When I left Sebastian in Morocco
I had intended to return directly to Paris
but the business of his allowance
meant that I had to travel to London
to see Bridey.
We met in the library of Marchmain House.
Do you consider there is anything vicious
about my brother's connection with this German?
No.
I'm sure not.
It's simply a case of two waifs coming together.
You say he's a criminal?
A 'criminal type'.
He's been in a military prison
and he was dishonourably discharged.
And the doctor says Sebastian is killing himself with drink.
Weakening himself.
He hasn't D.T.'s or cirosis.
He's not insane?
Certainly not.
He's found a companion he happens to like
and a place that he happens to like living in.
Then he must have his allowance as you suggest.
The thing is quite clear.
Would you like to paint this house?
My father wants it done for a record
to be kept at Brideshead.
One picture of the front
one of the back from the park
one of the staircase
and one of the large drawing room.
Four small oils.
I don't know any painters.
Julia said you specialist in architecture.
Yes.
I should like to very much.
You know they're pulling it down?
My father's selling it.
They're going to put up a block of flats here.
They're keeping the name.
We can't stop them, apparently.
What a very sad thing.
Well, of course I'm sorry.
But do you think it good architecturally?
One of the most beautiful houses I know.
I can't see it. I've always thought it rather ugly.
Perhaps your pictures will make me see it differently.
I began in the long drawing room
for they were anxious to shift the furniture
which had stood there since it was built.
I set out the perspective in pencil
but held back from the painting
like a diver on the water's edge.
Once in, I found myself buoyed
and exhilarated.
I was normally a slow and deliberate painter.
That afternoon and all next day, and the day after
I worked fast.
I could do nothing wrong.
At the end of each passage I paused, tense, afraid to start the next
fearing like a gambler that luck must turn
and the pile be lost.
But bit by bit, minute by minute
the thing came into being.
There were no difficulties.
The intricate multiplicity of light and colour
became a whole
each brush stroke, as soon as it was complete
seemed to have been there always.
May I stay here and watch?
Yes
so long as you don't talk.
This was my first commission.
I had to work against time, for the contractors
were only waiting for the final signature
to start their work of destruction.
In spite, or perhaps because of that, for it is my vice to spend
too long on a canvas, never content to leave well alone.
Those four paintings of Marchmain House
are particular favourites of mine
and it was their success both with myself and others
that confirmed me in what has since been my career.
It must be lovely to be able to do that.
It is.
I'm tired.
I bet you are.
Is it finished?
Practically.
I shall have to go over it again in the morning.
Do you know it's almost dinner time?
There's no one here to cook anything now.
I only came up today.
I didn't realise how far the decay had gone.
You wouldn't take me out to dinner, would you?
All right.
Thank you.
I'll go and get changed.
We left by the side door
and walked to the restaurant.
You've seen Sebastian? Yes, I have.
He won't come home even now.
I didn't realise you understood so much.
Well, I love him more than anyone.
It's sad about Marchers, isn't it?
Very sad.
Do you know they're going to build a block of flats?
And that Rex wants to take
what he called a 'penthouse' at the top?
Isn't that like him?
Poor Julia, that was too much for her.
He couldn't understand at all. He thought she'd like
to keep up with the old home.
Things have all come to an end very quickly, haven't they?
Apparently, Papa has been terribly in debt for a long time
and selling Marchers has put him straight again.
But what's going to happen to you? What indeed?
There are all kinds of suggestions.
Aunt Fanny Roscommon wants me to live with her
and then Rex and Julia talk of taking over half of Brideshead
and living there. But won't your father come back?
We thought he might
but no.
They closed the chapel at Brideshead.
Did they?
Bridey and the Bishop.
Mummy's Requiem was the last mass said there.
After she was buried, the priest came in
I was there alone.
I don't think he saw me.
He took up the altar stone and put it in his bag
then he burnt the wads of wool with the holy oil on them
and threw the ash outside.
He emptied the Holy water stoup
blew out the lamp in the sanctuary
and left the tabernacle open and empty
as though from now on it was always to be Good Friday.
I suppose none of this makes any sense to you, Charles.
Poor agnostic.
I stayed there till he was gone.
Then suddenly, there wasn't any chapel there any more.
Just an oddly decorated room.
I can't tell you what it felt like.
You've never been to Tenenbrae, I suppose?
No.
Well, if you had
you would know how the Jews feel about that Temple.
"Quomodo sedet sola civitas".
It's a beautiful chant.
You ought to go there once, just to hear it.
Are you still trying to convert me, Cordelia?
No. That's all over, too.
Do you know what papa said when he became a Catholic?
Mummy told me once.
He said "You have brought back my
family to the faith of their ancestors. "
Pompous, you know.
It takes people in different ways.
Anyhow, the family haven't been
very constant, have they?
There's him gone
Sebastian gone
Julia gone.
But God won't let them go for long you know.
I wonder if you remember the story that Mummy read us
the evening Sebastian first got drunk
I mean, that bad evening.
Father Brown? Yes.
He said something like
"I caught him, the thief, with an unseen hook
and an invisible line, which is long enough to let him wander
to the ends of the world and still bring him back
with a twitch upon the thread. "
First time I've ever been taken out to dinner alone at a restaurant.
Do you know what Julia said when
she heard about Marchmain being sold?
She said
"Poor Cordelia won't have her coming out ball here after all. "
It's a thing we used to talk about, like me being her bridesmaid.
That didn't come off either.
When Julia had her ball
I was allowed down for an hour
to sit in the corner with Aunt Fanny
and she said to me
"In six years time, you'll have all this!"
I hope I've got a vocation.
I don't know what that means.
It means you can be a nun.
If you haven't a vocation it's no good
however much you want to be, and if you have a vocation
you can't get away from it, however much you hate it.
Bridey thinks he has a vocation and hasn't.
I used to think Sebastian had and hated it
but I don't know now.
Everything has changed so much suddenly.
You'll fall in love.
Oh, I pray not.
I say, do you think I could have another
one of those scrumptious meringues?
My theme is memory
that winged host that soared about me
one grey morning of war time.
These memories which are my life
for we possess nothing certainly, except the past
were always with me.
For nearly ten dead years after that evening with Cordelia
I was borne along a road outwardly full of change and incident
but never during that time, except sometimes in my painting
did I come alive as I had been during the time
of my friendship with Sebastian.
I became an architectural painter.
But as the years passed
I began to mourn the loss of something
I had known in the drawing room of Marchmain House.
The intensity and singleness
and the belief that it was not all done by hand.
In a word, the inspiration.
In quest of this fading light, I went abroad
travelling by slow but not easy stages
through Mexico and Central America.
There, in great labour, sickness
and occasionally in some danger, I made the first drawings
for Ryder's Latin America.
I was in no great pains to keep in touch with England.
I followed local advice for my itinerary
and had no settled route
so that much of my mail never reached me
and the rest accumulated
until there was more than could be read at one sitting.
But despite this isolation and this long sojourn
in a strange world, I remained unchanged
still a small part of myself
pretending to be whole.
I discarded the experiences of those two years with my tropical kit
and returned to New York, as I had set out.
Ritchie!
I have a suite booked.
The name is Ryder. Yes, sir.
Has my wife arrived yet?
646 and 7. Mr. And Mrs. Charles Ryder.
Your wife has checked in, sir.
Would you care to sign the register, please?
Your wife went out earlier, sir.
She said to say she'd be back after lunch.
Thank you.
No, sir. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you, sir.
Goodnight. Goodnight.
I don't believe you read my letters.
Well, some of them went astray.
I remember distinctly your telling me
that the daffodils in the orchard were a dream
and that the new nursery maid was a jewel
but frankly I cannot remember you telling
that your new baby was called Caroline.
Why did you call it that?
After Charles, of course.
I made Bertha Van Halt godmother.
I thought she was safe for a good present.
What do you think she gave?
Bertha Van Halt's a well known trap.
What?
A fifteen shilling book token.
Now that John-John has a companion
Who?
Your son, darling. You haven't forgotten him, too?
Why do you call him that?
It's the name he invented for himself.
Don't you think it's sweet?
Now that John-John has a companion, I think we'd better
not have any more for some time, don't you?
Just as you like.
John-John talks about you such a lot.
He prays every night for your safe return.
I hope you admire my self-restraint.
Restraint?
I'm not asking any awkward questions.
I may say I've been tormented by visions of voluptuous half-casts
ever since you went away.
But I'm determined not to ask
and I haven't.
That suits me.
Shall I put my face to bed?
No, not just yet.
