I Capture the Castle (42 page)

He lifted up the American papers and dived under to the shelf holding his old detective novels, grabbing one quite at random. Then he put the lamp out. Just as we went out of the room, Mother’s little clock began to strike nine. Even after Father had locked the door and we were groping our way down the pitch-black stairs, I could hear the tiny, tinkling chimes.

“I must remember to carry matches,” he said, “now there’s no Stephen to leave a lamp outside my door.”

I said I would see to it in future. There was no lantern in the gatehouse passage, either—another of Stephen’s jobs; all the time I find out more and more things he did without my ever realizing it.

“Let me make you some cocoa, Father,” I suggested as we went into the kitchen, but he said he didn’t need anything— “Except a biscuit, perhaps—and find me a candle with at least three hours’ reading in it.” I gave him a whole plate of biscuits and a new candle.

“The richness of our life these days never ceases to astonish me,” he said as he went up to bed.

Thomas was deep in his homework, at the kitchen table. I waited until I heard Father go through to Windsor Castle, then said quietly: “Come on out, I’ve got to talk to you. Bring a lantern so that we can go into the lane-I don’t want Father to hear our voices through some open window.”

We went as far as the stile, and sat on it with the lantern balanced between us. Then I told him everything except my true reason for bearding Father; I said it was due to a sudden impulse.

“Well, how does it sound to you?” I finished up.

“Perfectly awful,” said Thomas.

“I’m afraid he really is going crazy.”

I was taken aback.

“Then I’ve made him sound worse than he seemed—through telling it too quickly.

It was only at the very end that his manner was odd—and a bit, perhaps, when he was talking to himself, about whales and mammoths.”

“But all those changes of manner—being furious with you one minute and then really pleasant. And when you add up all the silly things he’s been interested in lately-oh, lord, when I think of him taking that haddock-bone” He began to laugh.

I said, “Don’t, Thomas—it’s like people in the eighteenth century laughing at the lunatics in Bedlam.”

“Well, I bet I’d have laughed at them myself-things can be funny even when they’re awful, you know. But, I wonder”—he was suddenly serious” are we like Harry’s Father jeering at Jacob Wrestling? Perhaps he really has something up his sleeve. Though I don’t like the sound of all those lists he’s making it’s like taking too many notes at school; you feel you’ve achieved something when you haven’t.”

“You mean he may never get going on the book itself.” I was quiet for a minute, staring into the lantern, though what I saw all the time was Father’s face when he was looking humble and nervous.

“Oh, Thomas, if he doesn’t, I think he will go out of his mind. He said he wasn’t serious about plunging into insanity, but I believe I felt he was. He may be a borderline case—madness and genius are very dose to each other, aren’t they his If only we could push him the right way!”

“Well, you haven’t made much of a start tonight,” said Thomas, “you’ve just driven him to bed with a detective novel. Anyway, I’m going in. Whether Father’s sane or off his rocker, I’ve still got to do my algebra.”

“You can make him it, the unknown quantity,” I said.

“I think I shall stay here for a while. Can you manage without the lantern?”

He said he could—there was quite a bit of starlight.

“Though it won’t do you any good to sit here brooding,” he added.

But I didn’t plan to brood. I had decided to look up the record of my talk with Simon about psychoanalysis, on the off chance of finding something helpful; and I had no intention of letting Thomas know where my journal was hidden. I waited until I felt sure he would be back in the castle, then cut across the meadow and climbed the mound. A little cloud of white moths came all the way with me, hovering round the lantern.

It felt strange going from the warm, blowy night into the cool stillness of Belmotte Tower. As I climbed down the ladder inside I thought of being there with Simon on Midsummer Eve—as I do every time I go into the tower. Then I pulled myself together.

“This may be your last hope of keeping your Father out of a padded cell,” I told myself severely. And by then a faint flicker of hope on my own account had re-awakened. I felt that if I once got him even started on an important book, Rose just might be persuaded to postpone her marriage—and then anything might happen.

