Poverty Castle (15 page)

One dull wet afternoon, when it was already dark by four. Papa said, with a chuckle, above the noises of the dogs: ‘Why the gloomy faces?'

‘It's always raining,' said Effie. ‘It was raining yesterday and the day before.'

‘We think we should have gone to Spain to live,' said Rebecca.

‘You wouldn't have met Wallace and Bruce then.'

‘There are dogs in Spain, aren't there?' said Jeanie.

‘But they wouldn't understand English,' said Rowena.

‘We would have spoken to them in Spanish,' said Effie.

‘Uno, dos, tres.'

‘I've forgotten mine,' said Rebecca.

‘Cheer up,' said Papa. ‘There's a letter for you.'

‘For who?' asked Effie.

‘For all of you. Addressed to Diana, Effie, Jeanie, Rowena, and Rebecca Sempill.'

‘There wouldn't be much room on the envelope,' said Jeanie.

‘It can't be from Granny Ruthven,' said Rowena, ‘because she writes to Mama.'

‘It's not from Granny,' said Papa, ‘unless she's become a pupil at Eton College.'

Even the dogs, it seemed, were surprised. ‘We don't know anybody at Eton College,' said Effie.

‘Are you sure?'

‘How do you know it's from Eton College, Papa?' asked Jeanie. ‘Did you open it?'

‘Where's Eton College?' asked Rebecca.

‘I am not in the habit of opening other people's correspondence. Eton College, my dear, is in Windsor, England.'

‘There's a castle at Windsor,' said Rowena. ‘A
real
castle.'

‘Eton College is the school where the sons of the English aristocracy and renegade Scottish aristocracy too are educated.'

‘How do you know it's from Eton College if you didn't open it?' asked Jeanie.

‘Because it has the name embossed on the envelope. Are you sure you don't know anybody there?'

They asked Wallace and Bruce to be quiet to let them think. ‘You've got short memories,' said Papa. ‘What about Edwin, the long-nosed cricketer?'

They did not approve of his joke.

‘It's not his fault if his nose is long,' said Rebecca.

‘Didn't he tell you he was going to Eton?'

They remembered.

‘If it's from Edwin,' said Effie, ‘it's not for us, it's for Diana.'

‘Why for Diana in particular? It's addressed to you all.'

‘He would be too shy to address it just to her,' said Jeanie.

‘He's in love with Diana,' said Rowena.

‘And Diana's in love with him,' said Rebecca, so seriously that they all, including the dogs, laughed.

‘I wasn't aware of this great romance,' said Papa. ‘I don't think Mama is either.'

‘I suppose it's a secret,' said Effie.

‘We shouldn't have told you, Papa,' said Jeanie.

‘Don't worry. I can keep a secret. Am I to let Mama know?'

‘Yes, but she's not to tease Diana,' said Effie.

‘Edwin didn't want to go to Eton,' said Rebecca.

The envelope was on the silver salver in the hall, with petals from a bowl of chrysanthemums fallen on it. Still with their raincoats and Wellingtons on they took it into the living-room to examine it. The words Eton College were embossed in white letters.

‘Do you think he's sent his photograph?' asked Effie, feeling for it.

‘No.' Jeanie was positive. ‘If he was good-looking he would have sent it, but he isn't.'

‘He's got nice eyes,' said Rebecca.

‘You can't see a person's eyes in a photograph.'

‘I think we should open it,' said Effie. ‘We've got a right. It's addressed to us.'

‘It's addressed to us all,' said Jeanie. ‘We should wait till we're all here.'

‘There are four of us. Diana's only one. I vote we open it.'

‘I vote we don't,' said Jeanie.

Both Rowena and Rebecca sided with her.

‘I don't want to read it anyway,' said Effie. ‘He's just written because he's sorry for himself.'

‘Poor Edwin,' said Rebecca.

‘I couldn't fall in love with somebody who was sorry for himself,' said Effie, disdainfully.

She had often told them about the kind of man she was going to marry. He would be as daring as young Lochinvar, as fierce as Rob Roy, and as handsome as Bonnie Dundee.

