Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  And so it was. The days drifted very slowly, lazily down towards the coming winter, like the leaves from the trees, the golden sunlight lingered, gentle over the countryside, filtering through the bare branches, softening the hard lines and edges of every building. There were mists curling up from the rivers and marshes and from the earth itself, at dawn, and sometimes fine frosts at night; there was a new moon over a holly tree and Venus glittering bright beside it; there were sunsets and quiet, still nights when we lay awake and heard owls.

  Maxim was a young man again, he had a gaiety and restfulness I had rarely known in him and I was young and fearless and light hearted, with him.

  We left the Crawleys after an extra night’s stay, and, as Frank had suggested, drove in a hired car quickly through Scotland, which, quite suddenly, Maxim said he had had enough of – it was not what he wanted and then, by ambling stages, taking a quiet route, stopping wherever it looked pleasing. The open hills and moors of the northern counties, sheep country, then the softer, lusher fields and woods, and further south long stretches of empty country, clustered villages, little stone built market towns – all were beautiful to us and welcomed us, all lay quiet under the sun.

  I was surprised how little Maxim knew of England, how little travelled he was beyond the country around Manderley – he knew many places abroad far better. And I had been almost nowhere, it was new and delightful to me, so that we explored and discovered and enjoyed together.

  I did not speak of the future. I thought I need not, that Maxim knew what I wanted, and as the week passed I began to believe that he wanted it too, so that my plans became dearer, they were more than dreams now. We would come back, surely, it was all right, there was no danger, no doubt. Soon, we would come back for good.

  No. I did not speak of it, but I had not expected to find the place to which I knew at once that we would come, not so surely, not so soon. I was caught by it, quite unawares, as I had been by love – for it was the same, it was a sort of falling in love.

  We had come to that part of England that lies sheltered by the thin, high ridge of the Cotswold hills, a countryside of trees and chequered fields and lush pastures through which small streams run, soft, undemanding, somnolent places, where everyday life moves quietly at its own pace. Here, still, we were entirely content, nothing troubled us, the only shadows were those that lay along the land.

  Maxim drove lazily, the car window usually down and his arm lying along it, and we talked of small, delightful things, shared jokes and pleasures, pointed this or that charming cottage and particular view out to one another, laughed like children. We were children, it seems to me now, making up for too many years of having to be old.

  Only once, did a single remark, something that Maxim said, cause the faintest echo deep within me, like the faint, far off after-sound of a bell, reminding, disturbing. We were getting out of the car, beside the small hotel we had found, in the late afternoon sunshine and as I took my bag from Maxim, glancing around the village square at the butter coloured stone houses, the tower of the church set behind, I said, ‘Oh, I love it here – I love this part of England so much.’

  Maxim glanced at me, half smiling.

  ‘You do too, don’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s because it is about as far as one can get from the sea,’ and he turned abruptly, to go ahead of me into the hotel. I did not move for a moment, but was left, staring after him stupidly, not understanding why he had suddenly thought of it, and anxious that he had been brooding secretly about old things: the sea, the cove at Manderley, the boat, Rebecca’s drowning.

  But when I followed him into the cool, dark little hall, stone flagged and smelling of woodsmoke, when I touched his arm, and looked into his face again, it was quite untroubled, his eyes were steady on mine, he made some cheerful remark about liking the place we had chanced upon.

  And indeed, how could one have failed to be happy there? When I bring it to mind now, as I can so easily – my memory for places is so much stronger than for the faces even of those who have been very close to me – when I stand again beside the polished table that served as a reception desk, with its small brass bell, and the green leather bound visitor’s book, in my mind I know that, but for one, terrible, random trick of fate, the memory of it would be wholly perfect.

  The village was quite large, the houses and cottages set around a sloping green, with two great, noble oaks at the centre of it, and at the far side a wide stream ran clear over stones and under a bridge that spanned the road close to the hotel.

