Will You Love Me in September

A man came out and kept kissing Damaris and then me. After that we went into the house and everyone seemed to be talking at once. Jeremy stood by awkwardly, and as it seemed the others had forgotten him, I went over and took his hand, which seemed to remind them that he was there. My grandmother said we must be hungry and she would give orders.

Damaris declared that she was too happy to think of food, but I told them that I could be happy and hungry at the same time, at which they all laughed.

We were soon sitting at a table eating. It was a lovely room-so different from Jeanne's cellar-and a warm and happy feeling seemed to wrap itself around me. This was going to be my home for a while, I gathered. I asked Damaris and she said, "Until ... ” and looked very happy.

"Yes, of course," said my grandmother. "It is wonderful to have you back, my darling.

And Clarissa too. My little love, you are^ going to stay with us for a while." "Until ... " I said uneasily.

Damaris knelt beside me and said, "Your Uncle Jeremy and I are going to be married soon, and when we are, you will come to our home and live with us there.”

That satisfied me, and I knew that all of them were glad I was here.

Jeremy rode back to his house and I was left at the Eversleigh Dower House. I had a little room next to that of Damaris. "So that we can be close together," she said, which was comforting because I did dream now and then that I was back in Jeanne's cellar and that the old Grand'mere turned into a witch and the hairs growing out of her wart turned into a forest in which I was lost.

Then I would go into Damaris' bed and tell her about the forest with trees which had faces like old Grand'mere's and their branches were like brown fingers which kept counting money. "Only a dream, darling," Damaris would say. "Dreams can't hurt you.”

It was a great relief to get into Damaris' bed when the dreams came.

I was taken to Eversleigh Court, where there were more relations. These were very old. There was my great-grandmother Arabella and my great-grandfather Carleton, a fierce old man with bushy eyebrows. He liked me, though. He looked at me in a rather frightening way, but I planted my feet firmly together, and putting my hands behind my back, stared at him to show I was not going to let him scare me, because, after all, he was not nearly so alarming as old Grand'mere, and I knew that if he wanted to turn me away, Damaris, Jeremy and the others would stop him. "You're like your mother," he said. "One of the fighting Eversleighs.”

"Yes, I am," I answered, trying to look as fierce as he did, at which everyone laughed, and my great-grandmother said, "Clarissa has made a conquest of Carleton!”

There was another branch of the family. They came to Eversleigh to visit from a place called Ayot Abbas. I vaguely remembered Benjie because he had been my father before Hessenfield. It was bewildering and I could not understand it at all. I had had one father, and then Hessenfield had come and said he was going to be my father; now he was dead and Jeremy was going to be. Surely such a surfeit of fathers was most unusual.

Poor Benjie, he looked very sad, but when he saw me his eyes lighted up; he picked me up and gave me one of those emotional hugs.

Vaguely I remembered his mother, Harriet, who had the bluest eyes I had ever seen; then there was Benjie's father, Gregory, a quiet, kind man. They had been another set of grandparents. I was surrounded by relations, and I quickly realized that there was a controversy in the family and it was all about me. Benjie wanted me to go home with him. He said he was my father in a way and greater claim than Damaris. Grandmother Priscilla said it I’d break Damaris' heart if I was taken away from her, and, you and she was the one who had brought me home.

I was very gratified to be so wanted and sad when Benjie went Before he went he said to me, "Dear Clarissa, Ayot Abbas will always be your home when you want it. Will you remember it?" I promised I would, and Harriet said, "You must come and stay with us often, Clarissa. That is the only thing that will. I said I would, and they went away. Soon after that Damaris and Jeremy were married and Enderby Hall became my home.

Jeremy had lived there by himself, and when Damaris married him she was determined to change it a great deal. In the days before the wedding she would take me there.

The place fascinated me. There was a man called Smith who had a face like a relief map with rivers and mountains on it - there were lines everywhere and little warty lumps - and his skin was as brown as the earth. When he saw me his face would crinkle up and his mouth went up at one side. I couldn't stop looking at him. I realized I was seeing Smith's smile.

Then there was Damon. He was a great Newfoundland dog that stood as tall as I was.

He had curly hair, lots of it, half black, half white, with a bushy tail which turned up at the end. We took one look and loved each other.