I Capture the Castle (27 page)

And Stephen? No, I can’t capture Stephen.

Life does turn out unexpectedly. I was afraid it might be difficult being alone with him so much—during the long evenings, with Father shut in the gatehouse and Thomas busy with his lessons. I couldn’t have been more wrong. After tea, he helps me with the washing-up, then we usually garden—but often in quite different parts of the garden and, anyway, he hardly talks at all.

He hasn’t been to London any more and I am sure he hasn’t seen the photographs of himself—I should have known if they had been sent here.

It is really a very good thing that he seems to have lost interest in me because, feeling like this, I might not have been brisk with him.

Feeling like what, Cassandra Mortmain? Flat?

Depressed?

Empty? If so, why, pray?

I thought if I made myself write I should find out what is wrong with me, but I haven’t, so far. Unless-could I possibly be jealous of Rose?

I will pause and search my innermost soul …… I have searched it for a solid five minutes. And I swear I am not jealous of Rose; more than that, I should hate to change places with her. Naturally, this is mainly because I shouldn’t like to marry Simon. But suppose I were in love with him, as Rose is his That’s too hard to imagine. Then suppose it were Neil-because since he went away I have wondered if I am not just a little bit in love with him.

All right, I’m in love with Neil and I’m marrying him and he is the rich one. A thousand pounds is being spent on my trousseau with furs and jewelry coming later. I am to have a wonderful wedding with everyone saying: “What a brilliant match that quiet little girl has made.” We are going to live at Scoatney Hall with everything we can possibly want and, presumably, lots of the handsomest children. It’s going to be “happy ever after,” just like the fairy tales And I still wouldn’t like it. Oh, I’d love the clothes and the wedding. I am not so sure I should like the facts of life, but I have got over the bitter disappointment I felt when I first heard about them, and one obviously has to try them sooner or later.

What I’d really hate would be the settled feeling, with nothing but happiness to look forward to. Of course no life is perfectly happy—Rose’s children will probably get it, the servants may be difficult, perhaps dear Mrs. Cotton will prove to be the teeniest fly in the ointment. I should like to know what fly was originally in what ointment.) There are hundreds of worries and even sorrows that may come along, but I think what I really mean is that Rose won’t be wanting things to happen. She will want things to stay just as they are. She will never have the fun of hoping something wonderful and exciting may be just round the corner.

I daresay I am being very silly but there it is! 

I DO NOT ENVY ROSE

When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending—I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters …… It seems a long time since I wrote those last words. I have been sitting here staring at Miss Blossom without seeing her, without seeing anything. Now I am seeing things more clearly than usual-that often happens after I have been “stuck.” The furniture seems almost alive and leaning towards me, like the chair in van Gogh’s painting. The two beds, my little jug and basin, the bamboo dressing table—how many years Rose and I have shared them! We used so scrupulously to keep to our own halves of the dressing-table.

Now there is nothing of hers on it except a pink china ring-stand for which she never had any rings-well, she has one now.

I suddenly know what has been the matter with me all week.

Heavens, I’m not envying Rose, I’m missing her! Not missing her because she is away now—though I have been a little bit lonely but missing the Rose who has gone away for ever. There used to be two of us always on the lookout for life, talking to Miss Blossom at night, wondering, hoping; two Bronte Jane Austen girls, poor but spirited, two Girls of Godsend Castle. Now there is only one, and nothing will ever be quite such fun again.

Oh, how selfish I am—when Rose is so happy! Of course I wouldn’t have things different; even on my own account, I am looking forward to presents—though …… I wonder if there isn’t a catch about having plenty of money his Does it eventually take the pleasure out of things? When I think of the joy of my green linen dress after I hadn’t had a new dress for ages!

Will Rose be able to feel anything like that after a few years his One thing I do know: I adore my green linen dress even if it did cost only twenty-five shillings. “Only” twenty-five shillings! That seemed like a fortune when we bought the dress.

