Philippa Carr - Song of the Siren

“So,” he said, “you are returning to the country tomorrow. I am sorry about that. My mother would so liked to have entertained you. She is anxious to hear more of this house which is for sale.”

“It’s a very pleasant house,” I said.

“I wonder why the owners left it.”

“The wife died having a baby and her husband can’t forget. He came from the north originally and has gone back there. They were very great friends of ours and we have offered to show people the house if they are thinking of buying it. My grandmother has the keys at Eversleigh House.”

“And what about this other house?”

“Enderby. Well, that is a fine house too, but it has the reputation of being haunted.”

“My mother was most impressed by it.”

“Yes, but Carlotta, my sister, who owns it, decided not to sell. It was left to her, you see, by the previous owner, who was a relative.”

“I see, and Enderby remains empty.”

“It is extraordinary. Carlotta’s whim, my grandfather calls it.”

“Where is your sister?”

“She is married now and lives in Sussex. She has the dearest little baby. Tell me, do you live in London?”

“Well, I have a place in the country—in Dorset—a small estate to look after. I am there sometimes and sometimes with my mother in London. Of course now that there is war I may join the army.”

I frowned. My mother hated wars so fiercely that she had imbued me with the same feeling.

“It seems ridiculous that we should concern ourselves with the problems of other countries,” I said. “Why should what happens in Europe matter to us?”

I was really repeating what I had heard my mother say.

He said: “It is not quite as simple as that. Louis the Fourteenth, the French King, made an agreement with our late King and he has broken that agreement. His grandson Philip of Anjou has been made King of Spain. You see France will be dominating Europe. He has already put garrisons into the towns of the Spanish Netherlands. Worst of all he has acknowledged the son of James the Second as James the Third of England. War has been declared and we have strong allies in Holland and the Austrian Empire. It is necessary to go to war, you see.”

“So you may become a soldier. My father was a soldier once. He gave it up. My mother was so much against it. He bought the Dower House at Eversleigh and farms the land there and looks after his tenants; he works with my grandfather, who is getting old now. You met him yesterday. My uncle Carl is in the army and so is my uncle Edwin. He is the present Lord Eversleigh. He lives at Eversleigh when he is home.”

“I know yours is a family with a strong military tradition.”

We were deep in conversation when my mother entered the room. She drew back in astonishment.

“Oh, mother,” I cried, “we have a visitor. And he has brought some violets for you.”

“That is kind,” she said. “Thank you.” She took them and buried her face in them.

“My mother asked me to try to persuade you to stay a few more days so that we could entertain you here in London,” said Matthew Pilkington.

“That,” said my mother, “is extremely kind but we have made our arrangements.”

She sent for the customary wine and he stayed for an hour. I felt he was reluctant to go but I sensed that my mother was not eager for him to stay. I hoped he did not realise this and that I did only because I knew her so well.

When he left he said: “I believe we shall meet again soon.”

“I hope so,” I said warmly.

Later that day my mother told my grandparents that Matthew had called.

“A suitor for Damaris already,” said my grandmother.

“Nonsense,” retorted my mother, “she is far too young. In any case he brought the violets for me.”

“An excuse of course,” said my grandmother.

I suppose hearing Matthew referred to as my suitor set me thinking. He had seemed to like me. Then I realised that this was one of the rare occasions when Carlotta had not been present to demand attention.

Still, I rather liked the idea of having Matthew for a suitor.

We left London the next day. As we rode out of the town, passing through Temple Bar into Cheapside, where the stall holders and their customers made passage difficult, to Bucklersbury, where the tantalising smells which came from the apothecaries and grocers shops filled the air, and as I saw the grey walls of the Tower of London rising above the river I thought of what could have happened to me when I ventured into these fascinating but terrifying streets and how fortunate I had been to encounter no worse than Good Mrs. Brown.

Indeed I was beginning to bestow on her that benevolence she had been so eager to claim. Moreover, I remembered that she had brought the Pilkingtons into my life; and since Matthew had called with the violets I had been thinking about him a good deal.

My mother had been inclined to laugh at what she called his dandified appearance. My grandfather said it was the fashion and most young men looked like that nowadays. He thought fashions were less exaggerated than in his young days. “We were beribboned. Yes, that’s it! Ribbons in every conceivable place.”

My grandmother was rather pleased that Matthew had called again. She was sure he had come to see me. She had always felt that Carlotta overshadowed me and I knew that now she believed I should come into my own.

When I came to think of it I was rather pleased that Carlotta was not here. Then I fell to wondering whether I should ever see Matthew again.

So we left London and came into the country.

We stayed one night in an inn near Seven Oaks and the next day were home.

When I had assured myself that my dogs and my horse had been well cared for I was prepared to settle down to the daily routine, but somehow nothing could be quite the same again. We had a new sovereign; and I had had that adventure which was going to haunt me for a while. It did. I had a few nightmares dreaming I was in that horrible room with the three young girls and they were creeping up to me led by Good Mrs. Brown. I would awake calling out and clutching the bedclothes frantically to me. Once my mother heard me. She sat by the bed.

“How I wish we had never gone up to London,” she said.

But after a while I ceased to dream, and then there was the excitement of Elizabeth Pilkington’s coming to Grasslands Manor.

