I Capture the Castle (2 page)

He is rather how I imagine Silvius in As You Like It but I am nothing like Phoebe.

Stephen has come in now. The first thing he did was to light a candle and stick it on the window-ledge beside me, saying: “You’re spoiling your eyes, Miss Cassandra.”

Then he dropped a tightly folded bit of paper on this journal. My heart sank, because I knew it would contain a poem; I suppose he has been working on it in the barn. It is written in his careful, rather beautiful script. The heading is, ““To Miss Cassandra” by Stephen Colly.”

It is a charming poem—by Robert Herrick.

What am I to do about Stephen? Father says the desire for self-expression is pathetic, but I really think Stephen’s main desire is just to please me; he knows I set store by poetry.

I ought to tell him that I know he merely copies the poems out—he has been doing it all winter, every week or so—but I can’t find the heart to hurt him.

Perhaps when the spring comes I can take him for a walk and break it to him in some encouraging way. This time I have got out of saying my usual hypocritical words of praise by smiling approval at him across the kitchen. Now he is pumping water up into the cistern, looking very happy.

The well is below the kitchen floor and has been there since the earliest days of the castle; it has been supplying water for six hundred years and is said never to have run dry. Of course, there must have been many pumps. The present one arrived when the Victorian hot-water system (alleged) was put in.

Interruptions keep occurring. Topaz has just filled the kettle, splashing my legs, and my brother Thomas has returned from school in our nearest town, King’s Crypt. He is a cumbersome lad of fifteen with hair that grows in tufts, so that parting it is difficult. It is the same mousy color as mine; but mine is meek.

When Thomas came in, I suddenly remembered myself coming back from school, day after day, up to a few months ago. In one flash I re-lived the ten-mile crawl in the jerky little train and then the five miles on a bicycle from Scoatney station —how I used to hate that in the winter! Yet in some ways I should like to be back at school; for one thing, the daughter of the manager at the cinema went there, and she got me in to the pictures free now and then. I miss that greatly. And I rather miss school itself—it was a surprisingly good one for such a quiet little country town. I had a scholarship, just as Thomas has at his school; we are tolerably bright.

The rain is driving hard against the window now. My candle makes it seem quite dark outside. And the far side of the kitchen is dimmer now that the kettle is on the round hole in the top of the range. The girls are sitting on the floor making toast through the bars.

There is a bright edge to each head, where the firelight shines through their hair.

Stephen has finished pumping and is stoking the copper —it is a great, old-fashioned brick one which helps to keep the kitchen warm and gives us extra hot-water. With the copper lit as well as the range, the kitchen is much the warmest place in the house; that is why we sit in it so much. But even in summer we have our meals here, because the dining-room furniture was sold over a year ago.

Goodness, Topaz is actually putting on eggs to boil. No one told me the hens had yielded to prayer. Oh, excellent hens! I was only expecting bread and margarine for tea, and I don’t get as used to margarine as I could wish. I thank heaven there is no cheaper form of bread than bread.

How odd it is to remember that “tea” once meant afternoon tea to us with little cakes and thin bread-and-butter in the drawing-room. Now it is as solid a meal as we can scrape together, as it has to last us until breakfast. We have it after Thomas gets back from school.

Stephen is lighting the lamp. In a second now, the rosy glow will have gone from the kitchen. But lamplight is beautiful, too.

The lamp is lit. And as Stephen carried it to the table, my Father came out on the staircase. His old plaid traveling-rug was wrapped round his shoulders —he had come from the gatehouse along the top of the castle walls. He murmured: “Tea, tea-has Miss Marcy come with the library books yet?” (she hasn’t.) Then he said his hands were quite numb; not complainingly, more in a tone of faint surprise—though I find it hard to believe that anyone living at the castle in winter can be surprised at any part of themselves being numb. And as he came downstairs shaking the rain off his hair, I suddenly felt so fond of him. I fear I don’t feel that very often.

He is still a splendid-looking man, though his fine features are getting a bit lost in fat and his coloring is fading. It used to be as bright as Rose’s.

