Song of the Siren

by Philippa Carr

  There is something evil here, I thought. Get away. Forget it. Don’t come here again.

  I stood up and stumbled away. I did not want to search in those bushes. I felt I might find something there which I would rather not see, that I might discover something which would add to my uneasiness.

  My father had been so angry. Why? And why had Elizabeth Pilkington brought Belle out on a lead? Why had she been so nervous, so full of excuses, so anxious to make me feel that what she had been doing was perfectly normal?

  That afternoon Elizabeth came over to see us.

  “I have to go to London,” she said. “I may be away for a week or so.”

  “Is Matt going with you?” I asked quickly. I had spoken before I could stop myself.

  “No,” she said. “He will stay here. Of course, he will have to go away soon.”

  We talked awhile of the successful party she had given and how well staged the charades had been; but I sensed some tension even in Elizabeth. My mother’s nerves were certainly on edge.

  Elizabeth left the next day.

  I often think how strange it is that we have no warning of events which are going to shatter our illusions and change our lives. I had been so happy after the party. I was so sure that Matt loved me—perhaps not so intensely as I did him, but I did not expect that. Carlotta’s opinion of me, so often expressed, had so influenced me that I still saw myself as a very ordinary, rather dull and not very attractive creature who must be grateful for every crumb of affection which fell from the tables of the irresistible such as herself.

  It was true that I was aware of a heightening of tension, a certain uneasiness about me which had been caused by the discovery of Belle in the trap and the dismissal of the Rooks. But unfortunate as these incidents were, they did not seem to concern me personally.

  The day after Elizabeth Pilkington had left, my mother and I were in the stillroom. She had always taught me her skills in that direction and I had been a good pupil, which pleased her. She had often said: “At least I will make a housewife out of one of my daughters.” Which indicated that she had long despaired of doing so with Carlotta.

  There were sounds of arrival in the courtyard. We looked at each other. We were always excited by visitors. Sometimes they came from Westminster and we loved to hear the news; but mostly they went to Eversleigh, where my grandparents and Jane could entertain them more easily, having so much more room.

  But this sounded like visitors for us.

  We went hastily down to the hall and my mother gave a cry of joy, for there was Carlotta herself.

  Whenever I saw Carlotta after an absence I was always overwhelmed by her loveliness. She looked so beautiful in a dove-grey riding habit and a dark blue hat with a feather of a paler shade. Her eyes were sparkling blue, the colour of bluebells; there was a faint colour in her cheeks and startlingly thick black brows and lashes made such an entrancing contrast to her blue eyes. Her dark curls escaped from under the hat and she looked as young as ever. Having a child had certainly not detracted from her beauty.

  “My darling child!” cried my mother.

  Carlotta embraced her.

  “Is Benjie with you?”

  “No,” she said.

  My mother looked astonished. It was unthinkable that Benjie should not travel with his young wife.

  “I just wanted a few days to be with my family,” said Carlotta. “I insisted on coming alone.”

  “Alone,” said my mother.

  “There were of course the attendant grooms. Ah, sister Damaris.” She put her cheek against mine. “Still the same young Damaris,” she said and I immediately felt stripped of the confidence I had been acquiring over the last weeks.

  “And Harriet and Gregory?” said my mother.

  “All well. They send their love and greetings.”

  “So you’ve come alone, Carlotta.” My mother looked worried. “What of Clarissa?”

  “Clarissa is being well cared for. Have no fear of that. She is rapidly becoming a spoilt child.”

  “Well, you have come and I’m delighted to see you.”

  Carlotta laughed. She had a lovely laugh. Everything about her was more beautiful than I remembered. I was beginning to experience the old feeling of being plain and awkward.

  “Come up to your room. Leigh will be so pleased to see you and so will they be at Eversleigh.”

  “What of little Damaris? Is she pleased to see me too?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Well, I could do with a wash and I should like to change. I’ve told them to bring the bags up to my room. They will be taking them up now.”

