I Capture the Castle (23 page)

He was looking straight at her as he said it and I saw her return the look. But it wasn’t like that time at the Scoatney dinner table-her eyes weren’t flirtatious; just for an instant they were wide and defenseless, almost appealing. Then she smiled very sweetly and sad: “Thank you, Simon.”

“Time to pack up,” said Neil.

It flashed through my mind that he had felt it was an important moment, just as I had, and didn’t want to prolong it. After that, he was as off-hand to Rose as ever and she just ignored him.

It was sad, when they had been so friendly all day.

Neil had driven coming out, so Simon drove going home, with Rose at the front beside him. I didn’t hear them talking much; Simon is a very careful driver and the winding lanes worry him. It was fun at the back with Neil. He told me lots of interesting things about life in America—they do seem to have a good time there, especially the girls.

“Do Rose and I seem very formal and conventional, compared with American girls?” I asked.

“Well, hardly conventional,” he said, laughing, “even madam with her airs isn’t that,”—he jerked his head towards Rose.

“No, I’d never call any of your family conventional, but—oh, I guess there’s formality in the air here, even the villagers are formal; even you are, in spite of being so cute.”

I asked him just what he meant by “formality.”

He found difficulty in putting it into words, but I gather it includes reserve and “a sort of tightness.”

“Not that it matters, of course,” he added, hastily.

“English people are swell.”

That was so like Neil—he will joke about England, but he is always most anxious not really to hurt English feelings.

After that, we talked about America again and he told me of a three-thousand-mile car-drive he made from California to New York.

He described how he would arrive in some little town at sunset, coming in through residential quarters, where there were big trees and green lawns with no fences round them and people sitting on their porches with lighted windows behind them; and then drive through the main street with the shops lit up and the neon signs brilliant against the deep blue sky-I must say I never thought of neon lighting as romantic before but he made it sound so. The hotels must be wonderful, even in quite small towns there is generally one where most of the bedrooms have a private bath; and you get splendid food in places called Coffee Shops. Then he told me about the scenery in the different States he passed through —the orange groves in California, the cactus in the desert, the hugeness of Texas, the old towns in the South where queer gray moss hangs from the trees— I particularly liked the sound of that.

He drove from summer weather to winter—from orange blossom in California to a blizzard in New York.

He said a trip like that gives you the whole feel of America marvelously—and even to hear him describe it made America more real for me than anything I have read about it or seen on the pictures. It was still so vivid for him that though each time we drove through a beautiful village he would say “Yes, very pretty,” I could tell he was still seeing America. I told him I was trying to see it too; if one can sometimes get flashes of other people’s thoughts by telepathy, one ought to be able to see what their minds’ eyes are seeing.

“Let’s concentrate on it,” he said, and took my hand under the rug. We shut our eyes and concentrated hard. I think the pictures I saw were just my imaginings of what he had described, but I did get the strangest feeling of space and freedom—so that when I opened my eyes, the fields and hedges and even the sky seemed so close that they were almost pressing on me. Neil looked quite startled when I told him; he said that was how he felt most of the time in England.

Even when we stopped concentrating he went on holding my hand, but I don’t think it meant anything; I rather fancy it is an American habit. On the whole, it felt just friendly and comfortable, though it did occasionally give me an odd flutter round the shoulders.

It was dark when we got to the castle. We asked them in, but they were expecting Mrs. Cotton to arrive that evening and had to get back.

Father came home while I was describing our day to Topaz. (not one word did he say about what he had been doing in London.) He had travelled on the same train as Mrs.

Cotton and asked her to dinner on the next Saturday-with Simon and Neil, of course. For once, Topaz really got angry.

“Mortmain, how could you?” she simply shouted at him.

“What are we to give them—and what on? You know we haven’t a stick of dining-room furniture.”

“Oh, give them ham and eggs in the kitchen,” said Father, “they won’t mind. And they’ve certainly provided enough ham.”

We stared at him in utter despair. It was a good thing Rose wasn’t there because I really think she might have struck him, he looked so maddeningly arrogant. Suddenly he deflated.