I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles.
No, I'm afraid not.
Do you want to change?
It's the only evidence of life.
But you might change so that you didn't love me anymore.
There is that risk.
Charles?
You haven't stopped loving me?
You said yourself I hadn't changed.
Well, I'm beginning to think you have.
I haven't. No.
No, I can see that.
Were you at all frightened at meeting me today?
Not the least.
You didn't wonder if I should have fallen in love with someone else
in the meantime? No.
Have you?
You know I haven't.
Have you?
No
I'm not in love.
Oh, bloody central heating!
Lights out?
The garden's come on a lot.
The box-hedges you planted grew five inches last year.
Of course, darling, I can see your new pictures are perfectly brilliant
and really rather beautiful in a sinister way
but, somehow, I don't feel they're quite you.
We've got a first-class cook at the moment
we're really impressed.
Just like old times.
I'm not worrying anymore, Charles.
Good.
I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference.
Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off.
When?
What?
When we left off what?
When you went away, of course.
You're not thinking of something else, a little time before?
Oh Charles, that's old history.
It was nothing.
It was never.
It's all over and forgotten.
I just wanted to know.
So we're back where we were the day I went abroad, is that it?
So we started that day exactly
where we left off two years before
with my wife in tears.
Hello?
In the dressing room, please.
Charles! I'm just arranging our little party this evening.
Julia!
Celia, Celia Ryder.
Oh, it's lovely to find you on board.
What have you been up to?
Come and have a cocktail this evening and tell me all about it
Good. See you then.
Julia who?
Mottram.
I haven't seen her for years.
Hello? Operator
I'd not seen Julia since the private view of my first exhibition
where the four canvasses of Marchmain House, lent by Bridey
had hung together attracting much attention.
Those pictures were my last contact with the Flytes.
Our lives, so close for a year or two
had drawn apart.
Sebastian, I knew, was still abroad.
Rex and Julia I sometimes heard it said, were unhappy together.
Rex was not prospering quite as well as had been expected.
I saw their faces now and again, peeping from the Tatler
but they and I had fallen apart into separate worlds.
Can I get you anything, sir?
A whisky soda, no ice.
I'm sorry, sir. All the soda's iced.
Is the water iced? Oh yes, sir.
That will do.
Charles.
Hello.
I heard you were here. Celia telephoned to me.
It's delightful.
Will you join me for a drink? Thank you.
What are you doing? Waiting
my maid's unpacking.
She's been so disagreeable ever since we left England.
She's complaining now about the cabin.
I can't think why. It seems the lap of luxury to me.
He brought two jugs.
One of iced water, the other of boiling water.
I mixed them to the right temperature.
I'll remember that's how you take it, sir.
Thank you.
What can I get for you, madam?
Oh, a hot chocolate. Very good, madam.
I never see you now. I never see anyone I like.
I can't think why.
What have you been doing in America?
Don't you know?
I'll tell you about it sometime.
I've been a mug. I thought I was in love with someone
but it didn't quite work out that way.
What about you, Charles? What have you been up to?
Oh, I've just been painting
trying different styles.
I'm just back from a trip.
Where have you been?
Mexico, Central America
quite a way from anywhere.
I felt I needed a change of scene. I was getting stale.
It sounds thrilling. I'm longing to see the pictures.
Celia wanted me to unpack them and stick them around the cabin
for her cocktail party but I couldn't do that.
No
Is Celia as pretty as ever?
I always thought she had the most delicious looks of any girl in our year.
She hasn't changed.
You have, Charles.
So lean and grim
not at all the pretty boy Sebastian brought home with him.
Harder, too.
And you're softer.
Yes, I think so.
And more patient now.
And sadder, too.
Oh yes, much sadder.
Facing in to the room, please.
My wife was in exuberant spirits
when, two hours later
I returned to the cabin.
There you are. I've had to do everything.
How does it look?
You must go and get dressed. Where've you been all this time?
Talking to Julia Mottram.
Do you know her?
Oh, of course, you were a friend of the dipso brother.
Goodness her glamour!
She greatly admires your looks, too.
She used to be a girlfriend of Boy's.
Surely not?
He always said so.
Have you considered how your guests are going to eat this caviar?
I have.
It's insoluble.
But I suppose there's always this.
Anyway, people always find ways of eating things at parties.
Do you remember how we once ate potted shrimps with a paper knife?
Did we?
Darling.
It was the night you popped the question in.
As I remember it, you popped.
Well, the night we got engaged.
Well, you haven't said what you think of the arrangements.
It's a cinema actor's dream.
Cinema actors! That's what I want to talk about.
Charles, I've been thinking.
I do believe you're absolutely cut out to be a set designer for the cinema.
I've invited two very important American's, real Hollywood magnates.
Do promise you'll be sensible and talk to them.
Ah, here is Father Christmas. Dear Lady Celia
Is everything alright, madam?
We were just in raptures over your swan.
If you'll put on your warmest clothes
and come on an expedition with me to the cold storage
I can show you a whole Noah's Ark full of such objects.
The toast for the caviar will be along shortly.
They're keeping it hot.
Toast! Do you hear that, Charles?
Toast!
I do believe you've taken against my swan.
We were just Now don't be beastly about
it in front of the purser.
I think it was sweet of him to think of it.
You know, if Charles had read about it in a description of a 16th century
banquet in Venice, he would have said 'those were the days to live".
In sixteenth century Venice, it would have been a somewhat different shape.
Hello, how are you? I'm so glad you could come.
Celia, what a beautiful swan! Isn't it heavenly?
Well, I hate to spoil the fun, but it looks like we're in for a storm.
How can you be so beastly?
Anyway, storms don't affect a ship this size, do they?
Well, it might hold us back a bit. But it won't make us sick?
That depends on how good a sailor you are.
I'm always sick in storms, ever since I was a boy.
I don't believe a word of it, he's simply being sadistic.
I must show you the photographs of the children.
Do you know Charles hasn't even seen Caroline yet?
Isn't it thrilling for him? How old is she now?
I'm Gloria Stuyvesant Oglander. I feel I know you through and through
Celia's told me so much about you.
There were no friends of mine here
but I knew about a third of the party
and talked a way civilly enough.
But all the time I thought only of
when Julia would come.
Been waiting to do that for a long time.
Bet you don't know how many drops to the minute.
I do. I've counted.
I've no idea. Well, guess.
Go on, a tenner if you get it wrong and half a dollar if you get it right.
That's fair isn't it? Three.
Coo
you're a sharp chap, aren't you?
Been counting too, haven't you?
Tell me, how do you work this one out?
I'm an Englishman born and bred
this is my first time on the Atlantic.
You flew out? No.
You came round the world the other way and across the Pacific.
You are a sharp chap and no mistake.
I've made quite a bit out of arguing on that topic.
Well
I better skedaddle.
Toodle loo.
Still, Julia didn't come.
And the noise of twenty people in that tiny room
was the noise of a multitude.
Charles, this is Mr. Kramm of International Films.
So you are Mr. Charles Ryder.
Yes. Well, well, well.
Our purser says we're in for some pretty dirty weather.
What do you know about that?
Rather less than the purser.
I'm sorry, Mr. Ryder. I don't quite get you?
I mean I know less about that than
the purser. Is that so?
knowing that we should meet again in half an hour
I've enjoyed our talk.
I hope it'll be the first of many.
You must promise to bring that distinguished looking husband
of yours to my little do on Tuesday. Oh, we'd love to.
Do tell me, how did if feel meeting Celia after two years?
I know that I should feel indecently bridal.
But then Celia has never quite got the
orange blossom out of her hair, has she?
Julia never came?
No, she telephoned.
I couldn't quite hear what she said, there was so much noise going on.
Something about a dress.
It was quite lucky, actually, there wasn't room for a cat.
It was a lovely party, wasn't it?
Did you hate it very much?
You behaved beautifully and you looked so distinguished.
Who was your red haired chum?
No chum of mine? How very peculiar.
Did you say anything to Mr. Kramm about working in Hollywood?
Of course not.
Oh Charles. You are such a worry to me.
It's no good just standing around looking distinguished and being a martyr for Art.
Come on. Let's go to dinner.
We're at the Captain's table. I don't suppose he'll dine down tonight
but it's polite to be fairly punctual.
I just hope I can find the dining room. This place is an absolute maze.
We were a gruesome circle at dinner.
Even my wife's high social spirit faltered.
Wherever Celia is, you'll find she knows all the significant people.
I'm miserable about the party.
My beastly maid totally disappeared with every frock I have.
