I must go down and feed my family.
XII
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 o
ften 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!”
How words weave spells! As I wrote of the avenue, it rose before my eyes-I can see it now, lined with great smooth-trunked trees whose branches meet far above me. The still air is flooded with peace, yet somehow expectant-as it seemed to me once when I was in King’s Crypt cathedral at sunset. On and on I wander, beneath the vaulted roof of branch and leaf… and all the time, the avenue is yesterday, that long approach to beauty.
Images in the mind, how strange they are …… I have been gazing at the sky I never saw it a brighter blue. Great featherbed clouds are billowing across the sun, their edges brilliant silver. The whole day is silvery, sparkling, the birds sound shrill …… Yesterday was golden, even in the morning the light was softly drowsy, all sounds seemed muted.
By ten o’clock I had finished all my jobs and was wondering what to do with the morning. I strolled round the garden, watched thrush on the lawn listening for worms and finally came to rest on the grassy bank of the moat. When I dabbled my hand in the shimmering water it was so much warmer than I expected that I decided to bathe. I swam round the castle twice, hearing the Handel “Water Music” in my head.
While I was hanging my bathing-suit out of the bedroom window, I had a sudden longing to lie in the sun with nothing on. I never felt it before—Topaz has always had a monopoly of nudity in our household-but the more I thought of it, the more I fancied it. And I had the brilliant idea of doing my sunbathing on the top of the bedroom tower, where nobody working in the fields or wandering up our lane could possibly see me. It felt most peculiar crawling naked up the cold, rough stone steps-exciting in some mysterious way I couldn’t explain to myself. Coming out at the top was glorious, warmth and light fell round me like a great cape. The leads were so hot that they almost burnt the soles of my feet; I was glad I had thought of bringing up a blanket to spread.
It was beautifully private. That tower is the best-preserved of them all; the circle of battlements is complete, though there are a few deep cracks—a marigold had seeded in one of them. Once I lay down flat I couldn’t even see the battlements without turning my head. There was nothing left but the sun-filled dome of the cloudless sky.
What a difference there is between wearing even the skimpiest bathing-suit and wearing nothing! After a few minutes I seemed to live in every inch of my body as fully as I usually do in my head and my hands and my heart. I had the fascinating feeling that I could think as easily with my limbs as with my brain—and suddenly the whole of me thought that Topaz’s nonsense about communing with nature isn’t nonsense at all. The warmth of the sun felt like enormous hands pressing gently on me, the flutter of the air was like delicate fingers. My kind of nature-worship has always had to do with magic and folklore, though sometimes it turned a bit holy.
This was nothing like that. I expect it was what Topaz means by “pagan.” Anyway, it was thrilling. But my front got so terribly hot. And when I rolled over on to my stomach I found that the back of me was not so interested in communing with nature. I began to think with my brain only, in the normal way, and it felt rather shut inside itself-probably because having nothing but the roof to stare at was very dull. I started to listen to the silence-never have I known such a silent morning. No dog barked, no hen clucked; strangest of all, no birds sang. I seemed to be in a soundless globe of heat. The thought had just struck me that I might have gone deaf, when I heard a tiny bead of sound, tap, tap-I couldn’t imagine what it could be.
Plop, plop-I solved it: my bathing-suit dripping into the moat. Then a bee zoomed into the marigold, close to my ear—and then suddenly it was as if all the bees of the summer world were humming high in the sky.
sprang up and saw an airplane coming nearer and nearer—so I made for the stairs and sat there with just my head out. The plane flew quite low over the castle, and the ridiculous idea came to me that I was a mediaeval de Godys lady seeing a flying man across the centuries—and perhaps hoping he was a lover coming to win her.
After that the medieval lady groped her way downstairs and put on her shift.
Just as I finished dressing, the postman came through to the courtyard, calling: “Anyone home?” He had a parcel—for me!
