Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [44]
'Really, Cara, you ask the most embarrassing questions. How should I know? I assume...'
'He does not. But not the littlest piece. Then why does he stay with me? I will tell you; because I protect him from Lady Marchmain. He hates her; but you can have no conception how he hates her. You would think him so calm and English—the milord, rather blasé, all passion dead, wishing to be comfortable and not to be worried, following the sun, with me to look after that one thing that no man can do for himself. My friend, he is a volcano of hate. He cannot breathe the same air as she. He will not set foot in England because it is her home; he can scarcely be happy with Sebastian because he is her son. But Sebastian hates her too.'
'I'm sure you're wrong there.'
'He may not admit it to you. He may not admit it to himself; they are full of hate—hate of themselves. Alex and his family...Why do you think he will never go into Society?'
'I always thought people had turned against him.'
'My dear boy, you are very young. People turn against a handsome, clever, wealthy man like Alex? Never in your life. It is he who has driven them away. Even now they come back again and again to be snubbed and laughed at. And all for Lady Marchmain. He will not touch a hand which may have touched hers. When we have guests I see him thinking, "Have they perhaps just come from Brideshead? Are they on their way to Marchmain House? Will they speak of me to my wife? Are they a link between me and her whom I hate?" But, seriously, with my heart, that is how he thinks. He is mad. And how has she deserved all this hate? She has done nothing except to be loved by someone who was not grown up. I have never met Lady Marchmain; I have seen her once only; but if you live with a man you come to know the other woman he has loved. I know Lady Marchmain very well. She is a good and simple woman who has been loved in the wrong way.
'When people hate with all that energy, it is something in themselves they are hating. Alex is hating all the illusions of boyhood—innocence, God, hope. Poor Lady Marchmain has to bear all that. A woman has not all these ways of loving.
'Now Alex is very fond of me and I protect him from his own innocence. We are comfortable.
'Sebastian is in love with his own childhood. That will make him very unhappy. His teddy-bear, his nanny and he is nineteen years old... '
She stirred on her sofa, shifting her weight so that she could look down at the passing boats, and said in fond, mocking tones: 'How good it is to sit in the shade and talk of love,' and then added with a sudden swoop to earth, 'Sebastian drinks too much.'
'I suppose we both do.'
'With you it does not matter. I have watched you together. With Sebastian it is different. He will be a drunkard if someone does not come to stop him. I have known so many. Alex was nearly a drunkard when he met me; it is in the blood. I see it in the way Sebastian drinks. It is not your way.'
We arrived in London on the day before term began. On the way from Charing Cross I dropped Sebastian in the forecourt of his mother's house; 'Here is "Marchers",' he said with a sigh which meant the end of a holiday. 'I won't ask you in, the place is probably full of my family. We'll meet at Oxford'; I drove across the park to my home.
My father greeted me with, his usual air of mild regret.
'Here today,' he said; 'gone tomorrow. I seem to see very little of you. Perhaps it is dull for you here. How could it be otherwise? You have enjoyed yourself.'
'Very much. I went to Venice.'
'Yes. Yes. I suppose so. The weather was fine?' When he went to bed after an evening of silent study, he paused to ask: 'The friend you were so much concerned about, did he die?'
'No.'
'I am very thankful. You should have written to tell me. I worried about him so much.'
5
'IT is typical of Oxford,'