Here at the age of thirty-nine
I began to be old.
As I lay in that dark hour
I was aghast to realise
that something within me long sickening
had quietly died.
I felt as a husband might feel who
in the fourth year of his marriage
suddenly knew he had no longer any desire
or tenderness or esteem for a once beloved wife.
We had been through it together, the army and I
from the first importunate courtship until now
when nothing remained to us except the chill bonds of law
and duty and custom.
We were leaving that day and I reflected that
whatever scenes of desolation lay ahead of us
I never feared one more brutal than this.
So on this morning of our move
I was entirely indifferent to our destination.
I would go on with my drum
but I could bring it to nothing more than acquiescence.
When we had marched into this camp in the winter of 1943
I had brought with me a company of strong and pitiful men.
Word had gone round among them that we were at last
in transit for the Middle East.
But, as the weeks passed
and the snow began to clear
I saw their disappointment change to resignation
and I, who by every precept should have put heart into them
how could I help them
who could so little help myself?
Morning, sir. Morning Sergeant Major.
How's the move going? Last stores ready for loading 15:00, sir.
Good. Has Mr Hooper appeared yet?
Haven't seen him at all this morning, sir.
Has that been entered in the book?
Wind in the night, sir?
That will do.
Morning, Hooper. Morning, sir.
I should like to speak to Mr Hooper, Sergeant Major.
Very good, sir.
Where the devil have you been? I told you to inspect the lines.
Am I late? Sorry. Had a rush getting my gear together.
That's what you a servant for.
Well I suppose you're right, strictly speaking.
But you know how it is, he had his own stuff to do.
The trouble with Desmond is that if I get on the wrong side of him
he takes it out of me in other ways.
I'm not surprised, if you're so familiar with him.
Cap badge, Hooper! Yes.
C.O.'s orders, all distinguishing marks to be removed.
And what are you wearing all that gear for anyway?
You're not in the advance party. I am.
Aren't I? Of course you're not.
The orders were changed.
Don't you ever read the company notice board?
You don't mean they changed it all again?
There you go. Typical shambles.
Total inefficiency.
They couldn't get away with it in business, I can tell you.
Hooper, do you mind inspecting D squad now?
Righty oh.
And for Christ's sake don't say "Righty oh".
Sorry. I do try to remember. It just slips out.
C.O. Just coming up, sir.
Thank you Sergeant Major.
Good morning, sir.
Well, Ryder, everything squared up here?
Yes, I think so, sir. Think so? You ought to know.
Has that been entered in barrack damages?
Not yet, sir. Not yet, eh?
I wonder when it would have been if I hadn't seen it.
Aha!
Just look at that!
Fine impression that gives to the regiment taking over from us.
Don't you know what sets the standard of a regiment?
The way it leaves camp, Ryder.
Yes, that's bad, sir. It's a disgrace.
See that everything here is burned before we leave.
Very good sir. Sergeant Major, will you send over
to the carrier-platoon and tell Captain Brown that the C. O
would very much like this ditch cleared up?
Right, sir.
Remind me, Ryder, what were you in civilian life?
I was a painter, sir.
You shouldn't do it, sir. You shouldn't really.
That's not our rubbish. Maybe it's not, sir
but you know how it is.
If you get on the wrong side of senior officers
they'll take it out of you other ways.
This is top security
We must be ready to any order.
The important thing is where we go now.
It doesn't make sense. That's the third time we've copped it this week.
They're picking on you old boy.
How is the family, by the way? The children sound a bit difficult.
Jennifer says they always turn into monsters the minute my leave's over.
That young officer over there. Isn't he one of yours?
Yes sir.
What's his name again? Lieutenant Hooper, sir.
His hair needs cutting. He's in no shape to go to a new HQ.
I'll tell him, sir.
That's the sort of thing, Ryder, that lets down the regiment.
It does, sir. I'll see that it's done.
My God! The officers they send us now!
In my late regiment if a young officer was intending
to go to a new HQ like that, the other subalterns
would bloody well have cut his hair for him.
Would they, sir? I'll tell you something, Ryder.
I do not intend to have my professional reputation compromised
by the slack appearance of a few temporary officers.
Corporal Deakin.
Get a pair of scissors!
Lieutenant James! Sir?
Cut that man's hair for him.
Sir?
I said cut that man's hair for him!
I'm sorry, sir. I don't quite understand.
Is that an order, sir?
It is your commander officer's wish
and that's the best kind of order I know.
Go on. Getting tidied up!
We're going to tidy you up a bit. Sit down, Mr Hooper.
Your scissors, sir. Give them to lieutenant James.
Can't you understand an order? Get on with it!
Go on. Start cutting it.
Carry on. Keep at it. Cut it!
Company! Company slope arms!
Company will move to the left in threes.
Left turn!
Company, by the left, quick march!
Right, left, right, left!
I'm sorry about your hair, Hooper. Oh, that's all right.
It's not the sort of thing that used to happen in this regiment.
Oh, no hard feelings. I can take a bit of sport.
I say, any idea where we're off to?
None.
Do you think it's the real thing? No.
Just another flap? Yes.
Everyone's been saying we're for it. I don't know what to think really
it happens so often.
I wouldn't argue with that. Three times in the last six months.
Seems so silly somehow, all this drill and training
if we never go into action. I shouldn't worry, Hooper.
There'll be plenty for everyone in time.
Oh, I don't want much, you know, just enough to say I've been in it.
What the hell is going on?
We are being sprayed by liquid mustard gas.
Hooper, can you see if the windows are shut?
Check there are no casualties.
And write a short situation report.
C Company is to drive on a bit, sir.
Take the right fork. You'll see the dump post off the road.
