We Have Always Lived in the Castle

great round face, looking so much like our father’s, turned from Constance to Uncle Julian and back, smiling and opening its mouth to talk. I moved as far into my corner as I could, but finally the big face turned at me.

“Why, there’s Mary,” it said. “Good morning, Mary.”

I put my face down to Jonas.

“Shy?” he asked Constance. “Never mind. Kids always take to me.”

Constance laughed. “We don’t see many strangers,” she said. She was not at all awkward or uncomfortable; it was as though she had been expecting all her life that Cousin Charles would come, as though she had planned exactly what to do and say, almost as though in the house of her life there had always been a room kept for Cousin Charles.

He stood up and came closer to me. “That’s a handsome cat,” he said. “Does it have a name?”

Jonas and I looked at him and then I thought that Jonas’s name might be the safest thing to speak to him first. “Jonas,” I said.

“Jonas? Is he your special pet?”

“Yes,” I said. We looked at him, Jonas and I, not daring to blink or turn away. The big white face was close, still looking like our father, and the big mouth was smiling.

“We’re going to be good friends, you and Jonas and I,” he said.

“What will you have for breakfast?” Constance asked him, and she smiled at me because I had told him Jonas’s name.

“Whatever you’re serving,” he said, turning away from me at last.

“Merricat had pancakes.”

“Pancakes would be great. A good breakfast in charming company on a beautiful day; what more could I ask?”

“Pancakes,” observed Uncle Julian, “are an honored dish in this family, although I rarely take them myself; my health permits only the lightest and daintiest foods. Pancakes were served for breakfast on that last—”

“Uncle Julian,” Constance said, “your papers are spilling on the floor.”

“Let me get them, sir.” Cousin Charles kneeled to gather the papers and Constance said, “After breakfast you’ll see my garden.”

“A chivalrous young man,” Uncle Julian said, accepting his papers from Charles. “I thank you; I am not able myself to leap across a room and kneel on the floor and I am gratified to find someone who can. I believe that you are a year or so older than my niece?”

“I’m thirty-two,” Charles said.

“And Constance is approximately twenty-eight. We long ago gave up the practice of birthdays, but twenty- eight should be about right. Constance, I should not be talking so on an empty stomach. Where is my breakfast?”

“You finished it an hour ago, Uncle Julian. I am making you a cup of tea, and pancakes for Cousin Charles.”

“Charles is intrepid. Your cooking, although it is of a very high standard indeed, has certain disadvantages.”

“I’m not afraid to eat anything Constance cooks,” Charles said.

“Really?” said Uncle Julian. “I congratulate you. I was referring to the effect a weighty meal like pancakes is apt to have on a delicate stomach. I suppose your reference was to arsenic.”

“Come and have your breakfast,” Constance said.

I was laughing, although Jonas hid my face. It took Charles a good half-minute to pick up his fork, and he kept smiling at Constance. Finally, knowing that Constance and Uncle Julian and Jonas and I were watching him, he cut off a small piece of pancake and brought it to his mouth, but could not bring himself to put it inside. Finally he set the fork with the piece of pancake down on his plate and turned to Uncle Julian. “You know, I was thinking,” he said. “Maybe while I’m here there are things I could do for you—dig in the garden, maybe, or run errands. I’m pretty good at hard work.”

“You had dinner here last night and woke up alive this morning,” Constance said; I was laughing but she suddenly looked almost cross.

“What?” Charles said. “Oh.” He looked down at his fork as though he had forgotten it and at last he picked it up and put the piece of pancake into his mouth very quickly, and chewed it and swallowed it and looked up at Constance. “Delicious,” he said, and Constance smiled.

“Constance?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian?”

“I think I shall not, after all, begin chapter forty-four this morning. I think I shall go back to chapter seventeen, where I recall that I made some slight mention of your cousin and his family, and their attitude during the trial. Charles, you are a clever young man. I am eager to hear your story.”

“It was all so long ago,” Charles said.

“You should have kept notes,” Uncle Julian said.

“I mean,” Charles said, “can’t it all be forgotten? There’s no point in keeping those memories alive.”

“Forgotten?” Uncle Julian said. “Forgotten?”

“It was a sad and horrible time and it’s not going to do Connie here any good at all to keep talking about it.”

“Young man, you are speaking slightingly, I believe, of my work. A man does not take his work lightly. A man has his work to do, and he does it. Remember that, Charles.”

“I’m just saying that I don’t want to talk about Connie and that bad time.”

“I shall be forced to invent, to fictionalize, to imagine.”

“I refuse to discuss it any further.”

“Constance?”

“Yes, Uncle Julian?” Constance looked very serious.

“It did happen? I remember that it happened,” said Uncle Julian, fingers at his mouth.

Constance hesitated, and then she said, “Of course it did, Uncle Julian.”

“My notes…” Uncle Julian’s voice trailed off, and he gestured at his papers.

“Yes, Uncle Julian. It was real.”

I was angry because Charles ought to be kind to Uncle Julian. I remembered that today was to be a day of sparkles and light, and I thought that I would find something bright and pretty to put near Uncle Julian’s chair.

“Constance?”

“Yes?”

“May I go outside? Am I warm enough?”

“I think so, Uncle Julian.” Constance was sorry, too. Uncle Julian was shaking his head back and forth sadly and he had put down his pencil. Constance went into Uncle Julian’s room and brought out his shawl, which she put around his shoulders very gently. Charles was eating his pancakes bravely now, and did not look up; I wondered if he cared that he had not been kind to Uncle Julian.

“Now you will go outside,” Constance said quietly to Uncle Julian, “and the sun will be warm and the garden will be bright and you will have broiled liver for your lunch.”

“Perhaps not,” Uncle Julian said. “Perhaps I had better have just an egg.”

Constance wheeled him gently to the door and eased his chair carefully down the step. Charles looked up from his pancakes but when he started to rise to help her she shook her head. “I’ll put you in your special corner,” she said to Uncle Julian, “where I can see you every minute and five times an hour I’ll wave hello to you.”

We could hear her talking all the time she was wheeling Uncle Julian to his corner. Jonas left me and went to sit in the doorway and watch them. “Jonas?” Charles said, and Jonas turned toward him. “Cousin Mary doesn’t like me,” Charles said to Jonas. I disliked the way he was talking to Jonas and I disliked the way Jonas appeared to be listening to him. “How can I make Cousin Mary like me?” Charles said, and Jonas looked quickly at me and then back to Charles. “Here I’ve come to visit my two dear cousins,” Charles said, “my two dear cousins and my old uncle whom I haven’t seen for years, and my Cousin Mary won’t even be polite to me. What do you think, Jonas?”

There were sparkles at the sink where a drop of water was swelling to fall. Perhaps if I held my breath until