Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

hadn't lagged too.

"He just said "Wait a minute with that lantern, Thomas, or Rose won't be able to see." And down I had to "Don't worry--I swear I'll manage something," I told her.

We heard them crossing the landing.

"Who sleeps in the four-poster?" asked Simon, as they came in.

"Rose," I said quickly--it happened to be my week for it, but I felt it was more romantic than the iron bedstead for him to picture her in.

Then he opened the door to our tower and was very tickled to see Rose's pink evening dress hanging in it--she keeps it there because the frills would get crushed in the wardrobe.

"Fancy hanging one's clothes in a six-hundred-year-old tower!" he said.

Neil put his arm around Miss Blossom and said she was just his type of girl, then knelt on the window-seat to look down at the moat.

Inspiration came to me.

"How'd you like to bathe ?" I asked him.

"Love it," he said instantly.

"What, bathe tonight ?"--Thomas simply goggled at me.

"Yes, it'll be fun." Thank goodness, he caught the ghost of a wink I flickered at him, and stopped goggling.

"Lend Neil your bathing shorts--I'm afraid there's only one pair, Simon, but you could have them afterwards. Rose mustn't bathe because she gets chills so easily." (heaven forgive me! Rose is as strong as a horse--I am the one who gets chills.) "We'll watch from the window,"

said Simon.

I unearthed my bathing-suit, then ran after Thomas who was yelling from his room that he couldn't find the shorts--for an awful moment I feared he had left them at school.

"What's the game ?" he whispered.

"Don't you know the water'll be icy ?"

I did indeed. We never bathe in the moat until July or August and even then we usually regret it.

"I'll explain later," I told him.

"Don't you dare put Neil off." I found the shorts at last--they were helping to stop up Thomas's draughty chimney; luckily they are black.

"You'd better change in the bathroom," I called to Neil, "and go down the tower steps. You show him, Thomas, and then stay and light us with your lantern. I'll meet you at the moat, Neil."

I gave him the shorts, then went to change in Buffer. Simon called,

"Have a good swim," as I ran through the bedroom, then turned back to Rose. They were sitting on the window-seat looking splendidly

settled.

It was only while I was changing that I fully realized what I had let myself in for--I who hate cold water so much that even putting on a

bathing-suit makes me shiver. I went down the kitchen stairs feeling

like an Eskimo going to his frozen hell.

I had no intention of showing myself in the drawing-room--I had

outgrown my suit so much that the school motto was stretched right

across my chest; so I went to the moat via the ruins beyond the

kitchen. Near there, a plank bridge runs across to the wheat field. I sat on it, carefully keeping my feet well above the water.

Neil wasn't down- I could see the full length of the moat because the moon was rising. It was casting the most unearthly light across the

green wheat--so beautiful that I nearly forgot the horror having to

bathe. How moons do vary! Some are white, some are gold, this was

like a dazzling circle o tin-- I never saw a moon look so hard

before.

The water on the moat was black and silver and gold; silver where the moonlight shimmered on it, gold under the candlelit windows;

and while I watched, a gold pool spread around the corner tower as

Thomas came out and set the lantern in the doorway. Then Neil came

down looking very tall in the black bathing-shorts and stepped from

lantern light to moonlight.

"Where are you, Cassandra ?" he called.

I called back that I was coming, then put one toe in the water to know the worst. It was a far worse worst than I anticipated, and a brave

idea I'd had of getting my going-in agonies over by myself, and

swimming towards him, vanished instantly- I felt that a respite of even a few moments was well worth having. So I walked slowly along the edge of the field, with the wheat tickling my legs coldly as I brushed past, sat down on the bank opposite to him, and began a bright conversation.

Apart from putting of the horror plunging in, I felt dawdling was

advisable in order to give Rose more time-because I was pretty sure

that once we did get into the moat, we should very soon get out

again.

I talked about the beauty of the night. I told him the winning

anecdote of how I tried to cross the moat in a clothes-basket after I first heard about coracles. Then I started in on the good long subject of America, but he interrupted me and said."

"I believe you're stalling about this swim. I'm going in, anyway.

Is it deep enough for me to dive ?"

I said yes, if he was careful.

"Look out for the mud at the bottom," Thomas warned him. He did a cautious dive and came up looking a very surprised man.

"Gosh, that was cold," he shouted.

"And after all the sunshine we've been having!"

As if our moat took any notice of sunshine!

It is fed by a stream that apparently comes straight from Greenland.

I said: "I wonder if I ought to bathe, really--after such a heavy dinner."

"You don't get away with that," said Neil, "it was you who suggested it. Come on or I'll pull you in--it's really quite bearable."

I said to God: "Please, I'm doing this for my sister--warm it up a bit." But of course I knew He wouldn't.

My last thought before I jumped was that I'd almost sooner die.

It was agony- like being skinned with icy knives. I swam madly,

telling myself it would be better in a minute and feeling quite sure it wouldn't. Neil swam beside me. I must have looked very grim because

he suddenly said: "Say, are you all right ?"

"Just," I gasped, pulling myself up on to the plank bridge.

"You come right back and keep on swimming," he said, "or else you must go in and dry yourself. Oh, come on--you'll get used to it."

I slipped into the water again and it didn't feel quite so bad; by the time we had swum back as far as the drawing-room I was beginning to

enjoy it. Topaz and the Vicar, framed in the yellow square of the

window, were looking down on us. There was no sign of Rose and Simon

at the window high above;

I hoped they were too engrossed to look out. We swam through a patch

of moon-light--it was fun making silver ripples just in front of my eye sand then to the steps of the corner tower. Thomas had disappeared;

I hoped to heaven he hadn't gone back to Rose and Simon. his After we turned the corner to the front of the castle there was no more golden light from the windows or the lantern, nothing but moonlight. We swam on our hacks, looking up at the sheer, unbroken walls--never had they seemed to me so high. The water made slapping, chuckling noises

against them and they gave out a mysterious smell--as when thunder-rain starts on a hot day, but dank and weedy and very much of a night-time smell too.

I asked Neil how he would describe it but he only said, "Oh, I guess it's just wet stone"-- I found what he really wanted to think about was boiling oil being poured down on us from the battlements. Everything

to do with castle warfare fascinated him; when we reached the gatehouse he asked how drawbridges worked and was disappointed to find that our present bridge isn't one- we only call it "the drawbridge" to distinguish it from the Belmotte bridge. Then he wanted to know what

happened to the ruined walls we were swimming past and was most

indignant with Cromwell's Puritans for battering them down.

"What a darned shame," he said, looking up at the great tumbled stones.

I told him it was the first time I'd known him to have a feeling for