She only turned up half an hour ago.
I have made it my aim to reconcile the so-called Anarchist
and the so-called Communists.
There is no fundamental diversity in their ideologies.
It is a matter of personality, Mr. Ryder
and what personalities have put asunder
personalities may unite.
Of course. But I understood you to say
Lady Celia that you were unacquainted with him.
I meant that he was like Captain Foulenough.
Ah, I begin to comprehend.
He impersonates this friend of yours in order to come to your party.
No, no. Captain Foulenough is simply a comic character
in an English paper.
You know, like your "Popeye".
To recapitulate
an imposter came to your party
and you admitted him
because of a fancied resemblance
to a fictitious character in a cartoon.
Yes, I suppose that was it, really.
Do you not agree, Mr. Ryder?
Yes yes. What are words?
What indeed.
My mind reeled.
After the months of solitude, this was too much.
I felt like Lear on the heath
like the Duchess of Malfi bayed by madmen.
I summoned cataracts and hurricanes and, as if by conjury
the call was immediately answered.
Either I am a little drunk or it's getting rough.
This is where I say goodnight to you all.
Like King Lear.
Only each of us is all three of them.
What can you mean?
Lear, Kent, Fool.
Oh dear, it's like that agonizing Foulenough conversation over again.
Don't try and explain.
I'm not sure that I could.
Well, we've set a fine example of British phlegm.
But I think I've taken all I can.
This is making my headache and I'm tired, anyway.
I'm going to bed.
Are you coming, Julia?
Yes.
Will you be joining in the tombola this evening, sir?
No, no, thank you.
But if somebody could bring me some more brandy?
Certainly, sir. I'll get a steward for you.
Charles? Is that you?
Yes.
I feel terrible.
I didn't know a ship of this size could pitch like this.
Can't you do something?
Can't you get something from the doctor?
I'll call the steward. He'll have something.
Look, why don't I sleep next door? Then I won't disturb you.
Excuse me, sir, but these have come for you and her Ladyship.
What would you like me to do with them, sir?
Oh, put them over there.
What news of the storm?
Well, the wind's dropped a little, sir, but it's still blowing quite hard
and there's a heavy swell.
Nothing like a heavy swell for the enjoyment of the passengers.
There weren't many breakfasts wanted this morning.
Just a moment, Steward.
Would you have these delivered to Lady Mottram's cabin?
Certainly, sir.
And Steward
Would you ask the barber to call?
Very good, sir.
Thank you. Hello?
Charles! What a deplorable thing to do. How unlike you!
Don't you like them?
What can I do with roses on a day like this?
Smell them.
They've got absolutely no smell at all.
What have you had for breakfast?
Muscat grapes and cantaloupe.
When am I going to see you?
Before lunch?
I'm busy till then with a masseuse.
A masseuse? Yes. Isn't it peculiar?
I've never had one before, except once, when I hurt my shoulder hunting.
What is it about being on a boat that makes everyone behave
like a film star?
I don't.
How about these very embarrassing roses?
I'll see you on the deck about twelve thirty.
Marvelous. You might not recognize me.
What do you mean?
I'm having my beard removed.
How dreadful. It sounds like an operation.
Can I come in?
I thought these might cheer you up.
How sweet people are.
I take it you're not going to get up.
Oh no
Mrs. Clark is being so sweet.
Don't bother.
Come in and tell me what's going on sometimes.
Not now, my dear. The less we are disturbed today the better.
Charles
your beard.
Yes, I know.
What a pity. I thought it looked so distinguished.
It's no use, that woman beat hell out of me, and I'm still limp anyway.
Let's go in.
Bravo.
I confess I came round the other way.
I was not sure about that door somehow.
They have been working on it all morning you know.
Well
Bravo!
Do you know your birthday is nineteen?
I'm very lucky.
No, we’re the lucky ones!
Cheers!
Your usual, sir? Scotch and tepid water, I think.
Thank you.
And for the lady?
Might I suggest a nip of champagne?
D'you know, the awful thing is I would like champagne very much.
I'll have some champagne too.
Very good, sir.
What a life of pleasure!
Roses, half and hour with a female pugilist
and now champagne!
I wish you wouldn't keep going on about the roses.
It wasn't my idea in the first place.
Someone sent them Celia.
Oh, that's quite different. That lets you out completely.
But it makes my massage worse.
Well, I did have the barber shave me in my room this morning.
I'm glad about the roses. Frankly, they were a shock.
They made me think we were starting the day on the wrong foot.
All the next day Julia and I spent together
without interruption, talking, sometimes scarcely moving
held by the swell of the sea.
After luncheon, the last hardy passengers
went to rest and we were alone
as though the place had been cleared for us
as though tact on a titanic scale had sent
everyone tiptoeing out to leave us to one another.
We thought papa might come back to England after mummy died.
Or that he might marry again.
But he lives just as he did.
Rex and I often go and see him now.
I've grown very fond of him.
And Sebastian?
He's disappeared completely.
Cordelia's in Spain with an ambulance.
Bridey leads his own extraordinary life.
He wanted to shut Brideshead after mummy died
but papa wouldn't hear of it for some reason
so Rex and I live there now.
And Bridey too?
He has two rooms next to Nanny Hawkins
part of the old nurseries.
One meets him sometimes coming out of the library
or on the stairs.
I never know when he's at home
and now and then he suddenly comes in to dinner
like a ghost, quite unexpectedly.
He's like a character from Chekov.
You know, Charles, Rex has never been unkind to me intentionally.
It's just that he isn't a real person at all.
He's a few faculties of a man highly developed.
The rest simply isn't there.
He couldn't imagine why it hurt me to find out
two months after we came back to London from our honeymoon
that he was still keeping up with Brenda Champion.
I was glad when I found Celia was unfaithful.
I felt it made it all right for me to dislike her.
Is she?
Do you?
I'm glad. I don't like her either.
Why did you marry her?
Physical attraction.
Ambition, everyone agrees, she's
the perfect wife for a painter.
Loneliness
Missing Sebastian
You loved him, didn't you?
Oh yes.
He was the forerunner.
She told me, as though fondly turning the pages
of an old nursery book, of her childhood.
And I lived long sunny days with her in the meadows
with Nanny Hawkins on her camp stool
and Cordelia asleep in the pram.
She told me of her life with Rex
and of the secret, vicious, disastrous escapade
that had taken her to New York.
She, too, had had her dead years.
At first
I used to stay away with Rex in his friends' houses.
He doesn't make me anymore.
He was ashamed of me when he found
I didn't cut the kind of figure he wanted
ashamed of himself for having been taken in.
I wasn't at all the article he bargained for.
He can't see the point of me
but whenever he's made up his mind there isn't a point
and he's begun to feel comfortable
he gets a surprise
some man, or even woman, he respects
takes a fancy to me and he suddenly sees that
there's a whole world of things
we understand and he doesn't.
He was upset when I went away.
He'll be delighted to have me back.
I was faithful to him until this last thing came along.
When, before dinner
she went to get ready
I came with her
uninvited
unopposed
expected.
I recalled the courtships of the past
ten dead years.
How, knotting my tie before setting out
putting the gardenia in my buttonhole
I would plan an evening of seduction
and think at such and such a time
at such and such an opportunity
I shall cross the start line
and open my attack for better
or worse.
'this phase of battle has gone on long enough", I would think
"a decision must be reached".
With Julia there were no phases.
No start line.
No tactic at all.
I'll see you at dinner.
There's nothing like a good upbringing.
Do you know, last year, when I thought
I was going to have a child, I'd decided
to have it brought up a Catholic.
I hadn't thought about religion before
I haven't since
but just at that time, when I was waiting for the birth
I thought
'that's the one thing I can give her'".
"It doesn't seem to have done me much good
but my child shall have it'.
It was odd
wanting to give something one had lost oneself.
Then in the end, I couldn't even give her that.
I couldn't even give her life.
I never saw her.
I was too ill to know what was going on
and afterwards, for a long time
until now
I didn't want to speak about her.
She was a daughter
so Rex didn't mind so much about her being dead.
We’d argued endlessly
about whether I should have a child in the first place.
At first, I wanted one.
After a year or so I discovered that I'd have to have an operation
to make it possible.
By that time Rex and I were out of love.
But he still wanted an heir.
It's late.
Perhaps we’d better go to bed.
I have been punished a little for marrying Rex.
I can't get all that sort of thing out of my mind, quite.
Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell
Nanny Hawkins and the catechism.
It becomes part of oneself if they give it to one early enough.
