‘No way back; the gates barred; all the saints and angels posted along the walls. Thrown away, scrapped, rotting down; the old man with lupus and the forked stick who limps out at nightfall to turn the rubbish, hoping for something to put in his sack, something marketable, turns away with disgust.

‘Nameless and dead, like the baby they wrapped up and took away before I had seen her.’

Between her tears she talked herself into silence. I could do nothing; I was adrift in a strange sea; my hands on the metal-spun threads of her tunic were cold and stiff, my eyes dry; I was as far from her in spirit, as she clung to me in the darkness, as when years ago I had lit her cigarette on the way from the station; as far as when she was out of mind, in the dry, empty years at the Old Rectory, and in the jungle.

Tears spring from speech; presently in her silence her weeping stopped. She sat up, away from me, took my handkerchief, shivered, rose to her feet.

‘Well,’ she said, in a voice much like normal. ‘Bridey is one for bombshells, isn’t he?’

I followed her into the house and to her room; she sat at her looking-glass. ‘Considering that I’ve just recovered from a fit of hysteria,’ she said, ‘I don’t call that at all bad.’ Her eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright, her cheeks pale with two spots of high colour, where, as a girl, she used to put a dab of rouge. ‘Most hysterical women look as if they had a bad cold. You’d better change your shirt before going down; it’s all tears and lipstick.’

‘Are we going down?’

‘Of course, we mustn’t leave poor Bridey on his engagement night.’

When I went back to her she said: ‘I’m sorry for that appalling scene, Charles. I can’t explain.’

Brideshead was in the library, smoking his pipe, placidly reading a detective story.

‘Was it nice out? If I’d known you were going I’d have come, too.’

‘Rather cold.’

‘I hope it’s not going to be inconvenient for Rex moving out of here. You see, Barton Street is much too small for us and the three children. Besides, Beryl likes the country. In his letter papa proposed making over the whole estate right away.’

I remembered how Rex had greeted me on my first arrival at Brideshead as Julia’s guest. ‘A very happy arrangement,’ he had said. ‘Suits me down to the ground. The old boy keeps the place up; Bridey does all the feudal stuff with the tenants; I have the run of the house rent free. All it costs me is the food and the wages of the indoor servants. Couldn’t ask fairer than that, could you?’

‘I should think he’ll be sorry to go,’ I said.

‘Oh, he’ll find another bargain somewhere,’ said Julia; ‘trust him.’

‘Beryl’s got some furniture of her own she’s very attached to. I don’t know if it would go very well here. You know, oak dressers and coffin stools and things. I thought she could put it in mummy’s old room.’