Brideshead Revisited(49)

I lay in the bath and then dried slowly by the fire, thinking all the time of my friend’s black homecoming. Then I put on my dressing gown and went to Sebastian’s room, entering, as I always did, without knocking. He was sitting by his fire half-dressed, and he started angrily when he heard me and put down a tooth glass.

‘Oh, it’s you. You gave me a fright.’

‘So you got a drink,’ I said.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to pretend with me! ‘You might offer me some.’

‘It’s just something I had in my flask. I’ve finished it now.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing. A lot. I’ll tell you some time.’

I dressed and called in for Sebastian, but found him still sitting as I had left him, half-dressed over his fire.

Julia was alone in the drawing-room.

‘Well,’ I asked, ‘what’s going on?’

‘Oh, just another boring family potin. Sebastian got tight again, so we’ve all got to keep an eye on him. It’s too tedious.’

‘It’s pretty boring for him, too.’

‘Well, it’s his fault. Why can’t he behave like anyone else? Talking of keeping an eye on people) what about Mr Samgrass? Charles, do you notice anything at all fishy about that man?’

‘Very fishy. Do you think your mother saw it?’

‘Mummy only sees what suits her. She can’t have the whole household under surveillance. I’m causing anxiety, too, you know.’

‘I didn’t know’ I said, adding humbly, ‘I’ve only just come from Paris.’ so as to avoid giving the impression that any trouble she might be in was not widely notorious.

It was an evening of peculiar gloom. We dined in the Painted Parlour. Sebastian was late, and so painfully excited were we that I think it was in all our minds that he would make some sort of low-comedy entrance, reeling and hiccuping. When he came it was, of course, with perfect propriety; he apologized, sat in the empty place, and allowed Mr Samgrass to resume his monologue, uninterrupted and, it seemed, unheard. Druses, patriarchs, icons, bed-bugs, Romanesque remains, curious dishes of goat and sheeps’ eyes, French and Turkish officials all the catalogue of Near Eastern travel was provided for our amusement.

I watched the champagne go round the table. When it came to Sebastian he said: ‘I’ll have whisky, please,’ and I saw Wilcox glance over his head to Lady Marchmain and saw her give a tiny, hardly perceptible nod. At Brideshead they used small individual spirit decanters which held about a quarter of a bottle, and were always placed, full, before anyone who asked for it; the decanter which Wilcox put before Sebastian was half-empty. Sebastian raised it very deliberately, tilted it, looked at it, and then in silence poured the liquor into his glass, where it covered two fingers. We all began talking at once, all except Sebastian, so that for a moment Mr Samgrass found himself talking to no one, telling the candlesticks about the Maronites; but soon we fell silent again, and he had the table until Lady Marchmain and Julia left the room.

‘Don’t be long, Bridey,’ she said, at the door, as she always said, and that evening we had no inclination to delay. Our glasses were filled with port and the decanter was at once taken from the room. We drank quickly and went to the drawing-room, where Brideshead asked his mother to read, and she read The Diary of a Nobody with great spirit until ten o’clock, when she closed the book and said she was unaccountably tired, so tired that she would not visit the chapel that night.

‘Who’s hunting tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘Cordelia,’ said Brideshead. ‘I’m taking that young horse of Julia’s, just to show him the hounds; I shan’t keep him out more than a couple of hours.’

‘Rex is arriving some time,’ said Julia. ‘I’d better stay in to greet him.’

‘Where’s the meet?’ said Sebastian suddenly.

‘Just here at Flyte St Mary.’

‘Then I’d like to hunt, please, if there’s anything for me.’

‘Of course. That’s delightful. I’d have asked you, only you always used to complain so of being made to go out. You can have Tinkerbell. She’s been going very nicely this season.’

Everyone was suddenly pleased that Sebastian wanted to hunt; it seemed to undo some of the mischief of the evening. Brideshead rang the bell for whisky.

‘Anyone else want any?’

‘Bring me some, too,’ said Sebastian, and, though it was a footman this time and not Wilcox, I saw the same exchange of glance and nod between the servant and Lady Marchmain. Everyone had been warned. The two drinks were brought in, poured out already in the glasses, like ‘doubles’ at a bar, and all our eyes followed the tray, as though we were dogs in a dining-room smelling game.

The good humour engendered by Sebastian’s wish to hunt persisted, however; Brideshead wrote out a note for the stables, and we all went to bed quite cheerfully.

Sebastian got straight to bed; I sat by his fire and smoked a pipe. I said: ‘I rather wish I was coming out with you tomorrow.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t see much sport. I can tell you exactly what I’m going to do. I shall leave Bridey at the first covert, hack over to the nearest good pub, and spend the entire day quietly soaking in the bar parlour. If they treat me like a dipsomaniac, they can bloody well have a dipsomaniac. I hate hunting, anyway.’