I

Mr. Evelyn Waugh strode through the West End of London with a confident air, because that accorded with his nature and because he had no desire to appear ridiculous unless he chose the terms.

He was on his way to White's, his favorite London club and the place where he sometimes felt comfortable among old friends from the university or the army or his forays into society.

London seemed alien on this autumn day in 1946, though the effects of the Blitz and the rockets did not much disturb him. In fact, the random destruction by the Luftwaffe had removed some modern eyesores, whereas for the previous two decades Londoners had been busy destroying the architectural legacy of centuries. Most of the rubble had been removed in the eighteen months since the German surrender, but shortages in all kinds of materials limited efforts at reconstruction. In view of modern taste and workmanship, he thought, not a bad thing.

The people were more depressing than the prospect. Human beings had never been of much interest to him except as comic spectacle, and now Londoners were too shabby and harried and too busy standing in line for rationed food and clothing to do anything unexpected.

Even White's would be less amusing than it had been. Many of his friends had been turned out of Parliament a year ago, when voters impatient with years of privation and hungry for the fruits of victory had elected a Labour government which would level all invidious distinctions. They had their wish: everyone now had less. That came of trusting in politics. He was not displeased at the discomfiture of the Conservatives, who had in his view delivered the Catholic population of central and eastern Europe into Communist hands. But the defeated politicians' increased leisure meant that they were more likely to hang about White's, crowding the bar, drinking up the rapidly diminishing contents of the cellar, and complaining, without wit or any sense of irony, about the ingratitude of the electorate.

Waugh had never accepted Dr. Johnson's dictum that a man who is tired of London is tired of life, but he was tired of London. For that matter--was it only the onset of middle age?--he was beginning to see that it might be possible to tire of life. Perhaps his man of business could do something about that, he thought as he turned into his club, handed over his coat, hat, and umbrella, and headed for the bar.

Augustus Detlof Peters--A.D. to most of the world and Pete to Waugh--had managed to preserve a space into which Waugh wedged himself. After preliminary courtesies, Waugh said, as close to wheedling as he allowed himself to get, "Have you thought about what I asked you?"

Peters looked down at the stubby figure of his sometimes lucrative and always difficult client. As literary agent, he got ten per cent of Evelyn Waugh's earnings and rather more than his share of aggravation.

"In general terms, yes."

"Why not in your usual fashion?"

"Because I can't believe that you are serious in asking me to persuade a Hollywood studio to bring you and Laura half way around the world to Hollywood so that they can convince you to sell them the film rights to Brideshead Revisited."

"Your grasp of detail is as firm as ever, Pete."

Peters sighed. "Firm enough to make me ask you why you insist on going there. You wouldn't like it at all. Surely you remember that story you wrote years ago about the horrors of an English film studio. What did you finally call it--"Excursion in Reality"?

Waugh snorted theatrically. Only his closest friends could tell when he was pretending or actually annoyed. "I am fast approaching forty-three, but I have not yet attained the enviable state of senility. Of course I remember."

Peters, a very close friend, declined the bait. "Then you will recall the plot in which Hamlet got turned into Macbeth by a process which I cannot now remember. I can assure you that Hollywood is always doing that. I know that Brideshead is your ewe lamb, as Wodehouse would say. And I warn you, MGM is likely to do something equally horrible to it."

With an exaggerated combination of melancholy and horror, Waugh elaborated the point. "No doubt they will shave it, cut off its legs at the knee, and parade it as a dachshund. If I let them."

Peters chuckled, but he pressed his point. "Then why do you want me to approach them?"

Waugh made a great show of being patient by putting down his glass. "I said if I let them. Perhaps I have been less lucid than is my habit. The object of the exercise, as the army used to say, is to get Laura and me away from the current socialist reign of terror in this unhappy realm. I do not care whether the Yanks actually buy the novel or not. In fact, I shall insist that they film it on my terms or not at all."

Peters hesitated. He had known Waugh for almost twenty years, and he enjoyed the fantastic world that his client created, not just in his fiction but in almost everything he said and everywhere he went. Sometimes, however, Waugh seemed to believe that this world he invented for himself bore some correspondence to reality. That was why he needed an agent. Or a keeper. "Even at your most deluded," Peters said with some exasperation, "you cannot believe that they will agree to that."

Waugh never seemed to resent attempts at rescue. He would merely continue to explain, calmly, that his course of action was the soul of sanity and logic. "Of course they won't. But you will explain things to them in such a way that they will agree."

"I doubt that even Perry Mason would accept this brief."

Waugh looked serious and for a moment was. "I appeal to you as my only hope. As things now stand, this is the only way that I can escape. Besides, there is the odd chance that I might learn something. Look at Isherwood's example in Prater Violet. Thanks again for getting me that, by the way. The film didn't amount to much, but the narrator found out some things about himself.

"And I get ten percent of your increased self-knowledge?"

"You have done well enough out of Brideshead this year." Peters frowned. "If you have to go somewhere, why Hollywood? You managed a free trip to the Nuremburg Trials as an observer. And never wrote a word."

"But I did observe. And what I saw was too depressing to write about. The defendants had no defense and the place swarmed with American lawyers, all under the impression that the Yanks won the war by themselves. The worst kind of company, not to speak of the food." Waugh seemed cheered by the thought of his past discomfort.

"And then that junket to Spain. Did you ever learn the name of the Spaniard who was being honored?"

"Repeatedly. I always managed to forget. The point is that only officials or criminals or businessmen are allowed to travel these days, and Laura is, thank God in the strictest and fullest sense, none of those. Anyway, you can't tease me about that trip--I've been working away at a story set there, and it may make us both a little money."

"Speaking of money, I finally managed to get to your Spanish earnings and pay off the consul who advanced you money. He thought you were a reputable citizen." Peters did not say how much correspondence that had entailed.

"That almost equalled your feat in finding rice for Laura. I shan't ask how you did it. I like to think that it was by devious and scarcely legal methods."

"I will refrain from disappointing you with the truth, Evelyn, because I don't want to bore you."

"The truth is rarely disappointing and almost always discreditable and amusing. Your insistence on the appearance of virtue is touching. Just don't let it hamper you in the conduct of my affairs."

Peters sighed. "You know I have your interests constantly in mind. And as for virtue, I followed your directions about getting translation money to Catholic charities in Europe."

"You did. And quite efficiently, though it isn't your job. Thank you."

Peters waved a hand. "A mere formality. It doesn't save you that much in taxes, you know."

"I shall spare you an explanation, not because you are unable to comprehend it but because I would have to start from first principles, and the bar at White's is no place to begin. In any case, I have already paid you the highest accolade possible: Perry Mason could not have done better."

"You say that every time you have asked me to do something damnably difficult." Peters sipped his drink and decided not to groan. One comedian in this conversation was enough. He looked at Waugh as seriously as he could. "Back to business: I thought you said that the Spanish story wasn't very good. Something about the same old bottle and weak new wine?"

"I may have indicated that the form resembled that of Decline and Fall and Scoop, and for that matter Candide and a hundred other quite successful stories."

"And?"

"And the content may be somewhat condensed and the style a little less energetic than usual. I shall improve it a bit when the typist finishes, but it won't repay extended labor. If you think the usual editors will notice the quality, try to sell it to the Americans. They certainly won't. Look at the story I've just finished. The Strand gave a hundred and fifty pounds for that."

"More than they usually pay, I might add."

Waugh shook a finger in protest. "And good value they got for their money. But the Americans! I assume that $3500 is more than a hundred and fifty pounds?"

Peters found the dollar/pound exchange rate less difficult than he did his friend. "Not quite six times as much."

Waugh put down his glass and rubbed his hands in parody of a stage miser. "I thought so. I am not one to disparage my own work, and I thought the device of the potential murderer having his own plot turned against him neatly managed. But that is exactly seven times as much as the other Yank paid for my modest proposal for settling the upper classes on reservations. They must be mad. Or, what is much the same thing, they have a distorted sense of values."

"A fortunate state of affairs for you," Peters said. "Look at the sales of Brideshead there. And after you told me that not a half-dozen of them would understand it."

Waugh groaned loudly enough to turn heads at the bar. Seeing the source, they turned back to their drinks. "If you had seen some of the letters I've received, you would understand that purchasing it and comprehending it are quite separate processes. God, Americans are dense!"

"So you implied in that article for Life--and got paid for that too," Peters said, tapping the ash from his cigar. "What hope have you that Hollywood will comprehend it any better?"

"It doesn't do to sneer. Especially since you didn't want me to write the article in the first place. Those Yankee dollars paid for that cigar you so cleverly smuggled in." He drew on his own.

"And for yours too. By the way, is it true that you responded to some American woman's ravings about the novel as a work of genius with something like...let's see...'I used to think that it was good, but if you think so, I must be wrong.'"

"Pete, you are a much better agent than you are an editor. Your version encompasses the content but entirely misses the style. And I never say 'something like' anything or anyone."

