Rebecca's Tale (42 page)

“Just like your mama!” she said. “I see the resemblance now. I am Edith Danvers. My mother had the care of yours when your mama was a child, didn’t she explain that?”

I watched her carefully; Maman rarely explained anything, but I was reluctant to say so.

“Your mama will remember me,” she went on. “If you’d just tell her: Danny’s downstairs. There’s a room ready for you both at St. Agnes, and, if your mama would permit me, I’d be only too glad to pack for her.”

I went upstairs, woke Maman, and gave her this message. At the name “Danny,” she rolled her eyes and made one of her impudent faces. “Oh heavens,” she said. “That woman clings like ivy. Her mother’s a dear sweet thing—she was my nurse, darling, and I’m devoted to her—but the daughter! Ah, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’d better go down and face her. Toss me my dress, darling—no, not that old thing. Must keep up appearances—I’ll wear the silk one.”

I laced Maman into her dress and helped her arrange her hair. Seconds later, she looked grand and headstrong and beautiful. What an actress my maman could be! Not onstage, I’m afraid—there, she was always a little stiff and self-conscious; but offstage, she was a marvel—always very quick-witted, so warm and charming, not a sniff of insincerity, you’d have said. She swept downstairs that day like a duchess, and greeted that grim waxwork figure waiting below with
the greatest affection. No one would have known she was less than pleased to see her; no one could have guessed we were down to our last guinea. Strange stiff Danny melted in the face of this performance like ice before the sun. Her pale face lit; her eyes grew moist; she could scarcely speak for the strength of her emotion. So feudal! I felt quite sorry for her.

“Oh, Miss Isolda,” she said. “I can’t believe—it’s been so long. My mother says if there’s anything we can do…”

“Dearest Millicent—I’m so looking forward to seeing her,” said Maman. “
Will
you pack for me, Danny? You do it perfectly, I remember—and I can’t bear the thought of another night in this horrid place.”

“Of course, madam,” Danny replied, instantly subservient. And with that brief exchange, the course of our next seven years was decided.

D
ANNY BORE US BACK IN TRIUMPH TO
S
T
. A
GNES—AND IT
wasn’t a church, as I’d imagined it might be, but a very clean, very organized boardinghouse, everything spruce: “Shipshape and Bristol fashion,” said Millicent.

It was set up high, overlooking Plymouth Sound; you could watch warships from the window. There were starched antimacassars on every chair, aspidistras in brass pots in every window, and there was English food. When we arrived, Millicent Danvers gave us hot herring roe on toast. She introduced us to her husband, “Mr. D.,” who was old; he had false teeth, a wing collar, best clothes, and some mysterious ailment. He was presented, then whisked out of sight. Daughter Edith poured the tea, and I could see she was ashamed of the hot herring roe, and her father’s false teeth, and her mother’s apron. “Oh, I forgot the serviettes, Edie, dear,” her mother said, and Edith went crimson. “
Napkins
, mother,” she said, very sharp. “I’ll fetch them.” I ate a small bit of the herring ovaries. I thought, If we stay here, I’ll get as thin as a pin. Maman was very gay and charming and defiant—but I was beginning to recognize the danger signals now. I knew there’d be a lapse, and there was. Within a day, once the initial relief and euphoria had worn off, Maman would rally, then languish.

Every afternoon for a week, she put on her best dove gray dress, her prettiest hat, and those exquisite mauve suede gloves. She pinched her cheeks to give them color, and tilted the hat over her eyes in the most becoming way; she adjusted her veil and with a determined air she set off on mysterious visits.

Edith Danvers had returned to the house nearby where she was in service, so I stayed with Millicent. She was kind. She told me all about her tenants, two clerks, one traveling salesman, and regular “theatricals.” She introduced me to lavender water, and baptized my wrists with two special drops—it smelled like tomcats, I thought. She let me help her in the kitchen; she said all her vegetables were boiled for an hour with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda—that was the secret. I stood on a stool by the sink and swished soap over greasy dishes. I helped sacrifice mountains of poor vegetables daily, and Millicent told me stories. Up out of the dark came shapes: No news on my dark dead Devlin father, alas—Millicent never mentioned
him
—but she fleshed out the ghosts of my English family for me.

