Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

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

  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 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.

  There was a silence. We stood around the grave, looking down on the pale oak coffin and its dark crumblings of earth. They had taken off the golden flowers and laid them on the grass, and now I saw how many others there were, lining the graveside, heaped beside the path, wreaths and crosses and cushions of gold and white and bronze and purple set like jewels in their green setting, and as we turned I saw how many people there were, standing back a little, respectfully, to let us pass, perhaps fifty or sixty of them. How many friends Beatrice had had, how loved she had been, how well known and liked and respected.

  Now, as we went uncertainly forward, back to the cars, the play over, Maxim gripped my own hand very hard. They were staring at us and trying not to stare, they were thinking, wondering, speculating, I felt their eyes, though I cast mine down, I wondered how we would get through it, or how we could face them afterwards, at the house, whether Maxim would be able to cope at all.

  But as my thoughts were swirling in panic, at the worst moment, when we were surrounded by the people like a black forest of trees crowding in upon us, I half stumbled, moving from the grass to the gravelled path, and as I did so, felt a hand steadying me on the other side, away from Maxim, so that I did not fall, but looked directly up and into the concerned, unassuming, wonderfully familiar face of Frank Crawley.

  Long afterwards, I was to recall how his presence there changed everything for us, changed the rest of the day and how we managed to get through it, gave us support and reassurance and strength, and remember all over again how much it had always done so, how very much we owed to him. He had been Maxim’s agent, hardworking, loyal, efficient, and his staunchest, truest friend, he had suffered with him in so many ways, almost as much a victim of Rebecca as Maxim had been. He had known the truth of things and remained silent.

  But to me he had been more, a rock when I had believed that all around me was swirling, raging sea and I about to drown in it. He had been there from my first day as a young bride at Manderley, sensitive, unobtrusive, anticipating my anxieties, smoothing my path, relieved that I was as I was, young, gauche, inexperienced, nervous, plain, and seeing through it all to the real person underneath. I would probably never know exactly how great a debt I owed to Frank Crawley, in how many thousands of small, vital ways he had come to my aid, but I had many times thought of him during our years abroad, and with affection, and had given thanks for him too, on those odd moments I had spent briefly kneeling at the back of some foreign church. I thought that I had perhaps only known two people in my life who were so wholly, unconditionally good. Frank, and Beatrice. And today, they were both here; only Frank was alive and little changed and Beatrice was dead, and the past came flooding back to me, like a river overflowing the bare, dry land of the present.

  When the funeral was over, and we were standing on the path beyond the graveyard, formally, stiffly, shaking hands with so many people, most of whom we did not know, and when we had finally turned away and walked back towards the black, waiting cars behind Giles and Roger, at that moment Maxim would have run away if it had been possible, I knew, without his need to speak, that it was what he wanted. He would simply have got into one of the cars and ordered them to take us, we would not even have said goodbye, we would have sped fast and far, to the trains and the boat, and our exile again. We had come, done our duty. Beatrice was dead and properly buried. There was nothing to keep us here.

  But of course, we were obliged to stay and no mention was made of an alternative.

  ‘It was so good to see Frank,’ I said. The funeral car was lumbering out of the gateway, turning into the lane. ‘He looks so much the same, though his hair has gone grey – but then, he is older.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We all are. I expect we looked quite changed to everyone. Older, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is more than ten years.’

  Why did I say it? Why did I go on talking in that way, when I knew that it would only make us think of the past? It was in shadow, unacknowledged for all that it lay between us. Why did I drag it forwards into the full, glaring light, so that we were forced to look at it?

  Maxim turned. ‘For God’s sake, what’s the matter with you, do you think I don’t know how long? Do you think there is anything else at all in my mind? Do you not know that it’s all I have been able to think of for three days? What are you trying to do?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … it was only something to say …’

  ‘Why must you say anything? Do we need small talk?’

  ‘No, no. I’m sorry … Maxim, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘You didn’t think.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Or perhaps you did.’

  ‘Maxim, please … it was foolish of me, stupid, a stupid remark. We mustn’t quarrel. Not now. Not at all. We never quarrel.’

