I Capture the Castle

  “I’m not leaving until I’ve looked at everything he’s written.” I didn’t stop, so he snatched the torch from me. By the time I reached the top of the ladder he was calling after me: “You should see Section C—it’s all diagrams showing the distances between places. And he’s drawn a bird, with words coming out of its mouth.”

  “It’s a homing pigeon,” I called back derisively.

  “You’ll probably come to the carpetbag and the willow-pattern plate before long.”

  He shouted that I was just being Harry’s Father, jeering at Jacob Wrestling “There’s something in all this, I’m positive.” But I still didn’t believe him. And for the moment, I didn’t much care one way or the other.

  My whole mind had swung back to Simon.

  Topaz came running downstairs from the bedroom as I went into the kitchen.

  “It’s all right to talk -Mortmain’s gone to have a bath,” she said.

  “Oh, isn’t it wonderful that he’s begun work his What did you find?”

  I so hated having to disappoint her that I told her Thomas might be right and I might be wrong. But the minute I mentioned the crossword puzzle her spirits sank.

  “Though I’m sure he thinks he’s been working,” she said, worriedly.

  “His mind must be confused-it’s all he’s been through. I’ve a few things to say to you, my girl But there’s no time for that now;

  we must do something about Simon. Cassandra, will you go with him instead of me his Then I can stay with Mortmain. I don’t want him to know about Rose until he’s recovered a bit-he doesn’t even know that Simon’s here.”

  My heart gave a leap.

  “Yes, of course I’ll go.”

  “And for goodness’ sake try to make Rose see sense. I’ve told Simon I’d rather you went and he thinks it’s a good idea-that you may have more influence with her. He’s waiting in his car.”

  I ran upstairs and got ready. It was the wicked est moment of my life, because in spite of believing we had failed with Father, in spite of the wretchedness I had seen on Simon’s face, I was wildly happy. Rose had given him up and I was going to drive with him into the dawn.

  It was still dark when I ran out to the car, but there was a vague, woolly look about the sky and the stars were dimming. As I crossed the drawbridge I heard Heloise howling in the gatehouse room where we had left her shut in. She was up on Father’s desk with her long face pressed close to the dark window.

  Seeing her reminded me that my journal was still on the desk, but luckily Topaz came after me with some sandwiches and promised to put it away without trying to read the speed-writing.

  “And give my love to Father and tell him we meant it for the best,” I said—I was so happy that I wanted to be kind to every one in the world. Then off we went—past the barn where I once overheard Simon, past the crossroads where we started quoting poetry on May Day, past the village green where we stood counting scents and sounds. As we drove under the chestnut tree in front of the inn I felt a pang for Simon—would he remember Rose’s hair against its leaves his “Oh, I’ll make it up to him,” I told myself.

  “I swear I can, now that I’m free to try.”

  We had talked a little about Father soon after we started off. Simon wouldn’t believe that what Thomas and I had found really was nonsense; he said he would have to see for himself.

  “Though I must admit it sounds very peculiar,” he added. After that, he fell silent.

  We were some miles beyond Godsend before he said:

  “Did you know how Rose felt about me?”

  I was so long thinking out what to say that he went on:

  “Forget it. It’s not fair to ask you.”

  I began, “Simon-was He stopped me.

  “I believe I’d rather not talk about it at all-not until I’m sure she really means it.”

  Then he asked if I was warm enough or if he should close the car; it had been hot when they left London and Topaz had wanted it open. I said I did, too. The air was fresh and cool, but not really cold.

  It was a queer feeling, driving through the sleeping villages—each time, the car suddenly seemed noisier, the headlights more brilliant. I noticed that Simon always slowed down; I bet most men feeling as he did would have driven through like fury. In one cottage there was candlelight beyond the diamond panes of an upstairs window and a car at the door.

  “Perhaps a doctor’s there,” I said.

