Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [95]
'Yes?'
'I've turned the old barn into a studio for you, so that you needn't be disturbed by the children or when we have people to stay. I got Emden to do it. Everyone thinks it a great success.
There was an article on it in Country Life; I bought it for you to see.'
She showed me the article: '...happy example of architectural good manners...Sir Joseph Emden's tactful adaptation of traditional material to modern needs...'; there were some photographs; wide oak boards now covered the earthen floor; a high, stonemullioned bay-window had been built in the north wall, and the great timbered roof, which before had been lost in shadow, now stood out stark, well lit, with clean white plaster between the beams; it looked like a village hall. I remembered the smell of the place, which would now be lost.
'I rather liked that barn.' I said.
'But you'll be able to work there, won't you?'
'After squatting in a cloud of sting-fly,' I said, 'under a sun which scorched the paper off the block as I drew, I could work on the top of an omnibus. I expect the vicar would like to borrow the place for whist drives.'
'There's a lot of work waiting for you. I promised Lady Anchorage you would do Anchorage House as soon as you got back. That's coming down, too, you know—shops underneath and two-roomed flats above. You don't think, do you, Charles, that all this exotic work you've been doing, is going to spoil you for that sort of thing?'
'Why should it?'
'Well, it's so different. Don't be cross.'
'It's just another jungle closing in.'
'I know just how you feel, darling. The Georgian Society made such a fuss, but we couldn't do anything...Did you ever get my letter about Boy?'
'Did I? What did it say?'
('Boy' Mulcaster was her brother.)
'About his engagement. It doesn't matter now because it's all off, but father and mother were terribly upset. She was an awful girl. They had to give her money in the end.'
'No, I heard nothing of Boy.'
'He and Johnjohn are tremendous friends, now. It's so sweet to see them together.
Whenever he comes the first thing he does is to drive straight to the Old Rectory. He just walks into the house, pays no attention to anyone else, and hollers out: "Where's my chum Johnjohn?" and Johnjohn comes tumbling downstairs and off they go into the spinney together and play for hours. You'd think, to hear them talk to each other, they were the same age. It was really Johnjohn who made him see reason about that girl; seriously, you know, he's frightfully sharp. He must have heard mother and me talking because next time Boy came he said: "Uncle Boy shan't marry horrid girl and leave Johnjohn," and that was the very day he settled for two thousand pounds out of court. Johnjohn admires Boy so tremendously and imitates him in everything. It's so good for them both.'
I crossed the room and tried once more, ineffectively, to moderate the heat of the radiators; I drank some iced water and opened the window, but, besides the sharp night air, music was borne in from the next room where they were playing the wireless. I shut it and turned back towards my wife.
At length she began talking again, more drowsily 'The garden's come on a lot...The box hedges you planted grew five inches last year...I had some men down from London to put the tennis court right...first-class cook at the moment...'
As the city below us began to wake, we both fell asleep, but not for long; the telephone rang and a voice of hermaphroditic gaiety said: 'Savoy-Carlton-Hotelgoodmorning. It is now a quarter of eight.'
'I didn't ask to be called, you know.'
'Pardon me?'
'Oh, it doesn't matter.'
'You're welcome.'
As I was shaving, my wife from the bath said: 'Just like old times. I'm not worrying any more, Charles.'
'Good.'
'I was so terribly afraid that two years might have made a difference. Now I know we can start again exactly where we left off.'
'When?' I asked. 'What? When we left off what?'
When you went away, of course.'
'You are not thinking of something else, a little time before?'