Thank you, Sergeant. Morning Ryder, can I have a lift?
It's not a bad camp apparently. Big private house
with two or three lakes.
Looks as if we might get some duck if we're lucky.
Excellent.
In the back. Hooper! Morning, Hooper.
Right, you lot, get it moving!
Morning, Sergeant.
Does anyone know where we are?
Not officially, sir, but I did hear someone
mentions the name of the house. It's a place called Brideshead.
You can see it from over there. Huge great barrack of a place.
Thank you, Sergeant. Carry on.
Thank you sir. Right you lot, at the double!
Come on!
It was as though someone had switched off the wireless
and a voice that had been bawling in my ears incessantly
fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short.
An immense silence followed. Empty at first
but gradually, filled with a multitude
of sweet, natural, and long forgotten sounds.
For he had spoken a name
that was so familiar to me.
A conjuror's name of such ancient power, that at it's mere sound
the phantoms of those haunted late years
began to take flight.
Where are you off to, Hooper? B company relieved us.
I've just sent the chaps off to get cleaned up.
Good. Brigade HQ
are coming here next week.
I've just had a snoop around the house. Very ornate I'd call it.
And a queer thing, there's a sort of RC church attached to it.
I looked in and there was a kind of service going on
just a padre and one old man.
I felt very awkward, more in your line than mine.
There's a frightful, great fountain thing too, out the back.
All rocks and carved old men with trumpets.
You never saw such a thing.
Yes, Hooper, I did.
I've been here before.
Oh well, you'll know all about it then.
I'll just go and get myself cleaned up. See you, Ryder.
I had been there before. I knew all about it.
First, with Sebastian more than 20 years ago
on a cloudless day in June. That day, too
I had come not knowing my destination.
Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint.
When the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out
high and clear over her gables and cupolas
she exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth.
It was this cloistral hush that gave our laughter its resonance
and carried it still
joyously over the intervening clamor.
It was Eights Week.
Here discordantly came a rabble of womankind.
Echoes of the intruders penetrated every corner
and my own college was no exception.
We were giving a ball.
Morning, Lunt. Morning, Mr Ryder.
Thank you.
Gentlemen who haven't got ladies
are asked to eat out as far as possible
in the next few days.
Will you be lunching in? No, Lunt.
To give the servants a chance, they say.
Huh! What a chance!
I've got to buy a pincushion for the ladies' cloakroom.
What do they want with dancing? I don't see the reason in it.
There has never been dancing before in Eights Week.
As if the teas and the river weren't enough!
If you ask me, sir, it's all on account of the war.
It couldn't have happened but for that.
Now, wine in the evening or one or two gentlemen
for luncheon, I can see the reasoning. But not dancing.
It came in with them back from the war.
They were too old
and they didn't know and they wouldn't learn. Take my word.
And there's some that goes dancing with the town at the Masonic
but the proctor will have them, you see
Ah, here's Lord Sebastian.
Well, I mustn't stand here talking, not with pincushions to get.
Morning, Lunt! Charles, what in the world's
happening at your college? Is there a circus?
I've seen everything except elephants.
I must say the whole of Oxford is becoming very peculiar suddenly.
Last night it was pullulating with women.
You're to come away with me. At once, out of danger.
I've a motor car outside, a basket of strawberries and
a bottle of Chateau Payraguey
which is not a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend.
It's heaven with strawberries.
I shall go and get my things.
And bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy.
Yes.
Does anyone feel the same emotion for a butterfly or a flower
as he feels for a cathedral or a picture?
Yes, I do.
Ready? Yes.
It's over there.
Isn't it early? Yes!
The women are still doing whatever the women do before they come downstairs.
Sloth has undone them.
We're away. Where are we going?
To see a friend.
Take care of Aloysius. Make sure he isn't sick.
Where did you get the car?
Property of a very gloomy man called Hardcastle.
Do please return the bits to him if I kill myself.
I'm not very good at driving.
God bless Hardcastle! Whoever he may be!
He was supposed to be coming with us.
Well I did tell him ten o'clock and when he was still in bed at 8 I thought
well he's not very eager.
Much kinder to go without him.
It's a pity neither of us can sing.
It was about 11 when Sebastian, without warning, turned the car
into a cart track and stopped.
We ate the strawberries and drank the wine.
As Sebastian promised, they were delicious together.
The fumes of the sweet golden wine
seemed to lift us a finger's breadth
above the turf and hold us suspended.
Just the place to bury a crock of gold.
I should like to bury something precious
in every place that I've been happy.
So that when I'm old and ugly and miserable
I could come back and dig it up and remember.
This was my third term at University
but I date my Oxford life
from my first meeting with Sebastian
which happened by chance in the middle of the term before.
We were in different colleges and came from different schools.
So I might well have spent my three or four years
in the University and never have met him
but for the chance of his getting drunk
one evening in my college and of my having ground
floor rooms in the front quadrangle.
I had been warned of the dangers of these rooms
by my cousin Jasper, who alone, when I first came up
thought me a subject for detailed guidance.
So what are you reading? History.
Oh, it's a perfectly respectable school.
The very worst is English Literature.
The next worst is Modern Greats.
You want either a first or a fourth. There is no value in anything between.
Time spent on a good second is time thrown away.
You should go to the best lectures
Arkwright on Demesthenes for instance
irrespective of whether they are in your school or not.
Clothes. Dress as you do in a country house.
Never wear a tweed jacket and flannel trousers
always wear a suit.
And go to a London tailor, you get better cut and longer credit.
Good afternoon, sir.
Don't treat Dons like schoolmasters.
Treat them as you would the vicar at home.
Clubs. Join the Carlton now
and the Grid at the beginning of your second year.