  “Somebody dying or getting born, maybe,” said Simon. Gradually the dark sky paled until it looked like far away smoke. There was no color anywhere; the cottages were chalk drawings on gray paper. It felt more like dusk than dawn, but not really like any time of day or night. When I said that to Simon, he told me that he always thought of the strange light before dawn as limbo-light.

  A little while after that, he stopped to look at a map. All around us, beyond the hedge less ditches, were misty water-meadows dotted with pol larded willow trees. Very far away, a cock was crowing.

  “Pity there isn’t a good sunrise for you,” said Simon.

  But no sunrise I ever saw was more beautiful than when the thick gray mist gradually changed to a golden haze.

  “That really is remarkable,” Simon said, watching it.

  “And one can’t actually see any sun at all.” I told myself it was symbolic that he couldn’t yet see how happy I would make him one day.

  “Could you fancy a sandwich?” I asked.

  I think he only took one to keep me company, but he talked quite naturally while we ate—about the difficulty of finding words to describe the luminous mist, and why one has the desire to describe beauty.

  “Perhaps it’s an attempt to possess it,” I said.

  “Or be possessed by it; perhaps that’s the same thing, really. I suppose it’s the complete identification with beauty one’s seeking.”

  The mist grew brighter and brighter. I could have looked at it for ever, we drove but Simon on. hid the sandwich paper neatly down the ditch Before long, there was the feel of the sea in the air. The mist over the salt marshes was too thick for the sunrise to penetrate, but the whiteness was dazzling.

  It was like travelling through a tunnel in the clouds.

  “Are you sure this is where we came for the picnic?”

  Simon asked as we drove along the main street.

  “It looks different, somehow.”

  I said that was due to the summer-holiday atmosphere.

  In May, the village had seemed just like an inland village; now, children’s buckets and spades and shrimping nets were standing outside doors, bathing-suits were hanging over window ledges. I had a sudden fancy to be a child waking up in a strange bedroom, with a day on the sands ahead of me—though, goodness knows, I wouldn’t have changed places with anyone in the world just then.

  We didn’t see a soul in the main street, but we found the front door of the one hotel open and a charwoman scrubbing the hall. She let us look at the hotel register.

  There was no sign of Rose’s name.

  “We’d better wait until people are awake and then try every house in the village,” I said.

  “I suppose she wouldn’t be at “The Swan”?”

  said the charwoman.

  “It’s not rightly a hotel but they do take one or two.”

  I remembered it from the day of the picnic, a tiny inn right down by the sea, about a mile away; but I couldn’t believe Rose would ever stay there.

  “Still, it’s somewhere to try until the village wakes up,” said Simon. We drove along the lonely coast road. There was no mist over the sea; it was all pale, shimmering gold, so calm that the waves seemed only just able to crawl on to the shore and spread a lacy film over the sands.

  “Look! That’s where we had the barbecue,” I cried. Simon only nodded and I wished I hadn’t spoken. It wasn’t a moment to remind him of a very happy day.

  We could see “The Swan” from far off, it was the only building ahead of us: an old, old inn, rather
like “The Keys” at Godsend but even smaller and simpler. The windows glittered, reflecting the early sun.

  Simon drew up just outside the door.

  “Someone’s awake,” he said, looking upwards.

  A window was open in the gable-a window extraordinarily like the gable window at “The Keys,” even to the jug and basin standing there.

  Floating out to us came the sound of a girl’s voice singing “Early One Morning.”

  “It’s Rose!” I whispered.

  Simon looked astonished.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Certain.”

  “I’d no idea she could sing like that.”

  He sat listening, his eyes suddenly alight. After a few seconds, she stopped singing the words and just hummed the tune. I heard her moving about, a drawer being opened and closed.

  “Surely she couldn’t sing like that if she wasn’t happy?” said Simon.

  I forced myself to say: “Perhaps it’s all right—perhaps it was just nerves, as Topaz said. Shall I call up to her?”

  Before he could answer, there was a knock on a door inside the inn. Then a man’s voice said: “Good morning! Are you ready to come out and bathe?”

