Brideshead Revisited: Epilogue

Epilogue

"the worst place we've struck yet," said the commanding officer; "no
facilities, no amenities, and Brigade sitting right on top of us. There's
one pub in Flyte St. Mary with capacity for about twenty -- that, of course,
will be out of bounds for officers; there's a Naafi in the camp area. I hope
to run transport once a week to Melstead Carbury. Marchmain is ten miles
away and damn-all when you get there. It will therefore be the first concern
of company officers to organize recreation for their men. M.O., I want you
to take a look at the lakes to see if they're fit for bathing."

"Very good, sir."

"Brigade expects us to clean up the house for them. I should have
thought some of those half-shaven scrimshankers I see lounging round
Headquarters might have saved us the trouble; however . . . Ryder, you will
find a fatigue party of fifty and report to the quartering commandant at the
house at 10-45 hours; he'll show you what we're taking over."

"Very good, sir."

"Our predecessors do not seem to have been very enterprising. The
valley has great potentialities for an assault course and a mortar range.
Weapon-training officer, make a recce this morn-' ing and get something laid
on before Brigade arrives."

"Very good, sir."

"I'm going out myself with the adjutant to recce training areas. Anyone
happen to know this district?"

I said nothing.

"That's all then, get cracking."

"Wonderful old place in its way," said the quartering commandant; "pity
to knock it about too much."

He was an old, retired, re-appointed lieutenant-colonel from some miles
away. We met in the space before the main doors, where I had my half-company
fallen-in, waiting for orders.

"Come in. I'll soon show you over. It's a great warren of a place, but
we've only requisitioned the ground floor and half a dozen bedrooms.
Everything else upstairs is still private property, mostly cram full of
furniture; you never saw such stuff, priceless some of it.

"There's a caretaker and a couple of old servants live at the top --
they won't be any trouble to you -- and a blitzed R.C. padre whom Lady Julia
gave a home to -- jittery old bird, but no trouble. He's opened the chapel;
that's in bounds for the troops; surprising lot use it, too.

"The place belongs to Lady Julia Flyte, as she calls herself now. She
was married to Mottram, the Minister of whatever-it-is. She's abroad in some
woman's service, and I try to keep an eye on things for her. Queer thing the
old marquis leaving everything to her -- rough on the boys.
"Now this is where the last lot put the clerks; plenty of room, anyway.
I've had the walls and fireplaces boarded up you see -- valuable old work
underneath. Hullo, someone seems to have been making a beast of himself
here; destructive beggars, soldiers are! Lucky we spotted it, or it would
have been charged to you chaps.

"This is another good-sized room, used to be full of tapestry.., I'd
advise you to use this for conferences."

"I'm only here to clean up, sir. Someone from Brigade will allot the
rooms."

"Oh, well, you've got an easy job. Very decent fellows the last lot.
They shouldn't have done that to the fireplace though. How did they manage
it? Looks solid enough. I wonder if it can be mended?

"I expect the brigadier will take this for his office; the last did.
It's got a lot of painting that can't be moved, done on the walla.

As you see, I've covered it up as best I can, but soldiers get through
anything -- as the brigadier's done in the corner. There was another painted
room, outside under the pillars -- modern work but, if you ask me, the
prettiest in the place; it was the signal office and they made absolute hay
of it; rather a shame.

"This eye-sore is what they used as the mess; that's why I didn't cover
it up; not that it would matter much if it did get damaged; always reminds
me of one of the costlier knocking-shops, you know--'Maison Japonaise' . . .
and this was the ante-room . . ."

It did not take us long to make our tour of the echoing rooms. Then we
went outside on the terrace.

"Those are die other ranks' latrines and wash-house; can't think why
they built them just there; it was done before I took the job over. All this
used to be cut off from the front. We laid the road through the trees
joining it up with the main drive; unsightly but very practical; awful lot
of transport comes in and out; cuts the place up, too. Look where one
careless devil went smack through the box-hedge and carried away all that
balustrade; did it with a three-ton lorry, too; you'd think he had a
Churchill tank at least.

"That fountain is rather a tender spot with our landlady; the young
officers used to lark about in it on guest nights and it was looking a bit
the worse for wear, so I wired it in and turned the water off. Looks a bit
untidy now; all the drivers throw their cigarette-ends and the remains of
the sandwiches there, and you can't get to it to clean it up, since I put
the wire round it. Florid great thing, isn't it? ...

"Well, if you've seen everything I'll push off. Good day to you."

His driver threw a cigarette into the dry basin of the fountain;
saluted and opened the door of the car. I saluted and the quartering
commandant drove away through the new, metalled gap in the lime-trees.

"Hooper," I said, when I had seen my men started, "do you think I can
safely leave you in charge of the work-party for half an hour?"

"I was just wondering where we could scrounge some tea."

"For Christ's sake," I said, "they've only just begun work."

"They're awfully browned-off."

"Keep them at it."

"Rightyoh."

I did not spend long hi the desolate ground-floor rooms, but went
upstairs and wandered down the familiar corridors, trying doors that were
locked, opening doors into rooms piled to the ceiling with furniture. At
length I met an old housemaid carrying a cup of tea. "Why," she said, "isn't
it Mr. Ryder ?"

