I Capture the Castle (40 page)

“But she’s bad, really. Lots of women are.”

I said: “Sometimes we’re bad without meaning to be.”

And then I asked him if he could ever forgive me for letting him kiss me, when I knew I was in love with someone else.

“Oh, Stephen, that was bad! And I let you go on thinking I might get to love you.”

“I only did for a day or two—I soon saw I was making a fool of myself. But I couldn’t make it out—why you ever let me, I mean. I understand now. Things like that happen when you’re in love with the wrong person. Worse things. Things you never forgive yourself for.” He was staring straight ahead of him, looking utterly wretched.

I said:

“Are you miserable because you made love to Leda Fox-Cotton his It was her fault, wasn’t it his You don’t need to blame yourself.”

“I’ll blame myself as long as I live,” he said, then suddenly turned to me.

“It’s you I love and always will. Oh, Cassandra, are you sure you couldn’t ever get to care for me his You liked it when I kissed you—well, you seemed to. If we could get married his The glow from the sunrise was on his face, the breeze was blowing his thick fair hair. He looked desperate and magnificent, more wonderful even than in any of Leda’s photographs of him. The vague expression was gone from his eyes—I had a feeling it had gone for ever.

“I’d work for you, Cassandra. If I’m any good at acting perhaps we could live in London, a long way from—the others. Couldn’t I help you through, somehow—when Simon’s married to Rose?”

When he said Simon’s name, I saw Simon’s face. I saw it as it had looked in the corridor off the ballroom, tired and rather pale.

I saw the black hair growing in a peak on his forehead, the eyebrows going up at the corners, the little lines at the sides of his mouth. When first he shaved his beard I thought he was quite handsome, but that was only because he looked so much younger and so much less odd; I know now that he isn’t handsome-compared with Stephen’s, his looks aren’t anything at all.

And yet as my eyes turned to Stephen facing the sunrise, Simon in the darkness of my mind, it was as if Simon’s had the living face and Stephen’s the one I was imagining —or a photograph, a painting, something beautiful but not really alive for me.

My whole heart was so full of Simon that even my pity for Stephen wasn’t quite real—it was only something I felt I ought to feel;

more from my head than my heart. And I knew I ought to pity him all the more because I could pity him so little. I cried out: “Oh, please, please stop! I’m so fond of you—and so deeply grateful. But I could never marry you.

Oh, Stephen, dear I’m so very sorry.”

“That’s all right,” he said, staring in front of him again.

“Well, at least we’re companions in misfortune,” I said.

Then Heloise stood up and put her front paws on the parapet, between us, and my tears dropped down and made gray spots on her gleaming white head.

XVI am writing this at Father’s desk in the gatehouse. If it were the King’s desk in Buckingham Palace I could not be more surprised.

It is now half-past nine in the evening. (this time last week I was talking to Simon in that corridor off the ballroom—it feels like years and years ago.) I mean to work at this journal until I wake Thomas at two o’clock. Last night he kept this watch and I took the second one. And very dreadful I felt during most of it. I am less upset tonight, but still get nervous sinkings in my stomach every now and then. Oh, have we accomplished a miracle-or done something so terrible that I daren face thinking about it his I never finished my last entry—the memory of my tears falling on Heloise so flooded me with self-pity that I couldn’t go on. But there wasn’t much more to say about the trip to London. We came back on the first train. I slept most of the way, and slept again when we got home.

It was the middle of the afternoon when I woke up—to find myself alone in the castle; Stephen had gone over to Four Stones, Father was at Scoatney and Thomas was spending the weekend with his friend Harry. Stephen came home around nine o’clock and went to bed without disturbing me—I was up in the attic writing this journal. As I heard him crossing the courtyard I wondered if I ought to go down and talk to him, but I felt there was nothing helpful I could say. Later on, I thought I would at least make him some cocoa and chat about his film job, but by the time I got to the kitchen the light in his room was out.

He went back to London early on Monday morning, with his will you?”

“I won’t be coming back,” he said, quietly, “even if I’m no good as an actor. No, I won’t come back.”

I said of course he would, but he shook his head.