“I—just felt I had to—” all the bravado had gone out of his voice.

“She invited us to dine at Scoatney again next week and My God, I think my brain’s going—I actually forgot about the dining-room furniture. Can’t you rig something up?”

He looked pleadingly at Topaz. I can’t stand it when he goes humble—it is like seeing a lion sitting up begging (not that I ever did see one). Topaz rose to the occasion magnificently.

“Don’t worry, we’ll manage. It’s fun, in a way—a sort of challenge-was she tried to use her most soothing contralto, but it broke a bit. I felt like hugging her. “Let’s just look at the dining-room,” she whispered to me, while Father was eating his supper. So we took candles and went along.

I can’t think what she hoped for, but anyhow we didn’t find it-we didn’t find anything but space. Even the carpet was sold with the furniture.

We went into the drawing-room.

“The top of the grand piano would be original,” said Topaz.

“With Father carving on the keys?”

“Could we sit on the floor, on cushions? We certainly haven’t enough chairs.”

“We haven’t enough cushions, either. All we really have enough of is floor.”

We laughed until the candle wax ran down on to our hands.

After that we felt better.

In the end, Topaz got Stephen to take the hen-house door off its hinges and make some rough trestles to put it on, and we pushed it close to the window-seat, which saved us three chairs.

We used the gray brocade curtains from the hall as a tablecloth—they looked magnificent, though the join showed a bit and they got in the way of our feet. All our silver and good china and glass went long ago, but the Vicar lent us his, including his silver candelabra. Of course we asked him to dinner too, and he came early and sat in the kitchen giving his possessions a final polish while we got dressed. (rose wore Topaz’s black dress; we had found it didn’t look a bit conventional on Rose—it suited her wonderfully.) Our dinner menu was:

Clear soup (made from half the second ham-bone) Boiled chicken and ham Peaches and cream (the Cottons sent the peaches—just in time) Savory: Devilled ham mousse Topaz cooked it all and Ivy Stebbins brought it in; Stephen and Thomas helped her in the kitchen. Nothing unfortunate happened except that Ivy kept staring at Simon’s beard.

She told me afterwards that it gave her the creeps.

Mrs. Cotton was as talkative as ever but very nice—so easy; I think it was really she who made us feel the dinner was a success.

Americans are wonderfully adaptable—Neil and Simon helped with the washing-up. (they call it “doing the dishes.”) I rather wished they hadn’t insisted, because the kitchen looked so very un-American. It was wildly untidy and Thomas had put all the plates on the floor for Heloise and Abelard to lick—very wrong indeed, because chicken-bones are dangerous to animals.

Ivy washed and we all dried. Then Stephen took Ivy home. She is the same age as I am but very big and handsome. She obviously has her eye on Stephen—I hadn’t realized that before, I suppose it would be an excellent thing for him if he married her, because she is the Stebbins’s only child and will inherit the farm. I wondered if he would kiss her on the way home. I wondered if he had ever kissed any girl. Part of my mind went with him through the dark fields, but most of it stayed with the Cottons in the kitchen. Neil was sitting on the table, stroking About into a coma of bliss; Simon was wandering round examining things. Suddenly the memory of that first time they came here flashed back to me. I hoped Rose had forgotten Simon’s shadow looking like the Devil-I had almost forgotten it myself. There surely never was a more un-devilish man.

Soon after that we were into the exciting part of the evening. It began when Simon asked if they might see over the castle; I had guessed he would and made sure that the bedrooms were tidy.

“Light the lantern, Thomas, then we can go up on the walls,” I said—I felt the more romantic I could make it, the better for Rose.

“We’ll start from the hall.”

We went through the drawing-room where the others were talking-that is, Father and Mrs. Cotton were.

Topaz was just listening and the Vicar opened his eyes so wide when we went in that I suspected he had been dozing. He looked as if he rather fancied joining us but I was careful to give him no encouragement. I was hoping to thin our party out, not thicken it up.

“The gatehouse first,” said Rose when we got to the hall—and swept through the front door so fast that I saw she meant to skip the dining-room. Personally, I thought pure emptiness would have been more distinguished than our bedroom furniture.

