The Song of the Siren

Philippa Carr The Song of the Siren

CARLOTTA

A General Calls

Beau had come back. He was there, standing before me in all his elegance, his arrogance, his overwhelming charm. I had become alive again. I threw myself into his arms and I lifted up my face and looked at him.

I cried out “Beau! Beau! Why did you go away? Why did you leave me?”

And he answered: “All the time I have been here close ... close..,,” His voice went on echoing through the house saying: “Close ... close “

Then I awoke to the realization that he was not with me. It was only a dream, and misery descended upon me, for I was alone again even more desperately so because for a short while I had believed he had come back.

It was more than a year since he had gone away. We were to have been married. It had all been arranged. We were going to elope again-we had tried that once unsuccessfully-but this time we would plan more carefully. He had been hiding in the haunted house and I used to go there and visit him. My family had no idea of this; they thought they had separated us, but we were cleverer than they were. We had laid our plans carefully.

My family did not like Beau-particularly my mother, who became almost demented when his name was mentioned. I could see from the first that she was determined to prevent our marrying. At one time I thought that she was jealous of my love for Beau but I changed my mind later.

I had never felt I quite belonged to the Eversleighs, although Priscilla, my mother, had always made me feel I meant a great deal to her. I had always been deeply conscious of her possessiveness. She was quite unlike Harriet, who for so long I had believed to be my mother. Harriet was fond of me but not excessively so. She did not overwhelm me with her affection; and I was sure that if she knew that Beau and I had forestalled our marriage vows she would just have shrugged her shoulders and laughed, while Priscilla would have behaved as though it was a major disaster, although my very existence was evidence of her lack of conventionality in such matters.

It is known now that I am a bastard-the illegitimate daughter of Priscilla and Jocelyn Frinton, who was beheaded at the time of the Popish Plot. Of course he and my mother had intended to marry but he had been taken and executed before they could do so.

Then dear Harriet had pretended to be my mother and she and Priscilla had gone to Venice where I was born. On discovering this I had been rather pleased by my melodramatic entrance into the world. It was when my father’s uncle left me his fortune that the story came out; everyone accepted it then and I came to live with my mother and her husband Leigh, at Eversleigh, although I visited Harriet frequently.

Now Priscilla and Leigh had moved to the Dower House in the grounds of Eversleigh and lived there with my half sister, Damaris. Close by was Enderby Hall, where Beau and I used to meet. It had been left to me by my father’s uncle Robert Frinton. Enderby was a house of memories. It was said to be haunted. It was for this reason, I suppose, that I had been fascinated by it ever since I was a child before it seemed possible that it could ever belong to me. Some terrible tragedy had taken place there and certainly there was an eerie atmosphere about the place. Beau liked it. He used to call out to the ghosts to come and see us. When we lay on the four-poster bed, he would draw back the curtains. “Let them join in our bliss, Carlotta,” he said. He was bold, so recklessly adventurous and he cared for no one. I was sure that if one of the ghosts appeared he would not feel a twinge of uneasiness. He would have laughed in the face of the devil himself if that awesome being had put in an appearance.

He used to say he was one of the devil’s own.

How I longed for him! I wanted to creep into that house and to feel his arms about me as he sprang out on me. I wanted to be lifted in those arms and carried up the stairs to the bedroom in which the ghosts had slept when they were on earth; I wanted to hear his lazy voice, so beautifully modulated, so musical, so characteristic of him determined to get what was good out of life, no matter how-and equally determined to turn his back on what’ could bring him nothing.

“I’m not a saint, Carlotta,” he told me, “so don’t think you’ll get one for your husband, dear child!”

I assured him that a saint was the last thing I wanted.

He agreed that I was wise in that. “There’s a passionate woman in you, my little virgin-no-more, waiting to get out. I am giving her the key.”

He had constantly reminded me that I had lost my virginity. It seemed to be a source of amusement to him. Sometimes I believed it was because he was afraid they might persuade me not to marry him. “You’re committed now, my little bird,” he said once.

“You cannot fly away now. You belong to me.”