Philippa Carr - Song of the Siren

I caught at a tree trunk. My hand was grazed from the contact but it saved me from a fall. I rushed on. I was caught and held and felt faint with horror but it was only a bramble which had caught my sleeve. At last I came panting to the gate.

The rain was now pelting down. I was going to be saturated if I went back in this. Moreover, it was falling in such sheets that one could hardly see where one was going.

Then I thought of the house. How I was to wish later that I had not done so. But then perhaps it was inevitable and best for me to know.

I untethered Tomtit, who whinnied with pleasure at the sight of me.

“It can’t last long like this,” I said to him. “We’ll wait a bit. There’s an outhouse close to the house.”

I took him over and it was difficult to find our way in the blinding rain. There was just room for him in the shed. I patted him and he nuzzled against me.

I decided to wait in the house porch because I could get more shelter there.

Murmuring that I would not be long and that we would go as soon as the rain abated a little, I stumbled towards the house.

I reached the porch and leaned against the door. To my amazement it opened. It had evidently not been properly shut.

I went inside. It was a relief to get out of the wind and rain. I stood in the great hall and looked towards the minstrels’ gallery.

How gloomy it was. There was an atmosphere of menace, I always thought, in this house even when the sun was shining. But in the gloom it really was forbidding.

Even so it offered comfort after the conditions outside.

I don’t know why it is one can sense human presence but one often does, and as I stood there the firm conviction came to me that I was not alone in the house.

“Is anyone there?” I said. My voice seemed lost in the sound of the rain outside. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated the hall. It startled me so much that I gasped. A few seconds later came the roar of thunder.

A great desire came to me. “Get out.” It was as though a voice was warning me. I stood uncertainly. The darkness outside had deepened. It was like the dead of night.

Then suddenly the hall was lit up by another flash of lightning. I was staring at the minstrels’ gallery expecting to see something there. There was nothing. I braced myself for the tremendous clap of thunder. The storm was right overhead.

I stood leaning against the wall. My heart was beating so fiercely that it seemed as though it would choke me. I waited for the next burst of thunder. It did not come. As I stood there, the darkness lifted. I could see the curtains at the gallery. I could have fancied they moved, but that was only fancy.

And yet I had the conviction that someone was in this house.

“Go away,” said the voice of common sense.

But I could not go. Something was impelling me to stay.

I was in a state of shock, I believe. I was obsessed by the certainty that my father had killed Belle and buried her in the forbidden wood and that there was some dark secret there which I dared not discover. I felt that it would wrench the whole structure of my life if I found out.

It was as though I could hear voices, whispering voices, voices of the Rooks fabricating tales about my father, gossip, rumour. But there was something there. Normally I should be afraid to stay in this house. Now, although I sensed more than I ever had before that atmosphere of doom which hung over it, it did not frighten me. Or perhaps I was so afraid of reality—of what might lie under the soil of the forbidden wood—that I could not feel this fear of the supernatural. There was so much that could be explained to the human mind going on around me—that was if one could piece the evidence together.

There was another flash of lightning, less brilliant than those which had gone before, and some seconds passed before I heard the thunder. The storm was moving away. It had become lighter.

I wondered why the door was not shut. We always locked the doors when we left. It was not as though it was empty of furniture. All Robert Frinton’s furniture had been left here when he died and had remained since. Carlotta had wished it that way and it had been her house and her furniture—left to her by the adoring Robert Frinton, uncle of the father whom she had never known.

I looked up the staircase and it was as though some force impelled me to mount it.

I did so slowly. I could still hear the rain pelting down outside. I looked into the gallery. There was no one there.

Someone must have forgotten to lock the door, I told myself. Why not go out? Go to comfort poor Tomtit, who would be waiting patiently for me in the outhouse.

But I went up the stairs. I was going to look through the house to see if anyone was there.

I had a fantastic idea that the house was beckoning me on; I could almost fancy it mocked me.

“Silly little Damaris, always such a child.”

That was like Carlotta’s voice.

“When I, as a child, went and explored the haunted house I hid in a cupboard. It was called Carlotta’s cupboard after that. Robert Frinton said he was reminded of me every time he used it.”

Carlotta had loved to tell me tales like that when she was younger but so very much my senior—seeming to be more so then than now.

Oddly enough my fear had left me, although never had the house seemed more sinister. It was simply because I was not really here. I was in the wood looking down at that patch of land which I believed to be Belle’s grave.

Now I had reached the first-floor landing. I thought I heard whispering voices. I stood still listening. Silence … deep silence.

I imagined it, I thought. It was easy to imagine voices with the rain pelting against the window and the wind sighing through the branches of the trees which would be completely leafless after this violent storm.

I opened the door of the bedroom which Carlotta had liked best of all. The room with the four-poster bed with the red velvet curtains, the bed where I had come across her lying and talking to herself.

I stepped into the room. I took a few paces forward and almost tripped over something lying on the floor. I looked down. There was enough light to show me a riding habit … dove grey with a hat with a little blue feather.

I gave a little gasp. At that moment a flash of lightning illuminated the room and I saw them clearly. Carlotta and Matt. They were lying on the bed … naked … They were entwined about each other.

