Song of the Siren

by Philippa Carr

  ‘I will,’ I assured her.

  ‘Poor Benjie. He must marry again and forget your mother. But she was so beautiful, Clarissa.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Of course you know. But she brought little happiness to herself or to others.’

  ‘She did to Hessenfield.’

  ‘Ah… two of a kind. Your parents, dear Clarissa, were unusual people. They were rare people. How fortunate you are to have had such parents. I wonder if you will grow up like them. If you do, you will have to take care. You must curb your recklessness. You must think before you act. I always did, and look what it has brought me. This lovely house, a good man, the dearest son in the world. What a lovely way to spend one’s old age! But I wasn’t born to it, Clarissa. I worked for it… I worked every inch of the way. It’s the best in the end. Dearest child, you have every chance of a good life. You have lost your parents but you have a family to love you. And now you know the truth about yourself you must be happy. I was. Be bold but not reckless. Take adventure when it comes but be sure that you never act rashly. I know. I have lived a long time and proved how to be happy. That’s the best thing in the world, Clarissa. Happiness.’

  I used to sit with her and listen to her talking, which was fascinating. She told me a great deal about the past and her stage life and how she had first met my Great-Grandmother Arabella in the days just before the Restoration of Charles the Second. She could talk so vividly, acting as she went along, and she told me more about my family during that brief visit than I had ever heard before.

  She was right. It was good for me to know. I think in a way it was a beginning of the slackening of my need for security. When I heard what had happened to members of my family—there was nothing much Harriet could tell me of my father—that craving for security began to leave me.

  I was already feeling out for independence. But, of course, I was only eight years old at this time.

  One day Harriet called to me. There was a letter in her hand.

  ‘A message from your grandmother,’ she said. ‘She wants you back at Enderby. Damaris is recovering and missing you.’ Your little visit is at an end. We cannot ignore this—much as we should like to. It has made me very happy to have you here, my dear, and Benjie has been delighted. He will be sad when you go, but as your grandmother—and also your great-grandmother—has reminded me on several occasions, it was Damaris who brought you from France and Damaris who has first claim. How does it feel, Clarissa, to be in such demand? Never mind. Don’t tell me. I know. And you hate to leave us, but you want to see your dear Damaris … and, what is more important, Damaris wants you.’

  So the visit was over. I did want to see Damaris, of course, but I was loath to leave Harriet, Gregory and Benjie. I loved Eyot Abbas too, and I was sadly thinking that there would be no more trips to the island which I could see from my bedroom window. I was torn between Enderby and Eyot Abbas. Once again I was conscious of that surfeit of affection.

  Harriet said: ‘Gregory, Benjie and I will take you back. We’ll take the coach. It will give us a little more time together.’

  The thought of a journey in Gregory’s coach delighted me. It was such a splendid vehicle. It had four wheels and a door on each side. Our baggage was carried in saddle-bags on horses as there was no room for it in the coach. Two grooms would accompany us—one to drive the horses and the other to ride behind, while they changed places every now and then to share the driving.

  It was a leisurely journey and very enjoyable, with stops at the inns on the way. It stirred vague memories in me. I had ridden in this coach before. That was when I was very young. It was the first time I had seen Hessenfield. He had played at being a highwayman and stopped the coach. As I sat looking out of the window while we jogged along, pictures flashed in and out of my mind. Hessenfield in a mask, stopping the coach, ordering us to get out, kissing my mother and then kissing me. I had not been afraid. I had sensed that my mother was not either. I gave the highwayman the tail of my sugar mouse. Then he rode off and it was not until he carried me away from Eyot Abbas and out to the ship that I saw him again.

  I felt drowsy in the coach. Harriet and Gregory were dozing too. Next to Gregory sat Benjie and every now and then he would catch my eye and smile. He looked very sad because I was going. I thought then: If you were Hessenfield, you would not let me go. He carried me away to a big ship…

  I compared everyone with Hessenfield. He had been taller in stature than anyone else. He had towered above them in every way. I was sure that if he had lived he would have put King James on the throne.

