flung across her,
pressing her against the rail, warding myself off her with the arms that
held her prisoner on either side, and as the ship paused at the end of its
drop as though gathering strength for the ascent, we stood thus embraced, in
the open, cheek against cheek, her hair blowing across my eyes; the dark
horizon of tumbling water, flashing now with gold, stood still above us,
then came sweeping down till I was staring through Julia's dark hair into a
wide and golden sky, and she was thrown forward on my heart, held up by my
hands on the rail, her face still pressed to mine.
In that minute, with her lips to my ear and her breath warm in the salt
wind, Julia said, though I had not spoken, "Yes, now," and as the ship
righted herself and for the moment ran into calmer waters, Julia led me
below.
So at sunset I took formal possession of her as her lover. It was no
time for the sweets of luxury; they would come, in then-season, with the
swallow and the lime-flowers. Now on the rough water, as I was made free of
her narrow loins and, it seemed now, in assuaging that fierce appetite, cast
a burden which I had borne all my life, toiled under, not knowing its nature
-- now, while the waves still broke and thundered on the prow, the act of
possession was a symbol, a rite of ancient origin and solemn meaning.
We dined that night high up in the ship, in the restaurant, and saw
through the bow windows the stars come out and sweep across the sky as once,
I remembered, I had seen them sweep above the towers and gables of Oxford.
The stewards promised that to-morrow night the band would play again and the
place be full. We had better book now, they said, if we wanted a good table.
"Oh dear," said Julia, "where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans
of the storm?"
I could not leave her that night, but early next morning, as once again
I made my way back along the corridor, I found I could walk without
difficulty; the ship rode easily on a smooth sea, and I knew that our
solitude was broken.
My wife called joyously from her cabin: "Charles, Charles, I feel so
well. What do you think I am having for breakfast?" I went to see. She was
eating a beef-steak.
"I've fixed up for a visit to the hairdresser -- do you know they
couldn't take me till four o'clock this afternoon, they're so busy suddenly?
So I shan't appear till the evening, but lots of people are coming in to see
us this morning, and I've asked Miles and Janet to lunch with us in our
sitting-room. I'm afraid I've been a worthless wife to you the last two
days. What have you been up to?"
"One gay evening," I said, "we played roulette till two o'clock, next
door in the sitting-room, and our host passed out."
"Goodness. It sounds very disreputable. Have you been behaving,
Charles? You haven't been picking up sirens?"
"There was scarcely a woman about. I spent most of the time with
Julia."
"Oh, good. I always wanted to bring you together. She's one of my
friends I knew you'd like. I expect you were a godsend to her. She's had
rather a gloomy time lately. I don't expect she mentioned it, but . . ." my
wife proceeded to relate a current version of Julia's journey to New York.
"I'll ask her to cocktails this morning," she concluded.
Julia came, and it was happiness enough, now, merely to be near her.
"I hear you've been looking after my husband for me," my wife said.
"Yes, we've become very matey. He and I and a man whose name we don't
know."
"Mr. Kramm, what have you done to your arm?"
"It was the bathroom floor," said Mr. Kramm, and explained at length
how he had fallen.
That night the Captain dined at his table and the circle was complete,
for claimants came to the chairs on the Bishop's right, two Japanese who
expressed deep interest in his projects for world-brotherhood. The Captain
was full of chaff at Julia's endurance in the storm, offering to engage her
as a seaman; years of sea-going had given him jokes for every occasion. My
wife, fresh from the beauty parlour, was unravaged by her three days of
distress, and in the eyes of many seemed to outshine Julia, whose sadness
had gone and been replaced by an incommunicable content and tranquillity;
incommunicable save to me; she and I, separated by the crowd, sat alone
together close enwrapped, as we had lain in each other's arms the night
before.
There was a gala spirit in the ship that night. Though it meant rising
at dawn to pack, everyone was determined that for this one night he would
enjoy the luxury the storm had denied him. There was no solitude. Every
corner of the ship was thronged; dance music and high, excited chatter,
stewards darting everywhere with trays of glasses, the voice of the officer
in charge of tombola: "Kelly's eye --number one; legs, eleven; and we'll
Shake the Bag" -- Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander in a paper cap, Mr. Kramm and his
bandages, the two Japanese decorously throwing paper streamers and hissing
like geese.