"A quality which makes you far more bearable as a writer than, except in small doses, a companion." He set down his glass. "Let us have lunch and then talk over something more serious than this insane desire to go to Hollywood. The farther you stay from your American audience, the better for your pocketbook and mine. In fact, the farther you stay from any audience, the better."

"Does that mean that you approve of my decision to emigrate to the Irish countryside? There seem to be a great many castles for sale very cheaply."

Peters sometimes tired of representing reality, but it was his job. "Has it occurred to you that there may be a reason for that?"

"No doubt there are several, all groundless to a civilized man. Lust for modernity. Slavery to fashion. Fear of Romish influence. I have none of these motives. And Ireland offers incomparable advantages: no rationing and no socialists."

"It sounds like hell to me, but I am far too comfortable in London to wish to be anywhere else."

"And I wouldn't have you anywhere else. I need you here to fiddle the customs, subvert the currency regulations of His Majesty's Government, and deal with Wilfred Ariel Evill, the aptly named accountant you foisted off on me. And drink with me and buy me lunch."

Peters knew from experience that Waugh did not allow talk of business to accompany food, even the kind of food now available. For a change, that part of the discussion would be entirely pleasant. The American publisher and the Book-of-the Month Club had already sold over a half million copies of Brideshead, and in view of the new English tax laws, Peters had arranged for the bonanza to be paid out over the next several years in semi-annual payments of six thousand pounds.

"If," he said to Waugh as they replaced their napkins, "you can curb your lust to furnish Piers Court with high Victorian furniture and paintings with horribly embarrassing titles..."

"You are referring to that masterpiece, 'Husband disguised as a priest hears his wife's confession?'

"And all too many like it."

"Death to Picasso!"

"So you enjoin me at the end of every letter you send me. Now, as I was saying: if you can restrain yourself, you can live quite comfortably on that. Anything you earn in England--not much, given what little paper the publishers can give to any one book--can be used to satisfy your perverse tastes in art and interior decor."

Waugh looked annoyed, and was. "Speaking of publishers, have any approached you since I resigned from the Chapman and Hall board?"

"I haven't encouraged any," Peters said.

"Why not? I am still angry with Methuen. Ever since they took over, all the decisions are made without reference to the board. That's why I quit, as I explained in person and then in print."

Peters thought for a moment before laying out familiar arguments. "I know. But moving to another publisher would make it look as though you were acting on self-interest, not principle. Besides, I doubt that any other publisher will be able to devote any more paper to your work."

"Try to find out. You usually have my interests at heart."

Peters sighed. "Have you forgotten the 3,500 pounds I extracted from the English MGM?"

"That was masterful, I agree. Dr. Johnson said that no one but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. Now one can be paid for not writing. That is the sole respect in which our century is superior to his."

Having lured Waugh off dangerous ground, Peters pressed the advantage. "Speaking of indelicate subjects like writing, what are your plans?"

"Duckworth's will have the selection from my old travel books out in time for Christmas--by the way, have they told you that I let them change the title from "While the Going Was Good" to When the Going Was Good? We should be able to collect the rest of the wine due me for that pamphlet I wrote for the Russian prince turned wine merchant. See if you can find out a way to avoid or mitigate taxes on the in-kind payment."

Peters was used to regularizing his client's off-hand arrangements. "I shall enjoy ten percent of that. But I hope that this habit of bartering will not catch on. My office hasn't room for sacks of potatoes and crates of chickens."

On the rare occasions when he yielded the floor, Waugh was a good audience. Now he laughed. "What a subject for the kind of genre painting you perversely despise! 'Peters' ten per cents.'"

Peters shuddered at the thought of appearing in any painting Waugh approved of. "Don't change the subject. I need to know what to expect from you in order to think of where to sell it."

"I shall finish that story about Spain and then, of course, I shall not be able to write anything for a time because I shall be going to Hollywood."

Peters rolled his eyes. "I hoped that you had forgotten about that idea."

"I never forget anything. Nor am I as quixotic as you think me."

"That is welcome news. Incredible, but welcome."

"Look, Pete, I realize that no studio will let me dictate every detail of the script. I'm willing to waive my usual demand that I be hired, at a fat fee, to write additional dialogue--though if they had any sense, they would jump at the chance."

Waugh did not often seem to need praise, but Peters was consistently honest. "From a technical point of view, you are absolutely correct. If only they could lock you in a box, away from human contact."

Waugh swelled a little. "I shall be on my best behavior."

"They may not find that encouraging."

"You underestimate my powers of adaptation. Particularly given this strong a motive. This food, kind as you were to supply it, merely sharpens my anticipation of the fleshpots of California. How can a civilized man work on what the socialists allow us? It's gotten worse since the war ended. If it weren't for the black market, I don't know what we'd do."

"What everyone else does, I suppose."

"God preserve us. The socialists claim to sustain the body, but they do nothing for the imagination. Pete, I implore you: make me to lie down in green pastures, or at least in California. Muzzle not the ox that treads the corn."

"A muzzle is what you need, but if I send you to California, I won't have to listen to you--just to all the natives you outrage. Tell Laura that I'm doing this for her. If I can do it at all. The Yanks do have some say in this. It's a tricky business, you know. Remember when Selznick was interested in Scoop? That fell through. And Zanuck's man Bert Bloch..."

"Where do they get those names?"

"...said that he saw no problem in meeting your conditions for Brideshead."

"Sensible of him."

"I have heard nothing further from him."

"Yes, but that was before I became so reasonable," Waugh said with every sign of innocence. "All I want is luxury travel for two half-way round the globe to the discuss the possibility of making an all-talking, all-color, all-star extravaganza. I shall bargain in good faith. When they find that it is impossible to make the movie, we shall part on friendly terms. Or at least without rancor."

Peters knew when to concede. "I shall do my best. I go to Hollywood next month, and I shall emphasize the attractions of the story and try to fend off inquiries about the author."

II

On the train back to Gloucestershire, Waugh tried to relax. London had always stimulated him, but as he grew older, he found it difficult to recover from the excitement. Three and a half hours from the door of White's to the portals of his house were neither exciting nor restful. But this trip had been more productive than usual, and he felt confident that Peters would fix the trip to Hollywood as he had fixed almost everything else for nearly two decades. Why, he wondered, had he not told his agent and old friend what was really bothering him.

--Because, a mocking voice said, you only tell him about things he can fix.

Waugh looked at the only other passenger in the compartment, a respectable-looking elderly woman holding a copy of the Church Times. The voice was unmistakably masculine. Moreover, it sounded familiar.

It returned, dismissive.

--I don't mean your sore backside.

Waugh's confusion gave way to outrage. It was a far more comfortable attitude. If that specialist in Harley Street has been gossiping about my discomfort in the nether regions, he thought, I'll have him up for professional misconduct.

--I mean the impasse you created when you promised the Americans that you would write nothing but serious theological novels from now on. And in high style, at that.

Even if the physician had been gossiping to a woman with a deep voice, Waugh considered, it would be a wild coincidence for her to be here, now. Besides, she was unlikely to be that well informed about his trans-Atlantic journalism. He restrained his impulse to speak aloud and thought, with as much asperity as he could manage while sitting down and outwardly silent,

--Who is that? Why are you addressing me?

--Thought you had shaken me, didn't you? I'll give you a clue. I am fond of coincidence; it's been of the greatest help to me professionally.

That narrows it down, Waugh thought--to himself, he hoped. Most professionals plan carefully. Then, addressing the invisible intruder,

--I am not in the mood for guessing games. Identify yourself at once.

--Concealment was never my strong suit. I'm what you were before you made yourself what you are.

--Impossible!

--Why so? Surely you remember Max Beerbohm's series of cartoons in which the younger self confronts the elder. In the world of the imagination, nothing is impossible.

--Neither, in the much solider world of Catholic doctrine, is demoniac possession. How do I know that you aren't a devil?

--You don't. I wasn't a Leading Catholic Author like you, but I realize that you could devise no test that a demon couldn't pass equally well.

Waugh knew that he was considered difficult, but he liked to think of himself as just.

--That's the first thing you've said that makes sense.

This concession did not appease the voice. It--he?--continued with a bland assurance which Waugh found rather irritating.

--Everything I say makes sense. In fact, the only reason I am appearing now is that you are not making sense. You need my help.

--You sound suspiciously like that awful Yank Edmund Wilson. He said something about my early works being inspired by the devil, or some such nonsense. Did he send you?

--No, but Yanks are not totally debarred from saying something intelligent now and then. Even you admitted that he was right, from his point of view, to reject the religious theme in Brideshead. He was also disappointed in the sentimentality, and I must say that he was not entirely wrong. But I'm not here to lecture you about that.

--Why, then?

--To get you off your backside. Figuratively, of course. Though with your current physical problem, you might find it more comfortable to stand up. A touch of--how did that ad go?--"that distressing and almost universal complaint THE PILES"?