  It was true. We had not quarrelled since the day of the inquest into Rebecca’s death and the nightmare journey with Colonel Julyan to London to see her doctor, since the night of the fire. We had had too close a brush with mortal danger, there had been too much misunderstanding, we had almost lost one another as a result of it. We knew our own luck, knew the value of what we had too well to dare to take any risk, even of the slightest angry word over something trivial. When people have been through what we had, they do not tempt fate.
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  I held his hand. ‘It will soon be over,’ I said. ‘We will have to be polite to people, say the right things, for Giles’s sake. For Beatrice. But then they will be gone.’

  ‘And we can go. First thing tomorrow. Perhaps even tonight.’

  ‘But surely … we will have to stay and support Giles a bit longer? A day or two. He looks so awful, poor man, so broken.’

  ‘He has Roger.’

  We were silent. Roger. There was nothing to be said.

  ‘He has plenty of friends. They always did. We would be no use to him.’

  I did not reply, did not press it, not yet, did not dare to say that I wanted to stay, not because of Giles or Roger or Beatrice, but because we were here, home, back at last and my heart was full. I felt released, new born, desperate with a sort of sickness at the sight of the autumn fields, the trees and hedgerows, the sky and the sunlight, even the black flocks of swirling, flapping crows. I was guilty and ashamed, as if I were betraying Maxim and my loyalty to him as his wife, so that then, in a small, pathetic gesture that only I could understand I deliberately turned my head away from the window and refused to look at what I saw and loved, and instead kept my eyes only on Maxim’s pale, ill looking face, and on my own hand holding his and on the black leather of the car seat and the shoulders of the driver’s black coat.

  We were slowing down, the house was there, we could see Roger helping his father out of the other car.

  Maxim said, ‘I can’t face it. I can’t stand what they will say and how they will look at us. Julyan was there. Did you see him?’

  I had not.

  ‘On two sticks. And the Cartwrights and the Tredints.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Maxim. I’ll talk to them, I’ll deal with them all, you will only have to shake hands. Besides, they will want to talk about Beatrice. No one will mention anything else at all.’

  ‘They won’t have to. It will be written all over their faces and I shall see it. I shall know what they are thinking.’

  As I paused, as the door opened, in that split second before I began to get out of the car then, I heard what Maxim had just said being played and replayed over and over again in my mind, so that the second seemed to last for an eternity, I was standing there, frozen, forever, there was all time and no time in which I heard it. ‘It will be written all over their faces. I shall know what they are thinking.’ And my own small, secret, poisonous voice supplied the answer. ‘He is a murderer. He shot Rebecca. That is Maxim de Winter who killed his wife.’

  ‘There’s Frank now. Hell.’

  ‘Maxim, Frank of all people will be careful not to say anything. Frank will help us, you know that. Frank will understand.’

  ‘It’s the understanding I don’t think I can cope with.’

  And then he left the car, turning away from me, I saw him cross the drive, saw Frank Crawley step forward, offer his hand, saw him touch Maxim’s arm for a moment, drawing him into his protective circle. Sympathetic. Understanding.

  And the golden October sun shone down on us, all the black crows, gathering for the feast.

  People were very kind to us. I felt their kindness like a blanket wrapping us round, warm, suffocating, and they were tactful, too, they tried not to stare. I could see them trying. Wives had said to husbands before setting out, Now remember, if the de Winters are by any chance there – and I’ve heard that they may be coming – don’t ask … don’t mention … don’t stare, and so they did not, they avoided us, skirting the far side of the room, or else they did the opposite, strode up to us heartily, to get it over with, looked us straight in the eye, wrung our hands and at once turned back to the table and busied themselves over the sherry and whisky and sandwiches and cold pie, cramming their mouths full so that they might be excused from speaking.

  It did not matter, I did not care, I felt cocooned from them. I went around the room with a plate, offering savouries, and all the time speaking of Beatrice, remembering her, agreeing that her illness and death had been so hard, so unfair, and missing her, too, needing her there to help me, longing to hear her make some booming remark that would set everybody laughing. I could not believe that at any moment she would not come in through the door.

  They were all so very kind. It was only when I turned my back on this or that one, that I felt my face had been scalded by the things thought and left unsaid, to hover in the air. I met their eyes and saw questions, questions, questions. As often as I could I went to Maxim and stood close to him, touched his hand or his arm to reassure him while he had to listen to someone else reminisce about his sister or else drone on interminably about how it had been here during the war. He rarely spoke himself, but only smiled thinly and moved on every few minutes, afraid to stay too long with anyone in case, in case … Once, I heard the word ‘Manderley’ drop like the tolling of a bell into a sudden silence at the heart of the room, and spun round, panic stricken, almost dropping a dish, knowing that I must reach him, protect him, that it must not be said again. But then the voices rose and closed over it and the word was drowned, and when I next caught sight of him, he had moved on again, I saw his stiff back on the far side of the room.

