I Capture the Castle (13 page)

“That’s your fault,” I said to Neil Cotton, “you’ve made me the laughing.

stock of the neighborhood.” And he said “Waitbe quiet”—and then he told them to pretend there really had been a bear, as I told you.”

“Don’t you think it was wonderfully kind of him?” I asked.

She said: “Yes, in a way,” then stopped, and I knew she was trying to work out something in her mind. At last she went on: “But it’s all part of his not taking us seriously-not just us, but England generally. He wouldn’t have dared to pretend anything so silly in America, I bet. He thinks England’s a joke, a funny sort of toy-toy trains, toy countryside. I could tell that by the way he talked coming home in the car.”

I knew what she meant—I had felt it a bit that night they first came to the castle; not with Simon, though. And I am sure Neil doesn’t mean it unkindly.

I asked what the Mother was like.

“Beautiful, and never stops talking. Father’ll want to brain her with a brick.”

“If he ever meets her.”

“He’ll meet her all right. We shall be seeing quite a lot of the Cottons now.”

Her tone was so confident—almost arrogant—that I was frightened for her.

“Oh, Rose, don’t be silly with them this time!”-I had said it before I could stop myself.

She simply pounced on it.

“What do you mean’ silly his Did Topaz say I was?”

I said I was merely guessing, but she wouldn’t leave it at that. She battered at me with questions. What with wanting to defend Topaz and being very tired, I wasn’t as strong-minded as I ought to have been-and Topaz had said it might be best to tell if we got another chance with the Cottons. But I felt perfectly dreadful when I had told-mean, both to the Cottons and Rose.

Still, if it does her any good… And I was careful to stress about my being consciously naive. I left out the bit about Father.

She wanted to know which brother had said the worst things. I sorted the remarks out as best I could.

“Well, at least Simon was sorry for me,” she said.

“It was Neil who suggested dropping us. Oh, how I’ll pay them out!”

“Don’t count it against them,” I begged.

“Look how very kind they were tonight. And if you’re sure they want to be friends now” “I’m sure all right.”

“Did they say anything about seeing us again?”

“Never mind what they said.” And then, to my surprise, she started to giggle again—she wouldn’t tell me why. When she stopped, she said she was sleepy.

I tried to keep her talking by being Miss Blossom: “Here, Rosie, have you got something up your sleeve, you naughty girl?”

But she wasn’t having any.

“If I have, it’s staying there,” she said.

“You and Miss Blossom go to sleep.”

But I lay awake for ages, going over it all.

Heavens, Godsend church clock has just struck four-I have been writing up here on the mound for six hours!

Topaz never rang the lunch bell for me; instead, she brought me out some milk and two big cheese sandwiches, and a message from Father that I was to write as long as I liked. It seems selfish when the others are working hard on Aunt Millicent’s clothes, but while we were unpacking them this morning I began to shake again, and when Topaz found out what I felt about them she said I had better write it out of my system. I think I have, because I can now look down on them flapping on the line without any horror-though I don’t feel fond of them yet, as I do of the furs.

Stephen cycled to Scoatney station before he went to work and brought back the bear coat; it was hidden in a ditch.

Father can re member hearing about this coat when he was little. He says most coachmen were lucky if they got a short goatskin cape to wear in the winter; but great-grandmother said that if her husband, who rode inside the carriage, had a beaver-lined coat, the coachman out in the cold ought to be at least as warmly dressed. He was grateful for the bear coat but embarrassed, as little boys used to jeer and ask him to dance. The sealskin jacket was Aunt Millicent’s, in the “nineties, before she turned against furs. Father thinks she kept all these out of family sentiment and perhaps because she was only happy as a child. How queer to think that the old lady in the black military cloak was the Miss Milly who went to the dancing class! It makes me wonder what I shall be like when I am old.

My hand is very tired but I want to go on writing.

I keep resting and thinking. All day I have been two people—the me imprisoned in yesterday and the me out here on the mound; and now there is a third me trying to get in—the me in what is going to happen next. Will the Cottons ask us to Scoatney his Topaz thinks they will.

