Rebecca's Tale (7 page)

Five months later, she was dead. The following year, when her body was finally brought up from the sea, she was buried in the de Winter crypt in the little gray Saxon church one mile from Manderley. That terrible interment I’ve already described: the vicar stammering a hasty prayer; no hymns, no flowers; one so-called mourner, Frank Crawley, waiting by the car, and only Maxim and myself attending the coffin. We buried her in the evening, in the midst of a summer storm. The sky was overcast, with a livid hue on the horizon. She wasn’t even laid in what might have seemed her rightful place, next to Maxim’s parents, next to Lionel and poor Virginia. Maxim had other ideas. So she was secreted away in the darkest and most remote corner of that unhappy place, a section as yet unoccupied by other coffins, divided from the other ancestral husbands and wives by a thick pillar and a sagging masonry arch.

I hadn’t forgotten my undertaking, but in the face of Maxim’s anger, I had backed down. It was the first of my betrayals, maybe. And Rebecca did indeed come back to haunt me, but then—in my experience—she was always true to her word.

F
IVE

I
SAT THERE ON MY WALL ABOVE THE SEA WATCHING THIS
past of mine for a half hour that lasted decades; I’d known that if I listened to the dead well enough, they’d point me in the right direction. I felt restored, ready to tackle the next items on my tasklist—it was beginning to get chilly on my wall anyway. We may enjoy the benefits of a Gulf Stream climate here in Kerrith, but spring breezes off the water play havoc with the joints, and April is a cruel month as far as my rheumatism is concerned. I levered myself to my feet. Time to open my parcel, I thought—and I must telephone Gray, too. Barker stretched and yawned (he really is a most indolent dog); together we set off down the path to the house. Delicious cooking smells were wafting from the kitchen: Ellie was making bread.

I inspected my nicely stumped roses for any signs of greenfly (one can never start spraying too soon) and congratulated myself on how neat they looked since I took charge of them. They are so-called old roses of the kind garden snobs approve, and were originally planted by my mother—in 1900, to celebrate the new century. They were scions of the famous Grenville rose collection, from the gardens of their house, St. Winnow’s, farther up river from here; the cuttings were made by their gardener, and presented to my mother by one of those three Grenville sisters: not Maxim’s mother, poor Virginia,
who was dead by then, and not pretty little Isolda who broke my nine-year-old heart, for she had left the area and married—disastrously, people said—so it must have been Evangeline.

Both my mother and my late wife loved and cherished these roses, not least for their “romantic” names, many of them French—in fact, I believe some of the roses had originally come from France, where the Grenvilles had relatives.
Honorine de Brabant, Duchesse d’An-goulême, Cuisses de Nymphe
…names that do not sound quite so fine in translation: “Nymph’s Thighs.”
Preposterous
, I used to think. Despite my protests, the womenfolk gave the roses free rein. They grew into vast fecund bushes that threatened to take over the entire garden; I’d snip bits off when I thought no one was looking—they were viciously thorned and in my view needed hacking back hard.

In June, when they were at their best (the only time they
were
at their best; they looked at their worst for the other eleven months of the year), people made pilgrimages here to admire them. Rebecca, burying her face in one of the flowers—a deep crimson one, I forget its name—once told me that she didn’t expect ever to go to heaven, but if she did, it would smell like this. Heaven scent, she said; its color, she added, was precisely that of a Pomerol wine. I looked at her coldly. “Oh really? Which?” I said.

My tone was short. I didn’t know her at all well in those days—this incident took place shortly after I’d taken early retirement, and returned to The Pines with my family from my last posting in Singapore. It must have been June, so Rebecca would have been married to my friend Maxim for only three or four months; I’d met her maybe twice. I was suspicious of her, for no very good reason. I was suspicious of most young women, especially charming ones. I remember thinking these raptures were either an affectation on her part or a tease (and if you didn’t realize when she was teasing you, she could make you look a complete fool, so you had to keep your wits about you, as I’ve said).

