Daphne (8 page)

Hampstead, 15 January

When I woke this morning, Paul was already gone, and his side of the bed was cold, like the T-shirt he left beside me, discarded after he slept in it. The heavy velvet curtains were still drawn, as if he didn't want to wake me, though it probably wasn't yet light when he got up; he always leaves early for work, to avoid the rush hour, and to avoid me, perhaps. He doesn't need an alarm clock, though there is a clock on the little table on his side of the bed, an old wind-up one that ticks, very quietly, and sometimes I wake in the night and hear it ticking, and I wonder if it was Rachel's clock, and if it is waiting for her, marking time, while she bides her time, while she plans her return.

The walls of the bedroom are red - a dark red, not a colour that I'd ever choose, it's too reminiscent of the nightmarish red room that Jane Eyre was locked up in as a child; and the curtains are even darker than the walls, an inky blue-black. Sometimes I imagine saying to Paul, 'Let's redecorate the bedroom, let's paint over everything, please, let's begin again. . .' But it never seems to be quite the right time to say those words. In the last month, there's been so much silence between us when we're together, that it makes me even more awkward, because I wonder if I'm to blame for the silences, if I'm not much good at conversation. And that's when Paul starts talking about Henry James again, to fill in the gaps, I suppose, but it just makes me switch off, even though I know I should be interested, because he's so clever - Paul, I mean, though obviously James is a genius, as Paul keeps reminding me. I must say, there's nothing like being lectured on Henry James by one's husband to put you off both of them.

Anyway, I felt a bit abandoned this morning, lying in the big, Victorian mahogany bed like a child whose parents have disappeared, but also as if I had lost something else, something important, it was slipping through my head and disappearing into those blood-red walls, and I would never get it back again. I don't know what the thing was - that was part of the frustration, of knowing that I was forgetting it already; like I was forgetting myself.

So it wasn't just my husband that slipped away in the grey dawn, and maybe the feeling of losing him isn't the real issue, because to be honest, sometimes I wonder if I ever really had him, or if it was just borrowed time. Which is how I feel about my father, but when I tried to talk to Paul about this last night, he looked impatient. 'You're imagining things,' he said. 'You'd be better off focusing on your PhD, don't you think?'

We were lying in bed at the time, not touching each other, and I was shocked at the fury I felt when he spoke, like the red of the walls was seeping into me, staining me inside like a dye. 'You know what I think?' I said. 'I think it would be good if I could talk to you about Rachel. It's like she's a forbidden subject, and it's getting in the way of us talking - she's coming between us, even though you never mention her name.'

He didn't say anything, but a muscle in his cheek twitched slightly, and his mouth tightened.

'Well?' I said.

'Well what?'

'Tell me about Rachel.'

'I don't want to talk to you about. . . her,' he said, and as he paused, just for a heartbeat before saying 'her', I could see that it was hard for him to even speak her name to me. 'It feels. . . it would feel . . . inappropriate.'

'In what way, inappropriate?'

'Disloyal,' he said. 'Treacherous . . . I don't know.'

'Those are peculiar words to use,' I said. 'What do you mean exactly? That in talking about your ex-wife to me, you'd be betraying her?'

'That's not what I meant,' he said, keeping his eyes away from mine, apparently examining his nails, though his hand was curled almost into a fist. 'I just think she's irrelevant to our relationship.'

'How can she be irrelevant?' I said. 'She lived here, for God's sake. You slept with her in this bed. She's everywhere around us.'

He looked at me, briefly, as if startled by my outburst. 'What do you want me to do about it? What do you want to ask me?'

I was stuffed full of questions, of course - why did he and Rachel split up, did he still love her, did he love her more than me? - but now that he'd given me the chance to ask them, I didn't know where to start, they were choked inside my throat, where I always rammed them down. 'When did the two of you move into this house?' I said, even though I knew the answer.

'About ten years ago,' he said, with a small sigh. 'As you know, it was after my father died. My mother was already dead by then, and Dad had been living here by himself for quite a while.'

