Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  Then, everything was terrible, and the world, like the glossy, fashionable photograph, was ripped in two. Then, there was only my fear and Maxim’s anger and his withdrawal – for he behaved at once as if I were somehow to blame and had done this thing on purpose.

  I had no time to hide the sheet of paper, he pulled it out of my hands, and I saw his face whiten, his lips press together, as he looked briefly down at her.

  Mrs Maxim de Winter, at Manderley.

  If I could have seen ahead before it happened and asked how he would be, I might have said, gentle, worried for me, but calm about it, tender, holding me, telling me to put it from my mind, not to let it trouble me, because it was nothing, that it was all over, she could no longer hurt us.

  But he was not like that, so that I knew she still had power over him as much as over me, I had been wrong for years, living in a false, fool’s paradise. A door came down that night, shutting us from the future I had planned, it was the end of all hopes, all dreams, all happiness.

  I felt sick, my stomach churning with misery, I began to bite the side of my fingernail again, as I had done in the old, early, nervous days, I saw him notice it and turn irritably away.

  He screwed the photograph up hard in his hand, twisted it around and around, but then kept hold of it; the rest of the magazine he threw across the room into the waste paper bin.

  ‘You’d better get the cases out, and make a start in packing. It isn’t late, I’ll go and see if I can rouse them to have the bill ready.’

  I turned round to him. ‘Where are we going? What are we going to do?’

  ‘Get out of here.’

  ‘But when?’

  ‘In the morning, as soon as we can – before breakfast if possible. We can stop and have something on the way if you’re hungry.’

  I dared not ask more. I supposed he meant to cut the trip short and go back down to Giles. But then, what then? I did not want to think of it.

  He left me alone. The crushed up photograph had still been in his hand. I supposed that he would throw it into the fire downstairs and want to see it burned completely away, and I had a peculiar, superstitious impulse to go down and stop him, I felt afraid of what might happen to us, what she would do in revenge.

  Don’t be a fool, don’t be a child, I said, dragging out the cases from the wardrobe, she is dead, it is just an old photograph, she can’t hurt us now.

  But she had, I thought miserably, folding dresses, pyjamas, socks, sorting out just the few things we would need for the morning; she had crushed my hopes, she had smashed my frail, transparent bubble of a future. We would not live at Cobbett’s Brake, we would never come to this part of England, that too had become tainted, Maxim would never want to see any of these places again.

  Where then? I pressed down a pile of handkerchiefs, to lie flat. Back to Giles’s house? But after that? Surely there would be somewhere, some corner in which we could hide. I began to think back furiously over the journey from Scotland, trying to remember some pretty, small, obscure place we might both have liked, but I could think of nowhere; I had seen the house I wanted, it had spoiled everywhere else, I thought, and would do so forever. It was more than a house, and now, because we would never go there, not see it again, it assumed an even greater perfection in my mind, it became a lost paradise, and I shut out forever beyond the locked gates, condemned to gaze down at its unattainable, rose red beauty, caught in a timeless present, in its green grassy bowl.

  I slept a dreadful, restless, haunted sleep, that night, and woke, very early, when it was not yet light, and then lay, weak and sour with misery and disappointment. Maxim had scarcely spoken to me, only stood morosely at the window, as I finished packing our cases; the bill was paid, there was nothing to detain us.

  ‘I loved it here,’ I said once.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maxim –’

  ‘No.’ He came and stood in front of me, looking into my face. His skin was grey, the lines that ran from nose to mouth etched more deeply, it seemed, as the last hour or so had passed. His eyes were far away, he had gone from me and I could not reach him.

  ‘It makes no difference to anything,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever happens,’ Maxim said in a low, hoarse voice, ‘Wherever we go, whatever we do, it will be the same. So long as we are here, there will be no rest – we can’t take the chance, there will be something – like – like this, lying in wait, some trap waiting to spring, and after all, this has been nothing – trivial – other things could be –’ He did not go on. I took his hand and lifted it and held it against my face, desperate suddenly that we should salvage something from this, pleading with him.