  We were travelling slowly because the roads were dangerous. There had been heavy rain recently and every now and then we would splash through the puddles of water. I thought it was amusing to see the water splashing out and I laughed.

  ‘Not so pleasant for poor old Merry,’ said Benjie. Merry was driving at that moment. He had a lugubrious face, rather like a bloodhound. I thought it funny that he had a name like Merry and laughed whenever I heard it. ‘One of nature’s little jokes,’ said Harriet.

  Suddenly there was a jolt. The coach stopped. Gregory opened his eyes with a start and Harriet said: ‘What’s happened?’

  The two men got out. I looked out of the window and saw them staring down at the wheels. Gregory put his head inside the coach. ‘We’re stuck in a gully at the side of the road,’ he said. ‘It’ll take a little time to get us out.’

  ‘I hope not too long,’ replied Harriet. ‘In an hour or so it will be dark.’

  ‘We’ll get to work on it,’ Gregory told her. He was so proud of his coach and hated anything to go wrong with it. ‘It’s this weather,’ he went on. ‘The roads are in a dreadful state.’

  Harriet looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. ‘We must settle down to wait,’ she said. ‘Not too long, I hope. Are you looking forward to a nice warm inn parlour? What would you like to eat? Hot soup first? The sucking pig? The partridge pie?’

  Harriet always made you feel you were doing what she was talking about. I could taste the sweet syllabub and the heart-shaped marchpane.

  She said: ‘You rode in this coach long ago, remember, Clarissa?’

  I nodded.

  ‘There was a highwayman,’ she went on.

  ‘It was Hessenfield. He was playing a joke. He wasn’t a highwayman really.’

  I felt the tears in my eyes because he was gone for ever and I should never see him again.

  ‘He was a man, wasn’t he?’ said Harriet quietly.

  I knew what she meant and I thought: There will never be anyone like Hessenfield. Then it occurred to me that it was a pity there had to be such wonderful people in the world, because compared with them everyone else seemed lacking. Of course it would not be a pity if they did not die and go away for ever.

  Harriet leaned towards me and said quietly: ‘When people die they sometimes seem so much better than when they were alive.’

  I was pondering this when Gregory put his head inside the coach again. ‘Another ten minutes and we should be on our way,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ cried Harriet. ‘Then we’ll reach the Boar’s Head before it’s really dark.’

  ‘We’re lucky to get clear. The roads are in a shocking state,’ replied Gregory.

  A little later he and Benjie were taking their seats in the coach and the horses, after their little rest, were quite frisky and soon bowling along at a good pace.

  The sun was setting. It had almost disappeared. It had been a dark and cloudy day and there was rain about. It was growing dark rapidly. We came to the wood. I had a strange feeling that I had been there before; then I guessed it was the place where Hessenfield had stopped this very coach all those years ago.

  We turned into the wood and had not gone very far when two figures stepped out. They rode along by the window and I saw one of them clearly. He was masked and carried a gun.

  Highwaymen! The place was notorious for them. My immediate thought was: It’s not Hessenfield. This
is a real one. Hessenfield is dead.

  Gregory had seen. He was reaching for the blunderbuss under our seat. Harriet took my hand and gripped it tightly. Merry was shouting something. He had whipped up the horses and we were swaying from one side of the coach to the other as the horses galloped through the wood.

  Benjie took out the sword which was kept in the coach for such an emergency as this.

  ‘Merry seems to think we can outride them,’ muttered Gregory.

  ‘Best thing if we can,’ replied Benjie. He was looking at Harriet and me and I knew he meant he did not want a fight which might put us in danger.

  The coach rattled on. We were swaying furiously—and then suddenly it happened. I was thrown up in my seat. I remember hitting the top of the coach which seemed to rise as high as the trees.

  I heard Harriet whisper: ‘Oh God help us.’

  And then I was enveloped in darkness.

  When I regained consciousness I was in a strange bed and Damaris was on one side of it, Jeremy on the other.

