Brideshead Revisited

‘And yet,’ I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding ‘Pick-em-up, pick-em-up, hot potatoes’, ‘and yet that is not the last word; it is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

‘Something quite remote from anything the builders intended, has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time; a small red flame — a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.’

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our ante-room.

‘You’re looking unusually cheerful today,’ said the second-in-command.

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought:

‘The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

‘Righty-oh. I say, did you say you knew this place before?’

‘Yes, very well. It belongs to friends of mine,’ and as I said the words they sounded as odd in my I ears as Sebastian’s had done, when, instead of saying, ‘It is my home,’ he said, ‘It is where my family live.’

‘It doesn’t seem to make any sense — one family in a place this size. What’s the use of it?’

‘Well, I suppose Brigade are finding it useful.’

‘But that’s not what it was built for, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘not what it was built for. Perhaps that’s one of the pleasures of building, like having a son, wondering how he’ll grow up. I don’t know; I never built anything, and I forfeited the right to watch my son grow up. I’m homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper.’ He looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed. ‘Now go back to camp, keep out of the C.O.’s way, if he’s back from his recce, and don’t let on to anyone that we’ve made a nonsense of the morning.’

At last I asked her: ‘Have you heard from Julia?’

‘From Cordelia, only last week, and they’re together still as they have been all the time, and Julia sent me love at the bottom of the page. They’re both very well, though they couldn’t say where, but Father Membling said, reading between the lines, it was Palestine, which is where Bridey’s yeomanry is, so that’s very nice for them all. Cordelia said they were looking forward to coming home after the war, which I am sure we all are, though whether I live to see it, is another story.’

I stayed with her for half an hour, and left promising to return often. When I reached the hall I found no sign of work and Hooper looking guilty.

I did not spend long in the desolate ground-floor rooms, but went upstairs and wandered down the familiar corridors, trying doors that were locked, opening doors into rooms piled to the ceiling with furniture. At length I met an old housemaid carrying a cup of tea. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘isn’t it Mr Ryder?’

‘It is. I was wondering when I should meet someone I know.’

‘Mrs Hawkins is up in her old room. I was just taking her some tea.’

‘I’ll take it for you, I said, and passed through the baize doors, up the uncarpeted stairs, to the nursery.

Nanny Hawkins did not recognize me until I spoke, and my arrival threw her into some confusion; it was not until I had been sitting some time by her fireside that she recovered her old calm. She, who had changed so little in all the years I knew her, had lately become greatly aged. The changes of the last years had come too late in her life to be accepted and understood; her sight was failing, she told me, and she could see only the coarsest needlework. Her speech, sharpened by years of gentle conversation, had reverted now to the soft, peasant tones of its origin.

‘…only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling who was blown up, not a roof to his head nor a stick of furniture till Julia took him in with the kind heart she’s got, and his nerves something shocking…Lady Brideshead, too, Marchmain it is now, who I ought by rights to call her Ladyship now, but it doesn’t come natural, it was the same with her. First, when Julia and Cordelia left to the war, she came here with the two boys and then the military turned them out, so they went to London, nor they hadn’t been in their house not a month, and Bridey away with the yeomanry the same as his poor Lordship, when they were blown up too, everything gone, all the furniture she brought here and kept in the coach-house. Then she had another house outside London, and the military took that, too, and there she is now, when I last heard, in a hotel at the seaside, which isn’t the same as your own home, is it? It doesn’t seem right.

‘That fountain is rather a tender spot with our landlady; the young officers used to lark about in it on guest nights and it was looking a bit the worse for wear, so I wired it in and turned the water off. Looks a bit untidy now; all the drivers throw their cigarette-ends and the remains of the sandwiches there, and you can’t get to it to clean it up, since I put the wire round it. Florid great thing, isn’t it?…

‘I expect the brigadier will take this for his office; the last did. It’s got a lot of painting that can’t be moved, done on the walls. As you see, I’ve covered it up as best I can, but soldiers get through anything — as the brigadier’s done in the corner. There was another painted room, outside under pillars — modern work but, if you ask me, the prettiest in the place; it was the signal office and they made absolute hay of it; rather a shame.

‘There’s a caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top — they won’t be any trouble to you — and a blitzed R.C. padre whom Lady Julia gave a home to jittery old bird, but no trouble. He’s opened the chapel; that’s in bounds for the troops; surprising lot use it, too.

‘The place belongs to Lady Julia Flyte, as she calls herself now. She was married to Mottram, the Minister of-whatever-it-is. She’s abroad in some woman’s service, and I try to keep an eye on things for her. Queer thing the old marquis leaving everything to her — rough on the boys.

‘THE worst place we’ve struck yet,’ said the commanding officer; ‘no facilities, no amenities, and Brigade sitting right on top of us. There’s one pub in Flyte St Mary with capacity for about twenty — that, of course, will be out of bounds for officers; there’s a Naafi in the camp area. I hope to run transport once a week to Melstead Carbury. Marchmain is ten miles away and damn-all when you get there. It will therefore be the first concern of company officers to organize recreation for their men. M.O., I want you to take a look at the lakes to see if they’re fit for bathing.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them. I should have thought some of those half-shaven scrim-shankers I see lounging round Headquarters might have saved us the trouble; however…Ryder, you will find a party of fifty and report to the Quartering Commandant at the house at 1045 hours; he’ll show you what we’re taking over.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Julia said: ‘Here in the shadow, in the corner of the stair — a minute to say good-bye.’

‘So long to say so little.’

‘You knew?’

‘Since this morning; since before this morning; all this year.’

‘I didn’t know till today. Oh, my dear, if you could only understand. Then I could bear to part, or bear it better. I should say my heart was breaking, if I believed in broken hearts. I can’t marry you, Charles; I can’t be with you ever again.’

‘I know.’

‘How can you know?’

‘What will you do?’

‘Just go on — alone. How can I tell what I shall do? You know the whole of me. You know I’m not one for a life of mourning. I’ve always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can’t shut myself out from his mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable — like things in the school-room, so bad they were unpunishable, that only mummy could deal with — the bad thing I was on the point of doing, that I’m not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God’s. Why should I be allowed to understand that, and not you, Charles? It may be because of mummy, nanny, Cordelia, Sebastian — perhaps Bridey and Mrs Muspratt — keeping my name in their prayers; or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, he won’t quite despair of me in the end.

‘Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.’

‘I don’t want to make it easier for you,’ I said; ‘I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.’

The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mound glittered and lay still in the silent valley.