I Capture the Castle Read online

  This time I spent my basking in thinking about the family and it is a tribute to hot water that I could think about them and still bask. For surely we are a sorry lot: Father moldering in the gatehouse, Rose raging at life, Thomas-well, he is a cheerful boy but one cannot but know that he is perpetually underfed. Topaz is certainly the happiest for she still thinks it’s romantic to be married to Father and live in a castle; and her painting, her lute and her wild communing with nature are a great comfort to her. I would have taken a bet that she had nothing whatever on under her oilskins and that she intended to stride up the mound and then fling them off.

  After being an artists’ model for so many years, she has no particular interest in Nudism for its own sake, but she has a passion for getting into closest contact with the elements. This once caused quite a little embarrassment with Four Stones Farm so she undertook only to go nude by night. Of course, winter is closed season for nudity, but she is wonderfully impervious to cold and I felt sure the hint of spring in the air would have fetched her. Though it was warmer, it was still far from warm, and the thought of her up on Belmotte made my bath more comfortable than ever.

  I ate half my chocolate and meant to offer the rest to Rose, but Heloise was lashing her tail so hopefully that I shared with her instead and her gratitude was so intense that I feared she might get in the bath with me. I calmed her, discouraged her from licking the soap and had just started serious washing when there was a thump on the door.

  I still can’t imagine what made me call out: “Come in.” I suppose I said it automatically. I had just covered my face with soap, which always makes one feel rather helpless, and when I rashly opened my eyes, the soap got into them; I was blindly groping for the towel when I heard the door open. Heloise let forth a volley of barks and hurtled towards it—it was a miracle she didn’t knock the clothes horses over. The next few seconds were pandemonium with Hcl barking her hardest and two men trying to soothe her. I didn’t call her off because I know she never bites anyone and I hated the idea of explaining I was in the bath—particularly as I hadn’t even a towel to wrap around me; I had blinked my eyes open by then and realized I must have left it somewhere in the kitchen.

  Mercifully, Heloise quietened down after a minute or so.

  “Didn’t you hear someone say “Come in”?” said one of the men, and I realized that he was an American. It was a pleasant voice, like the nice people in American films, not the gangsters.

  He called out:

  “Anyone home?” but the other man told him to be quiet, adding:

  “I want to look at this place first. It’s magnificent.”

  This voice puzzled me. It didn’t sound English but it didn’t sound American either, yet it certainly had no foreign accent. It was a most unusual voice, very quiet and very interesting.

  “Do you realize that wall’s part of an old castle?” it said.

  This was not a happy moment as I thought he would come to look at the fireplace wall, but just then Thomas came out on the staircase.

  The men explained that they had turned down our lane by accident and their car was stuck in the mud. They wanted help to get it out.

  “Or, if we have to leave it there all night, we felt we’d better warn you,” said the American voice, “because it’s blocking the lane.”

  Thomas said he would come and have a look and I heard him getting his boots from the wash-house.

  “Wonderful old place you have here,” said the unusual voice, and I feared they might ask to look round. But the other man began talking about how stuck the car was and asking if we had horses to pull it out, and in a minute or so Thomas went off with them. I heard the door slam and heaved a sigh of relief.

  But I did feel a little flat; it was dull to think I had never even seen the men and never would. I tried to imagine faces to go with the voices—then suddenly realized that the water was cooling and I had barely begun washing. I got to work at last, but scrub as I might, I couldn’t make any impression on my green-dyed arms. I am a thorough washer and by the time I had finished, my mind was completely off the men. I hopped out and got another can hot water from the copper, which is close to the fire, and was just settling down to read when I heard the door open again.

  Someone came into the kitchen and I was sure it wasn’t any of the family—they would have called out to me or at least made a lot more noise. I could feel someone just standing and staring. After a moment I couldn’t bear it any longer so I yelled out:

  “Whoever you are, I warn you I’m in the bath here.”

  “Good heavens, I do beg your pardon,” said the man with the quiet voice.

  “Were you there when we came in a few minutes ago?”

  I told him I had been, and asked if the car was still stuck.

  “They’ve gone for horses to pull it out,” he said, “so I sneaked back to have a look round here. I’ve never seen anything like this place.”

  “Just let me get dried and in my right mind and I’ll show you round,” I said. I had mopped my face and neck on the drying sheets and still hadn’t taken the cold walk to find the towel.

  I asked him if he could see it anywhere but he didn’t seem able to, so I knelt in the bath, parted the green sheets and put my head through.

  He turned towards me. Seldom have I felt more astonished.

  He had a black beard.

  I have never known anyone with a beard except an old man in the Scoatney almshouses who looks like Santa Claus. This beard wasn’t like that; it was trim and pointed—rather Elizabethan. But it was very surprising because his voice had sounded quite young.

  “How do you do?” he said, smiling-and I could tell by his tone that he had taken me for a child. He found my towel and started to bring it over; then stopped and said: “There’s no need to look so scared. I’ll put it down where you can reach it, and go right back to the yard.”

