Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  I remembered the first time I had met Beatrice and Giles, that hot day at Manderley, a lifetime ago and in another life – and I another person, a child, and I had watched him as he lay on his back in the sun after lunch, snoring, and I had wondered with genuine bewilderment why ever Beatrice had married him, and thought that because Giles had already been fat and unattractive, and apparently well into middle age, they could not conceivably have been in love. What a very childish thing – how very naive and stupid and lacking in all knowledge I had been, to believe that one had to be handsome and smart and debonair and sophisticated in manner, seductive as Maxim had been, to be fallen in love with and loved and happily married. I had known nothing, nothing at all, I blushed with shame now to think of it. I had known only a little of being swept off my feet, and of first, passionate, blinkered love, a love that I now saw had been as much like a schoolgirl crush as anything else. I had known nothing of the love that came only with time and age and everyday life together, or of love that had endured misery and grief and suffering, and things which just as easily break apart, sour and destroy love as nurture it.

  I felt strangely old that night, infinitely older than poor helpless Giles, stronger, more capable, wiser. I felt so sorry for him; I knew that after all, he would come through, somehow, stumble on and make the best of things, but that it would never be the same for him, and that the best of his life was over, with Beatrice dead, and Roger so maimed and disfigured after his flying accident. Though perhaps the fact that his son was likely to remain at home with him always, because of his disability, might give him a reason for going on and pulling through and eventually enjoying life again. I did not know. He did not mention Roger at all, it was only Beatrice he thought of and wanted tonight.

  I have no idea how long we sat there together; I cried a little but Giles did not stop, even when he was talking, he cried, and did not try to restrain or control it, and although at first it had so embarrassed me, after a while, I came to respect him for it and to be moved, because of the depth of his devotion to Beatrice and his grief, and also because he felt close enough to me to be able to weep so, in front of me.

  Twice, at least, I asked if he wanted me to get him tea, or brandy, but he refused and so we just sat on, among the mess of clothes, in the bedroom that grew cold, as the night drew on.

  And then, as though he were coming to out of some sort of fit or trance over which he had had no control, he looked round the room, almost in bewilderment, as if uncertain how we both came to be there, and found a handkerchief from somewhere, and blew his nose several times with great, trumpeting noises.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, old thing, only I needed to be here – couldn’t have done without it.’

  ‘I know, Giles. It’s perfectly all right. I understand.’ I stood up, and said, rather lamely, ‘I was very fond of Beatrice too, you know.’

  ‘Everybody was. Everybody. All those people, those friends.’ He wiped his eyes, and then, looking up, said, ‘She never had an enemy in the world you know. Apart from Rebecca …’

  I stared at him stupidly, for somehow I had never expected to hear the name again, it sounded odd, like a word in another language. Rebecca. A word from another life. We never spoke it. I do not think it had crossed either of our lips since that terrible night.

  For a few seconds in the quiet room, it was as though some beast I had thought long, long dead, had stirred faintly, warningly, and growled, and the sound struck fear in me, but then it was silent and still again and the fear was only the faintest echo of an old fear, like the memory of a pain long past, I did not so much feel it as recall that I had once done so.

  ‘Sorry,’ Giles said again, ‘sorry, old thing.’

  But whether it was for mentioning Rebecca’s name, or his keeping me up with him while he was so distressed, I could not tell.

  ‘Giles, I think I should go back to bed, I’m really dreadfully tired, and Maxim may have woken and wondered where I am.’

  ‘Yes, of course, you go. Good Lord, it’s half past four. Sorry … I’m sorry …’

  ‘No, it’s fine, don’t be sorry. Really.’

  When I reached the door, he said, ‘I wish you’d come back now.’

  I hesitated.

  ‘Old Julyan was right, and Beatrice was always saying so. Damn silly, she said, them staying away this long, when there’s no need.’

  ‘But we had – have to – Giles, I don’t think Maxim could have borne to come home – when – when – there wasn’t Manderley any longer – and oh, everything …’

  ‘You could buy another place – come here – there’s enough room here – no, no, but you wouldn’t want that. I wish she’d seen old Maxim before – she wasn’t one to talk about feelings, but she missed him – all through the war – didn’t often say it but I knew. I wish she’d seen him again.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes. I’m very sorry.’

  He was staring down at the peach satin robe that he still had clutched in his hand. I said, ‘Giles, I’ll come and help put all this away in the morning – just leave it now. I think you ought to try and get some sleep.’

  He looked at me vaguely, then down again at the robe. ‘It wasn’t her usual thing, she didn’t go in for silks and satins and that sort of stuff, more for sensible sort of things.’ He was staring and staring at the shiny, slippery material. ‘I think Rebecca must have given it to her.’

  And, as he spoke, a terrible, vivid picture came into my mind, a picture so clear I might have been there, of Rebecca, whom I had never seen in my life, tall, slender, black-haired Rebecca, spectacularly beautiful, standing at the top of the great staircase at Manderley, a hand resting on the rail, her lips curled in a faint, sardonic smile, looking directly at me, summing me up, scornful, amused, wearing the peach satin robe that now lay crumpled in Giles’s fat, stubby hands.

  I ran out, and down the corridor, almost tripping over and banging my shoulder painfully against the corner of the wall as I saved myself, and found our room, and burst into it, trembling now, terrified because she had come back to me, she was haunting me again, when I had believed that she was quite, quite forgotten. But in our room, in the first, thin light of day, seeping through the worn old cotton curtains, I saw that Maxim was sound asleep, still huddled in the same position as when I had left him, he had not stirred at all, and I stopped dead, and then closed the door with infinite care, for I must not wake him, and could not speak, nor ever tell him anything of this. I must deal with it myself, lay the ghost, send the beast back to its lair, entirely on my own. Maxim must not be troubled or disturbed by it, Maxim must never know.

  I did not get into bed, I sat on the dressing stool by the window, looking out through a chink in the curtains at the shapes of the garden, the orchard and the paddock beyond, everything turning from night into grey pre-dawn, colourless, insubstantial, and it was beautiful as ever to me, the sight of it filled me again with longing, and then I was not frightened, I was angry, angry with memory, angry with myself, angry with the past, for its power to spoil and sour this for me, but most of all, angry, in a hard, cold, bitter way with her, for what she had been and done to us that could never be undone, the way she could reach out to us over so many years, as strongly in death as in life. Rebecca.

  But as the light strengthened, and I saw the trees and shrubs and then the horses take on distinction and shape, and then the pale, pearly mist of dawn began to rise and weave about them like silk being spun out by some invisible hand, and draped in and out restlessly, silently, a strange exultation began to well up in me, a joy and a glory in the morning, the new day, with this place, home, England, the life ahead of us, so that I wanted to fling open the window and shout across the countryside, all those miles, to where she lay in that dark, silent crypt alone.

  ‘I am alive!’ I wanted to shout. ‘Do you hear? I am alive and so is he, and we are together. And you are dead, and will never harm us again. You are dead, Rebecca.’

  Five
/>   We breakfasted by ourselves in the dining room. Giles slept in, and I had seen Roger go up to the horses when I was dressing, plodding slowly and heavily, from behind the same shape as his father, the same thick neck set low down on to broad shoulders, so ordinary a man, rising thirty, dull, pleasant, his head full of little other than horses and dogs. I scarcely knew him, he had never impinged much upon our lives.

  But he had flown and fought in the war with nerve, with distinction, earned a DFC and finally, been shot down and burned almost beyond recognition, so that if he had turned round now, I should have seen not the old, round and fresh, open faced Roger, but a hideous mask of stretched, shining, flaking skin, alternately white and with vivid staining, and eyes narrowed, looking out of scarred, lashless lids, so that I had to brace myself each time not to flinch, not to look in revulsion too quickly away. The damage to the rest of his body was unimaginable.

