[gentle instrumental music]
♪ ♪
Do you remember the storm?
The bronze doors banging.
The roses in cellophane.
The man who gave the get-together party
and was never seen again.
Do you remember how the sun came out on our last evening
just as it has done today?
So much to remember.
How many days have there been since then
when we haven't seen each other?
A hundred, do you think?
Oh, not so many.
Two Christmases
to keep up appearances for the sake of the children.
Oh, 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's 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."
[chuckles]
There was the time you had jaundice
and wouldn't let me see you.
And when I had flu, and you were afraid to come.
Yes.
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 future
pressing so hard on either side,
there doesn't seem room for the present at all.
Yes, Wilcox?
Lord Brideshead's just telephoned, milady.
He says not to wait dinner for him, please.
He'll be a little late.
Thank you, Wilcox.
It seems 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 matchboxes.
[chuckles]
You mean it's all your fault?
Well...
Hello, Bridey.
Bridey, we're almost finished.
Oh, well. Only you two?
I hoped to find Rex here.
How are you?
What's the news?
Well, 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 someday.
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 excitingl.
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.
What, 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.
[snickering]
You're not marrying her for her matchboxes?
No, the whole collection went to Falmouth Town Library.
I have a great affection for her.
In spite of all her difficulties,
she's a very cheerful woman,
very fond of acting.
She's a member of the Catholic Players 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 principle,
fortified by the prejudices of the middle classes.
I couldn't possibly bring her here.
It is 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 emphasize
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.
[sobbing]
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 that you paid.
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's wrong,
stopping doing 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.
It's 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 night-light burning before the Sacred Heart.
Me and Cordelia with the catechism
in Mummy's room before lunch and 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.
There's 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 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 had known you were going, I'd have gone too.
It was 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 will 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's used that room for years...
So brother and sister sat and talked
about the arrangement of the house until bedtime.
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 schoolroom 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 all the nonsense
you were taught in the nursery.
[elegant orchestral music]
♪ ♪
But you do know in your heart
that it's all bosh, don't you?
[laughs]
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 the 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 secondhand?
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.
Oh, beast.
Cat in the moonlight.
Your poor face.
Will there be a mark tomorrow?
L... l expect so.
Charles, am I going crazy?
What's happened here tonight?
Shh.
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? 34?
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 with another immediately
is beyond all reason.
I've seen 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
there have been times in the last couple of years
when I thought you were a bit rough on Celia.
Of course it's different when it's one's own sister,
but 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 20 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 45.
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 really 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.
[door rattling]
A telephone message, milady, from Lady Cordelia.
Lady Cordelia? How marvelous.
Where is she?
In London, milady.
Wilcox, how lovely.
Is she coming home?
Just starting for the station, milady.
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 12 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 of all that burning love
spending itself on serum injections
and delousing powder.
When she arrived, tired from her journey,
rather shabby,
moving in the manner of one who has no interest in pleasing,
I thought her an ugly woman.
It was odd, I thought,
how the same ingredients, differently 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 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's installed
with the widow and her children.
He wrote to me and said if I was homeless,
I could stay here after they moved in.
I don't know, though.
Mrs. Muspratt and the three boys.
Maybe I'll get myself a flat in London.
Situation became one of increasing gravity...
till at last...
Hello, Nanny.
Ahl Ohl
I knew you'd be up.
Mr. Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming.
I brought you some lace.
Oh, 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.
Now...
May we turn the wireless off, Nanny?
Oh, 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.
[laughing]
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 beardl.
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.
Cordelial.
What?
Come and tell me about Sebastian.
Not now, Charles.
It's a long story. Tomorrow.
Good night.
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,
whom the people said was an English lord,
had 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,
at least he 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 that 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, 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 realized that he was very ill.
So we took him to the infirmary.
He has 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.
And 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.
He sounds gruesome.
He said they went to Greece,
and Kurt had got arrested after some brawl
and sent back to Germany.
It was the 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 that he hated Germany
and wanted to get out.
I don't know how much it was simply 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'd 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'd been happy.
[somber instrumental music]
♪ ♪
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 that 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 are 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 about the same time
as Brideshead 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.