If you want to run for the Union
and it's not a bad idea
make your reputation outside first
at the Chatham or the Canning.
Oh, and keep clear of Boar's Hill.
Morning, Charles. Good morning.
And friends
Charles, do watch the people you make friends with.
You'll find you spend your second year getting rid of the undesirable ones
you made in your first.
And beware of Anglo-Catholics. They are all sodomites
with unpleasant accents.
In fact, steer clear of all religious groups.
They do nothing but harm.
I say, was this here when you arrived?
No, it's mine.
I put it up. It's Van Gogh.
Really
This is very pretty.
Well, I must be off. I've got a JCR meeting
at half past. Oh, by the way, one last point
change your rooms. But I was lucky to get them.
Ground floor rooms on the Front Quad.
Terribly dangerous. I've seen men ruined.
People start dropping in.
They leave their gowns here and pick them up on their way to hall.
Then you'll start giving them sherry. Before you know where you are
you'll have opened a free bar to all the undesirables in the college.
I do not know that I ever consciously
followed any of this advice.
I certainly never changed my rooms.
There were gilly flowers growing below the windows
which on summer evenings filled them with fragrance.
But that's the complete fallacy of modern aesthetics, Charles.
Can't you see?
You mean, the whole argument of significant form
stands or falls by volume?
Precisely.
If you allow Cezanne to represent a third dimension
in his two-dimensional canvas
then you must allow Landseer his gleam of loyalty
in the Spaniel's eye.
My earliest friends were Collins, a Wykehamist, and an embryo don
a man of solid reading and childlike humor
and a small circle of college intellectuals
who maintained a middle course of culture
between the flamboyant aesthetes and the proletarian scholars.
It was by this circle that I found myself adopted during my first term.
They provided the kind of company
I had enjoyed in the sixth form at school
and for which the sixth form had prepared me.
But even in the earliest days
when the whole business of living at Oxford
with rooms of my own and my own cheque book was a source of excitement
I felt at heart
that this was not all which Oxford had to offer.
I knew Sebastian by sight long before I met him.
That was unavoidable. For from his first week
he was the most conspicuous man of his year by reason of his beauty
which was arresting
and his eccentricities of behavior
which seemed to know no bounds.
My first sight of him was in the door of Germer's and
on that occasion, I was struck less by his looks
than by the fact that he was carrying a large teddy-bear.
Sheer exhibitionism.
That was Lord Sebastian Flyte. A most amusing young gentleman.
Apparently.
This way, sir.
He's the Marquis of Marchmain's second boy.
His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term.
He was very different, quite like an old man.
What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted?
A hair brush for his teddy-bear. It had to have
very stiff bristles. Not Lord Sebastian said
to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking
when he was sulky.
He bought a very nice one with an ivory back
and he's going to have Aloysius engraved on it.
That's the teddy-bear's name.
The barber, who in his time had had ample chance
to tire of undergraduate fantasy
was plainly captivated by him.
I, however, remained censorious.
And subsequent glimpses of him did not soften me
although Collins, who was reading Freud
had a number of technical terms to cover everything.
Nor when at last we met
were the circumstances propitious.
Once we reduce chance to a mathematical formula
we may subject it to the rules of probability.
And, indeed, we rob chance itself, therefore
of the element of chance which, if you see what I mean
must seem a solution of quite impregnable logic.
Thank you very much.
There was a question?
I wanted simply to ask if the laws of mathematics
can be understood by reason.
I think I can anticipate your question.
If the possibility exists, the chances of exist
in a rational universe, then the workings of chance
must be explained by rational processes.
If we believe that God created this rational world
then it is perfectly possible to believe
Who are those awful people?
What are they doing in there?
Looks like a bloody prayer meeting to me.
Look, if God is ultimately responsible for formulating
Newton's Law of Gravity, may He not
so runs my argument, fulfill his purpose by using
the infinite instances which we call chance.
Shouldn't we say then that chance is the very basic principle
of our life in this rational universe?
Alright, old man.
I trust that you will forgive my friend.
The wines were too various. It was neither the quality
nor the quantity that was at fault. It was the mixture.
Grasp that and you have the very root of the matter.
To understand all is to forgive all.
Yes.
A couple of jugs of mulled claret and this has to happen.
You couldn't even get to the window, could you?
Them that can't keep it down are better without it.
It wasn't one of my party. It was someone from out of college.
Yes, well, it's just as nasty to clear up, whoever it was.
There's five shillings on the sideboard.
So I saw and thank you.
But I'd rather not have the money
and not have the mess in the morning.
With the restoration of the Monarch
the Age of Puritanism was finally vanquished
I took my gown and left him to his task.
In those days, I still frequented the Lecture Room.
And female players, hitherto unknown
appeared upon the English stage for the first time
in the history of English drama.
There was an air of relaxation in the land again.
Indeed, this novel feeling of unaccustomed freedom
manifested itself in a remarkable outburst
of artistic creativity.
Have you seen your room?
Lunt. What is all this? The gentleman from last night, sir.
He left that note for you.
"I am very contrite. Aloysius won't speak to me
until he sees I am forgiven, so please
come to luncheon today. Sebastian Flyte. "
A most amusing young gentleman, sir.
I am sure it's a pleasure to clean up after him.
I take it you're lunching out, sir? I told Mr Collins and
Mr Partridge so, they wanted to take their commons in here with you.
Yes, Lunt. Lunching out.
Oh, do take some flowers for yourself and Mrs. Lunt, if you'd care to.
Oh, thank you sir. There is no Mrs. Lunt.
I went there uncertainly, for it was foreign ground
and there was a tiny priggish warning voice in my ear which
in the tones of Collins
told me it was seemly to hold back.
