I Capture the Castle (24 page)

I gave him the shorts, then went to change in Buffer. Simon called, “Have a good swim,” as I ran through the bedroom, then turned back to Rose. They were sitting on the window-seat looking splendidly settled.

It was only while I was changing that I fully realized what I had let myself in for—I who hate cold water so much that even putting on a bathing-suit makes me shiver. I went down the kitchen stairs feeling like an Eskimo going to his frozen hell.

I had no intention of showing myself in the drawing-room—I had outgrown my suit so much that the school motto was stretched right across my chest; so I went to the moat via the ruins beyond the kitchen. Near there, a plank bridge runs across to the wheat field. I sat on it, carefully keeping my feet well above the water.

Neil wasn’t down-I could see the full length of the moat because the moon was rising. It was casting the most unearthly light across the green wheat—so beautiful that I nearly forgot the horror having to bathe. How moons do vary! Some are white, some are gold, this was like a dazzling circle o tin— I never saw a moon look so hard before.

The water on the moat was black and silver and gold; silver where the moonlight shimmered on it, gold under the candlelit windows; and while I watched, a gold pool spread around the corner tower as Thomas came out and set the lantern in the doorway. Then Neil came down looking very tall in the black bathing-shorts and stepped from lantern light to moonlight.

“Where are you, Cassandra?” he called.

I called back that I was coming, then put one toe in the water to know the worst. It was a far worse worst than I anticipated, and a brave idea I’d had of getting my going-in agonies over by myself, and swimming towards him, vanished instantly-I felt that a respite of even a few moments was well worth having. So I walked slowly along the edge of the field, with the wheat tickling my legs coldly as I brushed past, sat down on the bank opposite to him, and began a bright conversation. Apart from putting of the horror plunging in, I felt dawdling was advisable in order to give Rose more time-because I was pretty sure that once we did get into the moat, we should very soon get out again.

I talked about the beauty of the night. I told him the winning anecdote of how I tried to cross the moat in a clothes-basket after I first heard about coracles. Then I started in on the good long subject of America, but he interrupted me and said.”

“I believe you’re stalling about this swim. I’m going in, anyway.

Is it deep enough for me to dive?”

I said yes, if he was careful.

“Look out for the mud at the bottom,” Thomas warned him. He did a cautious dive and came up looking a very surprised man.

“Gosh, that was cold,” he shouted.

“And after all the sunshine we’ve been having!”

As if our moat took any notice of sunshine!

It is fed by a stream that apparently comes straight from Greenland. I said: “I wonder if I ought to bathe, really—after such a heavy dinner.”

“You don’t get away with that,” said Neil, “it was you who suggested it. Come on or I’ll pull you in—it’s really quite bearable.”

I said to God: “Please, I’m doing this for my sister—warm it up a bit.” But of course I knew He wouldn’t.

My last thought before I jumped was that I’d almost sooner die.

It was agony-like being skinned with icy knives. I swam madly, telling myself it would be better in a minute and feeling quite sure it wouldn’t. Neil swam beside me. I must have looked very grim because he suddenly said: “Say, are you all right?”

“Just,” I gasped, pulling myself up on to the plank bridge.

“You come right back and keep on swimming,” he said, “or else you must go in and dry yourself. Oh, come on—you’ll get used to it.”

I slipped into the water again and it didn’t feel quite so bad; by the time we had swum back as far as the drawing-room I was beginning to enjoy it. Topaz and the Vicar, framed in the yellow square of the window, were looking down on us. There was no sign of Rose and Simon at the window high above;

I hoped they were too engrossed to look out. We swam through a patch of moonlight—it was fun making silver ripples just in front of my eye sand then to the steps of the corner tower. Thomas had disappeared;

I hoped to heaven he hadn’t gone back to Rose and Simon. his After we turned the corner to the front of the castle there was no more golden light from the windows or the lantern, nothing but moonlight. We swam on our hacks, looking up at the sheer, unbroken walls—never had they seemed to me so high. The water made slapping, chuckling noises against them and they gave out a mysterious smell—as when thunder-rain starts on a hot day, but dank and weedy and very much of a night-time smell too.