  My mother slipped her arm through Carlotta’s.

  “It is wonderful to see you, darling,” she said.

  I stayed with my sister to unpack.

  She had some beautiful dresses. She had always understood what became her most. I remember the scenes we had had with Sally Nullens and old Emily Philpots over clothes. Once Carlotta took off a red sash and threw it out of the window because she insisted on having a blue one. One body’s work, they said Carlotta was. “Give me a good child like little Damaris.”

  I hung up her dresses for her while she stretched on the bed watching me.

  “Do you know,” she said, “you’ve changed. Has anything happened?”

  “N-no.”

  “You don’t sound very sure whether anything has happened or not.”

  “Well, nothing very much. Elizabeth Pilkington gave a lovely party a little while ago. We did charades. I was Queen Elizabeth.”

  Carlotta burst out laughing.

  “My dear Damaris. You! Oh, how I should have loved to see you.”

  “They said I did very well,” I replied somewhat nettled.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Raleigh and the cloak.”

  “Oh, I see, and you most regally walked on it.”

  “Elizabeth did my dress and my hair. She’s been an actress you know … like Harriet. They can do such wonderful things with ordinary people.”

  “She must be a miracle worker if she could turn you into Queen Elizabeth. Who was Raleigh? I’m trying to think of someone round here. I suppose they were all from these parts.”

  “Oh, yes. It was Elizabeth’s son—Matt.”

  “What fun!” she said languidly. “I should have come earlier.”

  “Is everything all right?” I asked.

  “All right? What do you mean?”

  “With you … and Benjie.”

  “Of course it’s all right. He’s my husband. I’m his wife.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean …”

  “Benjie is an indulgent husband … which is what all husbands should be.”

  “I’m sure he’s very happy, Carlotta. Now he has you and dear little Clarissa. How can you bear to leave her?”

  “I bear it with amazing fortitude,” she said, her lips curling. “You’re still the same sentimental Damaris. Not grown up yet. Things are not always what they seem, dear sister. I just wanted to get away for a while. That’s how it is at times. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you are very happy, Carlotta.”

  “You’re such a babe, Damaris. What’s happiness? An hour or so … a day if you’re lucky. Sometimes you can say to yourself, ‘I’m happy now … now.’ And you want to cling to now and make it forever. But now becomes then in a very short time. That’s happiness. You can’t have it all the time and when you think back to when you did you’re just sad thinking of it, so that happiness has really deserted you.”

  “What a strange way to talk.”

  “I’d forgotten. You, dear Damaris, wouldn’t see it my way. You don’t ask for much. I hope you get what you want. Sometimes I think people like you are the lucky ones. It’s easy for you to get what you want because you don’t ask for the impossible. And when you’ve got it you just go on believing it’s happiness. Lucky Damaris.”

  She was in
a strange mood. I thought of her sitting on the cliff looking out to sea as though she were dreaming of the past and longing for it to come back.

  My mother had said that Matt must come over to us whenever he wished while his mother was away. She would not issue formal invitations. He was to consider himself one of the family.

  “That’s easy,” he said. “I think I already do.”

  Words to set my spirits soaring.

  That day my mother had been busy in the kitchens preparing everything that she knew Carlotta liked to eat. She looked better than she had for some time and I knew it was due to the pleasure of having Carlotta home.

  About half an hour before we were about to sit down to dinner, Matt arrived.

  I was in the hall alone when he came. He took my hands and kissed them. Then he bowed low, which he had done since we had played Elizabeth and Raleigh. It was a little joke between us.

  “It is so pleasant to come here,” he said. “Grasslands seems empty without my mother.”

  “You are well looked after there, I hope.”

  He touched my cheeks caressingly. “I am absolutely cosseted. But I assure you I do appreciate being allowed to come here.”

  At that moment Carlotta appeared at the top of the stairs.