But I was in search of love in those days
and I went full of curiosity
and the faint unrecognized apprehension that here, at last
I should find that low door in the wall others I knew
had found before me, which opened on an enclosed
and enchanted garden, which was somewhere
not overlooked by any window
in the heart of that grey city.
I've just counted them. There are five each and two over
so I'm having the two.
I'm unaccountably hungry today.
I placed myself unreservedly in the hands
of that obliging little chemist in the High
and now I feel so drugged that I've almost begun to believe that
the whole of yesterday evening was a dream.
Please don't wake me up. Hello.
Let's have some champagne.
Thank you for the flowers.
My room looks like a hot house.
My beastly scout has put Aloysius to bed
which is probably just as well since there won't be
any plovers' eggs for him.
Do you know, Hobson hates Aloysius?
I wish I had a scout like yours. He was perfectly sweet to me this morning
when some people might have been quite strict.
Only one piece last night. There was the most frightful
rumpus outside my staircase. I assumed it must be you.
Nonsense. We were quiet as mice.
Damn close thing though.
As each guest came into the room
he made first for the plovers' eggs
then noticed Sebastian and then myself
with a polite lack of curiosity which seemed to say
"We should not dream of being so offensive as to suggest
that you never met us before!"
I say, plovers' eggs.
The first I've seen this year. Where did you get them?
Mummy sends them from Brideshead.
They always lay early for her.
We were eating the Lobster Thermidor
when the last guest arrived.
My dear, I couldn't get away before.
I was lunching with my preposterous tutor.
He thought it very odd my leaving when I did.
I told him I had to change for footer.
Come and sit down.
I'm afraid I've already eaten your eggs.
Oh, I forgot, you don't know Charles Ryder.
Hello.
No.
Anthony Blanche.
But I have the most delicious feeling I'm going to.
Oh, my God, Blanche! It's all over the house, you know.
What is? My dear boy, the news that you
have finally lost your virginity, or perhaps I should say, mislaid it.
You put my own grandes passions quite in the shade.
What are you rattling on about, you appalling dago?
If you're going to be horrid about my cosmopolitan upbringing
I shall tell how you borrowed three hundred francs
to spend a torrid night with that elderly drab in Le Touquet.
It was a niggardly sum to pay for her trouble.
And what a trouble.
Charles, don't look so serious.
You don't mean to say that you let Boy
have a go at your Duchess?
My affair with the Duchess of Vincennes
was on an altogether higher plane than any of you
hobbledehoys can conceive.
Do you know what it was that cemented our love?
We used the same colored varnish
for our toenails.
The time is now propitious, as he guesses.
The meal is ended, she is bored and tired
endeavors to engage her in caresses
which still are unreproved, if undesired.
Flushed and decided, he assaults at once.
Exploring hands encounter no defense
his vanity requires no response,
and makes a welcome of indifference.
And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
enacted on this same divan or bed.
I who have sat by Thebes below the wall
and walked among the lowest of the dead.
Bestows one final patronizing kiss, and gropes his way
finding the stairs unlit.
How I've surprised them!
All boatmen are Grace Darlings to me.
What a boy
Too much, certainly. Too much.
Something will have to be done about that damn nancy boy.
You can count me out.
My dear, I should like to stick you
full of barbed arrows like a pin cushion.
I think it's perfectly brilliant of Sebastian
to have discovered you.
Where do you lurk? I shall come down your burrow and
chivvy you out like an old stoat.
Au revoir.
Well
I'd better be off, too.
Thank you very much. Have some more Cointreau.
Then I must go to the Botanical Gardens.
Why? To see the ivy.
I've never been to the Botanical Gardens.
Oh, Charles. What a lot you have to learn.
There are more kinds of ivy than I ever knew existed.
I don't know where I should be without the Botanical Gardens.
When at length I returned to my rooms
I found them exactly as I had left them that morning
but I detected a jejune air that had not irked me before.
Nothing except the golden daffodils seemed to be real.
If you ask me, sir, I was never very fond of that myself.
I suppose you'll be wanting me to get rid of it next
though where I'd have room for it
is nobody's business.
That day was the beginning of my friendship with Sebastian.
And thus, it came about that morning in June
that I was lying beside him
in the shade of the high elms watching the smoke
from his lips drift into the branches.
You still haven't told me where we're going.
Don't be so impatient, Charles.
I told you. To see a friend.
But who's the friend?
Name of Hawkins.
But who is Hawkins? Wait and see.
Well?
What a place to live in.
It's where my family live.
Don't worry. They're away. You won't have to meet them.
But I should like to.
You can't. They're in London, dancing.
Everything is shut up. We'd better go in this way.
I want you to meet Nanny Hawkins.
That's what we've come for.
Well, this is a surprise.
Who's this?
I don't think I know him.
This is Mr Charles Ryder, Nanny. A friend of mine from Oxford.
How do you do, Mrs. Hawkins? How do you do?
You've come just the right time. Julia's here for the day.
She was up with me nearly all the morning telling me about London.
Such a time they're all having. You must have just missed her.
It's the Conservative women. She won't be long
she's leaving immediately after her speech before the tea.
I'm afraid we may miss her again, Nanny.
Oh, don't do that, dear;
it'll be such a surprise to her seeing you
though she ought to wait for the tea. I told her
it's what the Conservative women come for.
Well, what's the news?
Are you studying hard at your books?
Not very, I'm afraid, Nanny.
Ah, cricketing all day long, I expect, like your brother.
He found time to study too, though.
Did you see that piece about Julia in the paper?
She brought it down for me. Not that it's nearly good enough of her
but what it says is very nice.
