Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

it--anyway, he'd have talked to them himself.

Oh, blast!"

Father had gone for a walk- the first he has taken for months.

Topaz said Simon Cotton had brought him a book by a famous American

critic because one of the essays in it dealt with Jacob Wrestling.

"I suppose Simon just might come back to talk to Mortmain," she said.

But I knew better.

It was beginning to get dark. There was a light down in the kitchen.

We saw Rose pass the window.

"Shall we tell her ?" I said.

Topaz thought not--unless we ever get asked to Scoatney-"If we do, we might try to kick some sense into her."

We won't get asked.

Topaz put her arm round me and we trudged down the mound --very

awkwardly because she takes longer strides than I can. When we got to the bottom she looked back at Belmotte Tower, dark against the twilight sky.

"Beautiful, isn't it ?" she said in her most velvety tones.

Now could she really be interested in beauty at such a moment his

Incidentally, when she painted the tower she made it look like a black rolling-pin on an overturned green pudding-basin.

My candle is burning out and the drawing-room is getting colder and

colder--the fire has been out for hours; but I can't write this in the same room with Rose. When I look at her I feel I am watching a rat in a trap that hopes it will get out when I know it won't.

Not that I ever watched a rat in a trap, nor does Rose think she is in one; but this is no moment to be finicky about metaphors.

Heloise has just pushed the door open and come in and licked me, which is kind but so chilly as I dry. And I can now hear what is going on in the kitchen far more fully than I could wish. Father is there now and is talking excitedly- he says the American critic has discovered things in Jacob Wrestling that he certainly never put there and that the

arrogance of critics is beyond belief.

He is obviously enjoying the thought of discussing it all with Simon

Cotton.

Rose's exuberance has risen higher and higher. I regret to say that

she is now whistling.

Stephen has been in and put his coat round me. It smells of horses.

Am I consciously naive? Perhaps I am, perhaps this journal is. In

future I will write it in stark prose. But I won't really write it at all any more, because I have come to the end of this exercise book-I

have already used both inside covers and am now crossing my writing,

and crossed speed-writing will probably never come uncrossed.

It must be just twenty-four hours since those Cottons walked in on me in my bath.

Topaz has just yelled that she is making cocoa.

Oh, comfortable cocoa! Not so good--Topaz has now yelled that it will have to be made with water because the Cottons drank the milk;

there was no tea to offer them. Still, any kind of cocoa is good.

But it will be agony to know that Rose will think we are having it to celebrate, while Topaz and I know that it is funeral baked meats.

THE END

SLAM THE BOOK SHUT

VI

I have a new exercise book, the finest I ever saw. It cost a whole

shilling! Stephen got Miss Marcy to buy it in London last week; she

went up on a cheap day-ticket. When he gave it to me, I thought I

would write something like Wuthering Heights in it- I never dreamt that I should want to go on with this journal.

And now life has begun all over again.

I am up on Belmotte. Spring has come with such a bound that catkins

are still dangling on the hazels while daisies are rushing out on the mound- I particularly love them in the short, brilliant grass of the

motte, where they look like spring in a child's picture-book as well

as the real spring. There are daffodils down in the courtyard garden

but I can't see them from here because the washing is flapping;

Topaz keeps coming out with more and more things to peg up, and they

are all part of the exciting happenings. I have been leaning back

against the tower quietly gloating, watching the dazzling white clouds move past--there is quite a breeze but a soft, almost summery one.

It is six weeks today since Topaz and I stood on Belmotte in the dusk with life at its lowest ebb--though it ebbed a great deal lower

afterwards. At first only Topaz and I were miserable;

it was a terrible strain not to show it- we used to slip off for long walks together and let our faces fall. Rose's exuberance lasted about ten days; then she began to feel something else ought to happen. I

staved her off for another week by suggesting Mrs.

Cotton's arrival must have kept her sons busy. Then the blow fell:

Miss Marcy told us that the Vicar had gone over to call and been asked to lunch, and that various Scoatney people had been invited there.

there is no one else in Godsend they would ever ask, except us.

"Your turn next, dears," said Miss Marcy.

Rose got up and walked straight out of the kitchen.

That night, after we were in bed, she suddenly said:

"Ask Miss Blossom what went wrong, Cassandra."

I was absolutely stuck- I felt I ought to edge in some advice for the future but I couldn't see how, without telling the brutal truth.

"She says she doesn't know," I said at last.

I didn't make Miss Blossom say it herself because I think of her as

very sincere.

"I expect it's because we're so poor," said Rose, bitterly. Then she sat up in the iron bedstead (it was my week for the four-poster) and

said: "I was nice to them- really I was."

I saw my chance and said in Miss Blossom's voice:

"Perhaps you were too nice, dearie."

"But I wasn't," said Rose.

"I was charming but I was--oh, capricious, contradictory. Isn't that what men like?"

"You just be natural, girlie," said Miss Blossom. Then I went on in my own voice: "How much did you really like them, Rose?"