And yet I wanted my child to have it.
Now I suppose I shall be punished for what I've just done.
Perhaps this is why you and I are here together like this.
Part of a plan.
No, Charles. Not yet.
Perhaps never.
I don't know.
I don't know if I want love.
Love?
I'm not asking for love.
Oh yes, Charles
You are.
Charles, are you there?
Yes.
I'll come in.
I've been asleep such a long while.
What time is it?
Half past three.
It's no better, is it?
It's worse.
I feel a little better, though.
Do you think they'd bring me some tea or something if I rang the bell?
I expect so.
Did you have an amusing evening?
Everyone's sick.
Poor Charles.
It was going to be such a lovely trip, too.
It may be better tomorrow.
Perhaps.
Next day the wind had dropped
and again we were wallowing in the swell.
That day
because we had talked so much the day before
and because what we had to say needed few words
we spoke little.
When, after long silences, we spoke at all
our thoughts we found
had kept pace together side by side.
you're standing guard over your sadness.
It's all I've earned.
You said so yesterday.
My wages
An IOU from life.
A promise to pay on demand.
The end of our day.
Let's go on deck.
Yes, now.
Oh dear, where can we hide
we, orphans of the storm?
Good morning. Morning, sir.
Charles!
Good morning.
I feel so well.
What do you think I'm having for breakfast?
Good Lord!
I've fixed up a visit to go 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 this evening
but all sorts of people are coming this morning to see us.
I've been a worthless wife to you these last few days.
What have you been up to?
Have you been behaving yourself?
You haven't been picking up sirens?
There was scarcely a woman about.
I have been talking to Julia.
Oh good.
I always wanted to get you two together.
She's one of my friends I knew you'd like.
You must have been a godsend to her.
She's been through a rather gloomy time lately.
I don't expect she mentioned it but
she got into trouble with an awful man.
I hear you've been looking after my husband for me.
Yes, we've become very matey.
Oh Charles, do let's go and see what's going on.
We'll catch you up.
What are your plans?
London for a bit.
Celia's going straight down to the country.
She wants to see the children.
You too?
No.
In London then.
Charles, this little red-haired man, Foulenough.
Did you see?
Two plain clothes police came and took him off.
I missed it.
There was such a crowd on that side of the ship.
I found out about trains and sent a telegram.
We shall be home by dinner.
The children will be asleep.
Perhaps we could wake John-John up, just this once.
You go down.
I really have to stay in London.
Oh, Charles, you must come. You haven't seen Caroline.
Will she change much in a week or two?
Darling, she changes every day.
Then where's the point of seeing her now?
I'm sorry, my dear
but I must get the pictures unpacked
so I can see how they've traveled.
I must get the exhibition fixed up.
Must you?
It's very disappointing.
Besides I don't know if Andrew and Cynthia will be out of the flat.
They took it to 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 tomorrow.
No, you mustn't disappoint the children.
No.
Will you come down at the weekend?
If I can.
All British passport holders to the smoking room.
I've arranged for that sweet
Foreign Office man at our table
to get us off early.
Good.
Hello? Cavendish Hotel?
Mr. Charles Ryder, please.
Charles!
Are you off to the gallery?
I'm sick of the pictures already and never want to see them again
but I suppose I better put in an appearance.
Do 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 could 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 a fitting next door at twelve.
Lovely.
See you in about an hour then.
Bye.
Good morning, Mr. Fisher. Good morning, sir.
How's it going?
Now Charles, darling, do remember, be nice to the critics.
No one's come yet.
I've been here since ten and it's been very dull.
Who's 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 well.
He said he was called Mr. Samgrass.
Apparently he's one of the 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, we could have asked her about him.
Well
Your whisky, darling.
Thank you.
I remember him.
He's a crook.
Yes
that stuck out a mile.
He's been talking about what he calls 'the Brideshead Set'.
Apparently, Rex Mottram has turned the place
into a next of party mutiny.
Did you know?
What would Teresa Marchmain have thought?
I'm going up there tonight.
No, not tonight, Charles.
You can't go tonight.
You're expected at home.
You promised, as soon as the exhibition was ready
you'd come home.
John-John 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.
Charles, you can't go tonight.
Did they ask me?
Of course
but I knew you wouldn't be able to come.
No, 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 there is no time
for a family rumpus.
The Clarences said they'd look in before luncheon.
They may be here any minute.
Good.
Mr. Ryder? Pamela Lomax, Daily Mail.
Oh yes?
I wondered if I might have a word
Lovely to see you again.
What a very charming hat!
Oh sir, you are sweet.
Interesting this trip down the Amazon.
One of my brothers has just got back. Got pretty bitten.
Looking forward to seeing the pictures.
How kind of you to come, sir.
Very good to see you.
Ma'am.
Would you care for some champagne?
Not for me, thank you.
Pretty hot out there I should think.
Yes it was, sir.
Was it terribly uncomfortable?
Well, ma'am
there were one
or two sticky moments.
Awfully clever the way you've hit off
the impression of heat.
Makes me feel quite uncomfortable in my great coat.
A little bit closer. That's it. Fine, lovely.
Can you see the picture?
That's alright. I'm not interested in the picture.
That's fine. A tiny bit closer
Lovely.
Now smile, please.
How kind, sir John. I'm delighted to hear it.
Charles, Charles.
Sir John has been saying the most marvelous things about you.
Good. I'm glad.
Yes, I think it's safe to say
we can look forward to
another Ryder at the Tate.
And now, if I may, I'd like to mark down
the following ones for further consideration.
Number seven.
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, really, hasn't he?
Not that I mean that he's given up that altogether.
I'm sure he'll always do one or two more for friends.
From fashionable and unfashionable
lips alike
I heard fragments of praise.
They all thought they had found something new.
It had not been thus at my last exhibition
in these same rooms shortly before 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.
I remembered that last exhibition too, for another reason.
It was the week I had detected
my wife in adultery.
Then, as now, she was a tireless hostess.
Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays
a building
I think to myself, that's by Charles.
Throughout our married life
again and again
I had felt my bowels shrivel within me
at the things she said.
But today
in this gallery
I heard her unmoved
and suddenly realized
that she was powerless to hurt me anymore.
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.
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 had to happen quite like this.
Good afternoon.
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 acquaintances with Lady Celia.
I do not want my photograph in the Tatler.
I have not come to exhibit myself.
I've 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 to you.
Antoine!
Come in!
My dear
there's a gorgon here
who thinks I'm gate crashing.
Dear Charles.
How are you?
I only arrived in London yesterday and I 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.
Where, my dear Charles
did you find this sumptuous greenery?
In the corner of some hot house
at Trent of Tring?
What gorgeous usurer nurtured these fronds
for your pleasure?
I've been to South America for two years
haven't you heard? I know all about that.
But they tell me, my dear
that you are happy in love
and that is everything, is it not?
Or nearly everything.
Are they as bad as that?
My dear
let us not expose your little imposture
before these good plain people.
Let us not spoil
their innocent pleasure.
We know, you and I, that this is
all terrible tripe.
Let us go, before we offend the connoisseurs.
I know of a louche little bar quite near here.
Let's go there and talk of your other
conquests.
Goodbye, sir.
Thank you for ever.
Not quite your milieu, my dear
but mine, I assure you.
After all, you have been in your
milieu all day.
I was given the address by a dirty old man in the
Boeuf sur le Toit.
I'm most grateful to him.
I've been out of England
so long
and really sympathetic little joints like this
change so fast.
I presented myself here for the first time yesterday evening
and already I feel quite at home.
Good evening, Cyril.
Lo Toni, back again?
Can't keep away, my dear.
What are you having, dear?
What would you like, Charles?
Gin and dry Vermouth, please.
Two of those please.
Hello, Tony. Good evening.
How are you? Fine, thank you.
Do you know Mr. Charles Ryder, the artist?
Pleased to meet you.
How do you do?
Thank you.
We'll take our drinks and sit down.
You must remember, my dear, that here you are just
as conspicuous and may I say abnormal
my dear, as I should be in
Bratt's Club.
Would your friend care to rhumba?
No, Tom
he would not
and I'm not going to give you a drink
not yet, anyway.
That's a very impudent boy
a regular
little gold digger, my dear.
Well, Antoine
What have you been up to all these years?
My dear, it's what you've been up to that we're 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.
I went to your first exhibition, my dear.
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 there was something a little gentlemanly about your painting.
You must remember, my dear, that I am not English.
I cannot understand
this keen zest to be well-bred.
English snobbery is even more
macabre to me even
than English morals.