I took one look and turned. I felt sick. I did not know what to do, what to think. My mind was a blank. As I shut the door the clap of thunder burst out.

I ran. I did not know where I was running. All I wanted to do was to get away. I could not bear to think of what I had seen, of what it implied. It revolted me, nauseated me.

I did not know where I was running. I was unaware of the rain beating down on me. I came to the gate of the forbidden land. Where to hide? Where to be alone with my jumbled thoughts? In there … there at the side of Belle’s grave.

I climbed the gate and went stumbling through the leaves. I flung myself down beside the disturbed earth. I lay there trying hard not to think of that scene in the bedroom.

It was dark. It was still raining but it was a softer rain now. I felt dazed and lost to the world. I was not sure where I was. Then I remembered. I was in the wood and Belle was murdered and I had seen something in the bedroom at Enderby which I could never forget. It had shattered my own personal dream; but it had done more than that. I did not want to know anymore. I wanted to forget. My father … my mother … my sister … I could not bear to be with them. I wanted to be alone … by myself … here in the forbidden wood.

My mind started to wander, I think, because I fancied I saw the will-o’-the-wisps dancing around me as though to claim me as one of their band. I was not afraid of them. I understood something of human unhappiness now. I just wanted to be wrapped round in nothingness. “Nothing, nothing,” I whispered. “Let it stay like this for ever.”

It was long after that night before I wrote again in my journal. They found me in the morning. It was my father who came into the wood looking for me and carried me home. Tomtit, sensing that something was wrong, had late that night left the hut and gone back to the Dower House. They were at that time very anxious about me and when he came back alone they were frantic with anxiety.

Then they searched … all through that night of rain and storm.

I had a raging fever and I came near to death. For a whole year I was in my bed. My mother nursed me with all the love and tenderness of which she was capable.

They didn’t question me. I was too ill for that. It was more than three months before I discovered that the Pilkingtons had left. Elizabeth had grown tired of the country, they said, and had left for London and put Grasslands up for sale. Matt had left a week or so after that terrible night.

My limbs were stiff even when I was recovered, and for a long time it was agony to move my hands. How devoted my mother was to me, how tender was my father. I found that I loved him just as much as I ever had, and we never spoke of Belle. I think he knew that I had gone to look for Belle and what I feared, for he had found me at that spot.

Carlotta did not come to see me. “She was here for a long time in the beginning,” said my mother. “She was so anxious about you. She wouldn’t go until she knew you were going to recover. I have never seen Carlotta so put about. Then she had to go home of course. She had been away so long. When you are well enough we will go to Eyot Abbass.”

Sometimes I thought I would never be well again. The pains in my limbs were excruciating at times and they were stiff when I tried to walk so that I tired easily.

My mother would read to me, my father played chess with me. They were anxious to show me I was their precious child.

So the time began to pass.

FOR MONTHS I BELIEVED I should never forget that moment when on the night of the great storm my sister, Damaris, opened the door of the red room and saw me with Matt Pilkington. It was a bizarre scene with that sudden flash of lightning showing us there … caught flagrantly, blatantly, so that the truth could not be hidden.

To her I must have seemed the ultimate sinner. The adultress taken in adultery. I could never begin to explain everything to Damaris. She is so good; I am so wicked. Though I do not believe any living person is entirely good nor any entirely bad. Even I must have some good points, for I did suffer terrible remorse on that night when she was missing. When her horse came home without her I was frantic with anxiety and all through that night I suffered such fear and there was born in me a repugnance of myself which I had never experienced before. I even prayed: “Anything … anything I will do,” I murmured, “but bring her home.” Then she was found. I shall never forget the overwhelming relief when my father carried her into the house.

We fell on her—my mother and I; we stripped off her sodden clothes; she was limp and raving with fever. We got her to bed; the doctors came. She was very ill and for weeks we were not sure whether she would live. I wouldn’t leave the Dower House until I was sure that she was going to recover.

I had lots of time for thought when I used to sit by her bed while my mother rested, for my mother would not allow her to be left for one hour of the day or night. While I longed for her to get better I used to dread the moment when she would open her eyes, look at me and remember.

For the first time in my life I despised myself. Always before I had been able to make excuses for my conduct. I found that difficult now. I knew how she had felt about Matt Pilkington. Dear Little Damaris, she was so innocent and obvious. Damaris is in love, I thought. I could just imagine her romantic fantasies—so far removed from reality.

When I sat by her bed I used to imagine myself explaining to her, trying to make her see how events had led up to that scene in the bedroom.

I would never make her understand my nature, which was different from hers as two natures could be.

“Damaris,” I imagined myself saying to her, “I am a passionate woman. There are instincts in my nature which demand to be satisfied. An impulse comes to me at certain times in certain company and when it comes it is beyond my control. I am not alone in this. You are fortunate, Damaris, because you will always be able to control your emotions; in any case you would never have these intense desires—animal desires, perhaps you would call them. They are like that. It is like a fire that suddenly is there and it has to be quenched. No, you would not understand. I am learning more and more about myself, Damaris. There will always be lovers for me. Marriage doesn’t alter that. I have met men who are as I am … Beau was one; there was a Jacobite who kidnapped me, he was another. And Matt, yes, Matt too, but there was another reason with Matt.”