Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“I’m sure they can hear you,” Jim Clarke said. “They can probably hear you in the village.”

“But I’m sure they misunderstood the people last night; I’m sure Constance was upset, and I must tell them that nobody meant any harm. Constance, listen to me, please. We want you and Mary Katherine to come to our house until we can decide what to do with you. Everything’s all right, really it is; we’re going to forget all about it.”

“Do you think she will push over the house?” I whispered to Constance, and Constance shook her head wordlessly.

“Jim, do you think you could break down the door?”

“Certainly not. Leave them alone, Helen, they’ll come out when they’re ready.”

“But Constance takes these things so seriously. I’m sure she’s frightened now.”

“Leave them alone.”

“They cannot be left alone, that is absolutely the worst possible thing for them. I want them out of there and home with me where I can take care of them.”

“They don’t seem to want to come,” Jim Clarke said.

“Constance? Constance? I know you’re in there; come and open the door.”

I was thinking that we might very well put a cloth or a piece of cardboard over the window in the kitchen door; it simply would not do to have Helen Clarke constantly peering in to watch pots cooking on the stove. We could pin the curtains together across the kitchen windows, and perhaps if the windows were all covered we could sit quietly at the table when Helen Clarke came pounding outside and not have to hide on the cellar stairs.

“Let’s leave,” Jim Clarke said. “They’re not going to answer you.”

“But I want to take them home with me.”

“We did what we could. We’ll come back another time, when they’ll feel more like seeing you.”

“Constance? Constance, please answer me.”

Constance sighed, and tapped her fingers irritably and almost noiselessly on the stair rail. “I wish she’d hurry,” she said into my ear, “my soup is going to boil over.”

Helen Clarke called again and again, going back around the house to their car, calling “Constance? Constance?” as though we might be somewhere in the woods, up a tree perhaps, or under the lettuce leaves, or waiting to spring out at her from behind a bush. When we heard their car start, distantly, we came up out of the cellar and Constance turned off her soup and I went along the hall to the front door to be sure they had gone and that the door was safely locked. I saw their car turn out of the driveway and thought I could still hear Helen Clarke calling “Constance? Constance?”

“She certainly wanted her tea,” I said to Constance when I came back to the kitchen.

“We have only two cups with handles,” Constance said. “She will never take tea here again.”

“It’s a good thing Uncle Julian’s gone, or one of us would have to use a broken cup. Are you going to neaten Uncle Julian’s room?”

“Merricat.” Constance turned from the stove to look at me. “What are we going to do?”

“We’ve neatened the house. We’ve had food. We’ve hidden from Helen Clarke. What are we going to do?”

“Where are we going to sleep? How are we going to know what time it is? What will we wear for clothes?”

“Why do we need to know what time it is?”

“Our food won’t last forever, even the preserves.”

“We can sleep in my hiding place by the creek.”

“No. That’s all right for hiding, but you must have a real bed.”

“I saw a mattress on the stairs. From my own old bed, perhaps. We can pull it down and clean it and dry it in the sun. One corner is burned.”

“Good,” said Constance. We went together to the stairs and took hold of the mattress awkwardly; it was unpleasantly wet and dirty. We dragged it, pulling together, along the hall, with little scraps of wood and glass coming with it, and got it across Constance’s clean kitchen floor to the kitchen door. Before unlocking the door I looked out carefully, and even when the door was opened I went out first to look around in every direction, but it was safe. We dragged the mattress out onto the lawn, and put it in the sun near our mother’s marble bench.

“Uncle Julian used to sit right here,” I said.

“It would be a good day, today, for Uncle Julian to sit in the sun.”

“I hope he was warm when he died. Perhaps he remembered the sun for a minute.”

“I had his shawl; I hope he didn’t wish for it. Merricat, I am going to plant something here, where he used to sit.”

“I am going to bury something for him. What will you plant?”

“A flower.” Constance leaned, and touched the grass softly. “Some kind of a yellow flower.”

“It’s going to look funny, right in the middle of the lawn.”

“We’ll know why it’s there, and no one else will ever see it.”

“And I will bury something yellow, to keep Uncle Julian warm.”

“First, however, my lazy Merricat, you will get a pot of water and scrub that mattress clean. And I will wash the kitchen floor again.”

We were going to be very happy, I thought. There were a great many things to do, and a whole new pattern of days to arrange, but I thought we were going to be very happy. Constance was pale, and still saddened by what they had done to her kitchen, but she had scrubbed every shelf, and washed the table again and again, and washed the windows and the floor. Our dishes were bravely on their shelf, and the cans and unbroken boxes of food we had rescued made a substantial row in the pantry.

“I could train Jonas to bring back rabbits for stew,” I told her, and she laughed, and Jonas looked back at her blandly.

“That cat is so used to living on cream and rum cakes and buttered eggs that I doubt if he could catch a grasshopper,” she said.

“I don’t think I could care for a grasshopper stew.”

“At any rate, right now I am making an onion pie.”

While Constance washed the kitchen I found a heavy cardboard carton which I took apart carefully, and so had several large pieces of cardboard to cover the glass window in the kitchen door. The hammer and the nails were in the tool shed where Charles Blackwood had put them after trying to mend the broken step, and I nailed cardboard across the kitchen door until the glass was completely covered and no one could see in. I nailed more cardboard across the two kitchen windows, and the kitchen was dark, but safe. “It would be safer to let the kitchen windows get dirty,” I told Constance, but she was shocked, and said, “I wouldn’t live in a house with dirty windows.”

When we had finished the kitchen was very clean but could not sparkle because there was so little light, and I knew that Constance was not pleased. She loved sunshine and brightness and cooking in a light lovely kitchen. “We can keep the door open,” I said, “if we watch carefully all the time. We’ll hear if any cars stop in front of the house. When I can,” I said, “I will try to think of a way to build barricades along the sides of the house so no one will be able to come around here to the back.”

“I am sure Helen Clarke will try again.”

“At any rate she cannot look in now.”

The afternoon was drawing in; even with the door open the sunlight came only a short way across the floor, and Jonas came to Constance at the stove, asking for his supper. The kitchen was warm and comfortable and familiar and clean. It would be nice to have a fireplace in here, I thought; we could sit beside a fire, and then I thought no, we have already had a fire.

“I will go and make sure that the front door is locked,” I said.

The front door was locked and no one was outside. When I came back into the kitchen Constance said, “Tomorrow I will clean Uncle Julian’s room. We have so little house left that it should all be very clean.”