Then he gave one last look round the room. The photographs of me and his Mother were gone. The bed was stripped and the one blanket neatly folded.

“I’ve swept the room out so that you won’t have anything extra to do,” he said.

“You can shut this place up and forget it. I gave Mr. Mortmain his books back before he went off to Scoatney. I’ll miss having books.”

“But you can buy them for yourself now,” I told him.

He said he hadn’t thought of that—”I don’t seem able to take in the money part, somehow.”

“Mind you save—just in case,” I warned him.

He nodded and said he’d probably soon be feeding pigs again.

Then we heard Mr. Stebbins hooting his horn. I said: “I’ll see you off but let’s say a private good-bye here.” I held out my hand, but added: “Please kiss me if you’d like to—I’d like it if you would.”

For a second I thought he was going to; then he shook his head and barely clasped my hand. I tried to help him carry the little sea-chest but he hoisted it up on his shoulder. We went out to the car. Heloise was there, investigating the wheels, and after Stephen had strapped the chest on to the luggage-carrier he stooped and kissed her on the head. He never looked back once as they drove along the lane.

While I was washing up the breakfast things, I realized that I had no idea where he would be staying. Would he go back to the Fox-Cottons? I suppose Rose will know.

(i wrote to her that morning, saying I had been in the wrong and asking her to forgive me. I must say she took her time about answering; but this after noon I had a telegram from her which said she would write when she could, and would I please try to understand. She didn’t put in anything about forgiving me, but as it was signed “your ever loving Rose” I suppose she has.) I worked on my journal most of Monday, finishing in floods of tears too late to get my face right before Thomas came home. He said: “You’ve been howling, haven’t you? I suppose the castle’s depressing after being in London”—which made things nice and easy for me. I said yes, that was it, and that it had been sad seeing Stephen go and wondering what would happen to him.

“I wouldn’t worry about Stephen,” said Thomas.

“He’s sure to be a riot on the pictures. All the girls in the village are in love with him—they used to hang about on the Godsend road trying to waylay him. One of these days you’re going to find out what you’ve missed.”

I started to get tea; Thomas had brought a haddock.

“Father’ll get tea at Scoatney, so we needn’t wait,” I said.

“The servants must be tired of feeding him,” said Thomas.

“What does he do there, day after day? Does he just read for the fun of it, or is he up to something?”

“Ah, if we only knew that,” I said.

“Harry says he ought to be psychoanalyzed.”

I turned in astonishment.

“Does Harry know about psychoanalysis?”

“His Father talks about it sometimes—he’s a doctor, you know.”

“Does he believe in it?”

“No, he’s always very sneery. But Harry rather fancies it.”

I had to concentrate on cooking the haddock then; but while we were eating it I brought up the subject of psychoanalysis again, and told Thomas of the conversation Simon and I had about it that first time we talked on the mound-though I couldn’t remember it very clearly.

“I wish I’d got Simon to tell me more,” I said.

“Would Harry’s Father have any helpful books, do you think?”

Thomas said he would find out, though that now Rose was going to marry Simon, it didn’t matter so much whether Father wrote or not.

“Oh, Thomas, it does!” I cried.

“It matters most terribly to Father.

And to us, too-because if all the eccentric things he’s been doing, on and off for months now, aren’t leading somewhere, well, then he is going crazy. And a crazy Father’s not a good idea, quite apart from our tender feelings towards him.”

“Have you tender feelings towards him his I don’t know that I have —not that I dislike him.” Just then, Father came in. He barely said “Hello” in answer to mine and started up the kitchen stairs to his bedroom.

Half-way up, he stopped and looked down at us; then came back quickly.

“Can you spare me this?” he asked, picking up the backbone of the haddock between his forefinger and thumb.

I thought he was being sarcastic-that he meant we had left him no fish. I explained that we hadn’t expected him, and offered to cook some eggs at once.

He said: “Oh, I’ve had tea,” and then carried the haddock-bone, dripping milk, out through the back door and across to the gatehouse.

About followed him hopefully. By the time he got back-a very disappointed cat-Thomas and I were lurching about, laughing in a way that hurts.