About has just walked in, mewing—it must be teatime;

that cat has a clock in his stomach. Yes—I can hear Stephen talking to Heloise in the courtyard; and Father shouting through the gatehouse window to know if Thomas has brought him a copy of the Scout (now, what can a grown man want with the Scout?). I wonder if Thomas remembered the kippers Yes, he did-I have just yelled down to him. He often brings us fish from King’s Crypt now. Well, it’s said to be good or the brain-perhaps it will help Father. Oh, kippers for tea, two each!

Three, if anyone wants them.

I feel better.

I must go down and feed my family.

It is Midsummer Day-and as beautiful as its name.

I am writing in the attic; I chose it because one can see Belmotte from the window. At first I thought I would sit on the mound, but I saw that would be too much-there I should keep re-living it all instead of writing about it. And I must set it down today so that I shall have it for ever, intact and lovely, untouched by the sadness that is coming—for, of course it is coming; my brain tells me that.

I thought it would have come by this morning but it hasn’t-oh, so much it hasn’t that I can’t quite believe it ever will!

Is it wrong of me to feel so happy his Perhaps I ought even to feel guilty his No. I didn’t make it happen, and it can’t hurt anyone but me. Surely I have a right to my joy? For as long as it lasts …. It is like a flowering in the heart, a stirring of wings oh if only I could write poetry, as I did when I was a child! I have tried, but the words were as cheap as a sentimental song.

So I tore them up. I must set it down simply—everything that happened to me yesterday with no airs and graces. But I long to be a poet, to pay tribute …. My lovely day began when the sun rose—I often wake then but usually I go to sleep again. Yesterday I instantly remembered that it was Midsummer Eve, my very favorite day, and lay awake looking forward to it and planning my rites on the mound. They seemed all the more valuable because I wondered if it might not be my last year for them—I didn’t feel as if it would, but Rose outgrew them when she was about my age. And I agree with her that it would be dreadful to perform them just as an affected pose; they were a bit peculiar last year when Topaz kindly assisted me and went very pagan. The nicest times of all were when Rose and I were young enough to feel rather frightened.

We first held the rites when I was nine-I got the idea from a book on folklore. Mother thought them unsuitable for Christian little girls (I remember my astonishment at being called a Christian) and she was worried in case our dresses caught alight when we danced round our votive fire. She died the following winter and the next Midsummer Eve we had a much bigger fire; and while we were piling more wood on, I suddenly thought of her and wondered if she could see us. I felt guilty, not only because of the fire, but because I no longer missed her and was enjoying myself. Then it was time for the cake and I was glad that I could have two pieces-she would only have allowed one; but in the end I only took one. Stephen’s mother always made us a beautiful Midsummer cake-the whole family got some of it, but Rose and I never let the others join in our rites on the mound; though after the year we saw the Shape, Stephen took to hanging about in the courtyard in case we called for help.

As I lay in bed watching the sun climb out of the wheat field yesterday, I tried to remember all our Midsummer Eves, in their proper order. I got as far as the year it poured and we tried to light a fire under an umbrella. Then I drifted back into sleep again —the most beautiful, hazy, light sleep. I dreamt I was on Belmotte Tower at sunrise and all around me was a great golden lake, stretching as far as I could see. There was nothing of the castle left at all, but I didn’t seem to mind in the least.

While I was getting breakfast, Stephen told me that he wouldn’t be in to lunch, as he usually is on Saturdays, because he was going to London to sit for Mrs. Fox-Cotton again.

“She wants to start work the very first thing tomorrow,” he explained, “so I’m to go up today and sleep the night there.”

I asked if he had anything to pack his clothes in and he showed me a moth-eaten carpetbag that had belonged to his Mother.

“Gracious, you can’t use that,” I told him.

“I’ll lend you my attache case—it’s big enough.”

“It’ll be that, all right,” he said, grinning. I found he was only taking his nightshirt, his safety-razor, a toothbrush and a comb.

“Couldn’t you buy yourself a dressing-gown, Stephen -out of the five guineas you earned last time?”

He said he had other things to do with that.

“Well, out of your wages, then. There’s no need to hand them over now we have two hundred pounds.” But he said he couldn’t make any change without discussing it with Topaz.

“Maybe she’ll be counting on me. And two hundred pounds won’t last for ever. Don’t you go feeling rich, it isn’t safe.”