'So did the two of you redecorate the house together? Did you make it your own?'

'Yes, but slowly,' he said. 'You can't rush these things . . .'

He closed his eyes, and rolled away from me, facing the wall. Within a minute or so, I could tell from his breathing that he was almost asleep, which seemed astonishing, when I was more wide awake than before. 'Paul?' I said, but he didn't answer. I touched his back with my fingertips, writing my name on his skin, but he just sighed again.

This morning was the worst in a week of bad mornings; I can taste them in my mouth, dull and metallic, like a chemical, or a virus; the very opposite of how I'd felt a year ago, when I'd wake up early and Paul's arms were wrapped around me, and he'd say, 'Hello, sweetheart,' and trace my face with his fingertips, 'you're like a petal,' he'd say, and start kissing me, as if he couldn't get enough of me, wanting more and more.

I lay there for a few minutes, thinking about all of this, and then I couldn't stand being in that claustrophobic bedroom, so I got up, had a quick cup of tea, and decided to go for a walk on the heath to clear my head before I started working. It was about half past nine by then, but the kind of dull January day that never seems to get properly light; when everything is shrouded. No one else was out on the heath, apart from a couple of dog walkers going in the opposite direction, and a tramp sitting on a park bench, drinking a can of beer in the drizzle. I wasn't thinking about where I was going - just walking, wondering how it could possibly be so dark when the trees were still leafless, but the sky was like a deep shadow over everything - and I ended up on one of the muddy paths that snake through the woodland beyond Kenwood. It's not my favourite bit of the heath - it can feel dank on a rainy winter's day - so I tend to avoid it, though I used to meander around these woods as a teenager, in my gloomiest adolescent moods, half imagining that if I found the right path, a secret, magical one, Hampstead might lead into Haworth and Wuthering Heights. Suddenly, something ran across the ground just in front of me, a big rat, its tail flicking behind it as it scuttled into the undergrowth, and I stopped in my tracks, because I didn't know where I was, I'd completely lost my bearings.

I started walking faster, almost running away from that sinister rat, and it seemed like I was going around in a circle, but there were railings on both sides of the path, and no gate out again. I passed a fallen tree that I thought I'd already seen a couple of times that morning, and I heard something in the distance, the sound of a child's voice, calling out, and then crying, a thin, faraway wail. But the woods weren't thinning, it was like being in a tunnel, and I couldn't find a path that would lead me on to the open ground.

Eventually, there was a clearing and I recognised where I was, and felt foolish and relieved all at once, and set off back home again. Just before I turned into our road, I stopped for a few seconds outside Cannon Hall, and peered in through the locked gates, into the courtyard in front of the house. There was no sign of life inside - the blinds were drawn, and it looked closed up for the winter - and I imagined the owner was away on the other side of the world, escaped to blue skies and sunlight. But I felt like I was going nowhere, my head not cleared at all by the walk, but dull and clogged and fogged up; the opposite of yesterday, when I'd been so excited at the thought of tracking down those missing letters between Daphne and Symington, and discovering something new.

It's my own fault that the rest of the morning went badly. When I got back, I picked up the newspaper that was lying on the table in the hallway, where Paul must have left it, unread, after it had been delivered earlier. I went downstairs to the kitchen, thinking that I would just flick through the pages quickly while eating some toast. But as I opened it, I was as startled as when I saw the rat. There was a piece about Rachel - a centre spread, impossible to miss, with a big photograph - because it turns out she's got a new book of poetry coming out. And I read the article, several times, knowing that I would not be interrupted, knowing I was alone in the house. It's all about how Rachel is the most talented poet of her generation, as brilliant as she is beautiful, and an esteemed academic, as well, according to the newspaper: 'an inspiring teacher to her students', and a great loss to British academia when she took a job at an American university.