Rose had gone back and ordered the “Midsummer Eve” scent; I thought she had forgotten. Oh, it was a fascinating present! Inside the outer wrapping was another-white, with colored flowers on it—and inside that was a blue box that felt velvety, and inside that was a glass bottle engraved with a moon and stars, and inside that was pale green scent. The stopper was fastened down with silver wire and silver seals. At first I thought I would open it at once;
then I decided to make the opening a prelude to the rites, something to look forward to all day. So I stood the bottle on the half of the dressing-table that used to be Rose’s and sent her waves of thanks-I meant to write to her after my “goings-on on Belmotte,” as she called them, and tell her I had worn the scent for them. Oh, why didn’t I write at once his What can I say to her now his …. I was hungry but I didn’t feel like cooking, so I had the most beautiful lunch of cold baked beans—what bliss it is that we can now afford things in tins again! I had bread-and-butter, too, and lettuce and cold rice pudding and two slices of cake (real shop cake) and milk. Hcl and About sat on the table and were given treats—they had had their own dinners, of course. They both took to baked beans at once—there is precious little they don’t take to, Heloise even accepted salted lettuce. (during our famine period she became practically a vegetarian.) Then, all three of us very full, we had a sleep in the four-poster, About curled up at the foot and Hcl with her back against my chest, which was rather hot but always gives one a companionable feeling.
We slept for hours—I don’t think I ever slept so long in the day time; I felt terribly guilty when I woke up and found it was nearly four o’clock. Hcl thumped her tail as if I had just come back from somewhere and About gave us a look as if he had never seen either of us before in his life—after which he jumped off the bed, did a little claw-sharpening on Miss Blossom’s solitary leg and then went downstairs. When I looked out across the courtyard a few minutes later he was high on the curtain walls with one leg pointing to heaven, doing some strenuous washing. It gave me the idea of washing my hair.
After that, it was time to gather flowers for the rites.
They have to be wild flowers—I can’t remember if that is traditional or if Rose and I made it up: mallow, campion and bluebells for the garland to hang round our necks, foxgloves to carry, and we always wore wild roses in our hair. Even since Rose has given up the rites she has sometimes come out for the garland-gathering —I kept talking to her yesterday and hearing her answer; it made me miss her more than ever, so I talked to Heloise instead. We had the most peaceful, companionable walk along the lane and through the fields, with Heloise carrying the flower-basket for several sec
onds at a time, the whole back half of her waggling with pride. I was glad to find there were still plenty of bluebells in the larch wood. One of the nicest sights I know is Heloise smelling a bluebell with her long, white, naked-looking nose. How can people say bull terriers are ugly? Heloise is exquisite—though she has put on a bit too much weight, these last opulent weeks.
I gave the flowers a long drink-wild ones die so quickly without water that I never make my garland before seven o’clock.
By then I had collected enough twigs to start the fire -Stephen always takes the logs up for me—and packed my basket. When I finished my garland, it was nearly eight and a pale moon was coming up though the sky was still blue. I changed into my green linen frock and put on my garland and wild roses; then, at the very last minute, I opened Rose’s scent.
One deep sniff and I was back in the rich shop where the furs were stored—oh, it was a glorious smell! But the odd thing was, it no longer reminded me of bluebells. I waved a little about on a handkerchief and managed to capture them for a second, but most of the time there was just a mysterious, elusive sweetness that stood for London and luxury. It killed the faint wild-flower scents and I knew it would spoil the lovely smell that comes from Belmotte grass after a hot day; so I decided not to wear any for the rites. I took one last sniff, then ran down to the kitchen for the sack of twigs and the basket and started off. I was glad Heloise wasn’t there to follow me, because she always wants to eat the ceremonial cake.
There wasn’t a breath of wind as I climbed the mound. The sun was down-usually I begin the rites by watching it sink, but trying the scent had taken longer than I realized. The sky beyond Belmotte Tower was a watery yellow with one streak of green across it-vivid green, most magically beautiful. But it faded quickly, it was gone by the time I reached the stones we placed to encircle the fire. I watched until the yellow faded, too—then turned towards the moon still low over the wheat field. The blue all around her had deepened so much that she no longer looked pale, but like masses of luminous snow.