“Oh, poor About!” I gasped, as I gave him some scraps from my plate.

“Stop laughing, Thomas. We shall be ashamed of our callousness if Father really is going off his head.”

“He isn’t -he’s putting it on or something,” said Thomas. Then a scared look came into his eyes and he added:

“Try to keep knives away from him. I’m going to talk to Harry’s father tomorrow.”

But Harry’s Father wasn’t in the least helpful.

“He says he’s not a psychoanalyst or a psychiatrist or a psycho-anything, thank God,” Thomas told me, when he got back in the evening.

“And he couldn’t think why we wanted to make Father write again, because he once had a look at Jacob Wrestling and didn’t understand a word of it. Harry was quite embarrassed.”

“Does Harry understand it, then?”

“Yes, of course he does—it’s the first I’ve heard about its being hard to understand. Anyway, what’s double-Dutch to one generation’s just “The cat sat on the mat” to the next.”

“Even the ladder chapter?”

“Oh, that!” Thomas smiled tolerantly. “That’s just Father’s fun.

And who says you always have to understand things his You can like them without understanding them—like “em better sometimes. I ought to have known Harry’s Father would be no help to us-he’s the kind of man who says he enjoys a good yarn.”

I certainly have been underestimating Thomas—only a few weeks ago I should have expected him to enjoy a good yarn himself.

And now I find he has read quite a lot of difficult modern poetry (some master at his school lent it to him) and taken it in his stride.

I wish he had let me read it—though I know very well I can’t like things without understanding them. I am astonished to discover how high-brow his tastes are—far more so than mine; and it is most peculiar how he can be so appreciative of all forms of art, but so matter-of-fact and unemotional about it. But then, he is like that over most things he has been so calm and assured this last week that I often felt he was older than I was. Yet he can get the giggles and plunge back into being the most ordinary schoolboy.

Really, the puzzling ness of people!

After we talked about Harry’s Father, Thomas settled down to his homework and I wandered out into the lane. There was a vast red sunset full of strangely shaped, prophetic-looking clouds, and a hot due-south wind was blowing—an exciting sort of wind, I always think; we don’t often get it. But I was too depressed to take much interest in the evening. All day long I had been hopeful about psychoanalysis; I had expected Thomas to bring home some books we could get our teeth into. And I hadn’t only been thinking of Father’s welfare. Early that morning it had struck me that if he started writing again, Rose might believe there would be enough money coming in to make life bearable, and still might break her engagement off. I wasn’t banking on winning Simon even if she gave him up. But I knew, and shall always know, that he ought not to marry a girl who feels towards him as Rose does.

I went to the end of the lane and turned on to the Godsend road, trying all the time to think of some way of helping both Father and myself. When I came to the high part of the road I looked back and saw his lamp alight in the gatehouse. I thought how often I had seen it shining across the fields on my summer evening walks, and how it always conjured up an image of him-remote, withdrawn, unapproachable. I said to myself, “Surely one ought to know a little more of one’s father than we do?” And as I began walking back to the castle I wondered if the fault could be ours, as well as his. Had I myself really tried to make friends with him his I was sure I had in the past—but had I lately?

No. I excused myself by thinking: “Oh, it’s hopeless to make friends with people who never talk about themselves.” And then it came to me that one of the few things I do know about psychoanalysis is that people have to be made to talk about themselves. Had I tried hard enough with Father—hadn’t I always been rebuffed too easily his “Are you frightened of him?” I asked myself. I knew in my heart that I was. But why his “Has he ever in his life struck any of you?” Never. His only weapon has been silence—and sometimes a little sarcasm.

“Then what is this insurmountable barrier round him? What’s it made of?

Where did it come from?”

It had become as if someone outside myself were asking the questions, attacking me with them. I tried to find answers. I wondered if Mother’s training that we must never worry or disturb him had gone on operating-and Topaz had perpetuated it by her habit of protecting him. I wondered if I had some undetected fear left from the day when I saw him brandishing the cake-knife —if I believed, without ever having admitted, it, that he really did mean to stab Mother.

“Heavens,” I thought, “I’m psychoanalyzing myself, now! If only I could do this to Father!”