The Beasts of Clawstone Castle (2 page)

S
ir George always woke early on Saturday morning because that was when the castle was open to the public and there was a lot to do.

He lifted his creaking legs out of the four-poster bed, which was propped up at one end with a wooden fish crate to stop it falling down, and padded off to the bathroom. There was no hot water but he was used to that; the boiler was almost as old as Sir George himself and Clawstone was not a place for people who wanted to be comfortable.

It did not take him long to get ready. His hair was so sparse that brushing it was dangerous, so he only passed a comb lightly through what was left of it and put on his long woollen underpants and the mustard-coloured tweed suit he wore summer and winter. But today, because it was Open Day, he also put on a tie. It was a regimental tie because he had served all through the war in the army and got a leg wound which still made him limp.

‘Right! Time to get going,’ he said to himself – and went over to the mantelpiece to fetch the bunch of keys which lived in a box underneath a painting of a large white bull. Once Sir George’s bedroom walls had been covered in valuable paintings, but they had all been sold and only the bull was left. Then he went downstairs to unlock the door of the museum and the dungeon and the armoury, so that the visitors tramping through the castle got their money’s worth.

Sir George’s sister, Miss Emily, also woke early on Open Day, and wound her thin grey plait of hair more carefully round her head than usual. Then she put on the long brown woollen skirt which she had knitted herself. During the many years she had worn it, it had taken on the outlines of her behind, but not at all unpleasantly because she was a thin lady and her behind was small. Today, though, because it was Open Day, she also knotted a scarf round her throat. It was one of those weak-looking chiffon scarves which look as though they need feeding up, but Emily was fond of it. She had found it under a sofa cushion when she went to move a nest of field mice who had decided to breed there, and the slightly mousy smell which clung to it did not trouble her in the least.

Then she fetched her keys, which also lived on the mantelpiece, but not under a painting of a bull – under a painting of a cow. Like her brother George, Emily had once slept in a room full of costly paintings, but now only the cow was left.

The third member of the family never came out of his room on Open Day. This was Howard Percival, a cousin of Sir George’s and Miss Emily’s. He was a middle-aged man with a grey moustache and so shy that if he saw a human being he had not known for at least twenty years he hurried away down the corridors and shut himself up in his room.

Emily always hoped that Howard would decide to help; there were so many things he could have done to interest the visitors, but she knew it was no good asking him. When shyness gets really bad it is like an illness, so she just knocked on his door to tell him that the day had begun and went downstairs to the kitchen where she found Mrs Grove, who came in from the village to help, preparing breakfast.

‘Nothing doing with Mr Howard, then?’ she asked, and Emily sighed and shook her head.

‘His door’s bolted.’

A frown spread over Mrs Grove’s kind, round face. It was her opinion that Sir George and Miss Emily should have been stricter with their cousin. With everyone working so hard for Open Day he could have pulled his weight. But all she said was, ‘I’ll put the coffee on.’

Emily nodded and went through to the storeroom to look at the treasures she had made for the gift shop.

People who pay to look round castles and stately homes usually like to have something to buy, and Emily had done her best. She had made three lavender bags, which she had sewn out of muslin – the kind that is used for bandages – and filled with flower heads from the bushes in the garden. One of them leaked a little but the other two were intact, and since so far no one had actually bought any bags there would probably be enough for today. She had prepared two bowls of dried rose petals, which were meant to scent people’s rooms: pot-pourri, it was called. The trouble was that it was difficult to dry anything properly in the castle, which was always damp, both inside and out, so the petals had gone mouldy underneath. Now she packed the scones she had baked into plastic bags and stuck little labels on them saying ‘Baked in the Clawstone Bakery’, which was perfectly true. She had baked them herself the day before on the ancient stove in the kitchen and they were not really burnt. A little dark round the edges perhaps but not actually
burnt
.

It was important not to lose heart; Emily knew that, but just for a moment she felt very sad and discouraged. She worked so hard, but she knew that never in a hundred years would her gift shop catch up with the gift shop at Trembellow Towers. The gift shop at Trembellow was larger. It had table mats stamped with the Trembellow coat of arms. It had furry animals bought in from Harrods and books of poems about Nature and embroidered tea towels. And leading out of the gift shop at Trembellow was a tea room with proper waitresses and soft music playing.

No wonder people turned left at the Brampeth Crossroads and made their way to Trembellow instead of Clawstone. And it seemed so unfair, because the people who owned Trembellow did not
need
money; they only
wanted
it, which is not the same at all.

But she would catch up, Emily told herself; she would not give in to despair. She was always having good ideas. Only yesterday she had found some old balls of wool left in a disused linen bag which would knit up into mittens and gloves. The moths had been at some of them but there were plenty left.

Sir George, meanwhile, was opening up the rooms he had prepared to make things interesting for the visitors. He was a private sort of person and found it difficult to have people tramping through his house and making loud remarks, which were often rather rude, but once he had decided it had to be done, he worked hard to see that the people who came got value for their money.

So he had filled the billiard room with all sorts of things – his grandmother’s old sewing machine and a rocking horse with a broken leg and a box of stones he had found on the beach when he was a boy, and he had put a big notice on the door saying ‘Museum’.

Down in the cellar he had collected ancient contraptions which might well have been used as torture instruments – rusty mangles which pulled at the laundry maids’ arms as they turned the handle, and huge washtubs which they might have drowned in, and dangerous boilers which had to be heated with fires underneath that could easily have burned them to death. He had labelled the door ‘Dungeon’, and he had made an armoury too, into which he had put his rifle from the war and the bow and arrow he had had as a little boy and various pikes and halberds and axes he had found lying about.

