Brideshead Revisited(79)

‘This is where I say good night to you all,’ said the diplomat’s wife, rising.

Her husband led her to their cabin. The dining-room was emptying fast. Soon only Julia, my wife, and I were left at the table, and, telepathically, Julia said, ‘Like King Lear.’

‘Only each of us is all three of them.’

‘What can you mean?’ asked my wife.

‘Lear, Kent, Fool.’

‘Oh dear, it’s like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again. Don’t try and explain.’

‘I doubt if I could,’ I said.

Another climb, another vast drop. The stewards were at work making things fast, shutting things up, hustling away unstable ornaments.

‘Well, we’ve finished dinner and set a fine example of British phlegm,’ said my wife. ‘Let’s go and see what’s on.’

Once, on our way to the lounge, we had all three to cling to a pillar; when we got there we found it almost deserted; the band played but no one danced; the tables were set for tombola but no one bought a card, and the ship’s officer, who made a speciality of calling the numbers with all the patter of the lower deck — ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed — key of the door, twenty-one — clickety-click, sixty-six’ — was idly talking to his colleagues; there were a score of scattered novel readers, a few games of bridge, some brandy drinking in the smoking-room, but all our guests of two hours before had disappeared.

The three of us sat for a little by the empty dance floor — my wife was full of schemes by which, without impoliteness, we could move to another table in the dining-room. ‘It’s crazy to go to the restaurant,’ she said, ‘and pay extra for exactly the same dinner. Only film people go there, anyway. I don’t see why we should be made to.’

Presently she said: ‘It’s making my head ache and I’m tired, anyway. I’m going to bed.’

Julia went with her. I walked round the ship, on one of the covered decks where the wind howled and the spray leaped up from the darkness and smashed white and brown against the glass screen; men were posted to keep the passengers off the open decks. Then I, too, went below.

In my dressing-room everything breakable had been stowed away, the door to the cabin was hooked open, and my wife called plaintively from within.

‘I feel terrible. I didn’t know a ship of this size could pitch like this, she said, and her eyes were full of consternation and resentment, like those of a woman who, at the end of her time, at length realizes that however luxurious the nursing home, and however well paid the doctor, her labour is inevitable; and the lift and fall of the ship came regularly as the pains of childbirth.

I slept next door; or, rather, I lay there between dreaming and waking. In a narrow bunk, on a hard mattress, there might have been rest, but here the beds were broad and buoyant; I collected what cushions I could find and tried to wedge myself firm, but through the night I turned with each swing and twist of the ship — she was rolling now as well as pitching — and my head rang with the creak and thud.

Once, an hour before dawn, my wife appeared like a ghost in the doorway, supporting herself with either hand on the jambs, saying: ‘Are you awake? Can’t you do something? Can’t you get something from the doctor?’

I rang for the night steward, who had a draught ready prepared, which comforted her a little.

And all night between dreaming and waking I thought of Julia; in my brief dreams she took a hundred fantastic and terrible and obscene forms, but in my waking thoughts she returned with her sad, starry head just as I had seen her at dinner.



After first light I slept for an hour or two, then awoke clearheaded, with a joyous sense of anticipation.

The wind had dropped a little, the steward told me, but was still blowing hard and there was a very heavy swell; ‘which there’s nothing worse than a heavy swell’, he said, ‘for the enjoyment of the passengers. There’s not many breakfasts wanted this morning.’

I looked in at my wife, found her sleeping, and closed the door between us; then I ate salmon kedgeree and cold Bradenham ham and telephoned for a barber to come and shave me.

‘There’s a lot of stuff in the sitting-room for the lady,’ said the steward; ‘shall I leave it for the time?’

I went to see. There was a second delivery of cellophane parcels from the shops on board, some ordered by radio from friends in New York whose secretaries had failed to remind them of our departure in time, some by our guests as they left the cocktail party. It was no day for flower vases; I told him to leave them on the floor and then, struck by the thought, removed the card from Mr Kramm’s roses and sent them with my love to Julia.

She telephoned while I was being shaved.

‘What a deplorable thing to do, Charles! How unlike you!’

‘Don’t you like them?’

‘What can I do with roses on a day like this?’

‘Smell them.’

There was a pause and a rustle of unpacking. ‘They’ve absolutely no smell at all.’

‘What have you had for breakfast?’

‘Muscat grapes and cantaloupe’

‘When shall I see you?’

‘Before lunch. I’m busy till then with a masseuse.’

‘A masseuse?’

‘Yes, isn’t it peculiar? I’ve never had one before, except once when I hurt my shoulder hunting. What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave like a film star?’