Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  ‘No,’ I whispered back. ‘No. Get away from me, you’re not real, neither of you, she can’t hurt me, and nor can you. Get away from me, Mrs Danvers.’ And then I cried out and stepped back, I heard my own voice coming after me like an echo sounding hollow from the depths of the sea, ‘No, no, no,’ as I fell.

  Everyone was solicitous, everyone was helpful, and Maxim the most concerned of all. The memory of his tenderness warmed me. I kept on turning to it, during the next few days, as I sat in a little, sunny sitting room overlooking the courtyard and a side-street of our pensione. The signora had insisted on putting me there, I could not be in a bedroom all day, she said, that would be depressing and my spirits should be kept up, she would not have me mope. I was not ill, after all, I simply needed to rest, to be looked after, to have great care taken of me. And after a time, as she came and went discreetly, clucking and fussing, bringing up small tempting plates of fruit – fresh ripe figs, the last few peaches, or sparkling water and little almond biscuits I realised, with a flush of embarrassment, that she thought I must be expecting a child. There was an indulgence, a coyness mingled with sympathetic understanding, in her expression. It affected me. I wanted to be able to please her by confiding that yes, yes, it was so.

  The courtyard had a gate in its far wall leading out into a lane, and at the end, stood what I learned was a convent, part of which housed a nursery. Several times a day I sat and listened to the voices of the children, high, bright, chattering little birds flocking to school, and laughing, calling, shouting at their play, over the high wall. Through an open window would come their chanting of rhymes, and their sweet, wavering singing.

  I never saw them, I did not need to, I could imagine them well enough. I was unsure whether their presence made me happy or quickened my disappointment.

  I was not ill, I had to protest that over and over again. I had felt horribly foolish, embarrassed, as I had been helped slowly down the flights of stone stairs and put on a great chair like a throne, in the entrance hall. Iced water was fetched, a car sent for, I was conscious of people peering discreetly, before glancing away.

  I had only felt suddenly giddy, I said, it was the height, or the contrast with the light outside, as I had stepped forwards, perhaps I had drunk one glass of wine more than was sensible at lunch, when I so rarely did so. In the hallway, in the car, at the pensione, Maxim had looked at me with such love, such anxious tenderness, his face kept coming to my mind, and when it did so, guilt filled me, and shame, at what I had been thinking about him, what I had allowed the voice in my head to go on whispering; for it had only been in my head, I knew that. I had imagined it, hallucinated even, and done nothing to silence it. I had been transfixed, mesmerised, almost in some horrible way enjoying it.

  I wished then that I had someone to talk to, and as I wished it, I realised that I had no friends, had never had them – not the sort of easy, cheerful confidantes other women always have, old school companions, sisters or cousins, the wives of their husband’s colleagues – anyone. I had kept up with no one. I was an only child, there were no relatives, I had gone as a paid companion to Mrs van Hopper, but that had not been a friendship, I could never have talked of anything to her, and while I had been with her, I had been keeping a secret, concealing things from her. I had had Maxim. After that, there had been no need for anyone, or no place. There had been hordes of visitors, endless acquaintances, neighbours, all of them older than me, none of them remotely close to me, none of them, except in a prurient way, at all interested. There had only been Frank Crawley, loyal to Maxim, fiercely discreet, a rock when I had needed one to cling to, but not in the way I meant and needed now, a friend, and then Beatrice – I could have talked to her, she had been fond of me, I thought. But Frank had been Maxim’s employee, Beatrice his sister, they were neither of them simply mine, on my side – though it ought not to be a question of ‘sides’, I knew, and that was something else to feel guilty about.

  I began to feel sorry for myself, during those few days, and that sickened me. I caught myself indulging it one afternoon – how I had never had a youth, or friends of my own, how I had been forced to leave behind what I wanted, for Maxim’s sake, how I wanted children and had not – perhaps could not – have them.

  Maxim had left me, to go and walk again around one of his favourite galleries, whose formal, artificial paintings were not very much to my taste, though I had said that I would go with him, that I could not sit about here so much.

  ‘I’m not ill,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly all right, Maxim, I didn’t want such a fuss made, I don’t need to be treated like an invalid.’

  He stood, looking down at me, generous, gentle, and I should have responded to it, I should have been loving, grateful, but it angered me, I felt irritated, patronised, pandered to like a child again. ‘Go out,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet you. We can have an ice in that café beside the old fountain.’

  ‘Will you rest?’

  ‘I’m not tired.’ But then I felt guilty again, rejecting his concern. I said, ‘I might, but I’m not ill – please believe me, it was really nothing – nothing at all.’

  The afternoon was suspended, the autumn sunshine very still on the old walk of the courtyard. I heard the signora chatting at the front of the house, and then go out, closing the door. The children were quiet, having their afternoon rest, perhaps.