I did not speak to Julia, alone, all that evening.
We met for a minute next day on the starboard side of the ship while
everyone else crowded to port to see the officials come aboard and to gaze
at the green coastline of Devon.
"What are your plans?"
"London for a bit," she said.
"Celia's going straight home. She wants to see the children."
"You, too?"
"No."
"In London then."
"Charles, the little red-haired man -- Foulenough. Did you see? Two
plain-clothes police have taken him off."
"I missed it. There was such a crowd on that side of the ship."
"I found out the trains and sent a telegram. We shall be home by
dinner. The children will be asleep. Perhaps we might wake Johnjohn up, just
for once."
"You go down," I said. "I shall have to stay in London."
"Oh, but Charles, you must come. You haven't seen Caroline."
"Will she change much in a week or two?"
"Darling, she changes every day."
"Then what's the point of seeing her now? I'm sorry, my dear, but I
must get the pictures unpacked and see how they've travelled. I must fix up
for the exhibition right away."
"Must you?" she said, but I knew that her resistance ended when I
appealed to the mysteries of my trade. "It's very disappointing. Besides, I
don't know if Andrew and Cynthia will be out of the flat. They took it till
the end of the month."
"I can go to a hotel."
"But that's so grim. I can't bear you to be alone your first night
home. I'll stay and go down to-morrow."
"You mustn't disappoint the children."
"No." Her children, my art, the two mysteries of our trades . . .
"Will you come for the week-end?"
"If I can."
"All British passports to the smoking-room, please," said a steward.
"I've arranged with that sweet Foreign Office man at our table to get
us off early with him," said my wife.
Chapter Two
it was my wife's idea to hold the private view on Friday.
"We are out to catch the critics this time," she said. "It's high time
they began to take you seriously, and they know it. This is their chance. If
you open on Monday they'll most of them have just come up from the country,
and they'll dash off a few paragraphs before dinner -- I'm only worrying
about the weeklies of course. If we give them the week-end to think about
it, we shall have them in an urbane Sunday-in-the-country mood. They'll
settle down after a good luncheon, tuck up their cuffs, and turn out a nice,
leisurely, full-length essay, which they'll reprint later in a nice little
book. Nothing less will do this time."
She was up and down from the Old Rectory several times during the month
of preparation, revising the list of invitations and helping with the
hanging.
On the morning of the private view I telephoned to Julia and said: "I'm
sick of the pictures already and never want to see them again, but I suppose
I shall have to put in an appearance."
"D'you want me to come?"
"I'd much rather you didn't."
"Celia sent a card with 'Bring everyone' written across it in green
ink. When do we meet?"
"In the train. You might pick up my luggage."
"If you'll have it packed soon I'll pick you up, too, and drop you at
the gallery. I've got a fitting next door at twelve."
When I reached the gallery my wife was standing looking through the
window to the street. Behind her half a dozen unknown picture-lovers were
moving from canvas to canvas, catalogue in hand; they were people who had
once bought a woodcut and were consequently on the gallery's list of
patrons.
"No one has come yet," said my wife. "I've been here since ten and it's
been very dull. Whose car was that you came in?"
"Julia's."
"Julia's? Why didn't you bring her in? Oddly enough, I've just been
talking about Brideshead to a funny little man who seemed to know us very
well. He said he was called Mr. Samgrass. Apparently he's one of Lord
Copper's middle-aged young men on the Daily Beast. I tried to feed him some
paragraphs, but he seemed to know more about you than I do. He said he'd met
me years ago at Brideshead. I wish Julia had come in; then we could have
asked her about him."
"I remember him well. He's a crook."
"Yes, that stuck out a mile. He's been talking all about what he calls
'the Brideshead set.' Apparently Rex Mottram has made the place a nest of
party mutiny. Did you know? What would Teresa Marchmain have thought?"
"I'm going there to-night."
"Not to-night, Charles; you can't go there to-night. You're expected at
home. You promised, as soon as the exhibition was J ready, you'd come home.