"The lovely daughter whom Lady Marchmain
is bringing out this season
witty as well as ornamental the most popular debutante. "
Well, that's no more than the truth, though it was a shame
to cut her hair. Such a lovely head of hair she had
just like her Ladyship's. I said to Father Phipps
it's not natural. He said
Sebastian and the old woman talked long.
It was a charming room.
Laid out on top of the mantelpiece, a collection of small presents
which had been brought to her at various times by her children.
The souvenirs of many holidays.
Presently, it was time for tea.
Look, Nanny, I'm afraid we can't stay for tea. We really must get back.
Oh. Julia will be upset when she hears.
It would have been such a surprise for her.
Goodbye, Nanny. Bye, love.
Come on, Charles.
Goodbye. Goodbye.
Poor Nanny, she does lead such a dull life.
I've a good mind to bring her to Oxford to live with me
only she'd always be trying to send me to church.
We must go quickly before my sister gets back.
Who are you ashamed of, her or me?
I'm ashamed of myself.
I'm not going to let you get mixed up with my family.
They're so madly charming All my life
they've taking things away from me. If they once got hold
of you with their charm, they'd make you their friend not mine
and I won't let them.
All right.
I'm perfectly content.
But aren't we going to see some more of the house?
It's all shut up. We came to see Nanny.
On Queen Alexandra's day it's all open for a shilling.
Come and look if you want to.
Well, it's all like this you see. Nothing to see.
A few pretty things I'd like to show you some day.
Not now.
But there is the chapel. You must see that.
This way.
Why do you do that? Just good manners.
Well, you needn't on my account.
You wanted to do sight-seeing.
What do you think of this?
Golly!
Papa had it restored for Mama
as a wedding present.
Julia. We only just got away in time.
I'm sorry. I'm afraid I wasn't very nice this afternoon.
Brideshead often has that effect on me.
But I had to take you to see Nanny.
I don't keep asking you questions about your family.
Neither do I about yours. But you look so inquisitive.
Well you're so mysterious about them.
I hoped I was mysterious about everything.
I'm rather curious about people's families
You see, it's not a thing I know much about.
There's only my father and myself.
And aunt used to keep an eye on me but my father drove her abroad.
You don't know what you've been saved.
There are lots of us.
Look them up in Debrett.
I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straightened by war
and overshadowed by bereavement.
To the hard bachelordom of English adolescence
the premature dignity and authority of the school system
I had added a sad and grim strain of my own.
Now, that summer term with Sebastian
it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell
of what I had never known
a happy childhood.
And though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars
and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins
there was something of a nursery freshness about us
that fell little short of the joy of innocence.
Towards the end of that term I took my first exams.
It was necessary to pass if I was to remain at Oxford.
And pass I did after a week in which I forbad Sebastian my rooms
and sat up to a late hour with iced black coffee
and charcoal biscuits cramming myself with neglected texts.
I remember no syllable of them now but the other
more ancient love which I acquired that term
will be with me in one shape or another till my last hour.
The end of that term, was also the occasion of the last visit
and grand remonstrance of my cousin Jasper.
I was just free of the schools having taken
the last paper of History previous the day before.
Jasper's sub-fusc suit and white tie
proclaimed him still in the thick of it.
He had the exhausted, but resentful, air of one
who fears he has failed to do himself full justice
of Pindar's Orphisms.
Duty alone had brought him to my rooms
at great inconvenience to himself and, as it happened, to me.
I don't know what sort of allowance my uncle makes you
but you must be spending double.
Is that paid for?
Or these?
Or this peculiarly noisome object?
Yes, I had to pay cash for the skull.
And your clothes. Your present get up
seems an unhappy compromise between the correct wear
for a theatrical garden party in Maidenhead
and a glee singing competition in a garden suburb.
I'm sorry if it disturbs you.
And drink! No one minds
a man getting tight once or twice a term.
In fact, he ought to, on certain occasions.
But you, my dear Charles
are constantly seen drunk in the middle of the afternoon!
I think that is my affair, Jasper.
Look Charles, I expected you to make mistakes
in your first year, we all do.
I got in with some thoroughly objectionable
Christian Union men who ran a mission to hop-pickers
during the Long Vac. But you, my dear Charles
whether you realise or not, have gone, hook line and sinker
to the very worst set in the University.
So that's what's worrying you.
Well, Anthony Blanche there's a man
there's absolutely no excuse for.
I don't particularly like him myself.
Well, he's certainly always hanging about here.
You realise the stiffer element in college don't like it?
They won't stand for him at the House. They threw him in Mercury last night.
I heard.
You may think that living in digs
I don't know what goes on in college, but I hear things.
In fact, I hear too much. I find I've become
a figure of mockery on your account at the Dining Club.
Then there's that chap Sebastian Flyte
you seem inseparable from. Well, he may be alright, I don't know.
His brother, Brideshead, was a very sound fellow
but this friend of yours, well
he looks odd to me and gets himself talked about.
I'm sorry, Jasper. I know it must be embarrassing for you.
I happen to like this bad set.
I like getting drunk at luncheon.
And though I haven't quite spent
double my allowance yet
I undoubtedly shall by the end of term.
Will you join me?
I usually have
a glass of champagne about this time.
If you stay, you might meet the despicable Mr Blanche.
I'm dining with him tonight.
No, thank you.
I have Greek History and Morals on Monday.
So my cousin Jasper despaired.
Looking back
there is little I would have left undone or done otherwise.
Perhaps now I could match
my cousin Jasper's game cock maturity with a sturdier fowl.
I could tell him that to know and love one other human being
is the root of all wisdom.
Two for you
and two for me. Yum-yum.
