Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle
can sometimes get flashes of other people's thoughts by telepathy, one ought to be able to see what their minds' eyes are seeing.
"Let's concentrate on it," he said, and took my hand under the rug. We shut our eyes and concentrated hard. I think the pictures I saw were
just my imaginings of what he had described, but I did get the
strangest feeling of space and freedom--so that when I opened my eyes, the fields and hedges and even the sky seemed so close that they were almost pressing on me. Neil looked quite startled when I told him; he said that was how he felt most of the time in England.
Even when we stopped concentrating he went on holding my hand, but I
don't think it meant anything; I rather fancy it is an American habit.
On the whole, it felt just friendly and comfortable, though it did
occasionally give me an odd flutter round the shoulders.
It was dark when we got to the castle. We asked them in, but they were expecting Mrs. Cotton to arrive that evening and had to get back.
Father came home while I was describing our day to Topaz. (not one
word did he say about what he had been doing in London.) He had
travelled on the same train as Mrs.
Cotton and asked her to dinner on the next Saturday- with Simon and
Neil, of course. For once, Topaz really got angry.
"Mortmain, how could you?" she simply shouted at him.
"What are we to give them--and what on? You know we haven't a stick of dining-room furniture."
"Oh, give them ham and eggs in the kitchen," said Father, "they won't mind. And they've certainly provided enough ham."
We stared at him in utter despair. It was a good thing Rose wasn't
there because I really think she might have struck him, he looked so
maddeningly arrogant. Suddenly he deflated.
"I--just felt I had to--" all the bravado had gone out of his voice.
"She invited us to dine at Scoatney again next week and My God, I think my brain's going--I actually forgot about the dining-room furniture.
Can't you rig something up ?"
He looked pleadingly at Topaz. I can't stand it when he goes
humble--it is like seeing a lion sitting up begging (not that I ever
did see one). Topaz rose to the occasion magnificently.
"Don't worry, we'll manage. It's fun, in a way--a sort of
challenge-was she tried to use her most soothing contralto, but it
broke a bit. I felt like hugging her.
"Let's just look at the dining-room," she whispered to me, while Father was eating his supper. So we took candles and went along.
I can't think what she hoped for, but anyhow we didn't find it-we
didn't find anything but space. Even the carpet was sold with the
furniture.
We went into the drawing-room.
"The top of the grand piano would be original," said Topaz.
"With Father carving on the keys ?"
"Could we sit on the floor, on cushions? We certainly haven't enough chairs."
"We haven't enough cushions, either. All we really have enough of is floor."
We laughed until the candle wax ran down on to our hands.
After that we felt better.
In the end, Topaz got Stephen to take the hen-house door off its hinges and make some rough trestles to put it on, and we pushed it close to
the window-seat, which saved us three chairs.
We used the gray brocade curtains from the hall as a table-cloth--they looked magnificent, though the join showed a bit and they got in the
way of our feet. All our silver and good china and glass went long
ago, but the Vicar lent us his, including his silver candelabra. Of
course we asked him to dinner too, and he came early and sat in the
kitchen giving his possessions a final polish while we got dressed.
(rose wore Topaz's black dress; we had found it didn't look a bit
conventional on Rose--it suited her wonderfully.) Our dinner menu
was:
Clear soup (made from half the second ham-bone) Boiled chicken and ham Peaches and cream (the Cottons sent the peaches--just in time) Savory: Devilled ham mousse Topaz cooked it all and Ivy Stebbins brought it
in; Stephen and Thomas helped her in the kitchen. Nothing unfortunate happened except that Ivy kept staring at Simon's beard.
She told me afterwards that it gave her the creeps.
Mrs. Cotton was as talkative as ever but very nice--so easy; I think
it was really she who made us feel the dinner was a success.
Americans are wonderfully adaptable--Neil and Simon helped with the
washing-up. (they call it "doing the dishes.") I rather wished they hadn't insisted, because the kitchen looked so very un-American. It
was wildly untidy and Thomas had put all the plates on the floor for
Heloise and Abelard to lick--very wrong indeed, because chicken-bones are dangerous to animals.