Johnjohn and Nanny have made a banner with 'Welcome' on it. And you haven't
seen Caroline yet."
"I'm sorry, it's all settled."
"Besides, Daddy will think it so odd. And Boy is home for Sunday. And
you haven't seen the new studio. You can't go tonight. Did they ask me?"
"Of course; but I knew you wouldn't be able to come."
"I can't now. I could have if you'd let me know earlier. I should adore
to see the 'Brideshead set' at home. I do think you're perfectly beastly,
but this is no time for a family rumpus. The Clarences promised to come in
before luncheon; they may be here any minute."
We were interrupted, however, not by royalty, but by a woman reporter
from one of the dailies, whom the manager of the gallery now led up to us.
She had not come to see the pictures but to get a "human story" of the
dangers of my journey. I left her to my wife, and next day read in her
paper: --
charles "stately homes" ryder steps off the map
That the snakes and vampires of the jungle have nothing on Mayfair is
the opinion of socialite artist Ryder, who has abandoned the houses of the
great for the ruins of equatorial Africa. ...
The rooms began to fill and I was soon busy being civil. My wife was
everywhere, greeting people, introducing people, deftly transforming the
crowd into a party. I saw her lead friends forward one after another to the
subscription list that had been opened for the book of Ryder's Latin
America; I heard her say: "No, darling, I'm not at all surprised, but you
wouldn't expect me to be, would you? You see Charles lives for one thing --
Beauty. I think he got bored with finding it ready-made in England; he had
to go and create it for himself. He wanted new worlds to conquer. After all,
he has said the last word about country houses, hasn't he? Not, I mean, that
he's given that up altogether. I'm sure he'll always do one or two more for
friends".
A photographer brought us together, flashed a lamp in our faces, and
let us part.
Presently there was the slight hush and edging away which follows the
entry of a royal party. I saw my wife curtsey and heard her say: "Oh, sir,
you are sweet"; then I was led into the clearing and the Duke of Clarence
said: "Pretty hot out there I should think."
"It was, sir."
"Awfully clever the way you've hit off the impression of heat. Makes me
feel quite uncomfortable in my great-coat."
"Ha, ha."
When they had gone my wife said: "Goodness, we're late for lunch.
Margot's giving a party in your honour," and in the taxi she said: "I've
just thought of something. Why don't you write and ask the Duchess's
permission to dedicate Latin America to her?"
"Why should I?"
"She'd love it so."
"I wasn't thinking of dedicating it to anyone."
"There you are; that's typical of you, Charles. Why miss an opportunity
to give pleasure?"
There were a dozen at luncheon, and though it pleased my hostess and my
wife to say that they were there in my honour, it was plain to me that half
of them did not know of my exhibition and had come because they had been
invited and had no other engagement. Throughout luncheon they talked without
stopping of Mrs. Simpson, but they all, or nearly all, came back with us to
the gallery.
The hour after luncheon was the busiest time. There were
representatives of the Tate Gallery, the Chantrey Bequest, the National Art
Collections Fund, who all promised to return shortly with colleagues and, in
the meantime, reserved certain pictures for further consideration. The most
influential critic, who in the past had dismissed me with a few wounding
commendations, peered out at me from between his slouch hat and woollen
muffler, gripped my arm, and said: "I knew you had it. I saw it there. I've
been waiting for it."
From fashionable and unfashionable lips alike I heard fragments of
praise. "If you'd asked me to guess," I overheard, "Ryder's is the last name
would have occurred to me. They're so virile, so passionate."
They all thought they had found something new. It had not been thus at
my last exhibition in these same rooms, shortly before my going abroad. Then
there had been an unmistakable note of weariness. Then the talk had been
less of me than of the houses, anecdotes of their owners. That same woman,
it came back to me, who how applauded my virility and passion, had stood
quite near me, before a painfully laboured canvas, and said, "So facile."
I remembered the exhibition, too, for another reason; it was the week I
detected my wife in adultery. Then, as now, she was a tireless hostess, and
I heard her say: "Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays -- a building or a
piece of scenery -- I think to -myself, 'That's by Charles.' I see
everything through his eyes. He is England to me."
