Brideshead Revisited(73)

Grateful words, but, alas, not true by a long chalk. My wife, who crossed to New York to meet me and saw the fruits of our separation displayed in my agent’s office, summed the thing up better by saying: ‘Of course, I can see they’re perfectly brilliant and really rather beautiful in a sinister way, but somehow I don’t feel they are quite you.’



In Europe my wife was sometimes taken for an American because of her dapper and jaunty way of dressing, and the curiously hygienic quality of her prettiness; in America she assumed an English softness and reticence. She arrived a day or two before me, and was on the pier when my ship docked.

‘It has been a long time,’ she said fondly when we met.

She had not joined the expedition; she explained to our friends that the country was unsuitable and she had her son at home. There was also a daughter now, she remarked, and it came back to me that there had been talk of this before I started, as an additional reason for her staying behind. There had been some mention of it, too, in her letters.

‘I don’t believe you read my letters,’ she said that night, when at last, late, after a dinner party and some hours at a cabaret, we found ourselves alone in our hotel bedroom.

‘Some went astray. I remember distinctly your telling me that the daffodils in the orchard were a dream, that the nursery-maid was a jewel, that the Regency four-poster was a find, but frankly I do not remember hearing that your new baby was called Caroline’. Why did you call it that?’

‘After Charles, of course.’

‘I made Bertha Van Halt godmother. I thought she was safe for a good present. What do you think she gave?’

‘Bertha Van Halt is a well-known trap. What?’

‘A fifteen shilling book-token. Now that Johnjohn has a companion —’

‘Who?’

‘Your son, darling. You haven’t forgotten him, too?’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said, ‘why do you call him that?’

‘It’s the name he invented for himself. Don’t you think it sweet? Now that Johnjohn has a companion I think we’d better not have any more for some time, don’t you?’

‘Just as you please.’

‘Johnjohn talks of you such a lot. He prays every night for your safe return.’

She talked in this way while she undressed with an effort to appear at ease; then she sat at the dressing table, ran a comb through her hair, and with her bare back towards me, looking at herself in the glass, said: ‘Shall I put my face to bed?’

It was a familiar phrase, one that I did not like; she meant should she remove her make-up, cover herself with grease and put her hair in a net.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not at once.’

Then she knew what was wanted. She had neat, hygienic ways for that too, but there were both relief and triumph in her smile of welcome; later we parted and lay in our twin beds a yard or two distant, smoking. I looked at my watch; it was four o’clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.

‘I don’t believe you’ve changed at all, Charles.’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘D’you want to change?’

‘It’s the only evidence of life.’

‘But you might change so that you didn’t love me any more.’

‘There is that risk.’

‘Charles, you haven’t stopped loving me.’

‘You said yourself I hadn’t changed.’

‘Well, I’m beginning to think you have. I haven’t.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘no; I can see that.’

‘Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?’

‘Not the least.’

‘You didn’t wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else in the meantime?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘You know I haven’t. Have you?’

‘No. I’m not in love.’

My wife seemed content with this answer. She had married me six years ago at the time of my first exhibition, and had done much since then to push our interests. People said she had ‘made’ me, but she herself took credit only for supplying me with a congenial background; she had firm faith in my genius and in the ‘artistic temperament’, and in the principle that things done on the sly are not really done at all.

Presently she said: ‘Looking forward to getting home?’ (My father gave me as a wedding present the price of a house, and I bought an. old rectory in my wife’s part of the country.) ‘I’ve got a surprise for you.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve turned the old barn into a studio for you, so that you needn’t be disturbed by the children or when we have people to stay. I got Emden to do it. Everyone thinks it a great success. There was an article on it in Country Life; I bought it for you to see.’

She showed me the article: ‘…happy example of architectural good manners…Sir Joseph Emden’s tactful adaptation of traditional material to modern needs…’; there were some photographs; wide oak boards now covered the earthen floor; a high, stone-mullioned bay-window had been built in the north wall, and the great timbered roof, which before had been lost in shadow, now stood out stark, well lit, with clean white plaster between the beams; it looked like a village hall. I remembered the smell of the place, which would now be lost.