I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles
you are not going to have sherry. You're going to try
this delicious concoction instead.
What is it? Brandy Alexander.
You don't like it? Then I'll drink it for you.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Down the little red lane they go.
How the students stare!
I'm not surprised, Anthony.
I'm a little out of sympathy with the undergraduates
for the moment. That's why we're dining at Thame.
Who else is coming? No one.
I've got you to myself tonight.
There's a delightful hotel there which, luckily
doesn't appeal to the hearties of the Bullingdon.
You heard what they did to me last night?
Yes, I did It's too naughty.
It was not, I knew, the first time that Anthony had been ducked.
But the incident seemed much on his mind.
I didn't want them to start getting rough
so I said to them pacifically: "Dear, sweet clodhoppers
if you knew anything of sexual psychology
you would know hat nothing could give me keener pleasure
than to be manhandled by you meaty boys
ecstasy of the naughtiest kind. If any of you
wishes to be my partner in joy, then come and seize me.
If, on the other hand, you wish to satisfy some obscure
and less easily classified libido
then come with me quietly to the water. "
So I just got into the fountain and, you know
it really was rather refreshing.
So I sported there and struck some attitudes.
Oh, la fatigue du Nord!
Now you can't imagine an unpleasantness like
that happening to Sebastian, can you?
No, I can't. No.
Sebastian has charm Such charm.
Of course, you haven't known him as long as I have.
How long have you known him, Anthony?
I was at school with him. You wouldn't believe it, but in those days
people used to say he was a little bitch.
The rest of us were constantly being beaten
in the most savage way, on the most frivolous pretexts.
But never Sebastian. I can see him now
at the age of fifteen. He never had spots, you know.
Boy Mulcaster was positively scrofulous, but not Sebastian.
Or did he have one, rather a stubborn one at the back of his neck?
Yes, now I think of it, he did. Narcissus with one pustule.
He and I were both Catholics so we used to go to mass together.
He used to spend such a time in the confessional
I used to wonder what he had to say
because he never did anything wrong, never quiet
at least he never got punished.
Perhaps he was just being charming through the grills.
I told all about you. He is absolutely agape.
You see, my dear Charles, you are that very rare thing.
An Artist. But who recognizes you?
The other day I told Sebastian that you drew like a young Ingres.
And do you know what he said?
Yes, Aloysius draws very prettily, too.
but of course he's rather more modern.
So charming, so amusing.
Do you wish Sebastian was with us?
No. Of course you do.
And do I? I wonder.
How our thoughts do run on that little bundle of charm
to be sure.
I think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles.
I bring you here, at very considerable expense
simply to talk about myself and I find
I talk of no one except Sebastian.
It's odd because there's really no mystery about him
except how he came to be born of such a very sinister family.
It's when one gets to the parents that a bottomless pit opens.
My dear, such a pair.
They were married for fifteen years or so.
And then Lord Marchmain went off to war.
He never came back, but formed a connection
with a highly talented dancer.
Why doesn't she divorce him?
Because she is so pious. My dear, you would think
that old reprobate had tortured her
stolen her patrimony, flung her out of doors
roasted, stuffed and eaten her children
and gone frolicking about wreathed in all the flowers
of Sodom and Gomorrah. She's a blood sucker, my dear
a blood sucker. You can see the tooth marks
on all her victims. It's witchcraft. There's no other explanation.
So you see, we mustn't altogether blame Sebastian.
For what? For seeming a little insipid.
But then, of course, you don't blame Sebastian
do you Charles?
With that very murky background, what could he do, except
set up as being simple and charming, particularly
as he isn't very well endowed in the top story.
We couldn't claim that for him, could we Charles
much as we love him?
Tell me candidly, have you ever heard Sebastian
say anything you have remembered for more than five minutes?
You know, when I hear him talk I am reminded of that
nauseating picture "Bubbles".
Conversation should be like juggling
up go the balls and plates
up and over, in and out, glittering in the footlights.
But when dear Sebastian speaks
it is like a little sphere of soap
sud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe
full of rainbow light for a second, and then
vanished with nothing left at all. Nothing.
Shall we go, Anthony?
What's the time?
It's after nine o'clock. I let you lie in.
I didn't think you'd be going to corporate communion.
And you were absolutely right, Lunt.
It was the last Sunday of term. The last of the year.
It was nearly eleven when I left, and during my walk
I heard the change ringing cease and all over the town
give place to the single chime which warned the city
that service was about to start.
None but churchgoers seemed abroad that morning
on their way to St Barnabas, St Columba, St Aroysius
all in the summer sunshine going to the temples of their race.
Four proud infidels alone proclaimed their dissent
four Indians from the gates of Balliol
making for the river.
So, through a world of piety
I made my way to Sebastian.
Hello.
I've been to mass.
I knew Mummy'd been writing to Monseignor Bell.
He's asked me to dinner twice last week
so I sat bang in the front and absolutely shouted the Hail Mary's.
I'm glad that's over.
How was dinner with Antoine? What did you talk about?
Well, he did most of the talking. That's not unusual.
Did you know him at Eton?
Hardly. He was sacked in my first half.
Though I do remember seeing him about a bit.
Did he go to church with you? I don't think so. Why?
Has he met any of your family?
Charles, how very peculiar you're being today. No. I don't suppose so.
So why all this interest?
Well, I was trying to find out how much truth
there was in what he said last night.
Very little I should think. That's his great charm.
Well, you may think it charming. I think it's devilish.
Do you know, he spent most of last evening trying to turn me
against you?
And he almost succeeded.
Did he?
How silly.
Aloysius wouldn't have approved of that at all.
Would you, you pompous old bear?