Though it was still raining and pitch dark at ten to five the
twins, in spite of their parents' demurs, set off on foot for Poverty gate, carrying torches, to meet Diana and escort her home. Wallace and Bruce wanted to go with them but weren't allowed: if they were put on leads they pulled the girls off their feet and if they weren't put on leads they wandered into the woods and got lost.

Diana had firmly requested Papa never to come for her in the car. ‘Never?' her sisters had teased. ‘Not even if there's snow up to your knees? Not even if there's a storm?' But they had known why she wanted to walk. She was always putting herself to tests. She was really scared of the sea, so she swam out furthest. She didn't like heights, so she climbed the highest. In her sisters' eyes she was a heroine. Like Diana Vernon, after whom she was named. Or Kate Barlass. As long as it wasn't Proud Maisie. That was her favourite poem and she could recite it in such a way as to make them all shiver, especially the lines:

The bus was late. The twins waited at the gate, listening to the rain pattering on their hats and on the trees. It was a point of honour to shine their torches as seldom as possible and then only for seconds. This wasn't to save the batteries but to test their own nerves. They pretended that they were the only persons left alive in the whole world; no, the only living creatures, for all birds and animals had perished too. There had been an atomic war. Their plight was infinitely more sad than Sir Bedivere's, for though King Arthur and all the knights had been slain there must have been peasants working in the fields to whom he could have spoken; whereas they, if they walked all the way to John O'Groats, would meet no one at all, at any rate no one alive.

Therefore an immense load of sadness and terror was lifted off their minds when they heard the bus in the distance and then saw its lights. It stopped at the gate. They could not see who was in it for the windows were misted. Since the door was at the other side they did not see Diana coming off. Then
the bus moved on and there she was, crossing the road.

She flashed her torch and greeted them coolly: ‘What are you two drookit creatures doing here? Do your parents know you're out?'

They tried to be cool too. ‘We just thought we'd take a walk before tea.'

None of them was deceived. They knew that they were experiencing a happiness in one another's company that words could not describe.

Effie insisted on carrying Diana's case, though ‘it weighed a ton'. Jeanie said she'd take it at the dead tree.

This was a very high ash like a gigantic skeleton, with its branches white as bones. Sometimes one would fall off.

‘Well, what is it?' asked Diana.

‘What do you mean?' asked Jeanie.

‘Something's happened.'

‘We've said nothing,' panted Effie.

‘I can tell by the way you're breathing. Has Annie the tinker girl come back?'

‘No.'

‘Did one of the cats catch a bird?'

‘No.'

‘Were deer in the garden again?'

‘No.'

‘Have we got a visitor?'

‘No.'

‘All right. I give up. What is it?'

‘We haven't said it's anything,' said Jeanie.

‘But it is. So you might as well tell me.'

‘Should we, Effie?'

‘We'd better, for she'd never guess in a hundred years.'

‘We'll give her a hint first. It's a letter.'

‘Addressed to Diana, Effie, Jeanie, Rowena, and Rebecca Sempill.'

‘Good heavens. It would have been simpler just to say The Misses Sempill.'

‘Never mind that,' said Effie, impatiently. ‘Guess who from?'

‘Some girl we knew in Edinburgh?'

‘No.' Effie couldn't help giggling.

‘It's from Edwin,' cried Jeanie.

‘Edwin? Who's Edwin?'

They had known she wouldn't show astonishment or joy, though she would feel them, but they hadn't expected her to be quite so calm and casual.

‘You know fine who he is,' said Effie. ‘Edwin Campton. He's at Eton College.'

‘Is he? Imagine that. What's he writing to us for? What does he want?'

‘We don't know that yet,' said Jeanie. ‘We haven't opened it. We voted to wait till you came.'

‘That was very noble, considering how you must have been bursting with impatience.'

‘We think it's really for you though it's addressed to us all.'

They had come to the dead tree. Usually ghosts and bogles haunted it, even in sunlight, but not on this dark wet night: the girls were too absorbed in their own affairs. Jeanie took the case and groaned at its weight.

‘Why should you think it's for me?' asked Diana.

‘You know why,' said Effie.

‘I do not.'

