The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [11]
A large composition of the Birth of Queen Victoria can be traced over the fireplace. There are broken bottles and dirty glasses and uncorrected galley proofs on the table; on the corner of the chimneypiece a beautiful decanter, the broken stopper of which has been replaced by a cork. Ernest is sitting in the broken wicker chair mending the feathers of some darts with unexpected dexterity. He is a short, sturdy young man, with fierce little eyes and a well-formed forehead. His tweeds, stained with drink and paint, have once been well-made, and still preserve a certain distinction. Women undergraduates, on the rare occasions of his appearance at lectures, not infrequently fall in love with him.
“Bolshevist.” It is a reasonable mistake, but a mistake. Until his expulsion for overdue subscriptions, Ernest was a prominent member of the Canning.
Adam goes through the gateway into Ernest’s College where two or three youths are standing about staring vacantly at the notice-boards. As Adam goes by, they turn round and scowl at him.
“Another of Vaughan’s friends.”
Their eyes follow him across the quad, to Ernest’s rooms.
Ernest is somewhat surprised at Adam’s visit, who, indeed, has never shown any very warm affection for him. However, he pours out whisky.
HALF AN HOUR LATER.
It has begun to rain again. Dinner is about to be served in Ernest’s College and the porch is crowded by a shabby array of gowned young men vacantly staring at the notice-boards. Here and there a glaring suit of “plus fours” proclaims the generosity of the Rhodes Trust. Adam and Ernest make their way through the cluster of men who mutter their disapproval like peasants at the passage of some black magician.
“IT’S NO GOOD TAKING ME TO ANY CLUB, DOURE, I’VE BEEN BLACK-BALLED FOR THE LOT.”
“I should imagine that would have happened—even in Oxford.”
AN HOUR LATER. AT THE CROWN.
Adam and Ernest are just finishing dinner; both show marked signs of intoxication.
The dining room at the Crown bears little resemblance to Adam’s epicurean dream. The walls, pathetically frescoed with views of Oxford, resound with the clattering of dirty plates. Swithin’s dinner party has just left, leaving the room immeasurably more quiet. The three women who up till now have been playing selections from Gilbert and Sullivan in the corner have finished work and begun eating their dinner. An undergraduate who has very grandly signed the bill is engaged in an argument with the manager. At a table near Adam’s three young men with gowns wound round their throats have settled themselves and ordered coffee and cream cakes; while they are waiting they discuss the Union elections.
Adam orders more double whiskies.
Ernest insists on sending a bottle of gin over to the party at the next table. It is rejected with some resentment, and soon they rise and go away.
Adam orders more double whiskies.
Ernest begins drawing a portrait of Adam on the tablecloth.
He entitles it “Le vin triste,” and, indeed, throughout dinner, Adam has been growing sadder and sadder as his guest has grown more happy. He drinks and orders more with a mechanical weariness.
At length, very unsteadily, they rise to go.
From now onwards the film becomes a series of fragmentary scenes interspersed among hundreds of feet of confusion.
“It’s going queer again, Ada. D’you think it’s meant to be like this?”
A public-house in the slums. Adam leans against the settee and pays for innumerable pints of beer for armies of ragged men. Ernest is engrossed in a heated altercation about birth control with a beggar whom he has just defeated at “darts.”
Another public house: Ernest, beset by two panders, is loudly maintaining the abnormality of his tastes. Adam finds a bottle of gin in his pocket and attempts to give it to a man; his wife interposes; eventually the bottle falls to the floor and is broken.
Adam and Ernest in a taxi; they drive from college to college, being refused admission. Fade out.
GABRIEL