The Song of the Siren

It was so easy to arrange. The gloomy afternoon with threatening rain, the damp leaves which seemed to cling to everything.

“Let’s go and look at Enderby. I have the key here with me. I meant to go in this afternoon.”

I opened the door and forgot to shut it. We went round the house and in the bedroom we stood for a moment looking at the four-poster bed.

Then I put my arms round him and kissed him. It was the spark to the flames.

We lay on the bed listening to the rain. The lightning and the thunder seemed to add something to this adventure. The two of us alone in an empty house, a haunted house where ghosts could look on.... The ghost of Beau perhaps....

And then we were not alone. She was there and that revealing flash of lightning betrayed us to her before, a few seconds later, she ran from the room.

That was how it happened. How could I explain that to Damaris?

It was an abrupt ending to our passion. Matt was horrified. I realized then that his feelings for Damaris had been strong and tender.

He could only repeat: “But she saw us. Damaris saw us.”

“It’s very unfortunate,” I agreed.

“Unfortunate!” he cried. “It’s disastrous.”

We dressed in silence. We found our horses and rode back to the house. I told him to go back to Grasslands. I kept rehearsing what I would say to Damaris when she came home.

Then she did not come. And when my father brought her home we thought she would die.

It may sound hypocritical when I say I suffered great remorse. I did. We had shocked the child so completely. She could not understand what had happened; she would never understand.

I rode over to Grasslands late the next day to tell Matt how ill Damaris was. He was terribly sad. He regarded me as though I were some evil witch. Good people are always like that. When they misbehave they look for scapegoats. “It was not my fault, oh, Lord, the evil one tempted me.” Whereas people like myself and Harriet at least see ourselves as we really are.

We say, “I wanted that and I took it. No, I did not think of the consequences of my act. It is only now that it has gone wrong that I think of it.”

At least we have a certain self-honesty. Oh, yes, there is a little good in the worst of us... and sometimes it is not all good in the best.

Matt kept calling, and when he knew that she would in time recover he went away.

I don’t think he could ever bring himself to face her.

It was going to be made easy for him because his mot her stayed in London and at that time decided that the town was more suited to her and she was going to sell Grasslands.

She did not come back while I was there. Indeed I saw very little of Matt. Our brief idyll, which had had such disastrous effects, was over.

I said I must go back too. I had been too long away from my husband and child.

So I travelled back to Eyot Abbass and tried to forget the havoc I had wrought.

A year had passed. I had not seen Damaris or my mother since I left the Dower House when I knew Damaris would recover. The days had ^ slipped by. I had said that I found it difficult to leave my little “daughter and my mother said Damaris, although improving, was unfit to travel.

We must content ourselves with letters.

I was relieved. Even after all the time which had elapsed I could not imagine what meeting Damaris would be like. It would certainly be embarrassing.

Moreover, in view of what had happened I felt penitent. I had been unfaithful to the best of husbands and all because of a momentary whim. I had not had the excuse that I had been overwhelmed by a great love. I had deliberately taken the man who was more or less betrothed to my sister and betrayed my husband at the same time.

There was no excuse I could offer for my conduct. But at least I could to compensate my husband in some way.

Benjie was delighted. He had never known me in this mood. I was loving, I was docile, I was thoughtful for his comfort. It did not take much to make him happy.

Then there was Clarissa. I am not a maternal woman by any means but in spite of myself the child began to charm me. She was two years old, talked a little, had passed the crawling stage, was, as her nurse said, “into everything, a proper bundle of mischief, that one.”

There was a look of Hessenfield about her. She had fair hair with a faint wave in it and her eyes were light brown-there were golden lights in them and in her hair; she was sturdy and healthy; a child to be proud of. Benjie treated her just as though she were his. He never mentioned the event which had led to Clarissa’s birth and our marriage.