Waugh was scornful.

--Whether you are a demon or who you claim to be, that is unworthy of an intelligent being. I agree that the condition is undignified. I shall have it attended to. But the specialist says, as you undoubtedly know, that it is not uncommon in someone my age who has been on active service.

The voice was gleeful.

--An honorable wound? The Americans get something called a Purple Heart. I wonder what your decoration would be called.

Waugh began to chuckle in spite of himself, but as the voice continued, he stopped laughing.

--Your sedentary habits of mind are the real point. If you are going to write religious books in fancy language, why don't you get down to it?

Waugh protested--perhaps, he realized, a little too much.

--I fully intend to.

--Then why haven't you touched that story about Saint Helena in almost a year?

--Nine months!

--Nine months since you've thought about it. What's the matter? Afraid to finish a novel because you can't equal Brideshead? Or afraid you can? All that American praise shook your confidence, didn't it? And the money has made you flabby.

--I see nothing shameful in taking a well-earned rest before resuming my labors.

--Labors on what? Thought you were clever to keep old Pete from mentioning Helena, didn't you?

Waugh realized that if he had to argue with a voice inside his head, better the younger self than a demon. In the first place, madness was not damnable, and though he rarely thought of Hell, he realized that as a Catholic he was obliged to fear it. Besides, and more in accord with his nature, he knew more about the younger self to use in counterattack.

--If you are who you say you are, we both know that you took time off. Two years between that book about the Abyssinian war and Scoop. And what a time you had finishing that!

--But I was also reading four or five books a week for that book page, and getting engaged and married. It just about killed me. In a way, it did. You began to emerge.

--And high time, too.

--You're beginning to sound like Father. Stuffy and moralizing, like that parson in Shaw's Candida.

Waugh did not know whether to be rueful or indignant, so he settled for honesty.

--Poor Father. I--or rather you--gave him a hell of a time. If he can overhear us from Purgatory, how it must console him. Come to think of it, if I take the proper attitude, your torments can shorten my stay there.

The voice spoke more seriously than usual.

--It is important to recognize one's failure to attain virtue, though I am more concerned about your imagination than your soul. In either case, you have given way to sloth.

Waugh found it difficult not to sound defensive when there was no real defense. But he was not accustomed to giving in.

--I have reached a climacteric. I am considering the whole of my future career.

--"Climacteric." That's become one of your favorite words. You applied it to the Labour victory in last year's elections; you applied it to your obvious advance into middle age; you apply it to your work. Or lack of it.

Waugh attacked the stylistic point:

--There is nothing to be gained from elegant variation when the word is apt.

--Where, then, is the climax?

Well thrust, Waugh conceded. He had been distressed by the voice only for a moment and exasperated for only a little longer. Perhaps it was a sign of lunacy to talk to yourself, still worse to argue with yourself, and worst of all to be losing. But he valued a battle, verbal and otherwise. This was a good one.

--You won't lose if you pay attention to me.

Oh, God, thought Waugh. The difference between this and other conversations is that I can't surprise my opponent.

--I didn't say anything about losing.

--You thought it. And try as you may, you cannot hide things from yourself.

If concealment wouldn't work, perhaps aggression would.

--I managed to write that new short story without you. The first I've done in seven years. Or do you take credit for its predecessor?

--The one about the country squire defending his territory? You had already begun to emerge as the lord of the manor, but my wit had not entirely deserted you.

--And I have none?

--You have become either ponderous or rude--I should have annihilated that American female fan more deftly. The new story does contain a few passages which show that you've not smothered me entirely. Of course it has neither of the elements you promised the Yanks. Nor does that turgid farce about the Spanish trip you are using my plots to construct.

--The novel about Helena will make that promise good.

--When?

--There is no hurry. For one thing, I am no longer obliged by poverty to turn out one book after another.

--Or to follow your profession at all?

--I have full command of the material.

--You know that Saint Helena will find the True Cross. But you don't know how she will find it or how she will get to the point of finding it. And there that poor, languishing manuscript sits in the well-appointed library. Famous Author at Work in Country House. All headline and no story.

Waugh sensed an opening:

--Journalistic jargon? You came by that dishonestly. All those articles about sunbathing and your favorite film star. And your greatest coup. That editor read "mothers" when you offered to write about matter-of-fact "manners." So "mothers" it was. A lot you knew about raising children!

The voice was unapologetic.

--If I was going to have to write balls, then what difference did it make? It was a challenge, since I knew nothing about mothers.

--Or manners.

--You're a fine one to talk. Anyway, I worked: at those inns, on that godawful boat in Africa, holed up in that appalling Brazilian town writing a real story. That turned into A Handful of Dust--my best novel. And the way that things are going, probably ours.

--I admit that it is good. I maintain that I have done better, and shall do better still. You can taunt me with that Life article as much as you like. I am dealing with an entirely different world from the one you knew. And with more experience.

--You're a fine one to talk about experience. In fact, you sound like poor old Smartiboots Cyril Connolly ten years ago, predicting that I would have to get more serious and compassionate to be a real writer. Are you happy fulfilling that kind of prophecy?

--He did not predict this kind of world. And my attitude towards Boots and his so-called avant-garde magazine has been made perfectly clear.

--But you didn't have the nerve to print what you really thought. "There but for the grace of God," wasn't it?

--I hope for grace far more than you did. I don't think that Boots does, unfortunately. Besides, I don't need grace to avoid the kind of disreputable company he keeps: abstractionists, socialists, experimental writers.

--At least they are writing. Look at you. You go through the biggest war in history and you sit on the material like a hen on a china egg.

--That experience needs time to mature. It's not like that fling at schoolmastering I turned into Decline and Fall.

--I turned into Decline and Fall.

--Or those society pages we chopped up and baked into Vile Bodies with a dash of self-pity. Or the quick trips to Africa and South America that went into the other novels.

--Well, if you've outgrown me, why footle about with my old diaries to try to cash in on another novel about that bore Ryder who narrated that bestseller. "I am not I," you stuck at the beginning. Well, he certainly isn't me, though he sounds very much like you.

--Ryder was fine for the role he had to play--staying in the background to tell the story. And coming to a position where he could understand the events.

--I can see that. Though almost no one else seemed to.

--I grant that it was a mistake to try to revive him from the bones of a dead self.

--How can I be dead when you keep sucking my blood? Reprinting snippets from my travel books with a preface whining about how you and the world are past any experience worth having. It was the going that was good. And I am going--you bore me.

Waugh was not used to being dismissed in this fashion, though he certainly recognized the maneuver. In any case, he thought, there was no way to answer this kind of judgment. But if the voice returned, he would be ready for it. Now to deal with reality.

Reality, or at any rate the old lady, was trying with little success not to stare at him.

I'll have to watch it, he realized. That impertinent young man is good company, but if I don't want to be confined to it exclusively in a locked room, I'll have to act as though nothing untoward were happening.

III

Seated at the broad desk in his library at Stinkers, as he called Piers Court, Waugh remembered the pleasure he had taken in Beerbohm's cartoons--over thirty years ago, that exhibit had been. His last taste of high life before his Welsh exile in that awful school. He got up, walked round his desk and to the third bay of books on the right, and pulled out the copy of Observations--not the first edition, he mourned. In 1925 he was frequently impoverished and when he had funds, he spent them on riotous living.

The cartoons lost nothing in the second edition. The appearance of his own younger self made them seem less amusing. Still, he could chuckle at the old Arnold Bennett (how kind he had been about Decline and Fall), rotund and prosperous, saying to his younger self, "All gone according to plan, you see." And the younger self's response: "My plan, you know." Or the preposterous figure of John Everett Millais--he had made excellent comic relief in my (that young man's?) Rossetti--disguised as country squire, confronted by the eager, idealistic young self. Not a little disquieting to find it happening to him.

Beerbohm's cartoon of Henry James in youth and age had come later. Waugh remembered the heavy, balding older self confronted by the slender, bearded younger version. Both were saying, in a single balloon linked to each mouth, "How badly you write!"

He walked back to the shelf behind his desk and looked at the row of his books. Unlike the elder James, he couldn't say that the young man had written badly.

Decline and Fall...Paul Pennyfeather...the prototype of his ingenu figure. His younger self had never been quite that innocent or ignorant. Black Mischief...the anti-type, Basil Seal the cad. The younger self had tried to equal that impudence in real life, or whatever it was he lived, but he had never managed to devour a girl-friend at a cannibal banquet. Neither had Basil Murray or Randolph Churchill, he thought. What a stir that novel had caused. Questions about the sincerity of his own faith. And in the official diocesan newspaper at that. He wondered what had ever happened to that editor...Oldmeadow? What would he think of Brideshead? Not much--he knew how to hold a grudge--despite the trouble Waugh had taken to have it certified as orthodox.