  I heard Simon gasp. The next instant he had re-started the car and we shot forward.

  “But what does it mean?” I cried.

  “That was Neil!”

  Simon nodded.

  “Don’t talk for a bit.”

  After a few minutes, he stopped the car and lit a cigarette.

  “It’s all right-don’t look so agonized,” he said.

  “I feel now as if I’d always known it.”

  “But, Simon, they hate each other!”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” said Simon, grimly. We drove on until we found a different road to go back by, to avoid re-passing the inn.

  Simon didn’t talk much, but he did tell me that he had known Neil was attracted by Rose in the beginning.

  “Then he decided she was affected and mercenary—at least, that’s what he said. I kidded myself he was piqued because she preferred me—just as I kidded myself she really cared for me; that is, I did at first. For weeks now, I’ve had my doubts, but I hoped things would come right after we were married. God knows I never had the remotest idea she was in love with Neil, or Neil with her. They might have told me honestly. This isn’t like Neil.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought it was like Rose,” I said miserably. We went home through the full brightness of the morning. All the villages were waking up and a great many cheerful dogs were barking in them. There were still a few scarves of mist floating the water-meadows where we had watched the veiled sunrise. As we drove past I remembered how I had told myself I would make Simon happy. I didn’t feel the same person. For I now knew that I had been stuffing myself up with a silly fairy tale, that I could never mean to him what Rose had meant. I think I knew it first as I watched his face while he listened to her singing, and then more and more, as he talked about the whole wretched business-not angrily or bitterly, but quietly and without ever saying a word against Rose. But most of all I knew it because of a change in myself. Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.

  Long before we got back to the castle, with all my heart and for my own heart’s ease as well as his, I would have given her back to him if I could.

  Now it’s October.

  I am up on the mound, close to the circle of stones. There are still some bits of charred wood left from my Midsummer fire.

  It is a wonderful afternoon, golden, windless—quite a bit chilly, though, but I am wearing Aunt Millicent’s little sealskin jacket, which is gloriously warm, and I have Father’s old traveling rug to sit on. He now uses the big bearskin coat. One way or another all Aunt Millicent’s furs have at last fulfilled themselves.

  Now the wheat fields are all string-colored stubble.

  The only bright color I can see anywhere is the spindle-berry bush down in the lane. Over towards Four Stones, Mr. Stebbins and his horses are ploughing. Soon we shall be surrounded by what Rose used to call a sea of mud. I had a letter from her this morning.

  She and Neil have driven across America and are now in the Californian desert, which sounds less and less like my idea of a desert; Rose says there are no camels and the ranch has three bathrooms. She is perfectly happy—except about her trousseau which has turned into fairy gold. She only needs slacks and shorts now, she says, which it didn’t happen to contain. But Neil is going to take her to stay in Beverly Hills so that she can dance in her evening dresses.

  I wish I didn’t still feel so angry with her; it is wrong of me when I have officially forgiven her. And she and Neil didn’t really run away without explaining to Simon. Neil wrote the explanation and left it with Rose’s note on the hall table, but it got under the letters that came by the afternoon post. Simon never thought of opening anything else after reading Rose’s message.

  I only saw her alone once before she went to America. It was on the awful day when we all went to the flat and everything was patched up. First Mrs. Cotton had an interview with Rose and Neil to forgive them, and then Simon had an interview with each of them separately, to go on with the forgiving. Then Mrs. Cotton asked Father if he would like to see Rose alone and he said:

  “Great God, no! I can’t think why Simon endures all this horror.” Mrs. Cotton said:

  “One must be civilized”—at which Father gave such an angry snort that Topaz grabbed his arm warningly.

  After that we all had a hollow champagne lunch.

  Stephen came, in a very well-cut suit, looking quite staggeringly handsome. When Rose shook hands with him she said: “I’ll thank you as long as I live.”

  I didn’t know what she meant until I was alone with her afterwards, helping her to pack. Then she told me that Stephen had gone to Neil’s hotel and told him plainly that she wasn’t in love with Simon.