I heard her say that; it was the sort of thing she had the habit of
saying. Throughout our married life, again and again, I had felt my bowels
shrivel within me at the things she said. But that ,j day, in this gallery,
I heard her unmoved, and suddenly realized that she was powerless to hurt me
any more; I was a free man; she had given me my manumission in that brief,
sly lapse of hers; my cuckold's horns made me lord of the forest.
At the end of the day my wife said: "Darling, I must go. It's been a
terrific success, hasn't it? I'll think of something to tell them at home,
but I wish it hadn't got to happen quite this way."
So she knows, I thought. She's a sharp one. She's had her nose down
since luncheon and picked up the scent.
I let her get clear of the place and was about to follow--the rooms
were nearly empty -- when I heard a voice at the turnstile I had not heard
for many years, an unforgettable self-taught stammer, a sharp cadence of
remonstration.
"No. I have not brought a card of invitation. I do not even know
whether I received one. I have not come to a social function; I do not seek
to scrape acquaintance with Lady Celia; I do not want my photograph in the
Tatler; I have not come to exhibit myself. I have come to see the pictures.
Perhaps you are unaware that there are any pictures here. I happen to have a
personal interest in the artist--if that word has any meaning for
you."
"Antoine," I said, "come in."
"My dear, there is a g-g-gorgon here who thinks I am g-g-gate-crashing.
I only arrived in London yesterday, and heard quite by chance at luncheon
that you were having an exhibition, so of course I dashed impetuously to the
shrine to pay homage. Have I changed? Would you recognize me? Where are the
pictures? Let me explain them to you."
Anthony Blanche had not changed from when I last saw him; not, indeed,
from when I first saw him. He swept lightly across the room to the most
prominent canvas -- a jungle landscape -- paused a moment, his head cocked
like a knowing terrier, and asked: "Where, my dear Charles, did you find
this sumptuous greenery? The corner of a hothouse at T-t-trent or T-t-tring?
What gorgeous usurer nurtured these fronds for your pleasure?"
Then he made a tour of the two rooms; once or twice he sighed deeply,
otherwise he kept silence. When he came to the end he sighed once more, more
deeply than ever, and said: "But they tell me, my dear, you are happy in
love. That is everything, is it not, or nearly everything?"
"Are they as bad as that?"
Anthony dropped his voice to a piercing whisper: "My dear, let us not
expose your little imposture before these good, plain people" -- he gave a
conspiratorial glance to the last remnants o the crowd -- "let us not spoil
their innocent pleasure. We know, you and I, that this is all t-t-terrible
t-t-tripe. Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs. I know of a louche
little bar, quite near here. Let us go there and talk of your other
c-c-conquests."
It needed this voice from the past to recall me; the indiscriminate
chatter of praise all that crowded day had worked on me like a succession of
advertisement hoardings on a long road, kilometre after kilometre between
the poplars, commanding one to stay at some new hotel, so that when at the
end of the drive, stiff and dusty, one arrives at the destination, it seems
inevitable to turn into the yard under the name that had first bored, then
angered one, and finally become an inseparable part of one's fatigue.
Anthony led me from the gallery and down a side street to a door
between a disreputable news agent and a disreputable chemist, painted with
the words blue grotto club. Members Only.
"Not quite your milieu, my dear, but mine, I assure you. After all, you
have been in your milieu all day."
He led me downstairs, from a smell of cats to a smell of gin and
cigarette-ends and the sound of a wireless.
"I was given the address by a dirty old man in the Bceuf sur le Toit. I
am most grateful to him. I have been out of England so long, and really
sympathetic little joints like this change so fast. J I presented myself
here for the first time yesterday evening, and already I feel quite at home.
Good evening, Cyril."
"'Lo, Toni, back again?" said the youth behind the bar.
"We will take our drinks and sit in a corner. You must remember, my
dear, that here you are just as conspicuous and, may I say, abnormal, my
dear, as I should be in B-b-bratt's."
The place was painted cobalt; there was cobalt linoleum on the floor.
