Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We dusted the dining room and the silver tea service and the high wooden backs of the chairs. Constance went every few minutes into the kitchen to look out the back door and check on Uncle Julian, and once I heard her laugh and call, “Watch out for the mud down there,” and I knew she was talking to Charles.

“Where did you let Charles sit last night at dinner?” I asked her once.

“In Father’s chair,” she said, and then, “He has a perfect right to sit there. He’s a guest, and he even looks like Father.”

“Will he sit there tonight?”

“Yes, Merricat.”

I dusted our father’s chair thoroughly, although it was small use if Charles was to sit there again tonight. I would have to clean all the silverware.

When we had finished neatening the house we came back to the kitchen. Charles was sitting at the kitchen table smoking his pipe and looking at Jonas, who was looking back at him. The pipe smoke was disagreeable in our kitchen, and I disliked having Jonas look at Charles. Constance went on out the back door to get Uncle Julian, and we could hear him say, “Dorothy? I was not asleep, Dorothy.”

“Cousin Mary doesn’t like me,” Charles said again to Jonas. “I wonder if Cousin Mary knows how I get even with people who don’t like me? Can I help you with that chair, Constance? Have a nice nap, Uncle?”

Constance made sandwiches for Jonas and me, and we ate them in a tree; I sat in a low fork and Jonas sat on a small branch near me, watching for birds.

“Jonas,” I told him, “you are not to listen any more to Cousin Charles,” and Jonas regarded me in wide-eyed astonishment, that I should attempt to make decisions for him. “Jonas,” I said, “he is a ghost,” and Jonas closed his eyes and turned away.

It was important to choose the exact device to drive Charles away. An imperfect magic, or one incorrectly used, might only bring more disaster upon our house. I thought of my mother’s jewels, since this was a day of sparkling things, but they might not be strong on a dull day, and Constance would be angry if I took them out of the box where they belonged, when she herself had decided against it. I thought of books, which are always strongly protective, but my father’s book had fallen from the tree and let Charles in; books, then, were perhaps powerless against Charles. I lay back against the tree trunk and thought of magic; if Charles had not gone away before three days I would smash the mirror in the hall.

He sat across from me at dinner, in our father’s chair, with his big white face blotting out the silver on the sideboard behind him. He watched while Constance cut up Uncle Julian’s chicken and put it correctly on the plate, and he watched when Uncle Julian took the first bite and turned it over and over in his mouth.

“Here is a biscuit, Uncle Julian,” Constance said. “Eat the soft inside.”

Constance had forgotten and put dressing on my salad, but I would not have eaten anyway with that big white face watching. Jonas, who was not allowed chicken, sat on the floor beside my chair.

“Does he always eat with you?” Charles asked once, nodding his head at Uncle Julian.

“When he’s well enough,” Constance said.

“I wonder how you stand it,” Charles said.

“I tell you, John,” Uncle Julian said suddenly to Charles, “investments are not what they were when Father made his money. He was a shrewd man, but he never understood that times change.”

“Who’s he talking to?” Charles asked Constance.

“He thinks you are his brother John.”

Charles looked at Uncle Julian for a long minute, and then shook his head and returned to his chicken.

“That was my dead wife’s chair on your left, young man,” Uncle Julian said. “I well recall the last time she sat there; we—”

“None of that,” Charles said, and shook his finger at Uncle Julian; he had been holding his chicken in his hands to eat it, and his finger sparkled with grease. “We’re not going to talk about it any more, Uncle.”

Constance was pleased with me because I had come to the table and when I looked at her she smiled at me. She knew that I disliked eating when anyone was watching me, and she would save my plate and bring it to me later in the kitchen; she did not remember, I saw, that she had put dressing on my salad.

“Noticed this morning,” Charles said, taking up the platter of chicken and looking into it carefully, “that there was a broken step out back. How about I fix it for you one of these days? I might as well earn my keep.”

“It would be very kind of you,” Constance said. “That step has been a nuisance for a long time.”

“And I want to run into the village to get some pipe tobacco, so I can pick up anything you need there.”

“But I go to the village on Tuesday,” I said, startled.

“You do?” He looked at me across the table, big white face turned directly at me. I was quiet; I remembered that walking to the village was the first step on Charles’ way home.

“Merricat, dear, I think if Charles doesn’t mind it might be a good idea. I never feel quite comfortable when you’re away in the village.” Constance laughed. “I’ll give you a list, Charles, and the money, and you shall be the grocery boy.”

“You keep the money in the house?”

“Of course.”

“Doesn’t sound very wise.”

“It’s in Father’s safe.”

“Even so.”

“I assure you, sir,” Uncle Julian said, “I made a point of examining the books thoroughly before committing myself. I cannot have been deceived.”

“So I’m taking little Cousin Mary’s job away from her,” Charles said, looking at me again. “You’ll have to find something else for her to do, Connie.”

I had made sure of what to say to him before I came to the table. “The Amanita phalloides, ” I said to him, “holds three different poisons. There is amanitin, which works slowly and is most potent. There is phalloidin, which acts at once, and there is phallin, which dissolves red corpuscles, although it is the least potent. The first symptoms do not appear until seven to twelve hours after eating, in some cases not before twenty-four or even forty hours. The symptoms begin with violent stomach pains, cold sweat, vomiting—”

“Listen,” Charles said. He put down his chicken. “You stop that,” he said.

Constance was laughing. “Oh, Merricat,” she said, laughing through the words, “you are silly. I taught her,” she told Charles, “there are mushrooms by the creek and in the fields and I made her learn the deadly ones. Oh, Merricat.”

“Death occurs between five and ten days after eating,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s very funny,” Charles said.

“Silly Merricat,” Constance said.

The house was not secure just because Charles had gone out of it and into the village; for one thing, Constance had given him a key to the gates. There had originally been a key for each of us; our father had a key, and our mother, and the keys were kept on a rack beside the kitchen door. When Charles started out for the village Constance gave him a key, perhaps our father’s key, and a shopping list, and the money to pay for what he bought.

“You shouldn’t keep money in the house like this,” he said, holding it tight in his hand for a minute before he reached into a back pocket and took out a wallet. “Women alone like you are, you shouldn’t keep money in the house.”

I was watching him from my corner of the kitchen but I would not let Jonas come to me while Charles was in the house. “Are you sure you put everything down?” he asked Constance.

“Hate to make two trips.”

I waited until Charles was well along, perhaps almost to the black rock, and then I said, “He forgot the library books.”