"Do you remember the storm?" "The bronze doors banging." "The roses in cellophane." "The man who threw 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 today?" "So much to remember." "How many days have there been since then when we haven't seen each other" "A hundred." "Not so many." "Two Christmases to keep up appearances for the sake of the children." "And the three days of good taste before I followed you to Capri." "Our first summer." "Do you remember how I hung about in aples and then followed." "How we met by arrangement on the hill path and how flat it felt." "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." "And I said Whatever made you think of him?" "And he said He seems to have a penchant for my children." "There was a time when you had jaundice and wouldn't let me see you." "And when I had flu you were afraid to come." "A hundred days." "Out of two years and a bit." "Not a day's coldness or mistrust or disappointment." "ever that." "Let's go and change." "How many more do you think?" "Another hundred?" "A lifetime." "I want to marry you, Charles." "One day, why now?" "War, this year, next year, sometime soon." "I want a year or two with you of real peace." "Isn't this peace?" "What do you mean by peace if not this?" "So much more." "Marriage isn't a thing we can take when the mood strikes us." "There must be a divorce two divorces." "We must make plans." "Plans, divorce, war" "On an evening like this." "Sometimes I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side there doesn't seem room for the present at all." "Yes, Wilcox?" "Lord Brideshead's just telephoned, my Lady." "He says not to wait dinner for him please as he'll be a little late." "Thank you, Wilcox." "It seem months since he was last here." "Yes" "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." "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 match boxes." "Hello Bridey." "Oh Bridey, we're almost finished." "Well, well, only you two." "I hoped to find Rex here." "How are you?" "What's the news?" "As a matter of fact I do have some news but it can wait." "Tell us now." "How's the painting Charles?" "Which painting?" "Whatever you have on the stocks." "Well, I've begun a picture of Julia but the light was difficult all day today." "Julia?" "Haven't you done her before?" "I suppose it's a change from architecture and much more difficult." "The world is full of different subjects." "Very true, Bridey." "If I were a painter" "I should choose a different subject every time." "Really?" "What sort of subjects?" "Oh I don't know really subjects with plenty of action in them like" "Macbeth, perhaps." "By the way, I've been meaning to ask you" "What happened to mother's jewels?" "Cordelia and I had most of her things." "This was hers." "And this." "The rest went to the bank." "Aren't there some rather famous rubies someone was telling me?" "Yes, a necklace." "Mummy often used to wear it don't you remember?" "Why, anyway?" "I just thought I'd like to take a look at them some day." "I say Papa isn't going to pop them, is he?" "He's not in debt again?" "o, no nothing like that." "Come on Bridey, don't be so mysterious." "Out with it." "Well, 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're pleased." "Bridey!" "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's a big woman." "Fat?" "o, big." "She's called Mrs. Muspratt." "Her Christian name is Beryl." "I've known her for quite a long time" "But until last year she had a husband now she's a widow." "Why do you laugh?" "I'm sorry." "It's not in 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." "Where did you find her?" "Her late husband, Admiral Muspratt collected matchboxes." "You're not marrying her for her matchboxes?" "o, the whole collection went to the Falmouth Town Library." "I have great affection for her." "In spite of all her difficulties she's a very cheerful woman very fond of acting." "She is a member of the Catholic Player's Guild." "Does Papa know?" "I had a letter from him this morning giving me his approval." "He's been urging me for some time to marry." "Well" "Congratulations, Bridey." "Yes." "Congratulations." "Thank you." "Thank you." "I think I'm very fortunate." "Bridey, when are we going to meet her?" "I do think you might have brought her down with you." "Bridey you sly, smug old brute why didn't you bring her here?" "Oh, I couldn't do that, you know." "Why couldn't you?" "I'm dying to meet her." "Let's ring her up and ask her." "She'll think us most peculiar leaving her alone at a time like this." "She has the children." "Besides you are peculiar, aren't you?" "What can you mean?" "I could hardly ask her here, as things are." "It wouldn't be suitable." "After all, I'm only a lodger here." "This is Rex's house at