I Capture the Castle

by Dodie Smith

The torch went out and he turned it to see if the bulb had gone. And that second, it came on again. For an instant, the shadow of his head was thrown on the wall and, owing to the pointed beard, it was exactly like the Devil.

“Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they’re complete, not leading anywhere.”

As it turned out, the potato-cakes were spoilt; because while we were eating them, we had one of those family rows which are so funny in books and on the pictures. They aren’t funny in real life, particularly when they happen at meals, as they so often do. They always make me shake and feel rather sick.

miserable people cannot afford to dislike each other. Cruel blows of fate call for extreme kindness in the family circle.

“We’re like Ab when he sees birds fly past the window. At any moment we’ll let out wistful cat noises.”

time takes the ugliness and horror out of death and turns it into beauty.

my brain began to pick out the bits it wanted to think about and I realized how the day made a pattern of clothes—first our white dresses in the early morning, then the consciousness of what people were wearing in London, then Aunt Millicent’s poor dead clothes, then all the exquisite things in the shop, then our furs. And I thought how important clothes were to women and always had been.

“But I can’t see how anyone could believe that you killed the bear with a pitchfork,” I said. “I didn’t. I only wounded it—badly, I think, but not enough to put it out of action. It came blundering towards me, I stepped aside and it crashed head-first into the river—I could hear it threshing about in the darkness. I picked up a big stone—poor brute, I hated to do it but I had to finish it off. It gave just one groan as the stone hit it and then went down. I held the lantern high; I could see the bubbles coming up. And then I saw the dark bulk of it under the water, being carried along by the current.”

“What did you want a lion for?” I asked. “Oh, they were kind of cute,” he said vaguely.

“I got used to the vitality of American women when I was over there,” he explained. “Do they all talk as much as that?” I asked. “No, of course not. But she happens to belong to a type I frequently met—it goes to lectures.

I nearly laughed—they were so different, Miss Marcy like a rosy little bird and Topaz tall and pale, like a slightly dead goddess, but just that second they so much resembled each other in their absolute lust to marry Rose off. “Perhaps

“Look, Mortmain, look! Oh, don’t you long to be an old, old man in a lamp-lit inn?” “Yes, particularly one with rheumatism,” said father. “My dear, you’re an ass.”

He is the nicest man—about fifty, plump, with curly golden hair; rather like an elderly baby—and most unholy. Father once said to him: “God knows how you came to be a clergyman.” And the Vicar said: “Well, it’s His business to know.”

“Mortmain, your women are spectacular.” “I’m not,” I said. “Ah, but you’re the insidious type—Jane Eyre with a touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl. I like your string of coral.”

It was a wonderful dinner with real champagne (lovely, rather like very good ginger ale without the ginger). But I wish I could have had that food when I wasn’t at a party, because you can’t notice food fully when you are being polite.

“When this house was built, people used daggers and their fingers,” he said. “And it’ll probably last until the days when men dine off capsules.”

It suddenly seemed astonishing that people should meet especially to eat together—because food goes into the mouth and talk comes out. And if you watch people eating and talking—really watch them—it is a very peculiar sight: hands so busy, forks going up and down, swallowings, words coming out between mouthfuls, jaws working like mad. The more you look at a dinner party, the odder it seems—all the candlelit faces, hands with dishes coming over shoulders, the owners of the hands moving round quietly taking no part in the laughter

I noticed a girl from Godsend village and gave her a tiny wink—and wished I hadn’t, because she let out a little snort of laughter and then looked in terror at the butler.

“Good God, you can’t say things like that to me at your own dinner table.” “Oh, I always employ shock tactics with men of genius,” said Mrs. Cotton. “And one has to employ them in public or the men of genius bolt.” “I’m perfectly capable of bolting, in public or out,” said father—but I could tell he wasn’t going to;

there was an easy, amused tone in his voice that I hadn’t heard for years. He went on banteringly, “Tell me, are you unique or has the American club woman become more menacing since my day?”

the Vicar was lying on the sofa by the middle fireplace reading Mrs. Fox-Cotton’s book.

“Let’s go and talk to them,” he said, “unless you want me to dance with you. I dance like an india-rubber ball.” I said I should like to see the kitchens. He got up, closing the book. “Mrs. Fox-Cotton said that was no book for little girls,” I told him. “It’s no book for little vicars,” he said, chuckling.

“Oh, Thomas, you can’t!” I began—but I didn’t want Neil to call me Great-Aunt Cassandra so I finished up: “Well, I suppose you have.” And I certainly would have fainted with despair if Thomas had refused the ham. In the end, I undertook to bring it home because he couldn’t manage it on his bicycle. “But swear you won’t go all ladylike and leave it behind,” he whispered. I swore.

“You’re nursing it as if it were your first-born child,” said father when it was returned to me eventually. I said I doubted if anyone’s first-born child was ever more welcome.

I wished I could change minds with her for a while and re-live her evening.

I’ll do out-of-bed prayers.”

