Daphne (12 page)

Hampstead, February

I had never realised until recently what a colossal number of pieces of paper are stored, most of them untouched for years at a time, in archives and libraries around the country: millions and millions of sheets, some of them indexed, some of them not, just boxed up without being catalogued, abandoned like ancient, yellowing bones in the catacombs beneath a city.

I suppose I should have known this before, as the daughter of librarians, and actually, one of the very few memories I have of my father is going with him to where he worked, to the Reading Room of the British Museum, and him showing me what must have been a card index. I'd never seen so many pieces of paper, there were far too many to count, and anyway, I didn't know what a card index was, I just remember him saying, 'look, these are the As.' Then he wrote out the alphabet for me on a piece of paper, 'A is for apple', and so on, which I didn't understand, because A didn't look like an apple, it looked like one of the step-ladders in the Reading Room that my father climbed up to reach the highest shelves. When I tried to follow him, he said, 'You're too small to go up the ladder', and it somehow stayed in my head, the ladder, not the apple. He must have died soon afterwards, and so it was my mother who taught me the alphabet, just by reading to me every evening, me sitting by her side, looking at the pictures, until one day the words and the pictures seemed to merge into one; she was showing me a picture of Peter Pan, and then she pointed at his name on the page, and I could read it, I could see that it was the boy who could fly in the picture, and the feeling I had was like flying, it was like a swoop inside me.

I was thinking about that when I fell asleep last night, and about my parents, and what they would make of me now, carefully picking my way through the catacombs, searching for documents relating to the almost entirely forgotten Mr J. A. Symington. It would all be second nature to them, but it still seems astonishing to me, to discover that there are thousands of pages that have passed through Symington's hands, once you start looking, and I have been looking, trying to follow the faint trail that is left in library catalogues and archives. I've sent dozens of emails to various librarians, and phoned several of them to pester them, and they've all been helpful with suggestions about where his letters might be stored. Some of Symington's papers seem to have ended up in New Jersey, at Rutgers University, but as far as I can tell, that acquisition dates back to the late 1940s, which was almost certainly before his correspondence began with Daphne du Maurier. Then a couple of days ago, I found a reference to another cache of papers, tucked away in the far reaches of a West Yorkshire municipal archive, donated by Symington's widow soon after his death. No detailed catalogue exists for this bequest, aside from a note that it contained a collection of his printing blocks (over 3000 of them), a huge quantity of apparently random newspapers and magazines from the 1920s and '30s, and what was simply referred to as 'various correspondence'. So it was obvious that I had to catch a train to Yorkshire and search through the archive myself.

And it seemed extraordinary that no one else should care; that no one else has thought to look, that I was going there alone. But none of that mattered, really, because it was like setting off on an adventure when I left the house this morning at the same time as Paul, and it was good to feel that I had a purpose, that it wasn't just him on his way to work as we stepped into the lift at Hampstead tube station together, going down underground. It was already busy, and I was pushed up close to him on the Northern Line carriage, and he took my hand, then brushed his lips against mine as I got off before him at King's Cross. 'Good luck,' he whispered into my ear, and smiled.

He wouldn't have smiled if I had told him I was looking for Daphne du Maurier's letters, but I hadn't gone into that much detail, I'd just said that I was spending the day at a West Yorkshire archive, and I had a hunch it might yield some original research for my PhD. 'Very romantic,' he'd said, 'though romantic with a capital "R", hopefully, if your quest yields some interesting Brontë material . . .' But I knew what I was looking for in the archives, and it had Daphne du Maurier's name on it.