I crawled up the crumbling staircase and brought down my bread-tin—I have used that for some time now, because ants kept getting into the attache case. I spread my three journals out on the old iron bedstead and sat there looking through them; I could read quite well by the light from the lantern. It didn’t take me long to find the entry for May Day, with the bit about psychoanalysis.

First came the speech in which Simon said he didn’t believe Father stopped writing just because he had been in prison—that the trouble probably lay much further back. But prison might have brought it to the surface. Anyway, a psychoanalyst would certainly ask Father questions about the time he spent there—in a way, try to put him mentally back in prison. And then there was the bit about it being possible that another period of physical imprisonment might resolve the trouble. But Simon said that was unworkable as a treatment, because it couldn’t be done without Father’s consent-and if he gave it, of course he wouldn’t feel imprisoned. There didn’t seem to be anything I could do along those lines.

I glanced through another page in case I had missed something, and came to the description of Simon’s face as he lay on the grass with his eyes closed. It gave me a stab in which happiness and misery were somehow a part of each other. I closed the journal and sat staring up into the dark shaft of the tower. And then I Suddenly the whole plan was complete in my mind almost to the last detail. But surely I meant it as a joke then?

I remember thinking how it would make Thomas laugh. It was still a joke while I put my journals away and began to climb out of the tower-I had to mount the ladder very slowly because I needed one hand for the lantern. I was half-way up when the extraordinary thing happened. Godsend church clock had begun to strike ten and suddenly, as well as the far-off booming bell, I heard in memory the tinkling chime of Mother’s little traveling clock.

And then my mind’s eye saw her face—not the photograph of it, which is what I always see when I think of her, but her face as it was. I saw her light brown hair and freckled skin—I had forgotten until then that she had freckles. And that same instant, I heard her voice in my head—after all these years of not being able to hear it.

A quiet, clipped little voice it was, completely matter-of-fact. It said: “Do you know, dear, I believe that scheme of yours might work quite well?”

I heard my own voice answer: “But Mother-surely we couldn’t his It’s fantastic—”

“Well, your Father’s quite a fantastic man,” said Mother’s voice.

That second, a gust of wind slammed the tower door just above me, startling me so that I nearly lost my footing on the ladder. I steadied myself, then listened again for Mother’s voice, asked her questions. All I heard was the last stroke of the church clock. But my mind was made up.

I hurried back to the castle and got Thomas to come out again.

To my surprise, he didn’t think my plan was as wild as I did myself-he was dead keen from the beginning, and most businesslike.

“You give me the housekeeping money and tomorrow I’ll buy everything we need,” he said.

“And then we’ll do it the very next day. We’ve got to act quickly, because Topaz may be home next week.”

I didn’t mention my strange experience of being advised by Mother; I might have if he had put up any opposition to the scheme, but he never did. Do I really believe I was in touch with Mother-or was it something deep in myself choosing that way to advise me his I don’t know. I only know that it happened.

Father went to Scoatney the next morning, so there was no danger of his seeing what I was up to.

By the time Thomas came home I had everything in readiness except for the few things that were too heavy for me to carry alone. He helped me with those and then we made our final plans.

“And we must do it the first thing after breakfast,” said Thomas, “or he may go off to Scoatney again.”

The minute I woke up on Thursday morning I thought: “I can’t go through with it. It’s dangerous-something dreadful might happen.” And then I remembered Father saying that if he didn’t start work soon the impetus might die. All the time I was dressing I kept thinking, “Oh, if only I could be sure it’s the right thing to do!” I tried to get more advice from Mother. Nothing happened.

I tried praying to God. Nothing happened. I prayed to “Any one who is listening, please”—to the morning sun—to Nature, via the wheat field… At last I decided to toss for it.

And just then Thomas came rushing in to say that Father wasn’t waiting until after breakfast, would be off to Scoatney at any minute-and instantly I knew that I did want to carry through our scheme, that I couldn’t bear not to.

The squeak of bicycle tires being pumped up came in through the open window.

“It’s too late. We’re sunk for today,” said Thomas.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Get out of the house without letting him see you —go along the walls and down the gatehouse stairs.

