We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Constance?” I said.

She put Uncle Julian’s clothes over the back of a chair, and, still laughing, went into the pantry and opened one of the drawers. I remembered what she was after and I laughed too. Then she came back and put an armload of tablecloths down beside me.

“These will do you very nicely, elegant Merricat. Look; how will you feel in this, with a border of yellow flowers? Or this handsome red and white check? The damask, I am afraid, is too stiff for comfort, and besides it has been darned.”

I stood up and held the red and white checked tablecloth against me. “You can cut a hole for my head,” I said; I was pleased.

“I have no sewing things. You will simply have to tie it around your waist with a cord or let it hang like a toga.”

“I will use the damask for a cloak; who else wears a damask cloak?”

“Merricat, oh, Merricat.” Constance dropped the tablecloth she was holding and put her arms around me. “What have I done to my baby Merricat?” she said. “No house. No food. And dressed in a tablecloth; what have I done?”

“Constance,” I said, “I love you, Constance.”

“Dressed in a tablecloth like a rag doll.”

“Constance. We are going to be very happy, Constance.”

“Oh, Merricat,” she said, holding me.

“Listen to me, Constance. We are going to be very happy.”

I dressed at once, not wanting to give Constance more time to think. I chose the red and white check, and when Constance had cut a hole for my head I took my gold cord with the tassel that Constance had cut from the drawing-room drapes and tied it around me for a belt and looked, I thought, very fine. Constance was sad at first, and turned away sadly when she saw me, and scrubbed furiously at the sink to get my brown dress clean, but I liked my robe, and danced in it, and before long she smiled again and then laughed at me.

“Robinson Crusoe dressed in the skins of animals,” I told her. “He had no gay cloths with a gold belt.”

“I must say you never looked so bright before.”

“You will be wearing the skins of Uncle Julian; I prefer my tablecloth.”

“I believe the one you are wearing now was used for summer breakfasts on the lawn many years ago. Red and white check would never be used in the dining room, of course.”

“Some days I shall be a summer breakfast on the lawn, and some days I shall be a formal dinner by candlelight, and some days I shall be—”

“A very dirty Merricat. You have a fine gown, but your face is dirty. We have lost almost everything, young lady, but at least we still have clean water and a comb.”

One thing was most lucky about Uncle Julian’s room: I persuaded Constance to bring out his chair and wheel it through the garden to reinforce my barricade. It looked strange to see Constance wheeling the empty chair, and for a minute I tried to see Uncle Julian again, riding with his hands in his lap, but all that remained of Uncle Julian’s presence were the worn spots on the chair, and a handkerchief tucked under the cushion. The chair would be powerful in my barricade, however, staring out always at intruders with a blank menace of dead Uncle Julian. I was troubled to think that Uncle Julian might vanish altogether, with his papers in a box and his chair on the barricade and his toothbrush thrown away and even the smell of Uncle Julian gone from his room, but when the ground was soft Constance planted a yellow rosebush at Uncle Julian’s spot on the lawn, and one night I went down to the creek and buried Uncle Julian’s initialled gold pencil by the water, so the creek would always speak his name. Jonas took to going into Uncle Julian’s room, where he had never gone before, but I did not go inside.

Helen Clarke came to our door twice more, knocking and calling and begging us to answer, but we sat quietly, and when she found that she could not come around the house because of my barricade she told us from the front door that she would not come back, and she did not. One evening, perhaps the evening of the day Constance planted Uncle Julian’s rosebush, we heard a very soft knock at our front door while we sat at the table eating dinner. It was far too soft a knock for Helen Clarke, and I left the table and hurried silently down the hall to be sure that the front door was locked, and Constance followed me, curious. We pressed silently against the door and listened.

“Miss Blackwood?” someone said outside, in a low voice; I wondered if he suspected we were so close to him. “Miss Constance? Miss Mary Katherine?”

It was not quite dark outside, but inside where we stood we could only see one another dimly, two white faces against the door. “Miss Constance?” he said again. “Listen.”

I thought that he was moving his head from side to side to make sure that he was not seen. “Listen,” he said, “I got a chicken here.”

He tapped softly on the door. “I hope you can hear me,” he said. “I got a chicken here. My wife fixed it, roasted it nice, and there’s some cookies and a pie. I hope you can hear me.”

I could see that Constance’s eyes were wide with wonder. I stared at her and she stared at me.

“I sure hope you can hear me, Miss Blackwood. I broke one of your chairs and I’m sorry.” He tapped against the door again, very softly. “Well,” he said. “I’ll just set this basket down on your step here. I hope you heard me. Goodbye.”

We listened to quiet footsteps going away, and after a minute Constance said, “What shall we do? Shall we open the door?”

“Later,” I said. “I’ll come when it’s really dark.”

“I wonder what kind of pie it is. Do you think it’s as good as my pies?”

We finished our dinner and waited until I was sure that no one could possibly see the front door opening, and then we went down the hall and I unlocked the door and looked outside. The basket sat on the doorstep, covered with a napkin. I brought it inside and locked the door while Constance took the basket from me and carried it to the kitchen. “Blueberry,” she said when I came. “Quite good, too; it’s still warm.”

She took out the chicken, wrapped in a napkin, and the little package of cookies, touching each lovingly and with gentleness. “Everything’s still warm,” she said. “She must have baked them right after dinner, so he could bring them right over. I wonder if she made two pies, one for the house. She wrapped everything while it was still warm and told him to bring them over. These cookies are not crisp enough.”

“I’ll take the basket back and leave it on the porch, so he’ll know we found it.”

“No, no.” Constance caught me by the arm. “Not until I’ve washed the napkins; what would she think of me?”

Sometimes they brought bacon, home-cured, or fruit, or their own preserves, which were never as good as the preserves Constance made. Mostly they brought roasted chicken; sometimes a cake or a pie, frequently cookies, sometimes a potato salad or coleslaw. Once they brought a pot of beef stew, which Constance took apart and put back together again according to her own rules for beef stew, and sometimes there were pots of baked beans or macaroni. “We are the biggest church supper they ever had,” Constance said once, looking at a loaf of homemade bread I had just brought inside.

These things were always left on the front doorstep, always silently and in the evenings. We thought that the men came home from work and the women had the baskets ready for them to carry over; perhaps they came in darkness not to be recognized, as though each of them wanted to hide from the others, and bringing us food was somehow a shameful thing to do in public. There were many women cooking, Constance said. “Here is one,” she explained to me once, tasting a bean, “who uses ketchup, and too much of it; and the last one used more molasses.” Once or twice there was a note in the basket: “This is for the dishes,” or “We apologize about the curtains,” or “Sorry for your harp.” We always set the baskets back where we had found them, and never opened the front door until it was completely dark and we were sure that no one was near. I always checked carefully afterwards to make certain that the front door was locked.

I discovered that I was no longer allowed to go to the creek; Uncle Julian was there, and it was much too far from Constance. I never went farther away than the edge of the woods, and Constance went only as far as the vegetable garden. I was not allowed to bury anything more, nor was I allowed to touch stone. Every day I looked