Fishes of Silver and gold paper had been pasted haphazard on ceiling and
walls. Half a dozen youths were drinking and playing with the slot-machines;
an older, natty, crapulous-looking man seemed to be in control; there was
some sniggering round the fruit-gum machine; then one of the youths came up
to us and said, "Would your friend care to rumba?"
"No, Tom, he would not, and I'm not going to give a drink; not yet,
anyway. . . . That's a very impudent boy, a regular little gold-digger, my
dear."
"Well," I said, affecting an ease I was far from feeling in that den,
"what have you been up to all these years?"
"My dear, it is what you have been up to that we are here to talk
about. I've been watching you, my dear. I'm a faithful old body and I've
kept my eye on you." As he spoke the bar and the bar-tender, the blue wicker
furniture, the gambling-machines, the wireless, the couple of youths dancing
on the oilcloth, the youths sniggering round the slots, the purple-veined,
stiffly dressed elderly man drinking in the corner opposite us, the whole
drab and furtive joint, seemed to fade, and I was back in Oxford looking out
over Christ Church meadow through a window of Ruskin Gothic. "I went to your
first exhibition," said Anthony; "I found it -- charming. There was an
interior of Marchmain House, very English, very correct, but quite
delicious. 'Charles has done something,' I said; 'not all he will do, not
all he can do, but something.'
"Even then, my dear, I wondered a little. It seemed to me that there
was something a little gentlemanly about your painting. You must remember I
arm not English; I cannot understand this keen zest to be well-bred. English
snobbery is more macabre to me even than English morals. However, I said,
'Charles has done something delicious. What will he do next?'
"The next thing I saw was your very handsome volume -- Village and
Provincial Architecture, was it called? Quite a tome, my dear, and what did
I find? Charm again. 'Not quite my cup of tea,' I thought; 'this is too
English.' I have the fancy I for rather spicy things, you know, not for the
shade of the cedar tree, the cucumber sandwich, the silver cream-jug, the
English girl dressed in whatever English girls do wear for tennis -- not
that, not Jane Austen, not M-m-miss M-m-mitford. Then, to be frank, dear
Charles, I despaired of you. 'I am a degenerate old d-d-dago,' I said, 'and
Charles -- I speak of your art, my dear -- is a dean's daughter in flowered
muslin.'
"Imagine then my excitement at luncheon to-day. Everyone was talking
about you. My hostess was a friend of my mother's, a Mrs. Stuyvesant
Oglander; a friend of yours, too, my dear. Such a frump! Not at all the
society I imagined you to keep. 1 However, they had all been to your
exhibition, but it was you f they talked of, how you had broken away, my
dear, gone to the tropics, become a Gauguin, a Rimbaud. You can imagine how
my old heart leaped.
"' Poor Celia,' they said, 'after all she's done for him.' 'He owes
everything to her. It's too bad.' 'And with Julia,' they said, 'after the
way she behaved in America.' 'Just as she was going back 1 to Rex.'
" 'But the pictures,' I said; 'tell me about them'
'"Oh, the pictures,' they said: 'they're most peculiar.' 'Not at 1 all
what he usually does.' 'Very forceful.' 'Quite barbaric.' 'if call them
downright unhealthy,' said Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander.
"My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair. I wanted tof dash out
of the house and leap in a taxi and say, 'Take me to Charles's unhealthy
pictures.' Well, I went, but the gallery after J luncheon was so full of
absurd women in the sort of hats they'i] should be made to eat, that I
rested a little --I rested here witfcl Cyril and Tom and these saucy boys.
Then I came back at the unfashionable time of five o'clock, all agog, my
dear; and what did I find? I found, my dear, a very naughty and very
successful practical joke. It reminded me of dear Sebastian when he liked so
much to dress up in false whiskers. It was charm again, my dear, simple,
creamy English charm, playing tigers."
"You're quite right," I said.
"My dear, of course I'm right. I was right years ago--more years, I am
happy to say, than either of us shows -- when I warned you. I took you out
to dinner to warn you of charm. I warned you expressly and in great detail
of the Flyte family. Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist
outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills
love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you."
The youth called Tom approached us again. "Don't be a tease, Toni; buy
me a drink." I remembered my train and left Anthony with him.
