Brideshead Revisited(93)

‘Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me.’

‘He’s gone back to the Church, you know. Of course, he never left it as definitely as I did. I’ve gone too far; there’s no turning back now; I know that, if that’s what you mean by thinking it all bosh. All I can hope to do is to put my life in some sort of order in a human way, before all human order comes to an end. That’s why I want to marry you. I should like to have a child. That’s one thing I can do…Let’s go out again. The moon should be up by now.’

The moon was full and high. We walked round the house; under the limes Julia paused and idly snapped off one of the long shoots, last year’s growth, that fringed their boles, and stripped it as she walked, making a switch, as children do, but with petulant movements that were not a child’s, snatching nervously at the leaves and crumbling them between her fingers; she began peeling the bark, scratching it with her nails.

Once more we stood by the fountain.

‘It’s like the setting of a comedy,’ I said. ‘Scene: a Baroque fountain in a nobleman’s grounds. Act one, sunset; act two, dusk; act three, moonlight. The characters keep assembling at the fountain for no very clear reason.’

‘Comedy?’

‘Drama. Tragedy. Farce. What you will. This is the reconciliation scene.’

‘Was there a quarrel?’

‘Estrangement and misunderstanding in act two.’

‘Oh, don’t talk in that damned bounderish way. Why must you see everything second-hand? Why must this be a play? Why must my conscience be a Pre-Raphaelite picture?’

‘It’s a way I have.’

‘I hate it.’

Her anger was as unexpected as every change on this evening of swift veering moods. Suddenly she cut me across the face with her switch, a vicious, stinging little blow as hard as she could strike.

‘Now do you see how I hate it?’

She hit me again.

‘All right,’ I said ‘go on.’

Then, though her hand was raised, she stopped and threw the half-peeled wand into the water, where it floated white and black in the moonlight.

‘Did that hurt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did it?…Did I?’

In the instant her rage was gone; her tears, newly flowing, were on my cheek. I held her at arm’s length and she put down her head, stroking my hand on her shoulder with her face, catlike, but, unlike a cat, leaving a tear there.

‘Cat on the roof-top,’ I said.

‘Beast!’

She bit at my hand, but when I did not move it and her teeth touched me, she changed the bite to a kiss, the kiss to a lick of her tongue.

‘Cat in the moonlight.’

This was the mood I knew. We turned towards the house. When we came to the lighted hall she said: ‘Your poor face,’ touching the weals with her fingers. ‘Will there be a mark tomorrow?’

‘I expect so.’

‘Charles, am I going crazy? What’s happened tonight? I’m so tired.’

She yawned; a fit of yawning took her. She sat at her dressing table, head bowed, hair over her face, yawning helplessly; when she looked up I saw over her shoulder in the glass a face that was dazed with weariness like a retreating soldier’s, and beside it my own, streaked with two crimson lines.

‘So tired,’ she repeated,, taking off her gold tunic and letting it fall to the floor, ‘tired and crazy and good for nothing.’

I saw her to bed; the blue lids fell over her eyes; her pale lips moved on the pillow but whether to wish me good night or to murmur a prayer — a jingle of the nursery that came to her now in the twilight world between sorrow and sleep: some ancient pious rhyme that had come down to Nanny Hawkins from centuries of bedtime whispering, through all the changes of language, from the days of pack-horses on the Pilgrim’s Way — I did not know.

Next night Rex and his political associates were with us.

‘They won’t fight.’

‘They can’t fight. They haven’t the money; they haven’t the oil.’

‘They haven’t the wolfram; they haven’t the men.’

‘They haven’t the guts.’

‘They’re afraid.’

‘Scared of the French; scared of the Czechs; scared of the Slovaks; scared of us.’

‘It’s a bluff.’

‘Of course it’s a bluff Where’s their tungsten? Where’s their manganese?’

‘Where’s their chrome?’

‘I’ll tell you a thing…’

‘Listen to this; it’ll be good; Rex will tell you a thing.’

Friend of mine motoring in the Black Forest only the other day, just came back and told me about it while we played a round of golf. Well, this friend driving along, turned down a lane into the high road. What should he find but a military convoy? Couldn’t stop, drove right into it, smack into a tank, broadside on. Gave himself up for dead…Hold on this is the funny part.’

‘This is the funny part.’

‘Drove clean through it, didn’t scratch his paint;. What do you think? It was made of canvas — a bamboo frame and painted canvas.’

‘They haven’t the steel.’

‘They haven’t the tools. They haven’t the labour. They’re half starving. They haven’t the fats. The children have rickets.’