Ivy washed and we all dried. Then Stephen took Ivy home. She is the
same age as I am but very big and handsome. She obviously has her eye on Stephen--I hadn't realized that before, I suppose it would be an
excellent thing for him if he married her, because she is the
Stebbins's only child and will inherit the farm. I wondered if he
would kiss her on the way home. I wondered if he had ever kissed any
girl. Part of my mind went with him through the dark fields, but most of it stayed with the Cottons in the kitchen. Neil was sitting on the table, stroking About into a coma of bliss; Simon was wandering round examining things. Suddenly the memory of that first time they came
here flashed back to me. I hoped Rose had forgotten Simon's shadow
looking like the Devil-I had almost forgotten it myself. There surely never was a more un-devilish man.
Soon after that we were into the exciting part of the evening.
It began when Simon asked if they might see over the castle; I had
guessed he would and made sure that the bedrooms were tidy.
"Light the lantern, Thomas, then we can go up on the walls," I said--I felt the more romantic I could make it, the better for Rose.
"We'll start from the hall."
We went through the drawing-room where the others were talking- that
is, Father and Mrs. Cotton were.
Topaz was just listening and the Vicar opened his eyes so wide when we went in that I suspected he had been dozing. He looked as if he rather fancied joining us but I was careful to give him no encouragement. I
was hoping to thin our party out, not thicken it up.
"The gatehouse first," said Rose when we got to the hall--and swept through the front door so fast that I saw she meant to skip the
dining-room. Personally, I thought pure emptiness would have been more distinguished than our bedroom furniture.
Little did I know how grateful Rose was to be to the humblest piece of it!
As we walked through the courtyard garden, Simon looked up at the
mound.
"How tall and black Belmotte Tower is against the starry sky," he said.
I could see he was working himself into a splendidly romantic mood. It was a lovely night with a warm, gentle little breeze --oh, a most
excellently helpful sort of night.
I never mount to the top of the gatehouse tower without recalling that first climb, the day we discovered the castle, when Rose kept butting into me from behind. Remembering that, remembering us as children,
made me feel extra fond of her and extra determined to do my best for her. All the time we were following the lantern and Simon was
marveling that the heavy stone steps could curve so gracefully, I was willing him to be attracted by her.
"This is amazing," he said as he stepped out at the top. I had never before been up there at night, and it really was rather exciting-not
that we could see anything except the stars and a few lights twinkling at Godsend and over at Four Stones Farm. It was the feel that was
exciting--as if the night had drawn closer to us.
Thomas set the lantern high on the battlements so that it shone on
Rose's hair and face; the rest of her merged into the darkness be cause of the black dress. The soft wind blew her little chiffon shoulder
cape across Simon's face.
"That felt like the wings of night," he said, laughing. It was fascinating watching his head next to hers in the lantern light- his so dark and hers so glowing.
I tried and tried to think of some way of leaving them by themselves up there, but there are limits to human invention.
After a few minutes, we went down far enough to get out on the top of the walls. It took quite a while to walk along them because Neil
wanted to know all about defending castles- he was particularly taken with the idea of a trebuchet slinging a dead horse over the walls. Rose tripped over her dress almost the first minute and after that Simon
kept tight hold of her arm, so the time wasn't wasted; he didn't let go until we stepped into the bathroom tower.
We left Thomas to show the bathroom- I heard Neil roaring with laughter at Windsor Castle. Rose and I ran on to the bed room and lit the
candles.
"Isn't there some way you can leave us alone together?"
she whispered.
I told her I had been hoping to, ever since dinner.
"But it's very difficult. Can't you just lag somewhere ?"
She said she had lagged on the top of the gatehouse tower, but Simon
hadn't lagged too.
"He just said "Wait a minute with that lantern, Thomas, or Rose won't be able to see." And down I had to "Don't worry--I swear I'll manage something," I told her.
We heard them crossing the landing.
"Who sleeps in the four-poster?" asked Simon, as they came in.
"Rose," I said quickly--it happened to be my week for it, but I felt it was more romantic than the iron bedstead for him to picture her in.
Then he opened the door to our tower and was very tickled to see Rose's pink evening dress hanging in it--she keeps it there because the frills would get crushed in the wardrobe.
"Fancy hanging one's clothes in a six-hundred-year-old tower!" he said.
