Dodie Smith - I Capture the Castle

child . "He got up and came towards me.

"Is the elbow better ?" I said, "Quite, thank you."

"Good. Next time you come I'll try to give you a better welcome-put the red carpet down. But you must wait until you're invited. I must

say I'm curious to know what keyed you up to this attack tonight.

Mrs. Cotton wasn't doing a little prodding by proxy, was she?"

"Gracious, no!" Of course had no intention of telling him my real reason for coming; it would have worried him quite uselessly, besides being unfair to Rose.

"It was only that I was anxious."

"Good lord, do you mean about my state of mind ?" He chuckled, then looked concerned.

"You poor girl, did you really think my brain was going? Well, I daresay I seemed pretty eccentric, and plenty of people will think

that's an understatement when this book gets out. If it ever does. Why can't I take the plunge? It's just the initial idea that eludes me.

I've lost confidence you know-it isn't laziness, I swear"--there was a humble, almost pleading note in his voice--"it never has been--I hope you believe that, my dear. It-well, it just hasn't been possible."

I said, "Of course I believe it. And I believe you're going to start very soon now."

"I hope so." He laughed a little, in an odd, nervous kind of way.

"Because if I don't get going soon, the whole impetus may die- and if that happens, well, I really shall consider a long, restful plunge into insanity. Sometimes the abyss yawns very attractively. There,

there--don't take me seriously."

"Of course not," I said briskly.

"Now, look, Father. Why not let me sit here as Mother used to?

I'll pray, as she did; I'm really quite good at it. And you go to your desk and start this very night."

"No, no, I couldn't yet"--he looked positively frightened.

"I know you mean well, my dear, but you're making me nervous. Now run along to bed. I'm going, myself."

He lifted up the American papers and dived under to the shelf holding his old detective novels, grabbing one quite at random. Then he put

the lamp out. Just as we went out of the room, Mother's little clock

began to strike nine. Even after Father had locked the door and we

were groping our way down the pitch-black stairs, I could hear the

tiny, tinkling chimes.

"I must remember to carry matches," he said, "now there's no Stephen to leave a lamp outside my door."

I said I would see to it in future. There was no lantern in the

gatehouse passage, either--another of Stephen's jobs; all the time I

find out more and more things he did without my ever realizing it.

"Let me make you some cocoa, Father," I suggested as we went into the kitchen, but he said he didn't need anything-- "Except a biscuit, perhaps--and find me a candle with at least three hours' reading in

it." I gave him a whole plate of biscuits and a new candle.

"The richness of our life these days never ceases to astonish me," he said as he went up to bed.

Thomas was deep in his homework, at the kitchen table. I waited until I heard Father go through to Windsor Castle, then said quietly: "Come on out, I've got to talk to you. Bring a lantern so that we can go

into the lane- I don't want Father to hear our voices through some open window."

We went as far as the stile, and sat on it with the lantern balanced

between us. Then I told him everything except my true reason for

bearding Father; I said it was due to a sudden impulse.

"Well, how does it sound to you ?" I finished up.

"Perfectly awful," said Thomas.

"I'm afraid he really is going crazy."

I was taken aback.

"Then I've made him sound worse than he seemed--through telling it too quickly.

It was only at the very end that his manner was odd--and a bit,

perhaps, when he was talking to himself, about whales and mammoths."

"But all those changes of manner--being furious with you one minute and then really pleasant. And when you add up all the silly things he's

been interested in lately- oh, lord, when I think of him taking that

haddock-bone" He began to laugh.

I said, "Don't, Thomas--it's like people in the eighteenth century laughing at the lunatics in Bedlam."

"Well, I bet I'd have laughed at them myself-things can be funny even when they're awful, you know. But, I wonder"--he was suddenly

serious" are we like Harry's Father jeering at Jacob Wrestling?

Perhaps he really has something up his sleeve. Though I don't like the sound of all those lists he's making it's like taking too many notes at school; you feel you've achieved something when you haven't."

"You mean he may never get going on the book itself." I was quiet for a minute, staring into the lantern, though what I saw all the time was Father's face when he was looking humble and nervous.

"Oh, Thomas, if he doesn't, I think he will go out of his mind. He said he wasn't serious about plunging into insanity, but I believe I

felt he was. He may be a borderline case--madness and genius are very dose to each other, aren't they his If only we could push him the right way!"

"Well, you haven't made much of a start tonight," said Thomas, "you've just driven him to bed with a detective novel. Anyway, I'm going in.

Whether Father's sane or off his rocker, I've still got to do my

algebra."

"You can make him it, the unknown quantity," I said.

"I think I shall stay here for a while. Can you manage without the lantern ?"

He said he could--there was quite a bit of starlight.

"Though it won't do you any good to sit here brooding," he added.

But I didn't plan to brood. I had decided to look up the record of my talk with Simon about psycho-analysis, on the off chance of finding

something helpful; and I had no intention of letting Thomas know where my journal was hidden. I waited until I felt sure he would be back in the castle, then cut across the meadow and climbed the mound. A little cloud of white moths came all the way with me, hovering round the

lantern.

It felt strange going from the warm, blowy night into the cool

stillness of Belmotte Tower. As I climbed down the ladder inside I

thought of being there with Simon on Midsummer Eve--as I do every time I go into the tower. Then I pulled myself together.

"This may be your last hope of keeping your Father out of a padded cell," I told myself severely. And by then a faint flicker of hope on my own account had re-awakened. I felt that if I once got him even

started on an important book, Rose just might be persuaded to postpone her marriage--and then anything might happen.

I crawled up the crumbling staircase and brought down my bread-tin--I have used that for some time now, because ants kept getting into the

attache case. I spread my three journals out on the old iron bedstead and sat there looking through them; I could read quite well by the

light from the lantern. It didn't take me long to find the entry for

May Day, with the bit about psychoanalysis.

First came the speech in which Simon said he didn't believe Father

stopped writing just because he had been in prison--that the trouble

probably lay much further back. But prison might have brought it to

the surface. Anyway, a psycho-analyst would certainly ask Father

questions about the time he spent there--in a way, try to put him

mentally back in prison. And then there was the bit about it being

possible that another period of physical imprisonment might resolve the trouble. But Simon said that was unworkable as a treatment, because it couldn't be done without Father's consent-and if he gave it, of course he wouldn't feel imprisoned.

There didn't seem to be anything I could do along those lines.

I glanced through another page in case I had missed something, and came to the description of Simon's face as he lay on the grass with his eyes closed. It gave me a stab in which happiness and misery were somehow a part of each other. I closed the journal and sat staring up into the