  Matt looked up at her and kept looking. I heard his quick intake of breath. I wasn’t altogether surprised that he should be overwhelmed by Carlotta’s beauty. Most people were, and I felt that pride in her which I had always felt when people met her for the first time and were startled by her outstanding looks.

  She was wearing a simple blue gown with a long-waisted bodice and elbow-length sleeves with frills of lace at the edge of them. It was cut rather low and was close fitting and accentuated her tiny trim waist. It was laced in the front to show her undergown of a lighter shade of blue. The skirt was long with side panniers. Not an elaborate gown but I had often thought that the more simply Carlotta was dressed the greater impact her beauty had. I was wearing green—a colour I think which suited me as well as any. It gave more colour to my eyes; and I had taken more pains with my appearance since the coming of Matt. Mine was a pretty dress with a laced bodice showing a pale pink undergown, and my sleeves had matching pink frills at the edges. But I had always had the feeling that anything I wore would look homely beside Carlotta’s simplest gown.

  It seemed to me that there was a long silence while they looked at each other and that Carlotta was as taken aback as Matt was. Then she came slowly down the stairs.

  “This is my sister, Carlotta,” I said.

  Her eyes seemed enormous and brilliant. She was looking at him as though she could not believe he was real.

  She walked towards us—it seemed to me very slowly but perhaps that was my imagination, because everything seemed to have slowed down. Even the clock in the hall seemed to pause between its ticks.

  Carlotta was smiling. She held out a hand. Matt took it and kissed it.

  She gave a little laugh. “Damaris,” she said. “You haven’t introduced me.”

  “Oh,” I stammered. “This is Matt … Matt Pilkington, whose mother has taken Grasslands Manor.”

  “Matt Pilkington,” she said, keeping her eyes on him. “Oh, yes, of course, I have heard of you. Tell me, what do you think of Grasslands?”

  He began to talk rather fast about Grasslands and how his mother had fallen in love with it the moment she had seen it. She had gone to London. He did not know how long she would be. He hoped Carlotta would have a long stay here. He had heard so much about her from Damaris.

  “I believe you have seen a lot of my family … and my little sister,” said Carlotta, and I immediately stepped back into that niche from which my friendship with Matt had helped me emerge.

  “They have been so good to me,” he said.

  My mother came into the hall. “Oh, Matt,” she said, “how nice to see you.”

  “I have taken advantage of your invitation to call in when I’m lonely,” he said.

  “And right glad I am that you have. You see, I have my other daughter with me now.” She went to Carlotta and slipped her arm through hers. Then she reached for my hand to show me that I must not feel that I was left out. But I did feel it. And I went on feeling it through the days that followed.

  I had become accustomed to seeing the effect Carlotta had on men. It had always been the same from the time when I was first aware of her; it did not matter who they were. I had often heard the story of how she had charmed Robert Frinton, who had left her his fortune; and even my grandfather was not immune to her charm.

  What was so amazing about it was that she did it effortlessly. She said what she pleased and she never went out of her way to impress or attract. It was some charm, some magnetism, which flowed from her.

  Emily Philpots had hinted that she was a witch. There had been times when I could believe it.

  During that first meal she dominated the table. She had been to London recently and had all the Court news. She was aware of what the Duke of Marlborough was doing on the Continent and how the war was progressing; she talked of the new book Daniel Defoe had written: The Shortest Way with Dissenters, or Proposals for the Establishment of the Church. “Such a brilliant satire on the intolerance of the Church party,” she commented. She talked blithely of the Whigs and the Tories and was apparently on terms of friendship with some of the leading men of affairs.

  This made her conversation racy and amusing. She sparkled and became even more beautiful every minute.

  My mother said: “But how can you do all this? You have your household now you are married. What of Benjie and Clarissa?”

  “Oh, Eyot Abbass was never like it is here, you know,” said Carlotta, somehow relegating our household to the category of boring dullness. “Harriet was never one to concern herself with domestic affairs and the men of the family were brought up to understand and like it that way. Benjie goes to London when I want to. As for Clarissa, we have an excellent nurse and a very good little nursery maid. Clarissa doesn’t need more than that.”