She says the oddness of the bear incident will fascinate them, just as they were fascinated by the oddness of the first night they came to the castle—and that Rose running away will have undone the damage she did by being too forthcoming. If only she doesn’t forth-come again! Topaz approves of my telling her last night; she had a talk with her herself about it this morning and Rose listened with surprising civility.

“Just be rather quiet and do a lot of listening until you feel at ease,” Topaz advised her.

“And for pity’s sake don’t be challenging. Your looks will do the challenging if you give them the chance.” I do love Topaz when she is in a down-to-earth mood.

Is it awful to join in this planning? Is it trying to sell one’s sister?

But surely Rose can manage to fall in love with them—I mean, with whichever one will fall in love with her. I hope it will be Neil, because I really do think Simon is a little frightening-only it is Neil who thinks England is a joke …… I have been resting, just staring down at the castle. I wish I could find words—serious, beautiful words-to describe it in the afternoon sunlight; the more I strive for them, the more they utterly elude me. How can one capture the pod of light in the courtyard, the golden windows, the strange long-ago look, the look that one sees in old paintings his I can only think of “the light of other days,” and I didn’t make that up …… Oh— I I have just seen the Cottons” car on the Godsend road —near the high crossroads, where one gets the first glimpse of the castle. They are coming here! Do I watch and wait again? No fear!

I am going down.

We are asked to Scoatney, to dinner, a week from today!

And there is something else I want to write about, something belonging to me. Oh, I don’t know where to begin!

I got down from Belmotte in time to warn the others Rose and Topaz were ironing and Rose put on a clean blouse hot from the iron. Topaz just tidied herself and then set the tea tray. I washed and then reckoned I had only enough time either to warn Father or to brush my hair; but I managed to do both by taking the comb and brush to the gatehouse with me. Father jumped up so quickly that I feared he was going to rush out to avoid the Cottons, but he merely grabbed my hairbrush and brushed his coat with it-neither of us felt it was a moment for fussiness.

In the end, we had a few minutes to spare because they left the car at the end of the lane-the mud is dry now but the ruts are still deep.

“Mrs. Cotton’s with them!” I cried, as they came round the last bend of the lane. Father said he would meet them at the gatehouse arch—”It’s not going to be my fault if anything goes wrong this time; I’ve promised Topaz.” Then he looked a bit grim and added:

“I’m glad you’re still on the young side to be marketed.”

I bolted back to Rose and Topaz. They had lit a wood fire in the drawing-room and arranged some daffodils. The fire made the room feel more spring like than ever. We opened the windows and the swans sailed by, looking mildly interested. Suddenly I remembered that first spring afternoon in the drawing-room, with Rose playing her piece. I saw Mother leaning out over the moat—I saw her gray dress so clearly, though I still couldn’t see her face. Something inside me said “Oh, Mother, make the right thing happen for Rose!”—and I had a vision of poor Mother scurrying from Heaven to do the best she could. The way one’s mind can dash about just while one opens a window!

Then Father came in with the Cottons.

Rose thought Mrs. Cotton beautiful but that isn’t how I would describe her. Topaz is beautiful-largely because of the strangeness of her face: that look she has of belonging to a whiter-than-white race. Rose, with her lovely coloring and her eyes that can light up her whole expression, is beautiful. Mrs. Cotton is handsome—no, that makes her sound too big. She is just wonderfully good-looking, wonderfully right-looking. She has exactly the right amount of color. Her black hair is going gray without looking streaky because it has exactly the right number of gray hairs in exactly the right places—and it has exactly the right amount of wave. Her figure is perfect, and so were her clothes—just country tweeds but so much more exciting than I ever thought tweeds could be;

they had clear colors in them, shades of blue which made you notice her eyes. I rather fear that I stared too hard at her —I hope she realized that it was only admiration. As she is Simon Cotton’s Mother she can’t be much less than fifty, which is hard to believe.

Yet now I come to think of it, I can’t imagine her being any younger; it is just that she is a different kind of fifty from any I have ever seen.

