My limbs were stiff even when I was recovered, and for a long time it was agony to move my hands. How devoted my mother was to me, how tender was my father. I found that I loved him just as much as I ever had, and we never spoke of Belle. I think he knew that I had gone to look for Belle and what I feared, for he had found me at that spot.
Carlotta did not come to see me. “She was here for a long time in the beginning,” said my mother. “She was so anxious about you. She wouldn’t go until she knew you were going to recover. I have never seen Carlotta so put about. Then she had to go home of course. She had been away so long. When you are well enough we will go to Eyot Abbass.”
Sometimes I thought I would never be well again. The pains in my limbs were excruciating at times and they were stiff when I tried to walk so that I tired easily.
My mother would read to me, my father played chess with me. They were anxious to show me I was their precious child.
So the time began to pass.
CARLOTTA
A Willing Abduction
FOR MONTHS I BELIEVED I should never forget that moment when on the night of the great storm my sister, Damaris, opened the door of the red room and saw me with Matt Pilkington. It was a bizarre scene with that sudden flash of lightning showing us there … caught flagrantly, blatantly, so that the truth could not be hidden.
To her I must have seemed the ultimate sinner. The adultress taken in adultery. I could never begin to explain everything to Damaris. She is so good; I am so wicked. Though I do not believe any living person is entirely good nor any entirely bad. Even I must have some good points, for I did suffer terrible remorse on that night when she was missing. When her horse came home without her I was frantic with anxiety and all through that night I suffered such fear and there was born in me a repugnance of myself which I had never experienced before. I even prayed: “Anything … anything I will do,” I murmured, “but bring her home.” Then she was found. I shall never forget the overwhelming relief when my father carried her into the house.
We fell on her—my mother and I; we stripped off her sodden clothes; she was limp and raving with fever. We got her to bed; the doctors came. She was very ill and for weeks we were not sure whether she would live. I wouldn’t leave the Dower House until I was sure that she was going to recover.
I had lots of time for thought when I used to sit by her bed while my mother rested, for my mother would not allow her to be left for one hour of the day or night. While I longed for her to get better I used to dread the moment when she would open her eyes, look at me and remember.
For the first time in my life I despised myself. Always before I had been able to make excuses for my conduct. I found that difficult now. I knew how she had felt about Matt Pilkington. Dear Little Damaris, she was so innocent and obvious. Damaris is in love, I thought. I could just imagine her romantic fantasies—so far removed from reality.
When I sat by her bed I used to imagine myself explaining to her, trying to make her see how events had led up to that scene in the bedroom.
I would never make her understand my nature, which was different from hers as two natures could be.
“Damaris,” I imagined myself saying to her, “I am a passionate woman. There are instincts in my nature which demand to be satisfied. An impulse comes to me at certain times in certain company and when it comes it is beyond my control. I am not alone in this. You are fortunate, Damaris, because you will always be able to control your emotions; in any case you would never have these intense desires—animal desires, perhaps you would call them. They are like that. It is like a fire that suddenly is there and it has to be quenched. No, you would not understand. I am learning more and more about myself, Damaris. There will always be lovers for me. Marriage doesn’t alter that. I have met men who are as I am … Beau was one; there was a Jacobite who kidnapped me, he was another. And Matt, yes, Matt too, but there was another reason with Matt.”
I should never explain to Damaris and if I tried she would never understand.
I thought back to the moment when I had arrived at the Dower House. I was coming down to the hall and there was Damaris with him. For the moment I thought he was Beau … It was the clothes, I suppose, really, and there was that faint musk scent he used. He told me later that he kept his linen in musk-scented trunks.
So for that moment I thought he was Beau.
We stared at each other. He said afterwards: “I couldn’t stop staring. I didn’t think you were real. I had never seen anyone so beautiful.”
I had received many compliments, but I never tired of them.
I realised as I came closer to him that it was a fleeting resemblance, something about the style of the dress and scent of musk. There is nothing like scent to bring back memories. At any rate from the first moment we were interested in each other.
It became clear to me during the first evening that he was becoming infatuated. There was something innocent about him which made him different from the men I had known. Beau and Hessenfield were adventurers, buccaneers, the sort of men who roused me more than any others. Benjie was the good dependable type, the perfect husband for a good woman. Alas, I was not that. But Matt Pilkington was different. He was capable of passion, no doubt about that, but as yet he was innocent—inexperienced. I could never outwit Beau or Hessenfield; and the game of trying to was completely fascinating to me. That was why I missed them so bitterly. I could guide Matt Pilkington; I could command him; he was completely mine, I knew, whenever I wished it.
I enjoyed his admiration—adoration, more likely. I would never tire of homage to my beauty. So we went riding. Damaris came out when we were about to leave. Matt asked her to join us and I couldn’t help laughing at his relief when she declined. Poor Damaris, I thought, she imagines herself in love with him. She’s a child really. It is calf love. A good experience for her, though.
We rode out together; we stopped at an inn for a tankard of ale and some hot fresh baked rye bread and a piece of cold bacon.
All the time his feeling for me was growing. When he helped me mount he was loathe to let me go and I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the brow. That seemed to fire both of us. Memories of Beau came sweeping over me. I had thought I had forgotten them with Hessenfield. He had taught me so much about myself. But it seemed I had not forgotten Beau, for whenever I went to Enderby I remembered our meetings there.
I had firmly fixed in my mind the idea that there was a resemblance between Matt and Beau and I wanted to prove to myself that I had forgotten Beau even if I could not forget Hessenfield.
We rode on for a while and then I suggested we tether the horses and sit by the stream. We did.
