The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [65]
“What I can’t understand, Father, is how you came to be there.”
“I was called in to see Sir Alastair. He wasn’t badly hurt, but he had been knocked unconscious. You both had a lucky escape. It was odd Sir Alastair asking for me. He isn’t a Catholic, but he seems to have had some sort of dream while he was unconscious that made him want to see a priest. Then they told me you were here too, so I came along.”
Rip thought for a little. He felt very dizzy when he tried to think.
“Alastair had a dream too, did he?”
“Apparently something about the Middle Ages. It made him ask for me.”
“Father,” said Rip, “I want to make a confession . . . I have experimented in black art . . .”
BY SPECIAL REQUEST
An alternative ending to A Handful of Dust
I
The liner came into harbour at Southampton, late in the afternoon.
They had left the sun three days behind them; after the Azores there had been a high sea running; in the Channel a white mist. Tony had been awake all night, disturbed by the fog signals and the uncertainty of homecoming.
They berthed alongside the quay. Tony leant on the rail looking for his chauffeur. He had cabled to Hetton that he was to be met and would drive straight home. He wanted to see the new bathrooms. Half the summer workmen had been at Hetton. There would be several changes to greet him.
It had been an uneventful excursion. Not for Tony were the ardours of serious travel, desert or jungle, mountain or pampas; he had no inclination to kill big game or survey unmapped tributaries. He had left England because, in the circumstances, it seemed the correct procedure, a convention hallowed in fiction and history by generations of disillusioned husbands. He had put himself in the hands of a travel agency and for lazy months had pottered from island to island in the West Indies, lunching at Government Houses, drinking swizzles on club verandahs, achieving an easy popularity at Captains’ tables; he had played deck quoits and Ping-Pong, had danced on deck and driven with new acquaintances, on well-laid roads amid tropical vegetation. Now he was home again. He had thought less and less of Brenda during the passing weeks.
Presently he identified his chauffeur among the sparse population of the quay. The man came on board and took charge of the luggage. The car was waiting on the other side of the customs sheds.
The chauffeur said, “Shall I have the big trunk sent on by train?”
“There’s plenty of room for it behind the car, isn’t there?”
“Well, hardly, sir. Her ladyship has a lot of luggage with her.”
“Her ladyship?”
“Yes, sir. Her ladyship is waiting in the car. She telegraphed that I was to pick her up at the hotel.”
“I see. And she has a lot of luggage?”
“Yes, sir, an uncommon lot.”
“Well . . . perhaps you had better send the trunks by train.”
“Very good, sir.”
So Tony went out to the car alone, while his chauffeur was seeing to the trunks.
Brenda was in the back, shrunk into the corner. She had taken off her hat—a very small knitted hat, clipped with a brooch he had given her some years ago—and was holding it in her lap. There was deep twilight inside the car. She looked up without moving her head.
“Darling,” she said, “your boat was very late.”
“Yes, we had fog in the channel.”
“I got here last night. The people in the office said you’d be in early this morning.”
“Yes, we are late.”
“You can never tell with ships, can you?” said Brenda.
There was a pause. Then she said, “Aren’t you going to come in?”
“There’s a fuss about the luggage.”
“Blake will see to that.”
“He’s sending it by train.”
“Yes, I thought he would have to. I’m sorry I brought so much . . . You see, I brought everything. I’ve turned against that flat . . . It never quite lost the smell. I thought it was just newness, but it got worse. You know—radiator smell. So what with one thing and another I thought, how about giving it up.”
Then the chauffeur came back. He had settled everything about the luggage.
“Well, we’d better start right away.”
“Very good, sir.”
Tony got in beside