  “I’m not scared,” I said, “but you don’t look the way you sound.”

  He laughed, but it struck me that it had been rather a rude thing to say, so I added hastily: “There’s no need to go, of course. Won’t you sit down his I’m sure I’ve no desire to appear inhospitable”—and that struck me as the most pompous speech of my life.

  I began to put one arm through the sheets for the towel.

  “There’ll be a catastrophe if you do it that way,” he said.

  “I’ll put it round the corner.”

  As I drew my head in I saw his hand coming round.

  I grabbed the towel from it and was just going to ask him to bring my clothes, too, when the door opened again.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Simon,” said the American voice.

  “This is the darnedest placeI’ve just seen a Spook” “Nonsense,” said the bearded man.

  “Honest, I have—while I was in the lane. I shone my flashlight up at that tower on the hill and a white figure flitted behind it.”

  “Probably a horse.”

  “Horse, nothing—it was walking upright. But gosh, maybe I am going crazy-it didn’t seem to have any legs.”

  I guessed Topaz must have kept her black rubber boots on.

  “Stop talking about it, anyway,” the bearded man whispered.

  “There’s a child in a bath behind those sheets.”

  I called out for someone to bring my clothes, and put an arm round for them.

  “My God—it’s a green child!” said the American.

  “What is this place-the House of Usher?”

  “I’m not green all over,” I explained.

  “It’s just that we’ve all been dyeing.”

  “Then maybe it was one of your ghosts I saw,” said the American.

  The bearded man came over with my clothes.

  “Don’t worry about the ghost,” he said.

  “Of course he didn’t see one.”

  I said: “Well, he easily might, up on the mound, but it was more likely my stepmother communing with nature.” I was out of the bath b
y then, with the towel draped around me respectably, so I put my head round to speak to him. It came out much higher than when I had been kneeling in the bath and he looked most astonished.

  “You’re a larger child than I realized,” he said.

  As I took the clothes, I caught sight of the other man. He had just the sort of face to go with his voice, a nice, fresh face. The odd thing was that I felt I knew it. I have since decided this was because there are often young men like him in American pictures—not the hero, but the heroine’s brother or men on petrol stations.

  He caught my eye and said:

  “Hello! Tell me some more about your legless stepmother-and the rest of your family. Have you a sister who plays the harp on horseback, or anything?”

  Just then Topaz began to play her lute upstairs -she must have slipped in at the front door. The young man began to laugh.

  “There she is,” he said delightedly.

  “That’s not a harp, it’s a lute,” said the bearded man.

  “Now that really is amazing. A castle, a lute-his And then Rose came out on to the staircase. She was wearing the dyed-green tea-gown, which is mediaeval in shape with long flowing sleeves. She obviously didn’t know that there were strangers in the house for she called out:

  “Look, Cassandra’” Both men turned towards her and she stopped dead at the top of the stairs. For once Topaz had her lute in tune. And she was, most appropriately, playing “Green Sleeves.”

  V

  Later. Up on the chaff in the barn again.

  I had to leave Rose stranded at the top of the stairs because Topaz was ringing the lunch bell. She had been too busy to cook, so we had cold Brussels sprouts and cold boiled rice -hardly my favorite food but splendidly filling. We ate in the drawing-room, which has been cleaned within an inch of its life. In spite of a log fire, it was icy in there; I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold.

  Rose and Topaz are now out searching the hedges for something to put in the big Devon pitchers. Topaz says that if they don’t find anything she will get bare branches and tie something amusing to them-if so, I bet it doesn’t amuse me;

  one would think that a girl who appreciates nudity as Topaz does would let a bare branch stay bare.

  None of us is admitting that we expect the Cottons to call very soon, but we are all hoping it like mad. For that is who the two men were, of course: the Cottons of Scoatney, on their way there for the first time. I can’t think why I didn’t guess it at once, for I did know that the estate had passed to an American.

  Old Mr. Cotton’s youngest son went to the States back in the early nineteen hundreds-after some big family row, I believe-and later became an American citizen. Of course, there didn’t seem any likelihood of his inheriting Scoatney then, but two elder brothers were killed in the war and the other, with his only son, died about twelve years ago, in a car smash. After that, the American son tried to make it up with his Father, but the old man wouldn’t see him unless he undertook to become English again, which he wouldn’t. He died about a year ago; these two young men are his sons.

  Simon—he is the one with the beard—said last night that he had just persuaded his grandfather to receive him when poor lonely old Mr. Cotton died, which seems very sad indeed.

  The younger son’s name is Neil, and the reason he sounds so different from his brother is that he was brought up in California where his Father had a ranch, while Simon lived in Boston and New York with the Mother. (I gather the parents were divorced. Mrs. Cotton is in London now and is coming down to Scoatney soon.) Father says Simon’s accent is American and that there are as many different accents in America as there are in England-more, in fact. He says that Simon speaks particularly good English, but of an earlier kind than is now fashionable here.

  Certainly he has a fascinating voice—though I think I like the younger brother best.

