Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

"Do you think he's going to see her-Mrs. Cotton?"

"Surely he couldn't--not without being asked," I said.

"Oh, yes he could," said Rose.

"Look at him, going to Scoatney three days running, letting the

servants feed him grubbing about in the books and magazines! I tell

you he'll end by putting them off ."

"It wasn't him who put them off us last time," said Topaz, angrily.

I saw there were going to be high words so I went through into the

drawing-room. Father was sitting on the window-seat polishing his

shoes with the curtain. When he got up he was covered with Heloise's

white hairs from the seat-pad.

"Is there no place a man in a dark suit can sit in this house?" he shouted as he went to the hall for the clothes-brush.

"Not unless we dye Hcl black," I said. I brushed him; but what with the brush having lost most of its bristles, his suit having lost most of its nap and Heloise having lost more hairs than seemed believable, the result was poor. Topaz came to say that breakfast was ready, but

he said he would miss his train if he waited for it.

"Don't fuss don't fuss," he said when she begged him to have just something. Then he pushed past her in the rudest way and grabbed

Rose's bicycle because his own had a flat tyre.

"When will you be back ?" Topaz called after him.

He yelled over his shoulder that he hadn't the faintest idea.

"What is the matter with him ?" said Topaz as we walked back across the garden.

"I know he's always been moody but not bad-tempered like this. It's been getting worse ever since we went to Scoatney."

"Perhaps it's better than heavy resignation," I suggested, trying to be comforting.

"He was shockingly bad-tempered when we were little- when he was writing. You know about Mother and the cake knife

Topaz looked suddenly hopeful.

"He can massacre me if it'll really help him," she said. Then the light died out of her eyes.

"But I'm no good to him. It's that woman who's started him."

"Gracious, we don't know if anything's started him," I said.

"We've had so many false alarms. Where did he get the money to go to London ?"

She said she had given him five pounds of the Vicar's rug money.

"Though I didn't think he'd spend it on seeing her." Then she added nobly: "I suppose I oughtn't even to mind that, if she stimulates him."

Rose came out of the kitchen with a slice of bread and jam, and passed us without a word--I gathered she and Topaz had had a very sharp row

while I was brushing Father. We found that the porridge was

burnt--than which there can be few less pleasing forms of food; and

what with this and Topaz's mood of gloom, we had a depressing meal.

(the boys, of course, had gone off earlier;

after a hammy breakfast.) "I shall go and dig until I find peace," said Topaz, when we had done the washing-up and made the beds.

I felt she would find it better alone and I wanted to write in my

journal; I had finished the evening at Scoatney but there were some

reflections about life I wanted to record. (i never did record them

and have now forgotten what they were.) As I settled myself down on

Belmotte mound, I saw Rose going along the lane with Mrs.

Stebbins's crinoline; Stephen had brought word that the old lady was

fretting for it. He had refused to take it back for Rose because he

said he'd feel embarrassed. Rose had it over her shoulder; she did

look peculiar.

I decided to think a little before I began writing, and lay back

enjoying the heat of the sun and staring up at the great blue bowl of the sky. It was lovely feeling the warm earth under me and the

springing grass against the palms of my hands while my mind was drawn upwards. Unfortunately my thoughts will never stay exalted for very

long, and soon I was gloating over my new green dress and wondering if it would suit me to curl my hair. I closed my eyes, as I usually do

when I am thinking very hard. Gradually I slid into imagining Rose

married to Simon--it doesn't seem to matter when you imagine about

other people, it only stops things happening when you do it about

yourself. I gave Rose a lovely wedding and got to where she was alone with Simon at a Paris hotel--she was a little frightened of him, but I made her enjoy that.

He was looking at her the way he did at dinner when he raised his glass to I opened my eyes. He was there, the real Simon Cotton, looking at

me.

I hadn't heard a sound. One second I had seen him in the Paris hotel, brilliantly clear yet somehow tiny and far away, rather as one sees

things in a convex mirror; the next instant he was like a giant against the sky. I had been lying with the sun on my eyelids so that for a

minute nothing was the right color. The grass and sky were bleached

and his face looked ashen. But his beard was still black.

"Did I startle you?" he asked, smiling.

"I had a bet with myself I'd get up the hill without your hearing.

Oh--you weren't asleep, were you ?"

"Not quite so early in the day," I said, sitting up blinking. He sat down beside me. It was the queerest feeling--changing the man I had

imagined to the real man. I had made him so fascinating, and of course he isn't really- though very, very nice; I know that now.

He and Neil had driven down just for the day; Neil had dropped him at the end of our lane and gone on to Scoatney -which sounded as if he

weren't very interested in us.

"I'm sorry to have missed your sister," said Simon, "but Mrs. Mortmain hopes she'll be back soon."

I said I was sure she would, though I really thought she would be gone at least an hour, and wondered if I could be interesting enough to

keep him talking as long as that. I asked him if they were having a

good time in London.

"Oh, yes--I love London. But it seems a waste not to be here in this weather." He leaned back on his elbow, gazing across the fields.

"I never knew the English spring could be so dazzling."

I said it astonished one every year.

"Well, after next week we'll be back here for some time--that is, Neil and I will; Mother's absorbed in her new apartment--flat, as I keep

forgetting to call it. Leda and Aubrey are helping her to choose the

furniture. Oh, that reminds me"--he took an envelope from his

pocket--"I ought to have left this at the castle.

It's for that nice boy Stephen; his fare to London, from Leda."

"I'll give it to him," I said. I wondered if Stephen had written saying he could go, or if she had just sent the money to tempt him.

Simon handed me the envelope.

"Tell me about him," he said.

"How does he come to speak so differently from the other village boys

?"

Of course Stephen speaks just as we do--except that he chooses rather humble words. I explained about him.

"I wonder what he'll make of Leda," said Simon.

"She wants to pose him with some casts of Greek sculpture.

She'll have him in a tunic if he's not careful, or out of it. He

certainly has a marvelous head--perhaps he'll end in Hollywood."

I shut the envelope in my journal so that it wouldn't blow away.

"What's that? Lessons ?" asked Simon.

"Heavens, no, I left school long ago."

"I do apologize," he said, laughing.

"I still think of you as that little girl in the bath. Is it a story his Read me a bit."

I told him it was my journal and that I had just finished the party at Scoatney.

"Do I come in it his I'll give you a box of candy if you'll let me read a page."

"All right," I said.

He grabbed the exercise book. After a second or two he looked up from it.

"You've swindled me. Is it your own private code ?"