  We were such seasoned hotel dwellers by now, used to sizing up rooms, picking the one with the best or the quietest situation, or to tucking ourselves modestly away, used to asking for a table far from the door, in a corner where we would not feel exposed to stares – it had become a habit, we could not lose it and sometimes I hated it, I wanted to stride about in the middle of it all, defiant, my head up, for what were we ashamed of, what did we have to hide?

  But of course I never did, for his sake, because he was so exquisitely sensitive to any look, any imagined gleam of recognition or speculation in people’s eyes, I would never have drawn attention to ourselves. There were only eight rooms here, though people came in for dinner, they said; the dining room was down some steps and overlooked a garden with a small stone pool in the centre, and wonderful late roses clambering up the high walls; there were small lounges tucked away, with old, comfortable chairs and deep sofas, stone fireplaces, window seats beside tiny, leaded windows; there was a clock that chimed and another that ticked loudly and there was an old, white faced labrador at the health, which lumbered up and at once went to Maxim, burying its nose in his hand and leaning against him. He has missed that, too, I thought, seeing him bend to fondle and stroke it, and oh, so have I, missed a dog to roam the countryside with, a companion beside the fire, there is so much like this that we could have again. And I prayed for it, an impulsive, urgent prayer.

  Let us come back. Let us come back.

  I had not asked Maxim what our plans were, I had not dared. I supposed that eventually we would go back to Beatrice’s house and see Giles and Roger again. I knew that we would have to return abroad, because all of our possessions were left locked in the room of our hotel by the lake. But my dream, which I allowed simply to hover at the back of my mind, was that we would go there only briefly, pack everything up and have it sent home – I did not know yet where home would be. It did not matter, I glossed over that, we could rent a house anywhere, until we knew where we wanted to settle. The only thing that mattered was that we should return.

  But I was afraid to voice my dream, I only hoped, only said my occasional, secret prayers.

  We spent three peaceful, contented nights in our hotel, and only the sound of the stream running softly over the stones ever disturbed us, and every day we went out, to walk, to look, to linger in the late sunshine.

  On the fourth day we took the car and went further – fifteen or twenty miles – meandering though winding, quite narrow lanes, between low hedges, looking across the fields to the lines and thickets of beech trees, oak, chestnut, ash, elm, some bare, some still with the last leaves clinging, up slopes, down slopes, going nowhere in particular; stopping for bread and cheese in small village pubs, drowsing a little, going on. The hedges were still thick with glistening blackberries, and dark, dark sloes, the corn was long cut and the earth brown again, here and there a yellow hayrick stood, and in all the cottage gardens as we passed we saw the wigwams of beans that had been pinched and blackened at the tips by the previous night’s frost, and men digging up potatoes and everywhere, bonfires, bonfires.

  We came to a crossroads in a lane lined with great tall trees, but beyond them, between the grey trunks, we saw the open country still, blue sky and sunlight.

  Maxim stopped. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We passed a sign.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking.’

  He sm
iled. He knows, I thought, I have no need to tell him. He knows my dream.

  The road rose quite steeply ahead and bent away out of sight. To our right was an even narrower lane that climbed between mossy banks.

  ‘That way,’ I said. I did not know why, there was no sign, but it was not chance, I know that, I was led.

  ‘We’re already lost. Supposing we get more so.’

  ‘We can’t – or not seriously lost. It’s no more than a couple of miles to that last village and we can easily find the way back from there, it’s quite well signposted.’

  ‘Whereas here,’ Maxim said, starting the engine again, ‘it is not.’

  ‘Oh, what does it matter?’ I felt suddenly carefree, and light headed. ‘Let’s just go on.’

  We went on.

  The lane dipped, narrowed between the high mossy banks out of which grey green tree trunks uncoiled, then climbed again quite steeply. The trees here were higher, towering above us; in summer, I thought, they would be dense and dark, the branches matted together to form a roof.

  Then, without warning, the lane opened out into a semicircular clearing. We stopped beside a wooden signpost whose lettering was greened over, on flaking paint. I got out of the car and crossed to it. Looked up. There was no sound, except, now and then, the slightest, silken rustling of the dry leaves as a nut or a twig broke off and fell, slipping down between them. For a moment, Maxim sat on in the car.