In the end he agreed to think about getting a dressing-gown, but I knew he was only saying it to please me. No —I expect he just said it to end the argument; he has given up trying specially to please me. And, no doubt, it is a very good thing.

He had barely left the house when Father came down, wearing his best suit-he, too, was off to London, and for several days, if you please!

“Where will you stay—with the Cottons?” I ventured-“ventured” being the way I ask him all questions these days.

“What where his Yes, I daresay I might. That’s a very good idea. Any messages for the girls his Don’t speak for a minute.”

I stared at him in astonishment. He had picked up a plate from the table and was examining it carefully—just a cracked old willow pattern plate I had found in the hen-house and brought in to relieve the crockery shortage.

“Interesting, quite a possibility,” he said at last then walked out to the gatehouse, taking the plate with him. After a few minutes he came back without it and started his breakfast.

I could see he was preoccupied, but I did want to know about that plate. I asked if it was valuable.

“Might be, might be,” he said, staring in front of him.

“Do you know anyone who would buy it?”

“Buy it his Don’t be silly. And don’t talk.”

I gave it up.

There was the usual scrimmage to get him off in time to catch the train. I wheeled his bicycle out for him and stood waiting in the courtyard. “Where are your things for the night?” I asked as he came out towards me empty-handed.

He looked faintly startled, then said: “Oh, well—I couldn’t manage a suitcase on the bicycle. I’ll do without. Hello—” He caught sight of Stephen’s carpetbag—I had thrown it out of the kitchen because it was crawling with moth-grubs.

“Now, that. I could use—I could sling it across the handlebars. Quick, get my things!”

I began to point out the awfulness of the bag but he chivvied me indoors, shouting instructions after me-so that I heard “Pyjamas!”

as I went across the kitchen, “Shaving tackle, on the kitchen stairs and “Toothbrush, handkerchiefs and a clean shirt if I have one!”

as I rummaged round his bedroom. By the time I reached the bathroom there came a roar: “That’s enough—come back at once or I shall miss my train.” But when I rushed down to him he seemed to have forgotten there was any hurry-he was sitting on the backdoor step studying the carpetbag.

“This is most interesting pseudo-Persian,” he began-then sprang up shouting: “Great Heaven, give me those things!” Godsend church striking the half had brought him back to earth.

He shoved everything into the bag, hung it on his bicycle and rode off full-tilt, mangling the corner of a flower-bed. At the gatehouse, he suddenly braked, flung himself off and dashed up the tower stairs, leaving the bicycle so insecurely placed that it slid to the ground. By the time I had run across and picked it up, he was coming down carrying the willow-pattern plate. He pushed it into the carpetbag, then started off again—pedaling frantically, with the bag thumping against his knees. At the first bend of the lane he turned his head sharply and shouted:

“Good-bye”—very nearly falling off the bicycle. Then he was gone.

Never have I known him so spasmodic—or have I? Wasn’t he rather like that in the days when his temper was violent his As I walked back to the house, it dawned on me that I was going to be alone for the night—Thomas was spending the weekend with Harry, his friend at school. For a second, I had a dismayed, deserted feeling but I soon convinced myself there was nothing to be frightened of-we hardly ever get tramps down our lane and when we do they are often very nice; anyway, Heloise is a splendid watchdog.

Once I got used to the idea of being by myself for so long I positively liked it. I always enjoy the different feeling there is in a house when one is alone in it, and the thought of that feeling stretching ahead for two whole days somehow intensified it wonderfully. The castle seemed to be mine in a way it never had been before; the day seemed specially to belong to me; I even had a feeling that I owned myself more than I usually do. I became very conscious of all my movements-if I raised my arm I looked at it wonderingly, thinking, “That is mine!” And I took pleasure in moving, both in the physical effort and in the touch of the air—it was most queer how the air did seem to touch me, even when it was absolutely still. All day long I had a sense of great ease and spaciousness. And my happiness had a strange, remembered quality as though I had lived it before. Oh, how can I recapture it-that utterly right, homecoming sense of recognition his It seems to me now that the whole day was like an avenue leading to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: “Now I know why I have been happy!”