I asked Neil how he would describe it but he only said, “Oh, I guess it’s just wet stone”— I found what he really wanted to think about was boiling oil being poured down on us from the battlements. Everything to do with castle warfare fascinated him; when we reached the gatehouse he asked how drawbridges worked and was disappointed to find that our present bridge isn’t one-we only call it “the drawbridge” to distinguish it from the Belmotte bridge. Then he wanted to know what happened to the ruined walls we were swimming past and was most indignant with Cromwell’s Puritans for battering them down.

“What a darned shame,” he said, looking up at the great tumbled stones. I told him it was the first time I’d known him to have a feeling for anything old.

“Oh, I don’t get a kick out of this place because it’s old,” he said.

“It’s just that I keep thinking it must have been a hell of a lot of fun.”

Once we were round on the Belmotte stretch of the moat it was very dark, because the moon wasn’t high enough to shine over the house. Suddenly something white loomed ahead of us and there was a hiss and a beating of wings—we had collided with the sleeping swans. Neil enjoyed that, and I laughed myself but I was really quite frightened; swans can be very dangerous. Luckily ours bore no malice—they just got out of our way and flapped into the bulrushes.

Soon after that, we swam under the Belmotte bridge and round into the moonlight again, on the south side of the moat.

There are no ruins there, the garden comes right down to the water; the big bed of white stocks smelt heavenly. It occurred to me that never before had I seen flowers growing above my head, so that I saw the stalks first and only the underneath of the flowers-it was quite nice change.

I was tired by then so I floated and Neil did too; it was lovely just drifting along, staring up at the stars. That was when we first heard the Vicar at the piano, playing “Air from Handel’s Water Music,” one of his nicest pieces—I guessed he had chosen it to suit our swim, which I took very kindly. It came to us softly but clearly; I wished I could have floated on for hours listening to it, but I soon felt cold and had to swim fast again.

“There, we’ve made the complete circuit,” I told Neil as we reached the plank bridge.

“I’ll have to rest now.”

He helped me out and we climbed over the ruins and sat down with our backs against the kitchen wall; the sun had been shining on it all day and the bricks were still warm. We were in full moonlight.

Neil had patches of brilliant green duck-weed on his head and one shoulder; he looked wonderful.

I felt that what with the moonlight, the music, the scent of the stocks and having swum round a six-hundred-year-old moat, romance was getting a really splendid leg-up and it seemed an awful waste that we weren’t in love with each other—I wondered if I ought to have got Rose and Simon to swim the moat instead of us.

But I finally decided that cold water is definitely anti-affection, because when Neil did eventually put his arm round me it wasn’t half so exciting as when he held my hand under the warm car-rug after the picnic, it might have improved, I suppose, but the next minute I heard Topaz calling me—I couldn’t tell where she was until Thomas signaled with his lantern from the Belmotte bridge. Then Father shouted that they were taking Mrs. Cotton and the Vicar over to look at the mound and Belmotte Tower.

“Mind you don’t catch a chill,” Topaz warned me.

Neil called: “I’ll send her in now, Mrs. Mortmain.”

“But I’m not cold,” I said quickly-I was afraid Rose hadn’t had long enough.

“Yes, you are, you’re beginning to shiver-so am I.”

He took his arm from my shoulders.

“Come on, where do we find towels?”

Never has such an innocent question so kicked me in the solar plexus. Towels! We have so few that on wash days we just have to shake ourselves.

“Oh, I’ll get you one,” I said airily; then picked my way across the ruins very slowly, so as to give myself time to think.

I knew we had two pink guest-towels in the bathroom—that is, they were meant as guest-towels; they were really two afternoon-tea napkins, kindly lent by Miss Marcy. Could I offer those to a large wet man his I could not. Then an idea came to me.

When we reached the back door I said: “Come in here, will you? It’ll be warm by the kitchen fire. I’ll bring a towel down.”

“But my clothes are in the bathroom-was Neil began.

I ran off calling over my shoulder: “I’ll bring those, too.”