the moment, so far as it's anybody's." "What goes on here is his business." "But I couldn't bring Beryl here." "I simply don't understand." "Of course" "Rex and I want her to come." "Oh yes, I don't doubt that." "But the difficulty is quite otherwise." "You must understand that Beryl is a woman" "Of strict Catholic principles fortified by the prejudices of the middle classes." "I couldn't possibly bring her here." "It's a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin" "With Rex or Charles or both" "I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your ménage but, in no case would Beryl consent to be your guest." "Why you pompous ass?" "I may have given the impression that this was a marriage of convenience." "I cannot speak for Beryl." "o doubt the security of my position has some influence on her." "Indeed, she has said as much." "But for myself, let me emphasis" "I am ardently attracted." "Bridey what a bloody offensive thing to say to Julia." "There was nothing she should object to." "I was merely stating a fact well known to her." "Aren't you cold?" "My darling, what is it?" "Why do you mind?" "What does it matter what the old booby says?" "I don't." "It doesn't." "It's just the shock." "Don't laugh at me." "How dare he speak to you like that?" "The cold-blooded old humbug" "o, it's not that." "He's quite right." "They know all about it, Bridey and his widow." "They bought it for a penny at the church door." "You can get anything there for a penny in black and white and nobody to see you pay." "Just take your tract." "There you've got it." "All in one word, too one little, flat, deadly word that covers a lifetime." "Living in sin not just doing wrong, as I did when I went to America doing wrong, knowing it is wrong stopping it, forgetting it." "That's not what they mean." "That's not Bridey's pennyworth." "He means just what it says." "Living in sin, every hour every day, year in year out." "Always the same." "Like an idiot child, carefully nursed guarded from the world." "Poor Julia they say, 'she can't go out. "" "She's got to take care of her little sin." "A pity it ever lived they say" "But it's so strong" "Children like that always are." "Julia's so good to her little, mad sin." "All those years when I was trying to be a good wife in the cigar smoke." "When I was trying" "To bear his child" "Torn in pieces by something already dead putting him away, forgetting him, finding you the past two years with you" "All the future with you or without you" "War coming" "World ending" "sin." "It's a word from so long ago." "From anny Hawkins stitching by the hearth and the nightlight burning before the Sacred Heart." "Me and Cordelia with the catechism, in Mummy's room before lunch, on Sundays." "Mummy carrying my sin with her to church." "Bowed under it." "Mummy dying with my sin eating at her more cruelly than her own deadly illness." "Mummy dying with it" "Christ dying with it nailed hand and foot." "High among the crowds and the soldiers." "o comfort except a sponge of vinegar and the kind words of a thief" "hanging forever over the bed in the night nursery." "There's no way back." "The gate's barred." "All the saints and angels posted along the wall." "Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down." "ameless and dead." "Like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had a chance to see her." "Well, Bridey is one for bombshells, isn't he?" "Considering that I've just recovered from a fit of hysteria" "I don't call that at all bad." "Most hysterical women look as if they've got a bad cold." "Come on." "We're not going down again?" "Of course." "We can't leave Bridey alone on his engagement night." "Can't we?" "I'm sorry about that appalling scene, Charles." "I can't explain it." "Was it nice out?" "If I'd known you were going I'd have come too." "Rather cold." "I hope it's not going to be inconvenient for Rex moving out of here." "You see, Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children." "Besides, Beryl likes the country." "In his letter" "Papa proposed making over the whole estate right away." "I'm sure he'll be sorry to leave." "Oh, don't worry." "Rex'll find another bargain somewhere." "Trust him." "Beryl has some furniture of her own she's very attached to." "I don't think it would go very well here." "You know, oak dressers and coffin stools and things." "I thought you could put it in Mother's room." "Yes, that would be the place for it of course nobody has used that room for years." "So brother and sister sat and talked about the arrangement of the house until bed-time." "An hour ago, I thought by the fountain, she wept her heart out for the death of her God." "Now she is discussing whether Beryl's children" "Shall take the old smoking room or