I Capture the Castle (9 page)

As soon as we got back to the castle Father went up to the gatehouse room and I rushed to join the girls. They were talking excitedly Topaz had got over her quiet mood. She was sure Rose had made a hit, and started to plan how to alter a dress for her, a real London dress that Rose has always admired. And they decided about cleaning the drawing-room in case the Cottons called very soon. I said wasn’t it wonderful that Father actually seemed to like them. Through the back windows of the gatehouse, we could see him sitting at his desk. Topaz said:

“It’s happened—the miracle! He’s going to start work again!”

Stephen and Thomas came back and I made Stephen drink the cocoa I’d saved for him-I had to hold it ready to pour down the sink before he would take it. Then we went to bed.

Rose got all her clothes out and draped them over Miss Blossom, to see if any of them were better than she remembered. They were worse.

But even that didn’t depress her.

We talked and talked. Suddenly I sat up in bed and said:

“Rose, we’re working it up too much. We mustn’t. Of course it’ll be wonderful if we’re asked to parties and things but—Rose, you couldn’t marry that man with a beard?”

“I could marry the Devil himself if he had some money,” said Rose.

I am pretty sure she was remembering Simon Cotton’s shadow; but as she didn’t mention it, I didn’t. There is no point in working up a thing like that about a wealthy man.

After we had blown the candles out I made Miss Blossom talk I can never think of the sort of things she says unless I pretend she is really saying them. When I asked her what she thought about it all, she answered:

“Well, it’s a start, girlies, there’s no denying that. Now you just make the best of yourselves. Of course all these old clothes you’ve draped over me won’t help you much, but wash your hair and keep your hands nice-that green stuff on them’s funny for once but the joke’s over. And now you’d better think of your complexions and get some beauty sleep.”

Rose certainly took the hint about the dye; this morning she scrubbed and scrubbed her hands until she got it all off. She used our last grains of scouring powder, so my dye will just have to wear off—it has now reached a gray stage which looks like dirt. Oh, I have just had an idea—after tea I shall attack myself with sand paper.

How quickly life can change! This time yesterday it was a wintery blank—and now not only have we met the Cottons, but there is a real hint of spring. From up here in the barn I can see blackthorn buds on the hedges …… I have just discovered that by moving my head I can make the square opening, near the roof, frame different parts of the lane—it is rather a fascinating game.

Oh! Oh, my goodness! They’re here—the Cottons —they’ve just come round the last bend of the lane! Oh, what am I to do his ……. They have gone past. There was no way I could warn Rose and Topaz-I couldn’t have got out of the barn without being seen. At least I know they are back from their walk because I heard Rose playing the piano some time ago. But how will they be dressed his And, heavens, Rose was thinking of washing her hair! Never did we dare to hope the Cottons would come this very day! I watched them pass, through the hinge of the barn door; then scrambled up on the chaff again and watched until they disappeared into the gatehouse passage. Ought I to go in his I want to, of course —but there is a huge hole in my stocking and my gym-dress is all dusty from the chaff …… It must be half an hour since I wrote that last line. I didn’t go in.

I have been lying here on the chaff thinking of them in the drawing-room with the log fire burning. It won’t really matter if Rose did wash her hair, because it looks very beautiful when it is drying. I feel sure I did right to stay here—for one thing, I talk too much sometimes. I must be desperately careful never to distract attention from Rose. I keep telling myself it is real, it really has happened —we know two men. And they like us-they must, or they wouldn’t have come back so soon.

I don’t really want to write any more, I just want to lie here and think. But there is something I want to capture. It has to do with the feeling I had when I watched the Cottons coming down the lane, the queer separate feeling. I like seeing people when they can’t see me. I have often looked at our family through lighted windows and they seem quite different, a bit the way rooms seen in looking-glasses do. I can’t get the feeling into words-it slipped away when I tried to capture it.

Simon Cotton’s black beard looks queerer than ever by daylight, especially now I have realized he isn’t at all old—I should guess him to be under thirty. He has nice teeth and rather a nice mouth with a lot of shape to it. It has a peculiar naked look in the midst of all that hair. How can a young man like to wear a beard his I wonder if he has a scar his His eyebrows go up at the corners.

Neil Cotton has such a charming face though no particular feature is striking. Very nice hair, fairish, curly.

He looks very healthy;

Simon is a bit pale. They’re both tall;

Simon a bit the taller, Neil a bit the broader. They don’t look like brothers, any more than they sound it.

Simon is wearing tweeds, very English-looking.

Neil is wearing a coat such as I never saw in my life before: checked back and front, but plain sleeves. Perhaps it was made out of two old coats -though I hope not, as that would show him to be poor and his brother mean. And it looked rather a noisily new coat. I expect it’s just American.

They’re coming out of the castle! Shall I run to meet them and just shake hands? No, not with these gray hands—.

Something awful has happened-so awful that I can hardly bear to write it. Oh, how could they, how could they his As they came towards the barn, I heard them talking. Neil said:

“Gosh, Simon, you’re lucky to get away with your life.”

“Extraordinary, wasn’t it?” said Simon.

“She didn’t give that impression at all last night.” Then he turned to look back at the castle and said: “What a wonderful place! But hellish uncomfortable. And they obviously haven’t a cent. I suppose one can’t blame the poor girl.”

“One can blame her for being so darned obvious,” said Neil.