  ‘We are being weak,’ I said. ‘Maxim, it is so silly – we are grown people – we can’t run away because of – you’re right – of nothing – Some silly, trivial incident – we are together, it will be all right.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nothing can touch us.’

  ‘But it can. You know that, don’t you?’

  He took his hand gently away from mine. I could not look into his face, I was too near to tears. Everything, everything was lost then, we would never come back. And I was filled with a hideous, bitter hatred, against her for what she had been, but worse, against Maxim for what he had done, and it frightened me and changed me, I had never felt anything but love for him before. Love and fear.

  We left soon after light, as the sun rose out of soft billows of mist. I sat staring ahead and could not bear to look back once at the little stone houses set around the square. There was no one about, we had only seen the plump, bleary waitress, setting out the breakfasts. I had glanced in at the lounge as we passed. The fireplace had been cleared, and fresh logs laid already in the cold grate. The pile of magazines had been tidied away on to a window ledge. The dog was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Let me drive,’ I said. I wanted to go slowly, to slip the journey through my fingers. Besides, if I drove, I would not find it so easy to think. But he would not, he gestured me to the passenger door, starting the engine impatiently before I had finished getting in, his fingers drumming on the rim of the wheel.

  Then, I was unable to go on being silent, being patient, then, the pain of our leaving and my own disappointment and misery, rushed up within me and spilled out. I cried out, ‘Oh, why, why does it have to be like this? Why must everything be spoiled? We can’t go on running away, running away. I know you hated seeing it and so did I, it gave me the most dreadful shock. But Maxim, it was nothing – what was it? A photograph. No more, no worse, simply an old photograph in an old paper.’

  He did not reply, only drove, with an awful concentration, very well, very fast. We were out of the gentle Cotswold hills already, going west.

  ‘I did not want it to be over like this – and brushed away as if it had never been.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This week. Scotland. This trip –’

  ‘Well, it is over.’

  ‘Does it have to be?’

  There was a flock of sheep in the middle of the road, being driven from one field to another, a slow, heaving river. We had to stop behind them.

  I thought, you never see real sheep abroad, only funny little goats and scrawny, scraggy, jumping things. Not stout, creamy, satisfying English sheep.

  There had been sheep scattered about the green bowl above Cobbett’s Brake.

  I felt tears prick behind my eyes.

  ‘I telephoned to Giles to say what we were doing,’ Maxim said, as we began to move slowly forwards again, ‘but there was no reply. It doesn’t matter, I can stop and telegraph from somewhere.’

  I stared though my tears out of the window. A black and white dog was behind the sheep, rushing to and fro, crouched low, guiding them expertly in through the new gateway. I wound down the window a little. Shep – I thought he would be called. Shep or Lad. But when we passed the farmer and he raised his hand to us, I heard him call, ‘Jess. Come on boy. Jess.’

  I did not want to ask
what he would tell Giles. Maxim had decided what we were doing, I had to go along.

  He was driving fast again, looking steadily ahead, blinkered, grim.

  ‘Cobbett’s Brake,’ I said, almost whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The house.’

  ‘What about the house?’

  ‘I loved it. I wanted it. I’ve never wanted a place in that way before – never felt – felt as if I should belong there. Do you understand at all?’ I waited, but there was no answer. I should have stayed silent then, if I had had sense and sensitivity, and any kindness, but I could not, I was feeling hurt and angry and not kind. ‘You had Manderley. You loved it more than anything, you loved it passionately, surely you know what I’m trying to say.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about all this?’

  ‘But it was never mine, I never belonged there, not really.’

  ‘Well now no one does.’

  ‘I want somewhere that will be mine – ours, where we can settle and belong – and – ours, mine.’ I did not give words to the rest.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s out of the question.’