However, I said, "Charles has done
something delicious. What will he do next?"
Imagine then my excitement at your luncheon today.
Everyone was talking about you.
How you had broken away my dear
gone to the Tropics, become a Gaugin, a Rimbaud.
You can imagine how my old heart lept.
"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
and just as she was going back to Rex".
"But the pictures', I said 'tell me about them".
"Oh the pictures', they said
'they're most peculiar".
"Not at all what he usually does'.
"Very
forceful, quite barbaric".
"I call them down-right unhealthy"
said Mrs. Stuyvesant Oglander.
My dear, I could hardly keep still in my chair.
I wanted to dash out of the house
and leap in a taxi
and say 'take me to Charles' unhealthy pictures'.
Well, my dear, I went
and what did I find?
I found a very naughty and
successful practical joke.
It reminded me of dear Sebastian
when he like so much to dress up in
false whiskers.
It was charm again, my dear.
Simple
creamy, English charm
playing tigers.
You're quite right.
Of course I'm right, my dear.
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
and I greatly fear, my dear Charles
that it has killed you.
It's nice seeing you again, Anthony.
I've got to go. I've got a train to catch.
Dommage.
I so enjoy our little talks together.
A bientot, Charles.
Don't be a tease, Toni.
Buy me a drink.
Alright.
This way m'lady. Thank you.
Charles
Hello, darling.
I'll just go and make sure the luggage is safely stowed.
Thank you.
I thought you'd missed the train.
It seems days since I saw you.
Six hours.
And we were together all yesterday.
You look worn out.
It's been a nightmare of a day.
Crowds, critics
and the Clarence’s
ending up with half an hours well reasoned abuse
about my pictures in a pansy bar.
I think Celia knows about us.
She had to know sometime.
Would you care for a drink before dinner, madam?
Two very dry Martinis, please.
Yes, sir.
Everyone seems to know.
My pansy friend had only been in London twenty four hours
before he'd found out.
Damn everybody.
Yes, but what about Rex?
Rex isn't anybody at all.
He just doesn't exist.
Julia.
Charles.
What we want is a showdown.
Wouldn't work with Baldwin.
Baldwin's too canny.
Baldwin's too clever
and Baldwin can rig it.
A chap just came from Fort Belvedere
and what he said was very interesting.
absolutely true.
Chap I know in the Foreign Office
swears it's a fact that Franco's a German agent.
Bring some more whisky, Rogers.
Yes, sir.
Charles!
Excuse me.
Good to see you.
Grizel's here somewhere.
She saw your show this morning.
Very impressed
impressed with what she calls
your new style.
Help yourself.
I must say, Charles
the murals look as handsome as ever.
That was a long time ago.
You seem to have a pretty good set up here.
It's a very happy arrangement.
Well, it suits me down to the ground.
The old boy keeps up the house
and Bridey takes care of the feudal stuff
you know, with the tenants.
I have the run of the house rent free.
All it costs me is the food and wages for the indoor servants.
Couldn't be fairer than that, could it?
Rex! Come and support me.
Come and stop Ronnie losing a bet.
He's put his shirt on Baldwin winning.
Do you know Henry and Ronnie Nash?
Come on over and say hello.
I'll join you in a minute.
What I'm saying, of course, is that now he can marry her
and make her Queen tomorrow.
Would you mind awfully not doing that?
Why not?
I don't much enjoy it.
Who cares about divorces these days, anyway?
A few old maids?
Good evening.
Charles!
Hello Grizel.
You were pretty nippy getting up here.
That exhibition of yours this morning was divine.
You enjoyed it?
I adored it.
And how's that lovely Celia? She's well.
Julia
Darling, you've lost weight.
And it suits you.
Goodness you look more stunning than ever.
I could spit.
Hello everybody.
Do carry on.
I'm sorry I wasn't here to greet you.
I hope Rex is taking care of you all.
Good evening Henry
Evening, darling.
You look lovely. Thank you.
My dear
you look simply marvelous.
Thank you so much.
Good evening.
Hello. Hello.
I guess you've been gambling tonight.
How was it?
Lost about £4,000.
Hello.
I wonder which is the more horrible
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.
But we've got our happiness in spite of them.
Here and now.
We've taken possession of it.
They can't hurt us completely.
Not now.
Not tonight.
Not for how many nights?
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 Naples 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.
Never 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?
No, 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?
No, 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?
No, 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.
No 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
No, 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 Nanny 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.
No 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.
Nameless 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?
No. 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 Nanny.
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 Nanny?
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.
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 North 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 Nazis.
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 North 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.
No dignity.
No power of will.
No 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 Nanny.
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.
In the winter of 1939
Lord Marchmain
in view of the international situation
declared his intention of returning to England
and passing his declining years in his old home.
Whatever harsh voices
might be bawling into the microphones of Central Europe
and whatever lathes spinning in the armament factories
the return of Lord Marchmain
took presence in his own neighborhood.
Julia and I, who had left Brideshead a month before
thinking we should not return
moved back for the reception.
It's the cold.
I'd forgotten how cold it is in England.
Quite bowled me over.
Can I get you anything, my Lord? Nothing, thank you.
Cara, where are those confounded pills?
The doctor said not more than three times a day.
Damn the doctor!
I feel quite bowled over.
A glass of water. Sure.
I don't feel at all the thing today.
The journey took it out of me.
Ought to have waited a night at Dover.
Wilcox, which rooms have you prepared for me?
Your old rooms, my Lord.
Not till I'm fit again.
Too many stairs
It has to be on the ground floor.
Plender, get a bed made up for me downstairs.
Very good, my Lord.
Which room shall we put it in, my Lord?
The Chinese drawing room.
Very good, my Lord.
And, Wilcox
The Queen's Bed.
The Chinese drawing room, my Lord
and the Queen's bed.
Yes, yes.
Few things could have caused more stir in the house.
The Chinese Drawing Room was one I'd never seen used.
The Queen's Bed was an exhibition piece
a vast brocade tent, like the baldachino at St Peter's.
So what had been foreseen as a day of formality
became one of fierce exertion.
The Estate carpenters were collected
to dismantle the bed
and it came down the main staircase at intervals during the afternoon.
Lord Marchmain seemed to derive comfort
from the consequences of his whim
and as he showed no inclination to move
tea was brought to us in the hall.
I daresay I shan't really be fit again until the summer comes.
I look to you four to amuse me.
Tell me the circumstances of Brideshead's courtship.
It seems he met her late husband first.
They shared the same hobby.
What was that?
Matchboxes.
Admiral Muspratt apparently had one on the finest collections
in the country.
Matchboxes.
I think she's past child-bearing.
In Italy no one believes there's going to be a war.
they think it will all be arranged.
I suppose, Julia, you no longer have access to political information
Cara, here, is fortunately a British citizen by marriage.
It is not a thing she customarily mentions
but it may prove valuable. She's legally Mrs. Hicks
are you not, my dear?
We know little of Hicks but we shall be grateful to him
if it comes to war.
And you you will I suppose be
an official artist?
No
As a matter of fact
I am negotiating now for a commission in the Special Reserve.
You should be an artist.
I had one with me during the last war, for weeks
till we went up the line.
Oh!
It really looks remarkably well.
I do congratulate you.
Yes, indeed.
Wilcox I seem to remember a silver basin and ewer
it stood in what we used to call 'The Irish Dressing Room'.
Suppose we put it here on the console.
Send Plender and Gaston to me.
Tell them not to worry about the luggage.
Just my dressing case and things for the night.
Plender will know.
Now if you'll all leave me
I'll go to bed.
We'll meet later.
You'll all come and dine with me here and keep me amused.
Of course, papa.
Charles. It really looks very well. Doesn't it?
Very well.
You might paint it, eh?
Call it 'The Death Bed'.
Did he mean that?
Yes. He has come home to die.
But this afternoon he was speaking so confidently of recovery.
That's because he was so ill.
When he is himself, he knows he is dying and accepts it.
His sickness is up and down.
One day, sometimes several days
he is strong and lively and then ready for death.
Other days he is down and afraid.
I do not know how it will be when is more and more down.
That will come in good time.
The doctors in Rome gave him less than a year.
There is someone coming from London, I think, tomorrow, who will tell us more.
What is it?
His heart.
Some long word at the heart.
He is dying of a long word.
I've not been much moved by family piety until now
but I am frankly appalled at the prospect
of Beryl taking what was once my mother's place
in this house.
Why should that uncouth couple sit here childless
while the house crumbles about their ears?