Scoop...a revision of Black Mischief with Boot the ingenu in place of the cad. Most ingenious, if disingenuous. And the other Boot, fashionable novelist and travel writer--a version of that younger self that even then he had attempted to silence. At least he had conferred a mis-directed knighthood on that self; more than the elder seemed likely to get.

Put Out More Flags...Basil again, edging towards middle-age, as caddish as ever towards women but finally trapped into marriage and joining the Commandos in a burst of patriotic rhetoric. Lots of silly girls in that, too, but none of them got eaten. In fact, the women triumphed in the end, although the men they caught were going off to war.

A Handful of Dust...now that was a fine piece of work if he did say so. Just as macabre as Black Mischief, but more terrifying. Innocence is not enough in that world, he thought. No return to the refuge from chaos, but poetic justice. Novelistic justice, rather, since poor Tony has to read Dickens aloud over and over again to his captor, reduced to a voice.

As was his tormentor, he thought. Unlike the Beerbohm elders, he could not see the younger self, but he knew what he looked like: the portrait that Henry Lamb had painted of him at 24, thin-faced and holding a pipe and a glass of beer. His older self must appear a good deal rounder. Light work on the lawn and ornaments of Piers Court was not adequate to keep down the weight of a middle-aged man, especially one who ate and drank as enthusiastically as he did.

The older self lived very differently from the younger. Piers Court was a long way from Golders Green physically, socially, and architecturally. His father had been proud of Underhill, that grandly named suburban house. Surely the old man had been unaware of the allusion to Beardsley's scabrous, fragmentary novel. His second, prodigal son now lived more grandly. Piers Court had been built in the sixteenth century. Never mind that he had received it as a wedding present when he married into an aristocratic family. For the second time, he thought with a wry smile, remembering the story of the aunt to both wives who had exclaimed, "I thought we were rid of that young man." He had expected to settle down after a rootless decade and found a family. The family had prospered--James was the fifth surviving child since 1938--but the roots had been stunted by the war.

He had nearly finished repairing the ravages inflicted on Piers Court by the convent school which had taken refuge from urban bombing. Somehow it did not feel the same. The war had taken him among a widely and sometimes wildly diverse assortment of human types. His old neighbors seemed rather dull, and he wished that they could talk like characters in a Jane Austen novel.

Still, when he looked at the massive desk in front of him and the rows of books on the wall behind him and in bays marching down the room ahead of him, he could take some pride in his accomplishment. He could also see the young self's point. The room looked uncomfortably like the library of Lord Metroland he had described in Vile Bodies with its stolid rows of reference books that seemed to guarantee comprehensive knowledge and social stability.

Except, he thought defensively, old Metroland refused to recognize that the world outside was crumbling. He could recognize nothing else. At the end of the war, he had recommended a retreat into the catacombs as the only sane way to deal with the triumph of barbarism and evil. As a Catholic, he should have had a greater fear of evil. But "the century of the common man"--the phrase and what it designated were inescapable--appalled him even more. Things had come to the point that no English editor was willing to publish his modest proposal, "What to Do with the Upper Classes."

That had been a promising idea--setting aside reservations for the aristocracy and country gentlemen to get them out of the socialist world in humane fashion. Perhaps the solution was too mild--not as startling as Swift's recipes for baby stew. Had he gone soft?

Worse, had he in fact boxed himself in by promising the Yanks to write about theological subjects in high style? He reached for some of the work the young self had disparaged.

The preface to When the Going Was Good was rather somber, but then there was a lot to be somber about. And the lines about the "seeming-solid, patiently built gorgeously ornamented structure of Western life" which he had seen "melt overnight like an ice-castle, leaving only a puddle of mud" were not only sonorous but an accurate reflection of his mood. The style was there, and he could explain the lack of theology. All but one of those travel books had been written after his conversion to Catholicism, but for the most part he had not written specifically as a Catholic.

Brideshead had changed that, or so he had thought when he wrote his answer to all those American fan letters. Now, looking at the neatly typed manuscript of "Tactical Exercise," he was less sure. Far from being ornamented, the style was direct, almost utilitarian. And the story didn't deal with God, though the characters certainly needed Him.

Thinking about what he had written, Waugh realized that the psychologist who had tested him during the war would find it significant. The central character, unlovable even by Waugh's usual standards, shared his creator's dissatisfaction with the Welfare State and went well beyond the rather casual anti-Semitism that Waugh had inherited from his father. Waugh was pleased at how he kept the character, but not the reader, ignorant of his wife's long-standing infidelity and the way that he established the motive for killing his wife as displaced hatred of the modern world. Waugh had no wish to dispose of Laura--who would take care of the five children? The joke was automatic, the real emotion unexpressible even to himself--but the story raised and, Waugh hoped, exorcised some of the demons who beset him.

"Scott-King's Modern Europe," as he had admitted to Peters, was uncomfortably close to the form of Decline and Fall, the circular journey of the ingenu from order to chaos and back to order again. It had worked well in that novel. It had worked fairly well in Scoop. But in those novels he had been dealing with ingenuous young men.

Scott-King was a bit old for an ingenu, he had to admit. For that matter, so was he, at least outwardly. In Spain he had suffered nothing beyond inconvenience and a little uncertainty. But they were enough to trigger a fear he had experienced before: what if I am abandoned? It could have happened to me--or him, that voice would maintain--in Brazil, and that turned into the story that led to A Handful of Dust. But I was really alone then. Do Scott-King's adventures seem thin because I was never in any real danger? Or have I just gone through the motions in sending him into a world of refugees, smugglers, and guerillas and having him resurface in a Palestine refugee camp? Like his predecessors, he was not so much reborn as reinstated to his former status. Still, there was nothing magical in the formula, and even in those days it had taken a little stylistic slight of hand in those stories to make things come out right.

Thus far, he admitted, "Scott-King" had not. He paged through the manuscript to the end. Having the novel end with Scott-King statement that he would never go abroad again was rather feeble. He remembered solving the same sort of problem by expanding the scene and ending it with a dying fall. (Whatever that was. He knew nothing about music, but he trusted Eliot's verbal cadences.)

Waugh picked up his pen. Focused on his task, he turned Scott-King's retreat into an assertion of classical values and an attack on the modern world and anything wicked enough to prepare boys for it.

As he finished, he thought--rapidly, to forestall the other voice--that solves this problem. It's not a great work, but it has kept me going.

--And where now?

The offensive young man was back.

--You might give me at least a minute's rest. Besides, this isn't finished yet--it's just concluded. I've more polishing to do.

--Make sure you don't rub it entirely away. And you're right: you are far too old to play the ingenu. I was never particularly good at it myself.

Waugh was not exactly disarmed by this reflection, but he decided to listen.

--Not that I admit for a second that you have anything useful to offer, but if I did, what would you suggest?

--Well, you might stop sitting on your backside (any twinges today?) and make something happen.

Despite Waugh's assertion that he wanted no more experience, this was tempting.

--What do you suggest?

--How should I know? I live in a different world. But I don't think running away to Ireland will make anything happen. Sounds to me like Pennyfeather and Boot all over again.

--What about the American trip?

--If you get it. And then only if you use it for something besides the opportunity to stuff yourself and annoy the Yanks. You're getting a bit long in the tooth to be an enfant terrible like Basil. As far as that goes, the last time you used him, he was getting a bit past it. Anyway, you're not as good-looking as he was. But you ought to go. It might shake you out of the rut you're in.

--Or give me the chance to escape your impertinent comments.

--I wouldn't bank on that.

IV

As far as Waugh was concerned, the new year began on October 28. In the past, when he bothered to keep a diary at all, his birthday was a time for summing up the year just ended. On this quiet evening in 1946, however, the intrusive voice had made him sensitive about being stuck in the past.

There could be something in that, he thought. He drew the blank sheet of lined paper before him and entered a rare resolution: to keep a full diary for the year to come. Perhaps if I pay attention to what is happening, I can find a way to go on.

Going on was a problem. He had written Nancy Mitford in Paris--how he missed her lively and almost certainly libelous gossip about their friends in London--that he had only two books left in him, the war and the autobiography. Both in the past, he admitted ruefully, but if he didn't want any more experience, he would have to settle for what he had acquired. Unfortunately, the novel had not come clear in his mind. He had written a long summary of his military career, but he had no framework for the material, and the usual cad and ingenu heroes would not do for something as serious as the end of civilization as he knew it.

The autobiography posed an entirely different problem: not what to leave in but what to leave out, from motives of discretion, kindness, or fear of legal action. How my old friends and enemies will scurry for cover when that book is announced! Almost sufficient motive to make me begin at once. (He sounded, he realized, a good deal like the invisible voice.) But that pleasure would be negated by the fact that the socialists will gobble up the income. It had become more profitable to do nothing than to work.

Better not to write that down. If he were going to live in the present, it would do no good to be querulous about it. And the present was not insupportable. He recalled a character's response in the bleakest days of the war: In the old days, if one thing went wrong, the whole day was spoiled. Now, if one thing went right, the day was saved.

