We Have Always Lived in the Castle (22 page)

“Miss Blackwood?” someone said outside, in a low voice; I wondered if he suspected we were so close to him. “Miss Constance? Miss Mary Katherine?”

It was not quite dark outside, but inside where we stood we could only see one another dimly, two white faces against the door. “Miss Constance?” he said again. “Listen.”

I thought that he was moving his head from side to side to make sure that he was not seen. “Listen,” he said, “I got a chicken here.”

He tapped softly on the door. “I hope you can hear me,” he said. “I got a chicken here. My wife fixed it, roasted it nice, and there's some cookies and a pie. I hope you can hear me.”

I could see that Constance's eyes were wide with wonder. I stared at her and she stared at me.

“I sure hope you can hear me, Miss Blackwood. I broke one of your chairs and I'm sorry.” He tapped against the door again, very softly. “Well,” he said. “I'll just set this basket down on your step here. I hope you heard me. Goodbye.”

We listened to quiet footsteps going away, and after a minute Constance said, “What shall we do? Shall we open the door?”

“Later,” I said. “I'll come when it's really dark.”

“I wonder what kind of pie it is. Do you think it's as good as my pies?”

We finished our dinner and waited until I was sure that no one could possibly see the front door opening, and then we went down the hall and I unlocked the door and looked outside. The basket sat on the doorstep, covered with a napkin. I brought it inside and locked the door while Constance took the basket from me and carried it to the kitchen. “Blueberry,” she said when I came. “Quite good, too; it's still warm.”

She took out the chicken, wrapped in a napkin, and the little package of cookies, touching each lovingly and with gentleness. “Everything's still warm,” she said. “She must have baked them right after dinner, so he could bring them right over. I wonder if she made two pies, one for the house. She wrapped everything while it was still warm and told him to bring them over. These cookies are not crisp enough.”

“I'll take the basket back and leave it on the porch, so he'll know we found it.”

“No, no.” Constance caught me by the arm. “Not until I've washed the napkins; what would she think of me?”

 

Sometimes they brought bacon, home-cured, or fruit, or their own preserves, which were never as good as the preserves Constance made. Mostly they brought roasted chicken; sometimes a cake or a pie, frequently cookies, sometimes a potato salad or coleslaw. Once they brought a pot of beef stew, which Constance took apart and put back together again according to her own rules for beef stew, and sometimes there were pots of baked beans or macaroni. “We are the biggest church supper they ever had,” Constance said once, looking at a loaf of homemade bread I had just brought inside.

These things were always left on the front doorstep, always silently and in the evenings. We thought that the men came home from work and the women had the baskets ready for them to carry over; perhaps they came in darkness not to be recognized, as though each of them wanted to hide from the others, and bringing us food was somehow a shameful thing to do in public. There were many women cooking, Constance said. “Here is one,” she explained to me once, tasting a bean, “who uses ketchup, and too much of it; and the last one used more molasses.” Once or twice there was a note in the basket: “This is for the dishes,” or “We apologize about the curtains,” or “Sorry for your harp.” We always set the baskets back where we had found them, and never opened the front door until it was completely dark and we were sure that no one was near. I always checked carefully afterwards to make certain that the front door was locked.

I discovered that I was no longer allowed to go to the creek; Uncle Julian was there, and it was much too far from Constance. I never went farther away than the edge of the woods, and Constance went only as far as the vegetable garden. I was not allowed to bury anything more, nor was I allowed to touch stone. Every day I looked over the boards across the kitchen windows and when I found small cracks I nailed on more boards. Every morning I checked at once to make sure the front door was locked, and every morning Constance washed the kitchen. We spent a good deal of time at the front door, particularly during the afternoons, when most people came by; we sat, one on either side of the front door, looking out through the narrow glass panels which I had covered almost entirely with cardboard so that we had each only a small peephole and no one could possibly see inside. We watched the children playing, and the people walking past, and we heard their voices and they were all strangers, with their wide staring eyes and their evil open mouths. One day a group came by bicycle; there were two women and a man, and two children. They parked their bicycles in our driveway and lay down on our front lawn, pulling at the grass and talking while they rested. The children ran up and down our driveway and over and around the trees and bushes. This was the day that we learned that the vines were growing over the burned roof of our house, because one of the women glanced sideways at the house and said that the vines almost hid the marks of burning. They rarely turned squarely to look at our house face to face, but looked from the corners of their eyes or from over a shoulder or through their fingers. “It used to be a lovely old house, I hear,” said the woman sitting on our grass. “I've heard that it was quite a local landmark at one time.”

“Now it looks like a tomb,” the other woman said.

“Shh,” the first woman said, and gestured toward the house with her head. “I heard,” she said loudly, “that they had a staircase which was very fine. Carved in Italy, I heard.”

“They can't hear you,” the other woman said, amused. “And who cares if they do, anyway?”

“Shhh.”

“No one knows for sure if there's anyone inside or not. The local people tell some tall tales.”

“Shh. Tommy,” she called to one of the children, “don't you go near those steps.”

“Why?” said the child, backing away.

“Because the ladies live in there, and they don't like it.”

“Why?” said the child, pausing at the foot of the steps and giving a quick look backward at our front door.

“The ladies don't like little boys,” the second woman said; she was one of the bad ones; I could see her mouth from the side and it was the mouth of a snake.

“What would they do to me?”

“They'd hold you down and make you eat candy full of poison; I heard that dozens of bad little boys have gone too near that house and never been seen again. They catch little boys and they—”

“Shh.
Honestly,
Ethel.”

“Do they like little girls?” The other child drew near.