"It is. I was wondering when I should meet sorheone I knew."

"Mrs. Hawkins is up in her old room. I was just taking her some tea."

"I'll take it for you," I said, and passed through the baize doors, up
the uncarpeted stairs, to the nursery.

Nanny Hawkins did not recognize me until I spoke, and my arrival threw
her into some confusion; it was not until I had been sitting some time by
her fireside that she recovered her old calm. She, who had changed so little
in all the years I knew her, had lately become greatly aged. The changes of
the last years had come too late in her life to be accepted and understood;
her sight was failing, she told me, and she could see only the coarsest
needlework. Her speech, sharpened by years of gentle conversation, had
reverted now to the soft, peasant tones of its origin.

". . . only myself here and the two girls and poor Father Membling who
was blown up, not a roof to his head nor a stick of furniture till Julia
took him in with the kind heart she's got, , and his nerves something
shocking. . . . Lady Brideshead, too, who I ought by rights to call her
Ladyship now, but it doesn't come natural, it was the same with her. First,
when Julia and Cordelia left to the war, she came here with the two boys and
then the military turned them out, so they went to London, nor they hadn't
been in their house not a month, and Bridey away with the yeomanry the same
as his poor Lordship, when they were blown up too, everything gone, all the
furniture she brought here and kept in the coach-house. Then she had another
house outside London, and the military took that, too, and there she is now,
when I last heard, in a hotel at the seaside, which isn't the same as your
own home, is it? It doesn't seem right.

". . . Did you listen to Mr. Mottram last night? Very nasty he was
about Hitler. I said to the girl Effie who does for me: 'If Hitler was
listening, and if he understands English, which I doubt, he must feel very
Small.' Who would have thought of Mr. Mottram doing so well? And so many of
his friends, too, that used to stay here? I said to Mr. Wilcox, who comes to
see me regular on the bus from Melstead twice a month, which is very good of
him and I appreciate it, I said: 'We were entertaining angels unawares,'
because Mr. Wilcox never liked Mr. Mottram's friends, which I never saw,,
but used to hear about from all of you, nor Julia didn't like them, but
they've done very well, haven't they?"

At last I asked her: "Have you heard from Julia?"

"From Cordelia, only last week, and they're together still as they have
been all the time, and Julia sent me love at the bottoni of the page.
They're both very well, though they couldn't say where, but Father Membling
said, reading between the lines, it was Palestine, which is where Bridey's
yeomanry is, so that's very nice for them all. Cordelia said they were
looking forward to coming home after the war, which I am sure we all are,
though whether I live to see it, is another story."

I stayed with her for half an hour, and left promising to return often.
When I reached the hall I found no sign of work and Hooper looking guilty.

"They had to go off to draw the bed-straw. I didn't know till Sergeant
Block told me. I don't know whether they're coming back."

"Don't know? What orders did you give?"

"Well, I told Sergeant Block to bring them back if he thought it was
worth while; I mean if there was time before dinner."

It was nearly twelve. "You've been hotted again, Hooper. That straw was
to be drawn any time before six to-night."

"Oh Lor; sorry Ryder. Sergeant Block -- "

"It's my own fault for going away. . . . Fall-in the same party
immediately after dinner, bring them back here and keep them here till the
job's done."

"Rightyoh. I say, did you say you knew this place before?"

"Yes, very well. It belongs to friends of mine," and as I said the
words they sounded as odd in my ears as Sebastian's had done, when, instead
of saying, "It is my home," he said, "It is where my family live."

"It doesn't seem to make any sense--one family in a place this size.
What's the use of it?"

"Well, I suppose Brigade are finding it useful."

"But that's not what it was built for, is it?"

"No," I said, "not what it was built for. Perhaps that's one of the
pleasures of building, like having a son, wondering how he'll grow up. I
don't know; I never built anything, and I forfeited the right to watch my
son grow up. I'm homeless, childless, middle-aged, loveless, Hooper." He
looked to see if I was being funny, decided that I was, and laughed. "Now go
back to camp, keep out of the C.O.'s way, if he's back from his recce, and
don't let on to anyone that we've made a nonsense of the morning."

"Okey, Ryder."

There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there
now. The chapel showed no ill-effects of its long neglect; the art-nouveau
paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more
before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words,
and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cookhouse
bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought: --

The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend;
they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year,
generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the
great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden
frost, came the -age of Hooper; the place was desolate and the work all
brought to nothing; Quomodo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity.

And yet, I thought, stepping out more briskly towards the camp, where
the bugles after a pause had taken up the second call and were sounding
Pic-em-up, Pic-em-up, hot potatoes -- and yet that is not the last word; it
is not even an apt word; it is a dead word from ten years back.

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out
of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played;
something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame -- a
beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper
doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs,
which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from
home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit
but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning,
burning anew among the old stones.

I quickened my pace and reached the hut which served us for our
ante-room.

"You're looking unusually cheerful to-day," said the second-in-command.




chagford, February-June, 1944


THE END