Now he is chatting to Topaz. I regret to note that he is in his falsely cheerful mood—though I think poor Topaz is grateful for even false cheerfulness from him these days. She adores him, and he seems to take so little interest in her.

I shall have to get off the draining-board—Topaz wants the tea-cozy and our dog, Heloise, has come in and discovered I have borrowed her blanket.

She is a bull-terrier, snowy white except where her fondant-pink skin shows through her short hair.

All right, Heloise darling, you shall have your blanket. She gazes at me with love, reproach, confidence and humor-how can she express so much just with two rather small slanting eyes his I finish this entry sitting on the stairs. I think it worthy of note that I never felt happier in my life-despite sorrow for Father, pity for Rose, embarrassment about Stephen’s poetry and no justification for hope as regards our family’s general outlook. Perhaps it is because I have satisfied my creative urge; or it may be due to the thought of eggs for tea.

LA-AR. Written in bed.

I am reasonably comfortable as I am wearing my school coat and have a hot brick for my feet, but I wish it wasn’t my week for the little iron bedstead —Rose and I take it in turns to sleep in the four-poster. She is sitting up in it reading a library book. When Miss Marcy brought it she said it was “a pretty story.” Rose says it is awful, but she would rather read it than think about herself.

Poor Rose! She is wearing her old blue flannel dressing-gown with the skirt part doubled up round her waist for warmth. She has had that dressing-gown so long that I don’t think she sees it any more; if she were to put it away for a month and then look at it, she would get a shock.

But who am I to talk—who have not had a dressing gown at all for two years his The remains of my last one are wrapped round my hot brick.

Our room is spacious and remarkably empty.

With the exception of the four-poster, which is in very bad condition, all the good furniture has gradually been sold and replaced by minimum requirements bought in junk-shops. Thus we have a wardrobe without a door and a bamboo dressing-table which I take to be a rare piece. I keep my bedside candlestick on a battered tin trunk that cost one shilling; Rose has hers on a chest of drawers painted to imitate marble, but looking more like bacon.

The enamel jug and basin on a metal tripod is my own personal property, the landlady of “The Keys” having given it to me after I found it doing no good in a stable. It saves congestion in the bathroom. One rather nice thing is the carved wooden window-seat- I am thankful there is no way of selling that. It is built into the thickness of the castle wall, with a big mullioned window above it. There are windows on the garden side of the room, too; little diamond-paned ones.

One thing I have never grown out of being fascinated by is the round tower which opens into a corner.

There is a circular stone staircase inside it by which you can go up to the battlemented top, or down to the drawing-room; though some of the steps have crumbled badly.

Perhaps I ought to have counted Miss Blossom as a piece of furniture. She is a dressmaker’s dummy of most opulent figure with a wire skirt round her one leg. We are a bit silly about Miss Blossom-we pretend she is real.

We imagine her to be a woman of the world, perhaps a barmaid in her youth. She says things like “Well, dearie, that’s what men are like,” and “You hold out for your marriage lines.”

The Victorian vandals who did so many unnecessary things to this house didn’t have the sense to put in passages, so we are always having to go through each other’s rooms. Topaz has just wandered through ours-wearing a nightgown made of plain white calico with holes for her neck and arms; she thinks modern underclothes are vulgar. She looked rather like a victim going to an Auto da Fe, but her destination was merely the bathroom. Topaz and Father sleep in the big room that opens on to the kitchen staircase. There is a little room between them and us which we call “Buffer State”;

Topaz uses it as a studio. Thomas has the room across the landing, next to the bathroom.

I wonder if Topaz has gone to ask Father to come to bed—she is perfectly capable of stalking along the top of the castle walls in her nightgown. I hope she hasn’t, because Father does so snub her when she bursts into the gatehouse. We were trained as children never to go near him unless invited and he thinks she ought to behave in the same way.

No—she didn’t go. She came back a few minutes ago and showed signs of staying here, but we didn’t encourage her. Now she is in bed and is playing her lute. I like the idea of a lute, but not the noise it makes; it is seldom in tune and appears to be an instrument that never gets a run at anything.

I feel rather guilty at being so unsociable to Topaz, but we did have such a sociable evening.