"I don't know--but I know I don't like them now.

Oh, I don't want to talk about it."

And that was all she ever did talk about it- that was almost the worst part of the gloom, our not talking naturally.

Never have I felt so separate from her. And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard. For she is a girl who cannot walk her

troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and

glare.

Topaz was wonderfully patient--but I sometimes wonder if it is not only patience, but also a faint resemblance to cows. It is rather like her imperviousness to cold; Father once said she had a plush-lined skin and there are times when I think she has plush-lined feelings. But they

certainly aren't plush-lined where Father himself is concerned. Three weeks ago I found her crying in Buffer State in front of her portrait of him--for which he never sits. (it is mostly orange triangles.) She said his disappointment was far more important than Rose's, that he had so much enjoyed meeting Simon Cotton and was longing to talk about the American essay on Jacob Wrestling.

"Particularly now he's changed his mind about it -he now thinks he did mean all the things the critic says he did. And I was sure it had

started him writing. But I've just sneaked into the gatehouse while

he's over at the vicarage, and what do you think he's working on his

Crossword puzzles!"

I suggested there might be money in crossword puzzles.

"Not that kind," said Topaz.

"They didn't make sense. Cassandra, what is the matter with him ?"

I had a most dreadful thought. I wondered if Father really had been

drinking for years, if he had found a secret wine-cellar under the

castle, or was making drink out of something--I know there is some

stuff called wood-alcohol.

"Oh, don't be idiotic," said Topaz.

"You can tell if men are drinking. We must be patient-it's just that he's a genius."

She went to bathe her eyes, and then put on her favorite dress, which is cream satin-damask--Italian--just about dropping to pieces; she

wears a little ruby-red cap with it.

Then she went down to make potato-cakes for tea.

I was in the garden, looking at a daffodil that was almost out, when

Father came back from the vicarage.

"Any news ?" I called, to be friendly.

"Only that it appears to be quite a distinction not to be asked to Scoatney. I gather invitations are being broadcast."

He said it in his loftiest manner; then gave me a quick little

embarrassed smile and added: "I'm sorry, my child. You know what the trouble is, don't you ?"

I stared at him and he went on: "It's the rent -they've looked into that little matter, I know, because the usual application didn't come in on the March quarter-day. Oh, they're kind enough --the best type

of American always is; but they don't want to get involved with us."

I knew Topaz hadn't told him the truth;

partly because she thought it would upset him and partly because she

has a sort of women-must-stick-together attitude. I wondered if I

ought to tell him myself. And then I decided that if he did feel

guilty about the rent it would be a good thing--anything, anything to prod him into working. But as he stood there in his thin old coat,

with the March wind blowing his fading gold hair, I felt very sorry for him;

so I told him there were potato-cakes for tea.

As it turned out, the potato-cakes were spoilt;

because while we were eating them, we had one of those family rows

which are so funny in books and on the pictures. They aren't funny in real life, particularly when they happen at meals, as they so often do.

They always make me shake and feel rather sick. The trouble arose

because Thomas asked Rose to pass the salt three times and she took no notice, and when he shouted at her, she leaned forward and boxed his

ears. Topaz said: "Blast you, Rose, you know Thomas gets ear-ache."

And Rose said: "You would bring that up-I suppose he'll die and I'll be responsible." Father said:

"Damnation!" and pushed his chair back on to Heloise, who yelped.

And I said: "I can't stand it, I can't stand it," which was ridiculous.

Stephen was the only person who kept calm; he got up quietly to see if Heloise was badly hurt. She wasn't, and she came off very well because we gave her most of the potato-cakes. Our appetites came back later

when there was nothing worth eating.

Food isn't much better, in spite of Stephen's wages coming in

regularly, because we have to go slow until the tradesmen's bills are paid off. Stephen keeps back a shilling a week; I this exercise book

came out of his savings. I have an uneasy feeling he will spend most

of them on me; he certainly spends nothing on himself.

He hasn't brought me any poems lately, which is a relief.

That evening of the row was our lowest depths; miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme

kindness in the family circle.

Had we but known it, our fortunes were already slightly on the mend,

for that was the very day Father's Aunt Millicent died. How dreadfully callous I sound! But if I could bring her back to life, truly I would; and as I can't, there seems no harm in thanking God for His wondrous

ways. For she left Rose and me her personal wardrobe which means

clothes, not a piece of furniture as I thought at first. When the

Vicar saw the death announced in The Times we entertained a faint hope that she might have left Father some money;

but she had cut him out of her will and left everything to a hostel for artists' models--I suppose she thought they ought to stick in hostels and not go marrying her relations. ("Just think," said Rose, "if Father hadn't married Topaz we might be rolling in wealth by now." And I asked myself if I would rather roll than have Topaz in the family and decided I wouldn't, which was nice to know.) After the first exuberance had worn off, we remembered that Aunt Millicent was seventy-four and an eccentric dresser. But to be left anything at all gives one a lift.