  I wondered how long we would continue like this, being in this place or that for no particular reason, whether we would do it for the rest of our lives. I supposed so. I could not ask Maxim, I dared not talk to him about it. We were far apart, I thought suddenly, and yet I did not understand why or how it had happened. We had come through our trials into calm seas, and been as close as it is possible for two people to be. Now it had gone, that completeness, and I wondered if marriage was always like this, constantly moving and changing, bearing one this way and that, together and then apart, almost at random, as if we were floating in it, as in a sea. Or were we not powerless at all, did we will it, did we bring it upon ourselves by what we wanted and thought and said and did? Were those things as influential as outside events, the chances of life? I spent an hour or more, questioning, puzzling, and only became more confused and bewildered, and did not even know why I had to go on, why I could not simply let it be, exist, without probing thoughts, and anxieties that disturbed and unsettled me, and so, Maxim, too.

  Perhaps I was wrong, perhaps I was not well. I felt very tired, listless and uninterested, perhaps that was why I had heard the whispering voice, and fainted. Round and round went the thoughts and questions, round and round, and I with them, wearily, and so, after a while, slept a little, a strange, shifting, troubled sleep, in that silent house.

  As I awoke, quite gently, in the late afternoon, I looked at the wall on the far side of the courtyard. I had been looking at it, I supposed, as I had gone to sleep, though without consciously registering what I saw there, but the image had done its work, and in some strange way, caused me to know the answer to something that must have been troubling me more than I knew, it came now clear and complete into my mind.

  A creeper grew up the old wall – spreading itself to right and left, like arms outstretched – and clambering around the top of the gate; it was a pretty, pleasing thing, its leaves a bright, glossy green, and it was covered in hundreds of starry, pure white flowers whose sweet scent came to me faintly, on the air. I did not know what it was called, but I realised now that I had seen it growing over an arch at the villa.

  The white flowers on the green reminded me of the others. And it was then that I was sure it had been teasing at me, puzzling me, somewhere deep down, the source of disquieting dreams and whispering voices, what had happened at the villa had been part of it.

  Frank Crawley had tried to reassure me. He had brushed aside my concerns about the wreath left at Beatrice’s graveside, tried to convince me that it was really of no importance, dismissed it, and the card, as nothing more than some trick, a sick, horrible joke. Ja
ck Favell, he had said firmly, I’ve heard that he is still about – I saw him once. That is who must have planted it, of course, that is the sort of thing it would amuse him to do. Ignore it, forget about it. It means nothing.

  But no, I thought now, No, it was not Jack Favell, that was not his style at all. Jack Favell was a weak, unpleasant, rotten character, a coward, a liar, and corrupt but not evil; Jack Favell was a sponger and a cheat, I remembered him now, big, loose fleshed, good looks running to seed, a soft, flabby sort of man, with a weak chin and whisky breath, leering, suggestive. Rebecca had despised him and so had Maxim. So had I, though I had been afraid of him too, but I had been afraid of everyone in those days. I would not fear Jack Favell now.

  He had not left the wreath. He had not the taste, the subtlety, the finesse, he would make a mess of something like that, even supposing it had occurred to him to do it. He could never have chosen such impeccable flowers, with such care, and organised to have them left there by such stealth and exquisite cunning. He might have appeared at Beatrice’s funeral – indeed, I realised now that in some shadowy way I had half expected it; I might not have been surprised if I had glanced around the church that afternoon and seen him at the back, looking at me with watering, fishy eyes, hair thin now, his neck creased with fat. But he had not come, probably he had not so much as known about Beatrice’s death.

  The wreath was not his doing. He could not have written the letter R, such a faithful replica of her hand, on the cream card. He did not have that delicacy, his ways were obvious, crass, blundering ways.

  There was only one person in the world who could have planned the white wreath so meticulously, carried out such a clever, cruel hoax, forged the letter R upon the card.

  The little children were coming out of the nursery, I heard their voices in a high silvery stream, over the wall, heard pattering footsteps die gradually away and then the courtyard was peaceful again. But she was there. She was in my head and before my eyes and shadowing even this innocent, private place.

  I saw her dressed, as always, in silken black, with long bony hands sticking like claws out of the thin black sleeves, saw her skull face, parchment white, with its prominent cheek bones, and deep, hollow set eyes. I saw her hair scraped back from her face, flat, gleaming on her head, like the hair of the guide at the villa, and her hands folded together in front of her, saw her expression when she looked at me, scornful, superior, and then those other times, when it had flashed with hatred, and loathing, when she had despised me and mocked me and tried in so many subtle, malevolent ways, to undermine my fragile happiness and what little sense of peace and security I had clung to.

  I saw her standing at the head of the staff arrayed on the steps of Manderley to greet me so formally there on my first arrival, as a bride; at the top of the great staircase beside the minstrel’s gallery, looking blankly, coldly down upon me; and in the doorway of the bedroom in the west wing, gloating, triumphant, catching me guilty and unawares. I saw her eyes, filled with satisfaction and exultation, the night of the Manderley ball, when I had fallen so easily into the trap she had set for me.

  I heard her, too, her voice whispered again, intimate, unpleasant, soft as a snake.

  I did not know where she was now. We had never seen her again, after we had driven down to Manderley from London, that last, terrible night. She had packed her things and left, they said, her room had been found empty that afternoon. And after that, the fire. I did not want to know about her, I wanted rid of her from our lives, and from my mind, I never thought of her, never let her shadow fall across my path or come between us.