  “Why on earth didn’t Benjie come with you?”

  “I wanted to come alone. I was longing to have a glimpse of you all. You have been telling me in your letters how Damaris has grown up, emerging from her shell like a baby chicken. I wanted to see my little sister on the brink of womanhood.”

  So the conversation went on, dominated all the time by Carlotta.

  I was glad when the evening was over. Matt left to ride over to Grasslands and I retired to my room.

  I was brushing my hair when there was a rap on the door. It was Carlotta.

  She came in smiling.

  “It’s nice to be home, Damaris,” she said.

  “Don’t you find it rather dull?” I asked.

  “Quiet … but it’s what I wanted … for a while.”

  I went on brushing. I said slowly: “You get tired of things quickly, Carlotta.”

  “I don’t think I would if …”

  “If what?”

  “Never mind. He’s an interesting young man, this Matt Pilkington, do you think?”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  “The son of that actress. I can’t remember what she looks like now. I saw her when I showed her round the house. Has she got a lot of red hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rather elegant?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not very talkative tonight, Damaris.”

  “You always pointed out to me and others that I had little to say for myself.”

  She laughed. “You were always such a meek child. But you’re supposed to have grown up now. Are you sixteen yet?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Still you will be in the not too distant future. When I think of how I had lived at your age, Damaris, I realise how different we are.”

  She came over suddenly and kissed me.

  “You’re good, Damaris. You know, I could never be good like you.”

  “You make it sound as though th
ere was something rather disgraceful about being good.”

  “I didn’t mean it. Sometimes I wish I were like you.”

  “Never!” I cried.

  “Yes, I do. I wish I could settle down and be good and happy. After all, I have so much, as you are all so anxious to keep telling me.”

  “Oh, Carlotta, you’re pretending. Of course you’re happy. Look how merry you were tonight.”

  “Merriment and happiness do not necessarily go hand in hand. Still, Damaris, I rather like your Matt.”

  “Yes,” I said, “so do we all.”

  She bent swiftly and kissed me again.

  “Good night,” she said and went out.

  I sat looking at my reflection in the mirror and seeing not my own face but her beautiful one. What had she been meaning to say? Why had she come to my room in this way? I thought she had been going to tell me something. But if she was she had changed her mind.

  The next day Matt came over to go riding. I was in the garden when he arrived.

  He called to me.

  “It’s a lovely morning. There won’t be many more like this. Winter is advancing on us.”

  Carlotta came out then and when I saw that she was dressed for riding in her dove-grey habit and little blue feathered hat and had evidently expected him, I realised with a twinge of dismay that they must have arranged this the previous evening.

  I looked from one to the other and flattered myself that I hid my disappointment admirably.

  “Oh … so you plan to take a ride?” I said.

  Matt said: “Are you coming with us, Damaris?”

  I hesitated. Obviously they had arranged this on their own and he had only asked me to join them because I was here.

  I said: “Well, I’m supposed to be doing lessons, and then I was going to deal with the herbs I’ve been drying in the stillroom.”

  Was it my fancy or was he relieved?

  He said with some alacrity—or perhaps I imagined that—“Well, let’s get going, shall we? Days are getting very short.”

  They went off and I went back into the house feeling depressed.

  The morning seemed endless. I kept wondering whether they had returned. I went to the stables twice. The horse Carlotta was riding was not there.

  It was about four o’clock and they had not returned. I was too restless to remain in the house. I decided to go for a ride. I loved Tomtit and he always seemed to understand my moods. I thought irrationally I might not be as attractive as Carlotta but animals loved me far more than they ever had her. She rode with grace and ease but there was no rapport between her and her horses. She would have laughed me to scorn if she heard me say that. Matt had understood. There was that feeling between him and his horses and with Belle, of course.