Not that any of the Symington collection was properly indexed, so it was hard to know where to start. There was no explanation for the printing blocks, no documentation to give clues as to why they had formed part of the collection; but there they were, in a packing case, along with a load of ancient periodicals, Picture Post, the Radio Times, and magazines I'd never heard of, like John Bull. A lot of the collection was tied up in brown paper and string, dusty and faded and mouldering, as if no one had touched it since Mr Symington's death, as if no one had been interested to discover what lay inside. The frustrating thing was that I didn't have time to go through all of Symington's files of correspondence - there were hundreds and hundreds of pages - and the journey had already taken most of the morning, first the train to Leeds, then a slow bus to a suburb in the north of the city, and then a fifteen-minute walk to this redbrick civic building that housed a section of the local archives. There was only one other researcher inside, an elderly man researching his family genealogy, or so I guessed from his whispered questions to the solitary archivist, their faces solemn beneath the fluorescent light, their voices hushed, as if we were in a church rather than a windowless room that felt like it hadn't been aired since it was built in the 1950s. Why, precisely, Symington's widow had decided that his correspondence should be deposited here, I have no idea; though I can see it made slightly more sense that it had stayed in Yorkshire, unlike other parts of his collection of manuscripts and rare books, which appear to have been sold to the university library in New Jersey while he was still alive.

But what matters is that Symington kept Daphne's letters to him, and the local archives preserved them, and I found them - or maybe they found me . . . It was the address that leapt out at me from the vast jumble of files - her address, typed on her typewriter: Menabilly, Par, Cornwall. I wanted to call out to someone, 'Look, over here, just see what I've found!' but instead, I made a small yelping noise as I flicked through the pages of her letters. There was something so astonishing about their physical existence: the pattern of the ink on the yellowing paper, and the shape of the words themselves on the page, in her irregular typescript that sometimes slopes downwards, instead of keeping to a straight line. I thought of saying that to the archivist, when I was asking him if I could make photocopies of the letters, but then I thought that might seem a bit obsessive, rather than professional, so I just showed him my postgraduate card from London University, and he nodded, and gave me a form to fill in.

Even the photocopies of the letters seemed precious, and it felt like a privilege to be taking them away with me on the slow train back to London. I was wide awake, reading them over and over again, while the other passengers began to doze, lulled by the rocking carriage and the fug inside, as the rain ran down the windows. By the time I got home, Paul was already asleep in bed, so there was no one to talk to about my discovery, but that was just as well, because I couldn't have told him that I'd unearthed the du Maurier letters, he would have been too angry, and the day would have been spoilt by his disapproval, so I hugged the secret all to myself.

Of course, I don't have Symington's replies to Daphne; but the thrill of possession hasn't yet gone; I can't stop looking at her letters, can't bear to put them away in a drawer, even though it's really late, and I should be sleeping next to Paul. So now I've got them on my desk, right beside my computer, and I know it sounds childish, but I still feel excited just seeing her address. These pages were written in the house that became Rebecca's Manderley; they came from inside the walls that I have imagined so many times - slipping into Menabilly, exploring its rooms in my head - which is why her letters seem almost like a series of clues or a kind of key into a closed and hidden place that Daphne called her house of secrets.

Not that she says anything so explicit to Mr Symington. Her first letter is brisk and to the point, but with sufficient detail to make it clear that she'd already done quite a lot of Brontë research, and therefore had some basis for her belief that Branwell was talented. But it's curious going through these letters, trying to map Daphne's thought processes, because of course I've already read her Branwell biography, the unwritten book that was taking shape in her head during the correspondence with Symington; a book which explores, amongst other things, what Branwell might, or might not, have written, as well as the blurred borderline between his fantasies and the reality of his short life.

Anyway, the letters continue for about a month - and you can tell from reading them that Symington has responded enthusiastically to Daphne's approach, has even sold her some rare books and papers from his Brontë library. And then the flurry of correspondence appears to stop until the beginning of 1959, a year and a half since it first began in the summer of 1957.

Oddly, in her last of these early letters to Symington, Daphne tells him that she has to go to London for a week or so, and perhaps they might arrange a time to see each other there. That's when it all goes quiet, which makes me wonder what, exactly, happened next, in that long, extended silence? Did they meet? Did they fall in love, and then out of love, did they quarrel or did they become disillusioned with one another? Somehow, this silence of theirs feels oddly reassuring; to me, that is. It makes me feel less alone, knowing that there are gaps in their lives, as well as their letters; spaces that I might fill, if only I could find a way into them.

Menabilly, October 1957

Daphne was not writing, she did not want to write; she did not want to think, she did not want to think about what was happening to her. She whispered instructions to herself, so quietly that no one else could hear: 'You need a good shake,' she murmured, but this did not help, for she was already shaking, like Tommy. 'Get a grip,' she said, but it was no good, she was already gripped, body and soul, and it was all out of her control, she could not break free. If only she knew what was behind the vice she was fixed in, it would be easier; perhaps it was her own vices, she thought, perhaps it was these that held her in their grip, so tightly that she couldn't breathe.

In her more lucid moments, she feared she was going mad, driven mad by Branwell, as much as by Tommy, by knowing and not knowing; by not knowing enough. And it was this that made her curse herself, for believing that Branwell could rescue her from Rebecca, that he was powerful enough to push Rebecca aside, but now she saw that he was as bad as Rebecca, that the two of them would consume her; for they should never have been exhumed from the crypt.

At other times, the worst times, she suspected conspiracies all around her; and if they were not real, then someone must have slipped a sliver of ice into her eyes, so that she could not see straight, she could not see things as they truly were. Or maybe she could see the truth, when no one else was able to see straight; perhaps she was the only person who really saw through everything, even though she could not unravel the words in Branwell's manuscripts, those impossible manuscripts, that were ruining her eyes, along with everything else.

The troubles started on her trip to London, for a fortnight in September. Tommy had refused to go back for any further appointments at the nursing home. 'You'll not force me into that torture chamber ever again,' he said to Daphne when she suggested that he consult the doctors there before attempting to return to work. But after four weeks of convalescence at Menabilly, he was judged well enough by the local doctor in Fowey to resume his duties at Buckingham Palace, though Daphne wasn't convinced by Tommy's apparent show of good health. True, he was less grey-faced than when he had first arrived home, and he no longer wept and had cut down on his drinking. But after the children and grandchildren left Menabilly, his silence in Daphne's presence did not abate, and she wondered if he had convinced the doctor to let him go back to work as a ruse to resume his relationship with the Snow Queen. Daphne was almost certain that he still spoke to her on the telephone, whenever she was safely out of the way in her writing hut; though she could not bear to confront him with this suspicion, it seemed too humiliating, too reminiscent of her father's displays of jealousy towards her. Instead, when the time came, she travelled back to the flat with Tommy to settle him in; those were the words she used to describe what was happening, but she knew that he knew that she wanted to keep an eye (both eyes) on him.

The journey from Cornwall was almost silent, the two of them sitting opposite one another in a stuffy first-class compartment; Tommy hidden behind a newspaper fortress, Daphne staring out of the window, as the train trundled through woodland and moors, where the leaves were beginning to fall, and the bracken was fading. After the train crossed the bridge at Plymouth, high over the River Tamar, Daphne felt her heart sink, dragged down by the sense that she was leaving her own country, losing her safe haven. She knew the journey so well, but dreaded it in this direction, even her favourite part of it, when the railway line snaked along the edge of the Devon coastline, seeming to hover almost above the waves. 'Darling, do look,' she said to Tommy as they skirted the wide estuary at Dawlish, where the low tide had left a flotilla of boats grounded on the mud flats.

'I think it's always beautiful,' said Daphne.

'Do you?' he said. 'Maybe I've just seen this view too often, trailing up and down from London, week after week, for all these years.' He picked up the paper again, lifting it so that his face was obscured, and Daphne suppressed a sigh, swallowing it back inside her. She wanted to say to him, 'I've been doing this journey, too, for the last thirty years,' but she knew it was pointless to remind him of that, and anyway, it was to be expected that she felt differently from Tommy; they were, after all, such separate entities.

By the time the train had shunted into Paddington, the silence between them seemed to have gained a sound of its own; a kind of rasping tension, like the noise of someone grinding their teeth in their sleep at night. They queued for a taxi at the station, and then both sat hunched in their own corners of the back seat, Tommy gripping the handles of his suitcase, his knuckles whitened, his hands shaking slightly. Was it the vibrations of the engine, Daphne wondered, that made his hands tremble, or was it still the after-effects of the treatment at the nursing home? She reached out, suddenly overcome with pity for her husband, and put her right hand over his. 'It's like shell shock, isn't it?' she said to Tommy.

'What is?' he said.

'What we've been through, this summer. It's as if we've both got battle fatigue, and now we must rest up and recover . . .'

But there was no rest to be had in London; there was no peace to be found there, only gloomy despondency. Daphne could not write in the dreary Chelsea flat, with its faint smell of gas that permeated everything, and its dismal view of sooty chimney pots and blank walls and the occasional diseased pigeon perched on the windowsill, limping on deformed and twisted claws. It was impossible, she could not breathe there, surrounded by the traffic and the grey-faced crowds, the redbrick canyons bearing down on her, no open space except for that bit of dusty scrub in Sloane Square, all of it choked and obscured in the thick fog of a million strangers' thoughts. She could only concentrate at home in Menabilly, in the silence, her island, her Gondal, away from the city's babble of meaningless talk; it was sending her crazy, being away from her safe house and her hut in the garden and the path to the sea, away from her routine, from her routes, from everything that kept her sane . . . Apart from Rebecca; Rebecca was part of Menabilly, and not safe at all, but at least she was a familiar danger, and Daphne had tactics to keep her at bay, or in the bay, if need be, alongside the shipwreck, that was the way to steer clear of her; let the sea submerge her, though she was uncovered at low tide, and there was nothing that one could do to avoid her then, but at least one could be prepared for those occasions.

Finally, Daphne gave up trying to write in the confined little flat, and decided to get on with her research in the Reading Room of the British Museum, for T. J. Wise's collection of Brontë manuscripts was held there, along with other rare letters and books that she needed to consult. She would work there all day, she decided, and perhaps meet up with Peter for lunch, as his office was just across the road from the museum entrance in Great Russell Street.

So why did she not ring Peter that day? Why, just after Tommy left for work in the morning, did she ring the Snow Queen instead? She had not planned the conversation, but suddenly found herself flicking through Tommy's address book by the telephone, and then dialling the number, half hoping that no one would answer. But there was an answer, and when Daphne heard the other woman's voice, saying, 'Hello?' she had to force herself to speak, to fill the questioning silence. What, then, should she say to the Snow Queen? Daphne wanted to ruffle her, to make her feel as disturbed as she was, to make the ice melt, to make this woman real, instead of a looming figure in Daphne's imagination. She wanted to be cruel, to reduce the woman to tears. But she found herself saying something else, something she had not expected. 'I'm in London, as you may already know,' she said, 'And I thought it might be a good idea if we were to meet.' She did not give the other woman time to disagree, but kept talking, quickly, suggesting that they meet later that day, in the forecourt outside the British Museum.

And though the Snow Queen's voice had remained cool on the end of the telephone, she agreed to the meeting, rather to Daphne's surprise. But it was hopeless, of course, she was as difficult to read as the Brontë manuscripts inside the museum: she gave nothing away, this woman, and Daphne had to struggle not to stare at her, as they sat on a bench together, side by side like a couple on a first date, or lovers on a secret assignation. The Snow Queen was as composed and graceful as a ballet dancer, or one of Gerald's leading ladies. Nothing seemed to make her falter or stumble, and she was unmoved by the sight of the tears that welled up in Daphne's eyes, or at least, she pretended not to notice, just smoothed back her blonde chignon, and her cold blue gaze remained steady. Daphne felt inelegant beside her, and badly dressed, her trousers too mannish, her shirt too shapeless, a hat jammed over her hair; entirely unsophisticated next to the Snow Queen's perfectly tailored beige silk dress and expensive cashmere coat. And Daphne's fingers were stained with black ink, her nails were broken and bitten, unlike the Snow Queen's, which were painted a shimmering pastel pink, though they should have been blood red talons.

