Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [116]
I often wondered what he made of me and of my continual presence; he seemed to accept me, without curiosity, as one of the household. Twice in the past two years he had surprised me by what seemed to be acts of friendship; that Christmas he had sent me a photograph of himself in the robes of a Knight of Malta, and shortly afterwards asked me to go with him to a dining club. Both acts had an explanation: he had had more copies of his portrait printed than he knew what to do with; he was proud of his club. It was a surprising association of men quite eminent in their professions who met once a month for an evening of ceremonious buffoonery; each had his sobriquet Bridey was called 'Brother Grandee'—and a specially designed jewel worn like an order of chivalry, symbolizing it; they had club buttons for their waistcoats and an elaborate ritual for the introduction of guests; after dinner a paper was read and facetious speeches were made. There was plainly some competition to bring guests of distinction and since Bridey had few friends, and since I was tolerably well known, I was invited. Even on that convivial evening I could feel my host emanating little magnetic waves of social uneasiness, creating, rather, a pool of general embarrassment about himself in which, he floated with log-like calm.
He sat down opposite me and bowed his sparse, pink head over his plate.
'Well, Bridey. What's the news?'
'As a matter of fact,' he said, 'I have some news. But it can wait.'
'Tell us now.'
He made a grimace which I took to mean 'not in front of the servants', and said, 'How is the painting, Charles?'
'Which painting?'
'Whatever you have on the stocks.'
'I began a sketch of Julia, but the light was tricky all today.'
'Julia? I thought you'd done her before. I suppose it's a change from architecture, and much more difficult.'
His conversation abounded in long pauses during which his mind seemed to remain motionless; he always brought one back with a start to the exact point where he had stopped. Now after more than a minute he said: 'The world is full of different subjects.'
'Very true, Bridey.'
'If I were a painter,' he said, 'I should choose an entirely different subject every time; subjects with plenty of action in them like...' Another pause. What, I wondered was coming? The Flying Scotsman? The Charge of the Light Brigade? Henley Regatta? Then surprisingly he said: '...like Macbeth.' There was something supremely preposterous in the idea of Bridey as a painter of action pictures; he was usually preposterous yet somehow achieved a certain dignity by his remoteness and agelessness; he was still half-child, already half-veteran; there seemed no spark of contemporary life in him; he had a kind of massive rectitude and impermeability, an indifference to the world, which compelled respect. Though we often laughed at him, he was never wholly ridiculous; at times he was even formidable.
We talked of the news from central Europe until, suddenly cutting across this barren topic, Bridey asked: 'Where are mummy's jewels?'
'This was hers,' said Julia, 'and this. Cordelia and I had all her own things. The family jewels went to the bank.'
'It's so long since I've seen them—I don't know that I ever saw them all. What is there? Aren't there some rather famous rubies, someone was telling me?'
'Yes, a necklace. Mummy used often to wear it, don't you remember? And there are the pearls—she always had those out. But most of it stayed in the bank year after year. There are some hideous diamond fenders, I remember, and a Victorian diamond collar no one could wear now. There's a mass of good stones. Why?'
'I'd like to have a took at them some day.'
'I say, papa isn't going to pop them, is he? He hasn't got into debt again?'
'No, no, nothing like that.'
Bridey was a slow and copious eater. Julia and I watched him between the candles. Presently he said: 'If I was Rex'—his mind seemed full of such suppositions: 'If I was Archbishop of Westminster', 'If I was head of the Great Western Railway', 'If I was an actress', as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted