Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  As we had set off for the church there had been skeins of mist weaving in and out of the trees, dissolved by the sun even as we watched, as the frost was melted by it, and I had instinctively looked over to where I knew that, miles away, the sea lay. When we had arrived at Dover on the previous evening it had already been dark, and coming across the channel the sea had simply been dull, grey and heaving about outside the ship’s windows, so that in a curious way, I had no real sense of its being the sea at all: and then the car had sped us away, and on to the long road.

  In spite of all that it had meant to us for ill, all the harm it had caused, I had missed the sea while we had been abroad, missed the slow drag of it up the beach, the hiss and suck over the pebbles, the crash of it, smacking down on to the shore of the cove – the fact that it was always there, sensed even through the densest fog that muffled every sound, and that whenever I wanted to I had been able to go down and simply look at it, watch its movement, the play of the light upon it, see it change, the shadows shift, the surface roughen. I had often dreamed of it, dreamed that I had gone there at night when it was calm and still and gazed from some place above down upon the moonlit water. The sea we had lived close to and walked beside at times during our exile was a tideless, glittering sea, translucent, brilliantly blue, violet, emerald green, a seductive, painted sea, quite unreal.

  Climbing into the black car that morning, I had paused, turned and strained my eyes and ears, willing myself to have some greater sense of it. But there was nothing, it was too far away, and even if it had been there, at the end of the garden, Maxim would have shrunk from any awareness of it.

  I had turned and climbed into the car beside him.

  The men in black had reached the church porch and paused there to shift their burden slightly, settling its weight between them. We stood uncertainly behind, and suddenly a robin flitted into the dark hollow of the porch and out again, and the sight of it lifted my heart. I felt that we were people in a play, waiting in the wings to go on to a stage, the lighted open space ahead of us. We were very few. But as we began to move under the arch I saw that the church itself was full. They rose as they heard us. I supposed they were all old neighbours, old friends – though I did not think that by now I would recognise many of them.

  ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life saith the Lord. Whosoever believeth in me, though he should die, yet shall he live …’

  We stepped inside and the heavy wooden door was closed behind us, shutting out the autumn day, the sunlight and the turned fields, the man ploughing and the larks spiralling upwards and the robin singing from the holly branch, the ragged, black crows.

  The congregation stirred like standing corn as we passed on our way to the front pew, I felt their eyes burning into our backs, felt their curiosity and fascination with us, and all the unspoken questions, hanging in the air.

  The church was beautiful, and the beauty of it made me catch my breath. I had never let myself think very much of how I missed such places as this. It was an ordinary, unremarkable English country church and yet to me, as rare and precious as the greatest cathedral. Sometimes I had slipped into a church in some foreign village or town, and knelt in the darkness among the black-shawled old women mumbling over their beads, and the smell of incense and guttering candles had been as strange as everything else to me, they had seemed to belong to some exotic religion, far removed from the austere stone church of home. I had needed to be there, and valued the quietness and the atmosphere of reverence, been half attracted, half repelled by the statues, the confessional boxes. I had never managed to put any prayer into words, never formed actual phrases, either on my lips or in my mind, of confession or petition. Only a sort of incoherent but immensely powerful emotion had sometimes surged up, as though forced by some pressure deep within me, and it had come close to the surface without ever erupting. It could never be properly expressed, and I supposed it was like a desperate touching of wood, for … For what? Our protection? Salvation? Or merely that we should continue to be left alone in our safe, dull haven for the rest of our lives, untroubled by ghosts.

  I dared not admit to myself how much I had missed and longed for an English church, but sometimes in reading and re-reading the newspapers, when they managed to reach us from home, I came upon the public notices for the services on the following Sunday, and reading slowly down them the words filled me with great longing. Sung Eucharist. Mattins, Choral Evensong. Stanford in C. Darke in E. Byrd. Boyce. Lead Kindly Light (Stainer). Thou wilt keep him … Like as the Hart …

  Preacher. The Dean … the Precentor … the Bishop.