“They hate little boys
and
little girls. The difference is, they
eat
the little girls.”

“Ethel, stop. You're terrifying the children. It isn't true, darlings; she's only teasing you.”

“They never come out except at night,” the bad woman said, looking evilly at the children, “and then when it's dark they go hunting little children.”

“Just the same,” the man said suddenly, “I don't want to see the kids going too near that house.”

 

Charles Blackwood came back only once. He came in a car with another man late one afternoon when we had been watching for a long time. All the strangers had gone, and Constance had just stirred and said, “Time to put on the potatoes,” when the car turned into the driveway and she settled back to watch again. Charles and the other man got out of the car in front of the house and walked directly to the foot of the steps, looking up, although they could not see us inside. I remembered the first time Charles had come and stood looking up at our house in just the same manner, but this time he would never get in. I reached up and touched the lock on the front door to make sure it was fastened, and on the other side of the doorway Constance turned and nodded to me; she knew, too, that Charles would never get in again.

“See?” Charles said, outside, at the foot of our steps. “There's the house, just like I said. It doesn't look as bad as it did, now the vines have grown so. But the roof's been burned away, and the place was gutted inside.”

“Are the ladies in there?”

“Sure.” Charles laughed, and I remembered his laughter and his big staring white face and from inside the door I wished him dead. “They're in there all right,” he said. “And so is a whole damn fortune.”

“You
know
that?”

“They've got money in there's never even been counted. They've got it buried all over, and a safe full, and God knows where else they've hidden it. They never come out, just hide away inside with all that money.”

“Look,” the other man said, “they know you, don't they?”

“Sure. I'm their cousin. I came here on a visit once.”

“You think there's any chance you might get one of them to talk to you? Maybe come to the window or something, so I could get a picture?”

Charles thought. He looked at the house and at the other man, and thought. “If you sell this, to the magazine or somewhere, do I get half?”

“Sure, it's a promise.”

“I'll try it,” Charles said. “You get back behind the car, out of sight. They certainly won't come out if they see a stranger.” The other man went back to the car and took out a camera and settled himself on the other side of the car where we could not see him. “Okay,” he called, and Charles started up the steps to our front door.

“Connie?” he called. “Hey, Connie? It's Charles; I'm back.”

I looked at Constance and thought she had never seen Charles so truly before.

“Connie?”

She knew now that Charles was a ghost and a demon, one of the strangers.

“Let's forget all that happened,” Charles said. He came close to the door and spoke pleasantly, with a little pleading tone. “Let's be friends again.”

I could see his feet. One of them was tapping and tapping on the floor of our porch. “I don't know what you've got against me,” he said, “and I've been waiting and waiting for you to let me know I could come back again. If I did anything to offend you, I'm really sorry.”

I wished Charles could see inside, could see us sitting on the floor on either side of the front door, listening to him and looking at his feet, while he talked beggingly to the door three feet above our heads.

“Open the door,” he said very softly. “Connie, will you open the door for me, for Cousin Charles?”

Constance looked up to where his face must be and smiled unpleasantly. I thought it must be a smile she had been saving for Charles if he ever came back again.

“I went to see old Julian's grave this morning,” Charles said. “I came back to visit old Julian's grave and to see you once more.” He waited a minute and then said with a little break in his voice, “I put a couple of flowers—
you
know—on the old fellow's grave; he was a fine old guy, and he was always pretty good to me.”

Beyond Charles' feet I saw the other man coming out from behind the car with his camera. “Look,” he called, “you're wasting your breath. And I haven't got all day.”

“Don't you understand?” Charles had turned away from the door, but his voice still had the little break in it. “I've
got
to see her once more. I was the cause of it all.”

“What?”

“Why do you suppose two old maids shut themselves up in a house like this? God knows,” Charles said, “I didn't mean it to turn out this way.”

I thought Constance was going to speak then, or at least laugh out loud, and I reached across and touched her arm, warning her to be quiet, but she did not turn her head to me.

“If I could just
talk
to her,” Charles said. “You can get some pictures of the house, anyway, with me standing here. Or knocking at the door; I could be knocking frantically at the door.”

“You could be stretched across the doorsill dying of a broken heart, for all of me,” the other man said. He went to the car and put his camera inside. “Waste of time.”

“And all that money. Connie,” Charles called loudly, “will you for heaven's sake open that door?”

“You know,” the other man said from the car, “I'll just bet you're never going to see those silver dollars again.”

“Connie,” Charles said, “you don't know what you're doing to me; I never deserved to be treated like this.
Please,
Connie.”

“You want to walk back to town?” the other man said. He closed the car door.

Charles turned away from the door and then turned back. “All right, Connie,” he said, “this is it. If you let me go this time, you'll never see me again. I mean it, Connie.”

“I'm leaving,” the other man said from the car.

“I mean it, Connie, I really do.” Charles started down the steps, talking over his shoulder. “Take a last look,” he said. “I'm going. One word could make me stay.”

I did not think he was going to go in time. I honestly did not know whether Constance was going to be able to contain herself until he got down the steps and safely into the car. “Goodbye, Connie,” he said from the foot of the steps and then turned away and went slowly toward the car. He looked for a minute as though he might wipe his eyes or blow his nose, but the other man said, “Hurry
up,
” and Charles looked back once more, raised his hand sadly, and got into the car. Then Constance laughed, and I laughed, and for a minute I saw Charles in the car turn his head quickly, as though he had heard us laughing, but the car started, and drove off down the driveway, and we held each other in the dark hall and laughed, with the tears running down our cheeks and echoes of our laughter going up the ruined stairway to the sky.