I will not disguise from you that I have taken a dislike to Beryl.
Perhaps it was unfortunate that we should meet in Rome.
Almost any other place would have been more sympathetic.
And yet, when one considers it
where could I have met her without repugnance?
We dined at Raineri's. A quite little restaurant
which I have frequented for years
no doubt you know it.
Beryl seemed to fill the place.
I of course was host
but to hear Beryl press my son with food
you would have thought otherwise.
Brideshead was always a greedy boy.
A wife with his best interests at heart would rather have tried to restrain him.
But that's a matter of small importance.
No doubt she had heard of me as a man of irregular life.
I can only describe her manner to me as roguish.
A naughty, old man, that's what I was.
I suppose she's met naughty old Admirals
and knew how they were to be humored.
I will not attempt to describe her conversation.
I will give you one example.
They had been to an audience at the Vatican that morning
a blessing on their marriage.
And do you know what she said to me?
'Lord Marchmain', she said
'I felt as though it was I who was leading the bride'.
It was said with great indelicacy
I can't yet quite fathom
what she meant.
Was she making a play on my son's name
or was she, do you think, referring to his undoubted virginity?
I fancy the latter.
I don't think she would quite be in her proper element here, do you?
Who shall I leave it to?
The entail ended with me, you know.
Sebastian, alas, is out of the question.
Who wants it?
A quiz!
Would you like it, Cara?
No, of course you wouldn't.
Cordelia?
I think I shall leave it to Julia and Charles.
Of course not, papa. It's Bridey's.
And Beryl's?
I should have Gregson down one day soon and go over the matter.
It's time I brought my will up to date.
It's full of anomalies and anachronisms
I have taken a fancy to the idea of installing Julia here.
So beautiful this evening, my dear. So beautiful always.
Much more suitable.
Do you think he really means to leave it to us?
Yes, I think he does.
But it's monstrous for Bridey.
Is it?
I don't think he cares much for the place.
I do, you know.
He and Beryl will be much more content
in some little house somewhere.
So you mean to accept?
Certainly.
It's Papa's to leave as he likes.
I think you and I could be very happy here.
Brideshead and his wife returned from their honeymoon
and stayed a few nights.
It was one of the bad times
and Lord Marchmain refused to have them near him.
"Mr Chamberlain opened his speech in Birmingham by saying
that tomorrow he would attain his seventieth birthday
and that as he felt still sound in mind and limb
he hoped he might have a few more years before him
in which to give what service he could to the State".
'this remark was greeted with cheers'.
Shall I go on?
Yes do, if it's not boring you.
No.
Chamberlain
I knew him
A mediocre fellow.
Bridey, I'm sorry.
He's terribly tired.
He can't see anyone else today.
Oh dear.
How very disappointing. Are you quite sure?
He's very exhausted.
Yes, I do see.
Perhaps tomorrow he'll be brighter.
Well I'm afraid Beryl simply can't wait any longer.
She has to get back to the children.
As you can imagine, this is very distressing for her.
She was most anxious to see him.
She formed an instant liking for him in Rome.
One morning, Father MacKay, the parish priest from Melstead
came to call as a matter of politeness.
Don't bother. I'll be alright.
Good morning.
Cordelia put him off with apologies and excuses
but when he was gone, she said 'Not yet'
Papa doesn't want him yet.
Charles, I see great Church trouble ahead.
Can't they even let him die in peace?
They mean something so different by 'peace'.
It would be an outrage.
No one could have made it plainer in his life
what he thought of religion.
They come to him now when his mind's wandering and he hasn't the strength
to resist and claim him as a death bed penitent.
I've had some respect for their religion up to now
but if they do that
then I'll know that what stupid people say is true
that its all superstition and trickery.
Don't you agree?
I don't know, Charles. I simply don't know.
The weeks of illness wore on
and the life of the house kept pace
with the faltering strength of the sick man.
No, it's too good. I don't believe it.
Cordelia, you didn't let me win on purpose, did you?
Of course not, Papa.
Wilcox says the Painted Parlour's ready.
Do you really want to do this?
What's that, Julia?
Apparently Papa told Wilcox this morning
he wants to move to the Painted Parlour.
Well, I've changed my mind.
Why should you move? You're comfortable here.
Where's she going? Where's she going?
Don't worry, Alex. She's coming back.
Do you want me to read to you?
No.
I'll get my revenge first.
I suppose you want the whites to win this one.
Once, at the end of February
he called for a car
and got as far as the north front steps.
Then suddenly he lost interest in the drive.
No, not now. Later.
Sometime in the summer.
The bad spells became longer
and more frequent.
Days and nights became indistinguishable to him.
A nurse was engaged.
I have a very serious complaint to make, Lady Cordelia.
I've never seen such a room
nothing like it anywhere in all my experience.
How can I possibly nurse his Lordship in conditions like this?
I must insist that my patient's moved
where there's running hot water
a small narrow bed that I can get round
and a dressing room for myself.
It's only what I'm used to.
I'm sorry nurse, we have tried
but it's hopeless. He won't be moved.
Then I can't answer for the consequences.
Presently there were no good spells
merely brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.
Bridey was called back.
It was the Easter holidays
and Beryl was busy with her children.
He came alone.
Papa must see a priest.
Oh Bridey, do you think he would?
I shall see that he does.
I've just asked Father MacKay to come tomorrow.
I'll take him in myself.
Although none of us had spoken of it
I felt the question ever present
through the weeks of Lord Marchmain's illness.
I saw it when Cordelia drove off early in the mornings for Mass.
I saw it as Cara took to going with her.
Now Brideshead, in his own way
had planted the problem down before us.
Well now, Lord Brideshead, do you think the poor soul would be ready to see me?
I'm sure, Father.
Nurse said he had a good night.
Would you care to come with me?
This is all so serious.
Listen
'April events on the Riviera. '
'There will be a fete on Monte Carlo
and Mrs. Reginald Fellows has organized a charity gala. '
Indefatigable old bag!
I've brought Father MacKay to see you, Papa.
Who?
Father MacKay, Papa.
Father MacKay.
I'm afraid you've been brought here under a misapprehension.
I am not in extremis
and I have not been a practicing member of your Church
for twenty-five years.
Brideshead
I think you should see Father MacKay out
don't you?
Go on reading, darling.
The Russian ballet season will open under the direction
of Monsieur Massine
and the Battle of Flowers will take place at Nice.
Father, I can only apologize
Poor soul.
Mark you, it was seeing a strange face.
You may depend on it. That's what it was
the unexpected stranger.
Indeed I can understand it well myself.
I'm sorry, Father. It's wretched to have
brought you all this way.
Don't talk about it at all, Lady Cordelia.
Why, I've had bottles thrown at me in the Gorbals.
Give him time.
I've know worse cases make beautiful deaths.
And now if you'll excuse me, I'll pay a visit to Mrs. Hawkins.
I'll call again.
Pray for him.
Do you know your way, Father?
Indeed I do.
Do I gather the visit was not a success?
It was not.
Cordelia, will you drive Father MacKay home
when he comes down from Nanny's.
I'm going to telephone Beryl to see if she needs me at home.
Bridey
It was horrible.
What are we going to do?
We've done all we can for the moment.
Damn Bridey!
I knew it wouldn't work.
I felt triumphant.
I had been right. Everyone else had been wrong.
Truth had prevailed.
The threat I had felt hanging
over Julia and me at the fountain had been averted
perhaps dispelled forever.
Mumbo-jumbo's off.
The witch doctor's gone.
Poor papa.
It's great sucks to Bridey.
I can't quite see why you've taken it so to heart
that my father shall not have the last sacraments.
Well, it's such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy, isn't it?
Is it?
It's been going on for nearly two thousand years.
I really don't know why you should suddenly get so excited about it now.
For Christ's sake
write a letter to 'The Times'
get up and make a speech in Hyde Park
start a 'No Popery' riot
but don't bore me about it.
What's it got to do with you or me
whether my father sees his parish priest?
There was also
I can now confess it
another unexpressed, inexpressible
indecent, little victory
that I was furtively celebrating.
I guessed that the morning's business
had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance.
In that I was correct.
A man was sent for from the solicitors in London that afternoon.
It soon became known throughout the house that Lord Marchmain
had made a new will.
I was wrong in thinking that the religious controversy
was quashed.
It flared up again that evening, after dinner.
What Papa said was 'I am not in extremis.
I have not been a practicing member
of the church for twenty-five years'.
Not 'the church', 'your church'.
I don't see the difference.
There's every difference.