The long vacation came
and Sebastian disappeared
into that other life of his where I was not asked to follow.
I was left, instead
forlorn and regretful. I returned to my father's house without plans
and without money.
I faced a bleak prospect.
I was overdrawn at the Bank
and without my father's authority, I could draw no more.
My dear boy, they never told me you were here.
Hello, father.
Did you have a very exhausting journey?
They gave you tea?
Yes. Mrs. Abel brought me some.
You are well?
I have just made a somewhat audacious purchase from Sonerachein's.
A terra-cotta bull of the 5th century.
I was examining it and forgot your arrival.
Was the carriage very full?
No. I managed to get a corner seat.
Good.
Hayter brought you the evening paper.
No news, of course. Such a lot of nonsense.
What do you like to drink?
Hayter, what have we for Mr Charles to drink?
There's some whisky.
There's whisky. Perhaps you like something else?
What else have we?
There isn't anything else in the house, sir.
There's nothing else.
You must tell Hayter what you would like and he will get it in.
I never keep any wine now. I am forbidden it
and no one comes to see me. But while you are here
you must have what you like.
You are here for long? I'm not quite sure, father.
It's a very long vacation.
In my day, we used to go to
what were called reading parties
always in mountainous areas.
Why? Why should alpine scenery be thought conducive to study?
I had thought of putting in some time at an art school.
My dear boy, you'll find them all shut. The students go to Barbison
or such places and paint in the open air.
There was an institution in my day called "Sketching club".
Mixed sexes, bicycles, pepper-and-salt knickerbockers
holland umbrellas and, it was popularly thought, free love.
Such a lot of nonsense. I expect they still go on.
You might try that.
One of the problems of the vacation, father
is money.
Oh. I shouldn't worry about a thing like that at your age.
You see, I've run rather short. Yes?
In fact, I don't know how I'm going to get through the next couple of months.
Well, I'm the worst person to come to for advice.
I've never been short as you so painfully call it.
And yet what else could you say?
Hard up? Penurious? Distressed?
Embarrassed? Stoney-broke? On the rocks?
In Queer Street?
Well, let us just say you are in Queer Street and leave it at that.
Yes, but what do you suggest I should do?
Your cousin Melchior was imprudent in his investments
and got into a very queer street.
He went to Australia.
Hayter. I've dropped my book.
During the sultry week that followed
I saw little of my father during the day.
He spent hours on end in the study. Now and again
I would hear him go out
sometimes for half an hour or less.
Sometimes for a whole day.
Aah, so there you are.
Splendid, splendid.
Very warm today, very warm. Yes.
His errands were never explained.
The dinner table was our battlefield.
I do think, Charles, you might talk to me.
I've had a very exhausting day.
I was looking forward to a little conversation.
Of course, father.
What shall we talk about?
Cheer me up. Take me out of myself.
Tell me about the new plays.
But I haven't been to any.
You should, you know, you really should.
It isn't natural in a young man to spend all his evenings at home.
Well, father, as I told you, I haven't much money
to spare for theatregoing.
My dear boy, you must not allow
money to become your master in this way.
Why, at your age, your cousin Melchior was part-owner of a musical piece.
It was one of his few successful ventures.
You should go to the play as part of your education.
I received one letter from Sebastian.
It was written on, and enveloped in heavy
Victorian mourning paper, black-coroneted and black bordered.
"Dearest Charles. I found a box of this paper
at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning
for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors
despaired of it from the start. Seems I am off to Venice
to stay with Papa in his palace of sin.
I wish you were coming. I wish you were here.
I am never quite alone. Members of my family
keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again
but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind
not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet
a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.
Love or what you will. S."
Strife was internecine during the next fortnight.
But I suffered the more,
for my father had greater reserves to draw on.
One day, by chance, a weapon came to hand.
I met an old acquaintance of school days named Jorkins.
I never had much liking for Jorkins
but I greeted him with enthusiasm and asked him to dinner.
My father was quick to retaliate.
He made a little fantasy for himself that Jorkins should be an American.
So nice of you to come all this way, Mr Jorkins.
Oh, it isn't far. Really only a matter of minutes.
Ah. Science annihilates distance.
You are over here on business?
Well, I'm in business
if that�s what you mean.
I had a cousin who was in business, you wouldn't know him
it was before your time.
I was telling Charles about him only the other night.
He has been much in my mind. He came a cropper.
You find his misfortune the subject for mirth?
Or perhaps you were unfamiliar with the word I used.
You no doubt would say folded up.
Well, I don't know that
I mean
I suppose with your standards
you find our life here very parochial.
My father was master of the situation.
Throughout the evening he played
a delicate, one-sided parlour game with him
explaining any peculiarly English terms
in the conversation, translating pounds into dollars
so that my guest was left with the vague sense that
there was a misconception somewhere as to his identity
which he never got the chance of explaining.
I mean if
Only once I thought my father had gone too far.
Of course, I'm afraid living in London
you must sadly miss your national game.
My national game?
Cricket!
Never mind. I've decided to diversify Charles' evenings at home.
Tonight I have a surprise. I've asked a few young friends
over for a little music-making.
Charles, you know the Orme-Herricks?
Did you know that Miss Orme-Herrick was a student of the cello?
She's going to play for us tonight after dinner!
Charles.
I really have to go
Please.
I'm afraid Jorkins has to go, father.
He has to be up very early in the morning.
Oh, what a pity. Goodbye then, Mr Jorkins.
I hope that you will pay us another visit next time you cross the herring pond.
Goodbye, Mr Ryder, and thank you. I'm so sorry I have to leave.
I'll just see him out, father. Such a versatile young man.
You must ask him again, soon.
Goodnight, Jorkins.