Neil put his arm around Miss Blossom and said she was just his type of girl, then knelt on the window-seat to look down at the moat.
Inspiration came to me.
"How'd you like to bathe ?" I asked him.
"Love it," he said instantly.
"What, bathe tonight ?"--Thomas simply goggled at me.
"Yes, it'll be fun." Thank goodness, he caught the ghost of a wink I flickered at him, and stopped goggling.
"Lend Neil your bathing shorts--I'm afraid there's only one pair, Simon, but you could have them afterwards. Rose mustn't bathe because she gets chills so easily." (heaven forgive me! Rose is as strong as a horse--I am the one who gets chills.) "We'll watch from the window,"
said Simon.
I unearthed my bathing-suit, then ran after Thomas who was yelling from his room that he couldn't find the shorts--for an awful moment I feared he had left them at school.
"What's the game ?" he whispered.
"Don't you know the water'll be icy ?"
I did indeed. We never bathe in the moat until July or August and even then we usually regret it.
"I'll explain later," I told him.
"Don't you dare put Neil off." I found the shorts at last--they were helping to stop up Thomas's draughty chimney; luckily they are black.
"You'd better change in the bathroom," I called to Neil, "and go down the tower steps. You show him, Thomas, and then stay and light us with your lantern. I'll meet you at the moat, Neil."
I gave him the shorts, then went to change in Buffer. Simon called,
"Have a good swim," as I ran through the bedroom, then turned back to Rose. They were sitting on the window-seat looking splendidly
settled.
It was only while I was changing that I fully realized what I had let myself in for--I who hate cold water so much that even putting on a
bathing-suit makes me shiver. I went down the kitchen stairs feeling
like an Eskimo going to his frozen hell.
I had no intention of showing myself in the drawing-room--I had
outgrown my suit so much that the school motto was stretched right
across my chest; so I went to the moat via the ruins beyond the
kitchen. Near there, a plank bridge runs across to the wheat field. I sat on it, carefully keeping my feet well above the water.
Neil wasn't down- I could see the full length of the moat because the moon was rising. It was casting the most unearthly light across the
green wheat--so beautiful that I nearly forgot the horror having to
bathe. How moons do vary! Some are white, some are gold, this was
like a dazzling circle o tin-- I never saw a moon look so hard
before.
The water on the moat was black and silver and gold; silver where the moonlight shimmered on it, gold under the candlelit windows;
and while I watched, a gold pool spread around the corner tower as
Thomas came out and set the lantern in the doorway. Then Neil came
down looking very tall in the black bathing-shorts and stepped from
lantern light to moonlight.
"Where are you, Cassandra ?" he called.
I called back that I was coming, then put one toe in the water to know the worst. It was a far worse worst than I anticipated, and a brave
idea I'd had of getting my going-in agonies over by myself, and
swimming towards him, vanished instantly- I felt that a respite of even a few moments was well worth having. So I walked slowly along the edge of the field, with the wheat tickling my legs coldly as I brushed past, sat down on the bank opposite to him, and began a bright conversation.
Apart from putting of the horror plunging in, I felt dawdling was
advisable in order to give Rose more time-because I was pretty sure
that once we did get into the moat, we should very soon get out
again.
I talked about the beauty of the night. I told him the winning
anecdote of how I tried to cross the moat in a clothes-basket after I first heard about coracles. Then I started in on the good long subject of America, but he interrupted me and said."
"I believe you're stalling about this swim. I'm going in, anyway.
Is it deep enough for me to dive ?"
I said yes, if he was careful.
"Look out for the mud at the bottom," Thomas warned him. He did a cautious dive and came up looking a very surprised man.
"Gosh, that was cold," he shouted.
"And after all the sunshine we've been having!"
As if our moat took any notice of sunshine!
It is fed by a stream that apparently comes straight from Greenland.
I said: "I wonder if I ought to bathe, really--after such a heavy dinner."
"You don't get away with that," said Neil, "it was you who suggested it. Come on or I'll pull you in--it's really quite bearable."
I said to God: "Please, I'm doing this for my sister--warm it up a bit." But of course I knew He wouldn't.
My last thought before I jumped was that I'd almost sooner die.
It was agony- like being skinned with icy knives. I swam madly,
