Brideshead Revisited(96)

‘We shan’t see them in spring,’ said Julia; ‘perhaps never again.’

‘Once before,’ I said, ‘I went away, thinking I should never return.’

‘Perhaps years later, to what’s left of it, with what’s left of us…’

A door opened and shut in the darkling room behind us. Wilcox approached through the firelight into the dusk about the long windows.

‘A telephone message, my Lady, from Lady Cordelia.’

‘Lady Cordelia! Where was she?’

‘In London, my Lady.’

‘Wilcox, how lovely! Is she coming home?’

‘She was just starting for the station. She will be here after dinner.’

‘I haven’t seen her for twelve years,’ I said — not since the evening when we dined together and she spoke of being a nun; the evening when I painted the drawing-room at Marchmain House. ‘She was an enchanting child.’

‘She’s had an odd life. First, the convent; then, when that was no good, the war in Spain. I’ve not seen her since then. The other girls, who went with the ambulance came back when the war was over; she stayed on, getting people back to their homes, helping in the prison-camps. An odd girl. She’s grown up quite plain, you know.’

‘Does she know about us?’

‘Yes, she wrote me a sweet letter.’

It hurt to think of Cordelia growing up ‘quite plain’; to think of all that burning love spending itself on serum-injections and delousing powder. When she arrived, tired from her journey, rather shabby, moving in the manner of one who has no interest in pleasing, I thought her an ugly woman. It was odd, I thought, how the same ingredients, differently dispensed, could produce Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia, and her. She was unmistakably their sister, without any of Julia’s or Sebastian’s grace, without Brideshead’s gravity. She seemed brisk and matter-of-fact, steeped in the atmosphere of camp and dressing-station, so accustomed to gross suffering as to lose the finer shades of pleasure. She looked more than her twenty-six years; hard living had roughened her; constant intercourse in a foreign tongue had worn away the nuances of speech; she straddled a little as she sat by the fire, and when she said, ‘It’s wonderful to be home,’ it sounded to my ears like the grunt of an animal returning to its basket.

Those were the impressions of the first half hour, sharpened by the contrast with Julia’s white skin and silk and jewelled hair and with my memories of her as a child.

‘My job’s over in Spain,’ she said; ‘the authorities were very polite, thanked me for all I’d done, gave me a medal, and sent me packing. It looks as though there’ll be plenty of the same sort of work over here soon.’

Then she said: ‘Is it too late to see nanny?’

‘No, she sits up to all hours with her wireless.’

We went up, all three together, to the old nursery. Julia and I always spent part of our day there. Nanny Hawkins and my father were two people who seemed impervious to change, neither an hour older than when I first knew them. A wireless set had now been added to Nanny Hawkins’ small assembly of pleasures — the rosary, the Peerage with its neat brown-paper wrapping protecting the red and gold covers, the photographs, and holiday souvenirs — on her table. When we broke it to her that Julia and I were to be married, she said: ‘Well, dear, I hope it’s all for the best,’ for it was not part of her religion to question the propriety of Julia’s actions.

Brideshead had never been a favourite with her; she greeted the news of his engagement with: ‘He’s certainly taken long enough to make up his mind,’ and, when the search through Debrett afforded no information about Mrs Muspratt’s connections: ‘She’s caught him, I daresay.’

We found her, as always in the evening, at the fireside with her teapot, and the wool rug she was making.

‘I knew you’d be up,’ she said. ‘Mr Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming.’

‘I brought you some lace.’

‘Well, dear, that is nice. Just like her poor Ladyship used to wear at mass. Though why they made it black I never did understand, seeing lace is white naturally. That is very welcome, I’m sure.’

‘May I turn off the wireless, nanny?’

‘Why, of course; I didn’t notice it was on, in the pleasure of’ seeing you. What have you done to your hair?’

‘I know it’s terrible. I must get all that put right now I’m back. Darling nanny.’

As we sat there talking, and I saw Cordelia’s fond eyes on all of us, I began to realize that she, too, had a beauty of her own.

‘I saw Sebastian last month.’

‘What a time he’s been gone! Was he quite well?’

‘Not very. That’s why I went. It’s quite near you know from Spain to Tunis. He’s with the monks there.’

‘I hope they look after him properly. I expect they find him a regular handful. He always sends to me at Christmas, but it’s not the same as having him home. Why you must all always be going abroad I never did understand. Just like his Lordship. When there was that talk about going to war with Munich, I said to myself, “There’s Cordelia and Sebastian and his Lordship all abroad; that’ll be very awkward for them.”‘

‘I wanted him to come home with me, but he wouldn’t. He’s got a beard now, you know, and he’s very religious.’