I Capture the Castle (46 page)

And when Simon kissed me, that was a bit wonderful, too-you can’t really judge by kisses-so I got mixed. But not for long.”

Oh, so many things came back to me! I could see how she had tried to work herself up into hating Neil-her dislike for him had always seemed exaggerated. I remembered how quick she had been to tell Simon to make him come to the flat that night I was there, how she had asked him to dance with her, how depressed she had seemed when they came back to the glittering corridor.

And, of course, so much of Neil’s anger on the night of the engagement had been due to jealousy!

They had walked out of the flat that morning hoping to get married at once” You can do that in America, Neil says; but we soon found you can’t here. So we went down to the inn to wait until we could. We chose that place because Neil said the picnic was the last time he’d seen me human. And of course, darling, it’s really you I have to thank for everything, because I’m sure Stephen only went to Neil on your account. He told Neil you were the right one for Simon—I suppose he’d guessed you were in love and was trying to help you.”

Oh, my dear, dear Stephen, how can I ever repay you for such unselfishness? But the happiness you hoped to win for me will never be mine.

“And of course everything will come right now,” Rose chattered on.

“Just as soon as Simon’s got over me a bit, you’ll be able to get him

.”

“I should have thought you’d have grown out of talking about “getting” men,” I said coldly.

She flushed.

“I didn’t mean it that way-you know I didn’t. I’m hoping he’ll really fall in love with you. He likes you so much already-he said so only today.”

A dreadful thought struck me.

“Rose-oh, Rose!” I cried.

“You didn’t tell him I’m in love with him?” She swore she hadn’t. But I fear she had. He has been so kind ever since then he was always that, but now his kindness seems deliberate. Or do I imagine it? I know it has made me feel I can hardly bear to see him;

but it takes so much strength of mind not to, when he comes to talk to Father nearly every day. They are in the gatehouse together, now.

Apparently I was all wrong about Father.

Apparently it is very clever to start a book by writing THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT nineteen times.

Now stop it, Cassandra Mortmain. You are still piqued because Thomas was the one to guess that what we found in the tower wasn’t just nonsense. You are trying to justify your stupidity—and it was stupidity, considering Father had told you plainly that all his eccentricities meant something. And it isn’t true that the book starts with nineteen cats on mats; in the revised version there are only seven of them. And there is a perfectly logical explanation of them, according to that bright boy Thomas. They are supposed to be in the mind of a child learning to read and write.

Am I unusually stupid his Am I old-fashioned his Am I really Harry’s father jeering at Jacob Wrestling? Oh, I can see that Father’s puzzles and problems are clever in themselves, that the language in which he sets them out conjures up beautiful images; but why are they supposed to be more than puzzles and problems his Thomas and I were used as guinea-pigs for the first four sections when Father had fully revised them; there is a lot more in them now than when we found them two months ago. I really did try. I worked out the children’s puzzles quite easily. I managed to do the crossword—and I can’t say I enjoyed it, as the clues are all to do with nightmares and terror. I treated that homing pigeon with the greatest respect (it is the hero of a kind of comic strip called “Pigeon’s Progress”). I even fought my way through most of Section D, which is a new kind of puzzle invented by Father, partly words, partly patterns, with every clue taking you further and further back into the past. But none of it meant anything to me-and it did to Thomas, though he admitted he couldn’t get his feelings into words.

Father said: “If you could, my boy, I’d go out and drown myself.” Then he roared with laughter because Topaz said Section A had “overtones of eternity.”

As far as I am concerned, it all has overtones of lunacy NO. I am jeering again. I am DENSE. If Simon says Father’s Enigmatism is wonderful, then it is. (it was Simon who christened it “Enigmatism”-and a very good name for it.) And publishers both in England and America have paid Father an advance, even though the whole book may not be finished for years. And the first four sections are going to be printed in an American magazine very soon. So now will I stop jeering?

