Mrs De Winter (16 page)

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Was I building an elaborately balanced, ornate house of cards? A castle in the air? Yes, a small, spiteful voice whispered, yes, but I turned away and laughed at it, bold, defiant. We had been led to Cobbetfs Brake, every step of our journey perhaps not merely this week, but for years, had been towards it, I believed that with a terrible, superstitious vehemence that was quite uncharacteristic.

Only once, fleetingly that night, before the worst moment came, did I have the faintest of warnings, a premonition, a reminder, though I brushed it aside at once.

I went up to our room to fetch Maxim’s book and, as I opened the door, saw that the moon was shining in through the window on to my bedspread and making a clear, pale pool of light, and the sudden sight of it brought the wreath of white flowers vividly to my mind, making my stomach clench in fear; they were there, I could have reached out to touch the petals, I felt the edge of the cream card against my fingers, I stared at the beautifully shaped, black initial letter R.

‘No,’ I whispered urgently, aloud into the empty room. ‘No,’ and quickly switched on the light, so that all was ordinary again, and found Maxim’s book, and ran from the room, and though I knew that I carried the image of the wreath in my mind still and perhaps it would be there always, I could never finally escape, I was stronger than it could ever be. Somehow the sight of the house had given me tremendous, almost magical power, the wreath and the card could not hurt me, they were nothing, trivial, a joke, a trick. I filled myself with thoughts of the house, and it refreshed me instantly, I turned to its calm, clear image with gratitude, investing it with so much strength and goodness, and promise.

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I stopped in the doorway of the lounge, and looked with such love, such contentment, at what I saw. The coffee had arrived, the pots and cups were set out on a low table before the fire, and Maxim was leaning forward out of one of the great armchairs, stroking the labrador dog as it stretched, making low grumbling noises of pleasure. No one else was in the lounge yet, so that it might have belonged to us, been a room in our own home, instead of a hotel.

I had a book but I did not want to read, I was too happy with the present and with the world I wove out of my own fancy, to want to immerse myself in another. So for a while I simply sat, beside Maxim, drinking my coffee, basking in the warmth of the fire, hearing the clock tick and then chime, and nothing touched me, and nothing could, it seemed.

But after a while, I looked around me for something to do, wishing again that I was a woman who did crochet or a needlepoint. Well, when we were there, I would, and there would be a basket of mending, too, I saw it now, a round wicker basket lined with cotton, a china knob to its lid.

There was a cupboard in the corner, the door ajar. I went to look into it and found games, boxes of draughts and chess and children’s games, too, ludo and snakes and ladders; jigsaw puzzles of the Fighting Temeraire, a bluebell wood, a hunt in full cry; an old postcard album; some local maps and a gazeteer. But there was nothing to divert me for long. I was happy simply to sit, but I knew that it irritated Maxim, he looked up sharply from his book, disturbed, wanting me to settle, so that I went across to the table in the centre of the room and brought a pile of magazines. They were country

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picture papers from before the war, carefully set in place each day, looked after, I supposed because such things had not been obtainable more recently.

I began to look through them, at out of fashion frocks and advertisements with strange, quaint lettering, pictures of hunt balls and women riding side saddle. I read an article about St Paul’s Cathedral and another about hares, and it was such nostalgic pleasure, they reminded me of the magazines I had read sometimes in our exile, old copies of The Field, and how I had learned pages of them almost by heart, how the descriptions and drawings, the tiny details of the English countryside, had satisfied my yearning for it a little, how I had had to keep them from Maxim, for fear of stirring up too many memories and longings within him, of hurting him.

The fire slipped down, scattering sparks. The labrador shifted, grunted, slept on, from somewhere, in the depths of the hotel, a voice, another, laughing briefly, the clatter of a plate. Silence again. The others who had been dining had left, gone upstairs or out. Once Maxim looked up from The Moonstone to smile, once to throw a log on the fire. This is happiness, I thought, this is happiness now. And the house, Cobbett’s Brake, rode like a ship, at anchor, peaceful, expectant, under the moon.

