Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

We stood looking down on the lane and over the fields stretching far on either side; we were so high that we could see how the hedges cut them up into a patchwork pattern. There were a few little woods and, a mile or so to the left, a tiny village. We moved round the tower to look

across the courtyard garden -and then we all shouted: "There it is!" at the same moment. Beyond the ruined walls on the west side of the

courtyard was a small hill and on the top of it was the high tower we had driven so long in search of. It puzzles me now why we hadn't seen it when we first came through the gatehouse passage. Perhaps the

overgrown garden obstructed the view; or perhaps we were too much

astonished at seeing the house to look in the opposite direction.

Father dived for the staircase. I cried "Wait, wait!" and he turned and picked me up, letting Rose go ahead striking the matches. He

guessed the bottom of the staircase must come out in the gatehouse

passage, but Rose used the last match as we reached the archway on to the walls; so we went back along them to the bathroom and down the nice little front staircase of the house into the hall. Mother was just

coming through the front door to look for us, dragging a cross, sleepy Thomas--he never liked to be left alone in the car. Father showed her the tower on the hill--we could see it easily once we knew where to

look--and told her to come along; then dashed across the courtyard

garden. She said she couldn't manage it with Thomas. I remember

feeling I ought to stay with her, but I didn't. I raced after Father

and Rose.

We climbed over the ruined walls which bounded the garden and crossed the moat by the shaky bridge at the south-west corner; that brought us to the foot of the hill-but Father told us it was ancient earthworks

and not a natural hill (ever since then we have called it the mound).

The turf was short and smooth and there were no more ruins. At the top we had to scramble over some ridges which Father said must have been

the outer de fences This brought us to a broad, grassy plateau. At the far end was a smaller mound, round in shape and very smooth, and rising from this was the tower, sixty feet tall, black against the last flush of sunset. The entrance was about fifteen feet up, at the top of an

outside flight of stone steps. Father did his best to force the door

but had no luck; so we didn't see inside the tower that night.

We walked all round the little mound and Father told us that it was

called a motte and that the wide grassy plateau was a bailey; he said all this part was much older than the moated castle below. The sunset faded and a wind got up and everything began to look frightening, but Father went on talking most happily and excitedly. Suddenly Rose

said:

"It's like the tower in The Lancashire Witches where Mother Demdike lived." She had read bits of that book aloud to me until I got so frightened that Mother stopped her.

Just then we heard Mother calling from below; her voice sounded high

and strange, almost despairing. I grabbed Rose's hand and said: "Come on, Mother's frightened." And I told myself I was running to help Mother; but I was really terrified of being near the tower any

longer.

Father said we had all better go. We climbed the ridges and then Rose and I took hands and ran down the smooth slope--faster and faster, so that I thought we should fall. All the time we were running I felt

extremely frightened, but I enjoyed it. The whole evening was like

that.

When we got back to the house, Mother was sitting on the front

door-step nursing Thomas, who had fallen asleep again.

"Isn't it wonderful ?" cried Father.

"I'll have it if it takes my last penny."

Mother said: "If it's to be my cross, I suppose God will give me the strength to bear it."

Father laughed at that and I felt rather shocked. I don't in the least know if she meant to be funny-but then, I realize more and more how

vague she has become for me. Even when I remember things she said, I

can't recall the sound of her voice. And though I can still see the

shape of her that day huddled on the steps, her back view when we were in the car, her brown tweed suit and squashy felt hat, I can't

visualize her face at all. When I try to, I just see the photograph I have of her.

Rose and I went back to the car with her, but Father wandered round

until it was dark. I remember seeing him come out on the castle walls near the gatehouse -and marveling that I had been up there myself. Even in the dusk I could see his gold hair and splendid profile. He was

spare in those days, but broad-always a large person.

He was so excited that he started to drive back to King's Crypt at a

terrific pace -Rose, Thomas and I simply bounced about at the back of the car. Mother said it wasn't safe with the roads so narrow and he

slowed down to a snail's pace which made Rose and me laugh a lot.

Mother said: "There's reason in everything and Thomas ought to be in bed." Thomas suddenly sat up and said: "Dear me, yes, I ought," which made even Mother laugh.

The next day, after making enquiries, Father went over to Scoatney

Hall. When he got back he told us that Mr. Cotton wouldn't sell the

castle, but had let him have a forty years" lease on it.

"And I can do anything I like to the house," he added, "because the old gentleman agrees I couldn't possibly make it any worse."