If only Father would answer a few questions! If Thomas would throw out some more of his bright ideas! (after telling me Section A was a child learning to read and write, he decided he was not “prepared” to say any more.) Topaz, of course, is always delighted to air her views, but I hardly find them helpful.

Her latest contributions are “cosmic significance” and “spherical profundity.”

The one person who could help me, of course, is Simon; but I don’t like to ask him to have a private talk in case he thinks I am running after him. I try to avoid meeting him unless someone else is there. Often I keep out of the way until I know he has gone back to Scoatney.

Shall I let myself see him today? Shall I run down from the mound when he comes out of the gatehouse, then say I want to ask him about Father’s work? I do indeed, but more than anything I just want to be with him. If only I could be sure that Rose didn’t tell him about me!

I will wait until tomorrow. I promise myself tomorrow. It is out of my hands. I looked down and saw him standing in the courtyard—he waved to me -started towards the bridge—he is coming up! Oh, I won’t let myself be selfconscious! It will help if I talk hard about Father-How much one can learn in an hour!

All I really want to write about is what happened just before he left. But if I let myself start with that I might forget some of the things which came first. And every word he said is of deepest value to me.

We sat side by side on the rug. He had come to say good-bye; in a few days he is going to America—partly because Mrs. Cotton wants to be in New York for the winter and partly so that he can be there when Father’s work first comes out in the magazine.

He is going to write some articles on it.

“Your Father says I’m like an alert terrier shaking a rat,” he told me.

“But I think he’s rather glad to be shaken. And it’s important that he should be dropped at the feet of the right people.”

I said: “Simon, as a parting present, could you tell me anything that would help me to understand what he’s driving at?”

To my surprise, he said he’d already made up his mind to try.

“You see, when I’m gone you’ll be the one person in close touch with him who’s capable of understanding it—oh, Thomas is a clever lad, but there’s an oddly casual quality about his interest—in a way, it’s still the interest of a child.

Anyhow, I’m sure it’s your understanding that your Father hankers for.”

I was astonished and flattered.

“Well, I’m only too willing. But if he won’t explain Why won’t he, Simon?”

“Because it’s the essence of an enigma that one must solve it for oneself.”

“But at least one is allowed to know—well, the rules for solving puzzles.”

He said he rather agreed with me there and that was why he had persuaded Father to let him talk to me.

“Do you want to ask me questions?”

“I certainly do. The first one is: Why does his work have to be an enigma at all?”

Simon laughed.

“You’ve started off with a honey.

No one will ever know why a creator creates the way he does. Anyway, your father had a very distinguished forerunner. God made the universe an enigma.”

I said, “And very confusing it’s been for everybody. I don’t see why Father had to copy Him.”

Simon said he thought every creative artist did, and that perhaps every human being was potentially creative.

“I think one of the things your father’s after is to stimulate that potential creativeness-to make those who study his work share in its actual creation.

Of course, he sees creation as discovery. I mean, everything is already created, by the first cause-call it God if you like; everything is already there to be found.”

I think he must have seen me looking a little bewildered because he stopped himself and said: “I’m not putting this clearly—wait-give me a minute—” He thought with his eyes closed, as he did once on May Day; but this time I only dared take one quick glance at his face. I was trying to hold my deepest feelings back-I hadn’t even let myself realize he was going away. There would be a long time for realizing it after he had gone.

At last he said: “I think your father believes that the interest so many people take in puzzles and problems—which often starts in earliest childhood—represents more than a mere desire for recreation; that it may even derive from man’s eternal curiosity about his origin. Anyway, it makes use of certain faculties for progressive, cumulative search which no other mental exercise does. Your father wants to communicate his ideas through those faculties.”

I asked him to repeat it, slowly. And suddenly I saw—oh, I saw absolutely!

“But how does it work?” I cried.

He told me to think of a crossword puzzle—of the hundreds of images that pass through the mind while solving one.