But he too, as he tidied the exhibits and straightened the signs saying ‘Danger’ on those floorboards which had gone rotten, had to be careful not to feel discouraged and sad. For he knew that for every car which made its way to Clawstone, there would be ten cars at least going to Trembellow. And really he couldn’t wonder at it. Trembellow had a proper dungeon with throat manacles and racks on which people had been stretched and died in agony. Trembellow’s museum housed priceless rings; the weapons in the armoury had belonged to Charles the First. And the man who owned Trembellow was as rich as Sir George was poor.

At ten o’clock Mrs Grove’s sister Sheila came to take the tickets, bringing with her a duffel bag filled with things that people in the village had sent for the museum and the shop. The postmistress had had a clear-out in her attic and found the old cardboard gas-mask case which had held her grandfather’s gas mask in the war. And Mr Jones had made a new puzzle for the shop.

Mr Jones was the retired sexton and had taken up fretwork. He made jigsaw puzzles by sticking pictures on to plywood and sawing them into wiggly shapes, and he was very kind about letting Miss Emily have them to sell in the gift shop. The one he had sent this morning was a picture of two vegetable marrows and a pumpkin which he had managed to saw into no less than twenty-seven pieces.

Then Mrs Grove and her sister set up the folding table and brought out the roll of tickets and the saucer for the change and laid out the pamphlets Sir George had written giving the history of the castle, and Open Day began.

It did not go well. By lunchtime only ten people had come and there had been some unpleasantness because Emily had left her bedroom door open and a family with two small boys had gone in and peered at her nightdress, which they thought had been worn by Queen Victoria and was part of the tour. Nobody bought a lavender bag and a man with a red face brought back the jigsaw puzzle he had bought the week before and asked for his money to be returned because the pieces did not fit properly. It was not until the visitors had made their way out of the castle and were wandering about in the gardens that Sir George and his sister could relax.

But today their quiet time did not last for long because the postman brought a most distressing letter. It was from Sir George’s niece, Patricia Hamilton, asking if they could have Madlyn and Rollo to stay for two months in the summer.

The parents apologized; they hated to ask favours, but if it was possible it would be a wonderful thing for the children.

‘Children!’ said Sir George, leaning back in his chair. His voice was grim. He might as well have been saying ‘Smallpox!’ or ‘Shipwreck!’

‘Oh dear, children,’ repeated Emily. ‘I do find children a little alarming. Especially if they are small.’

‘Children are generally small,’ said Sir George crabbily. ‘Otherwise they would not be children.’

Emily was about to say that actually some children were quite large these days because they ate the wrong things – she had read about it in the paper – but she didn’t.

‘Do you think they will shout and scream and... play practical jokes?’ she asked nervously. ‘You know . . . string across the stairs and apple-pie beds?’

Sir George was frowning, staring out of the window at the park.

‘If they let off fireworks and frighten the animals I shall have to beat them,’ he said.

But the thought of beating children was seriously alarming. You had to catch them first, and then upend them ... and his joints were a trouble to him even when he had to get up from his chair. What if they were the kind of children who
squirmed
?

‘They have been brought up in town,’ he went on disapprovingly. ‘The boy will probably pretend to be a motor car and make those vroom-vroom noises all the time.’

‘And the girl will wear thin shoes and carry a handbag.’

A gloomy silence fell. Then:

‘Cousin Howard won’t like it,’ said Emily.

‘No,’ said her brother, ‘Cousin Howard won’t like it at all. But the children are “family”. Patricia is my niece. They have Percival blood.’

Emily nodded. Blood is blood and cannot be argued with – and the next day they wrote to say that of course Madlyn and Rollo would be welcome to spend the summer at Clawstone.

M
adlyn stood still in the centre of the courtyard and looked round at the towers and the battlements which surrounded her.

‘Poor thing,’ she said.

‘Poor thing’ is not usually what people say to castles, but Madlyn was right. Clawstone did not look well. There were blobs of lichen – green blobs and yellow blobs and purple blobs – all over the steps which led to the front entrance. The statue of a knight-at-arms had lost his nose, the two cannons which flanked the doorway were covered in rust.

And the two old people who came carefully down the steps to greet them looked rather like poor things also. Sir George had bent down, ready to shake hands, but it did not seem certain that he would be able to straighten himself up again. Emily’s skirt was coming unravelled at the hem, and her watery eyes were worried.

The children had travelled in charge of Rollo’s former childminder, a plump and caring lady called Katya. She loved the children and she loved England, but she did not care for the English language, which she spoke oddly or not at all.

‘Is here Madlyn, is here Rollo,’ she said. Then thumping herself on the chest: ‘Is here Katya.’

Uncle George shook hands with everybody. Now that they were here he had to admit that the children did not look dangerous. Madlyn was very pretty and Rollo was very small and the lady who had brought them was returning to London on the following day.

As the children followed Aunt Emily up the stone staircase and down the corridor which led to their rooms a figure in a long dressing gown appeared suddenly and came towards them. They stopped, ready to greet him, but when he saw them the man turned round abruptly and scuttled away.

‘Oh dear,’ said Aunt Emily when he was out of sight. ‘I did so hope he would say good evening to you. He’s a very polite person really, but so dreadfully shy.’

‘Who is he?’ asked Madlyn.

‘It’s Cousin Howard. He finds it so hard to meet new people but I hoped as you were “family” . . . Never mind, I’m sure when he knows you better ... Now here are your rooms.’

Their rooms were in the newest part of the castle, which was only three hundred years old. They were next to each other with a connecting door between them, and Katya’s room was across the corridor, so they slept well and were up early next morning to explore.