I Capture the Castle (26 page)

It was no moment to tell her there is no such word;

anyway, I rather liked it.

“Perhaps Mrs. Cotton will go back to America with Neil,” I suggested comfortingly.

“Not she. She’s taken the flat for three years.

Oh lord, what a fool I am-how can I stop her meeting him, even if I do stay with her his There are thousands of places they can go.

He’ll probably renew his interest in the British Museum.”

I must say it was a bit suspicious—he hadn’t been to London once while Mrs. Cotton was at Scoatney.

“In that case, you might as well go,” I said.

“I mean, it doesn’t matter your motive being to spy, if you know very well that you can’t.” “That’s true.” She heaved a sigh that was almost a groan and sounded very histrionic, then began to pack her shroud like night gowns. Suddenly she strode to the window and stood looking at Father’s light in the gatehouse.

“I wonder!” she said sepulchrally.

I obligingly asked her what.

“If I shall ever come back. I’ve got my crossroads feeling—I’ve only had it three or four times in my life. That night in the Cafe Royal when Everard hit the waiter-was She stopped dead.

“Why did he do that?” I asked with the utmost interest. Everard was her second husband, a fashion artist; her first was called Carlo and had something to do with a circus. Rose and I have always longed to know about them.

It wasn’t any good. She turned a faintly outraged stare on me and murmured foggily: “Let the dead bury their dead.” As far as I know, Everard is alive and kicking and I never have seen how the dead can go burying anyone.

Nothing of great importance to me happened between the night of the engagement and Rose and Topaz going to London. Of course, we went to Scoatney several times but Neil wasn’t there. He went off to see the Derby and other races; it seemed a pity that he had to go to them alone. After thinking about it a lot, I wrote him a little note. I can remember it word for word:

DEAR NEIL,

I am sure you will be glad to know that Rose really is in love with Simon. When I talked to you last, I was afraid she might not be-so you were justified in calling me a liar, but I am not one now. Rose told me herself and she is very truthful. To prove this, I will tell you she admitted most honestly that she would have married him even if she had not been in love. I don’t think I quite believe that, but anyway, please do not count it against her, as she is a girl who finds poverty very hard to bear and she has been bearing it for years. And as she fell in love with him at the psychological moment, everything has come right.

I hope you are having a nice time in London.

With love from your future sister-in-law

CASSANDRA

I thought it would be all right to put “with love” in a relation like way—though I am not quite sure if Rose’s marriage really will make me his sister-in-law. Perhaps I shall only be Simon’s.

I must now go indoors—partly because the sun is too hot and partly so that I can copy in Neil’s reply.

Here I am on the bedroom window-seat with a glass of milk and a now-eaten banana.

Neil wrote back:

DEAR CASSANDRA,

It was nice of you to write that letter and what you say is probably right. I guess I was being unreasonable and certainly very rude. I apologize again.

Mother’s apartment is so full that I have moved to a hotel, so I have not seen much of them all, but I joined them at a theatre last night and everyone seemed very happy. It was an opening night and the photographers made a rush at Mrs. Mortmain, who looked stunning.

I hope I see you before I go back home.

Maybe we can swim the moat again. How are the swans?

I shall be tickled to death to have you for a sister-in-law.

Love from 

NEIL

I wish he weren’t going back to America. He is hoping to get a partnership in a ranch, Simon told me; somewhere in a California desert. Deserts do not seem to be deserted in America. This morning I had a letter from Rose which I will now copy in:

DEAR CASSANDRA:

I am sorry not to have written before but we have been very busy. Getting a trousseau is quite hard work. I think you would be surprised at the way we do it. We hardly go to real shops at all but to large beautiful houses. There are drawing-rooms with crystal chandeliers and little gilt chairs all round and you sit there and watch the manniquins (can’t spell it) walk past in the clothes. You have a card and a pencil to mark down what you like. The prices are fabulous-quite plain dresses cost around twenty-five pounds. My black suit will be thirty-five- more, really, because everything is in guineas, not pounds. At first I had a frightened sort of feeling at so much being spent but now it seems almost natural.

