‘The college has sent Sebastian down for a term only, and will take him back after Christmas on condition he goes to live with Mgr Bell. It is for him to decide. Meanwhile Mr Samgrass has very kindly consented to take charge of him. As soon as his visit to his father is over Mr Samgrass will pick him up and they will go together to the Levant, where Mr Samgrass has long been anxious to investigate a number of orthodox monasteries. He hopes this may be a new interest for Sebastian.

‘Sebastian’s stay here has not been happy.

‘When they come home at Christmas I know Sebastian will want to see you, and so shall we all. I hope your arrangements for next term have not been too much upset and that everything will go well with you.

Yours sincerely,

Teresa Marchmain.

‘I went to the garden-room this morning and was so very sorry.’

BOOK TWO

BRIDESHEAD DESERTED

CHAPTER ONE

‘And when we reached the top of the pass,’ said Mr Samgrass, ‘we heard the galloping horses behind, and two soldiers rode up to the head of the caravan and turned us back. The General had sent them, and they reached us only just in time. There was a Band, not a mile ahead.’

He paused, and his small audience sat silent, conscious that he had sought to impress them but in doubt as to how they could politely show their interest.

‘A Band?’ said Julia. ‘Goodness!’

Still he seemed to expect more. At last Lady Marchmain said, ‘I suppose the sort of folk-music you get in those parts is very monotonous.’

‘Dear Lady Marchmain, a Band of Brigands.’ Cordelia, beside me on the sofa, began to giggle noiselessly. ‘The mountains are full of them. Stragglers from Kemal’s army; Greeks who got cut off in the retreat. Very desperate fellows, I assure you.’

‘Do pinch me,’ whispered Cordelia.

I pinched her and the agitation of the sofa-springs ceased. ‘Thanks,’ she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘So you never got to wherever-it-was,’ said Julia. ‘Weren’t you terribly disappointed, Sebastian?’

‘Me?’ said Sebastian from the shadows beyond the lamplight, beyond the warmth of the burning logs, beyond the family circle, and the photographs spread out on the card-table. ‘Me? Oh, I don’t think I was there that day, was I, Sammy?’

‘That was the day you were ill.’

‘I was ill,’ he repeated like an echo, ‘so I never should have got to wherever-it-was, should I, Sammy?’

‘Now this, Lady Marchmain, is the caravan at Aleppo in the courtyard of the inn. That’s our Armenian cook, Begedbian; that’s me on the pony; that’s the tent folded up; that’s a rather tiresome Kurd who would follow us about at the time….Here I am in Pontus, Ephesus, Trebizond, Krak-des-chevaliers, Samothrace, Batum – of course, I haven’t got them in chronological order yet.’

‘All guides and ruins and mules,’ said Cordelia. ‘Where’s Sebastian?’

‘He,’ said Mr Samgrass, with a hint of triumph in his voice, as though he had expected the question and prepared the answer, ‘he held the camera. He became quite an expert as soon as he learned not to put his hand over the lens, didn’t you, Sebastian?’