  ‘Why? Why must it be? Haven’t you been happy this last week? Haven’t you loved being at home – being in England? I think you have.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said very quietly. ‘Yes. I have been happy, more happy than I can say or I can bear. But it is not a happiness that is possible or one that can continue.’

  ‘But the house –’

  ‘The house was a dream. A fancy. Nothing more – you must forget it.’

  We had come into a town, and now, Maxim was parking the car.

  ‘Come along, we’d better have some breakfast. There’s a hotel over there, it looks perfectly decent. Go and sit down and order for us, I’ll send that telegram to Giles.’

  Dumbly, I got out and did as I was told. It was a rather cold dining room with a sideboard covered in dishes of food, and formal, pompous looking waiters. I sat down and ordered coffee, and toast, and cooked food for Maxim. I would not be able to eat anything, the toast was to give me something to do with my hands, and because I still had a lingering fear of waiters, still had to ingratiate myself with them, try and please them. There were several men at tables, chomping stolidly, reading newspapers. The coffee, weak but hot, arrived as Maxim came back.

  ‘I spoke to him,’ he said, flipping out his napkin. ‘He sounded in a frightful way still – can’t seem to pull himself up at all.’

  I drank my coffee, because I did not want to speak, stared miserably down at the tablecloth because I could not bear to look at him. I felt like someone at the end of a love affair, tidying up the last details before parting, all interest and life and colour had drained out of the world.

  ‘He’ll have to get back to work – I told him to go up to London for a week – start taking some sort of an interest.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ I said. And then I did look at him. He was buttering toast briskly, efficiently, cutting it into small squares, as I had seen him do every morning for eleven years.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know you. Who are you? I don’t understand what is happening to you.’ It was no more than the truth. Something had changed him, brought out again a hard, off-hand style I had thought quite gone, only a defence against old unhappiness, for which there was no longer the remotest need. ‘You sound unfeeling and uncaring, you are talking of Giles in that dismissive way as if you were contemptuous of him. And what about Beatrice? She was your sister. I thought that you loved her. I did. I loved her and I miss her and I understand what Giles is feeling. I hate it that you can’t –’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He laid down his knife, and reached for my hand. For a moment, for the first time, I hesitated before I gave it to him. ‘I know, I simply can’t take the way Giles is reacting, it isn’t the way he feels I don’t understand.’

  ‘The way he shows it.’

  ‘I suppose so, yes.’

  ‘What are you afraid of, Maxim?’

  He went on with his breakfast. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all. Eat your toast.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I don’t want to have to stop again.’

  ‘Until we get down there?’ I lifted the coffee pot. It was a long way still, I supposed that I had better drink.

  ‘We’re not going back,’ Maxim said. ‘I asked Giles to get what bits we left there packed up and sent on. I didn’t see any point. It will be all right you see. I promise. Once we’re away again, it will all be all right.’

  ‘Away again,’ I said, and the words came oddly out of my mouth, as if it were frozen and I could not move it properly.

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked out of the dining-room window, through the net half curtains, across the street. A small child in a blue hat was sitting down in the middle of the pavement howling, drumming its legs, beside a distraught, embarrassed mother. It was funny, or sad, it did not interest me, there was nothing of any interest left. I must not mind, I thought, I must not mind. I am with Maxim, I must take care of him, share what he feels. ‘Where are we going?’ I managed to ask, and a faint shaft of hope broke through, for perhaps it would be all right, as he said, somehow it would come right.

  He looked surprised, holding out his cup for more coffee.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Of course.’

  I lifted the silver pot, and for a second, our reflections flared back at us from its surface, distorted, strange. ‘How silly. Of course I know quite well that we are going back.’

  ‘There is no other way. It isn’t possible. You do see, my darling, you do understand, don’t you?’

  I looked into his face, and smiled, a sweet, false, dishonest smile. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, Maxim, of course.’

