Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [26]
'Eh?'
'Won't you find it rather a bore having me at home for so long?'
'I trust I should not betray such an emotion even if I felt it, said my father mildly and turned back to his book.
The evening passed. Eventually all over the room clocks of diverse pattern musically chimed eleven. My, father closed his book and removed his spectacles. 'You are very welcome, my dear boy,' he said. 'Stay as long as you find it convenient.' At the door he paused and turned back. 'Your cousin Melchior worked his passage to Australia before the mast.' (Snuffle.) 'What, I wonder, is "before the mast"?'
During the sultry week that followed, my relations with my father deteriorated sharply. I saw little of him during the day; he spent hours on end in the library; now and then he emerged and I would hear him calling over the banisters: 'Hayter, get me a cab.' Then he would be away, sometimes for half an hour or less, sometimes a whole day; his errands were never explained. Often I saw trays going up to him at odd hours, laden with meagre nursery snacks—rusks, glasses of milk, bananas, and so forth. If we met in a passage or on the stairs he would look at me vacantly and say 'Ah-ha,' or 'Very warm,' or 'Splendid, splendid,' but in the evening, when he came to the garden-room in his velvet smoking suit, he always greeted me formally.
The dinner table was our battlefield.
On the second evening I took my book with me to the dining-room. His mind and wandering eye fastened on it with sudden attention, and as we passed through the hall he surreptitiously left his own on a side table. When we sat down, he said plaintively: '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,' petulantly, 'tell me about the new plays.'
'But I haven't been to any.'
'You should, you know you really should. It's not 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 theatre-going.'
'My dear boy, you must not let money 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 happy ventures. You should go to the play as part of your education. If you read the lives of eminent men you will find that quite half of them made their first acquaintance with drama from the gallery. I am told there is no pleasure like it. It is there that you find the real critics and devotees. It is called "sitting, with the gods". The expense is nugatory, and even while you wait for admission in the street you are diverted by "buskers". We will sit with the gods together one night. How do you find Mrs.Abel's cooking.?'
'Unchanged.'
'It was inspired by your Aunt Philippa. She gave Mrs Abel ten menus, and they have never been varied. When I am alone I do not notice what I eat, but now that you are here, we must have a change. What would you like? What is in season? Are you fond of lobsters? Hayter, tell Mrs Abel to give us lobsters tomorrow night.'
Dinner that. evening consisted of a white, tasteless soup, overfried fillets of sole with a pink sauce, lamb cutlets propped against a cone of mashed potato, stewed pears in jelly standing on a kind of sponge cake.
'It is purely out of respect for your Aunt Philippa that I dine at this length. She laid it down that a three-course dinner was middle-class. "If you once let the servants get their way," she said, "you will find yourself dining nightly off a single chop." There is nothing I should like more. In fact, that is exactly what I do when I go to my club on Mrs Abel's evening out. But your aunt ordained that at home I must have soup and three courses; some nights it is fish, meat, and savoury, on others it is meat, sweet, savoury—there are a number of possible permutations.
It is remarkable how some people are able to put their opinions in lapidary form; your aunt had that gift.
'It is odd to think that she and I once dined together nightly just as you and I do, my boy. Now she made unremitting efforts to take me out of myself. She used to tell me about her reading. It was in her mind to make a home with me, you know. She thought I should get into funny ways if I was left on my own. Perhaps I have got into funny ways. Have I? But it didn't do. I got her out in the end.'