I believe my whole trousseau is to cost up to a thousand pounds-and that will not mean very many things, really, not at the prices we are paying.

But things like fur coats and jewelry will come after I am married.

I already have my engagement ring, of course, a square emerald.

Lovely.

I expect you will wish I would describe everything we have bought but I haven’t the time and I also feel embarrassed at having so much when you have so little. But you are to have a most beautiful bridesmaid’s frock-you are to come up to be fitted for it—and I think the ready-made clothes I am wearing now can be altered for you, once I get my trousseau. And when I am married we will shop like mad for you.

Here is some news that will interest you specially. We dined with the Fox-Cottons and saw Stephen’s photographs and, my dear, he looks like all the Greek gods rolled into one. Leda is sure he could get a job on the pictures, quite seriously. I said it was a scream to think of him acting and she got quite annoyed. You had better look after your property. I’m joking-don’t do anything silly. I intend to find someone really exciting for you.

I don’t like the Fox-Cottons much. Aubrey makes an awful fuss of Topaz—he has taken her out several times. She is a conspicuous person.

She knew some of the manaquins at a dress-show-I could have died. And she knew the photographers at a first-night we went to. Macmorris was there—he looks like a very pale monkey. He wants to paint her again. Her clothes seem wildly eccentric now we are with well-dressed people—it’s funny to think I used quite to envy them.

I thought of you yesterday. I was out by myself and I went into that shop where the furs were stored—the clothes there look stodgy after the ones I’ve been seeing but they do have nice gloves and things. I saw the branch of white coral you lost your heart to, and wondered if I could buy it for you but it is only for display. Then I thought I would buy you a bottle of the scent you said smelt like bluebells but the price is ruinous and I hadn’t enough with me—the only pocket-money I have is what Topaz doles out and she is being remarkably cautious with the beaver coat money, though strictly speaking it is yours and mine. Mrs. Cotton spends the earth on me, of course, but hasn’t offered anything for me to spend myself—perhaps she thinks it wouldn’t be tactful, but it would.

Oh, darling, do you remember how we stood watching the woman buying a whole dozen pairs of silk stockings and you said we were like cats making longing noises for birds? I think it was that moment I decided I would do anything, anything, to stop being so horribly poor.

It was that night we met the Cottons again. Do you believe one can make things happen? I do. I had the same sort of desperate feeling the night I wished on the angel—and look what that did! He is an angel, all right, not a devil. It’s so wonderful that I can be in love with Simon as well as everything else.

Darling Cassandra, I promise you shall never make any more longing cat noises once I am a married woman. And there are other things besides clothes that I can help you with, you know. I have been wondering if you would like to go to college (did you know Thomas is to go to Oxford?) Personally, I think it would be dreary but you might enjoy it as you are so intelligent. My marriage is going to help us all, you know—even Father. Being away from him has made me more tolerant of him. Both Simon and Mrs.

Cotton say he really was a great writer. Anyway, it doesn’t matter any more that he can’t earn any money. Give him my love—and to Thomas and Stephen. I will send them all postcards. This letter is private to you, of course.

I do wish you were here-I miss you at least a hundred times a day.

I felt so sad being in that shop without you. I shall go back and get you that scent when I have extracted more money from Topaz —it’s called “Midsummer Eve” and you shall have it in time for your goings-on on Belmotte.

Heavens, I’m using pages and pages of Mrs. Cotton’s elegant notepaper, but it feels a bit like talking to you. I meant to tell you all about the theatres but I mustn’t start now—it’s later than I thought and I have to dress for dinner.

Love and please write often to your Rose. 

P.s. I have a bathroom all to myself and there are clean peach-colored towels every single day. Whenever I feel lonely, I go and sit in there till I cheer up.

That is the first letter I ever had from her, as we haven’t been separated since we were very small, when Rose had scarlet fever. It doesn’t sound quite like her, somehow—for one thing, it is much more affectionate; I don’t think she has ever called me “darling” before. Perhaps it is because she is missing me. I do call it a sign of a beautiful nature if a girl who is in love and surrounded by all that splendour is lonely for her sister.