Maman was the youngest of three lovely sisters—and the youngest by a long way: She was an
afterthought
, said Millicent mysteriously. The eldest sister, Miss Evangeline, was now Lady Briggs; she lived in a lovely house called St. Winnow’s not so very far from here, and she had two charming daughters, Elinor and Jocelyn. Her husband was rich as Croesus. His family wasn’t a patch on Evangeline’s and my mother’s—their branch of the Grenvilles was not well-off, but they could trace their ancestry back to kingdom come, whereas Sir Joshua’s background was nothing to write home about, and he was said to be a difficult straitlaced narrow-minded man—but there, he
was
rich, and he’d been handsome when young, and Miss Evangeline had set her heart on him, and, like most Grenville women, she was determined, not to say headstrong.

The second sister, now dead, was the poor dear sweet good Miss Virginia I recognized from Maman’s stories. A fine match
she’d
made. She’d married the catch of the neighborhood, the owner of Manderley, Mr. Lionel de Winter, no less—and a merry dance he’d led her, Millicent said, chopping up a carnage of cabbage. Poor Miss Virginia, God rest her, had had two children, first a girl, Beatrice, and then a boy, Maximilian, the son and heir. But she’d never lived to see the son and heir grow up; she’d taken a fever when he was three years
old. “Dead in a week!” Millicent said. “So, the grandmother reared him. Miss Virginia never was strong, not even as a child, poor thing. She was nervous—sensitive—I always said as Manderley wouldn’t suit her. Great gloomy place, to my mind. Exposed. Too near the sea. You wouldn’t want to be up there in a storm, Miss Rebecca, I can tell you.”

“I’ve seen a photograph of Manderley,” I said. “Someone sent it to Maman. I think it’s beautiful.”

Millicent dropped her chopping knife, bent to pick it up. “Yes, well,” she said in a flurried way, becoming flushed, “It’s a fine place—in its way. Tastes vary.”

“Maybe that’s where Maman’s gone to visit today,” I went on, casual as could be. I burned to know where she went, and I knew Maman would never tell me. “Maybe she’s gone to call at Manderley; I expect she’d like to do that, when she’s been away nearly eight years, don’t you think, Millicent?”

Millicent didn’t agree. She thought such a visit was very unlikely. After all, Maman’s sister was dead now, so the place would have very sad memories for her; she’d give it a very wide berth, Millicent thought, and the more she insisted on this, the less I believed her.

“Did you go to Manderley today, Maman?” I asked, when she finally came home. We were in our St. Agnes bedroom, with its crucifix on the wall and a black marble tomb of a chimneypiece. Maman had flung herself down on the bed as soon as she came back; she was lying there now, looking white and exhausted, but when I asked that, she sprang up, and started pacing the room.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “Why should I? Who suggested that? Who’s been putting ideas in your head? For heaven’s sake, Becka, haven’t I enough to worry about?”

“No one suggested it. Millicent was telling me about your sister Virginia, that’s all, and I wondered—”

“Well, don’t,” Maman said, very sharply. “Poor Virginia’s
dead
. I hate that house. I hate everyone in it. Lionel de Winter, and that ghastly mother of his—she ran roughshod over poor Virginia. And she
never
liked me. She went out of her way to make my life a misery. Old beast! She’s an interfering, arrogant old woman. I wouldn’t call on her if she were at death’s door. She should have died years and years ago—she’s been widowed long enough, in all conscience. And I
wish to God she
had
died. Everything would have been different, then. Lionel and I were friends once—when I was a girl, and poor Virginia was always so sick, and he had all these worries. We’d be friends still if it wasn’t for that mother of his.”

“Why would you be friends? You said you hated him.”

“We just
might
, that’s all. Stop interrogating me, for heaven’s sake, Becka…. He’s ill now, in any case—someone told me. He hasn’t been well for months. Oh, what am I going to do? Where are we going to go? We can’t stay here; there’s hardly any money left. I can’t pay Millicent, we’re living here on charity, on my own nurse’s charity. Evangeline can’t help—or won’t. She says I should never have come home. My own sister, and she treats me like a pariah. It’s insupportable. I don’t know which way to turn.”

She burst into tears, and, flinging herself down on her bed again, turned her face to the crucifix wall. I began to feel very sick and queer. I’d never seen her like this; I didn’t know what to do, but I thought it might help if I knew the truth, so I fetched Maman some tea and some medicine for her headache; then I sat by her side and stroked her hair until she fell asleep. And when I was certain she was asleep, deeply asleep, this is what I did, my darling. I crept across the room, found the tiny silver key I knew she hid in her jewelery box, and unlocked the drawers of her little traveling writing desk.