“In your father’s puzzles, the sum-total of the images adds up to the meaning he wants to convey. And the sum-total of all the sections of his book, all the puzzles, problems, patterns, progressions—I believe there’s even going to be a detective section-will add up to his philosophy of search-creation.”

“And where do those cats on mats come in?” I enquired, a bit satirically.

He said they were probably there to induce a mood.

“Imagine yourself a child faced with the first enigmatic symbols of your lifetime-the letters of the alphabet.

Think of letters before you understood them, then of the letters becoming words, then of the words becoming pictures in the mind. Why are you looking so worried? Am I confusing you?”

“Not in the least,” I said.

“I understand everything you’ve said. But-oh, Simon, I feel so resentful Why should Father make things so difficult? Why can’t he say what he means plainly?”

“Because there’s so much that just can’t be said plainly. Try describing what beauty is-plainly- and you’ll see what I mean.” Then he said that art could state very little-that its whole business was to evoke responses. And that without innovations and experiments such as Father’s -all art would stagnate.

“That’s why one ought not to let oneself resent them-though I believe it’s a normal instinct, probably due to subconscious fear of what we don’t understand.”

Then he spoke of some of the great innovations that had been resented at first Beethoven’s last quartets, and lots of modern music, and the work of many great painters that almost everyone now admires. There aren’t as many innovations in literature as in the other arts, Simon said, and that is all the more reason why Father ought to be encouraged.

“Well, I’ll encourage him for all I’m worth,” I said.

“Even if I still do resent him a bit, I’ll try to hide it.”

“You won’t be able to,” said Simon.

“And resentment will paralyse your powers of perception.

Oh, lord, how am I to get you on his side?

Look—can you always express just what you want to express, in your journal? Does everything go into nice tidy words? Aren’t you constantly driven to metaphor his The first man to use a metaphor was a whale of an innovator—and now we use them almost without realizing it. In a sense your father’s whole work is only an extension of metaphor.”

When he said that, I had a sudden memory of how difficult it was to describe the feelings I had on Midsummer Eve, and of how I wrote of the day as a cathedral-like avenue. The images that came into my mind then have been linked with that day and with Simon ever since. Yet I could never explain how the image and the reality merge, and how they somehow extend and beautify each other.

“Was Father trying to express things as inexpressible as that… his “Something’s clicked in your mind,” said Simon.

“Can you put it into words?”

“Certainly not into nice tidy ones—” I tried to speak lightly; remembering Midsummer Eve had made me so very conscious of loving him.

“But I’ve stopped feeling resentful. It’ll be all right now.

I’m on his side.”

After that we talked about what started Father writing again.

I suppose we shall never know if locking him in the tower really did any good. Simon thought it was more likely that everything worked together—”Our coming here; Mother’s very stimulating, you know. And his reading at Scoatney may have helped-I strewed the place with stuff that I thought might interest him. I believe he does feel that being shut in the tower caused some kind of emotional release; and he certainly hands you full credit for telling him to write “The cat sat on the mat.”

That started him off—gave him the whole idea of the child learning to read.”

Personally, I think what helped Father most was losing his temper. I feel more and more sure that the cake-knife incident taught him too much of a lesson, somehow tied him up mentally. Simon thought that was quite a good theory.

“What’s his temper like nowadays?” he asked.

“Well, most of the time he’s nicer than I ever remember him. But in spasms, it’s terrific.

Topaz is adoring life.”

“Dear Topaz!” said Simon, smiling.

“She’s the perfect wife for him now that he’s working—and he knows it. But I don’t see how life at the castle can be much fun for you this winter. There’ll be a maid at the flat, if you feel like staying there sometimes. Are you sure you don’t want to go to college?”

“Quite sure. I only want to write. And there’s no college for that except life.”

He laughed and said I was a complete joy to him sometimes so old for my age and sometimes so young.

“I’d rather like to learn typing and real shorthand,” I told him.

“Then I could be an author’s secretary while I’m waiting to be an author.”