  Mrs Danvers had been Rebecca’s, she had belonged with her and with Manderley. I wanted none of her. But Mrs Danvers had sent the wreath. I knew it. I knew.

  I went out without taking my jacket or a bag, half ran, from the pensione, down through the narrow sidestreets, to the fountain. He was there already, sitting with his legs crossed and his glass of tea on the table before him.

  ‘Maxim,’ I called, out of breath, but trying to gather myself, trying to be as easy, as nonchalant, as he was.

  He looked up.

  ‘I’m better,’ I said, brightly, ‘isn’t it lovely? It’s still quite warm in the sun. I’m really perfectly all right.’

  I saw a faint frown between his eyes, a look of puzzlement. Why was I so anxious to reassure him, why did I have to protest, at once and so urgently and lightly, that I was well?

  I ordered tea, and a lemon ice. I was calm, very calm. I sipped my drink and ate tiny mouthfuls of the ice slowly, from the slender bone handled spoon, and in between them, I smiled at him. I did not blurt it out.

  But at last, I said, ‘Let’s leave here soon. I’d like a change, wouldn’t you? Surely we can enjoy somewhere else, before the winter comes.’

  We had not discussed that. I supposed we must settle somewhere, when the weather changed, but it had not seemed to matter where. It still did not. I was only desperate to leave here, because it was tainted now, I could no longer be peaceful here, no longer walk about these streets and squares without feeling that I must glance behind me. We had to move on again, to find a place which was not yet spoiled. Now, I was the one who was restless, I was the one who needed to run and run away, even though it was futile, and what I ran from was in myself, I carried it with me no matter how far we went.

  Maxim watched me. The cold ice made my throat ache as I swallowed it. I could not ask again, I thought, he would be suspicious and question me, and I could not have answered. I could never say her name, any of those names, out of that other world.

  And then he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought that we would go to Venice again.’

  It was dark by the time we went back to the pensione, the air was cold. On a whim, I did not turn into the front entrance, but went a few yards on, and up the little alley way, leading to the courtyard gate.

  ‘There’s something I want to show you,’ I said to Maxim. ‘I hadn’t noticed it properly before, but then, when I woke this afternoon, I saw it. It’s lovely – it smells so sweetly – but I don’t know what it is.’

  Why did I want to see him standing there, beside the creeper? I was not going to tell him about the wreath, and yet, showing him this seemed to be a way of telling, a way of linking them together in my mind and the need to do that was so clear and so powerful that it frightened me.

  ‘Look.’ In the dusk, the foliage receded and the tiny flowers stood out, pale and ghostly against it. I reached out and touched a petal with my finger. Maxim’s face was pale, too, in profile.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘pretty thing. You often see it in Mediterranean countries – a late flowering, before the winter.’ He reached out, and broke off a twig of it, and held it out for me. ‘It’s called Maiden’s Bower,’ he said, and waited, so that in the end, I was forced to take the flowers and carry them with me, into the house.

  By the time we reached Venice, riding at last across the open water of the lagoon towards that magic city at the end of the day, summer and autumn had withered away to winter, leaving no trace.

  The wind was cold, it blew in our faces and whipped up the water, so that we retreated under cover inside the boat, and when we disembarked at the San Marco station, the stones of the streets and the square ahead gleamed with rain. It was quiet, too, only Venetians got off with us, men with briefcases, putting up their coat collars and striding quickly away, going home, a few old women in black, carrying raffia shopping bags, heads bent.

  But it was still beautiful, I thought, it could never fail, I gazed across the water behind me at the dome of the Salute, and further across, to the island out of which the tower of S. Giorgio rose, so perfectly, and back as far as I could see, up the course of the Grand Canal, before it bent into the dusk, receding between the overlooking houses. I gazed not only in pleasure, but with a strange sense of unreality, as if I might close my eyes and blink the scene completely away. The last time we had come here it had been spring and the buildings had
glittered in the thin, pale early sunlight, and I had had an even greater sense of disbelief, for then, I had been newly married to Maxim, and quite disorientated, shaken by the surprise and swiftness of it all, carried along by him, and by the event itself, unthinking, willing, bewildered, ecstatically happy.

  I remembered so little of that time, I never had, it had been an interlude of uncharacteristic, carefree joy and irresponsibility, before we had returned to the real world, and its pains and cares and shocks had overtaken us again. Of all that followed, at Manderley, I recalled every detail, it was like a film that I could re-run on demand.

  But of Venice, and the other places we had first visited together, it was only small, irrelevant things I could remember out of the vague, overall blur of optimism and light headed-ness.

  Now, I saw it again as a very different place, with a sombre, darker expression; I admired it, I looked at it in awe, but, walking up the narrow alleyway beside a canal, following the porter who carried our bags, I shivered, not only because I was tired and chilled, but because I felt afraid of this ancient, hidden, secret city which seemed never to present a true face to us, but a series of masks, that changed, according to mood.