“That’ll do, Rose,” I told her at last. “It’s enough just to mention things, you know. Long prayers are like nagging.”

I love owls, but I wish God had made them vegetarian.

“All I got out of him was ‘Don’t be a fool, my dear—how can one repeat the details of a conversation? She’s a highly intelligent woman and she can listen as well as she can talk.’ And then what do you think he said? That he’d placed her wrongly—her knowledge of literature wasn’t at all superficial; she’s very widely read. ‘It just shows,’ he told me, ‘that one shouldn’t generalize about nations on the strength of a brief acquaintance’—and you’d have thought from his tone that I’d been doing the generalizing.”

“How very annoying,” I said, trying not to laugh—I was so tickled that father had taken to heart Mrs. Cotton’s little snub about generalizing.

Lots of good poetry doesn’t have them at all. The main thing is to write what you really feel.” “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” he said. “No, that would never do.” “But why not, Stephen? Of course it would do.” “No, it wouldn’t,” he said, and smiled straight in front of him as if he were thinking of some private joke.

The daft look is hazy, dreamy; the wooden look is obstinate to the point of sulkiness. It is a look he gives Rose sometimes, but I couldn’t remember his ever turning it on me.

Just then Topaz came in from the garden wearing Aunt Millicent’s black cloak and no stockings or shoes. I guessed she’d had one of her nude sessions. “Thank heaven Nature never fails me,”

“The only part that still puzzles me is the ladder chapter—you know, where it’s printed so that it actually looks like a ladder, with a sentence for every rung. Father won’t answer questions about that.”

it’s one of the forerunners of post-war literature. And your father’s a link in the chain of writers who have been obsessed by form. If only he’d carried his methods further!”

“My beard,” said Simon. “You were wondering how any man could wear one—unless, of course, it has acquired a fascination of horror for you. Which is it?” “As a matter of fact, I’m getting used to it.” He laughed and said that was the ultimate humiliation—everyone did.

“Would it be rude to ask just why you do wear it?” “It would be natural, anyway. I grew it when I was twenty-two, for a bet, and then kept it out of sheer pig-headedness—it looked so wonderfully unsuitable for a Wall Street office; I was with a cousin of my mother’s there and our dislike was mutual. And I think I felt a beard kept me in touch with literature. But it probably has some deep psychological significance—I expect I’m trying to hide an infamous nature from the world.”

“Did you know Scoatney was going to be yours then?” “Good Lord, no—there were six lives between me and it. And I loved it with a most precocious passion. I remember standing at the top of the staircase looking down on my grandfather, my father and uncles, and a cousin of my own age all at tea in the hall, and thinking: ‘If they were all dead, Scoatney would belong to me.’ And then rushing screaming to the nursery, appalled at my wickedness.

“Well, whatever it was, she doesn’t know it,” I said at last. I am an honest liar when I take my time; he believed me at once. “You wonderful child not to tell her.” I heard myself explaining to God as I always do about good, kind, useful lies.

Simon started to tell me why they “got Rose all wrong.” “It’s because she’s so original,” he said.

He says “vacations” where we would say “holidays.” Although I still think his voice is like extra-good English, I now realize that almost every sentence he speaks has some little American twist—“guess” for “suppose,” “maybe” where we use “perhaps,” “I’ve gotten” when we would say “I’ve got”—

Although I still think his voice is like extra-good English, I now realize that almost every sentence he speaks has some little American twist—“guess” for “suppose,” “maybe” where we use “perhaps,” “I’ve gotten” when we would say “I’ve got”—oh, there are dozens of words.

Oh, it is amicable being with someone who knows the poems you know! I do hope I get Simon for a brother-in-law.

Neil is amusing—though it is more the laconic way he says things than what he actually says; sometimes he sounds almost grim and yet you know he is joking. I believe this is called wise-cracking.

Heloïse and I were at the front—part of the time Neil drove with his arm round her. “Gosh, what sex-appeal she has,” he said. Then he told her she was a cute pooch, but would she please not wash his ears? Not that it stopped her; Heloïse can never see a human ear at tongue-level without being a mother to it.

I would rather see her furious than desperate—it made me think of the day she turned on a bull that was chasing us. (It turned out to be a rather oddly shaped cow.) Remembering this made me feel very fond of her,

This desire for solitude often overcomes her at house-cleaning times.

After breakfast, I went to church. The Vicar spotted me from the pulpit and looked most astonished. He came to talk to me afterwards, when I was waking Heloïse from her nap on one of the oldest tombstones. “Does this delightful surprise mean you have any particular axe to grind with God?” he enquired.

To my surprise, she considered it a long time, staring out across the lawn to where Simon was talking to father and Topaz. A pink camellia fell with a little dead thud.

“Do you think it’s an improvement?” she asked Simon. “I’m wondering. Shall we say it’s perfect for the sea and the sunlight—and the other Rose is perfect for candlelight? And perhaps what’s most perfect of all is to find there are several Roses?”