He picked up the Times. Not much seemed to have gone right. The socialists claimed to support private enterprise, with the proviso that it be "inspired and heartened by social purposes." In these circumstances, idleness was a virtue. Besides, look at the arts: a frog painter "able to give a sumptuous effect even to crude colour laid on with apparent violence." And he had thought that Picasso was as bad as painting could get. A sculptress whose abstract figures "are so clean one could eat off them." At least they could be put to utilitarian purposes. He glanced at the bust of himself. At least that old Jug Paravicini had some basic knowledge of his craft. Not so Miss Hepworth, according to the Times. Her paintings and drawings showed "a certain weakness and hesitation in her construction and arrangement of forms." Nothing about the colors, and probably no violence. Not even the saving modern grace of social purposes.

Sensible fellow named Lutyens--Sir Ned's son?--arguing against Fr. Martindale's lust to rebuild Fountains Abbey. Good point about English Jesuit taste--execrable. Still better about revival gothic: "Architectural beauty is achieved by skill and not by piety; and gothic building in particular sprang from the inspired empiricism of mason-craftsmen; it is still-born on the imitator's drawing-board."

"Waiter Alleged to Have Struck a Singer." An unexpected use for the lower classes.

What horrors were the politicians up to? Cambridge over-run with a thousand civil servants. Bevin leaving the country to foment mischief at the United Nations. No increase in clothing coupons for curtains and bedding. Sir Stafford Cripps--no novelist would dare to use such a name--put a foot through his sheets every time he went to bed. Waugh smiled. Would this become a necessary bedtime ritual in prosperous times? More bread shortages predicted by that Communist Strachey. So much for the paradise he had predicted years ago. But the heretical Irish were sending a hundred and sixty thousand turkeys for Christmas.

No good came of public life. And private? He reviewed this day's events and judged them good. Then, almost automatically, he arranged them in neat categories. Food: by current standards, he had fared quite well. Haddock for breakfast; pilaf--Peters' benefaction--for lunch. Rationing has made us a nation of beggars, he thought. And from Americans! Are we to become care-package democrats, like the rice Christians during Chinese famines? Well, they have rice. We don't. The government's sole response to any shortage was to ration what was already unavailable. In the old days, he would have made wry comedy of the decision to cut the size of a loaf of bread in the hope that the public would not notice. But in those days he had plenty to eat.

Enough of that. His birthday had been celebrated by champagne before dinner. The fact that he had earned it by writing that drivel for the merchants made it taste none the worse.

And the roast chicken tasted all the better because, raised on the grounds, it was exempt from socialist regulation. One of Laura's rare successes, he thought. She is a much better wife and mother than she is a farmer. He much preferred it that way, but the cuisine would be improved if she could move beyond apprenticeship in the craft of agriculture. Besides, he had little patience with amateurs and less with mere journeymen. Only a master craftsman earned his respect.

Enough of that, too. The rest of his day had been quite pleasant. He had done a little work on the lawn. He had taken a walk. He had read some of Henry James in a volume of the massive New York edition inherited from his father. Only then, he thought with a tinge of younger son's jealousy, because Alec is a rolling stone who gathers no books. Just women and unsuitable friends.

Did The Portrait of a Lady do anything to explain the Americans, he wondered? That young woman from Albany takes herself with intense seriousness. She seems not much interested in marriage for the usual purposes, social advancement or sexual gratification, or dynastic continuity. Indeed, she hardly seems aware of them. Instead, she is bent on a quest to bestow herself and her fortune as a prize for the worthiest male without regard for what she is to receive.

Osmond is clearly a second-rate cad from the moment he appears. His character, and the young woman's response to it, are drawn with a master's touch. Would it make any difference if he were first-rate at what he does but still a cad? James would think that inconceivable. Do I? Basil was a cad, but he a man of action, or perhaps of impulse, not an artist. What would he have been like if he had been touched by inspiration? Like Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I thought--or that young self did--that he lacked the rectitude essential for great art, but that this may have had nothing to do with morals in the usual sense.

Would the young woman be better or worse off with an inspired cad? Surely not all American women can be like that. Are any like that? None that I have encountered. Those seemed intensely aware of the gratifications which their assets can procure for them. But I cannot claim to have observed them in their native habitat. Perhaps this is a useful reason for going to America. And for being grateful to have encountered James's work at this juncture in my life.

He looked down at his own writing. I'm not in America yet, he thought. On the other hand, Pete wouldn't object so strenuously to my going if he weren't fairly confident that he can lure the Yanks with Brideshead as bait. He seemed touched by my plea that poor Laura needs a holiday from the children and the farm. And so she does, bless her.

Tempting as the prospect was, he pulled himself back to the present, which remained a blank sheet of paper. If he were going to deal with current experience, perhaps he could use the diary for practice.

Not a bad idea. For years he had thought of himself as the central character in a continuing story. What if he made the process more conscious? And how to begin?

Why not place himself by an inventory of the day's mail? There had been the weekly issue of the New Yorker. He flipped through its pages. One had to admire the casual assumption that understated sophistication and good will pervaded society and would prevail over bad manners, bad breath, and the black disaster that had overtaken much of the world. That world was not as pleasant as the one he mourned--the West End of London, some country houses ranging from estates to cottages, a monastery or two--but at least it was a plausible dream to the magazine's contributors. Some quite amusing cartoons.

Today he looked at the magazine more attentively than usual. If Peters wooed Hollywood successfully, the "Goings On About Town" might have more than vicarious interest.

The section on Theatre was disappointing: a play about an American businessman, another about a free Palestine (no to both) and some revivals (Cyrano de Bergerac; Lysistrata "with an all-Negro cast"; Lady Windemere's Fan; The Duchess of Malfi: two no's and two possibles. He skipped Ballet and Night Life and shuddered at the monotonous repetition of "abstract" in the entries under Art. Films...Caesar and Cleopatra...a long time since, as a schoolboy, he had admired Shaw. He had hardly thought of him since. A number of other British films. He felt no surge of patriotism, but he took comfort in the fact that his countrymen were occupying screens that otherwise would show far worse.

Ads...more to Laura's taste...and finally some text. The Bodelian at Oxford lists pornography under "Phi." Was that true? He had spent little time there during his undergraduate years and none since.

Prediction of weather controlled by science...nonsense. A comparison of the Nuremburg Trials with legal actions at the end of the first war.

Zippered overshoes for cows. Laura might be too interested in that. If the fad spread to England, would a whole new stratum of bureaucrats be fostered to issue clothing coupons?

Someone had observed a waiting chauffeur typing away on a portable machine, his activity attributed to high prices paid for novels by Hollywood. Most encouraging for his own prospects.

A debate on vegetarianism...his family might be unwillingly reduced to that.

He turned his attention to the cartoons until the words "Protestant" and "Jesuit" caught his eye. A piece about a convent girl's fear for her Protestant grandfather's soul after a particularly fierce hell-fire sermon. The attempts of the nuns to reassure the child. "Like all truly intellectual women, these were in spirit romantic desperadoes." True or not, it was well put. An admiration for panache...perhaps Americans weren't as boring as he feared. Mary McCarthy...where had he heard of her? Some connection of that awful Wilson's?

"What kind of airliners do you want to fly in?" None at all. But how rum to ask people who know nothing of aeronautics.

"Letter from Paris." The conference there, and an American pretending to be worried that the Russians and the Americans held the real power and that Europeans "are reduced to sitting quiet and worried in their cities or on their land and nodding like yes men to a pair of enormous, newly grown-up outsiders." Not much like his impression of the British Embassy last spring, but the person writing the piece obviously was not on Duff Cooper's list or worthy of Diana's company.

"Feminine Fashions"--to be shown to Laura only if Peters came through.

"London Letter." What nonsense are the Yanks being fed about us? A report on the "Britain Can Make It" exhibit at the Victoria and Albert. Large crowds, it seemed: mass-ochism. Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today. Or new flats or appliances or furniture. Olivier's opening in Lear a triumph. Hotels crowded; most Englishmen "waiting to see what the statesmen in Paris will do with them." That again. All the more reason to flee to Ireland.

He flipped to Books and skimmed the review of The Natural History of Nonsense. Everybody believes that foreigners are fools, he read. And with good reason. The only mistake was to exempt one's countrymen.

On the opposite page the Book-of-the-Month Club had a full-page ad. Nothing more about Brideshead, though Orwell's Animal Farm was holding up the side. Remarkably sensible fellow for an atheistic socialist. But then, try as he would to hide it, he was an old Etonian.

So much for that side of the Atlantic. He flipped through his stack of mail. There had been a letter about his nomination of Maurice Bowra, Ran Antrim, and Randolph Churchill for membership in the Beefsteak Club. Maurice spent most of his time in Oxford, as a don should, but he could be an amusing companion. Besides, years ago he had annoyed Waugh's tutor, and Waugh never forgot a favor of that kind. His life was respectable enough in appearance, and though privately Waugh thought him feeble as a scholar and critic, his books were reviewed respectfully.