the school room for their own." "I was all at sea." "I won't believe that great spout of tears came just from a few words of Bridey's." "You must have been thinking about it before." "Hardly at all." "Now and then." "more, lately with the Last Trump so near." "Of course, it's a thing psychologists could explain." "A pre-conditioning from childhood feelings of guilt from the nonsense you were taught in the nursery." "You do know in your heart that it's all bosh, don't you?" "How I wish it was." "Do you know, Sebastian once said almost the same thing to me." "He's gone back to the Church, you know." "Of course, he's never left it as definitely as I did." "I've gone too far." "There's no turning back." "I know that, if that's what you mean by thinking it all bosh." "Let's go out again." "It's like the setting for a comedy." "Scene:" "A baroque fountain in a nobleman's grounds." "Act one, sunset." "Act two, moonlight." "Act three, towards dawn." "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?" "Misunderstanding and estrangement in Act Two." "Don't talk in that damned bounderish way." "Why must you see everything second hand?" "Why must this be a play?" "It's a way I have." "I hate it." "Now do you see how I hate it?" "Did that hurt?" "Yes." "Did it?" "Did I?" "Cat on the rooftop." "Beast!" "Cat in the moonlight." "Your poor face." "Will there be a mark tomorrow?" "I expect so." "Charles, am I going crazy?" "What's happened here tonight?" "I'm so tired." "So tired" "Tired and crazy and good for nothing." "All I can hope to do is put my life in some sort of order." "That's why I want to marry you." "I should like to have a child." "That's one thing I can do" "So you're being divorced." "Isn't that rather unnecessary after being happy together all these years?" "We weren't particularly happy, you know." "Weren't you?" "Were you not?" "I distinctly remember last Christmas seeing you together and thinking how happy you looked, and wondering why." "You'll find it very disturbing, you know, starting off again." "How old are you, thirty four?" "That's no time to be starting." "You ought to be settling down." "Have you made any plans?" "Yes." "I intend to get married again as soon as the divorce is through." "Well, I do call that a lot of nonsense." "I can understand a man wishing he hadn't married" "And trying to get out of it" "Though I never felt anything of the kind myself" "But to get rid of one wife and take up another immediately is beyond all reason." "I've seen quite a few divorces in my time." "I've never known one work out so happily for all concerned." "Almost always" "However matey people are at the start bad blood crops up as soon as they get down to detail." "Mind you, I don't mind saying that there have been times" "In the last couple of years when I thought you were a bit rough on Celia." "Course it's different when it's one's own sister." "I've always thought her a jolly attractive girl." "The sort of girl any chap would be glad to have artistic too" "just down your street." "I must admit." "You're a good picker." "I've always had a soft spot for Julia." "Well, I suppose if Julia insists on a divorce she must have one." "My God, she couldn't have chosen a worse time." "Things had not gone as smoothly for Rex as he had planned." "Only war could put his fortunes right and carry him into power." "A divorce would do him no great harm but he was like a gambler with a big bank running" "He could not look up from the table." "Tell her to tell her to hang on a bit, Charles, there's a good fellow." "I met the widow at luncheon." "Did you?" "Do you know what she said to me?" "So you're divorcing one divorced man and marrying another." "It sounds rather complicated but my dear, she called me my dear about twenty times" "I've usually found that every Catholic family has one lapsed member, and it's often the nicest." "What's she like?" "Majestic." "And voluptuous." "Common, of course." "I'll tell you one thing." "She's lied to Bridey about her age." "She's a good forty five." "I don't see her providing an heir." "Bridey can't take his eyes off her." "He was gloating on her in the most revolting way all through luncheon." "Was she friendly?" "Goodness, yes" "In a condescending way." "I think it put her rather at ease to have me there as the black sheep." "She concentrated on me in fact, said rather pointedly she hoped to see me often in London." "I think Bridey's scruples only extend to her sleeping under the same roof with me." "Apparently I can do her no serious harm in a hat shop or hairdresser's." "The scruples are all on Bridey's part, anyway." "The widow is madly tough." "Does she boss him?" "Not yet, much." "He's in an amorous stupor, poor beast and doesn't know where he is." "She's just a