'It's such a lot of witchcraft and hypocrisy.'
'Is it? Anyway, it's been going on for nearly two thousand years. I don't know why you should suddenly get in a rage now.' Her voice rose; she was swift to anger of late months. 'For Christ's sake, write to The Times; get up and make a speech in Hyde Park; start a "No Popery" riot, but don't bore me about it. What's it got to do with you or me whether my father sees his parish priest?'
I knew these fierce moods of Julia's, such as had overtaken her at the fountain in moonlight, and dimly surmised their origin; I knew they could not be assuaged by words. Nor could I have spoken, for the answer to her question was still unformed; the sense that the fate of more souls than one was at issue; that the snow was beginning to shift on the high slopes.
Brideshead and I breakfasted together next morning with the night-nurse, who had just come off duty.
'He's much brighter today,' she said. 'He slept very nicely for nearly three hours. When Gaston came to shave him he was quite chatty.'
'Good,' said Brideshead. 'Cordelia went to mass. She's driving Father Mackay back here to breakfast.'
I had met Father Mackay several times; he was a stocky, middle-aged, genial Glasgow-Irishman who, when we met, was apt to ask me such questions as, 'Would you say now, Mr Ryder, that the painter Titian was more truly artistic than the painter Raphael?' and, more disconcertingly still, to remember my answers: 'To revert, Mr Ryder, to what you said when last I had the pleasure to meet you, would it be right now to say that the painter Titian...' usually ending with some such reflection as: 'Ah, it's a grand resource for a man to have the talent you have, Mr Ryder, and the time to indulge it.' Cordelia could imitate him.
This morning he made a hearty breakfast, glanced at the headlines of the paper, and then said with professional briskness: 'And now, Lord Brideshead, would the poor soul be ready to see me, do you think?'
Brideshead led him out; Cordelia followed, and I was left alone among the breakfast things. In less than a minute I heard the voices of all three outside the door.
'...can only apologize.'
'...poor soul. Mark you, it was seeing a strange face; depend upon it, it was that - an unexpected stranger. I well understand it.'
'...Father, I am sorry...bringing you all this way...'
'Don't think about it at all, Lady Cordelia. Why, I've had bottles thrown at me in the Gorbals...Give him time. I've known worse cases make beautiful deaths. Pray for him...I'll come again...and now if you'll excuse me I'll just pay a little visit to Mrs Hawkins. Yes, indeed, I know the way well.'
Then Cordelia and Brideshead came into the room.
'I gather the visit was not a success.'
'It was not. Cordelia, will you drive Father Mackay home when he comes down from nanny? I'm going to telephone to Beryl and see when she needs me home.'
'Bridey, it was horrible. What are we to do?'
'We've done everything we can at the moment.' He left the room.
Cordelia's face was grave; she took a piece of bacon from the dish, dipped it in mustard and ate it. 'Damn Bridey,' she said, 'I knew it wouldn't work.'
'What happened?'
'Would you like to know? We walked in there in a line; Cara was reading the paper aloud to papa. Bridey said, "I've brought Father Mackay to see you"; papa said, "Father Mackay, I am afraid you have been brought here under a misapprehension. I am not in extremis, and I have not been a practising member of your Church for twenty-five years. Brideshead, show Father Mackay the way out." Then we all turned about and walked away, and I heard Cara start reading the paper again, and that, Charles, was that.'
I carried the news to Julia, who lay with her bed-table amid a litter of newspapers and envelopes. 'Mumbo-jumbo is off,' I said. 'The witch-doctor has gone.'
'Poor papa.'
'It's great sucks to Bridey.'
I felt triumphant. I had been right, everyone else had been wrong, truth had prevailed; the threat that I had felt hanging over Julia and me ever since that evening at the fountain, had
been averted, perhaps dispelled for ever; and there was also - I can now confess it - another unexpressed, inexpressible, indecent little victory that I was furtively celebrating. I guessed that that morning's business had put Brideshead some considerable way further from his rightful inheritance.
In that I, was correct; a man was sent for from the solicitors in London; in a day or two he came and it was known throughout the house that Lord Marchmain had made a new will. But I was wrong in thinking that the religious controversy was quashed; it flamed up again after dinner on Brideshead's last evening.
'...What papa said was, "I am not in extremis, I have not been a practising member of the Church for twenty-five years." '
'Not "the Church", "your Church".'
'I don't see the difference.'
'There's every difference.'
'Bridey, it's quite plain what he meant.'
'I presume he meant what he said. He meant that he had not been accustomed regularly to receive the sacraments, and since he was not at the moment dying, he did not mean to change his ways - yet.'
'That's simply a quibble.'
'Why do people always think that one is quibbling when one tries to be precise? His plain meaning was that he did not want to see a priest that day, but that he would when he was "in extremis".'
'I wish someone would explain to me,' I said, 'quite what the significance of these sacraments is. Do you mean that if he dies alone he goes to hell, and that if a priest puts oil on him - '
'Oh, it's not the oil,' said Cordelia, 'that's to heal him.'
'Odder still - well, whatever it is the priest does - that he then goes to heaven. Is that what you believe?'
Cara then interposed: 'I think my nurse told me, someone did anyway, that if the priest got there before the body was cold it was all right. That's so, isn't it?'
The others turned to her.
'No, Cara, it's not.'
'Of course not.'
'You've got it all wrong, Cara.'
'Well, I remember when Alphonse de Grenet died, Madame de Grenet had a priest hidden outside the door - he couldn't bear the sight of a priest - and brought him in before the body was cold; she told me herself, and they had a full Requiem for him, and I went to it.'
'Having a Requiem doesn't mean you go to heaven necessarily.'
'Madame de Grenet thought it did.'
'Well, she was wrong.'