Ran Antrim was not only a peer but a comrade in arms in the Commandos. No more need be said.

These two men represented the two most important institutions in his life, Waugh reflected. Except for the Church. Curious how he kept his social life separate from his religious life. He could proselytize--he should probably apologize for bullying poor Betjeman about his obdurate heresy, but the lesson in logical reasoning would be good for a poet--and he could give money and advice, but he could not share or even discuss his private faith. With characteristic honesty, he understood how non-Catholics like Nancy and Randolph could be puzzled by the unkindness of someone who professed to be a Christian. He had told them that he would be far worse except for his religion, and that was the truth.

Christianity might help Randolph. Nothing else seemed to. On what grounds, Waugh asked himself, had he nominated Randolph for the Beefsteak? What did he represent? Not politics, since his father had been unseated as prime minister in last year's Conservative debacle. Randolph himself had lost his seat in Parliament, but then he had won it only because he had been unopposed. Not civility, since Randolph was notorious for unaccountable rages, drunk or sober, and for insupportable, non-stop monologues.

Waugh himself had been often accused of being rude, and he was not infrequently drunk. If Waugh managed Randolph's election, he could at least submit that he was not the rudest man in the club.

Of course, it wouldn't do to say that. Perhaps the best strategy would be to point to Randolph's undeniably distinguished family (a little sympathy vote there, perhaps) and to his unexceptionable war record (better not to go too deeply into that). Then he could assert that Randolph would not use the club often. This candor might disarm reasonable objections, and it would satisfy his compunction about telling an outright lie.

That letter did not require immediate action. The one from the BBC needed some response. They wanted him to go to Europe to spread good will at Christmas. Showed how little they knew his attitude towards the radio: he refused to allow one in the house. Or his horror at the domestic rituals Christmas. Or for that matter, his attitude towards Europe as it now stood--or rather lay--in ruins. Two trips in the past year were enough. He would quote a fee which, if the corporation were insane enough to pay it, he would be pleased to have. If they turned him down, they might think in larger numbers the next time they approached him.

The climax of the day's post was the offer to sell him a castle in Ireland. Early nineteenth century Gothic--therefore pre-Ruskin and unselfconscious. Almost twice as many bedrooms as the eight at Piers Court. Three times the acreage for Laura to farm. A ballroom--unfinished, but useful to a man with three daughters for whom suitors must be lured. And, most appealing of all, a chapel.

Like the one at Brideshead Castle, he thought with satisfaction. That novel had originally been called "A Household of the Faith." When he had been received into the Roman Catholic Church all those years ago, his imagination had been caught by the doctrine of the union of all the faithful, living and dead, in the Mystical Body of Christ. In practice, he found the physical company of his fellow worshippers rather irksome, and the private chapel would allow him to fulfill his Sunday obligation in private. If he was going to become a saint at all, it would have to be as a martyr or a hermit.

First, of course, Knight, Frank, and Rutley would have to dispose of Piers Court. Not an easy task, he feared at times. At others, he wondered why he had taken against it. Part was real Tudor; part eighteenth century. Good periods for English domestic architecture if not for the Church. All mod cons. New stalls for Laura's cows; a sty for pigs. Room for all of his increasing brood of children.

On the other hand, suburbs were beginning to encroach from three directions. In his absence during the war the fabric and grounds had not been kept up, and the energy and enthusiasm with which he had occupied Piers Court as a bridegroom were irrecoverable. Fortunately, the disillusion of middle age and his post-war depression had settled on his house rather than his wife. Unlike the unfortunate character in his "Tactical Exercise." At least he had written that.

He reread the first diary entry of the new year. How simple, blameless, and orderly his life looked. Bland, in fact. Perfectly accurate and wholly misleading.

V

Waugh realized that few people understood why he had married Laura. He had given a consistently successful performance as a man of the world, he had cultivated a reputation for cynical brilliance. He was on intimate terms with famous beauties like Diana Cooper and female wits like Nancy Mitford. He had not given many clues about the cause of his attraction. Indeed, he had described Laura to Lady Mary Lygon, with whom he kept up playfully obscene correspondence, as shy and virginal, with a long nose, untidy hair in a bun, thirteen years younger than he, and pretty.

He had not told Lady Mary that Laura was nearly as tall as he. He was sensitive about his height--the invisible voice could

not goad him about that, he thought with some satisfaction--but he was willing to endure the occasionally raised eyebrow. His father had attributed the Waugh stature to the penchant of Victorian Waughs for marrying small women whom they could dominate. Perhaps his descendants would benefit, though it would take more generations than he would see for Waughs unborn to attain the aristocratic length of friends like Harry Stavordale in the Commandos.

He had not had to tell anyone that Laura came from a higher social class, and he knew that some people suspected him of marrying up.

At least these were reasons, if not the real ones, for his marrying Laura. No one, he suspected, could thing of any reason at all why Laura should marry him. In fact, his letter of proposal ten years ago had given a number of reasons why she should reject him. Of course, he had written that letter only after he was sure that she would not.

He was exceedingly glad that she had not. Although he could never bring himself to say so in public, she was exactly what he needed. Beauties like Diana found him an amusing companion from time to time, but they seemed to prefer a different kind of man. Wits like Nancy were best enjoyed at a distance. The two of them would drive each other mad in a week if they lived together. Besides, she would have no excuse for writing those marvelous letters. Or for receiving those he addressed to her.

He had in fact married Laura because, in his own complicated and sometimes oblique fashion, he loved her deeply. In return, he gained a stability he had wanted in his first marriage--not a real marriage, he interjected mentally, since it was annulled. Those years between, alternating between episodes of platonic yearning and visits to brothels, had been empty and futile. He still flirted chastely with fashionable women, but there would be no more prostitutes. Laura provided him with a center, no matter how far he wandered physically.

He did not feel guilty about his prolonged absence during the war. He could hardly have helped that. He had decided early on not to try to wangle a desk job near home, partly because he feared that it would smother him as a novelist and partly because his nature ached for combat.

Still, he thought, volunteering for parachute training at forty may have been a bit much. However, Laura had never reproached him for that--or for anything else.

In any case, even a desk job would have kept him away during her three wartime pregnancies. He had been absent for all the others, as far as that went. And he had never intended to take an active part in raising his children. He had been raised by a nanny, and he took it for granted that his children would be.

But during the war, nannies had been in short supply. Poor Laura had gone to Pixton Park, staying with her formidable mother and her sisters. Sometimes he thought that his sympathy was misplaced; she did not seem to mind it as much as he would. But he refused to rely on that excuse. Moreover, she had more than the usual burdens of motherhood, for Lady Herbert had patriotically taken in a gaggle of children evacuated from the cities. He had been willing to face the Germans, but not all those children, and he had visited Laura there only when there had been no alternative.

Now that they were together, he tried to find treats for her--not easy, under the circumstances. He restrained himself from announcing his plans for the American trip: she had had too many disappointments in the past seven years.

But the news of the Irish castle could be shared. The morning after his birthday he carried the announcement into her room.

Laura rarely showed her feelings, but he could see that she was pleased.

"How clever of you to find a place with all that land to farm," she exclaimed. "If only I can find someone to manage it."

"At the very least, we can unleash the children on the unsuspecting peasantry."

Like Peters, Laura assumed the role of anchor. "It should be easier to get nannies there."

"Of course, when they get older we shall send them to school back here to scrape off the brogue."

"They'll be all right. And so shall I. You're the one I'm worried about. Do you think you'll be able to work outside of England?"

Waugh was pleased at her concern, but long habit led him to bluster. "As Ryder said in that book I had to bully you to read, after some of the places I've worked, I could write while sitting on top of an omnibus."

"Since you complain when the children make the slightest noise, I doubt that. Besides, you would miss your friends in London."

It was clearly necessary to reassure her, and he said, with as much candor as he could manage, "London is bad for me. Every time I go there, I act like an unsupervised child at a party. It takes me days to recover. I shall be healthier and more productive in Ireland. And because there will be less to provoke me, a more pleasant companion for you."

Laura was unconvinced. "I know how bored you get when you haven't enough to do. And won't the move take you away from your material?"

"Nonsense. I told Nancy Mitford that exiles lose their creative powers, but I was trying to frighten her into staying in London with the example of Aldous Huxley. He wrote one good book, Antic Hay, and then ran off to Italy, where he got worse, and then to America, where he got worse still. That book he wrote about California was full of boring sermons. But he left England before he was thirty. At my advanced age, I've had enough experience to last out my writing life."

--Whistling in the dark, are you? That's not what you told Nancy.

Trying not to show his surprise at the voice's intrusion, Waugh replied to it as tartly as he could while remaining silent,

--Please be good enough not to interrupt me while I'm talking to someone else!

--All right, but I'll be back.

Laura looked concerned. "Are you all right?"