  Roger, calling softly and waiting, as the grey and then the chestnut horse came trotting down, his future irreparable. The picture of him came to me again now as I sat, sipping my coffee, watching Maxim peel an apple, and the sight of his hands on the fruit bringing back to me, as they did every day, the memory of that first breakfast I had seen him eat, the morning in Monte Carlo when I had gone, sick with love, with misery, to tell him I had to leave for New York that day with Mrs van Hopper. Every detail of what he wore, ate, drank, every word of what he said, was immortal to me, no detail would, could, ever fade or be confused or forgotten.

  He glanced up at me, and whatever the expression on my face was, read it, and through it to what I felt and thought, unerringly, I have still not learned to conceal things, my hopes and fears, every nuance of passing emotion, still show as clearly on my face as on that of a child, I know. I am still not a grown woman in that way. I think he would not want it.

  Now, in that dining room full of old fashioned oak furniture, with the chill of the night still on it because the heater did not work very well, and the dreadful memory of yesterday’s luncheon when old Colonel Julyan had struggled to his feet to toast our return, now, Maxim laid down his apple and the knife neatly by his plate, and reached out across the table and took my hand.

  ‘Oh, my darling girl, how very badly you want to stay longer, don’t you? How much you are dreading my getting up and telling you we should pack, now, at once, and have the car come as soon as possible. You have changed since we got back, do you know that? You look different, something has happened to your eyes – your face –’

  I was ashamed then, deeply ashamed, I felt guilty that I had failed to conceal anything at all from him, have my own secrets. Clinging to my own joy at being home, afraid that he did not share it, terrified, as he said, of having to leave too soon.

  ‘Listen.’ He had got up and gone to stand by the window and now he gestured for me and I went at once to stand beside him. The top gate stood open, Roger had led the horses out.

  ‘I can’t go there – you know that.’

  ‘Of course – oh, Maxim, I would never dream of asking – it would be out of the question – I couldn’t bear to go back to Manderley either.’

  Though as I said it, glibly, reassuringly, I knew that I lied, and a little snake of guilt stirred and began to uncoil slightly, guilt and its constant companion deceit. For I thought of it night and day, it was always in my mind somewhere, just out of sight, waiting for me, I dreamed of it, Manderley. Not far. Just across the county, away from this low, lovely, gentle inland village, across the high, bare back of the moors and so down, slipping between hills, following the deft in the land along the river, to the sea, and belonging to another life, years ago, to the past, and yet as close as my next breath. Empty? Derelict? Razed completely? Built upon? Wilderness? Or restored, alive again? Who knew? I wanted to find out. Dared not.

  Manderley.

  I scarcely faltered, all of it came into my mind and before my eye, in a single encompassing second. I said, ‘I wasn’t thinking of – of Manderley.’ It was still hard to say the name, I felt Maxim tense at once. ‘But, oh, Maxim, it is good to be in England. You feel it too, don’t you? The way it looks – the light – the trees – everything. Couldn’t we have a while longer? Go to a few places perhaps – out of the way places, I mean – not anywhere from – from before. New places. No one will know us or see us – and then we can go back again and take it with us – it will see us through until – whenever. Besides, I don’t think we should leave Giles just yet, it would seem so cruel.’ I had told him a little, very briefly, about the night before. ‘Just a few days more here – to help him begin to sort things out and then – well, Frank invited us up to Scotland. Couldn’t we go there? I’d love to see it – I’ve never been – and meet his family – it was good to see him so happy and settled, wasn’t it?’

  I babbled on, and he indulged me in the old way, and all was light and easy between us, the secrets I held close to me remained concealed. And what pathetically small things they were, I thought suddenly, going back up to our room, little enough, God knows, to suffer such guilt about.

