Mrs De Winter (4 page)

This morning … early this morning.’ His voice came out in odd gulps, and kept tailing away into tears. Once he paused for several seconds to overcome them, but did not succeed. ‘She was still in the nursing home, we didn’t get her home… she wanted to come home … I was trying to work things out, do you see? I meant her to be at home …’ He sobbed again, and I did not know what to say to him, how to cope with it at all, it made me sorry for him, but embarrassed too, I wanted to drop the receiver, to run away.

‘Giles …’

‘She is dead. She died this morning. Early this morning. I wasn’t even there. I’d gone home, do you see, I’d no idea… they didn’t tell me.’ He took a deep, deep breath, and then said, very loudly and slowly, as if I might not have heard or understood, was deaf, or a small child. ‘I am ringing to tell Maxim that his sister is dead.’

He had opened the balcony windows and was standing

29

there, staring out into the dark garden. Only one lamp, beside the bed, was lit. He said nothing when I told him, nothing at all, he did not move, or look at me.

I said, ‘I didn’t know what to say. I felt awful. He cried. Giles was crying.’

I remembered the sound of his voice again, as it had come to me over the bad line, the great sobs and the heaving of his breath as he tried to control them and could not, and then I realised that all the time I had been standing there, in the hotel manager’s stuffy office, clutching the receiver so tightly, I had had in my mind a terrible picture not of Giles sitting somewhere on a chair in their house, perhaps, in his study, or the hall, but of him dressed as an Arab Sheikh, flowing white robes covering his huge frame and some sort of teacloth tied around his head, as he had been on the dreadful night of the Manderley fancy dress ball. I had imagined the tears coursing down his spaniel’s cheeks, staining rivulets in the brown make up he had taken such trouble over. But the tears that night had not been his, he had been awkward and embarrassed; the tears, of shock and bewilderment and shame, had only been mine.

I wished I did not think of it so much now, I wanted that time wiped clean from my memory, but instead, it only seemed to grow more vivid and I had no power to hold back the memories, the pictures that came quite unbidden, at all sorts of odd times, into my mind.

A cold breeze blew in through the open window.

Then Maxim said, ‘Poor Beatrice,’ and again, after a moment, ‘poor Beatrice,’ but in an oddly dead, toneless voice, as if he had no feeling about her at all. I knew

30

that he did, must. Beatrice, more than three years older, and very different, had been loved when nobody else at all had been able to arouse any feeling within him. They had spent little time together since childhood, but she had supported him, sided with him unquestioningly, loved him naturally and loyally, for all her bluff, undemonstrative manner, and Maxim, forever impatient and peremptory with her, he had loved her, and relied.upon her and been dumbly grateful to her, too, so many times in the past.

I moved away from the window and began to go restlessly about the room, opening drawers and looking into them, wondering about packing, unable to clear my mind or to focus, tired but too tense, I knew, to sleep.

At last, Maxim came inside, and latched the windows.

I said, ‘It will be far too late tonight to find out anything about tickets — which will be the best way to go. We don’t even know what day the funeral is, I didn’t ask. How stupid, I should have asked, I’ll try and telephone Giles tomorrow, and make the arrangements then.’

I glanced across at him, a confusion of thoughts and questions and half plans bubbling about inside my head. ‘Maxim?’ He was staring at me, his face appalled, disbelieving. ‘Maxim, of course we shall have to go. You see that, surely. However could we not go to Beatrice’s funeral?’

He was white as paper, his lips bloodless. ‘You go. I can’t.’

‘Maxim, you must.”

I went to him then, held him without speaking more than murmured reassurances, and we clung to one another as it began to creep over us both, the terrible realisation. We had said that we could never go back, and now we must. What

31

else could possibly have made us? We did not dare begin to speak of what it meant, the enormity of what was to happen lay between us, and there was nothing, nothing to be said.

In the end we went to bed, though we did not sleep and I knew that we would not. At two o’clock, three, four, we heard the chimes of the bell tower from the square.