Bridey, it's perfectly plain what he meant.
I presume he meant what he said.
He meant he was not accustomed
regularly to receive the sacrament
and since he was not at that moment dying
he did not intend to change his ways yet.
That's simply a quibble.
Why do people always think that one is quibbling
when one tries to be precise?
His plain meaning was that he did not
wish to see a priest that day
but that he would when he was in 'extremis'.
I wonder if there's any more coffee.
I wish somebody would explain to me
what the significance of these sacraments is.
Do you mean that if he dies without a priest
quite alone, that he goes to Hell?
And that if a priest is there and puts oil on him...
No, it's not the oil that heals him.
Odder still, well, whatever it is he does
that then he goes to Heaven? Now is that what you believe?
I think my nurse told me, or someone did anyway
that if the priest got there before the body was cold
it was all right. That's so, isn't it?
No, Cara. It isn't.
Certainly not.
You've got it all wrong.
Do any of you Catholics know exactly
what good you think this priest will do?
Do you simply want to arrange it so that your father
can have a Christian burial?
Or do you want to keep him out of hell?
I only want to be told.
They're the same thing.
To keep out of hell, as you put it
and have a Christian burial, he must make an act of the will.
He has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled.
Only God knows whether he has really made that act of will.
You mean sometimes the priest doesn't know?
Not necessarily.
So, it's quite possible that the will may still
be working when a man is too weak
to make any outward sign of it?
He may be lying as though dead.
Yes, and willing all the time to be reconciled.
God understands that, and so does the Church
so she is able to give him the last sacraments.
I never heard that before.
So, if the priest isn't there, and he makes the act of will alone
that's as good as if there was a priest. Is that right?
More or less.
Well, for heaven's sake
what's the priest for?
All that I know is that I shall take very good care
to have a priest.
Bless you.
I believe that's the best answer.
I wish you wouldn't start these religious arguments.
I didn't start it.
You don't convince anyone else and you don't really convince yourself.
I only want to know what these people believe.
They say it's all based on logic.
If you'd let Bridey finish, he would have made it all quite logical.
There were four of you.
Cara didn't know the first thing it was about
and may or may not have believed it.
You knew a bit
and didn't believe a word.
Cordelia knew about as much and believed it madly.
Only poor Bridey both knew and believed,
and I thought he made a pretty poor show when it came to explaining.
And people go about saying.
At least Catholics know what they believe.
Well, we had a fair cross section there tonight.
Oh Charles, don't rant.
I shall begin to think you're getting doubts.
The weeks passed
and still Lord Marchmain lived on.
In June, my divorce was made absolute.
Julia would be free in September.
The nearer our marriage got
the more wistfully I noticed Julia spoke of it.
War was now growing nearer too.
But Lord Marchmain's mind
was far from world affairs.
It was there on the spot turned in on himself.
He had no strength for any other war
than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.
Better today.
I can see now where the geese are flying over the lilies.
where yesterday I was confused and took the lilies for swans.
Soon I shall see where the geese are headed
when they gather to fly over the looking glass.
Better tomorrow.
We live long in our family
and marry late.
Seventy three
No great age.
Aunt Julia, my father's aunt
lived to be eighty-eight.
Born and died here.
Never married.
Saw the fire on Beacon Hill for the battle of Trafalgar.
Always called it 'The New House'.
That was their name for it in the nursery
and in the fields when unlettered men
had long memories.
You can see where the old house stood
near the village church.
They called the field 'Castle Hill'.
Horlick's field
where the ground's uneven
and most of it waste
nettle, and brier
in hollows too deep for ploughing.
Those were our roots
in the waste hollows of Castle Hill.
We were knights then
barons since Agincourt.
The larger honors came the last
and they'll go the first.
The barony goes on.
When Brideshead's buried
Julia's son will be called
by the name his fathers bore
before the fat days.
The days of wool shearing
and the wide corn lands
the days of growth and building
when the marshes were drained
and the waste land brought under the plough.
When one built the house
his son added the dome
his son spread the wings
and dammed the river.
He's got a wonderful will to live
hasn't he?
Would you put it like that?
I'd say a great fear of death.
Is there a difference?
Oh dear me, yes.
He doesn't derive any strength from his fear.
It's wearing him out.
Goodbye, Mr. Ryder.
I'll call in tomorrow morning.
Better stay.
I've lived carefully
protected myself from the cold winds
eaten moderately what was in season
drunk fine claret
slept in my own sheets
I shall live long.
When I was fifty
they dismounted us and sent us up the line.
'Old men stay at the base', the orders said.
Old venerables. My commanding.... my
nearest neighbors, he said.
'You are as fit as the youngest'....
So I was.
So I am now
if only I could breathe.
When summer comes
I shall leave my bed
and sit in the open air
and breathe more freely.
When the wind comes down the valley
and a man can turn to meet it
and fill himself with air
like a beast at water.
God take it, why have
they dug this hole for me?
Must a man stifle to death in his own cellar?
Plender, Gaston, open the windows.
The windows are all wide open my Lord.
It's empty, look nurse, there's nothing comes out.
No, Lord Marchmain, it's quite full
you can tell from this dial here
it's at full pressure.
Listen, can't you hear it hiss?
Now, try and breathe slowly, Lord Marchmain
quite gently,
then you get the benefit.
There
Free as air.
That's what they say.
'Free as air'.
Now they bring me my air in an iron barrel.
I was free once.
I committed a crime
in the name of freedom.
Cordelia
What became of the chapel?
They locked it up, Papa
when Mummy died.
It was hers.
I built it for her.
There was a chaplain here until the war.
Do you remember him?
I was too young.
Then I went away.
I left her
praying in the chapel.
It was hers.
It was the place for her.
I never came back
to disturb her prayers.
They said we were fighting for freedom
I had my victory.
Was that a crime?
I think it was Papa.
Do you think that, child?
Thus Lord Marchmain lay dying
wearing himself down in the struggle to live.
Since there was no reason to expect an immediate change
Cordelia went to London to see her women's organization
about the coming emergency.
That day
when Julia and I were alone with Cara
he became suddenly worse.
Is he dying?
It's difficult to say.
When he does die it will probably be like this.
He may recover from the present attack.
The only thing is not to disturb him.
The least shock will be fatal.
I'm going to telephone Father MacKay.
Dr. Grant, we must stop this nonsense.
My business is with the body.
It's not my business to argue whether people are better alive or dead
or what happens to them after death.
I only try to keep them alive.
And you said just now that the least shock would kill him.
What could be worse for a man who fears death, as he does
than to have a priest brought to him?
A priest he turned out when he had the strength?
I think it may kill him.
Then will you forbid it?
I've no authority to forbid anything.
I can only given an opinion.
Doctor!
Excuse me.
Cara, what do you think?
I don't want him made unhappy.
That is all there is to hope for now, that he'll die without knowing it.
But I should like the priest there all the same.
Will you try and persuade Julia to keep him away
until the end?
Then he can do no harm.
I will ask her to leave Alex happy.
Yes.
I've telegraphed Bridey and Cordelia.
I hope you agree that nothing should be done until they arrive.
I wish they were here now.
You can't take the responsibility alone.
Everyone else is against you.
Doctor Grant
tell her what you told me just now.
I said the shock of seeing a priest might well kill him
without that he may survive this attack.
As his medical man I must protest against anything
being done to disturb him.
Cara?
I know you are doing for the best, Julia
but you see
Alex was not a religious man. He scoffed always.
We mustn't take advantage of him, now he's weak
to comfort our own consciences.
If Father Mackay comes to him when he is unconscious
then he can be buried in the proper way
can he not, Father?
I'll go and see how he is.
Do you remember how Lord Marchmain greeted you last time?
Do you think it possible he can have changed now?
Well thank God, by His grace, it is possible.
Perhaps you could go in while he is sleeping
say the words of absolution over him
he would never know.
I've seen so many men and women die
I never knew them sorry to have me there at the end.
Yes, but they were Catholics.
Lord Marchmain has never been one except in name
well, at any rate not for years.
He was a scoffer.
Cara said so.
There's no change.
Now, doctor, how could I be a shock to anyone?
Do you know what I'm going to do?
It is something so small, there's no show about it.
I don't wear special clothes, you know. I go just as I am.
He knows the look of me now. It's nothing alarming.
Oh, Julia. What are we to say?
Let me speak to him.
Father. I really think we
I just want him to make some little sign of assent, I want him,
anyway, not to refuse me
then I want to give him God's pardon.
Alex?
You remember the priest from Melstead?