What very dull friends I have!
You know, without the spur of your presence
I would never have roused myself to invite them.
I have been very neglectful about entertaining lately.
Now you are paying me a long visit
I will have many such evenings.
You liked Miss Orme-Herrick?
No.
No? Was it her little moustache you objected to
or her very large feet? Do you think she enjoyed herself?
No.
That was my impression also. I doubt if any of our guests
will count this among their happiest evenings.
That young foreigner behaved atrociously I thought.
Where can I have met him?
And Miss Constantia Smethwick, where can I have met her?
But the obligations of hospitality must be observed.
While you are here, you shall not be dull!
Finally, one Sunday afternoon, a telegram arrived from Sebastian
which threw me into a state of fevered anxiety.
Father
You'll never guess where I've spent the day.
I've been to the zoo. It was most agreeable.
The animals seem to like the sunshine so much.
Father, I have to leave at once. Yes?
A friend of mine, he's gravely injured. I must go to him.
There's a train in about half an hour.
"Gravely injured, come at once. Sebastian. "
Well, I'm sorry you are upset. Reading this message
I do not think that the accident can be quite so serious
as you seem to think, otherwise
it would hardly be signed by the victim himself.
Still, of course, he may well be fully conscious
but blind or paralyzed with a broken back.
Why exactly is your presence so necessary?
You have no medical knowledge. You are not in holy orders.
Do you hope for a legacy?
I told you, he is a great friend.
Well, Orme-Herrick is a very great friend of mine, but I should not go
tearing off to his death bed on a warm Sunday afternoon.
I rather doubt whether Lady Orme-Herrick would welcome me.
However, I see you have no such doubts.
I shall miss you, my dear boy.
But do not hurry back on my account.
Fear worked like yeast in my thoughts.
And the fermentation brought to the surface
in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster.
A loaded gun, held carelessly at a stile
a horse rearing and rolling over
a shaded pool with a submerged stake
a car at a blind corner.
All the catalogue of threats to civilized life rose and haunted me.
I even pictured a homicidal maniac mouthing in the shadows
swinging a length of lead pipe.
Tickets, please, sir.
Brideshead, sir? Yes.
Lady Julia's waiting in the yard.
Thank you.
You're Mr Ryder? Yes.
Jump in.
How is he? Oh, he's fine.
Have you had dinner? Yes, on the train.
Well, I expect it was beastly. There's some more at home.
Sebastian and I are alone so we thought we'd wait for you.
But what happened to him? Didn't he say?
I expect he thought you wouldn't come if you knew.
He cracked a bone in his foot so tiny that it hasn't a name.
But they X-rayed it yesterday and told him
to keep it up for a month.
It's a great bore to him, putting out all his plans.
He's been making the most enormous fuss.
Everybody else has gone. At first he tried to make me
stay back with him. Well, I expect you know
how maddeningly pathetic he can be.
I almost gave in and then I said, surely there must be someone
you can get hold of? And he said everybody was away
or busy and anyway, no one else would do.
But at last he agreed to try you
and I promised I'd stay if you failed him, so
you can imagine how popular you are with me.
I must say I think it's noble of you to come all this way at a moment's notice.
How did he do it?
Believe it or not, playing croquet. He lost his temper
and tripped over a hoop. Not a very honorable scar.
She so much resembled Sebastian, that sitting beside her
I was confused by the double illusion
of familiarity and strangeness.
I hate driving at this time of the day.
There doesn't seem anyone left at home who can drive a car.
Sebastian and I are practically camping out.
Cigarette? No, thanks.
Light one for me, will you?
It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me and
as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers
I caught a thin bat's squeak of sexuality
inaudible to any but me.
Thanks.
You've been here before. Nanny reported it.
We both thought it very odd of you not to stay to tea with me.
That was Sebastian.
You seem to let him boss you around a good deal.
You shouldn't. It's very bad for him.
Here we are.
I wouldn't have put it past Sebastian to have started dinner.
Thank you.
Hello, darling.
Thank you, Wilcox.
Well darling, I've collected your chum.
I thought you were dying.
I thought so too. The pain was excruciating.
Julia, do you think if you asked him, Wilcox would give us champagne tonight?
I hate champagne and Mr Ryder has already had dinner.
Mister Ryder? Mister Ryder?
Charles drinks champagne at all hours.
Do you know, looking at this great swaddled foot of mine, I can't get
it out of my head that I've got gout, and that gives me a craving for champagne.
Which way? This way.
Dinner was served in the Red Dining Room.
While they dined, I ate a peach
and told them of the war with my father.
And he said to him "Living in London, you must miss
your national game. And Jorkin said, " What national game?"
and my father said, "Why, Cricket, of course. "
I really think he's sometimes quite mad.
He sounds a perfect poppet to me.
And now I'm going to leave you boys.
Where are you off to? The nursery.
I promised Nanny a last game of halma.
Dear Nanny Hawkins. She lives entirely for pleasure.
Goodnight, Mr Ryder and goodbye. I'm leaving early.
I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for relieving me
at the sick bed.
My sister's very pompous tonight.
I don't think she cares for me.
I don't think she cares for anyone very much.
I love her. She's so like me. Do you? Is she?
In looks I mean, and the way she talks.
I wouldn't love anyone with a character like mine.
Charles, we're going to have a heavenly time alone.
When, next morning, I saw Julia drive from the forecourt and disappear
I felt a sense of liberation and peace such as I was to know
years later, when after a night of unrest
the sirens sounded the "All Clear".
I believed myself very close to heaven
during those languid days at Brideshead.
It is thus I like to remember Sebastian
as he was that summer
when we wandered alone through that enchanted palace.