  I had spoken the words silently to myself.

  Glancing surreptitiously to either side of us now, and then up to the altar ahead, I saw the grey stone arches and ledges and steps, and the austerely carved memorial tablets to local squires long dead, and the Biblical texts lettered in the clear windows.

  Come to me all ye that are heavy laden.

  I am the vine, ye are the branches.

  Blessed are the peacemakers.

  I read the grave, measured words as our steps fell, like the steps of soldiers treading the dead march, down the stone flagged aisle to where the trestles stood. There were flowers, golden and white as the sun and stars, in great jugs and urns on the table beside the font. I had thought that we were shut in from the countryside beyond the church, but we were not. The sun came striking through the side windows, on to the wood of the pews and the pale stone, the beautiful, limpid English autumn sunlight that filled me with such joy and recollection and sense of homecoming, it fell on the backs of heads and of raised prayer books, set the silver cross momentarily on fire, fell softly, gently, on to the plain, good oak of Beatrice’s coffin as the men set it down.

  Two

  Maxim had brought out the letter. He had left me sitting at our usual table overlooking the little square of which we had grown so fond, and gone back to the hotel for cigarettes.

  It was not so warm, I remember, clouds kept slipping in front of the sun and a sudden gust of wind had rushed down one of the narrow side alleys between the high houses, swirling a few scraps of paper and leaves. I had pulled my jacket up round my shoulders. The summer was over. Perhaps, later this afternoon, we would have one of the storms which had begun to break up the weather in the past week. The clouds came again, and the square was in shadow, featureless, oddly melancholy. Some small dark haired children were playing in a bowl of mud they had made among the cobbles, stirring it with sticks, fetching more dust in little wooden ice cream scoops, their voices, bright as birds, chattered across towards me. I always did watch them, always listened and smiled. I tried not to let children upset me.

  The waiter passed by and half glanced at my empty cup but I shook my head. I would wait for Maxim. Then, the church bell began to sound the hour, a thin, high, tinny note, and the sun came flooding out again, sharpening the edges of the long shadows, warming me, lifting my mood. The small boys all clapped and let out a cheer at something that delighted them, in their mud. Then, I looked up and saw him coming towards me, his shoulders hunched, his face the mask behind which he always, automatically, tried to hide any distress. He was holding a letter, and as he sat down in the flimsy, metal café chair he threw it on to the table, before swinging round and snapping his fingers to the waiter in a way he so rarely did now, the old, arrogant way.

  I did not recognise the handwriting at all. But I saw the postmark and put out my hand to cover his.

  It was from Giles. Maxim did not look at me as I read quickly through it. ‘… found her on the floor in the bedroom … heard a heavy thump … managed to get her up … Maidment came … some movement back in the left side almost at once … speech poor but clearing a bit … she knows me all right … nursing home and medical people don’t say much … awful … live in hope …’ I glanced back at the envelope. It was dated three weeks before. Our mail took so wretchedly long sometimes, communications seem to have deteriorated since the end of the war.


  I said, ‘She’s sure to be much better, Maxim. Perhaps even recovered completely. We would have heard by now otherwise.’

  He shrugged, lit a cigarette. ‘Poor Bea. She won’t be able to bray across four counties. No hunting for her.’

  ‘Well if they make her give it up altogether that will be nothing but a good thing. I never think it can be sensible for a woman turned sixty.’

  ‘She has held everything together. I’ve been no use to her. She doesn’t deserve this.’ He got up abruptly. ‘Come on,’ took out some coins and dropped them on the table, and began to walk away across the square. I looked back to smile apologetically at the waiter, but he was inside, talking to someone, his back to us. I don’t know why it had seemed to matter, to make some slight contact with him. I stumbled, almost slipping over on the cobbles, to catch Maxim up. In their huddle, squatting, the little boys bent their heads close together and were quiet.