I had decided to get my own towel or Rose’s -whichever proved to be the drier-and fold it like a clean towel; then go back to Neil with it clutched against me and apologize for having made it a bit damp. There would still be no need to disturb Rose’s tete a tete with Simon, because both towels were on our bedroom tower staircase-I had thrown them out there while tidying the house for the Cottons-and I could reach them through the drawing-room entrance to the tower. I meant to dress like lightning while Neil was dressing and then get back to the kitchen and keep him talking there a good while longer.

I got the drawing-room door to the tower open very quietly and started up. After I turned the bend I was almost in darkness so I went on all fours, feeling my way carefully.

There was an awkward moment when I got tied up in Rose’s pink dress, but once clear of that I saw the line of light under the door to our bedroom. I knew the towels were only a few steps higher than that, so I stretched up and felt for them.

And then, through the door, I heard Simon say:

“Rose, will you marry me?”

I stood stock still, scarcely daring to move in case they heard me.

Of course I expected Rose to say “Yes” instantly, but she didn’t.

There was an absolute silence for a good ten seconds. Then she said, very quietly but very distinctly:

“Kiss me, please, Simon.”

There was another silence; a long one—I had time to think I wouldn’t like my first kiss to be from a man with a beard, to wonder if Neil would have kissed me if Topaz hadn’t shouted to me, and to notice that a very cold draught was blowing down the tower on me. Then Rose spoke-with that excited little break in her voice that I know so well.

“Yes, please, Simon,” she said.

Then they were quiet again. I grabbed a towel-I could only find one-and started my way down. Suddenly I stopped. Might it not be more sensible to walk right in on them, just in case… his I don’t quite know what I meant by “just in case”—surely I didn’t imagine Simon might change his mind his All I knew was that the sooner the engagement was official the better. I went back.

When I pushed the tower door open they were still standing in each other’s arms. Simon jerked his head round quickly, then smiled at me.

I hope I smiled back. I hope I didn’t look as flabbergasted as I felt. Just for one second I didn’t think it was Simon. His beard was gone.

He said: “Is it all right by you if Rose marries me?”

Then we were all talking at once. I hugged Rose and shook hands with Simon.

“My child, you’re like ice,” he said as he let my hand go.

“Hurry up and change out of that swimsuit.”

“I must take Neil a towel first,” I said, “and his clothes, too.” I started off to the bathroom for them.

“How do you like Simon without his beard?” Rose called after me. I knew I ought to have spoken about it before but I’d had an embarrassed feeling.

“Wonderful?” I shouted. But was it? Of course he looked years and years younger and I was astonished to see how handsome he was. But there was something defenseless about his face, as if strength had gone out of it. Oh, his chin isn’t weak —it wasn’t anything like that. It was just that he had… a lost sort of look.

How on earth did Rose get him to shave, I wondered, as I collected Neil’s things. I guessed she had dared him to.

I must say I was astonished at him—it seemed so undignified, using Father’s shaving tackle and my little enamel basin. (but then, the dignified, stately Simon seems to have vanished with the beard-I find it hard to believe now that I was ever even a little bit in awe of him;

not that I think the change is merely due to the beard having gone, it is far more due to his being so much in love with Rose.) When I went into the kitchen, Neil was standing so close to the fire that his bathing-shorts were steaming.

“Why, I thought you’d forgotten me,” he said, turning to smile at me.

“Isn’t it splendid?” I cried.

“Rose and Simon are engaged.”

His smile went like an electric light switched of.

I said: “You don’t look exactly pleased.”

“Pleased!” For a second he just stood glaring; then he grabbed the towel.

“Clear out and let me get dressed,” he said—in a very rude tone of voice indeed.

I dumped his clothes down and turned to go, then changed my mind.

“Neil—please-was I tried to sound very friendly and reasonable.

“Why do you hate Rose so his You have from the beginning.”

He went on drying his shoulders.

“No, I haven’t. I liked her a lot at first.”

“But not now? Why not, Neil?”

He stopped drying himself and looked me full in the face.

“Because she’s a gold-digger. And you know it, Cassandra.”

“I do not,” I said, indignantly.

“How dare you say a thing like that?”

“Can you honestly tell me she isn’t marrying Simon for his money?”

“OF course I can!” I said it with the utmost conviction-and really believed it for that second. Then I felt my face go scarlet because, well “You darned little liar,” said Neil.