  I think I knew then, with that curious sixth sense, that absolute yet indefinable, ungraspable awareness of the future that sometimes comes to me. I had seen nothing, I was only standing under a sign in the middle of a lane.

  Yet I knew. I felt a sureness, and an excitement within me. It is here – we have found it – just round the corner, near, near. The sign pointed down a path that was scarcely more than a muddy, leaf covered track between the trees.

  To Cobbett’s Brake.

  I said the name to myself, mouthed it quietly, trying out the words.

  Cobbett’s Brake.

  I knew.

  Then I beckoned to Maxim.

  We walked over the mulch of leaves, for a hundred yards or so. The track sloped down, so that we had to pick our way carefully, holding on to one another. At one point, a squirrel leaped across the divide between two branches ahead of us, but otherwise there was no sound, except the sound we made, no movement but our own. I wondered how far we would descend, imagined what a climb we would have back to the car.

  I had my eyes on the ground, placing my feet with care, so that what I saw first was the end of the track as it opened out, and the afternoon sunlight falling through the last, thin branches of the trees, on to the ground.

  I looked up.

  There was a rough, short path leading to a great gateway, with delicate, high, wrought iron gates between two stone pillars. We approached them almost holding our breath. And stopped and stood in silence, looking, looking down.

  Below us, at the end of a drive, set in a bowl surrounded by grassy slopes that rose all around it, was the most beautiful house I had ever seen – more beautiful at once, to me, than Manderley, because it was not so imposing, not so frighteningly large and grand, but a house that went straight to my heart. I closed my eyes quickly, opened them again, half expecting it to have vanished, to have been an illusion, born of my own wishes, but it was there, still, resting in the sun, a house of enchantment and of fairy stories; yet not some towered and turreted fantasy castle, but a rose red, many chimneyed Elizabethan manor house. It was set among lawns and rose-beds and pergolas and fountains and small ornamental ponds, but they were neglected and overgrown, not run back to nature, not quite unkempt, but as though someone who lived there could no longer cope, and had tried and failed to manage without sufficient help. The tree-dotted basin of green rose gently up around it, the barley sugar chimneys and the bricks of the walk were tinted soft ochre and geranium and shell pink, buff and apricot, and all merging and blending together like the walls and roofs of some sunlit Italian hilltop town.

  There was no sign of life at all, no sound of voices or dogs, no smoke from the chimneys. Cobbett’s Brake was empty now, but I did not think that it was abandoned, or unloved, it was not a lost house, and beyond recall.

  We stood, hand in hand, and breathless as children in the enchanted wood, gazing half in awe, half in wonder. We had often seen grand houses on our journey of the past week, mansions and halls and manors, formidable, pompous, and I had turned my eyes from them and my back to them and fled. Those places meant nothing to me and the life lived in them was not for us. But this house was of a different kind.

  It was not small, but it had no sense of importance, it drew in, beckoned, welcomed, it was quite unforbidding. In spite of being deserted now, silent and a little overgrown, it had warmth, it was of a cheerful countenance.

  I dreamed, standing there, and the house enfolded us, all of us, in my dream. I saw Maxim walking down the drive, saw the children clambering up the grassy slopes to where the sheep grazed, heard their shouts, saw them wave to me where I knelt in the garden, weeding one of the flowerbeds.

  I saw smoke curling from the barley sugar chimney and a little, brown shaggy pony beside the old fence, at the back.

  I would be entirely happy here, of that I was calmly, quietly sure, because I would make the house mine, order it in my own way, with Maxim’s blessing. I realised, standing there, that I had never had my own home, never once in my life, but this would be mine, as Manderley had never been. That had belonged to others, to Maxim, to his family, for generations before, and to everyone else, to half the county, to the servants. To Mrs Danvers. To Rebecca. It had never belonged to me.