Round about eight o’clock, Miss Marcy came with the books. She is about forty, small and rather faded yet somehow very young. She blinks her eyes a lot and is apt to giggle and say: “Well, reely!” She is a Londoner but has been in the village over five years now. I believe she teaches very nicely; her specialties are folk song and wild flowers and country lore. She didn’t like it here when first she came (she always says she “missed the bright lights”); but she soon made herself take an interest in country things, and now she tries to make the country people interested in them too.

As librarian, she cheats a bit to give us the newest books; she’d had a delivery today and had brought Father a detective novel that only came out the year before last—and it was by one of his favorite authors. Topaz said:

“Oh, I must take this to Mortmain at once.”

She calls Father “Mortmain” partly because she fancies our odd surname, and partly to keep up the fiction that he is still a famous writer. He came back with her to thank Miss Marcy and for once he seemed quite genuinely cheerful.

“I’ll read any detective novel, good, bad or indifferent,” he told her, “but a vintage one’s among the rarest pleasures of life.”

Then he found out he was getting this one ahead of the Vicar and was so pleased that he blew Miss Marcy a kiss. She said “Oh, thank you, Mr. Mortmain! That is, I mean—well, reely!” and blushed and blinked. Father then flung his rug round him like a toga and went back to the gatehouse looking quite abnormally goodhumored.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Miss Marcy said “How is he?” in a hushed sort of voice that implied he was at death’s door or off his head.

Rose said he was perfectly well and perfectly useless, as always. Miss Marcy looked shocked.

“Rose is depressed about our finances,” I explained.

“We mustn’t bore Miss Marcy with our worries,” said Topaz, quickly. She hates anything which casts a reflection on Father.

Miss Marcy said that nothing to do with our household could possibly bore her— I know she thinks our life at the castle is wildly romantic. Then she asked, very diffidently, if she could help us with any advice— “Sometimes an outside mind .. “

I suddenly felt that I should rather like to consult her; she is such a sensible little woman-it was she who thought of getting me the book on speed-writing. Mother trained us never to talk about our affairs in the village, and I do respect Topaz’s loyalty to Father, but I was sure Miss Marcy must know perfectly well that we are broke.

“If you could suggest some ways of earning money,” I

“Or of making it go further—I’m sure you’re all much too artistic to be really practical.

Let’s hold a board meeting!”

She said it as if she were enticing children to a game. She was so eager that it would have seemed quite rude to refuse;

and I think Rose and Topaz felt desperate enough to try anything.

“Now, paper and pencils,” said Miss Marcy, clapping her hands. Writing paper is scarce in this house, and I had no intention of tearing sheets out of this exercise book, which is a superb sixpenny one the Vicar gave me. In the end, Miss Marcy took the middle pages out of her library record, which gave us a pleasant feeling that we were stealing from the government, and then we sat round the table and elected her chairman. She said she must be secretary, too, so that she could keep the minutes, and wrote down:

INQUIRY INTO THE FINANCES OF THE MORTMAIN FAMILY

Present: Miss Marcy (chairman) Mrs. James Mortmain Miss Rose Mortmain Miss Cassandra Mortmain Thomas Mortmain Stephen Colly We began by discussing expenditure.

“First, rent,” said Miss Marcy.

The rent is forty pounds a year, which seems little for a commodious castle, but we have only a few acres of land, the country folk think the ruins are a drawback, and there are said to be ghosts-which there are not. (there are some queer things up on the mound, but they never come into the house.) Anyway, we haven’t paid any rent for three years. Our landlord, a rich old gentleman who lived at Scoatney Hall, five miles away, always sent us a ham at Christmas whether we paid the rent or not. He died last November and we have sadly missed the ham.

“They say the Hall’s going to be re-opened,” said Miss Marcy when we had told her the position about the rent.

“Two boys from the village have been taken on as extra gardeners. Well, we will just put the rent down and mark it “optional”. Now what about food? Can you do it on fifteen shillings a week per head? Say a pound per head, including candles, lamp-oil and cleaning materials.”

The idea of our family ever coming by six pounds a week made us all hoot with laughter.