She came in talking solidly, and solidly is a very good word to describe it; it made me think of a wall of talk. Fortunately she speaks beautifully—just as Simon does—and she doesn’t in the least mind being interrupted; her sons do it all the time and Father soon acquired the technique—it was him she talked to most. After he had introduced Topaz and me and she had shaken hands with us all, and hoped Rose had recovered from her shock, and said “Will you look at those swans?” -she started on to Jacob Wrestling and how she had heard Father lecture in America. They went on interrupting each other in a perfectly friendly manner, Rose sat on the window seat and talked to Simon, and Topaz and I slipped out to bring the tea in. Neil kindly came after us saying he would carry things.

We stood round the kitchen fire waiting for the kettle to boil.

“Doesn’t your Mother really know Rose was the bear?” I asked.

“Gosh, no-that wouldn’t do at all,” he said, “it isn’t her kind of joke. Anyway, it wouldn’t be fair to your sister.”

I did see that, of course I Mrs. Cotton would have wondered why on earth Rose was running away. (i suppose Neil guesses it was because she felt they had dropped us. Dear me, how embarrassing!) “But I can’t see how anyone could believe that you killed the bear with a pitchfork,” I said.

“I didn’t. I only wounded it-badly, I think, but not enough to put it out of action. It came blundering towards me, I stepped aside and it crashed headfirst into the river-I could hear it threshing about in the darkness. I picked up a big stone-poor brute, I hated to do it but I had to finish it off. It gave just one groan as the stone hit it and then went down. I held the lantern high; I could see the bubbles coming up. And then I saw the dark bulk of it under the water, being carried along by the current.”

“But you didn’t have a lantern,” I said.

“He didn’t have a bear,” said Topaz.

For a moment I had almost believed him myself—and felt most desperately sorry for the bear. No wonder Mrs.

Cotton has been deceived.

“Mother made us go over to compensate the circus owner this morning,” he went on, grinning.

“It’s just a midget of a circus-he didn’t have any bears at all, as a matter of fact; but he said he’d be delighted to back our story up-he hoped it might get him a bit of publicity. I tried to buy one of his lions but he wouldn’t sell.”

“What did you want a lion for?” I asked.

“Oh, they were kind of cute,” he said vaguely. Then the kettle boiled and we took the tea in.

After Neil had helped to hand things round, he went and sat by Rose on the window-seat. And Simon came and talked to Topaz politely. Father and Mrs. Cotton were still interrupting each other happily. It was fascinating to watch them all, but the conversations cancelled each other out so that I couldn’t listen to any of them. I was anxious about Rose. I could see she was letting Neil do most of the talking, which was excellent; but she didn’t seem to be listening to him, which was not so good. She kept leaning out of the window to feed the swans. Neil looked a bit puzzled.

Then I noticed that Simon kept watching her, and after a while she caught his eye and gave him a smile. Neil shot a quick glance at her, then got up and asked Topaz for some more tea (though I noticed he didn’t drink it). Simon went over to Rose. She still didn’t say much, but she looked as if everything he said was terrifically interesting. I caught a word here and there, he was telling her about Scoatney Hall. I heard her say: “No, I’ve never seen the inside.” He said: “But you must, of course. We were hoping you’d dine with us one night next week.” Then he turned to Mrs. Cotton and she invited us. There was an awful moment when I thought I was going to be left out because she said: “Is Cassandra old enough for dinner parties?” but Neil said “You bet she is!” and it was all right.

Oh, I do like Neil! When they went, I walked up the lane with him; Father was with Mrs. Cotton, and Rose with Simon. Neil asked how we would get over to Scoatney and when I said we should have to think that out, he arranged to send the car for us. He is the kindest person -though as we passed the barn I remembered how very far from kind he was about Rose that day. Perhaps one ought never to count things one overhears. Anyway, it was Simon who said I was consciously naive—Neil said I was a cute kid; it’s not exactly the way I see myself, but it was kindly meant.

As we walked back to the castle Father said how nice they all were, then asked if we had dresses for the party. I had been worrying about this myself, but I said:

“Oh, Topaz will manage something.”

“Could anything of Aunt Millicent’s be altered his If not-damn it, there must be something we can sell—” He gave me a humble, appealing sort of look. I put my arm through his and said quickly:

“We’ll be all right.” He looked tentatively at Rose. She was smiling faintly to herself. I don’t think she had heard a word we had said.