Fancy thirty-five guineas for a suit! That is thirty-six pounds fifteen shillings; I do think shops are artful to price things in guineas.

I didn’t know clothes could cost so much—at that rate, Rose is right when she says a thousand pounds won’t buy so very many; not when you think of all the hats and shoes and underclothes. I had imagined Rose having dozens and dozens of dresses—you can get such beauties for two or three pounds each; but perhaps it gives you a glorious, valuable feeling to wear little black suits of fabulous price—like wearing real jewelry. Rose and I always felt superb when we wore our little real old chains with the seed-pearl hearts.

We howled like anything when they had to be sold.

A thousand pounds for clothes—when one thinks how long poor people could live on it! When one thinks how long we could live on it, for that matter! Oddly, I have never thought of us as poor people—I mean, I have never been terribly sorry for us, as for the unemployed or beggars; though really we have been rather worse off, being unemployable and with no one to beg from. I don’t believe I could look a beggar in the face if my trousseau had cost a thousand pounds …… Oh, come, Mrs. Cotton wouldn’t give the thousand pounds to beggars if she didn’t spend it on Rose, so Rose might as well have it. And I shall certainly be delighted to accept clothes from Rose. I ought to be ashamed—being glad the riches won’t be on my conscience, while only too willing to have them on my back.

I meant to copy in a letter from Topaz but it is pinned up in the kitchen, most of it being instructions for cooking—about which I am more ignorant than I had realized. We used to manage quite well when she was away sitting for artists, because in those days we lived mostly on bread, vegetables and eggs; but now that we can afford some meat or even chickens, I keep coming to grief. I scrubbed some rather dirty-looking chops with soap which proved very lingering, and I did not take certain things out of a chicken that I ought to have done.

Even keeping the house clean is more complicated than I expected - I have always helped with it, of course, but never organized it.

I am realizing more and more how hard Topaz worked.

Her letter looks as if it had been written with a stick-she always uses a very thick, orange quill pen. There are six spelling mistakes. After the helpful cooking hints, she mentions the theatre first-night they went to and says the play was not “significant” —a word she has just taken up. Aubrey Fox-Cotton’s architecture is significant, but Leda Fox-Cotton’s photographs are not—Topaz doubts their ultimate motivation. Ultimate with two like’s.

Dear Topaz! Her letter is exactly like her—three quarters practical kindness and one quarter spoof. I hope the spoof means she is feeling happier; there has been less and less of it since she has been worrying about Father.

It must be months since she played her lute or communed with nature.

She finishes by saying she will come home instantly if Father shows signs of missing her. Unfortunately, he doesn’t; and he is far less irritable than when she was here—though not conversational.

We only see each other at meals; the rest of the day he either walks or shuts himself in the gatehouse (when he leaves it, he now locks the door and takes the key). I regret to say that he is rereading Miss Marcy’s entire stock of detective novels.

And he has spent one day in London. While he was gone I told myself it was absurd the way we had all been hypnotized by him not to ask questions, so when he came back I said cheerfully: “How was the British Museum?”

“Oh, I haven’t been there,” he answered, quite pleasantly.

“Today I went to was He broke off, suddenly staring at me as if I were some dangerous animal he had only just noticed;

then he walked out of the room. I longed to call after him: “Father, really! Are you going queer in the head?” But it struck me that if a man is going queer in the head, he is the last person to mention it to.

That sentence has brought me up with a bang. Do I really believe my Father is going insane his No, of course not. I even have a faint, glorious hope that he may be working—he has twice asked for ink. But it is slightly peculiar that he took my colored chalks-what was left of them—and an ancient volume of Little Follggness;

also that he went for a walk carrying an out-of-date Bradshaw railway guide. His manner is usually normal. And he has been most civil about my cooking—which is certainly a sign of control.

How arrogant I used to be! I remember writing in this journal that I would capture Father later—I meant to do a brilliant character sketch. Capture Father! Why, I don’t know anything about anyone! I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that even Thomas is living a double life—though he does seem all homework and appetite. One nice thing is being able to give him enough to eat at last; I crowd food on to his plate.