  I heard Damaris say: ‘I think she’s awake now.’

  I opened my eyes and said: ‘We were in the coach…’ as memory flooded back.

  ‘Yes, darling. You’re safe now.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was an accident… but don’t worry about that now.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘We’re in the Boar’s Head. We are going home very soon now. As soon as you are well enough to travel.’

  ‘Are you staying here, then?’

  ‘Yes, and we shall be here until we take you back.’

  It was one of those occasions when I could feel happy to be wrapped in such loving care.

  I recovered rapidly. I had a broken leg, it seemed, and many bruises.

  ‘Young bones mend quickly,’ they said.

  I was at the Boar’s Head for another two days and gradually the news was broken to me. The coach would never be on the road again. The horses had been so badly injured that they had had to be shot.

  ‘It was the best way,’ Damaris told me with a catch in her voice. She loved all animals.

  ‘It was the highwaymen,’ I said. ‘Were they real highwaymen?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Damaris. ‘They made off. They did not stay when it happened. It was because of them. It was their fault. Merry and Keller whipped up the horses hoping to escape the robbers. They didn’t see the fallen tree-trunk. That was how it happened.’

  ‘Are Benjie and Harriet and Gregory here at the inn?’

  There was a silence and a sudden fear came to me.

  ‘Clarissa,’ said Damaris slowly, ‘it was a very bad accident. You were lucky. Benjie was lucky…’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked faintly.

  Damaris looked at Jeremy and he nodded. He meant: Tell her. There is no point in holding back the truth.

  ‘Harriet and Gregory … were killed, Clarissa.’

  I was silent. I did not know what to say. I was numbed. Here was death again. It sprang up and took people when you least expected it. My beautiful parents… dead. Dear kind Gregory… beautiful Harriet with the blue eyes and curly black hair … dead.

  I stammered: ‘I shan’t see them any more.’

  I just wanted to close my eyes and go to sleep and forget.

  They left me. I heard them whispering outside my door.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have told her. She’s only a child.’

  ‘No,’ answered Jeremy. ‘She’s got to grow up. She’s got to learn what life is.’

  So I lay thinking and remembering those who had been so intensely alive—my mother, my father and Harriet… now dead… filled with sorrow.

  I felt I was no longer a child on that day. Yet it was true that young bones healed quickly and young bodies could withstand such shocks and throw off the physical effects.

  Poor Benjie! He looked like a ghost. How cruel life was to Benjie, who was so good, and I was sure had never harmed anyone in the whole of his life… yet he had lost my mother to Hessenfield; he had lost me to Damaris; and now he had lost his parents, whom I knew he had loved with that rare, tender, selfless emotion which only people like Benjie are capable of giving.

  He came back with us to Eversleigh. Damaris and Jeremy insisted that he should.

  Jeremy carried me into Enderby Hall and Smith and Damon were waiting to greet me. Smith’s face was wrinkled up with pleasure to see me safe so that the rivers in his face seemed more deeply embedded than ever, and Damon kept jumping up and making odd little whinnying noises to show how pleased he was that I was back.

  Jeremy carried me up and downstairs every day until my bones healed; and Arabella, Carleton and Leigh were always coming to see me.

  Arabella was very sad about Harriet.

  ‘She was an adventuress,’ she said, ‘but there was no one else quite like her. She has been in my life for a very long time. I feel that “I have lost part of myself.’

  They wanted Benjie to stay but he had the estate to look after. He would be better working, he said.

  He did not ask me to come to Eyot Abbas to see him, and I knew it was because he felt it would be too sad a place for me without Harriet.

  I made up my mind that I would go often. I would do my best to comfort Benjie.

  A VISITOR FROM FRANCE

  IT WAS ABOUT A year after the accident when it was decided that my education must be attended to and it was arranged that I should have a governess.

  Grandmother Priscilla set about the task of finding one. Recommendations were always the best way, she decided, and when the Eversleigh rector, who knew we were looking for someone, rode over to the Dower House to tell my grandmother that he knew of the very person for the post, she was delighted.

