‘There’s nothing we can do here,’ said Brideshead, ‘and it’s very distressing for Beryl. We’ll come back if things get worse.’

The bad spells became longer and more frequent; a nurse was engaged. ‘I never saw such a room,’ she said, ‘nothing like it anywhere; no conveniences of any sort.’ She tried to have her patient moved upstairs, where there was running water, a dressing-room for herself, a ‘sensible’ narrow bed she could ‘get round’ – what she was used to – but Lord Marchmain would not budge. Soon, as days and nights became indistinguishable to him, a second nurse was installed; the specialists came again from London; they recommended a new and rather daring treatment, but his body seemed weary of all drugs and did not respond. Presently there were no good spells, merely brief fluctuations in the speed of his decline.

Brideshead was called. It was the Easter holidays and Beryl was busy with her children. He came alone, and having stood silently for some minutes beside his father, who sat silently looking at him, he left the room and, joining the rest of us, who were in the library, said, ‘Papa must see a priest.’

It was not the first time the topic had come up. In the early days, when Lord Marchmain first arrived, the parish priest – since the chapel was shut there was a new church and presbytery in Melstead – had come to call as a matter of politeness. Cordelia had put him off with apologies and excuses, but when he was gone she said: ‘Not yet. Papa doesn’t want him yet.’

Julia, Cara, and I were there at the time; we each had something to say, began to speak, and thought better of it. It was never mentioned between the four of us, but Julia, alone with me, said, ‘Charles, I see great Church trouble ahead.’

‘Can’t they even let him die in peace?’

‘They mean something so different by “peace”.’

‘It would be an outrage. No one could have made it clearer, all his life, what he thought of religion. They’ll come now, when his mind’s wandering and he hasn’t the strength to resist, and claim him as a death-bed penitent. I’ve had a certain respect for their Church up till now. If they do a thing like that I shall know that everything stupid people say about them is quite true – that it’s all superstition and trickery.’ Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’ Still Julia said nothing. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘I don’t know, Charles. I simply don’t know.’

And, though none of us spoke of it, I felt the question ever present, growing through all the weeks of Lord Marchmain’s illness; I saw it when Cordelia drove off early in the mornings to mass; I saw it as Cara took to going with her; this little cloud, the size of a man’s hand, that was going to swell into a storm among us.

Now Brideshead, in his heavy, ruthless way, planted the problem down before us.