‘I expect you’ve guessed already what I have come to ask. Quite simply, is Sebastian drinking too much this term?’

I had guessed; I answered: ‘If he were, I shouldn’t answer. As it is, I can say, “No”.’

She said: ‘I believe you. Thank God!’ and we went together to luncheon at Christ Church.

That night Sebastian had his third disaster and was found by the junior dean at one o’clock, wandering round Tom Quad hopelessly drunk.

I had left him morose but completely sober at a few minutes before twelve. In the succeeding hour he had drunk half a bottle of whisky alone. He did not remember much about it when he came to tell me next morning.

‘Have you been doing that a lot,’ I asked, ‘drinking by yourself after I’ve gone?’

‘About twice; perhaps four times. It’s only when they start bothering me. I’d be all right if they’d only leave me alone.’

‘They won’t now,’ I said.

‘I know.’

We both knew that this was a crisis. I had no love for Sebastian that morning; he needed it, but I had none to give.

‘Really,’ I said, ‘if you are going to embark on a solitary bout of drinking every time you see a member of your family, it’s perfectly hopeless.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Sebastian with great sadness. ‘I know. It’s hopeless.’

But my pride was stung because I had been made to look a liar and I could not respond to his need.

‘Well, what do you propose to do?’

‘I shan’t do anything. They’ll do it all.’

And I let him go without comfort.

Then the machinery began to move again, and I saw it all repeated as it had happened in December; Mr Samgrass and Mgr Bell saw the Dean of Christ Church; Brideshead came up for a night; the heavy wheels stirred and the small wheels spun. Everyone was exceedingly sorry for Lady Marchmain, whose brothers’ names stood in letters of gold on the war memorial, whose brothers’ memory was fresh in many breasts.

She came to see me and, again, I must reduce to a few words a conversation which took us from Holywell to the Parks, through Mesopotamia, and over the ferry to north Oxford, where she was staying the night with a houseful of nuns who were in some way under her protection.

‘You must believe’, I said, ‘that when I told you Sebastian was not drinking, I was telling you the truth, as I knew it.’

‘I know you wish to be a good friend to him.’

‘That is not what I mean. I believed what I told you. I still believe it to some extent. I believe he has been drunk two or three times before, not more.’

‘It’s no good, Charles,’ she said. ‘All you can mean is that you have not as much influence or knowledge of him as I thought. It is no good either of us trying to believe him. I’ve known drunkards before. One of the most terrible things about them is their deceit. Love of truth is the first thing that goes.