Little did I know how grateful Rose was to be to the humblest piece of it!

As we walked through the courtyard garden, Simon looked up at the mound.

“How tall and black Belmotte Tower is against the starry sky,” he said. I could see he was working himself into a splendidly romantic mood. It was a lovely night with a warm, gentle little breeze —oh, a most excellently helpful sort of night.

I never mount to the top of the gatehouse tower without recalling that first climb, the day we discovered the castle, when Rose kept butting into me from behind. Remembering that, remembering us as children, made me feel extra fond of her and extra determined to do my best for her. All the time we were following the lantern and Simon was marveling that the heavy stone steps could curve so gracefully, I was willing him to be attracted by her. “This is amazing,” he said as he stepped out at the top. I had never before been up there at night, and it really was rather exciting-not that we could see anything except the stars and a few lights twinkling at Godsend and over at Four Stones Farm. It was the feel that was exciting—as if the night had drawn closer to us.

Thomas set the lantern high on the battlements so that it shone on Rose’s hair and face; the rest of her merged into the darkness because of the black dress. The soft wind blew her little chiffon shoulder cape across Simon’s face.

“That felt like the wings of night,” he said, laughing. It was fascinating watching his head next to hers in the lantern light-his so dark and hers so glowing.

I tried and tried to think of some way of leaving them by themselves up there, but there are limits to human invention.

After a few minutes, we went down far enough to get out on the top of the walls. It took quite a while to walk along them because Neil wanted to know all about defending castles-he was particularly taken with the idea of a trebuchet slinging a dead horse over the walls. Rose tripped over her dress almost the first minute and after that Simon kept tight hold of her arm, so the time wasn’t wasted; he didn’t let go until we stepped into the bathroom tower.

We left Thomas to show the bathroom-I heard Neil roaring with laughter at Windsor Castle. Rose and I ran on to the bed room and lit the candles.

“Isn’t there some way you can leave us alone together?” she whispered.

I told her I had been hoping to, ever since dinner.

“But it’s very difficult. Can’t you just lag somewhere?”

She said she had lagged on the top of the gatehouse tower, but Simon hadn’t lagged too.

“He just said “Wait a minute with that lantern, Thomas, or Rose won’t be able to see.” And down I had to “Don’t worry—I swear I’ll manage something,” I told her.

We heard them crossing the landing.

“Who sleeps in the four-poster?” asked Simon, as they came in.

“Rose,” I said quickly—it happened to be my week for it, but I felt it was more romantic than the iron bedstead for him to picture her in. Then he opened the door to our tower and was very tickled to see Rose’s pink evening dress hanging in it—she keeps it there because the frills would get crushed in the wardrobe.

“Fancy hanging one’s clothes in a six-hundred-year-old tower!” he said.

Neil put his arm around Miss Blossom and said she was just his type of girl, then knelt on the window-seat to look down at the moat.

Inspiration came to me.

“How’d you like to bathe?” I asked him.

“Love it,” he said instantly.

“What, bathe tonight?”—Thomas simply goggled at me.

“Yes, it’ll be fun.” Thank goodness, he caught the ghost of a wink I flickered at him, and stopped goggling.

“Lend Neil your bathing shorts—I’m afraid there’s only one pair, Simon, but you could have them afterwards. Rose mustn’t bathe because she gets chills so easily.” (heaven forgive me! Rose is as strong as a horse—I am the one who gets chills.) “We’ll watch from the window,” said Simon.

I unearthed my bathing-suit, then ran after Thomas who was yelling from his room that he couldn’t find the shorts—for an awful moment I feared he had left them at school.

“What’s the game?” he whispered.

“Don’t you know the water’ll be icy?”

I did indeed. We never bathe in the moat until July or August and even then we usually regret it. “I’ll explain later,” I told him.

“Don’t you dare put Neil off.” I found the shorts at last—they were helping to stop up Thomas’s draughty chimney; luckily they are black.

“You’d better change in the bathroom,” I called to Neil, “and go down the tower steps. You show him, Thomas, and then stay and light us with your lantern. I’ll meet you at the moat, Neil.”