As soon as she saw it she declared that she liked it; and this time the sale went through. By the end of the summer she was installed in the Manor.

Matthew by that time was serving with the army, and I did not see him, but I became friendly with her and we visited each other frequently.

I helped her move in and buy some of the furniture for the house, for she was still keeping her London residence.

“I am so used to town life,” she told me, “that I can’t abandon it altogether.”

She was amusing and lively and talked a great deal about the theatre and the parts she had played. She reminded me of Harriet and indeed they had known each other at one time when they had played together in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. My grandfather liked her and she was often invited to Eversleigh. My mother became friendly with her too. Her dislike seemed to be for Matthew and now that he was in the army she seemed to have forgotten about him.

That Christmas we went to Eyot Abbass. Little Clarissa was quite a person now. She was ten months old and beginning to take an interest in everything. She was fair haired and blue eyed and I loved her dearly.

My mother said: “Damaris will make a good mother.” And I thought more than anything I should like to have a baby of my own.

Carlotta was as beautiful as ever. Benjie adored her and was so delighted to be her husband. It was not so easy to know how Carlotta felt. She had always been unpredictable. There was a vague restlessness in her which I could not understand. She was the most beautiful girl in any gathering; she had a husband who clearly wanted to grant her every wish; she had a dear little baby, a gracious home; Harriet and Gregory were very fond of her and she had all her life been like a daughter to them. What did Carlotta want to make her happy?

I couldn’t resist asking her once. It was four days after Christmas and I went out walking with Gregory’s retriever when I came upon her sitting in the shelter of a cliff looking out to the Eyot.

I sat down beside her. “You are lucky, Carlotta,” I said. “You just have everything …”

She turned to look at me in amazement. “What has come over our little Damaris?” she asked. “She used to be such a contented little piece. Happy in her lot, ministering to the sick—animals mostly but not above taking a basket of goodies to the ailing of the district-goodness and contentment shining from her little face.”

“You always made fun of me, Carlotta.”

“Perhaps it was because I could never be like you.”

“You … like me! You’d never want to.”

“No,” she said. “You’re right there. What an adventure you had in the wicked city. Robbed of your clothes and sent out naked. My poor Damaris!”

“Yes, it was terrifying. But I ran into the Pilkingtons and because of that Elizabeth Pilkington is at Grasslands. Carlotta, isn’t it strange how one thing that happens leads to something else which wouldn’t have happened otherwise?”

She nodded and was serious. I could see her thinking of that.

“You see, if I hadn’t gone out to buy violets …”

“I get the point,” she said. “No need to elaborate.”

“Well, it just struck me.”

“You like this woman, don’t you? I did when I showed her Enderby.”

“Why did you decide so suddenly not to sell?” I asked.

“Oh, I had my reasons. She has a son, has she?”

“Yes … Matthew.”

“You like him, don’t you?”

“How … did you know?”

She laughed at me and gave me a friendly push. “That was the trouble, Damaris. I always know what you’re going to do. You’re predictable. It makes you …”

“I know,” I said. “Dull.”

“Well, it is nice to meet a little mystery now and then. So Matthew was very gallant, wasn’t he?”

“He brought violets for our mother.”

She burst out laughing.

“Why do you laugh?” I asked.

“Never mind,” she said. Then she stared out to sea and said: “You never know what is going to happen, do you? Right across the sea, that’s France over there.”

“Of course,” I said, a little nettled by her laughter. “What’s odd about that? It’s always been there, hasn’t it?”

“Imagine it over there,” she said. “There’ll be a lot of excitement. The old King dying and now the new one.”

“There isn’t a new one. It’s a Queen we have.”

“They don’t think so over there.”

She hugged her knees, smiling secretly.

I was about to remark that she was in a strange mood. But then Carlotta was often in a strange mood.

A few days later when I was riding I passed the same spot and there she was seated by the rock staring out to France.

A YEAR HAD GONE by. I had passed my fourteenth birthday and was now rising fifteen. The war was still going on. My uncles Edwin and Carl were abroad serving with Marlborough, who had now become a duke. But for the fact that they were engaged in the fighting we should have thought little of it for the war itself did not intrude on our lives.

It was Maytime, a lovely time of the year. After I had finished lessons with my governess, Mistress Leveret, I would exercise my horse, Tomtit; sometimes I would take him to the sea and ride along close to the water. He loved that and it was exhilarating to take deep breaths of air, which we all said was fresher on our coast than anywhere else. There was always a sharp tang in it which, having been brought up with it, we all loved.

Sometimes I rode deeper into the country. I liked to leave Tomtit to drink by a stream while I lay in the grass very quietly watching the rabbits come out to gambol and sometimes voles and baby field mice. I could watch the frogs and toads and the water beetles for hours. I loved the country sounds and the melodious song of the birds.

One day Tomtit cast a shoe and I took him along to the blacksmith. While he was being shod I went for a walk and that led me near Enderby Hall.

The place had a fascination for me as it had for most people. I rarely went in it. My mother was always complaining that nothing was done about it; it was absurd to keep the place cleaned and aired for nobody she said. Carlotta must be made to see reason and get rid of it.