I Capture the Castle (22 page)

“As if that proves anything,” said Topaz, gloomily.

“People do nothing but use it for assignations—I met him there myself once, in the mummy room.” She went off to the gatehouse with his sandwiches; he had asked her to bring them to him there. When she came back she said:

“Cassandra, he’s going out of his mind. He’s got a sheet of graph paper pinned to his desk and he told me to ask Thomas to lend him some compasses. And when I told him Thomas was asleep he said:

“Then bring me a goat. Oh, go to bed, go to bed.” Heavens, does he really want a goat?”

“Of course not,” I said laughing.

“It’s just an idiotic association of words—you know, “Goat and Compasses”; they sometimes call inns that. I’ve heard him make that sort of joke before and very silly I always think it is.”

She looked faintly disappointed—I think she had rather fancied hauling some goat in out of the night.

A few minutes later, Father came rampaging into the kitchen saying he must have the compasses even if it meant waking Thomas;

but I crept into his room and managed to sneak them out of his school satchel without disturbing him. Father went off with them.

It was three o’clock before he finally came in from the gatehouse-I heard Godsend church clock strike just after he wakened Heloise, who raised the roof. Fancy sitting up until three in the morning playing with graph paper and compasses! I could hit him!

Oh, I long to blurt out the news in my first paragraph —but I won’t! This is a chance to teach myself the art of suspense.

We didn’t hear anything from the Cottons for nearly two weeks after we lunched in the village, but we hardly expected to as they were still in London; and while I was describing that day it was like re-living it, so I was quite contented—and it took me a long time, as Topaz developed a mania for washing, mending and cleaning, and she needed my help.

I had to do most of my writing in bed at night, which stopped me from encouraging Rose to talk much not that she had shown signs of wanting to, having taken to going for long walks by herself. This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.

I finished writing of May Day on the second Saturday after it-and immediately felt it was time something else happened. I looked across at Rose in the four-poster and asked if she knew exactly when the Cottons were coming back.

“Oh, they’re back now,” she said, casually.

She had heard it in Godsend that morning-and kept it to herself.

“Don’t count on seeing them too soon,” she added.

“Neil will keep Simon away from me as long as he can.”

“Rubbish,” I said; though I really had come to believe that Neil disliked her. I tried to get her to talk some more—I was ready to enjoy a little exciting anticipation-but she wasn’t forthcoming.

And I quite understood; when things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn’t safe.

The next day, Sunday, something happened to put the Cottons out of my head. When I got down, Topaz told me Stephen had gone off to London. He hadn’t said a word to anyone until she came down to get breakfast and found him ready to start.

“He was very calm and collected,” she said.

“I asked him if he wasn’t afraid of getting lost and he said that if he did, he’d get a taxi; but he hardly thought he would need to, as Miss Marcy had told him exactly which “buses to take.”

I was suddenly furious at his asking Miss Marcy, when he had been so secretive with us.

“I hate that Fox-Cotton woman,” I said. “Well, I warned him to keep his eyes open,” said Topaz.

“And of course, her interest really may be only professional. Though I must say I doubt it.”

“Do you mean she might make love to him?” I gasped-and for the first time really knew just why I minded his going.

“Well, somebody will, sooner or later. But I’d rather it was some nice girl in the village. It’s no use looking horrified, Cassandra. You mustn’t be a dog in the manger.”

I said I shouldn’t mind if it was someone good enough for him.

She stared at me curiously.

“Doesn’t he attract you at all his At your age I couldn’t have resisted him for a minute—not looks like that.

And it’s more than looks, of course.”

“Oh, I know he has a splendid character,” I said.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” said Topaz, laughing.

“But I’ve promised your Father not to put ideas into your head about Stephen, so let’s leave it at that.”

I knew perfectly well what she had meant. But if Stephen is physically attractive, why don’t I get attracted—really attracted?

Or do I his After breakfast, I went to church. The Vicar spotted me from the pulpit and looked most astonished. He came to talk to me afterwards, when I was waking Heloise from her nap on one of the oldest tombstones.