  Anita Harley came for an interview in due course and was immediately approved.

  She was about thirty years of age, an impoverished parson’s daughter who had looked after her father until his death, on which occasion she had found it necessary to earn a living. She was well-educated; her father had given lessons to the local aristocracy in which Anita had shared, and as her aptitude for learning far outstripped that of her fellow students, she had, at the age of twenty-two, assisted her father in teaching local children, so she was well experienced to have charge of my education.

  I liked her. She was dignified without being pompous and her learning sat lightly upon her; she had a pleasant sense of fun; she enjoyed teaching English and history and was not so keen on mathematics—so our tastes coincided. She also had some French and we could read stories together in that language. My accent was better than hers for I had chattered away like a native to servants at the hôtel, and as I had learned it when I was also learning my native English, my intonation as well as accent was entirely French.

  We were very happy together. We rode, played chess and conversed constantly; she was indeed a happy addition to our household.

  Damaris was delighted.

  ‘She’ll teach you more than I ever could,’ she said.

  Anita was treated like a member of the family. She dined with us and accompanied us when we visited the Dower House or Eversleigh Court.

  ‘A thoroughly charming girl,’ was Arabella’s comment.

  ‘So good for the child,’ added Priscilla.

  ‘The child’ by this time was growing up, learning fast. I knew of my origins; I had heard myself referred to as precocious and the servants who came from Eversleigh Court whispered together that I was a ‘Regular One’ and it would not take a gipsy with a crystal ball to see that I was going to turn out just like my mother.

  I kept up my intention to visit Benjie often. Damaris approved of what she called my thoughtfulness. She said that she would have to come with me for she would never have a moment’s peace thinking of me on the roads after what had happened.

  We went to Eyot Abbas and we always made sure that we passed through Wokey’s Wood, which was the scene of the accident, in daylight; and there was always a well-
armed party with us. I enjoyed the adventure of going through those woods, though my memories of Hessenfield were now overshadowed by what had happened, and I would think sadly not only of my exciting father but of dear Harriet and Gregory as well.

  Anita accompanied us, for Damaris thought I should continue with lessons. I was glad to have her, for we had become great friends. Alas, Eyot Abbas seemed quite different without Harriet and it was depressing because there was evidence of her all over the house.

  Damaris said that Benjie should change everything. It was always wise to do so when something had happened which was best forgotten. She looked very serious when she said that and I thought of the bedroom at Enderby.

  ‘Perhaps we can advise him,’ said Damaris. ‘You might have some suggestions, Anita.’

  Anita had proved herself to be very good with flower arranging and matching colours. She told me she had longed to be able to furnish the old rectory where she had lived, but there had never been enough money to do it.

  So we went to Eyot Abbas and Benjie was delighted to see us—especially me—but oh, how sad he was.

  He did say that he was almost glad his father had gone with his mother because he would have been so utterly desolate without her. Benjie implied that he was utterly desolate himself.

  ‘You must do everything you can to cheer him,’ Damaris had said to me. ‘You can do more than anyone.’

  ‘Perhaps I should go and live with him,’ I had said.

  Damaris had looked at me steadily. ‘Is that… what you want?’ she asked.

  I flung my arms about her neck then. ‘No… no. It is you I want to be with.’

  She had been tremendously relieved and I couldn’t help thinking how important I was. Then it occurred to me that all these people wanted me as a sort of substitute—Damaris because she had no child and poor Jeremy had his moods; Benjie because he had lost Carlotta and now his parents. I was flattered in a way but I had to face the fact that I was wanted because what all of them really wanted was someone else. I was becoming introspective. It might be due to my talks with Anita.

  We rode a good deal—Anita, Benjie and I. Damaris accompanied us sometimes but she grew tired if she was too long in the saddle, so the three of us went alone. I think Benjie was happier on those rides than at any other time. He was interested in forestry and taught me a great deal. Anita was quite knowledgeable on the subject already. I started to distinguish the different species and Benjie waxed enthusiastic about the oaks, which were truly magnificent.