She and Maxim had arrived at The Pines in the early evening, on that occasion. I think my wife, who liked Rebecca, had suggested she might want to see the garden, and they dropped in en route to some party. I was deputed to show Rebecca the roses; Maxim, who’d seen them a thousand times, remained indoors talking to my wife. I wasn’t pleased at this suggestion. I was not in a gallant mood that night. So
in the cool of the scented evening air, with the sea whispering in the distance, I marched mutinously up and down the paths, murdering the romantic names with an accent that was anything but French. Maxim’s young wife, for some reason, made me self-conscious and stiff. I found her exotic and strange. As I was already discovering, she seemed to have no idea whatsoever of conventional social niceties, and you never knew what odd and unexpected thing she might say next.

As she paused to bend over the roses, every shade from the deepest crimson through soft mauves to flesh pink, I stole covert glances at her. I know nothing about women’s clothes, and care less, but even I could see that the dress she was wearing was an exquisite thing; later, with a sigh, my wife would inform me that it was Chanel, purchased in Paris, and the last word in chic. It was made of some heavy slubby material that I suppose was silk, and it was very, very plain—
Understated, Arthur, dear
, my wife patiently said. Above its boat-shaped neckline, I could see the bluish hollows below Rebecca’s collarbone; she was wearing a famous de Winter necklace, of pinkish pearls, around her delicate throat, and the dress also was pink—but not any pink I’d ever seen before. It was the softest, palest blush pink, almost the colour of skin; I found I was looking at it hard, trying to find a word for the color, when the right term,
exactly
the right term, suddenly rose up in my head unbidden:
Cuisses de Nymphe
…

I reddened, moved off a few paces, and attempted to speed up this rose inspection; I looked at my watch. But Rebecca was not to be hurried. She continued to walk between the roses in a slow intent way, bending over them, inspecting the formation of their petals, and inhaling their scent. She looked serious, intent, and impossibly young. It struck me that for all the sophistication of her dress, and despite her height—she was tall and exceptionally slender—she looked like a child, a very beautiful grave child plucked from some foreign place, and set down here in a country where no one knew her customs or spoke her language or understood her race.

I felt a sudden pulse of protectiveness toward her, which disconcerted me. She turned to look at me, inspecting my face; I had the unpleasant sensation that she could read my mind, that she perhaps found me dull or deeply absurd—she’d given no indication of this, but I felt an obscure need to retaliate. Wishing to snub her, bristling
and on edge, I became increasingly curt. She made her remark about roses and wine, and I made my snide reply. It was meant to put her in her place, and of course she knew that. She straightened up from the rose and frowned slightly; her extraordinary and unreadable eyes rested on my face. She told me the name of the wine she’d meant (her French accent, unlike mine, was perfectly correct). She said she knew it well because it was one of her father’s favorite wines. Then she left.

That was the only occasion, ever, when she mentioned her father to me, but I wasn’t to know then how unusual a remark it was. When she’d gone, I was irritable—and curious. I went down to my cellar (well-stocked), found I had a bottle of the particular wine she’d named, and fetched it up. I poured out a glass, and held it against the rose. It was indeed the same color, and Rebecca had been entirely accurate. Very few women are accurate, in my experience, and even fewer of them know the least thing about wine. For these reasons, I paid greater attention to her than I had done after that.

“Did you check? Was I right?” she said to me the next time I saw her. The occasion was some Manderley garden party. It was several weeks later. It was very hot. Rebecca was wearing another exquisite garment, this time the color of milk; her face, arms, and throat were lightly tanned, which shocked me deeply. Women avoided the sun in those days and prized white skin. It was the mark of a lady, people said. This fashion was about to change, but Rebecca cared little for fashionable dictates—she simply did as she liked. She was not wearing gloves or a hat—and I found this nakedness shocking, too.

“Yes I did. And yes, you were,” I said.

I could have pretended I didn’t understand her reference—there was no prompting or preamble prior to the sudden question—but I felt obscurely that I was being tested, and I was suddenly very anxious to pass that test.

“Good.” She gave a small approving nod, leaving me to decide whether she was pleased at this confirmation of her accuracy or pleased that I’d bothered to check. She slipped her arm through mine—the dress was short sleeved, and her arm was bare. “You thought I was pretentious,” she went on. “Don’t bother denying it. You had a perfect right to think that—you don’t know me yet.”

