Brideshead Revisited(89)
‘Yes, two Christmases…And the three days, of good taste before I followed you to Capri.’
‘Our first summer.’
‘Do you remember how I hung about Naples, then followed, how we met by arrangement on the hill path and how flat it fell?’
‘I went back to the villa and said, “Papa, who do you think has arrived at the hotel?” and he said, “Charles Ryder, I suppose.” I said, “Why did you think of him?” and papa replied, “Cara came back from Paris with the news that you and he were inseparable. He seems to have a penchant for my children. However, bring him here; I think we have the room.”
‘There was the time you had jaundice and wouldn’t let me see you.’
‘And when I had flu and you were afraid to come.’
‘Countless visits to Rex’s constituency.’
‘And Coronation Week, when you ran away from London. Your goodwill mission to your father-in-law. The time you went to Oxford to paint the picture they didn’t like. Oh, yes, quite a hundred days.’
‘A hundred days wasted out of two years and a bit…not a day’s coldness or mistrust or disappointment.’
‘Never that.’
We fell silent; only the birds spoke in a multitude of small, clear voices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among their carved stones.
Julia took the handkerchief from my breast pocket and dried her hand; then lit a cigarette. I feared to break the spell of memories, but for once our thoughts had not kept pace together, for when at length Julia spoke, she said sadly: ‘How many more? Another hundred?’
‘A lifetime.’
‘I want to marry you, Charles.’
‘One day; why now?’
‘War,’ she said, ‘this year, next year, sometime soon. I want a day or two with you of real peace.’
‘Isn’t this peace?’
The sun had sunk now to the line of woodland beyond the valley; all the opposing slope was already in twilight, but the lakes below us were aflame; the light grew in strength and splendour as it neared death, drawing long shadows across the pasture, falling full on the rich stone spaces of the house, firing the panes in the windows, glowing on cornices and colonnade and dome, spreading out all the stacked merchandise of colour and scent from earth and stone and leaf, glorifying the head and golden shoulders of the woman beside me.
‘What do you mean by “peace”, if not this?’
‘So much more’; and then in a chill, matter-of-fact tone she continued: ‘Marriage isn’t a thing we can take when the impulse moves us. There must be a divorce — two divorces. We must make plans.’
‘Plans, divorce, war — on an evening like this.’
‘Sometimes said Julia, ‘I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all.’ Then Wilcox came down the steps into the sunset to tell us that dinner was ready.
Shutters were up, curtains drawn, candles lit, in the Painted Parlour.
‘Hullo, it’s laid for three,’
‘Lord Brideshead arrived half an hour ago, my lady. He sent a message would you please not wait dinner for him as he may be a little late.’
‘It seems months since he was here last,’ said Julia. ‘What does he do in London?’
It was often a matter for speculation between us — giving birth to many fantasies, for Bridey was a mystery; a creature from underground; a hard-snouted, burrowing, hibernating animal who shunned the light. He had been completely without action in all his years of adult life; the talk of his going into the army and into parliament and into a monastery, had all come to nothing. All that he was known with certainty to have done and this because in a season of scant news it had formed the subject of a newspaper article entitled ‘Peer’s Unusual Hobby’ — was to form a collection of matchboxes; he kept them mounted on boards, card-indexed, yearly occupying a larger and larger space in his small house in Westminster. At first he was bashful about the notoriety which the newspaper caused, but later greatly pleased, for he found it the means of his getting into touch with other collectors in all parts of the world with whom he now corresponded and swapped duplicates. Other than this he was not known to have any interests. He remained joint Master of the Marchmain and hunted with them dutifully on their two days a week when he was at home; he never hunted with the neighbouring pack, who had the better country. He had no real zest for sport, and had not been out a dozen times that season; he had few friends; he visited his aunts; he went to public dinners held in the Catholic interest. At Brideshead he performed all unavoidable local duties, bringing with him to platform and fête and committee room his own thin mist of clumsiness and aloofness. ‘There was a girl found strangled with a piece of barbed wire at Wandsworth last week,’ I said, reviving an old fantasy.
‘That must be Bridey. He is naughty.’
When we had been a quarter of an hour at the table, he joined us, coming ponderously into the room in the bottle-green velvet smoking suit which he kept at Brideshead and always wore when he was there. At thirty-eight he had grown heavy and bald, and might have been taken for forty-five.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, only you two; I hoped to find Rex here.’ I often wondered what he made of me and of my continual presence; he seemed to accept me, without curiosity, as one of the household. Twice in the past two years he had surprised me by what seemed to be acts of friendship; that Christmas he had sent me a photograph of himself in the robes of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards asked me to go with him to a dining club. Both acts had an explanation: he had had more copies of his portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he was proud of his club. It was a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery; each had his sobriquet Bridey was called ‘Brother Grandee’ — and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches were made. There was plainly some competition to bring guests of distinction and since Bridey had few friends, and since I was tolerably well known, I was invited. Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which, he floated with log-like calm.