“And that ridiculous dress—at this time of the day!

Funny, I rather liked her in it last night.”

“The stepmother seems quite pleasant. She looked about as uncomfortable as I felt. My God, how that girl embarrassed me!”

“We shall have to drop them, Simon. If we don’t, she may put you in a very awkward position.” Simon said he supposed so. They were talking quietly, but it was so still that every word came to me clearly. As they passed the barn, Neil said:

“Pity we didn’t see the child again. She was a cute kid.”

“A bit consciously naive, don’t you think?” said Simon.

“I shall feel worst about dropping the old man-I’d rather hoped I could help him. But I don’t suppose there’s much one can do if he’s a hopeless drunk.”

Oh, I could kill them! When Father doesn’t even get enough to eat, let alone any strong drink! They must have heard some lying gossip. How dare people say he drinks And he isn’t an old man he not yet fifty.

I didn’t hear any more. I wish now that I had rushed out and hit them. That would have showed them if I am consciously naive!

What on earth did Rose do his I must go in.

Eight o’clock. In the drawing-room.

I have come in here to get away from Rose. She is drying her hair in the kitchen and manicuring her nails with a sharpened match.

And she is talking, talking. I don’t know how Topaz can stand it, knowing what she does know—for I couldn’t keep it to myself, I couldn’t bear to. I might have done if I hadn’t found her alone when I got in; but I did and she saw that I was upset. I began to tell her in a whisper—ours is a dreadful house for being overheard in-but she said: “Wait,” and pulled me out into the garden.

We could hear Rose singing upstairs, so we didn’t talk until we had crossed the bridge and gone a little way up the mound.

Topaz wasn’t as furious as I had expected-but, of course, I didn’t tell her the bit about Father. She wasn’t even surprised. She said Rose had seen the Cottons coming from her bedroom window and nothing would stop her changing into the tea-gown. (as if anyone ever wore a tea-gown for tea!) And she had behaved insanely, making a dead set at Simon Cotton.

“Do you mean she was too nice to him?”

“Not exactly—that mightn’t have mattered so much.

She was terribly affected, she kept challenging him if she’d had a fan she’d have tapped him with it and said “Fie, He!” And she fluttered her eyelids. It’d all have been very fetching a hundred years ago.”

Oh, I could see it! Rose got it out of old books. We’ve never known any modern women except Topaz, and Rose would never dream of copying her. Oh, poor, poor Rose-she never even saw modern girls on the pictures, as I did.

“They won’t come back,” said Topaz.

“I’d have known that, even if you hadn’t overheard what they said.”

I said we didn’t want them, that they must be hateful people to talk like that. But Topaz said that was nonsense-“Rose asked for it. Men don’t really mind your showing you like them when you do, but they run a mile from obvious fascination-that’s what it was, of course, all the challenging and head-tossing, and all directed at Simon in the crudest way. If Mortmain had been in he might have chaffed her out of it—anyway, he’d have talked to them himself.

Oh, blast!”

Father had gone for a walk-the first he has taken for months.

Topaz said Simon Cotton had brought him a book by a famous American critic because one of the essays in it dealt with Jacob Wrestling.

“I suppose Simon just might come back to talk to Mortmain,” she said. But I knew better. It was beginning to get dark. There was a light down in the kitchen. We saw Rose pass the window.

“Shall we tell her?” I said.

Topaz thought not—unless we ever get asked to Scoatney-“If we do, we might try to kick some sense into her.”

We won’t get asked.

Topaz put her arm round me and we trudged down the mound —very awkwardly because she takes longer strides than I can. When we got to the bottom she looked back at Belmotte Tower, dark against the twilight sky.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” she said in her most velvety tones.

Now could she really be interested in beauty at such a moment his Incidentally, when she painted the tower she made it look like a black rolling-pin on an overturned green pudding-basin.

My candle is burning out and the drawing-room is getting colder and colder—the fire has been out for hours; but I can’t write this in the same room with Rose. When I look at her I feel I am watching a rat in a trap that hopes it will get out when I know it won’t.

Not that I ever watched a rat in a trap, nor does Rose think she is in one; but this is no moment to be finicky about metaphors.

Heloise has just pushed the door open and come in and licked me, which is kind but so chilly as I dry. And I can now hear what is going on in the kitchen far more fully than I could wish. Father is there now and is talking excitedly-he says the American critic has discovered things in Jacob Wrestling that he certainly never put there and that the arrogance of critics is beyond belief.

He is obviously enjoying the thought of discussing it all with Simon Cotton.

Rose’s exuberance has risen higher and higher. I regret to say that she is now whistling.

Stephen has been in and put his coat round me. It smells of horses.

Am I consciously naive? Perhaps I am, perhaps this journal is. In future I will write it in stark prose. But I won’t really write it at all any more, because I have come to the end of this exercise book-I have already used both inside covers and am now crossing my writing, and crossed speed-writing will probably never come uncrossed.

It must be just twenty-four hours since those Cottons walked in on me in my bath.

Topaz has just yelled that she is making cocoa.

Oh, comfortable cocoa! Not so good—Topaz has now yelled that it will have to be made with water because the Cottons drank the milk;

there was no tea to offer them. Still, any kind of cocoa is good.

But it will be agony to know that Rose will think we are having it to celebrate, while Topaz and I know that it is funeral baked meats.

THE END

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