Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [124]
Those were the impressions of the first half hour, sharpened by the contrast with Julia's white skin and silk and jewelled hair and with my memories of her as a child.
'My job's over in Spain,' she said; 'the authorities were very polite, thanked me for all I'd done, gave me a medal, and sent me packing. It ' looks as though there'll be plenty of the same sort of work over here soon.'
Then she said: 'Is it too late to see nanny?'
'No, she sits up to all hours with her wireless.'
We went up, all three together, to the old nursery. Julia and I always spent part of our day there. Nanny Hawkins and my father were two people who seemed impervious to change, neither an hour older than when I first knew them. A wireless set had now been added to Nanny Hawkins' small -assembly of pleasures—the rosary, the Peerage with its neat brown-paper wrapping protecting the red and gold covers, the photographs, and holiday souvenirs—on her table. When we broke it to her that Julia and I were to be married, she said: 'Well, dear, I hope it's all for the best,' for it was not part of her religion to question the propriety of Julia's actions.
Brideshead had never been a favourite with her; she greeted the news of his engagement with: 'He's certainly taken long enough to make up his mind,' and, when the search through Debrett afforded no information about Mrs Muspratt's connections: 'She's caught him, I daresay.'
We found her, as always in the evening, at the fireside with her teapot, and the wool rug she was making.
'I knew you'd be up,' she said. 'Mr Wilcox sent to tell me you were coming.'
'I brought you some lace.'
'Well, dear, that is nice. 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. That is very welcome, I'm sure.'
'May I turn off the wireless, nanny?'
'Why, of course; I didn't notice it was on, in the pleasure of' seeing you. What have you done to your hair?'
'I know it's terrible. I must get all that put right now I'm back. Darling nanny.'
As we sat there talking, and I saw Cordelia's fond eyes on all of us, I began to realize that she, too, had a beauty of her own.
'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.'
'I hope they look- after him properly. I expect they find him a regular handful. He always sends to me at Christmas, but it's not the same as having him home. Why you must all always be going abroad I never did understand. Just like his Lordship. When there was that talk about going to war with Munich, I said to myself, "There's Cordelia and Sebastian and his Lordship all abroad; that'll be very awkward for them." '
'I wanted him to come home with me, but he wouldn't. He's got a beard now, you know, 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, scrub as you might.'
'It's frightening,' Julia once said, 'to think how completely you have forgotten Sebastian.'
'He was the forerunner.'
'That's what you said 'in the storm. I've thought since, perhaps I am only a forerunner, too.'
'Perhaps,' I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke—a thought to fade and vanish like, smoke without a trace—'perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that other have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in. our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.'
I had not forgotten Sebastian. He was with me daily in Julia; or rather it was Julia I had known in him, in those distant Arcadian days.