‘Because he's in love with you, that's why, and he's not in love with us.'

‘And you're in love with him,' added Jeanie.

‘What a pair of romantic little idiots you are.'

‘She's just pretending,' said Effie. ‘That's what people in love do in stories. Isn't it, Jeanie?'

‘Yes, they're in love but they pretend they're not.'

‘When did you two start reading love stories?' said Diana.

‘Years ago.'

‘Well, you're forgetting something.'

‘What's that?'

‘I'm not in a story. I'm real.'

Keeping up her pretence of indifference Diana merely glanced at the envelope when it was handed to her by Rebecca. If they didn't mind, she said, with a little yawn, she would read it after tea:
they
were at liberty to read it anytime they liked. Dourly they contained themselves till the meal was over. Then, adding to their exasperation, she said that she had a lot of homework to do and ought to do it first, since it was more important. In any case she shouldn't be wasting time over a letter from a boy she hardly knew.

That settled it as far as her sisters were concerned. They rushed to the playroom where without any more palaver Effie tore open the envelope and took out two sheets of notepaper. She looked again to make sure there was no photograph.

‘It's an awful scribble,' she said, ‘and he can't spell.'

They knew she was making poor Edwin suffer for Diana's perverseness.

‘Read it to us,' said Rebecca, ‘and don't make it sound silly.'

‘If it is silly I'll have to make it sound silly, won't I?'

‘Let me read it,' said Rowena.

They were against that. She would imitate Edwin's voice and make them all laugh, which wouldn't be fair.

Effie began, in a flat voice: ‘Dear Girls –'

‘You're going to make it sound silly,' objected Rebecca.

Effie's voice became much livelier. ‘Dear Girls, I am sorry we did not meet again after the cricket match. That was the best day of my hols in Scotland. I did not enjoy the grouse shooting because you told me it was cruel to kill birds for sport.'

‘I told him that,' said Jeanie.

‘When I saw them dead and their feathers covered with blood I made a vow never to go shooting again. I didn't shoot but being there was just as bad.'

‘I don't think being there was just as bad,' said Rowena. ‘Anyway, birds kill other birds, don't they. Hawks kill sparrows.'

‘They don't know any better,' said Jeanie.

Effie continued. ‘The boys here call me Snozzle because of my big nose. Maybe it's a punishment that I deserve. I don't
like it here. If I was good at some game like football or cricket it would be different but I'm not. As you know I can't play for toffee.'

‘It was me said that,' said Jeanie.

‘I wish we lived in Scotland all the time and I went to school there. Have you got all the pets you said you were going to have when you moved into Poverty Castle? One of the boys asked me who I was writing to. I said friends. He asked where they lived. I said in the Highlands of Scotland in a house called Poverty Castle. He was impressed. It is a smashing name for a house. I didn't tell him you were girls. I've got a pet white mouse. Sorry I can't tell you what I call her. Give my regards to your Mama and Papa. My mouse sends hers too.'

‘It's a very nice letter,' said Rebecca, after a pause.

‘It's not bad,' said Jeanie, ‘but he's nearly thirteen.'

‘His writing's a scribble,' said Effie. ‘Miss McGill would have made him do it over again.'

‘I wonder what he calls his mouse?' asked Rowena.

‘That's easy,' said Effie. ‘It's a she. So he calls her Diana or maybe just Di. If it had been some other name he wouldn't have been too shy to tell us what it is, would he?'

‘It's not fair them calling him Snozzle,' said Rebecca. ‘He can't help it if his nose is big.'

‘Well, are we going to answer it?' asked Effie.

‘I can't,' said Rebecca, ‘because I can't write yet.'

‘You could tell us what to say and we could write it down for you,' said Jeanie.

‘It wouldn't be private then.'

They laughed. ‘What would you want to say to him that has to be private?' asked Jeanie.

‘That's private too.'

They laughed again and hugged her. They felt sorry for Edwin for not having a wee sister like her, and having instead a brother like awful Nigel.

‘He's not happy,' said Jeanie, ‘so maybe we should write and cheer him up.'

‘Let's go and see what Diana thinks,' said Effie.