Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Constance,” I asked her on a bright morning; Charles had been in our house for three days then, I thought; “Constance, has he said anything yet about leaving?”

She was increasingly cross with me when I wanted Charles to leave; always before Constance had listened and smiled and only been angry when Jonas and I had been wicked, but now she frowned at me often, as though I somehow looked different to her. “I’ve told you,” she said to me, “I’ve told you and told you that I won’t hear any more silliness about Charles. He is our cousin and he has been invited to visit us and he will probably go when he is ready.”

“He makes Uncle Julian sicker.”

“He’s only trying to keep Uncle Julian from thinking about sad things all the time. And I agree with him. Uncle Julian should be cheerful.”

“Why should he be cheerful if he’s going to die?”

“I haven’t been doing my duty,” Constance said.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I’ve been hiding here,” Constance said slowly, as though she were not at all sure of the correct order of the words. She stood by the stove in the sunlight with color in her hair and eyes and not smiling, and she said slowly, “I have let Uncle Julian spend all his time living in the past and particularly re-living that one dreadful day. I have let you run wild; how long has it been since you combed your hair?”

I could not allow myself to be angry, and particularly not angry with Constance, but I wished Charles dead. Constance needed guarding more than ever before and if I became angry and looked aside she might very well be lost. I said very cautiously, “On the moon…”

“On the moon,” Constance said, and laughed unpleasantly. “It’s all been my fault,” she said. “I didn’t realize how wrong I was, letting things go on and on because I wanted to hide. It wasn’t fair to you or to Uncle Julian.”

“And Charles is also mending the broken step?”

“Uncle Julian should be in a hospital, with nurses to take care of him. And you—” She opened her eyes wide suddenly, as though seeing her old Merricat again, and then she held out her arms to me. “Oh, Merricat,” she said, and laughed a little. “Listen to me scolding you; how silly I am.”

I went to her and put my arms around her. “I love you, Constance.”

“You’re a good child, Merricat,” she said.

That was when I left her and went outside to talk to Charles. I knew I would dislike talking to Charles, but it was almost too late to ask him politely and I thought I should ask him once. Even the garden had become a strange landscape with Charles’ figure in it; I could see him standing under the apple trees and the trees were crooked and shortened beside him. I came out the kitchen door and walked slowly toward him. I was trying to think charitably of him, since I would never be able to speak kindly until I did, but whenever I thought of his big white face grinning at me across the table or watching me whenever I moved I wanted to beat at him until he went away, I wanted to stamp on him after he was dead, and see him lying dead on the grass. So I made my mind charitable toward Charles and came up to him slowly.

“Cousin Charles?” I said, and he turned to look at me. I thought of seeing him dead. “Cousin Charles?”

“Well?”

“I have decided to ask you please to go away.”

“All right,” he said. “You asked me.”

“Please will you go away?”

“No,” he said.

I could not think of anything further to say. I saw that he was wearing our father’s gold watch chain, even with the crooked link, and I knew without seeing that our father’s watch was in his pocket. I thought that tomorrow he would be wearing our father’s signet ring, and I wondered if he would make Constance put on our mother’s pearls.

“You stay away from Jonas,” I said.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “come about a month from now, I wonder who will still be here? You,” he said, “or me?”

I ran back into the house and straight up to our father’s room, where I hammered with a shoe at the mirror over the dresser until it cracked across. Then I went into my room and rested my head on the window sill and slept.

I was remembering these days to be kinder to Uncle Julian. I was sorry because he was spending more and more time in his room, taking both his breakfast and his lunch on a tray and only eating his dinners in the dining room under the despising eye of Charles.

“Can’t you feed him or something?” Charles asked Constance. “He’s got food all over himself.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Uncle Julian said, looking at Constance.

“Ought to wear a baby bib,” Charles said, laughing.

While Charles sat in the kitchen in the mornings eating hugely of ham and potatoes and fried eggs and hot biscuits and doughnuts and toast, Uncle Julian drowsed in his room over his hot milk and sometimes when he called to Constance, Charles said, “Tell him you’re busy; you don’t have to go running every time he wets his bed; he just likes being waited on.”

I always had my breakfast earlier than Charles on those sunny mornings, and if he came down before I finished I would take my plate out and sit on the grass under the chestnut tree. Once I brought Uncle Julian a new leaf from the chestnut tree and put it on his window sill. I stood outside in the sunlight and looked in at him lying still in the dark room and tried to think of ways I might be kinder. I thought of him lying there alone dreaming old Uncle Julian dreams, and I went into the kitchen and said to Constance, “Will you make Uncle Julian a little soft cake for his lunch?”

“She’s too busy now,” Charles said with his mouth full. “Your sister works like a slave.”

“Will you?” I asked Constance.

“I’m sorry,” Constance said. “I have so much to do.”

“But Uncle Julian is going to die.”

“Constance is too busy,” Charles said. “Run along and play.”

I followed Charles one afternoon when he went to the village. I stopped by the black rock, because it was not one of my days for going into the village, and watched Charles go down the main street. He stopped and talked for a minute to Stella, who was standing in the sunlight outside her shop, and he bought a paper; when I saw him sit down on the benches with the other men I turned and went back to our house. If I went into the village shopping again Charles would be one of the men who watched me going past. Constance was working in her garden and Uncle Julian slept in his chair in the sun, and when I sat quietly on my bench Constance asked, not looking up at me, “Where have you been, Merricat?”

“Wandering. Where is my cat?”

“I think,” Constance said, “that we are going to have to forbid your wandering. It’s time you quieted down a little.”

“Does ‘we’ mean you and Charles?”

“Merricat.” Constance turned toward me, sitting back against her feet and folding her hands before her. “I never realized until lately how wrong I was to let you and Uncle Julian hide here with me. We should have faced the world and tried to live normal lives; Uncle Julian should have been in a hospital all these years, with good care and nurses to watch him. We should have been living like other people. You should…” She stopped, and waved her hands helplessly. “You should have boy friends,” she said finally, and then began to laugh because she sounded funny even to herself.

“I have Jonas,” I said, and we both laughed and Uncle Julian woke up suddenly and laughed a thin old cackle.

“You are the silliest person I ever saw,” I told Constance, and went off to look for Jonas. While I was wandering Charles came back to our house; he brought a newspaper and a bottle of wine for his dinner and our father’s scarf which I had used to tie shut the gate, because Charles had a key.