good-hearted woman who wants a good home for her children and isn't going to let anything stand in her way." "A telephone message, my Lady, from Lady Cordelia." "Lady Cordelia?" "How marvelous." "Where is she?" "In London, my Lady." "Wilcox, how lovely." "Is she coming home?" "Just starting for the station." "She'll be here after dinner." "Thank you." "I haven't seen her since I took her to dinner at the Ritz and she talked about becoming a nun." "It must be twelve years!" "She was an enchanting child." "She's had an odd life." "First the convent and when that was no good, the war in Spain." "Then staying on when the war was over and helping in the camps." "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 at 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 dispersed could produce Brideshead, Sebastian, Julia and her." "It's wonderful to be home." "My job's over in Spain." "The authorities were very polite thanked me for all I'd done gave me a medal" "and sent me packing." "Mind you, it looks as though there'll be plenty of the same sort of work over here soon." "Rex seems pretty certain." "He's made up his mind there's going to be a war." "I wonder what Papa will do?" "Where is Rex?" "Is he coming down?" "o." "The lawyers insisted on a formal separation so he's moved back to London." "I'm only staying until" "Bridey is installed with the widow and her children." "He wrote to me and said if I was homeless" "I could stay here after they've moved in." "I don't know though" "Mrs. Muspratt and the three boys." "Maybe I'll get myself a flat in London." "Hello anny." "I knew you'd be up." "Mr. Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming." "I brought you some lace." "That is nice, dear." "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." "Well, that'll be very welcome I'm sure." "May we turn the wireless off anny?" "Why of course." "I didn't notice it was on in the pleasure of seeing you." "Isn't it splendid about Julia and Charles getting married?" "Well I hope it's all for the best." "Brideshead has certainly taken long enough to make up his mind." "I've hunted all through Debrett and I couldn't find any mention of Mrs. Muspratt's connections." "She caught him, I daresay." "What have you done to your hair?" "Oh I know, it's terrible." "I must get all that put right now I'm back." "Darling nanny." "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." "Oh, well I hope they look after him properly." "I expect they find him a regular handful." "He always sends to me at Christmas." "Though it's not the same as having him home." "He's got a beard now and he's very religious." "That I won't believe, not even if I see it." "He was always a little heathen." "Brideshead was one for Church, not Sebastian." "And a beard!" "Only fancy" "Such a nice, fair skin as he had" "Always looked clean, though he'd not been near water all day." "While Brideshead there was no doing anything with." "Cordelia!" "What?" "Come and tell me about Sebastian." "Not now, Charles." "It's a long story." "Tomorrow." "Goodnight." "Goodnight." "I had not forgotten Sebastian." "He was with me daily in Julia or perhaps it was Julia I had known in him in those distant Arcadian days." "Every stone of the house had a memory of him" "And hearing him spoken of by Cordelia" "As someone she had seen a month ago my lost friend filled my thoughts." "I heard he was dying." "A journalist in Burgos told me who'd just arrived from orth Africa." "A down and out called Flyte who people said was an English Lord" "Has been found starving" "And taken in to a monastery near Carthage." "That was how the story reached me." "I knew it couldn't quite be true however little we did for Sebastian he at least got his money sent to him." "But I started off at once." "It was quite easy to find him." "I just went to the consulate." "Apparently he'd turned up in Tunis one day and applied to be taken on as a missionary lay brother." "The fathers took one look at him and turned him down." "Then he started drinking again." "He lived in a little hotel on the edge of the Arab Quarter." "I went to see the place later." "It was a bar with a few rooms over it" "Smelling of hot oil and garlic and stale wine." "He stayed there a month drinking Greek absinthe." "They loved him there." "He's still loved you see." "Whatever he does, whatever condition he's in." "It's a thing about him he'll never lose." "They thought very ill of his family for leaving him like that." "It wouldn't happen with their people, they said." "And I daresay they're right." "Anyway, that was later." "After the consulate" "I went straight to the monastery and I saw the Superior." "He told me his part of the story." "So I sent him away." "He kept coming back two or three times a week always