  He was walking out towards the path that ran around the lake.

  ‘Maxim …’ I reached him, touched his arm. The wind blew, rippling the water. ‘She will be all right now … fine … I’m sure of it. We can try and telephone Giles this evening, can’t we? But we would have heard … he wanted to let you know, and it’s wretched that the letter was so delayed … he might even have written again, though you know he isn’t one for letters, they neither of them are.’

  It was true. For all these years, we had received occasional, short, dutiful letters in Beatrice’s enormous, girl like hand, telling us very little, mentioning neighbours sometimes, trips to London, the war, the blackout, the evacuees, the shortages, the hens, the horses, and carefully, tactfully, nothing of very personal importance, family matters, the past. We might have been distant cousins, long out of touch. Because we had moved about, and then come here, after the war, the letters had often been addressed to a poste restante, and for a long time had come only once or twice a year and been hopelessly delayed. I was the one who replied, in the same, cautious, stilted fashion, my own handwriting as unformed as Beatrice’s, ashamed of the triviality of our little bits of news. As Beatrice simply never referred to them, I had no idea at all whether they arrived.

  ‘Please don’t look so worried. I know a stroke is a dreadful thing and it will have been so frustrating for her, she longs to be active, can’t bear to sit still, stay indoors. She won’t have changed.’ I saw the flicker of a smile flit across his mouth, knew that he was remembering. ‘But plenty of people have strokes, quite minor ones, and recover completely.’

  We were standing watching the empty, steely water that lay, ringed around by trees, and the gravelled path. I heard myself chattering pointlessly on, trying to reassure him. Not doing so. For of course it was not only of Beatrice that he was thinking. The letter, the postmark, Giles’s handwriting, the address at the top of the paper, all of it, as ever, dragged his mind back, obliged him to remember. I had wished to spare him all of it, but it would have been wrong, I knew, to hide the letters, even could I have done so successfully, it would have been a deceit and we had no deceits, or none that counted, and besides, I would not have had us pretend that he had no sister, no family anywhere but me.

  It was Beatrice who had handled all the affairs from the day we left, signed things, taken decisions, Beatrice and, for the first year or two, Frank Crawley. Maxim had not wanted to be told anything of that, anything at all. Well, I thought now, perhaps it had all been too great a strain on her, we had taken her strength and good, open nature too much for granted. And then, there had been the war.

  ‘I have scarcely been a support to her.’

  ‘She has never expected it, she has never once said anything, you know that.’

  He turned to me then, his eyes desperate. ‘I am afraid.’

  ‘Maxim, of what? Beatrice will be fine, I know it, she …’

  ‘No. Whether she is or is not … not that.’

  ‘Then …?’

  ‘Something has changed, can’t you see? I am afraid of anything changing. I want every day to be as today was when we awoke. Things that are there are there, and if they do not change, I can pretend, I don’t have to think of any of it.’

  There was nothing to be said to him, no platitude that could help, I knew that. I stopped burbling uselessly about how good a recovery Beatrice was sure to make. I simply walked slowly beside him along the shore of the lake and then, after a mile or so, back again in the direction of our hotel. We stopped to look at some geese on the water. Fed a pair of sparrows some crumbs I found in the bottom of my pocket. We met hardly anyone. The holiday season was all but over. When we got back there would be the papers, and a little, precious time with them, before our single glass of vermouth, a punctual, simple lunch.

  All the way, in our silence, I thought of Beatrice. Poor Beatrice. But there was some movement already back in her side, the letter said, she knew Giles, had speech. We would telephone, wire flowers if it were possible, assuage our guilt that way.

  Just for a moment, as we went up the hotel steps, I had a vision of her, clear as day, striding towards me over the lawn at Manderley, dogs barking around her feet joyously, her voice ringing out. Dear, good, loyal Beatrice, who had kept her thoughts to herself and never asked a question, had loved us and accepted what we had done absolutely. My eyes had welled with tears. But by now, she would be striding out again. I even began to plan out my letter that would tell her to slow down, take more care of herself. Give up hunting.