I made some fatuous reply. I can’t remember, and don’t want to remember, what it was, but it was complimentary and patronizing,
and prefixed with a “My dear” that made me sound, and was designed to make me sound, like a pompous old stick. I was just forty-six at the time, not
that
much older than Rebecca’s husband, but for some reason found it safer to pretend I was sixty-six. It was a disguise I’d been perfecting for a decade at least.

“I’m glad I was right, though,” she continued, ignoring my remark—she knew she had me on the run, I expect. “If I’d been wrong, you’d have dismissed me out of hand. Crossed me off your list. Then we’d never have made friends—and that would have been a sad waste. I want friends. And look—apart from you, there isn’t a single candidate.”

With a mischievous glance, she gestured toward a group of other guests, standing on the terrace. Maxim and his sister Beatrice were there; I spotted Frank Crawley, Maxim’s friend from the first war, now his estate manager; there were several spinsters of the parish, including my cronies, Elinor and Jocelyn Briggs, daughters of the former Evangeline Grenville. There was a clutch of the usual county families; the bishop was present…and there were all too many dull old coves wearing panama hats and suits exactly like mine; there was a positive invasion of Colonel Julyan doppelgängers, which depressed me a bit.

I could recognize all the people there; most of them were infernal bores, and I’d been skulking in the shrubbery in a desperate attempt to avoid them. I expect Rebecca knew that. But what happened next? Rebecca returned to her guests, I suppose, for, despite her remarks, she was assiduous on such occasions. I was flattered, though I think flattery was not Rebecca’s intention. And we did become friends—for which state, I suppose, I have these roses to thank.

I looked for the heaven scent rose now—was it the third on the left, or the fourth? The labels have long gone, and I couldn’t be sure, and besides, thanks to my unconventional pruning techniques the roses look very different now. What were once great billowing bushes bowed down with flowers are now small twiggy affairs that reach knee height. I like flowers in serried ranks, as if drawn up on a parade ground. This taste is not universally shared, of course.

There was a small danger that I might take this failure to locate the rose as an omen: I find I’m now given to seeing omens at every turn; I’m also becoming superstitious. I catch myself walking ostenta
tiously around ladders, or knocking on wood like some damn woodpecker. This is not a good sign. If softening of the brain (and what an unpleasant phrase that is when one thinks about it) first manifests itself in this way, I’m alarmed. I do not intend to give in to weaknesses of that foolish kind. I stumped up to the French windows in a purposeful way. “Barker—
down
,” I said, very firmly indeed, pointing at the hearth rug. Barker walked round the room four times, scratched himself, looked at me soulfully, and, finally, having demonstrated his independence of mind as he likes to do, lay down and went to sleep.

I reached for the telephone to speak to Gray—I’d decided Terence Gray could definitely be useful to me; given his interest in Manderley matters, I could do worse than co-opt him, and make him my assistant on my new “quest.” Before I took him into my confidence, though, I’d stick to my resolve, and watch how he conducted himself on our Manderley walk. Then I remembered that I
still
hadn’t invited him for this walk. I began to dial his number, then changed my mind. I had forgotten all about my package, I realized, picking it up and examining it. Bound to be bumf, I said to myself, but even so I felt a little thrill of anticipation. I’d have felt a great deal more, had I known what the content was.

Inside the envelope was a small black-covered exercise book, smaller than, but similar to, those once used in schools. It had an unusual detail, in that it fastened shut with its own attached leather laces, which wrapped around its width, and were tied in a neat bow on its spine.

For reasons I then couldn’t put my finger on, this notebook looked familiar—and it engendered an unspecific but definite unease. I felt around in the envelope. I held the book by its spine, undid the laces, and shook it; to my surprise, an old sepia picture postcard of Manderley fell out. I saw that this had come loose from the notebook’s back page. There was nothing written on the card, however, and there was no letter enclosed with the little book. Curiouser and curiouser: an anonymous offering, then.