We had fled from England more than ten years ago, had begun our flight on the night of the fire. Maxim had simply turned the car and driven away from the flames of Manderley, and from the past and all its ghosts. We had taken almost nothing with us, made no plans, left no explanations, though in the end, we had sent an address. I had written to Beatrice, and there had been a formal letter and two sets of legal documents, from Frank Crawley and the solicitor and then from the bank in London. Maxim had not read them, scarcely even glanced at the paper, had scrawled his signature and pushed them back to me as if they, too, were burning. I had dealt with everything else, what little came to us, after that, and then there had been our fragile year or so of peace, before the war had sent us in search of another place, and then another, and after the war, at last, we had come to this country, and finally, this little lakeside resort, and found relief again, become settled, resumed our precious, dull, uneventful life, completely closed in upon ourselves, needing and wanting no one; and if I had begun recently to be restless, to remember again, and known that it had been there, the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, I had never spoken of it to him, and would have cut out my tongue before doing so.

I think that I was not only too tense to sleep that night, I was afraid too, in case I had nightmares, images I

32

^r

could not bear and could not control, of things I wanted to forget forever. But instead, when I did fall into a half sleep, a little before dawn, the images that slid before my eyes were entirely tranquil and happy ones, of places we had visited and loved together, views of the blue mediterranean, the lagoon in Venice with the churches rising and floating out of a pearly mist in the early morning, so that when I came awake again I was quite calm and rested, and lay quietly beside Maxim in the darkness, willing for him to catch my mood.

I had not yet fully faced what else was with me in the dream, the curious excitement and joy that were fluttering there. I had been too ashamed of them. But now, I admitted them quite calmly.

Beatrice was dead. I was very sorry. I had loved her dearly and I think that she had loved me. In time, I knew that I would weep for her, and miss her and feel very great distress. And I must face Maxim’s anguish, too, not only at her loss but at what it meant we had to do.

We had to go back. And lying there in our hotel bedroom in that foreign town beside the lake, I allowed myself to feel, secretly, guiltily, a wonderful anticipation, although it was mingled with dread — for I could not imagine what we would find, how things would look to us, and above all, how Maxim would be and what anguish our return would cause him.

It was clear in the morning that it was very great but that he had instinctively begun to deal with it in the old way, by shutting things out and refusing to think or feel, concealing everything behind a mask and acting like an automaton, going through movements in the detached, mechanical way he had mastered long ago. He scarcely spoke, except of

33

trivial things to do with the preparations, but stood at the window or on the balcony staring out at the garden, silent, pale, distant. It was I who made the arrangements, organised our travel, telephoned, telegraphed, booked tickets, worked out connections, I who packed for us both, as I usually did now, and it was when I stood looking at the row of clothes in the wardrobe that I felt the old feeling of inadequacy creeping back. For I was still not a smart woman, I still did not care to waste much time in choosing clothes, though goodness knows I had enough time to pass. I had gone from being a gauche, badly dressed girl, to being an uninterestingly, dully dressed married woman, and indeed, looking at them now, I saw that my clothes were those of someone entirely middle aged, in unadventurous background colours, and it suddenly struck me that in this way too, I had never been young, never been at all frivolous and gay, let alone fashionable or smart. At the beginning, it had been through a combination of ignorance and poverty; later, untutored, in awe of my new life and position, and in the shadow of Rebecca, the immortally beautiful and impeccably, extravagantly dressed, I had chosen safe, uninteresting things, not daring to experiment. Besides, Maxim had not wanted it, he had married me because of, not in spite of, my ill chosen, unbecoming clothes, they were all part of the innocent unworldly person I had been.

So, I had taken out the plain, tailored, cream blouses, the sensible beige-and grey-and mole-coloured skirts, the dark cardigans and neat, self-effacing shoes and packed them carefully, and was oddly unable to imagine whether it would be warm or cold in England, and afraid to ask Maxim for his

34

opinion, for I knew that he would have closed his mind to it completely. But it was all done quite quickly, and the rest of our belongings locked away in the wardrobes and drawers. We would return, of course, though I did not know when. I went down to reassure the hotel manager that we were keeping on the room. He had tried to make us pay a deposit and, confused, anxious to get everything over with, I had been about to agree, thinking that it must be usual and was only fair. But when Maxim had heard he had suddenly sprung to life, like a dog that has been sleeping and is roused to temper, and snarled at the man in his old, thin lipped, imperious way, told him we had no intention of paying more money than we would owe in the normal course of events, he must accept our word that we would return. ‘He hasn’t a chance of letting the rooms to anyone else at this end of the season and he knows it perfectly well. The place is emptying now. He’s lucky to get us. There are plenty of other hotels.’

