Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh [65]
'All guides and ruins and mules, ' said Cordelia. 'Where's Sebastian?'
'He,' said Mr Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though he had expected the question and prepared the answer, 'he held the camera. He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put his hand over the lens, didn't you, Sebastian?' There was no answer from the shadows. Mr Samgrass delved again into his pigskin satchel.
'Here,' he said, 'is a group taken by a street photographer on the terrace of the St George Hotel at Beirut. There's Sebastian.'
'Why, ' I said, 'there's Anthony Blanche surely?'
'Yes, we saw quite a lot of him; met him by chance at Constantinople.' A delightful companion. I can't think how I missed knowing him. He came with us all the way to Beirut.'
Tea had been cleared away and the curtains drawn. It was two days after Christmas, the first evening of my visit; the first, too, of Sebastian's and Mr Samgrass's, whom to my surprise I had found on the platform when I arrived.
Lady Marchmain had written three weeks before: 'I have just heard from Mr Samgrass that he and Sebastian will be home for Christmas as we hoped. I had not heard from them for so long that I was afraid they were lost and did not want to make any arrangements until I knew. Sebastian will be longing to see you. Do come to us for Christmas if you can manage it, or as soon after as you can.'
Christmas with my uncle was an engagement I could not break, so I travelled across country and joined the local train midway, expecting to find Sebastian already established; there he was, however, in the next carriage to mine, and when I asked him what he was doing, Mr Samgrass replied with such glibness and at such length, telling me of mislaid luggage and of Cook's being shut over the holidays, that I was at once aware of some other explanation which was being withheld.
Mr Samgrass was not at ease; he maintained all the physical habits of selfconfidence, but guilt hung about him like stale cigar smoke, and in Lady Marchmain's greeting of him I caught a note of anticipation. He kept up a lively account of his tour during tea, and then Lady Marchmain drew him away with her, upstairs, for a 'little talk'. I watched him go with something near compassion; it was plain to anyone with a poker sense that Mr Samgrass held a very imperfect hand and, as I watched him at tea, I began to suspect that he was not only bluffing but cheating. There was something he must say, did not want to say, and did not quite know how to say to Lady Marchmain about his doings over Christmas, but, more than that, I quessed, there was a great deal he ought to say and had no intention at all of saying, about the whole Levantine tour.
'Come and see nanny,' said Sebastian.
'Please, can I come, too?' said Cordelia.
'Come on.'
We climbed to the nursery in the dome. On the way Cordelia said: 'Aren't you at all pleased to be home?'
'Of course I'm pleased,' said Sebastian.
'Well, you might show it a bit. I've been looking forward to it so much.'
Nanny did not particularly wish to be talked to; she liked visitors best when they paid no attention to her and let her knit away, and watch their faces and think of them as she had known them as small children; their present goings-on did not, signify much beside those early illnesses and crimes.
'Well, ' she said, 'you are looking peaky. I expect it's all that foreign food doesn't agree with you. You must fatten up now you're back. Looks as though you'd been having some late nights, too, by the look of your eyes—dancing, I suppose.' (It was ever Nanny Hawkins's belief that the upper classes spent most of their leisure evenings in the ballroom.) 'And that shirt wants darning. Bring it to me before it goes to the wash.'
Sebastian certainly