Then dash up the mound and hide behind the tower. Be ready to help. Go on-quick!”

He bolted off and I hurried down to the courtyard, pretending to be very worried that Father was leaving without his breakfast.

“Oh, they’ll give me some at Scoatney,” he said airily. Then I talked about his bicycle, offering to clean it for him, telling him it needed new tyres.

“Let me pump that back one a bit harder for you,” I said, and kept at it until I felt Thomas would have had enough time.

Then, just as I was handing the bicycle over, I remarked casually, “Oh, can you spare a minute to come up to Belmotte Tower his I think you may want to let someone at Scoatney know what’s been happening in there.”

“Oh, lord, did that last heavy rain do a lot of damage?” said Father.

“Well, I think you’ll see quite a few changes,” I said, with the utmost truthfulness.

We crossed the bridge and started to climb the mound.

“One doesn’t often see an English sky as blue as this,” he said.

“I

wonder if Simon’s agent has authority to do repairs to the tower?” He went on chatting most pleasantly and normally. All my misgivings were rushing back; but I felt the die was cast.

“Really, I ought to spend more time in here,” he said as he followed me up the steps outside the tower. I opened the heavy oak door and stood back for him to pass me. He climbed down the ladder inside and stood blinking his eyes.

“Can’t see much yet, after the sunlight,” he called up, peering around.

“Hello, have you been camping-out down here?”

“One of us is going to,” I said—then added quickly:

“Go up the staircase a little way, will you?”

“The crumbling’s worse, is it?” He went through the archway and began to make his way up the stairs.

Thomas had already crept from behind the tower. I beckoned and he was beside me in a flash. Together, we dragged the ladder up and flung it down outside.

Father shouted: “Come and show me what you mean, Cassandra.”

“Don’t say anything until he comes back,” whispered Thomas.

Father called again and I still didn’t answer. After a few seconds he returned through the archway.

“Couldn’t you hear me calling?” he said, looking up at us.

“Hello, Thomas, why haven’t you gone to school?”

We stared down at him. Now that the ladder had gone he seemed much further away from us; the circle of stone walls rose round him dungeon like He was so foreshortened that he seemed only to have a face, shoulders and feet.

“What’s the matter his Why don’t you answer?”

he shouted.

I racked my brains to think of the most tactful way of telling lim what had happened to him. At last I managed:

“Will you please look round you, Father his It’s a sort of surprise.”

We had put the mattress from the four-poster on the old iron bedstead, with blankets and pillows. The most inviting new stationery was spread on the rustic table, with stones to use as paperweights.

We had given him the kitchen armchair.

“There are washing arrangements and drinking water in the garderobe,” I called down-my enamel jug and basin had come in handily again.

“We think you’ll have enough light to work by, now we’ve cleared the ivy from all the lowest arrow-slits —we’ll give you a lantern at night, of course. Very good meals will be coming down in a basket—we bought a “Thermos” .. ” I couldn’t go on —the expression on his face was too much for me.

He had just taken in that the ladder wasn’t there any more.

“Great God in heaven!” he began—and then sat down on the bed and let out a roar of laughter. He laughed and laughed until I began to fear he would suffocate.

“Oh, Thomas!” I whispered.

“Have we pushed him over to the wrong side of the borderline?”

Father mopped his eyes.

“My dear, dear children!” he said at last.

“Cassandra, are you-what is it, seventeen, eighteen? Or are you eight? Bring that ladder back at once.”

“You say something, Thomas,” I whispered.

He cleared his throat and said very slowly and loudly:

“We think you ought to start work, Father—for your own sake far more than for ours. And we think being shut up here may help you to concentrate and be good for you in other ways. I assure you we’ve given the matter a lot of thought and are in line with psychoanalysis his “Bring back that ladder!” roared Father. I could see that Thomas’s weighty manner had infuriated him.

“There’s no point in arguing,” said Thomas, calmly.

“We’ll leave you to get settled. You can tell us at lunch time if there are any books or papers you need for your work.” “Don’t you dare go away!” Father’s voice cracked so pitifully that I said quickly: