Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  ‘Actually –’ I said, ‘to tell you the truth, it is a problem – it’s very difficult. Perhaps you could tell me of a doctor I might see? We’ve been abroad – I don’t know of anyone really, or how to go about finding the right one. Only – I wouldn’t want it talked about.’

  I felt my face flush. She looked at me squarely, her eyes quite serious. ‘Absolutely understood. You may be surprised but I am very good at not blabbing – my father taught me. Tittle tattle about any old stuff, he’d say, but never betray what matters. I’ve tried to stick to it.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I believe that. Thank you.’

  ‘And as to your doctor – I’ll have to make a few very discreet enquiries. I’m afraid I had mine just like that, you see, and old Broadford, the local chap looked after me – he’s retired now, of course, there’s a sharp new young man I don’t much take to but he’s fine for all the coughs and colds and Bill’s arthritis. We’re never ill much, though I suppose one has to look to old age. But I’ve a niece and a sister in London who’ll be able to advise. I’ll let you know and I won’t keep you waiting. Shall we go out and look at the roses and I’ll tell you what’s been lost through neglect, if I can, you might want to put something back, though of course you’ll have your own ideas and quite right too. Are you a very keen gardener? We are, frightfully.’

  And she was off, striding out of the house, calling out to Ned. I wondered what Maxim would make of her, whether he would find her tiresome. But it did not matter. She was good for me just now, her forthrightness was what I needed. And she had asked no questions about us at all, only appeared to accept whatever we were at once and carry on from that point.

  We went out, into the sunshine of the garden.

  ‘His name is Lovelady.’ She had telephoned me early that evening. ‘Which you will have to agree is the most divine name for a gynaecologist, and my niece says he’s the absolutely top man, she wouldn’t look at anyone else, and very sympathetic and all that, which I’m sure you want, but no smarm either, tells you what’s what.’

  ‘I think I’d prefer that too.’

  ‘Well, of course you would, you want to know where you are. He’s not in Harley Street either, which is a blessing I should say, it’s such a dreary street. He’s in Kensington, a nice quiet square.’ She gave me the address and telephone number. ‘I’d offer to come with you, I wouldn’t mind a day up in town, and of course you’ve only to ask, but I should think you’d rather go alone, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, actually I do think I would, Bunty. But thank you.’

  ‘No bother at all – now don’t worry, my dear – what will be will be – you might as well be philosophical – but of course it’s stupidly easy for me to talk. Good luck.’

  I had written the name and number on a piece of paper and now, hearing Maxim on the staircase, I stuffed it into my pocket, as if I were guilty of something. I felt guilty. I did not understand why, but I wanted to do all this in secret, never to tell him. If the doctor suggested that he wanted to see Maxim too, I would simply say it was impossible, and bury the whole matter, it seemed almost a matter of pride that I saw to it alone. We never spoke of children now.

  I tried to plan out very carefully how I would broach the subject of a visit to London, turned phrases and reasons over in my mind, even mouthed them to myself. I thought that I would choose the right moment, say it as I went out of the room perhaps, casually, as if it were of no particular importance, an afterthought.

  But now that Bunty had given me the doctor’s name, I could think of nothing else, it seemed so urgent, I could not wait. In the middle of dinner, I said, ‘Maxim, I want to go to London,’ blurting it out, so that he glanced up in surprise.

  ‘You never want to go to London. You hate London, especially in this weather.’

  ‘Yes, I know – what I mean is, I need to go, I really must get some summer clothes, I don’t have anything much, and then there are things for the house –’

  I knew what someone must feel, lying in order to meet a lover. I was sure he would be suspicious. Please, I said, please.

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, too quickly. ‘No, you’d be very bored.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just drive me over to the station – I’d like to go early – one day next week, I think.’

  ‘Fine. I wish Frank would write – I do want to know whether he’ll come down and go over that farm and the extra woodland with me, I need his advice.’

  With relief, I plunged with him into a land discussion, eager to show interest, eager to leave the subject of London. It had been easy after all.

  But not so easy to get what I wanted at once. Dr Lovelady’s diary was very full, I heard when I telephoned early the following day, he had no appointment for almost a month.

  ‘Oh, I hadn’t realised,’ I said. ‘Of course, I understand – but is there nothing, nothing at all – I’m – I’m so anxious to see him.’ To my shame, I heard the fears in my voice, my own distress and agitation. I had not known how desperately I wanted this, now that I had made my decision, I could not bear the idea of waiting several weeks.

  ‘Would you wait a moment, please.’ She went away. I heard her footsteps, voices in another room. I imagined her saying, ‘She seems to be very distressed, there’s obviously something very wrong, do you think you could manage to see her?’ and felt foolish.

  ‘Mrs de Winter – Dr Lovelady will see you after his hospital rounds on Thursday – will you be here at three?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course – oh, thank you so much.’

