The Song of the Siren

The weeks passed and we were still at the Dower House. Damaris’s attitude toward me had not changed. It was blank, as though she was scarcely aware of me. When I remembered what she had been like in the past I felt I was with a different person. Not that I was ever with her alone. I wondered what would happen if I were, but I did not want to test it.

August came and there was news of Marlborough’s victory at Blenheim.

There was great excitement at Eversleigh and Carl and Edwin fought out the battle on the dinner table using dishes and salters for the troops and the guns.

Apparently it was a resounding victory. Louis had hoped through the battle to menace Vienna and strike at the very heart of Austria, but Marlborough had once more thwarted him, and the French troops in Blenheim were surrounded and at length forced to surrender.

The French were no match for Marlborough’s cavalry and had been forced to retreat beyond the Rhine.

I wondered how the news had affected Hessenfield as I listened to the rejoicing at Eversleigh.

I went once to look at Enderby Hall with my mother and Leigh.

I stood in that Hall with its strange brooding atmosphere. I could see that it had an effect on my mother and Leigh.

“Come on,” said my mother briskly. “Let’s go through the house and get it over with.”

So we went through. I went into that bedroom of many memories.

“That’s a very fine bed,” said my mother. “I daresay anyone who bought the house would want the furniture too.”

I was glad to get out of the room. I never wanted to see it again. Once I had loved it. Beau used to call it Our Sanctuary with that half-amused smile which indicated that anything with a trace of sentiment in it was something of a joke.

We came out of the house and I saw that that part of the land which had been fenced in was so no longer.

Leigh saw my surprise and said: “It was a waste of land.”

“I could never understand why you fenced it in in the first place.”

“Oh, I had ideas for it, but I never did anything about them. There never seemed to be the time. Now we are growing flowers there as you see.”

“I have my rose garden in there-my very own,” said my mother. “I planted it myself and I have given orders that it is completely mine.”

“Woe betide anyone who tramples on her flowers,” said Leigh.

“So it is still forbidden territory?”

”Forbidden territory?” said my mother sharply. “What a strange way of putting it.”

“Well, it makes a beautiful garden,” I said. “And not too far from the house.”

“And my own,” said my mother. “My very own.”

We went in and looked around.

She had left a good deal of it wild, which was very attractive, and here and there she had her flowers growing. And there was her rose garden, which was full of lovely roses of all kinds including a goodly array of damask roses, which were especially favoured in the family because an ancestress had been named after it when Thomas Linacre first brought the flower to England.

It would soon be September, time we returned if we were to do so before the bad weather set in.

On the last day of August we set out for Eyot Abbass.

There was a faint mist in the air when we left-a sign that the autumn would soon be with us. Some of the leaves were already turning to bronze and Harriet remarked that we were wise to depart while there was a little summer left to us.

Clarissa had taken a tearful farewell of Damaris. “Come with us,” she kept saying.

“Why can’t you? Why? Why?”

“You must come again, darling ... soon,” said my mother.

And Clarissa put her arms round Damaris’s neck and refused to let go. It had to be Damaris who gently unclasped them.

“We shall see each other soon,” she promised.

As we rode away Clarissa was quiet and could not be comforted even by a sugar mouse which my mother had put into her hands at the last moment.

But after an hour or so she was looking out of the windows and calling our notice to a goat tethered to a stave and telling us that a goat would tell you what the weather was going to be like.

I said, thinking to bring back her spirits and mocking her a little: “Why?”

“Because he knows. If he eats with his head to the wind it’ll be a fine day; if he eats with his tail to the wind it’ll rain.”

”Who told you that?”

“My aunt Damaris.” She was at once sad. “When are we going to see her again?”

“Oh, my dear child, we have just left. But soon.”

She was thoughtful. She took the sugar mouse from her pocket and regarded him sadly.

“If I bit off his head how would he see?” she said.

She was silent for a while and then she leaned against me and slept.

It was afternoon. We had picnicked by the roadside. My mother had put a hamper of food in the coach ... enough for several alfresco meals. “For,” she said, “you don’t want to have to make for an inn during the day. You can eat by the roadside whenever you have the fancy to.”