“Does this delightful surprise mean you have any particular axe to grind with God?” he enquired. It didn’t, of course—though I had taken the opportunity to pray for Rose; I don’t believe that church prayers are particularly efficacious, but one can’t waste all that kneeling on hard hassocks.

“No, I just dropped in,” I said lamely. “Well, come and have a glass of sherry,” he suggested, “and see how well the collie dog rug looks on my sofa.”

But I told him I had to talk to Miss Marcy, and hurried after her; seeing her was my real reason for coming, of course.

She obligingly dived straight into the subject to which I had meant to lead up.

“Isn’t it splendid about Stephen,” she said, blinking delightedly.

“Five guineas for just one day—nearly six, if he saves the money that was sent for taxis! So thoughtful—how kind Mrs.

Fox-Cotton must be!”

I didn’t find out anything interesting. Stephen had come to her for a guide to London; there isn’t one in the library but she had helped him with advice. When I left her she was still burbling about the wonderful chance for him, and Mrs.

Fox-Cotton’s kindness.

Miss Marcy isn’t the woman of the world Topaz and I are.

Stephen didn’t come home until late in the evening.

“Well, how did you get on?” asked Topaz-much to my relief because I had made up nay mind not to question him. He said he had taken the right ‘bus and only been lost for a few minutes, while he was looking for the house. Mrs. Fox-Cotton had driven him back to the station and taken him round London on the way.

“She was nice,” he added, “she looked quite different—very businesslike, in trousers, like a man. You never saw such a huge great camera as she has.”

Topaz asked what he had worn for the photographs.

“A shirt and some corduroy trousers that were there. But she said they looked too new—I’m to wear them for work and then they’ll be all right for next time.” “So you’re going again.” I tried to make it sound very casual.

He said yes, she was going to send for him the next time she had a free Sunday, probably in about a month. Then he told us about the broken bits of statues he had been photographed with and what ages the lighting had taken and how he had lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Fox-Cotton.

“The studio’s at the back of their house,” he explained.

“You wouldn’t believe that house. The carpets feel like moss and the hall has a black marble floor. Mr. Fox-Cotton asked to be remembered to you, Mrs. Mortmain, ma’am.”

He went to wash while Topaz got him some supper.

“It’s all right,” she said.

“I misjudged the woman.”

I talked to him when he came back and everything seemed natural and easy again. He told me he had wanted to buy me a present but all the shops were closed, of course.

“All I could get was some chocolate from a slot-machine on the station platform, and I don’t suppose it’s special London chocolate.”

He was too tired to eat much. After he had gone to bed, I thought of him falling asleep in that dank little room with pictures of the studio and the Fox-Cottons” rich house dancing in front of his eyes.

It was odd to think he had been seeing things I had never seen—it made him seem very separate, somehow, and much more grownup.

Next morning, I had something else to think about.

Two parcels arrived for me! Nobody has sent me a parcel since we quarreled with Aunt Millicent. (the last one she sent had bed socks in it, most hideous but not to be sneezed at on winter nights. They are finishing their lives as window-wedges.) I could hardly believe it when I saw my name on labels from two Bond Street shops, and the things inside were much more unbelievable.

First I unpacked an enormous round box of chocolates and then a manuscript book bound in pale blue leather, tooled in gold; the pages—two hundred of them, I counted —have dazzling gilt edges and there are blue and gold stars on the end papers (topaz said it must have cost at least two guineas.) There was no card in either of the parcels, but of course I remembered Simon had promised me a box of “candy” if I let him look at my journal.

And he had sent me a new journal, too!

There was nothing for Rose.

“He can send me presents because he thinks of me as a child,” I pointed out.

“He’s probably afraid you wouldn’t accept them.”

“Then he’s a pessimist,” she said, grinning.

“Well, eat all you can, anyway,” I told her.

“You can pay me back when you’re engaged—you’ll get dozens of boxes then.”

She took one, but I could see that it was the idea of owning them that mattered to her, not the chocolates themselves. She didn’t eat half as many as Topaz and I did; Rose never was greedy about food.