She looks extraordinary in the photograph, not that I can see her properly, she's turning away from the camera, and her face is partly hidden by her dark hair, and in shadow, but still, she's mysterious and elegant and very grown-up. Well, of course she looks grown-up: she's Paul's age. They were a striking couple, it says in the piece, and all their friends were surprised when their marriage ended; no one was sure why, exactly, given that they'd appeared to be such a perfect match.

It's the first time that I've come across a picture of Rachel, which is odd, really, because her image is stamped all over this house: in the antique mirror in the hallway that would have reflected her face every time she came in or went out; in the the strong colours that she chose for the walls, the red bedroom, a lilac bathroom, the yellow kitchen - a Van Gogh sunflower yellow that I'm certain was nothing to do with Paul. Maybe that's why I chose to have my study in the attic - it's white, and feels somehow free of Rachel, as if it had been a spare room when she lived here, and of little consequence to her.

Anyway, I sat at the kitchen table - her table, scrubbed pine, with a pale lime-wash finish; or maybe I'm imagining it was hers, it could have belonged to Paul's parents, I suppose - and studied the picture of Rachel, so closely that the contours of her face were etched into my mind, even when I closed my eyes for a moment. And when I opened my eyes again, and looked around me, at Rachel's cookery books on the shelf, which still contained her buttery fingerprints, propped against a jar full of shells and stones that she must have gathered with Paul from a beach, I felt I had to prove myself to her, as well as Paul, and the only way I could imagine doing so was to discover the letters between Symington and du Maurier, and use them as a basis for an outstanding dissertation. I imagined rescuing Daphne from the misunderstandings of insensitive critics that had obscured her true worth; I imagined making people realise that she was a great writer, as well as a popular one; I imagined being interviewed in the same newspaper as Rachel, and my photograph being taken, and Paul telling me how proud he was of me. And Rachel would see me, too, and be impressed and intrigued. She might not think me beautiful, but she would want to know more about me, just as I do about her.

I'm aware that it's ridiculous, of course, this idea that the newspapers would get hold of a minor piece of academic research, but even so, I was swept away by the fantasy, imagining my dissertation turning into a book to rival Rachel's; and I actually came up with its title, I think it's a really good one, 'Self-Interrogation', after Emily Brontë's poem, which inspired du Maurier's first novel.

So I got up to go to my study, determined to write another email to the librarian in Leeds, to get on with locating the correspondence between Symington and du Maurier. But halfway up the stairs, I began to feel stupid. I mean, really stupid, and not just about the foolish fantasy of public recognition, but also as if I could no longer think clearly, with the same fogged feeling as earlier. It was impossible, this idea of tracing the links between du Maurier and the Brontës, as impossible as making my marriage work, as improbable as making Paul think that Daphne was worthy of interest; as if the two were somehow linked, and his contempt for her writing was also indicative of what he felt about me.

At that moment - the instant I felt a physical sense of my own inadequacies - I stumbled on one of the steps, and my feet were slipping, my socks skating over the wooden stairs, and I went bumping down, banging my head before I could break my fall. For a few seconds I was dizzy, literally unbalanced, and I wanted to cry, to call for someone to come and pick me up off the floor. Actually, the person I really wanted was my mother - for her to be there, so that I could bury my face against her shoulder, like I did when I was a little girl. And even though she was dead, the memory of her seemed more real to me than Paul.

'What am I doing here?' I whispered. There was no answer, of course, just the almost imperceptible hum of the house, and I couldn't understand why I was in this place - not just crumpled at the bottom of the stairs - but also how I had come to be here, married to a man who no longer appears sure that he wants me. That sounds old-fashioned, doesn't it? I mean, why don't I seize the initiative in our relationship, and make it clear what I want? But it feels like we're both frozen, unable to move towards one another in bed at night, yet pretending that nothing is wrong. And when he does reach out to me, it's as if he is compelled by a desire that he no longer trusts, as if he is swept up by it for a while - and sweeps me along with him - and then afterwards, he seems desolate, like a man washed up by the tide in a place where he does not belong, does not even recognise. And we don't discuss it; just as we don't talk about why Rachel left him.