  It is a pity that Simon is the heir, because Rose thinks the beard is disgusting; but perhaps we can get it off. Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn’t much like the look of? It is half real and half pretence -and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet any eligible young men. They just… wonder. And if any family ever had need of wondering, it is ours. But only as regards Rose. I have asked myself if I am doing any personal wondering and in my deepest heart I am not. I would rather die than marry either of those quite nice men.

  Nonsense! I’d rather marry both of them than die.

  But it has come to me, sitting here in the barn feeling very full of cold rice, that there is something revolting about the way girls’ minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love. And most of those minds are shut to what marriage really means. Now I come to think of it, I am judging from books mostly, for I don’t know any girls except Rose and Topaz. But some characters in books are very real —Jane Austen’s are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage. I wonder if Rose is?

  I must certainly try to make her before she gets involved in anything. Fortunately, I am not ignorant in such matters-no stepchild of Topaz’s could be. I know all about the facts of life. And I don’t think much of them.

  It was a wonderful moment when Rose stood there at the top of the stairs. It made me think of Beatrix in Esmond—but Beatrix didn’t trip over her dress three stairs from the bottom and have to clutch at the banisters with a green-dyed hand. But it all turned out for the best because Rose had gone selfconscious when she saw the Cottons—I could tell that by the way she was sailing down, graceful but affected. When she tripped, Neil Cotton dashed forward to help her and then everyone laughed and started talking at once, so she forgot her selfconsciousness.

  While I was hurrying into my clothes, behind the sheets, the Cottons explained who they were. They have only been in England a few days. I wondered how it would feel to be Simon-to be arriving by night for the first time, at a great house like Scoatney, knowing it belonged to you. For a second, I seemed to see with his eyes and knew how strange our castle must have looked, suddenly rising from the water-logged English countryside. I imagined him peering in through the window over the sink—as I bet he did before he came back without his brother. I think I got this picture straight from his mind, because just as it came to me, he said:

  “I couldn’t believe this kitchen was real—it was like looking at a woodcut in some old book of fairy tales.”

  I hope he thought Rose looked like a fairy tale princess—she certainly did. And she was so charming, so easy; she kept laughing her pretty laugh. I thought of how different she had been in her black mood not half an hour before, and that made me remember her wishing on the devil-angel. Just then, a queer thing happened. Simon Cotton had seemed about equally fascinated by Rose and the kitchen—he kept turning from one to the other. He had taken out his torch-only he called it a flashlight-to examine the fireplace wall (i was dressed by then) and after he had shone it up at the stone head, he went to the narrow window that looks on to the moat, in the darkest corner of the kitchen. The torch went out and he turned it to see if the bulb had gone. And that second, it came on again. For an instant, the shadow of his head was thrown on the wall and, owing to the pointed heard, it was exactly like the Devil.

  Rose saw it just as I did and gave a gasp.

  He turned to her quickly, but just then Heloise walked through the green sheets and upset a clothes-horse, which created a diversion.

  I helped it on by calling, “Hcl, Hcl,” and explaining Heloise was sometimes called that for short—which went well, though a worn-out joke to the Mortmain family. But I couldn’t forget the shadow. It is nonsense, of course—I never saw anyone with kinder eyes.

  But Rose is very superstitious. I wonder if the younger brother has any money. He was as nice to Rose as Simon Cotton was. And quite a bit nice to There was one
dramatic moment when Simon asked me if we owned the castle and I answered: “No—you do!”

  I hastily added that we had nearly thirty years of our lease to run.

  I wonder if leases count if you don’t pay the rent. I did not, of course, mention the rent. I felt it might be damping.

  After we had all been talking for twenty minutes or so, Topaz came down wearing her old tweed coat and skirt.

  She rarely wears tweeds even in the daytime and never, never in the evening-they make her look dreary, just washed-out instead of excitingly white so I was most astonished; particularly as the door of her room was slightly open and she must have known who had arrived.

  I have refrained from asking her why she made the worst of herself. Perhaps she thought the tweeds would give our family a county air.

  We introduced the Cottons and she talked a little but seemed very subdued—what was the matter with her last night? After a few minutes she began to make cocoa—there was no other drink to offer except water; I had even used the last of the tea for Thomas and very dusty it was.

  We never rise to cocoa in the evening unless it is a special occasion -like someone being ill, or to make up a family row-and I hated to think that Thomas and Stephen seemed likely to miss it; they were still away getting horses from Four Stones to pull the car out.

  I felt, too, that Father ought to be in on any form of nourishment that was loose in the house, but I knew it was useless to ask him to come and meet strangers—I was afraid that even if he came down for a biscuit, he would hear voices when he got as far as his bedroom and turn back. Suddenly, the back door burst open and in he came—it had started to rain heavily again and it is quicker to rush across the courtyard than go carefully along the top of the walls. He was freely damning the weather and the fact that his oil-stove had begun to smoke, and as he had his rug over his head, he didn’t see the Cottons until he was right in the midst of things.