Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Constance had given them to Charles and now they were scattered, instead of spending their little time decently put away on a shelf. There was one in the drawing room and one in the dining room and one, I supposed, in the study. They were not fragile, because the one now in the bedroom had not cracked although the pipe on it was burning. I had known all day that I would find something here; I brushed the saucer and the pipe off the table into the wastebasket and they fell softly onto the newspapers he had brought into the house.

I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes—the left—saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented. I had reached the staircase to go downstairs before I remembered and had to go back to wash, and comb my hair. “What took you so long?” he asked when I sat down at the table. “What have you been doing up there?”

“Will you make me a cake with pink frosting?” I asked Constance. “With little gold leaves around the edge? Jonas and I are going to have a party.”

“Perhaps tomorrow,” Constance said.

“We are going to have a long talk after dinner,” Charles said.

“ Solanum dulcamara, ” I told him.

“What?” he said.

“Deadly nightshade,” Constance said. “Charles, please let it wait.”

“I’ve had enough,” he said.

“Constance?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian?”

“I have cleaned my plate.” Uncle Julian found a morsel of meat loaf on his napkin and put it into his mouth. “What do I have now?”

“Perhaps a little more, Uncle Julian? It is a pleasure to see you so hungry.”

“I feel considerably better tonight. I have not felt so hearty for days.”

I was pleased that Uncle Julian was well and I knew he was happy because he had been so discourteous to Charles. While Constance was cutting up another small piece of meat loaf Uncle Julian looked at Charles with an evil shine in his old eyes, and I knew he was going to say something wicked. “Young man,” he began at last, but Charles turned his head suddenly to look into the hall.

“I smell smoke,” Charles said.

Constance paused and lifted her head and turned to the kitchen door. “The stove?” she said and got up quickly to go into the kitchen.

“Young man—”

“There is certainly smoke.” Charles went to look into the hall. “I smell it out here,” he said. I wondered whom he thought he was talking to; Constance was in the kitchen and Uncle Julian was thinking about what he was going to say, and I had stopped listening. “There is smoke,” Charles said.

“It’s not the stove.” Constance stood in the kitchen doorway and looked at Charles.

Charles turned and came closer to me. “If this is anything you’ve done…” he said.

I laughed because it was clear that Charles was afraid to go upstairs and follow the smoke; then Constance said, “Charles—your pipe—” and he turned and ran up the stairs. “I’ve asked him and asked him,” Constance said.

“Would it start a fire?” I asked her, and then Charles screamed from upstairs, screamed, I thought, with the exact sound of a bluejay in the woods. “That’s Charles,” I said politely to Constance, and she hurried to go into the hall and look up. “What is it?” she asked, “Charles, what is it?”

“Fire,” Charles said, crashing down the stairs, “Run, run; the whole damn house is on fire,” he screamed into Constance’s face, “and you haven’t got a phone. ”

“My papers,” Uncle Julian said. “I shall collect my papers and remove them to a place of safety.” He pushed against the edge of the table to move his chair away. “Constance?”

“Run,” Charles said, at the front door now, wrenching at the lock, “ run, you fool.”

“I have not done much running in the past few years, young man. I see no cause for this hysteria; there is time to gather my papers.”

Charles had the front door open now, and turned on the doorsill to call to Constance. “Don’t try to carry the safe,” he said, “put the money in a bag. I’ll be back as fast as I can get help. Don’t panic.” He ran, and we could hear him screaming “Fire! Fire! Fire!” as he ran toward the village.

“Good heavens,” Constance said, almost amused. Then she took Uncle Julian’s chair to help him into his room and I went into the hall and looked upstairs. Charles had left the door to our father’s room standing open and I could see the movement of fire inside. Fire burns upward, I thought; it will burn their things in the attic. Charles had left the front door open too, and a line of smoke reached down the stairs and drifted outside. I did not see any need to move quickly or to run shrieking around the house because the fire did not seem to be hurrying itself. I wondered if I could go up the stairs and shut the door to our father’s room and keep the fire inside, belonging entirely to Charles, but when I started up the stairs I saw a finger of flame reach out to touch the hall carpet and some heavy object fell crashing in our father’s room. There would be nothing of Charles in there now; even his pipe must have been consumed.

“Uncle Julian is gathering his papers,” Constance said, coming into the hall to stand beside me. She had Uncle Julian’s shawl over her arm.

“We will have to go outside,” I said. I knew that she was frightened, so I said, “We can stay on the porch, behind the vines, in the darkness.”

“We neatened it just the other day,” she said. “It has no right to burn.” She began to shiver as though she were angry, and I took her by the hand and brought her through the open front door and just as we turned back for another look the lights came into the driveway with the disgusting noise of sirens and we were held in the doorway in the light. Constance put her face against me to hide, and then there was Jim Donell, the first one to leap from the fire engine and run up the steps. “Out of the way,” he said, and pushed past us and into our house. I took Constance along the porch to the corner where the vines grew thick, and she moved into the corner and pressed against the vines. I held her hand tight, and together we watched the great feet of the men stepping across our doorsill, dragging their hoses, bringing filth and confusion and danger into our house. More lights moved into the driveway and up to the steps, and the front of the house was white and pale and uncomfortable at being so clearly visible; it had never been lighted before. The noise was too much for me to hear all together, but somewhere in the noise was Charles’ voice, still going on and on. “Get the safe in the study,” he said a thousand times.

Smoke squeezed out the front door, coming between the big men pushing in. “Constance,” I whispered, “Constance, don’t watch them.”

“Can they see me?” she whispered back. “Is anyone looking?”

“They’re all watching the fire. Be very quiet.”

I looked carefully out between the vines. There was a long row of cars, and the village fire engine, all parked as close to the house as they could get, and everyone in the village was there, looking up and watching. I saw faces laughing, and faces that looked frightened, and then someone called out, very near to us, “What about the women, and the old man? Anyone see them?”

“They had plenty of warning,” Charles shouted from somewhere, “they’re all right.”

Uncle Julian could manage his chair well enough to get out the back door, I thought, but it did not seem that the fire was going near the kitchen or Uncle Julian’s room; I could see the hoses and hear the men shouting, and they were all on the stairs and in the front bedrooms upstairs. I could not get through the front door, and even if I could leave Constance there was no way to go around to the back door without going down the steps in the light with all of them watching. “Was Uncle Julian frightened?” I whispered to Constance.