  But now, I did not regret it, I did not care, Manderley vanished that afternoon, it simply went out like a candle and was gone. This, I thought, gazing down at the beautiful house, seeing the light soften and darken, the colour of the walls change, as the afternoon slipped away. This would be mine – we would come here. I knew. It was a sort of madness, a fantasy that had a stronger grip upon me than what was real, but it was so calm, so sure, I was in thrall and I had no doubts, my confidence and trust that now I had found the house, everything would somehow, one day, fall into place, was clear eyed and absolute.

  I said, ‘I want to go in.’

  ‘We can’t, of course. There’s a padlock on the gate.’

  ‘The fence is broken – look there – and over there.’

  ‘No.’ But he did not pull away. He stood behind me, his hand resting on my shoulder, and I knew that he felt as I felt then. I had no doubt at all.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and I began to make my way carefully up the bank, keeping in line with the fence, my eyes never leaving the house.

  And after a moment or so, Maxim followed, and glancing back, I saw that he too could not stop looking at it. Oh, the dreams of that day, the world I had stepped into, the hopes I had. I remember them so clearly.

  We made our way around the east side of the house, where the garden was most neglected. An old pergola ran on two sides, with the remnants of creeper, rose and honeysuckle hanging in strands from it, wisteria gnarled and unpruned clambered up another, and a path led through them between pillars, to a closed gate. Flowerbeds and borders were overgrown, and yet I thought it had not been so very long since someone had gardened here, it would not take too much work to get it back. I saw myself planning things out, taking this down, mending that, planting more here, working hard with perhaps one local man who knew about the place and a boy; in a couple of summers, we would make it glorious again.

  At the back of the house there were stables, a stone flagged courtyard with a statue of a kneeling child in the centre, an old cart and a broken barrow stood about, there was a greenhouse with broken panes, and a robin sang to us fiercely from a branch.

  I looked up and up the walls to the little leaded windows at the very top. The sun was low, slipping off the house. ‘Maxim …’

  ‘They are most probably just away.’
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  ‘No,’ I said, ‘no, they’re not, they’ve been here quite recently I think, but they have gone now.’

  But then, glancing at him, I saw the sadness on his face and that he had withdrawn into it, saw that he looked old, and that he would never truly be able to leave the past, because he did not want to.

  I turned back. Cobbett’s Brake stood in deep shadow now, the brick of the walls and the stone paths a soft violet darkening to grey, and not only love for it welled up within me then, but something else, a sort of steely determination. What I wanted now I wanted for me, and I was startled, frightened even, by my own defiance.

  Maxim had left me and was walking slowly back, head bent, not looking at the house. He will not speak of it, I thought, we shall simply leave, get back in the car and drive away, and tomorrow or the next day be gone from here forever, I shall not have been denied or refused anything, my dream will simply not have been acknowledged, and this place will never be referred to. That will be his way of dealing with it. Resentment and bitterness and a horrible self pity began to simmer and stir about within me. I was already anticipating my disappointment and how I would mourn it. I had lost all grip on reality, I had no sense at all.

  It was a hard, steep climb back up the narrow track to where we had left the car, and Maxim was ahead of me the whole time. Once, once only, I stopped to get my breath, and let myself look back through the clearing, between the trees, and there it lay, quiet, closed in upon itself, merging into the shadows, but the last light from the setting sun had caught three or four of the chimneys on the west side and was burning them like coals.

  I had gone from joy and hope, to desolation. I felt suddenly cold.

  The car was cold, too. I held my hands together to stop them shaking. Maxim had not spoken. He sat as if he were waiting for something. I looked at him.

  ‘I suppose we shall be too late for tea,’ I said dully. ‘I should like to have a hot bath when we get back.’

  Maxim took both my hands, and pressed them close together between his own. ‘Poor little thing,’ he said, and I saw that he was looking at me with infinite fondness, infinite tenderness, in the old way. ‘You try so hard to shield me and protect me, and really, there is no need, you try so hard to hide what you want, how you feel, and of course you can’t.’