drunk until I gave orders to the porter to keep him out." "He must have been a terrible nuisance to you." "I don't know what I can do to help him except pray." "Finally, we found him unconscious outside the main gate he had fallen down and had lain there all night." "At first we thought that he was merely drunk again then we realised that he was very ill so we took him to the Infirmary." "He's been there ever since." "They'd given him a room to himself just off the cloisters." "He looked terrible." "Any age." "At first he couldn't talk much" "But I stayed a fortnight with him until he was over the worst of his illness." "Then he told me what had been happening to him." "It was mostly about Kurt, his German friend." "Well you've met him, so you know all about that." "Sounds gruesome." "He said they went to Greece" "And Kurt had got arrested after some brawl and sent back to Germany." "It was a time when they were rounding up all their nationals from all parts of the world, to make them into azis." "Sebastian followed." "For a year he couldn't find any trace of him." "Then in the end he ran him to earth dressed as a storm trooper in a provincial town." "At first he wouldn't have anything to do with Sebastian spouting all that official jargon about the rebirth of his country." "But it was only skin deep with him." "Six years of Sebastian had taught him more than a year of Hitler." "Eventually Kurt chucked it and admitted he hated Germany and wanted to get out." "I don't know how much it was simple the call of the easy life sponging on Sebastian." "He said it wasn't entirely that but Kurt had just begun to grow up." "Maybe he's right." "Anyway, it didn't work." "Kurt always got into trouble whatever he did." "Finally they caught him and they put him in a concentration camp." "Sebastian couldn't get near him." "He didn't even know what camp he was in." "So he hung about in Germany for another year" "Drinking again." "Until one day in his cups" "He took up with a man who'd just been out of the camp" "Where Kurt had been" "And learned that he had hanged himself in his hut in the first week." "So that was the end of Europe for Sebastian." "He went back to orth Africa where he had been happy." "I once had a governess who jumped off this bridge and drowned herself." "I know." "How could you know?" "It was the first thing I ever heard about you before I ever met you." "How very odd." "Have you told Julia this about Sebastian?" "The substance of it." "Not quite as I told you." "She never really loved him" "You know, as we do." "Poor old Sebastian." "It's quite pitiful." "How will it end?" "I think I can tell you exactly, Charles." "I've seen others like him." "And I believe they are very near and dear to God." "They'll let him stay there living half in and half out of the community." "He'll be a great favorite with the old fathers and something of a joke with the novices." "There's usually a few odd hangers on in a religious house." "You know" "People who don't quite fit in to either the world or the monastic rule." "I suppose I'm something of that sort myself but as I don't happen to drink I'm more employable." "He'll disappear for two or three days every month" "Or so and they'll all nod and smile and say" "Old Sebastian on a spree again." "Then one day, after one of his drinking bouts he'll be picked up at the gate dying" "and show by the mere flicker of his eyelids that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments." "Not such a bad way of getting through one's life." "It's not what one would have foretold." "I suppose he doesn't suffer?" "Oh yes, I think he does." "One has no idea what the suffering may be to be as maimed as he is." "o dignity." "o power of will." "o one is truly holy without suffering." "Holy?" "Yes." "That's what you've got to understand about Sebastian." "He's in a very beautiful place, you know" "White cloisters, a bell tower" "Rows of green vegetables and a monk watering them when the sun is low." "You knew I wouldn't understand." "You and Julia." "Tell me Charles" "When you first met me last night" "Did you think, Poor Cordelia, such an engaging child grown into a plain and pious spinster, full of good works?" "Did you think thwarted?" "Yes, I did." "But now I'm not so sure." "It's funny you know" "That's exactly the word that I thought for you and Julia when I saw you up in the nursery with anny." "Thwarted passion' I thought." "My divorce case or rather my wife's was due to be heard at about the same time as Bridey was married." "But he was to have no triumphal return." "Lord Marchmain with a taste for the dramatically inopportune declared his intention in view of the international situation of returning to England and passing his declining years in his old home." "730"