"What? Oh, yes. I just thought of something. Anyway, don't worry about me. The change will do us both good. And now I must go do something about intensifying Scott-King's woes. I'll see you at luncheon."

As he walked down the stairs to his study, he spoke to the younger self.

--Well, what is it? Or do you just want to torment me about my no doubt groundless misgivings about running out of material.

Nothing but silence. Waugh had thought that it would be welcome, but it was frustrating to be prepared for a row and not have it.

--Oh, all right. But I am tired of hearing about your grand, vague plans for the future. I'm tired of talking about them myself.

--What subject would you prefer? I suppose that I am the host, though I have not decided whether you are a guest or a parasite.

--Ireland seems a promising topic. I dimly remember going in the mid-twenties.

--It is reassuring to learn that your memory can fail.

--Nothing wrong with my memory. I was blind drunk part of the time. And then there was that auto race I went to.

--You were stuck because that woman abandoned you. Me. Us.

--Whomever she left, the auto race gave me a nice plot turn for Vile Bodies.

--You should be a bit more sympathetic with my difficulties in that regard. And depending on chance experience is a poor way to construct a novel.

The voice seemed disinclined to pursue this line of conversation.

--Stick to the point. Let's see: poor Ambrose Silk got shunted off to Ireland at the end of Put Out More Flags. Poor bugger couldn't write a word in that dull, damp climate. Whose idea was that?

--You invented Basil Seal; he sent Ambrose there.

--You took Basil to the verge of middle age.

--Perhaps we can share the credit. But I did Brideshead Revisited by myself.

--All the more reason why we should get back together. But not for any of the feeble topics you now have in hand.

--Oh, go away and let me work.

--If only you would.

During the next two weeks, Waugh pruned and re-wrote the tale about Scott-King, not eager to finish a task which had no clear sequel. Finally he reached a point where further revision would be not only futile but harmful--he smiled at the voice's remark about rubbing the story completely away.

He had just put the manuscript in a desk drawer to let it age when his butler entered with a telegram on a tray. However bad the news, Waugh thought, the mode of conveyance is entirely satisfactory.

It was from Peters in Los Angeles. Mission accomplished. Details to follow.

Waugh no longer had the figure or the temperament for dashing up a flight of stairs, but he moved more rapidly than he had in recent months.

"Something has turned up," he announced to Laura in his best imitation of his father's Dickensian manner.

"That's nice. Did the BBC meet your price for the Christmas tour?"

"Far better than that. You have been promoted from wife to secretary."

"You know I can't take shorthand or type."

"Doesn't matter. Your only task will be to sleep with your boss."

"Evelyn!"

"That involves no breach of faith and morals: I shall be your boss. There is one disadvantage, though."

"One more, perhaps. What is it?"

"You will be required to accompany me to Los Angeles, California."

"How on earth can we afford it?"

"We shan't have to. The bottomless coffers of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will pay for a first-class, top-hole vacation for us both. Three days in New York. A month in Hollywood. Hotels with all mod cons."

"And who will take care of the new baby, not to mention the other children."

Waugh waved away this objection. "The usual surrogates will function in our place. Or rather yours."

"When do we leave? What shall I pack? Most of my clothes are at least six years old."

"How fast the maternal instinct ebbs when confronted with Mammon."

"No, really, this is serious."

"The further news is that my American agent is squatting atop piles of dollars I have earned by unremitting toil. Something called Good Housekeeping has bought that story you thought so nasty for upwards of seven hundred pounds. Because you are a good housekeeper, they are yours to spend as you like. And perhaps more, if I can squeeze it out of the Yanks."

"You are a good husband, no matter what you or anyone else says."

"Please don't make that public."

"No one would believe me. Oh--I forgot to ask. Why we are going?"

"The Yanks have the illusion that they can make a film of Brideshead."

"Shall you let them?"

"I promised Pete that I would behave honorably. If they can approximate my intent, I shall not stand in their way. In which case we shall have a large pile of dollars."

"Do you think that they can?"

"There's not the slightest chance."

As Waugh stumped down the stairs, he did not exactly rub his hands in glee because he lacked an audience, but he was well satisfied with himself. Then the voice said,

--Mr. Toad on top! Congratulations.

--I thought you only turned up to torment me.

--And to applaud really outrageous impudence. This beats my turning manners into mothers.

--I have promised to behave. And I am a man of my word.

--And my words too, I hope. This is better than burying yourself in Ireland. America is bound to be more lively. And far less damp.

--You never got to America. Is there any chance that you are confined to places you've actually been?

--Not the slightest.

VI

A normal person finds it hard to be self-critical when full of painkiller, but as Waugh lay in his private room at Saint John and Saint Elizabeth Hospital, he condemned his behavior in the strongest, if not clearest, terms.

When he had decided to undergo the operation for piles, he had described it to his friends as "painful, costly and indelicate," as if the elegance of the series would somehow mitigate the discomfort. The verbal magic had failed.

Words... Despite the discomfort, he had to smile when he thought of the preposterous American offer, fifty pounds for fifty "Words to Live By," commentary on a quotation. Had his choice been prophetic? Crashaw's

He had given the American sound doctrine: remember you must die. Consider your last end. The words had fallen on barren ground. Did Americans ever think of death? Did they think at all? He shifted in the bed and winced at the challenge from his end.

What else could he have expected from a people mad enough to pay a pound a word? Why, for that matter, had he accepted the assignment at all?

There was a kind of symmetry in the figure. Fifty pounds for fifty words; fifty pounds for his first book. One in the eye for that obstreperous young person who had been haunting him. Of course, he thought quickly, to forestall the obvious answer, that young person actually collected the money; the politicians allowed him to keep most of it; and it was worth something.

He considered, without nostalgia, where that money had gone.

Restaurants, drinks, the girl whom he had so off-handedly married for so brief a time. That, if you like--and he still did not--was a painful excision. Better to think about something else.

An echo from the past: "Have you thought of death?" The appalling, pushy American evangelist in Vile Bodies. The reply of a sea-sick passenger: "Have I not!" But physical discomfort did not lead to the most exalted reflections on mortality.

The operation and its after-effects had been almost as bad as Christmas. True, he had brought this on himself, but unlike the holiday it would not recur and could be suffered in solitude.

The trouble with solitude was that it provided no one to talk to. The nuns were solicitous, competent, and obviously serving God in their every word and act. They set an example he would do well to follow, however much it went against his unregenerate nature. But they did not speak the private language he used with heathen like Nancy and Diana.

Even the inner voice had been silent. Why? Waugh thought, and searched his memory.

Waugh's behavior was often disorderly. His mind was not. It sorted and arranged the evidence and reached conclusions which he faced with characteristic fortitude. Elimination: he hasn't turned up here. He hasn't spoken to me at Mass or while I was praying. Could it be that he shrinks from the sacred? That would seem to indicate that he is not my younger self but a demon.

If so, what is his purpose? Waugh sorted through the topics of conversation. He certainly is not tempting me to pride, since he ridicules me at every opportunity. Or sloth, since he keeps trying to goad me into action.

Could that be a temptation? Waugh considered alternatives. Well, he thought, if to attain sanctity I must become a contemplative, then God's grace won't just have to glorify my nature, it will have to reconstruct it. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with action in itself.

If he isn't tempting me, then what is he doing? He speaks most often, Waugh realized, when I am trying to delude myself--mostly about work--or am being pompous. He isn't concerned with my morals as such. More with what the schoolmasters called "character." He would mean something quite different, of course.

"Bogus." Haven't thought of that word in years. My friends and I used it to deflate stuffy, conventional behavior or to describe outrageous and patent fraudulence. Waugh stirred uneasily in his bed.

--That's quite a mouthful, but not inaccurate.

Waugh started in surprise and then in pain. He thought, with as much vehemence as the drugs would allow,

--If you have to intrude, would you have the decency to announce yourself less precipitately?

The voice spoke with annoying reasonableness:

--What would you suggest? I can't send my card on the butler's tray. I can't knock. I can't telephone--which you would find still more annoying. Besides, I know that you are pleased to have company.

--I prefer better. And during visiting hours, I shall have it.

The voice was almost contemptuous:

--What kind of friends are those? Mine wouldn't have paid any attention to a schedule.

Waugh tried to imagine those friends in this setting.

--Yes, he thought, they would have gathered round the bed like brightly colored, alcoholic buzzards. Or rather they would have tried to. They never had to deal with nuns. Just outraged dowagers and fathers. The rout would be precipitate and complete.

--As you can see, or rather hear, they haven't routed me, the voice said complacently.

--These good women are linked to the supernatural; they don't have control over it.

--Oh, come off it. I'm responsible for us being here; I was received into the Church.

--And went off to a nightclub to announce it in a gossip column. And turned a penny writing an article about it for old Beaverbrook.

The voice did not sound repentant.

--Grace glorified, not changed, my nature.

--Stealing my words isn't glorious, Waugh said with a debater's quickness.

