Welcome to Augie's Corner:
I realize that this is unconventional even for me, but tonight I’m going to forego my usual interview and allow my guest to introduce herself. We are not in a studio, nor is there an audience present, just my guest and me. You see she is very shy, and the only way I could do this interview was to travel to Montauk Peninsula and visit her home. This is a gorgeous mansion, actually the first that I have ever been in, with huge walls that surrounds the perimeter, all I could see are rolling green hills, orchards, vineyards, stables and I think I can hear the sea.
Guest: Yes, Augie you are correct, you can hear the sea, if you pull the curtain back, you can actually see the harbor in the distance. Okay, I think I’m ready. Let me see, I suppose I should introduce myself and then go from there.
Augie: I think that would be a great place to start
Guest: Here goes, my name is Charlotte, and I am the only living child of Theis Veit-Standforte and Chevalier Georges Aethelbert Demerayes. We live in this mansion that has been in the Demerayes’ family for generations.
My mother is called Mistress and father is Master of Fanaman, who is a land baron.
I had a brother, who was younger than I, but he died. No one speaks of him, actually, no one is allowed to say his name, or mention anything about him according to Mistress.
Let me see, I’m nineteen, nearly twenty and I have never married, nor have I ever been betroth. According to mother, I am a disaster, a failure to all women and a failure to the Veit-Standforte as well as the Demerayes.
You see women in my era were considered spinsters if they were not married or betroth by the age of sixteen, and I am a little late. I am an embarrassment, I accept this.
I wanted to be unconventional, you know never marry, enjoy life, but that was not to be. She had other plans for me. To be honest mother hates me.
Augie: Isn’t that a little harsh.
Guest: Oh no, she will not allow me to go anywhere, well I have been to the Village maybe ten to twelve times in my life and I do go with the family to Grissly Hall during the winter, but other than that I stay here, between these walls. All I have learned about life was taught to me by Mary, my favorite friend, she’s our maid and dear old Alexander, who is father’s manservant, who is really father’s boyhood friend. Mother has no friends, she spends her time conjuring up spells and doing evil things to people and me. She never spends time with me, unless it is to ridicule me about one thing or another.
I heard once that she had a friend but she disappeared, like the things in the Mansion, that mother tells me