  Not long afterwards I found myself standing beside the french windows looking out on to the garden and the countryside beyond, and then I could shut the people out, pretend they were none of them here at all, I could gaze and gaze, at the light and the trees, the brown and the green and the blazing of the berries that studded the holly.

  ‘I’m sure it would be quite all right for you to go outside. I think you could do with a break, couldn’t you?’

  Frank Crawley, dear, reliable, predictable, thoughtful Frank, the same Frank, full of concern, as sensitive as he had always been, to how I felt. I glanced quickly over my shoulder, back into the room. He said, ‘Maxim is fine. I’ve just been with him. Lady Tredint is boring him about evacuees. The war has been over for almost four years but you’ll find it is still the main topic of conversation down here. Not the wider aspects, of course, but things like who under declared the number of eggs their hens laid so as to keep more back for themselves – a matter not easily forgiven or forgotten.’

  We began to walk slowly up the garden away from the house and as we did so, I felt the strain and worry of it all slip from my shoulders, I could turn my face to the sun.

  I said, ‘I’m afraid we knew so little of what was going on here. Letters went astray. We only heard the worst news, about the bombings, and what was happening in other countries.’ I stopped. ‘I suppose we ran away from those things, too. Is that what people say?’

  ‘I think,’ he replied carefully, ‘that people became very inward-looking and preoccupied with their own affairs.’

  ‘Oh, Frank, thank you. How good you are. You even put me in my place in the nicest possible way. You mean, out of sight, out of mind. We were really far too unimportant to be thought of or gossiped about at all. People just forgot us.’

  Frank shrugged his shoulders non-committally, always polite.

  ‘You see, we have lost our sense of perspective, Maxim and I. In … in the old days … we were, or rather Manderley was at the centre of things down here, you know that, everyone was interested, everyone talked … but the world has moved on, hasn’t it? It has had much greater concerns. We’re of no importance now.’

  ‘Of course you are remembered, of course … it’s only …’

  ‘Frank, don’t mind, don’t be sorry … God knows, it is what I’ve wanted for us both, to be small and insignificant, part of the past, and all but forgotten. You must know that.’

  ‘Yes indeed.’

  We had reached the old orchard, from where we could look back to the sturdy, white house, or up, to the horses in the meadow.

  ‘Poor things,’ I said, seeing them eye us and lift their heads and begin to move. ‘Shall we take them some apples?’

  We began to pick up a few windfalls from the grass and then make our way slowly towards the fence, and the horses saw us and came
trotting down, sleek and handsome, the chestnut and the grey.

  ‘Who will ride them now? Does Giles still ride? Or Roger? I don’t know what has been happening – what will happen.’

  ‘And I’m afraid nor do I. I’ve only kept in touch very irregularly these past few years.’

  I knew that Frank had gone to live in Scotland, where he managed a huge estate, knew that as soon as the war was over, he had married and had two sons straight away, and I knew too, looking at him now, that he was entirely happy, settled, and almost completely detached from the past, and I felt a strange pang, I did not know precisely of what – grief? Loss? He was the only other person who had cared for Manderley almost as much as Maxim, our last link with it. Now, like Beatrice, though in a different way, I felt that Maxim knew Frank had gone.

  We were standing beside the fence, the horses were munching the apples, picking them gently from the palms of our hands, their lips curled back. I stroked the warm mossy muzzle of the grey. Then I said, ‘Frank, I want to stay in England so much, I wish I could tell you how I have longed to come home. How I have dreamed about it. I never speak of it to Maxim – how can I? I wasn’t sure how it would be. But never mind about the people, never mind what they think or whether they care at all. It isn’t the people.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘It’s the places – this place, here, these fields … the sky … the countryside. I know Maxim feels it too, I’m absolutely certain, only he daren’t acknowledge it. He has been as homesick as I have, but with him …’ My voice tailed off. There was only the sound of the horses quietly chomping, and of a lark somewhere, spiralling up into the dear sky. The word Manderley lay between us, unspoken, we felt it, everything it had been and meant charged the air like electricity. At last I said, ‘I feel so disloyal. It is wrong for me to be saying any of this.’