  It was agreed very easily. We would stay here with Giles and Roger until the end of the week, and then go at once to Scotland, to stay with the Crawleys. Maxim seemed quite happy, and I knew that my reassurance about not returning to any of the old familiar places, or anywhere with family connections, but most of all, any places in which we would be remembered and recognised, had meant a great deal and, I thought, quietened his most serious fears. He wanted to see nothing, go nowhere, meet no one, who had the slightest connection with his past and the old life, with Manderley, and most of all, with Rebecca, and Rebecca’s death.

  This house, Beatrice’s house, he could cope with now, I thought, and he might even enjoy ambling gently about the lanes and fields within a short distance. That was what I told myself.

  And I – I was wonderfully, gloriously happy, that we could be here longer, and then go to Scotland, and, after that, perhaps, though I scarcely dared to make my ideas coherent, to spell it out even to myself – after that, when Maxim was more relaxed and unafraid, when he had discovered how easy it was to be here and that there was no threat – after that, might we not stay even longer, go elsewhere, spend the last golden autumn days gently exploring this or that quiet corner of England that was unknown to us? Would that not be every bit as good, as restful and unthreatening to him, as being abroad? So long as we kept far, far away from the old places – from Manderley.

  I sang as I went upstairs to change, and realised, when I caught myself, that it was ‘On Richmond Hill’, and that I had not sung or heard it for years, not since I had learned it at school, and yet it came into my head now, fresh and clear. I found that I remembered every word of it.

  I could not persuade Maxim to come out. He would wait for Giles to get up, he said, he must try and talk business matters to him, in case there was anything he had to know or attend to concerning Beatrice’s affairs. I was surprised. I thought he would have avoided anything that might bring him close to learning about how things had been disposed over Manderley, but he was curt, took The Times into the morning room and closed the door, and when I glanced there, from the garden on my way out, I saw that he had his back to the window, and the paper held high, and knew then how much it hurt him to be here, and that he could not bear to look out even at Beatrice’s and Giles’s old garden and orchard, which were nothing, nothing like any of the gardens at Manderley.

  He is doing it for me, I thought. He is doing it out of love. And within me rose, as well as love in return, a flicker of the old insecurity, the disbelief that I could be loved – by any man, and this man, above all, for I still saw him in some sort, as a God, and in spite of the way things had been between us for all of our time in exile, how much stronger I had tried to become, how dependent he had grown on me, in spite of it all, deep down, I had no real confidence, no belief in myself as a woman who was loved in that way. Occasionally, still, I caught myself staring down at my wedding ring as though
it were on some stranger’s hand, and could not possibly belong to me, turning it round and round, as I had done the whole time on our honeymoon in Italy, as if to convince myself of its reality, heard my own voice on that sunlit Monte Carlo morning, ‘You don’t understand, I’m not the sort of person men marry.’

  But I smiled to myself, hearing it faintly again, as I walked up through the thick dew drenched grass of the paddock, towards the slope and the trees and the hedgerows of the open, glorious, golden countryside beyond.

  I walked for more than an hour, following a path, and then leaving it and striding off across the fields, and at first I wished that Maxim had come with me, I wanted so much for him to see it all, hoping, I suppose, that he would fall in love with it again, that the pull of this country, of England, the light and the land, would be so strong that he would be quite unable to resist. I pictured him stopping, here or there, on this little rise, beside this gate that overlooked a small copse, turning to me, ‘We must come back, of course,’ he would say. ‘I see now how much I have missed England – I couldn’t bear to go back abroad now, we must stay, and never leave again, whatever that may mean.’ And I would reassure him that all would be well, and no one would trouble us, that the past would never rear its head. And if it did – ‘Maxim, whatever there is to face, we face it together.’

  Catching myself, weaving my fantasies, even feeling my lips move in the imagined conversation, I smiled, for it was an old habit. I had dreamed all the usual schoolgirl dreams this way once, before reality overtook me, though I had indulged it very little in recent years, been too busy growing up, looking after Maxim, protecting him, being his only companion, learning tricks to keep memory from springing up, harsh and powerful, and seizing him, defenceless as he now was.