I bit my lip and could not meet the manager’s eye, as he watched us climb into the taxi. But Maxim’s spurt of temper had died and for the rest of the journey, all that day and night and for the whole of the following day, he was shrunken into himself, silent for the most part, though gentle with me, taking food and drink when I proffered it, like a child.

‘It will be all right,’ I said, once or twice. ‘Maxim, it will not be as bad as you expect.’ He smiled wanly, and turned his head to look out of the train window at the endless, grey plains of Europe. Here, there was no autumn sunshine, no glorious, sifting light, here there were only rain sodden fields and ragged trees and dull, huddled villages, bleak little towns.

35

There was just one other thing. It was fleeting, momentary, but it terrified me, it came so unexpectedly and with such force, and for a second it froze my heart.

We were at a railway station on one of the borders, and because they were changing engines we had half an hour to wait, enough time to get out and walk up and down the long platform to stretch our legs. There had been a stall selling cooked sausages, good hot coffee and schnapps, and sweet, spicy cakes which we dipped in and soaked, before eating greedily. Maxim was watching some pantomime to do with a man and a great heap of luggage piled on to a rickety trolley. Amused, standing beside him, I was thinking at that moment of nothing, nothing in particular at all, neither past nor future, simply enjoying the break from the motion of the train, the taste of the cake and coffee. Then Maxim had turned and glanced at me, caught my eye and smiled, and as I looked into his face I heard, falling into my head as clearly as drops of water falling on to stone, That man is a murderer. He shot Rebecca. That is the man who killed his wife,’ and for one terrible moment, staring at Maxim, I saw a stranger, a man who had nothing to do with me, a man I did not know.

And then the guard had blown the warning whistle to summon us back on to the train.

36

Three

‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live.’

The crows were whirling in the sky again, rising, scattering, falling; on the hillside, the man still ploughed. The sun still shone. The world was quite unchanged.

‘In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?’

I was holding my breath, as if waiting for something to happen. And soon, of course, it did; they moved forward and began to slip the ropes. I looked up. Maxim was standing a few paces away from me, stock still, a black shadow. We were all black, in that golden sunshine. But it was Giles whose face I watched, as I looked at him across the open grave, Giles, heavy jowled, sunken eyed, weeping and doing nothing to try and restrain his tears. Giles, with Roger beside him. But I could not look at Roger’s face, I slid my eyes away in embarrassment. Now, they were stepping forward.

‘For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister

37

here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground.’

Now they were leaning down and scattering their handful of earth. I reached for Maxim’s hand. His fingers were unresponsive and cold, and as I touched them I saw Beatrice again, vividly before me, as I saw her all the time now, Beatrice in her tweed suit and brogues striding towards me across the lawns, her plain, open face curious, interested, full of friendliness. Beatrice, from whom I had never had an unkind or unfair word.

‘I heard a voice from heaven say unto me write, from henceforth, blessed be the dead which die in the Lord.’

I wished that I could weep then. I should have wept, it was not for want of feeling that my eyes were dry. Instead, I thought how glorious the day was and how much she would have revelled in it, riding out somewhere on one of her hunters, or walking the dogs — she had scarcely ever seemed to be indoors during the day, and then I thought again how wrong it had been, how unfair. Beatrice ought to have fallen off a horse in a ripe old age, hunting to the end, and happy, careless on such a day as this, not been enfeebled and humiliated after a stroke when she was not even sixty. Or else it should have been Giles, fat, unhealthy looking Giles, crumpled now, his moon face creased and wet, a great white handkerchief held to his mouth. Or Roger. I glanced at him quickly again as he stood beside his father, and had the appalling thought that death would surely have been preferable to such disfigurement, but knew that that was for our sakes, to spare ourselves the unpleasantness of having to look at him, not for his.