We had scarcely recovered from the excitement of the parcels when the Scoatney car arrived. Only the chauffeur was in it. He brought a box of hot-house flowers and a note from Simon asking us all to lunch the next day even Thomas and Stephen. The flowers weren’t addressed to anyone and the note was for Topaz; she said Simon was being very correct, which was a good sign. She gave the chauffeur a note accepting for all of us but Thomas and Stephen, and saying she was uncertain about them—she didn’t like to refuse for them without knowing how they felt; which was just as well because Thomas insisted on cutting school and coming.

Stephen said he would sooner die.

I ought to have recorded that second visit to Scoatney immediately after it happened, but describing May Day had rather exhausted my lust for writing. Now, when I look back, I mostly see the green of the gardens, where we spent the afternoon-we stayed on for tea.

It was a peaceful, relaxed sort of party— I never felt one bit nervous, as I did when we went to dinner. (but the dinner-party was more thrilling; it glows in my memory like a dark picture with a luminous centre—candlelight and shining floors and the night pressing against the black windows.) Mrs. Cotton was still away and Simon was very much the host, rather serious and just a bit stately, talking mainly to Father and Topaz. Even with Rose he was surprisingly formal, but he was jolly with me. Neil took a lot of trouble with Thomas, encouraging him to eat a great deal and playing tennis with him Neil asked Rose and me to play, too, but she didn’t want to as she hasn’t had any practice since she left school. So she and I wandered around on our own and drifted into the biggest greenhouse.

It was lovely moving through the hot, moist, heavily scented air and it felt particularly private—almost as if we were in a separate world from the others. Rose suddenly said:

“Oh, Cassandra, is it going to happen—is it?”

She looked as she used to on Christmas Eve, when we were hanging up our stockings.

“Are you really sure you want it to?” I asked —and then decided it was a wasted question when she was so obviously determined. To my surprise, she considered it a long time, staring out across the lawn to where Simon was talking to Father and Topaz.

A pink camellia fell with a little dead thud.

“Yes, quite sure,” she said, at last, with an edge on her voice.

“Up to now, it’s been like a tale I’ve been telling myself. Now it’s real.

And it’s got to happen. It’s got to.”

“Well, I feel as if it will,” I told her—and I really did. But greenhouses always give me a waiting, expectant sort of feeling.

Neil pressed another ham on Thomas and six pots of jam-Father raised a protest but it was very mild; he was in a wonderfully good temper. He borrowed a lot of books from Simon and retired to the gatehouse with them as soon as we got home.

The next exciting day was when we went for the picnic -they called for us unexpectedly. Father had gone to London again (without any explanation) and Topaz made an excuse not to come, so only Rose and I went. We drove to the sea.

It wasn’t like an ordinary English picnic, because Neil cooked steak over the fire—this is called a “barbecue”; I have been wondering what that was ever since I read about Brer Rabbit. The steak was burnt outside and raw inside, but wonderfully romantic.

Simon was at his youngest and most American that day. He and Neil kept remembering a picnic they had been on together when they were very little boys, before their parents separated. I suppose they are only gradually getting to know each other again, but I feel sure Neil is already fond of Simon; with Simon one can’t tell, he is so much more reserved. They are both equally kind but Neil’s nature is much warmer, more open. He was nice even to Rose that day —well, most of the time; not that I see how anyone could have helped being, because she was at her very best. Perhaps the sea and the fun of cooking the steak did it—something changed her into a gloriously real person again. She laughed and romped and even slid down sand hills on her stomach. We didn’t bathe because none of us had brought suits—a good job, too, as the sea was icy.

Simon seemed more fascinated than ever by Rose.

Late in the afternoon, when she had just been particularly tomboyish, he said to Neil:

“Did you ever see such a change in a girl?”

“No, it’s quite an improvement,” said Neil. He grinned at Rose and she pulled a little face at him; just for that minute I felt they were really friendly to each other.

“Do you think it’s an improvement?” she asked Simon.

“I’m wondering. Shall we say it’s perfect for the sea and the sunlight—and the other Rose is perfect for candlelight? And perhaps what’s most perfect of all is to find there are several Roses?”