Brideshead Revisited(90)

He sat down opposite me and bowed his sparse, pink head over his plate.

‘Well, Bridey. What’s the news?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I have some news. But it can wait.’

‘Tell us now.’

He made a grimace which I took to mean ‘not in front of the servants’, and said, ‘How is the painting, Charles?’

‘Which painting?’

‘Whatever you have on the stocks.’

‘I began a sketch of Julia, but the light was tricky all today.’

‘Julia? I thought you’d done her before. I suppose it’s a change from architecture, and much more difficult.’

His conversation abounded in long pauses during which his mind seemed to remain motionless; he always brought one back with a start to the exact point where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: ‘The world is full of different subjects.’

‘Very true, Bridey.’

‘If I were a painter,’ he said, ‘I should choose an entirely different subject every time; subjects with plenty of action in them like…’ Another pause. What, I wondered was coming? The Flying Scotsman? The Charge of the Light Brigade? Henley Regatta? Then surprisingly he said: ‘…like Macbeth.’ There was something supremely preposterous in the idea of Bridey as a painter of action pictures; he was usually preposterous yet somehow achieved a certain dignity by his remoteness and agelessness; he was still half-child, already half-veteran; there seemed no spark of contemporary life in him; he had a kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to the world, which compelled respect. Though we often laughed at him, he was never wholly ridiculous; at times he was even formidable.

We talked of the news from central Europe until, suddenly cutting across this barren topic, Bridey asked: ‘Where are mummy’s jewels?’

‘This was hers,’ said Julia, ‘and this. Cordelia and I had all her own things. The family jewels went to the bank.’

‘It’s so long since I’ve seen them — I don’t know that I ever saw them all. What is there? Aren’t there some rather famous rubies, someone was telling me?’

‘Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don’t you remember? And there are the pearls — she always had those out. But most of it stayed in the bank year after year. There are some hideous diamond fenders, I remember, and a Victorian diamond collar no one could wear now. There’s a mass of good stones. Why?’

‘I’d like to have a look at them some day.’

‘I say, papa isn’t going to pop them, is he? He hasn’t got into debt again?’

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

Bridey was a slow and copious eater. Julia and I watched him between the candles. Presently he said: ‘If I was Rex’ — his mind seemed full of such suppositions: ‘If I was Archbishop of Westminster’, ‘If I was head of the Great Western Railway’, ‘If I was an actress’, as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted — ‘if I was Rex I should want to live in my constituency.’

‘Rex says it saves four days’ work a week not to.’

‘I’m so he’s not here. I have a little announcement to make.’

‘Bridey, don’t be so mysterious. Out with it.’

He made the grimace which seemed to mean ‘not before the servants.’

Later when port was on the table and we three were alone Julia said: ‘I’m not going till I hear the announcement.’

‘Well,’ said Bridey, sitting back in his chair and gazing fixedly at his glass. ‘You have only to wait until Monday to see it in black and white in the newspapers. I am engaged to be married. I hope you are pleased.’

‘Bridey. How…how very exciting! Who to?’

‘Oh, no one you know.’

‘Is she pretty?’

‘I don’t think you would exactly call her pretty; “comely” is the word I think of in her connection. She is a big woman.’

‘Fat?’

‘No, big. She is called Mrs Muspratt; her Christian name is Beryl. I have known her for a long time, but until last year she had a husband; now she is a widow. Why do you laugh?’

‘I’m sorry. It isn’t the least funny. It’s just so unexpected. Is she…is she about your own age?’

‘Just about, I believe. She has three children, the eldest boy has just gone to Ampleforth. She is not at all well off.’

‘But, Bridey, where did you find her?’

‘Her late husband, Admiral Muspratt, collected matchboxes he said with complete gravity.

Julia trembled on the verge of laughter, recovered her self-possession, and asked: ‘You’re not marrying her for her matchboxes?’

‘No, no; the whole collection was left to the Falmouth Town Library. I have a great affection for her. In spite of all her difficulties she is a very cheerful woman, very fond of acting. She is connected with the Catholic Players’ Guild.’

‘Does papa know?’

‘I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval. He has been urging me to marry for some time.’

It occurred both to Julia and myself simultaneously that we were allowing curiosity and surprise to predominate; now we congratulated him in gentler tones from which mockery was almost excluded.