Father MacKay
You were very naughty with him when he came to see you.
You hurt his feelings very much.
Now he's here again.
I want you to see him
just for my sake
to make friends.
Though it's not essential I wanted to anoint him.
It's nothing, a touch of the fingers, a little oil from this little box
nothing to hurt him.
I don't think he heard me.
I thought I knew how to put it to him
but he didn't answer me.
If he's unconscious
it couldn't make him unhappy to see the priest
could it, doctor?
Thank you for your advice, doctor.
I take full responsibility for whatever happens.
Father MacKay, will you please come and see my father now?
You won't disturb him now.
Do you mean?
No, no. But he is past noticing anything.
Pax huic domui et omnibu habtautibus in ea.
I know that you are sorry for all the sins of your life
aren't you?
Make a sign, if you can.
You're sorry, aren't you?
Try and remember your sins.
Tell God that you are sorry.
I am going to give you absolution.
While I'm giving it
tell God that you are sorry that you have offended him.
Ego te absolvo ad ómnibus censuria et peccatis
I recognized the words of absolution
and saw the priest make the sign of the cross.
Then I knelt too and prayed.
Oh God, if there is a God
forgive him his sins.
If there is such a thing as sin.
Per istam sanctan unctionem et suma
piissimam misericoriam indulgeat tibi
Dominus quidquid deliquisti. Amen.
I suddenly felt the longing for a sign
if only of courtesy
if only for the sake of the woman I loved
who knelt in front of me praying
I knew, for a sign
It seemed so small a thing that was asked
the bare acknowledgement of a present
a nod in the crowd.
I prayed more simply.
God, forgive him his sins and please
God, make him accept your forgiveness.
So small a thing to ask.
Ego, facultate mihi ab Apostolica Sede tributa
Indulgentiam plenarium
et remissionem omnium pessatorum tibi concedo.
Et benedico te in nominee Patris
et Fillii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.
Then I knew that the sign that I had asked for
was not a little thing
not a passing nod of recognition
and a phrase came back to me from my
childhood of the veil of the temple
being rent from top to bottom.
Will you see Father MacKay out?
I'm staying here for a little.
That was a beautiful thing to see.
I've seen it happen that way again and again.
The devil resists to the last moment
and then the Grace of God is too much for him.
You're not a Catholic I think, Mr. Ryder
but you'll be glad for the ladies to have
the comfort of it.
Father
We should give you something for your trouble.
Oh, don't think about it, Mr. Ryder.
It was a pleasure.
But anything you care to give
is useful in a parish like mine.
Is this alright?
Well that's more than generous, Mr. Ryder.
God bless you.
I'll call again later, but
I don't think the poor soul
has long for this world.
Goodbye.
Julia remained in the Chinese drawing room
until, at five o'clock that evening, her father died
proving both sides right in the dispute
priest and doctor.
Lord Marchmain's passed away, sir.
It was very peaceful.
If you will excuse me, sir.
Julia
I
Not now.
I'm taking Cara to her room.
Later.
Thus
I come to the broken sentences
which were the last words spoken
between Julia and me.
The last memories.
While she was still upstairs
Brideshead and Cordelia arrived from London.
When at last we met alone
it was by stealth
like young lovers.
Here on the stairs, a minute to say goodbye.
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.
But 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 see one step ahead.
But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable
like things in the school room, so bad they are unpunishable
that only Mummy could deal with
the bad thing that 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.
It may be because of Mummy, Nanny, Sebastian, Cordelia
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 hope your heart may break
but I do understand.
The worst place we've struck yet.
No facilities, no amenities
and Brigade Headquarters arriving next week
sitting right on top of us.
Marchmain, the town, 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.
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 around Headquarters might have saved us the trouble
however
Ryder
you will find a fatigue party and report to the Quartering Commandant
at the house of 10.45 hours.
He'll show you what we're taking over.
Very good, sir.
Anyone happen to know this district?
That's all, then. Get cracking.
Good morning, sir. Morning.
Fatigue party reporting for duty.
Well done.
Wonderful old place in it's way.
Pity to knock it about too much.
Come in. I'll show you over.
Thank you, sir.
It's a vast warren but we've only requisitioned the ground floor
and half a dozen bedrooms.
So everything else upstairs is private property.
Caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top.
They won't be any trouble to you.
The chapel's open, in bounds to the troops
and a surprising number use it.
The place belongs to Lady Julia Flyte, as she calls herself now.
She used to be married to Mottram, the Minister
for whatever-it-is.
She's abroad in some women's service.
I try to keep an eye on things for her.
Surprising the old Marquis leaving everything to her
Bit rough on the boys.
Thank you.
This is the signals room
plenty of space anyway.
The last lot made absolute hay of the place.
Rather a shame.
Pity we didn't have these paintings covered up.
Modern work I think, but if you ask me, quite the prettiest in the place.
Somebody's made rather a beast of himself there.
Destructive beggars soldiers are.
See the fountain out there!
Rather a tender spot for our landlady.
The young officers used to lark about in it
on guest nights
and it was all looking a bit the worse for wear
so I boarded it up and turned the water off.
Florid great thing, isn't it?
They put the clerks in here.
Don't know why, really, gets bloody cold in the winter.
We tried these oil heaters but it didn't do much good.
Now keep an eye on the busts.
Some bright spark managed to knock the head off one of them
playing indoor hockey if you please.
Don't worry, it won't be charged to your lot.
I'd advise you to give this room to the Brigadier for his office.
The last one took it.
Next door's no good. There's a bloody great bed in it
and a load of Chinese furniture.
Always reminds me of one of the costlier knocking shops
you know
'La Maison Japanaise'.
I'm only here to clear up.
Someone from Brigade will allot the rooms.
Oh, you've got an easy job, haven't you?
Well, if you've seen everything, I'll push off. Good-day to you.
Good-day, sir.
Hooper
is there any chance I can safely leave you
in charge of the working party for half an hour?
I was just wondering if we could scrounge some tea.
For Christ's sake, you've only just started.
They're awfully browned off.
Keep them at it.
Righty oh.
Go and get the last four crates out of the truck will you.
Why, isn't it Mr. Ryder?
It is.
I was wondering when I'd meet somebody I knew.
Mrs. Hawkins is still in her old room.
I was just going to take her some tea.
I'll take it for you. Very good sir.
Nanny
Hello.
It's me
Charles Ryder.
Do sit down, Nanny. I've brought your tea.
Charles Ryder!
Lady Julia's not here
only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling
who was blown up, not a roof to his head
not a stick of furniture
till Julia took him in with the kind heart she's got
and his nerves something shocking.
Did you listen to Mr. Mottram last night?
Very nasty about Hitler, he was.
I said to Effie, the girl who does for me
I said If Hitler was listening, and if he understands English
which I doubt, he'll feel very small.
Have you heard from Julia?
From Cordelia, only last week.
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, but 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 all very nice for them.
Cordelia said they were all 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.
Where are the men, Hooper?
They had to go off to draw the bed straw.
I didn't know anything about it till Sergeant Block told me.
I don't know whether they'll be coming back.
Don't know? What orders did you give?
Well, I told Sergeant Block to bring them back if he thought
it was worthwhile, if there'll be time between now and dinner.
You've been hotted again, Hooper.
That straw was to be drawn till six this evening.
Oh, sorry, Ryder.
Sergeant Block
No, it was my fault for going away
fall in the same party immediately after lunch, bring them back here
and keep them here till the job's done.
Rightyoh.
Thanks.
I say
did you say you know this place before?
Yes, very well.
It belongs to friends of mine.
It doesn't make any sense
one family in a place this size.
What's the use of it?
I suppose Brigade find it useful.
That's not what it's built for, though is it?
No.
It's not what it was built for.
Maybe that's one of the pleasures of building
having a son
wondering how he'll grow up.
I don't know, I've never built anything
and I forfeited the right to watch my son grow up.
I'm homeless
childless
middle-aged and loveless, Hooper.
Now go on back to camp and keep out of the C.O.'s way
if he's back from his recce.
Okay, Ryder.
And Hooper
don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of this morning.
The chapel
showed no ill-effects of its long neglect.
The paint was as fresh and as bright as ever
the lamp burned once more before the altar.
I knelt and said a prayer
an ancient newly-learned form of words.
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, 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.
And yet, I thought
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
had 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 re-lit
before the beaten copper doors of a tabernacle.
This flame
which the old knights saw from their tombs
which they saw put out
the 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 that morning
burning anew among the old stones.
Morning Ryder.
You're looking remarkably cheerful today.