshmen, dining with the visiting lecturer at the Newman, drinking a glass of port when we have guests, with Mgr Bell’s eye on me to see I don’t get too much, being explained, when I was out of the room, as the rather embarrassing local inebriate who’s being taken in because his mother is so charming?’

‘I told her it wouldn’t do,’ I said.

‘Shall we get really drunk tonight?’

‘It’s the one time it could do no conceivable harm,’ I said.

‘Contra mundum?’

‘Contra mundum.’