I took out her secret letters—the admirer’s letters, all tied up in that rose-embroidered ribbon. First, he wrote every week, then every fortnight, then every month, then the gaps lengthened. By the time I was four, it was down to one letter a quarter, then once every six months or so. The last letter of all, stained with Maman’s salt tears, had been written nearly a year ago.

They weren’t very long letters, fortunately, and they were easy to read because Maman’s correspondent had big, childish handwriting. I couldn’t understand all the words he was using, and some of the things he said he wanted to do sounded strange. They sent little furtive shivers all down my body.

I’ll tell you what I discovered, my love. The admirer was Lionel de Winter, her dead sister’s husband, my uncle by marriage. He’d been writing to Maman for a long time, since before I was born. He’d been writing to Maman when my Devlin father was alive—months before he set off on that fatal sea voyage. It wasn’t right for Lionel to call a
married woman his “sweet darling,” I thought. If my Devlin father had known about that, he’d have killed him stone dead, I felt sure of it.

I wondered if Maman had noticed how these letters had altered in tone over time, and if it had hurt her. First she was “a sweet darling,” then Lionel’s “dearest girl,” then “dear Isolda.” First he was “wild” to see her; then he “wished” he could see her; then, if circumstances changed, he would certainly “try” to see her; meanwhile, he would “help out” whenever he could, and he’d send something pretty—as pretty as she was—to cheer her.

More recently, the letters turned querulous. Lionel had enough nagging to contend with on the home front, he said; didn’t his little Isolda know that men hated women who made complaints all the time? It was wearisome. None of this was his fault. Yes, he could see things must be hard for her, and she might sometimes be lonely, but she was better off in a nice comfortable house in France. If she came back to England, there would only be more talk—especially if she turned up with a child in tow. People would get the wrong idea then; they’d leap to the wrong conclusions, he would be compromised, she would be shunned. The notion was insane; would she please forget it immediately?

I stole the last of those letters, to fuel my hate—and just as well I did, because someone (Danny probably) made sure the rest of them were destroyed when my mother died. I know its cheapnesses by heart; here’s a specimen. Here’s lionhearted, lily-livered Lionel de Winter; here’s my husband’s father writing to my mother:

Sweetheart, I’m going to be frank: You know I’ve always been very fond of you, and always will be. You’re a dear girl in many ways—but you are headstrong. I’ve always made the situation perfectly clear; you can’t deny that. This entanglement wasn’t of my making, you know, Isolda. It’s all very well now to say you were just a child, and you fell in love—but if we look back, the betrayals bothered me more than they did you. It was I who had the conscience, dear. Remember that day at the boathouse?

You don’t seem to appreciate the difficulties I was laboring under then—a sick, complaining wife, a nagging mother, loneliness, and boredom. I was wretched, dear, so of course I responded to your youth, your gaiety, and sympathy. All men have needs—and when they can’t or won’t be met in the rightful way, then there’s always danger, and the man isn’t to blame, in my view.

I’ve always promised you that I’ll take care of things, and I will. Meanwhile, accusations don’t help, frankly. You’re not “buried alive” as you put it, Isolda—you’re living in comfort, as I understand it. It was your family that decided to separate us after Virginia died. It was they who whisked you away to France; Mother and I had nothing to do with that decision—I don’t know why you should think we were involved in any way, dear. You then made a hasty and impetuous marriage, which hurt me very much, and which I advised you against, if I recall correctly. It might help if you’d remember that occasionally.

I’m not under any obligation to you, dear, let alone your child, and in view of the attitude of your own family, I feel you should appreciate more the generosity I’ve shown you as a friend and brother-in-law.

I’ve told you, Isolda, I haven’t been well recently. I’ve been laid up for months now in considerable pain, and it’s made me very depressed in spirits. I’ve had to make a will—a gloomy process—and insofar as I can, I’ve made provision for you. It took up days of my time, and it wasn’t easy; all of the estate and too damn much of the money is tied up in trusts, but I was determined to do the right thing by you, dear. I think you should be grateful for that, and not nag and threaten, when I’m in no condition to cross the Channel and pay visits, and if you thought for one second, you’d see that.