Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

"One can blame her for being so darned obvious," said Neil.

"And that ridiculous dress--at this time of the day!

Funny, I rather liked her in it last night."

"The stepmother seems quite pleasant. She looked about as

uncomfortable as I felt. My God, how that girl embarrassed me!"

"We shall have to drop them, Simon. If we don't, she may put you in a very awkward position."

Simon said he supposed so. They were talking quietly, but it was so

still that every word came to me clearly. As they passed the barn,

Neil said:

"Pity we didn't see the child again. She was a cute kid."

"A bit consciously naive, don't you think?" said Simon.

"I shall feel worst about dropping the old man- I'd rather hoped I could help him. But I don't suppose there's much one can do if he's a hopeless drunk."

Oh, I could kill them! When Father doesn't even get enough to eat, let alone any strong drink! They must have heard some lying gossip. How

dare people say he drinks And he isn't an old man he not yet fifty.

I didn't hear any more. I wish now that I had rushed out and hit them.

That would have showed them if I am consciously naive!

What on earth did Rose do his I must go in.

Eight o'clock. In the drawing-room.

I have come in here to get away from Rose. She is drying her hair in

the kitchen and manicuring her nails with a sharpened match.

And she is talking, talking. I don't know how Topaz can stand it,

knowing what she does know--for I couldn't keep it to myself, I

couldn't bear to. I might have done if I hadn't found her alone when I got in; but I did and she saw that I was upset. I began to tell her in a whisper--ours is a dreadful house for being overheard in-but she

said: "Wait," and pulled me out into the garden.

We could hear Rose singing upstairs, so we didn't talk until we had

crossed the bridge and gone a little way up the mound.

Topaz wasn't as furious as I had expected-but, of course, I didn't tell her the bit about Father. She wasn't even surprised. She said Rose

had seen the Cottons coming from her bedroom window and nothing would stop her changing into the tea-gown. (as if anyone ever wore a

tea-gown for tea!) And she had behaved insanely, making a dead set at Simon Cotton.

"Do you mean she was too nice to him ?"

"Not exactly--that mightn't have mattered so much.

She was terribly affected, she kept challenging him if she'd had a fan she'd have tapped him with it and said "Fie, He!" And she fluttered her eyelids. It'd all have been very fetching a hundred years ago."

Oh, I could see it! Rose got it out of old books. We've never known

any modern women except Topaz, and Rose would never dream of copying

her. Oh, poor, poor Rose-she never even saw modern girls on the

pictures, as I did.

"They won't come back," said Topaz.

"I'd have known that, even if you hadn't overheard what they said."

I said we didn't want them, that they must be hateful people to talk

like that. But Topaz said that was nonsense-"Rose asked for it. Men don't really mind your showing you like them when you do, but they run a mile from obvious fascination- that's what it was, of course, all the challenging and head-tossing, and all directed at Simon in the crudest way. If Mortmain had been in he might have chaffed her out of

it--anyway, he'd have talked to them himself.

Oh, blast!"

Father had gone for a walk- the first he has taken for months.

Topaz said Simon Cotton had brought him a book by a famous American

critic because one of the essays in it dealt with Jacob Wrestling.

"I suppose Simon just might come back to talk to Mortmain," she said.

But I knew better.

It was beginning to get dark. There was a light down in the kitchen.

We saw Rose pass the window.

"Shall we tell her ?" I said.

Topaz thought not--unless we ever get asked to Scoatney-"If we do, we might try to kick some sense into her."

We won't get asked.

Topaz put her arm round me and we trudged down the mound --very

awkwardly because she takes longer strides than I can. When we got to the bottom she looked back at Belmotte Tower, dark against the twilight sky.

"Beautiful, isn't it ?" she said in her most velvety tones.

Now could she really be interested in beauty at such a moment his

Incidentally, when she painted the tower she made it look like a black rolling-pin on an overturned green pudding-basin.

My candle is burning out and the drawing-room is getting colder and

colder--the fire has been out for hours; but I can't write this in the same room with Rose. When I look at her I feel I am watching a rat in a trap that hopes it will get out when I know it won't.

Not that I ever watched a rat in a trap, nor does Rose think she is in one; but this is no moment to be finicky about metaphors.

Heloise has just pushed the door open and come in and licked me, which is kind but so chilly as I dry. And I can now hear what is going on in the kitchen far more fully than I could wish. Father is there now and is talking excitedly- he says the American critic has discovered things in Jacob Wrestling that he certainly never put there and that the

arrogance of critics is beyond belief.

He is obviously enjoying the thought of discussing it all with Simon

Cotton.

Rose's exuberance has risen higher and higher. I regret to say that

she is now whistling.

Stephen has been in and put his coat round me. It smells of horses.

Am I consciously naive? Perhaps I am, perhaps this journal is. In

future I will write it in stark prose. But I won't really write it at all any more, because I have come to the end of this exercise book-I

have already used both inside covers and am now crossing my writing,

and crossed speed-writing will probably never come uncrossed.

It must be just twenty-four hours since those Cottons walked in on me in my bath.

Topaz has just yelled that she is making cocoa.

Oh, comfortable cocoa! Not so good--Topaz has now yelled that it will have to be made with water because the Cottons drank the milk;

there was no tea to offer them. Still, any kind of cocoa is good.

But it will be agony to know that Rose will think we are having it to celebrate, while Topaz and I know that it is funeral baked meats.

THE END

SLAM THE BOOK SHUT

VI

I have a new exercise book, the finest I ever saw. It cost a whole

shilling! Stephen got Miss Marcy to buy it in London last week; she

went up on a cheap day-ticket. When he gave it to me, I thought I

would write something like Wuthering Heights in it- I never dreamt that I should want to go on with this journal.

And now life has begun all over again.

I am up on Belmotte. Spring has come with such a bound that catkins

are still dangling on the hazels while daisies are rushing out on the mound- I particularly love them in the short, brilliant grass of the

motte, where they look like spring in a child's picture-book as well

as the real spring. There are daffodils down in the courtyard garden

but I can't see them from here because the washing is flapping;

Topaz keeps coming out with more and more things to peg up, and they

are all part of the exciting happenings. I have been leaning back

against the tower quietly gloating, watching the dazzling white clouds move past--there is quite a breeze but a soft, almost summery one.

It is six weeks today since Topaz and I stood on Belmotte in the dusk with life at its lowest ebb--though it ebbed a great deal lower

afterwards. At first only Topaz and I were miserable;

it was a terrible strain not to show it- we used to slip off for long walks together and let our faces fall. Rose's exuberance lasted about ten days; then she began to feel something else ought to happen. I