  Maxim turned as we went through the doors, and I saw from his face that he, too, had convinced himself, and so could relax the mask, turn back to our own, frail, comfortable existence with relief again.

  I am ashamed now, and it is a shame I shall always live with, that we became so happy, so light hearted that evening, turning our minds away from everything outside our own selves and the comfortable bubble in which we were cocooned. How smug it seems that we were, how self-centred and unfeeling, deliberately persuading ourselves, because it suited us to do so, that Beatrice’s stroke must have been slight and that by now, surely, she would be up and about and fully herself again.

  I did a little shopping in the afternoon and even bought some cologne, of a kind that was new to me, and a precious packet of bitter chocolate which was once again occasionally available; it was as though I were one of the rich, bored, frivolous women we had so often observed, passing her time in buying this and that, indulging herself. It was not like me, and I do not know why I behaved in such a way that day. We had tea and then dinner, and after dinner we walked again, as we usually did, beside the lake and went to drink our coffee in one of the last of the hotels to have its terrace still open in the evening and tables out under the awnings. The fairy lights were lit above our heads, shining midnight blue and crimson and an ugly orange on to the tables and our hands and arms as we stretched them out to our cups. It was milder again, the wind had dropped. One or two other couples were about, strolling past us, coming in for drinks and coffee and the tiny, cherry and frangipane tarts that were a speciality. If Maxim was sometimes unable to prevent himself from thinking of things that were far away from here, he concealed it very well from me and lounged back in his chair, smoking, the same figure, only a little more lined and grey haired, that I had sat beside in the open car driving up the mountain roads at Monte, a lifetime ago, the same man who had ordered me, gauche and red with embarrassment, to his own table, when I had been lunching alone and knocked over my glass of water. ‘You can’t sit at a wet tablecloth, it will put you off your food. Get out of the way,’ and to the waiter, ‘Leave that and lay another place at my table. Mademoiselle will have luncheon with me.’

  He was rarely so imperious now, or so impulsive, and his temper was generally so much more even, he was more accepting of things, and of tedium most of all. He had changed. Yet as I looked across at him now, it was the old Maxim that I saw, the one I had first known. It should have been like so many other evenings as I sat beside him, talking of little, knowing that
he needed only the reassurance of my presence to be content, and quite used by now to being strong, to have him dependent upon me. And if, at the very back of my mind, today as on a few other days during the past year or two, I was conscious of some faint restlessness within myself, a faint struggling, new voice, something that I could not have explained or defined but was only like ‘a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand’ I was as careful as ever to turn myself away and refuse to face or to acknowledge it.

  They brought more coffee, thick and black, in tiny, glazed cups, and Maxim ordered cognac.

  I said, ‘There goes the chemist,’ and caught Maxim’s eye as always in gentle, mutual amusement, as we both turned slightly to look at the man walking past us along the waterfront, a peculiarly erect and thin man, who was the local pharmacist and spent all day immaculate as a priest in a long white coat, and each evening, punctually at this time, walked the length of the lake path and back, wearing a long, black coat, and holding a small, fat, wheezing pug dog on the far end of a lead. He made us laugh, he was so solemn, so humourless, everything about him, the cut of his clothes and of his hair, the set of his head, the way he wore his collar carefully turned up, even the type of lead the dog had, was unmistakably foreign. Such small, regular sights, such harmless shared amusement, marked our days.

  I remember we began to talk of him to speculate about his status – for we had never seen him with a wife, or indeed, with any other person at all, and to match make for him with various ladies in other shops, or else in the hotel lounges and at café tables of the little town, eyeing other dog-walkers as likely prospects and later, as it grew chilly again and the fairy lights on the terrace were wholly extinguished, walked back hand in hand, beside the dark, silent water, and pretended, though without speaking a word of it, that all was as it had been. We did not mention the letter.