  I think Neil must have believed me when I wrote and told him she was; anyway, he had hardly let himself see her while she was in London. But after talking to Stephen, he went to the flat and asked her straight out.

  “And do you know what it was like?” she said.

  “Can you remember me coming home after I had scarlet fever —how we hugged and hugged each other without saying a word his It was like that only a million times more so. I thought we never would stop holding on to each other. I’d have married him if he hadn’t had a penny—and I would weeks ago if only he’d given me the chance. You see, I didn’t know that he cared for me.”

  “But, Rose, how did Stephen know he did?” I asked.

  “Well, he had a little clue that Neil was, well, interested in me,” she said, then went off into one of her nicest giggles.

  “Do you remember that night they mistook me for a bear, when I slapped Neil’s face his After he carried me across the railway line to the field behind the station, he set me down and said: “This is for slapping me,”—and then he kissed me. And Stephen saw.”

  So that was what she had up her sleeve when we talked in bed that night! I felt she was hiding something—and then I forgot all about it.

  I said: “But just because he saw Neil kiss you once” “It was more than once, it was quite a lot of times. And it was wonderful. But I thought he needed punishing for the things you heard him say about me in the lane-and for daring to kiss me like that, even though I’d liked it.

  Besides, he wasn’t the rich one. Though—truly, Cassandra, I don’t believe I’d have let that stand in the way if he’d ever showed he really cared for me. But he never did—he wasn’t ever nice to me again, always rude and horrid; because he thought I was chasing Simon-which I certainly was.

  And when Simon kissed me, that was a bit wonderful, too-you can’t really judge by kisses-so I got mixed. But not for long.”

  Oh, so many things came back to me! I could see how she had tried to work herself up into hating Neil-her dislike for him had always seemed exa
ggerated. I remembered how quick she had been to tell Simon to make him come to the flat that night I was there, how she had asked him to dance with her, how depressed she had seemed when they came back to the glittering corridor.

  And, of course, so much of Neil’s anger on the night of the engagement had been due to jealousy!

  They had walked out of the flat that morning hoping to get married at once” You can do that in America, Neil says; but we soon found you can’t here. So we went down to the inn to wait until we could. We chose that place because Neil said the picnic was the last time he’d seen me human. And of course, darling, it’s really you I have to thank for everything, because I’m sure Stephen only went to Neil on your account. He told Neil you were the right one for Simon—I suppose he’d guessed you were in love and was trying to help you.”

  Oh, my dear, dear Stephen, how can I ever repay you for such unselfishness? But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine.

  “And of course everything will come right now,” Rose chattered on.

  “Just as soon as Simon’s got over me a bit, you’ll be able to get him

  .”

  “I should have thought you’d have grown out of talking about “getting” men,” I said coldly.

  She flushed.

  “I didn’t mean it that way-you know I didn’t. I’m hoping he’ll really fall in love with you. He likes you so much already-he said so only today.”

  A dreadful thought struck me.

  “Rose-oh, Rose!” I cried.

  “You didn’t tell him I’m in love with him?” She swore she hadn’t. But I fear she had. He has been so kind ever since then he was always that, but now his kindness seems deliberate. Or do I imagine it? I know it has made me feel I can hardly bear to see him;

  but it takes so much strength of mind not to, when he comes to talk to Father nearly every day. They are in the gatehouse together, now.

  Apparently I was all wrong about Father.

  Apparently it is very clever to start a book by writing THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT nineteen times.

  Now stop it, Cassandra Mortmain. You are still piqued because Thomas was the one to guess that what we found in the tower wasn’t just nonsense. You are trying to justify your stupidity—and it was stupidity, considering Father had told you plainly that all his eccentricities meant something. And it isn’t true that the book starts with nineteen cats on mats; in the revised version there are only seven of them. And there is a perfectly logical explanation of them, according to that bright boy Thomas. They are supposed to be in the mind of a child learning to read and write.