As I stood on the platform by the restaurant-car I saw my luggage and
Julia's go past with Julia's sour-faced maid strutting beside the porter.
They had begun shutting the carriage-doors when Julia arrived, unhurried,
and took her place in front of me. I had a table for two. This was a very
convenient train; there was half an hour before dinner and half an hour
after it; then, instead of changing to the branch line, as had been the rule
in Lady Marchmain's day, we were met at the junction. It was night as we
drew out of Paddington, and the glow of the town gave place first to the
scattered lights of the suburbs, then to the darkness of the fields.
"It seems days since I saw you," I said.
"Six hours; and we were together all yesterday. You look worn out."
"It's been a day of nightmare -- crowds, critics, the Clarences, a
luncheon party at Margot's, ending up with half an hour's well-reasoned
abuse of my pictures in a pansy bar. ... I think Celia knows about us."
"Well, she had to know some time."
"Everyone seems to know. My pansy friend had not been in London
twenty-four hours before he'd heard."
"Damn everybody."
"What about Rex?"
"Rex isn't anybody at all," said Julia; "he just doesn't exist."
The knives and forks jingled on the tables as we sped through the
darkness; the little circle of gin and vermouth in the glasses i lengthened
to oval, contracted again, with the sway of the carriage, touched the lip,
lapped back again, never spilt; I was leaving the day behind me. Julia
pulled off her hat and tossed it into the rack above her, and shook her
night-dark hair with a little sigh of ease -- a sigh fit for the pillow, the
sinking firelight and a bedroom window open to the stars and the whisper of
bare trees.
"It's great to have you back, Charles; like the old days."
Like the old days? I thought.
Rex, in his early forties, had grown heavy and ruddy; he had lost his
Canadian accent and acquired instead the hoarse, loud tone that was common
to all his friends, as though their voices were perpetually strained to make
themselves heard above a crowd, as though, with youth forsaking them, there
was no timdi to wait the opportunity to speak, no time to listen, no time
ten reply; time for a laugh -- a throaty mirthless laugh, the base| currency
of goodwill.
There were half a dozen of these friends in the Tapestry Hall ill
politicians, "young conservatives" in the early forties, with spar hair and
high blood-pressure; a socialist from the coal mines wh had already caught
their clear accents, whose cigars came lid pieces in his lips, whose hand
shook when he poured hir out a drink; a lovesick columnist, who alone was
silent, glc ing sombrely on the only woman of the party; a financier oldafl
than the rest, and, one might guess from the way they treated him, richer; a
woman they called "Grizel," a knowing rake whom, in their hearts, they all
feared a little.
They all feared Julia, too, Grizel included. She greeted them and
apologized for not being there to welcome them, with a formality which
hushed them for a minute; then she came and sat with me near the fire, and
the storm of talk arose once more and whirled about bur ears.
"Of course, he can marry her and make her queen to-morrow."
"We had our chance in October. Why didn't we send the Italian fleet to
the bottom of Mare Nostrum? Why didn't we blow Spezia to blazes. Why didn't
we land on Pantelleria?"
"Franco's simply a German agent. They tried to put him in to prepare
air'bases to bomb France. That bluff has been called, anyway."
"It would make the monarchy stronger than it's been since Tudor times.
The people are with him."
"The press arc with him."
"I'm with him."
"Who cares about divorce now except a few old maids who aren't married,
anyway?"
"If he has a showdown with the old gang, they'll just disappear like,
like . . ."
"Why didn't we close the Canal? Why didn't we bomb Rome?"
"It wouldn't have been necessary. One firm note . . ."
"One firm speech."
"One showdown."
"Anyway, Franco will soon be skipping back to Morocco. Chap I saw
to-day just come from Barcelona . . ."
". . . Chap just come from Fort Belvedere . . ."
". . . Chap just come from the Palazzo Venezia . . ."
"All we want is a showdown."
"A showdown with Baldwin."
"A showdown with Hitler."
"A showdown with the Old Gang."
". . . That I should live to see my country, the land of Clive and
Nelson ..."
". . . My country of Hawkins and Drake."
". . . My country of Palmerston . . ."