I turned a page idly.

The shock was indescribable.

The magazine was over fifteen years old. They went in for such grandeur in those years before the war.

It was a full page photograph. She was standing at the head of the great staircase, one hand resting lightly on the banister, the other at her waist, almost as if she were a mannequin. The

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pose was artificial, yet it was perfectly judged, the spotlight had been placed to light her in exactly the right way. She wore an evening gown of satin, in some dark colour, without sleeves, but with a strap up from the niched bodice over one shoulder, and a sable wrap, carelessly, precisely draped, hung from her hand. Her head was thrown back a little, revealing her long, white neck, her black hair fell in casual, impeccably brushed ripples and waves, long, shining.

‘You’ve seen her brushes, haven’t you?’ I heard the voice whisper. ‘Her hair came down below her waist, when she was first married. Mr de Winter used to brush it for her then.’

I could see the gallery just behind her, at the top of the staircase, the balustrade, and the corridor running away into the shadows.

I realised that I had never seen her before. Everyone had talked about her, everyone had described her, I had known what she looked like in every detail, how tall she was, and slender, how elegant, how pale skinned, I knew about her black hair. Her beauty. But there had been no photograph, or drawing, or portrait anywhere.

And so, until now, I had not seen her.

We stared at one another, and now I saw the beauty and the arrogance, the flash of defiance in her eyes, the coldness, the strength of will. She looked out at me in amusement and pity, despising me, from her great height, commanding the great stairs above the hall.

‘Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?’ the whispering voice of the woman said.

I looked away quickly, away from her bold, amused,

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triumphant gaze, at the words printed below, ordinary, plain, black and white words, from years ago, a caption line, like so many others they printed there, week after week, beneath some society photograph.

Mrs Maxim de Winter, at Manderley.

After that, the nightmare began and perhaps it was a year before we woke from it, perhaps we never did.

Only a few seconds passed while I took in the photograph, fascinated by the sight of her at last, appalled that it should be here, should have lingered on the table of this remote little hotel, among others, waiting for me, biding its time for years until we should come.

Mrs Maxim de Winter, at Manderley.

I shut the cover, mumbling something, and fled, half falling over my handbag which was on the floor as I did so, so that Maxim looked up in surprise. I heard him begin a question, but I did not stay to answer, I could not. He must not see it, he must not know. I stumbled up the stairs, my heart pounding like the sea in my chest, in my head, and she was with me, her pale, haughty, laughing face, her faintly contemptuous expression, looking at me, looking at me, tossing her black hair off her shoulders, resting her hand so easily on the banister of the stairs. Rebecca. I had wanted to see her always, she had repelled and attracted me for years, but she was dead and I had thought myself free of her. He must never see.

In our room I began to rip out the page with her photograph, my hands shaking, the paper was stiff and glossy, firmly bound in, I could not do it, and when, at last, I did, it tore, across, so that her arm and the side of her

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sleek, elegant dress had a jagged rip down them, and a part was left firm inside the book. But it had not touched her face. She was still looking up at me, smiling a little, commanding, as Maxim flung open the door of the room.

Then, everything was terrible, and the world, like the glossy, fashionable photograph, was ripped in two. Then, there was only my fear and Maxim’s anger and his withdrawal — for he behaved at once as if I were somehow to blame and had done this thing on purpose.

I had no time to hide the sheet of paper, he pulled it out of my hands, and I saw his face whiten, his lips press together, as he looked briefly down at her.

Mrs Maxim de Winter, at Manderley.

If I could have seen ahead before it happened and asked how he would be, I might have said, gentle, worried for me, but calm about it, tender, holding me, telling me to put it from my mind, not to let it trouble me, because it was nothing, that it was all over, she could no longer hurt us.

But he was not like that, so that I knew she still had power over him as much as over me, I had been wrong for years, living in a false, fool’s paradise. A door came down that night, shutting us from the future I had planned, it was the end of all hopes, all dreams, all happiness.

