Saraband for Two Sisters

“But that is a year ahead,” she went on, as though she were pleased that it could be postponed. “There is something else. It’s a tradition in our family that the women of the household keep journals. It’s a strange one, because it had been carried on in an unbroken line since your great-great-grandmother Damask Farland began it. It is possible to follow our family history in these journals. Now that you are growing up you may read that of Damask and of your great-grandmother Catherine. You will find it of the utmost interest.”

“And Grandmother Linnet’s and yours?” asked Bersaba.

“They are not yet for reading.”

“Oh, what a pity,” I cried, but Bersaba was looking thoughtful, and she said gravely, “If people knew that what they wrote would be read by those living round them they wouldn’t tell the truth ... not the whole truth.”

Our mother nodded, slowly smiling at Bersaba. Bersaba had a certain wisdom which I lacked. I said whatever came into my head, just allowing it to flow out without thinking very much about it. Bersaba often thought carefully before she spoke. “Why should they not?” I demanded. “What is the point of keeping a diary if you don’t tell the truth?”

“Some people see the truth as they want to,” said Bersaba.

“Then how can it be the truth?”

“It’s truth to them because that’s what they believe, and if they are writing for people to read who might have been there when whatever they are writing about was happening, they would tell their version of it.”

“There’s some truth in that,” said my mother. “So, your journal is your own secret.

It must be so. It is only years later that it becomes the property of the family.” ‘When we are dead,” I said with a shiver, but I was fascinated by it. I thought of the generations to come reading all about my life. I hoped it would be worth reading.

My mother went on: “So now that you are growing up I am going to suggest that you keep your journals. I am giving you one each tomorrow and a desk in which you can lock them up when you have written in them. They will be your very own private property.»

“Do you still write in yours, Mother?” asked Bersaba.

She smiled gently. “I still write now and then. Once I wrote a good deal. That was in the days before I married your father. I had a great deal to write about then.” Her expression clouded. I knew she was thinking of the dreadful mystery of her mother’s death. “Now,” she said, “I hardly ever write. There is nothing dramatic to record. Life has been happy and peaceful for these last years, and happiness and a peaceful existence have one failing only-they give little to write about. I hope, my darlings, that you will find only happy events to record in your books. But write all the same ... write of the ordinary happy things of life.”

I cried: “I’m longing to begin. I shall start tomorrow. I shall tell about today ... our seventeenth birthday.”

“And what of you, Bersaba?” asked my mother.

“I shall write when I have something interesting to write about,” answered my sister.

My mother nodded. “Oh, and by the way, I think it is time we visited your grandfather.

We shall leave next week. You’ll have plenty of time to prepare.”

Then she kissed us and left us.

And then next day we received our desks and journals, and I started mine by writing the above.

There was nothing unusual about visiting our grandfather in Castle Paling. We did it several times a year. The Castle is not far from us-a few miles along the coast only, but going there always excited me. Castle Paling was in itself a ghostly place; terrible things had happened there not so very long ago. My mother had hinted at them and she should know for she had spent her childhood there. Her mother-our grandmother Linnet Casvellyn-had died there in a mysterious fashion (she had, I believed, been murdered although this had never been admitted), and now our grandfather Colum Casvellyn lived a strange and solitary life in the Seaward Tower, a trial to all around him and especially to himself. My Uncle Connell and Aunt Melanie lived in another part of the castle with their four children. They were a very normal family, but extreme contrasts like the placidity of my Aunt Melanie and the wildness of my grandfather create an atmosphere which is more sinister because of this very contrast.