'Do any of you Catholics know what good you think this priest can do?' I asked. 'Do you simply want to arrange it so that your father can have Christian burial? Do you want to keep him out of hell? I only want to be told.'
Brideshead told me at some length, and when he had finished Cara slightly marred the unity of the Catholic front by saying in simple wonder, 'I never heard that before.'
'Let's get this clear,' I said; 'he has to make an act of will; he has to be contrite and wish to be reconciled; is that right? But only God knows whether he has really made an act of will; the priest can't tell; and if there isn't a priest there, and he makes the act of will alone, that's as good as if there were a priest. And it's quite possible that the will may still be working when a man is too weak to make any outward sign of it; is that right? He may be lying, as though for dead, and willing all the time, and being reconciled, and God understands that; is that right?'
'More or less, ' said Brideshead.
'Well, for heaven's sake.' I said, 'what is the priest for?' There was a pause in which Julia sighed and Brideshead drew breath as though to start further subdividing the propositions. In the silence Cara said, 'All I know is that I shall take very good care to have a priest.'
'Bless you,' said Cordelia, 'I believe that's the best answer.'
And we let the argument drop, each for different reasons, thinking it had been inconclusive.
Later Julia said: 'I wish you wouldn't start these religious arguments.'
'I didn't start it.'
'You don't convince anyone else and you don't really convince yourself.'
'I only want to know what these people believe. They say it's all based on logic.'
'If you'd let Bridey finish, he would have made it all quite logical.'
'There were four of you,' I said. 'Cara didn't know the first thing it was about, and may or may not have believed it; you knew a bit and didn't believe a word; Cordelia knew about as much and believed it madly; only poor Bridey knew and believed, and I thought he made a pretty poor show when it came to explaining. And people go round saying, "At least Catholics know what they believe." We had a fair cross-section tonight - '
'Oh, Charles, don't rant. I shall begin to think you're getting doubts yourself.'
The weeks passed and still Lord Marchmain lived on. In June my divorce was made absolute and my former wife married for the second time. Julia would be free in September. The nearer our marriage got, the more wistfully, I noticed, Julia spoke of it; war was growing nearer, too - we neither of us doubted that - but Julia's tender, remote, it sometimes seemed, desperate longing did not come from any uncertainty outside herself; it suddenly darkened, too, into brief accesses of hate when she seemed to throw herself against the restraints of her love for me like a caged animal against the bars.
I was summoned to the War Office, interviewed, and put on a list in case of emergency; Cordelia also, on another list; lists were becoming part of our lives once more, as they had been at school. Everything was being got ready for the coming 'Emergency'. No one in that dark office spoke the word 'war'; it was taboo; we should be called for if there was 'an emergency' - not in case of strife, an act of human will; nothing so clear and simple as wrath or retribution; an emergency- something coming out of the waters, a monster with sightless face and thrashing tail thrown up from the depths.
Lord Marchmain took little interest in events outside his own room; we took him the papers daily and made the attempt to read to him, but he turned his head on the pillows and with his eyes followed the intricate patterns about him. 'Shall I go on?' 'Please do if it's not boring you.' But he was not listening; occasionally at a familiar name he would whisper: 'Irwin...I knew him - a mediocre fellow'; occasionally some remote comment: 'Czechs make good coachmen; nothing else'; but his mind was far from world affairs; it was there, on the spot, turned in on himself; he had no strength for any other war than his own solitary struggle to keep alive.
I said to the doctor, who was with us daily. 'He's got a wonderful will to live, hasn't he?'
'Would you put it like that? I should say a great fear of death.'
'Is there a difference?'
'Oh dear, yes. He doesn't derive any strength from his fear, you know. It's wearing him out.'
Next to death, perhaps because they are like death, he feared darkness and loneliness. He liked to have us in his room and the lights burnt all night among the gilt figures; he did not wish us to speak much, but he talked himself, so quietly that we often could not hear him; he talked, I think, because his was the only voice he could trust, when it assured him that he was still alive; what he said was not for us, nor for any ears but his own.
'Better today. Better today. I can see now, in the comer of the fireplace, where the mandarin is holding his gold bell and the crooked tree is in flower below his feet, where yesterday I was confused and took the little tower for another man. Soon I shall see the bridge and the three storks and know where the path leads over the hill.
'Better tomorrow. We live long in our family and marry late. Seventy-three is no great age. Aunt Julia, my father's aunt, lived to be eighty-eight, born and died here, never married, saw the fire on beacon hill for the battle of Trafalgar, always called it "the New House"; that was the name they had for it in the nursery and in the fields when unlettered men had long memories. You can see where the old house stood near the village church; they call the field "Castle Hill", Horlick's field where the ground's uneven and half of it is waste, nettle, and brier in hollows too deep for ploughing. They dug to the foundations to carry the stone for the new house; the house that was a century old when Aunt Julia was born. Those were our roots in the waste hollows of Castle Hill, in the brier and nettle; among the tombs in the old church and the chantry where no clerk sings.
'Aunt Julia knew the tombs, cross-legged knight and doubleted earl, marquis like a Roman senator, limestone, alabaster, and Italian marble; tapped the escutcheons with her ebony cane, made the casque ring over old Sir Roger. We were knights then, barons since Agincourt, the larger honours came with the Georges. They came the last and they'll go the first; the barony goes on. When all of you are dead Julia's son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days; the days of wool shearing and the wide corn lands, the days of growth and building, when the marshes were drained and the waste land brought under the plough, when one built the house, his son added the dome, his son spread the wings and dammed the river. Aunt Julia watched them build the fountain; it was old before it came here, weathered two hundred years by the suns of Naples, brought by man-o'-war in the days of Nelson. Soon the fountain will be dry till the rain fills it, setting the fallen leaves afloat in the basin; and over the lakes the reeds will spread and close. Better today.