"Would you very much mind not doing that?"'said Grizel the columnist,
who had been attempting in a maudlin manner to twist her wrist. "I don't
happen to enjoy it."
"I wonder which is the more horrible," I said, "Celia's Art and Fashion
or Rex's Politics and Money."
"Why worry about them?"
"Oh, my darling, why is it that love makes me hate the world? It's
supposed to have quite the opposite effect. I feel as though' all mankind,
and God, too, were in a conspiracy against us."
"They are, they are."
"But we've got our happiness in spite of them; here and noW| we've
taken possession of it. They can't hurt us, can they?"
"Not to-night; not now."
"Not for how many nights?"
Chapter Three
"Do you remember," said Julia, in the tranquil, lime-scented evening,
"do you remember the storm?"
"The bronze doors banging."
"The roses in cellophane."
"The man who gave the 'get-together' party and was never seen again."
"Do you remember how the sun came out on our last evening just as it
has done to-day?"
It had been an afternoon of low cloud and summer squalls, so overcast
that at times I had stopped work and roused Julia from the light trance in
which she sat -- she had sat so often; I never tired of painting her,
forever finding in her new wealth and delicacy -- until at length we had
gone early to our baths, and on coming down, dressed for dinner, in the last
half-hour of the day, we found the world transformed; the sun had emerged;
the wind had fallen to a soft breeze which gently stirred the blossom in the
limes and carried its fragrance, fresh from the late rains, to merge with
the sweet breath of box and the drying stone. The shadow of the obelisk
spanned the terrace.
I had carried two garden cushions from the shelter of the colonnade and
put them on the rim of the fountain. There Julia sat, in a tight little gold
tunic and a white gown, one hand in the water idly turning an emerald ring
to catch the fire of the sunset; the carved animals mounted over her dark
head in a cumulus of green moss and glowing stone and dense shadow, and the
waters round them flashed and bubbled and broke into scattered beads of
flame.
". . . So much to remember," she said. "How many days have there been
'since then, when we haven't seen each other; a hundred, do you think?"
"Not so many."
"Two Christmases" -- those bleak, annual excursions into propriety.
Boughton, home of my family, home of my cousin Jasper, with what glum
memories of childhood I revisited its pitch-pine corridors and dripping
walls! How querulously my father and I, seated side by side in my uncle's
Humber, approached the avenue of Wellingtonias knowing that at the end of
the drive we should find my uncle, my aunt, my Aunt Philippa, my cousin
Jasper and, of recent years, Jasper's wife and children; and besides them,
perhaps already arrived, perhaps every moment expected, my wife and my
children. This annual sacrifice united us; here among the holly and
mistletoe and the cut spruce, the parlour games ritually performed, the
brandy-butter and the Carlsbad plums, the village choir in the pitch-pine
minstrekl gallery, gold twine and sprigged wrapping-paper, she and I weril
accepted, whatever ugly rumours had been afloat in the past yeafJ as man and
wife. "We must keep it up, whatever it costs us, fc the sake of the
children," my wife said.
"Yes, two Christmases. . . . And the three days of good tas before I
followed you to Capri."
"Our first summer."
"Do you remember how I hung about Naples, then followe how we met by
arrangement on. the hill path and how flat fell?"
"I went back to the villa and said, 'Papa, who do you think arrived at
the hotel?' and he said, 'Charles Ryder, I suppose.' 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, brir him here. I think we have the room.'"
"There was the time you had jaundice and wouldn't let 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 Londc 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' hundred days."
"A hundred days wasted out of two years and a bit ... a day when you
were not in my heart; not a day's coldness mistrust or disappointment."
"Never that."
We fell silent; only the birds spoke in a multitude of smalj clear
voices in the lime-trees; only the waters spoke among the carved stones.
Julia took the handkerchief from my breast pocket and 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, spreading 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, drawing out all the hidden sweetness 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 under ground; 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, 1 and into Parliament, and into a monastery, had
all come to nothing. All that he was known with certainty to have done--andi
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 match-boxes; 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 fettfil 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; last Christmas he sent me a photograph of himself in the robes
of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards he 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 cvp-ning 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 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 loglike calm.
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 f
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 to-day."
"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 minu