Филиппа Карр: Will You Love Me in September

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.

"Careful," said Damaris, "he can be fierce.”

But not with me - never with me. He knew I loved him immediately. We had had no dogs in the hotel, and certainly not in Jeanne's cellar. And I was so happy because I was going to live in the same house as Damon, Damaris, Jeremy and Smith. Smith said, "I've never seen him take to anyone like that before." I just put my arms round Damon's neck and kissed the tip of his damp nose. They all watched with trepidation, but Damon and I knew how it was between us.

Jeremy was very pleased that we liked each other. Everybody was very pleased about most things at that time, except of course when they thought of Carlotta, and when I thought of her and dear handsome Hessenfield I was sad too. Damaris assured me that they would be happy in the place they had gone to, and that started to bf ^ * ^^ ^ happy where I had come to. Enderby Hall was a dark house at first, until they cut down some of the bushes which were all around it and made lawns and flower beds. Damaris took down some of the heavy furnishings and replaced them with lighter colors. The hall was magnificent; it had a vaulted roof and beautiful paneling. At one end were the screens, beyond which were the kitchens, and at the other a lovely staircase, which led to the minstrels' gallery.

"When we entertain we shall have musicians to play there, Clarissa," Damaris told me.

I listened with awe, taking in every detail of my new life and savoring it all with complete delight.

There was one bedroom which Damaris hated to go into. I soon sensed that, and with the directness of a child asked her why. She looked astonished. I think that was because she knew she had betrayed her reluctance.

She merely said, "I'm going to change it all, Clarissa. I'm going to make it unrecognizable.”

"I like it," I said. "It's pretty." And I went to the bed and stroked the velvet hangings. But she looked at it with loathing, as though she were seeing something I could not. I understood later ... much later ... what that room meant to her.

Well, she changed it, and it certainly looked different. The red velvet was replaced by white-and-gold damask, with curtains to match. She even changed the carpet. She was right. It did look different, but she did not use it as her and Jeremy's room, although it was the best in the house. The door was always shut. I believe she rarely went there.

So this was my new home-Enderby Hall, about ten minutes' ride from the Dower House and an equal distance from Eversleigh Court, so I was surrounded by my family.

That Damaris and Jeremy were happy together there could be no doubt; as for myself, I was so pleased to have escaped from that Paris cellar that I lived in a state of joyful appreciation of everything for those first few months. I used to stand in the middle of the great hall and look up at the minstrels' gallery and say, "I'm here." And I tried to remember the cellar with the cold stone floor and the rats that came at night and looked at me with their baleful eyes that seemed yellowish in the darkness. I did this to remind myself that I had escaped and told myself I would never, never go back there again. I did not like to see cut flowers in pots because they reminded me. Damaris loved them and gathered basketfuls from the garden.

She had a special room ii d the flower room and she used to arrange them there. She‘d say, "Come on, Clarissa, we'll go and get some roses." She W°cklY noticed, though, that I grew quiet and mournful and I often had a nightmare the following night. So she stopped cutting flowers. Damaris was very perceptive. More so than Jeremy. I think he was too concerned with the way life had treated him before he met Damaris to think much about how it had treated thers. Damaris thought of others all the time, and believed that what had gone wrong in her life was largely her own fault rather than fate's.

When the violets came out she took me to the hedgerows and we gathered wild ones.

She said, "It was violets, you remember, that brought us together. So I shall always love violets. Will you?”

I said I would, and it seemed different picking them after that; and in time I didn't mind about the flowers. To show Damaris this I went into the garden to pick some roses for her. She understood at once and hugged me tightly, hiding her face so that I should not see the tears in her eyes.

In those early days they were always talking about me not only at Enderby but at the Dower House, and there were conferences at Eversleigh Court. I often heard someone say, "But what would be best for the child?”

The cocoon was being woven very tightly round me. I had had an unusual start. Therefore I needed very special care.

Perhaps that was why I felt very much at ease with Smith. I used to watch him doing the garden or cleaning the silver. Before Damaris became mistress of the house he used to do everything, but now servants from Eversleigh Court used to be sent over by Great-grandmother Arabella. Jeremy did not really like that; Smith didn't like it either.

Smith treated me, as he would say, "rough." "Don't stand there idle," he would say.

"Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do." And I would have to arrange the forks and knives in their cubbyholes, as he called them, or pick up branches and dead flowers and put them in the wheelbarrow. Damaris was often present and the three of us would be very happy together. With bmith \teK completely at ease, not the child whose welfare had to e continually considered-sometimes at some inconvenience to hers I feared-but a fellow worker of very little importance. It strange to want to be of no importance, but I really did. It was an indication, of course, that I was already beginning to feel the bounds of security tightening around me.

There was a discussion in the family as to whether or not I should have a governess.

Damaris said she would teach me.

"Perhaps you are doing too much," said Grandmother Priscilla anxiously.