I felt sick, my stomach churning with misery, I began to bite the side of my fingernail again, as I had done in the old, early, nervous days, I saw him notice it and turn irritably away.

He screwed the photograph up hard in his hand, twisted it around and around, but then kept hold of it; the rest of the magazine he threw across the room into the waste paper bin.

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‘You’d better get the cases out, and make a start in packing. It isn’t late, I’ll go and see if I can rouse them to have the bill ready.’

I turned round to him. Where are we going? What are we going to do?’

‘Get out of here.’

‘But when?’

‘In the morning, as soon as we can — before breakfast if possible. We can stop and have something on the way if you’re hungry.’

I dared not ask more. I supposed he meant to cut the trip short and go back down to Giles. But then, what then? I did not want to think of it.

He left me alone. The crushed up photograph had still been in his hand. I supposed that he would throw it into the fire downstairs and want to see it burned completely away, and I had a peculiar, superstitious impulse to go down and stop him, I felt afraid of what might happen to us, what she would do in revenge.

Don’t be a fool, don’t be a child, I said, dragging out the cases from the wardrobe, she is dead, it is just an old photograph, she can’t hurt us now.

But she had, I thought miserably, folding dresses, pyjamas, socks, sorting out just the few things we would need for the morning; she had crushed my hopes, she had smashed my frail, transparent bubble of a future. We would not live at Cobbett’s Brake, we would never come to this part of England, that too had become tainted, Maxim would never want to see any of these places again.

Where then? I pressed down a pile of handkercliiefs, to lie

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flat. Back to Giles’s house? But after that? Surely there would be somewhere, some corner in which we could hide. I began to think back furiously over the journey from Scotland, trying to remember some pretty, small, obscure place we might both have liked, but I could think of nowhere; I had seen the house I wanted, it had spoiled everywhere else, I thought, and would do so forever. It was more than a house, and now, because we would never go there, not see it again, it assumed an even greater perfection in my mind, it became a lost paradise, and I shut out forever beyond the locked gates, condemned to gaze down at its unattainable, rose red beauty, caught in a timeless present, in its green grassy bowl.

I slept a dreadful, restless, haunted sleep, that night, and woke, very early, when it was not yet light, and then lay, weak and sour with misery and disappointment. Maxim had scarcely spoken to me, only stood morosely at the window, as I finished packing our cases; the bill was paid, there was nothing to detain us.

‘I loved it here,’ I said once.

‘Yes.’

‘Maxim — ‘

‘No.’ He came and stood in front of me, looking into my face. His skin was grey, the lines that ran from nose to mouth etched more deeply, it seemed, as the last hour or so had passed. His eyes were far away, he had gone from me and I could not reach him.

‘It makes no difference to anything,’ I said.

‘Whatever happens,’ Maxim said in a low, hoarse voice, Vherever we go, whatever we do, it will be the same. So long as we are here, there will be no rest — we can’t take

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the chance, there will be something — like — like this, lying in wait, some trap waiting to spring, and after all, this has been nothing — trivial — other things could be - ‘ He did not go on. I took his hand and lifted it and held it against my face, desperate suddenly that we should salvage something from this, pleading with him.

We are being weak,’ I said. ‘Maxim, it is so silly - we are grown people — we can’t run away because of — you’re right - of nothing - Some silly, trivial incident - we are together, it will be all right.’

‘No.’

‘Nothing can touch us.’

‘But it can. You know that don’t you?’

He took his hand gently away from mine. I could not look into his face, I was too near to tears. Everything, everything was lost then, we would never come back. And I was filled with a hideous, bitter hatred, against her for what she had been, but worse, against Maxim for what he had done, and it frightened me and changed me, I had never felt anything but love for him before. Love and fear.

We left soon after light, as the sun rose out of soft billows of mist. I sat staring ahead and could not bear to look back once at the little stone houses set around the square. There was no one about, we had only seen the plump, bleary waitress, setting out the breakfasts. I had glanced in at the lounge as we passed. The fireplace had been cleared, and fresh logs laid already in the cold grate. The pile of magazines had been