The voice was unruffled:

--What's thine is mine.

--And vice versa?

--That's what I've been trying to tell you.

--What could I possibly do with it? Your world isn't mine. How can your methods be?

--They don't have to be identical. But you might recall the virtues of indirection. Take A Handful of Dust: perfectly orthodox and not a direct moral lesson in it.

--So indirect that almost no one recognized that a Catholic wrote it. Except that Catholic editor, who doubted the sincerity of your conversion.

--Our conversion. And who believes in it after Brideshead?

Waugh sighed.

--The attitude exhibited by some of the simpler appendages to the Mystical Body has been discouraging. They seem to think that if one doesn't write tracts or promotional advertisements for the worldly efficacy of religion, then one is outside the pale. A Jesuit in America kept trying to explain imaginative fiction to his readers--at least one person on that benighted continent has a glimmer of sense--but obviously without effect.

The voice sounded almost sympathetic:

--Just like Oldmeadow's reaction to Handful. And what about the heretics and heathens?

--Outrage or incomprehension or both. Connolly has paid that Macaulay woman to attack on me.

--What was the article called?

--It was in a series titled "The Best and the Worst." As you know perfectly well.

--And what was the best?

--You know that, too. She liked you when you were being funny. Either didn't enjoy Handful or didn't know what to do with it.

--And Brideshead? Something about "orchidaceous luxury of bloom" in the style? "Over-written and lush, and too consciously, opulently graceful"? Some talk of a sentimental, adolescent double kept in check for fifteen years who escaped to lay waste to our talent?

--Anglican propaganda.

--Is that why you keep threatening poor old Betjeman with hellfire if he remains in the Church of England?

Waugh stiffened.

--I have only his spiritual welfare at heart. Any pleasure I take in demolishing his preposterous defenses is a temporal reward for good works.

--Balls. If you are such a skilled apologist for the faith, why didn't you overwhelm Macaulay when you met her at that cocktail party?

--I was rather drunk.

--Not as drunk as you got later. Still sober enough to realize that there was a modicum of truth to what she said? She isn't the only one to say it.

--Nonsense.

--Then why can't you finish the Helena story? Why no theology in the last two stories? And if you were going to use my methods, why not use them with some conviction? Or toughness. Or energy.

There was a long pause. Then Waugh said flatly:

--Because I can't.

He waited for derisive comment. Instead, he heard:

--Good! Now stop moping about that and think about what you can do.

--I don't know.

--You can stop shrinking from the world--it is horrible, isn't it--and your misguided critics and attack. Didn't some frog say that the way to succeed was audacity? And more audacity!

Waugh's groan was, for a change, genuine.

--I don't feel audacious at this point.

--Your backside will heal if you follow doctor's orders. Your imagination will heal if you follow mine. And I have the advantage: you can't sneak off and disobey my instructions.

--Very well, Waugh answered. Nothing else seems to be working. It can't turn out worse than this operation.

--You might try to be more enthusiastic, but I suppose a grudging acquiescence is better than none.

--It is all that I am capable of. Or that you deserve. Now leave me in peace. I have less vexatious company in store.

He was wrong about that, for his brother Alec was among the first to arrive at his bedside, energetic, a little tipsy, and solicitous about his condition. Waugh groaned inwardly throughout the visit but remained outwardly polite.

Afterwards, he wondered why he found his brother's company nearly insupportable. Had Alec ever done him an injury, conscious or not? No. Had he ever gloated over or taken advantage of their father's obvious preference for him? No. Had he ever been anything but warm and generous? No.

Well, then, how could he explain his aversion?

--He writes very badly.

For a moment, Waugh was so startled to hear the voice attacking someone else that he did not reply. Then he thought, in a reasonable tone,

--I don't suppose that he does it on purpose. The poor fellow can't help it.

The voice sounded almost petulant:

--And he's bald.

--I'm sure he can't help that either, Waugh replied.

The voice was relentless:

--And he goes around with such awful people.

Waugh found any faulty reasoning annoying.

--If it comes to that, he thought, he used to go round with you when you hadn't a penny. And some of your friends were hardly the kind to propose for membership in White's.

--And the women he takes up with!

Waugh's sense of justice made him retort,

--At least he didn't have to pay them.

The voice was almost shrill:

--That says more about their taste than his prowess!

The younger self, if that was who he was, had always before sounded urbane, sardonic, and self-assured. Waugh had braced himself for attack; now, off balance, he had to reconsider his role.

--Good God! he thought. You're jealous of Alec!

There was a silence, and then, grudgingly,

--All right. Suppose I am? What of it?

--For one thing, envy is a deadly sin.

Some of the usual spirit came back into the voice:

--Envy! Who said anything about envy. Do you suppose I wanted that kind of woman? Or wanted to write those books?

Theological questions were the most interesting kind, Waugh thought.

--What distinction do you make between envy and jealousy?

--Envy is wanting what another has.

--And?

--I could never have had what he had: Father's confidence.

--Ah, Waugh thought. And now that Father is dead, you never can. We never can. I.

He lay there, for once in sympathy with himself. It wasn't just Father, he realized. Alec has never for a moment doubted that he is doing absolutely the right thing. I think his standards shallow and self-serving and his behavior irresponsible at best, but I am jealous of his self-confidence. What peace of mind he must have!

On the other hand, the poor fellow has no spiritual existence at all. Does he miss it? How could he? If he missed it he would feel incomplete, and that's what's so annoying about him.

A soul can be an awful nuisance, he admitted. Mine takes a lot of care, and it doesn't seem to bear much fruit. But put this way, I suppose that I am content not to be wise in my generation, however difficult the alternative.

Weary from the mental struggle, he worked his head more comfortably into his pillow and fell into a doze.

His visitor next day was more welcome. As fellow Catholic, fellow man of letters, and companion in arms, Christopher Sykes had never caused anxiety or excited jealousy, and he was capable of pricking back when jabbed.

Whether the probing of his backside or his conscience was the cause, Waugh felt less belligerent than usual.

When Sykes congratulated him on the impending bonanza from Hollywood, he said uneasily, "I'm afraid that selling Brideshead to MGM might be the end of me as a writer."

Sykes looked surprised. "Why on earth should it? You could certainly use the money--especially if you're going to buy Irish castles in wholesale lots. It looks to me like money for jam."

Waugh was surprisingly patient. "Easy enough for you to say. Your artistic chastity is not under attack."

Sykes laughed. "They can't rape you, you know. I've heard you say a dozen times that if you don't like what they propose, you will simply reject it."

Waugh sounded almost plaintive. "But--to continue your indelicate metaphor--what if I find myself enjoying it? People do--money and ease, I mean, to descend to the literal."

"Look," Sykes answered placidly, "suppose you do. You deserve it the money. And if they make the worst movie in history out of Brideshead, so what? Terrible movies have been made of classics with far longer histories. Vanity Fair and Hamlet aren't affected by Hollywood idiocies."

"Thackeray and Shakespeare are safely dead and immune from that kind of corruption. It can't affect their future work."

Sykes looked down at his recumbent friend. "Your worries do you credit, I suppose. I wish I had them. But no one is going to tempt me to hand over my book to the literary white slavers."

Waugh remembered his manners. "Sorry to bore you with my qualms. How is the book selling?"

"Well enough for what it is. I can't expect a collection of four quite different biographical sketches to rivet the attention of the reading public."

Waugh seemed to gather himself as if for combat. "If the other three were as good as the sketch about your great-uncle," he said accusingly, "you might be hailed as the new Lytton Strachey. Far less of a bitch, of course."

Sykes was used to his friend's back-handed praise. "Instead of which?"

"Instead of which you wasted a whole novel's worth of material in that discussion of the French town. To someone who wonders where his next book is coming from, that seems nothing short of criminal."

Sykes looked unrepentant. "Since I'm not really a novelist, I don't see that it matters."

"If that's the attitude you're going to take," Waugh said, pulling the bedclothes in exasperation, "there's no use talking to you. But you do not deny that you are a biographer of sorts?"

"I suppose not," Sykes answered carelessly, "though I see that the admission is going to get me into trouble."

"That section on Robert Byron. Totally wrong-headed. His mental processes were a shambles, and his writing was disgracefully bad even for someone with those mental habits."

"I gave fair treatment of his shortcomings."

Waugh glared. "You said that he would have been--what was it?--'one of the great names of our time' if he had lived. Such a lot of nonsense."

Sykes was unruffled. "We disagree, but I maintain that this is a reasonable assumption."

"Forget assumptions! What about facts? Why didn't you say that he was a dedicated bugger all his life?"

"Believe it or not, I didn't know that until after the book came out."

Waugh threw his head back, winced, and sighed loudly. "If ever you write my biography--which God forbid!--I hope you will be more diligent in your researches."

Sykes laughed. "You will outlive me, flourishing in wickedness like the green bay tree. And if you don't, my problem will be to paint a picture that is truthful as well as believable, using what I already know."