  It was very fast, very easily accomplished, our running away, we simply drove and drove, down through the rest of England, and it paid out behind us like an unravelled ribbon and we discarded it. He was as good as his word, we did not stop, except once for petrol, so that we reached Dover by the late afternoon. He had arranged for the car to be left at a garage, and I supposed collected by someone later, I did not ask. He had telegraphed ahead for tickets, too, it was all done, all arranged.

  We boarded the evening boat early. There were very few people about.

  ‘We’re catching the night sleeper from Calais,’ Maxim said. ‘I’ve booked our berths, you’ll be able to go to bed straight after dinner.’

  Sleep, I thought wonderingly, sleep. Dinner. Yes. All arranged, all will come about, as if it were any journey. And then, suddenly, I did not care any more, I simply stopped feeling, stopped thinking at all, I was too tired. The past week had been a turmoil of discordant experiences, emotional, disturbing, I could not sort them out from one another, or discover which predominated, which mattered, the shocks, the fear, the pleasure, or the pain.

  Maxim had walked very fast across the quay and up the gang plank of the boat, looking straight ahead, impatient with the porter for dragging the trolley with our bags. Now, he sat in the lounge reading the first edition of the evening paper the boy had brought round, and when I looked at him, I saw relief on his face again, and that the fine lines of anxiety and foreboding had smoothed already.

  I turned away, walked out and up on to the deck, and stood at the rail, watching all the business of preparation for sailing, and then, I let myself turn to it for what I told myself would be the last time, and gazed upon it. Cobbett’s Brake rode in my mind like another ship, at anchor in calm water, infinitely beautiful, and then another rode beside it, grander, more austere, but in its own grave way beautiful too, Manderley, silver grey and secret, under the moon.

  I felt old then, and as if my life was more than half over, and all the important things past, not to come, old before I had ever been truly young.

  I stayed there, resting my arms upon the rail, looking down, until the sirens sounded and we began to move, I stared at the gap widening between the ship and the quay, saw
the water spread out in a broader and broader band, watched England drift away from me, out of reach, and soon enough, as darkness fell, out of sight.

  Part Two

  Eleven

  So it was all over, and quite soon I had accepted it and turned my back upon the dream of the house, so that it became fragmented and insubstantial, and when I tried to summon the picture of it to my mind, I found that I could not.

  How quickly we can make the best of things.

  We scarcely stayed a night in our old hotel, only long enough to pack up the rest of our belongings and pay what we owed to the manager – who behaved rudely, because he had lost good business he had been relying on for the winter.

  We did not care.

  ‘I want to show you so much,’ Maxim said. ‘Poor girl, you have been like a prisoner confined to one dingy cell, and very patient. Well, we shall make up for that. We shouldn’t waste our lives in skulking.’

  He seemed full of excitement and plans and I caught his mood, of course I did, it was a relief that our time was to be better filled, but more, to have him looking outward again, gay and high spirited. The small hotel by the lake seemed suddenly shabby and third rate, our room cramped and dingy. I closed the door on it for the last time without a pause, it had become as anonymous to me as all the others, in spite of the length of time we had spent here, nothing of moment had happened, nothing to remember. Yet I would remember it, some day, for no reason that I could discern, it would simply float to the surface and be there, in the middle of my doing something quite unrelated to it or to this time. Some part of my life had been spent here, a time which would never come back. I ought to be grateful to it, I thought, going on down the corridor, it was one of the rooms of my life in which there had been no fear, no distress, no dread. We had been perfectly, dully content.

  We went away, travelling restlessly, always going on in search of a new sight, a fresh experience; we pored over maps and guides in cafés here and there, spreading them out, pointing, looking up routes and timetables. It was as though Maxim were hungry for other places, desperate to move on, to enjoy, not to miss, he would say, ‘Let’s go here …’ or ‘Come on, I’ll take you there …’ or ‘I’ve never been to …’ and we would be off. The succession of hotels, the small pensions, the neat little houses in which we took rooms, is a blur now, I will never remember any of those, just the pattern on a curtain, the random expression on a waiter’s face, the sound of a window creaking as it closed.