Of course, he made it very much better--whitewashing it, unearthing the drawing-room paneling from beneath eight coats of wallpaper, pulling

out the worst fireplaces, the false ceilings, the partitions in the

kitchen. There were many more things he meant to do, particularly as

regards comfort--I know Mother wanted some central heating and a

machine to make electric light; but he spent so much on antique

furniture even before work at the castle began that she persuaded him to cut things down to a minimum. There was always a vague idea that

the useful things were to come later; probably when he wrote his next book.

It was spring when we moved in. I particularly remember the afternoon we first got the drawing-room straight. Everything was so fresh- the

flowered chintz curtains, the beautiful shining old furniture, the

white paneling--it had had to be painted because it was in such a poor condition. I was fascinated by a great jar of young green beech

leaves; I sat on the floor staring at them while Rose played her piece

"To a Water Lily" on Mother's old grand piano. Suddenly Father came in, in a very exulting mood, to tell us that there was a surprise for us outside the window. He flung the mullioned windows open wide and

there on the moat were two swans, sailing sedately. We leaned out to

feed them with bread and all the time the spring air blew in and

stirred the beech leaves. Then I went into the garden, where the lawns had been cut and the flower-beds tidied; there were a lot of early

wallflowers which smelt very sweet. Father was arranging his books up in the gatehouse room. He called down:

"Isn't this a lovely home for you ?"

I agreed that it was; and I still think so. But anyone who could enjoy the winter here would find the North Pole stuffy.

How strange memory is! When I close my eyes, I see three different

castles--one in the sunset light of that first evening, one all fresh and clean as in our early days here, one as it is now.

The last picture is very sad because all our good furniture has

gone-the dining-room hasn't so much as a carpet; not that we have

missed that room much--it was the first one we saw that night we

explored the house and was always too far from the kitchen. The

drawing-room has a few chairs still and, thank goodness, no one will

ever buy the piano because it is so big and old. But the pretty chintz curtains are faded and everything has a neglected look. When the

spring comes we must really try to freshen up our home a little-at

least we can still have beech leaves.

We have been poor for five years now; after Mother died, I fear we

lived on the capital of the money she left. Not that I ever worried

about such things at the time because I always felt sure Father would make money again sooner or later. Mother brought us up to believe that he was a genius and that geniuses mustn't he hurried.

What is the matter with him his And what does he do all the time his I wrote yesterday that he does nothing but read detective novels, hut

that was just a silly generalization, because Miss Marcy can seldom let him have more than two a week (although he will read the same ones

again and again after a certain lapse of time, which seems to me

amazing). Of course he reads other books, too. All our valuable ones

have been sold (and how I have missed them!) but there are a good many of the others left, including an old, incomplete Encyclopedia

Britannica;

I know he reads that and he plays some kind of a game following up

cross-references in it. And I am sure he thinks very hard. Several

times when he hasn't answered my knock on the gatehouse room door I

have gone in and found him staring into space. In the good weather he walks a lot, but he hasn't now for months. He has dropped all his

London friends.

The only friend he has ever made down here is the Vicar, who is the

nicest man imaginable; a bachelor with an elderly housekeeper. Now I

come to think of it, Father has dodged seeing even him this winter.

Father's un sociability has made it hard for any of us to get to know people here--and there aren't many to know. The village is tiny: just the church, the vicarage, the little school, the inn, one shop (which is also the post office) and a huddle of cottages; though the Vicar

gets quite a congregation from the surrounding hamlets and farms. It

is a very pretty village and has the unlikely name of Godsend, a

corruption of Godys End, after the Norman knight, Etienne de Godys, who built Belmotte Castle. Our castle--I mean the moated one, on to which our house is built- is called Godsend, too; it was built by a later de Godys.

No one really knows the origin of the name "Belmotte"-the whole mound, as well as the tower on it, is called that. At a guess one would say

the "Bel" is from the French, but the Vicar believes in a theory that it is from Bel the sun god whose worship was introduced by the

Phoenicians, and that the mound was raised so that Midsummer Eve votive fires could be lit there; he thinks the Normans simply made use of it.

Father doesn't believe in the god Bel theory and says the Phoenicians worshipped the stars, not the sun. Anyway, the mound is a very good

place to worship both sun and stars from.

I do a little worshipping there myself when I get time.

I meant to copy an essay on castles I wrote for the school History

Society into this journal, but I find it is very long and horridly

overwritten (how the school must have suffered), so I shall paraphrase it briefly:

CASTLES

In early Norman times, there seem to have been mounds with ditches and wooden stockades as de fences Inside the de fences were wooden

buildings, and sometimes there was a high earthen motte to serve as a lookout place. The later Normans began building great square stone

towers (called keeps), but it was found possible to mine the corners of these- mining was just digging then, of course, not the use of

explosives --so they took to building round towers, of which Belmotte is one. Later, the tower-keeps were surrounded with high walls, called curtain walls.