It was as if she had suddenly been turned back into the hapless, nameless second Mrs de Winter, Daphne de Winter, inept and inexperienced when faced with her rival. But her rival was alive, indisputably real this time, not dead like Rebecca, though the Snow Queen had something of Rebecca about her, she was beautiful and could never be defeated, and her voice was steady and her stare unwavering when she told Daphne that she would not promise to stop seeing Tommy.

'I love him,' she said to Daphne, 'and he loves me, you must realise that.' Daphne wanted to tell her that a Snow Queen can know nothing of love, only of destruction, but she remained silent, just looked away.

The woman continued talking. 'I've given up my husband for Tommy,' she said, 'and don't you think it's time to be realistic about your own marriage? From what Tommy tells me, it sounds like there have been irresolvable problems between the two of you for years, since the war. And it's not as if you've been faithful to him, have you? You can't claim to occupy the moral high ground.' Daphne did not answer her, she could think of nothing to say, it was all too futile for words, and after a few minutes, the woman stood up, smoothed down her skirt, and said, 'We're not getting anywhere like this, are we? I think it would be better if you didn't try to get in touch with me again, unless you've got something useful to discuss.'

Daphne was too distracted to say goodbye, because by then she'd begun to notice them, in the corners of her eyes, the figures in the lengthening afternoon shadows of the British Museum, several of them amidst the stone columns of the portico, though it was hard to be certain, as they slipped between the unknowing passers-by. She was sure they were watching her, or was it the Snow Queen they were spying on? No, that couldn't be right, because after the Snow Queen walked away, her sharp grey heels tapping on the flagstones, the watchers had remained beside the colonnade. There were too many of them to be private detectives, she thought, and anyway, surely Tommy would not set detectives on her trail? He was the one with the secrets, after all; for Gertie was dead, and she had nothing left to hide from him . . .

She felt panicky when she went back into the museum, unable to concentrate either on her encounter with the Snow Queen or her study of Branwell's manuscripts; she stared at his faded handwriting, but it made no sense, none of it made any sense, the pages might as well have been covered with ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, like the papyrus relics displayed alongside the mummified bodies in a gallery nearby; and when she turned to her notebook, she had nothing to write, the pages remained blank, like blind, unseeing eyes. There were other eyes, though, that were watching her. Inside the Reading Room, she was safe, she had to be, they would not dare to follow her in there, but outside, they were waiting, she sensed them, though she did not understand what they wanted from her.

Daphne stayed in the Reading Room until closing time, when one of the librarians, a young man, came over to her and said, apologetically, that it was necessary for him to take the Brontë manuscripts back from her, but would she like him to reserve them for her tomorrow morning? She gazed at him, aghast, and he looked concerned, asking if he could do anything to help, and she just shook her head, then rushed out, head down, trying not to meet anyone's eyes. She'd bought a return ticket from Sloane Square underground station that morning, having planned to take the tube home again, from Russell Square, so as not to have to sit on the bus as it stopped and started through the interminable traffic, but when she walked out of the museum gates, she set off in a different direction, not thinking straight, knowing only that she needed to shake off the figures who were still following her. There was a tall man in a tweed suit and a trilby hat; he was the leader, she thought; the others followed his hat through the crowded streets, the hat was a signal to them. The men were getting closer, gaining on her, and she started to run, stumbling past office workers on their way home, and they looked at her, startled, but no one helped, no one could help her, and she feared going underground, someone might push her beneath a train, disposing of her as easily as a piece of tissue paper. So she hailed a passing taxi, and asked the driver to take her to Buckingham Palace. He looked at her through the open car window, half-smiling, and then she feared that he was part of this conspiracy that she did not understand. She pulled back from the taxi, horrified, and the driver called after her, but she did not stop, she was running faster now, and jumped on to a bus, it didn't matter where it was going, as long as it took her away from this place.

At Piccadilly Circus she got her bearings, and caught another bus to throw them off the scent, and then slipped on to a different one at Hyde Park Corner, and finally, she reached Sloane Square, and was almost certain that no one was following her down the King's Road, as she hurried back to the flat.