I wanted him to hold me, but I was not sure how far I wanted this to go. I did love Benjie in a way but my feeling for him was different from that I had had for Beau and Hessenfield. Benjie was gentle, tender and a good husband. But he did not satisfy my craving for that wild adventurous passion which men like Beau and Hessenfield could give me.
I had not been unfaithful to Benjie … yet. I now realised that was because there had been no incentive to be. Suddenly, desperately, I wanted Matt Pilkington to be my lover. My reasons were mixed. I needed the wild illicit adventure which I had had from Beau and Hessenfield. I wanted to be dominated, I suppose. Beau had laughed at my innocence and been determined to deflower it; Hessenfield had made it clear that I had no choice. Situations, I suppose, which would have horrified a person like my good little sister, Damaris, but which titillated me.
We sat side by side on the grass. I put my hand over his and said to him: “It’s strange, but when I first saw you I thought I had met you before … just for a moment when you stood in the hall.”
“I could not believe you were real,” he said.
“I saw your mother once … some time ago. I can’t remember much about her now … except that she was beautiful and elegant and she had masses of red hair.”
“She’s very proud of her hair. I’ll tell her you
thought her beautiful and elegant. That will please her.”
“I hope she wasn’t upset because I decided not to sell Enderby.”
“I think she understood. She has Grasslands now and is very satisfied with that. It’s a brighter house than Enderby.”
“Did you ever see Enderby?”
“I came to look at it when my mother thought she might buy it. She had the key and took me over.”
A flash of understanding came to me. Of course. I had smelt the musk perfume there. It was strong stuff and lingered on after whoever was wearing it had gone. And the button which I had thought was Beau’s … it was Matt’s of course. I had been certain that button was Beau’s. But of course buttons were obviously duplicated, even when they were as valuable as the one which I had found.
It was a mystery cleared up. I almost told him that it was because he had been to Enderby and I had thought he was someone else—a ghost from the past—that I had decided not to sell the house.
But there was time for that later.
I was exerting myself to draw him to me. Although he did not really look so much like Beau, and his character was very different, I kept having flashes of memory when I was with him, and Beau seemed nearer to me than he had for a long time.
And as I sat there beside him I knew that I could let myself believe that Beau had come back. I wanted to test myself, to ask myself whether I still wanted Beau. During those few wildly exciting days I had spent in Hessenfield’s company I had forgotten Beau. I wanted to forget him; I wanted to forget Hessenfield. It sounds hypocritical, really, to say I wanted to be a good wife to Benjie while I was at the same time contemplating breaking my marriage vows.
Harriet had once said: “There are people who disregard the laws laid down for good and honourable behaviour, people who, because of something they possess, think they are above the rules which others obey. You are one of those, Carlotta … So was I. We use other people perhaps. It’s unfair because we invariably win in the end.” Then she smiled and added cryptically, “But who can say what is victory?”
I could have seduced him there and then, but the idea had come to me that it would be more effective if it were in the four-poster bed in Enderby Hall where Beau and I had made love so many times.
I was excited by the prospect. I was aware of the desire in him which could not be quenched by the efforts he was making to suppress it. He did not know that the obstacles to it make it the more enticing. I was a married woman; he was contemplating betrothal to my sister; he had only known me for a day or so. I knew exactly what he was thinking—he was a good man, or he wanted to be, which is perhaps the same thing.
I was neither good nor bad when passion took possession of me; and I was allowing Matt Pilkington to have this effect on me. I wanted to lie on the bed with Matt Pilkington and delude myself briefly into thinking that Beau had returned.
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 mother 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 try 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.
Harriet was aware of the change in me. She watched me with alert blue eyes. I don’t know how old Harriet was now—she had never told us how old she was and, according to my grandmother, even when she was in her twenties she had pretended to be much younger. But she must have been in her late twenties at the time of the Restoration and that was over forty years ago. Her hair was still dark; her eyes still violet blue; she was rather plump, but her laughter was still like a young woman’s and frequently heard and she was interested in the young people about her—in particular me, for she said I was like her and she had pos
ed as my mother for the first years of my life, which made a great bond between us.
She wanted to know what had happened. I told her that Damaris had been out in the rain and had some virulent fever because of it.
“Whatever made her do that?” she asked.
I shook my head, but Harriet was perceptive.
“It may have had something to do with Matt Pilkington. I think she had a romantic feeling for him.”
“And it went wrong when you were there?”
“It couldn’t have been right before, could it?”
“But the climax came after your arrival?”
“She was out in the storm. That was how it happened.”
“What is he like, this Matt Pilkington?”
“Very … young.”
“Suitable for Damaris?”
“Oh, Damaris is too young yet.”
“I’ll swear,” said Harriet, “that he took a fancy to Damaris’s sister.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Well, if he is easily diverted perhaps it is just as well.”
“Damaris is only a child really,” I insisted.
“I seem to remember when you were her age you were planning an elopement.”
“Damaris is young for her years.”
“Something has happened,” said Harriet. “I have always found that the best way to discover a secret is not to probe.”
“It’s a good rule,” I said.
She knew of course that my visit had had something to do with Damaris’s illness. She would, as she had implied, discover the secret in due course.
And when I showed no inclination to visit the Dower House and she was aware of my determination to be a good wife to Benjie, she guessed.
It amused her somewhat. It was the sort of adventure she would have had in her youth.
She always smiled when she found some similarity between us. She said: “It was a joke of the gods because at your entry into the world—which, my dear Carlotta, was not the most discreet—I pretended to be your mother.”
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