  I wanted to weep, and dance, and run to Maxim – ‘It’s going to be all right, we shall have our children,’ and I saw them again, darting across the lawn, going up to fetch the ponies. For I was far ahead, all the problems done away with, I was not anxious now, it would all work out perfectly, just as the house had done.

  I heard Dora arrive, and begin to stack the crockery into the sink, singing cheerfully.

  ‘I’m going up to London, Dora,’ I said, ‘on Thursday. I shan’t be back until late. I wonder if you’d just prepare something light for Mr de Winter’s supper?’ And we went on to discuss trout or salmon, and whether the tomatoes were ripening up, and as we did so, I realised that I felt different in some way, confident – grown up, at last.

  ‘You look quite excited,’ Maxim said, amused. ‘You look as if you were off for an assignation.’

  I felt my face burn.

  ‘And so you should – you need a day out – I’m sorry you haven’t an old friend to go with.’

  ‘I’m perfectly happy on my own, Maxim, I shall like it much better.’

  ‘Well, make sure you treat yourself to a very nice lunch.’

  ‘Oh no, I shall only have a sandwich somewhere, I’d feel wrong eating lunch alone.’

  No, not for that reason, I thought, getting into the train, looking out after Maxim, waving as we pulled out, but because I could not eat, could not swallow even the sandwich, not until I have seen him, heard what he will tell me, not until I come out again into the street, knowing, knowing what will be.

  London was beautiful to me that day, the streets sparkled, the windows of the buses and taxis were flashing mirrors reflecting the sun, and the trees were bowers under which I stood to refresh and cool myself. The buildings seemed more graceful, more stately than I had remembered, and the curve of Albert’s back as he sat gravely in his memorial was described as elegantly as a bow. I saw it, as I saw everything, with new eyes. I walked through the park, I looked at skipping children and navy blue nannies clustered together with their prams, and watched the birds and the sailing boats with a heart as light as a feather, for they would be mine, my babies, my sturdy, sunlit children, flying their kites into the brilliant sky, their faces seemed so bright, their eyes danced, there was nothing but playfulness and laughter on the air.

  Earlier, I had gone into shops, and had to buy a couple of skirts and blouses, take
some samples of fabric, because otherwise, what would I have to show for my guilty visit? But I had hurried over them – choosing anyhow, and then gone to wander among nursery things, chests and cribs, and up, among the cricket bats and dolls’ houses, seeing this or that in its place at Cobbett’s Brake, smiling at the sales girls, as though sharing a secret.

  I could not have relished it so much if I had not been alone. I spent the day hugging the pleasure close to myself, savouring it, making it last. I shall not forget this, I thought. I did not see the bomb sites, still strewn with rubble, cratered and ugly, only saw where the wild flowers grew up between the broken, blackened walls and heaps of stones.

  It was very hot, but I was not aware of being tired, I walked an inch above the pavement and the journey was effortless.

  The square was large, with tall, pale cream houses, and chestnut and plane trees throwing deep pools of shade. There was a garden behind railings in the centre, where children played among great green shrubs, I heard their voices, more children.

  And then, the house, with the brass plate that seemed to me to be made of gold, magically lettered. I went up in an ancient lift that rose magisterially, through the shadowy, quiet house.

  ‘Would you go into the waiting-room, Mrs de Winter? Dr Lovelady won’t be very long.’

  But I did not mind, I was happy to wait here, in this cool high ceilinged room, full of a ticking clock and the distant shouts of the children in the square, a little antiseptic, a little lavender polished. I did not pick up any of the fan of magazines, or look at the newspaper, neatly folded, or even at the cartoons on the walls. I wanted to sit, holding myself and my awareness of where I was and why, like a precious object.

  ‘Mrs de Winter?’

  He was younger than I had expected, sandy haired, heavy. His eyes looked directly at me, so that I felt summed-up, pigeonholed.

  I sat down, and was suddenly weak, I felt myself twisting my fingers together in my lap.

  I began to answer the questions.

  Fifteen

  On a corner of the street, close to the underground station, an old woman was selling violets, sitting patiently on a small canvas stool, her face upturned to the sun; I bought a bunch from her, and gave her too much money, and walked away not taking the change. I pinned the flowers on the lapel of my coat with the brooch I was wearing. They would wilt and die before the end of the afternoon but I did not mind, for now they were damp and fresh and sweet smelling. They reminded me of the woods above the house, and the deep, cool banks on either side of the stream that ran down the hillside and along the bottom of the garden.

  I was walking again, through the hot, bright early afternoon streets, walking but I wanted to dance, and run and spin around and around, to stop passers by and tell them, have them dance with me.

  ‘Any worries about anything?’ he had asked. I heard his voice now, friendly, at ease, almost matter of fact. ‘Apart from your very understandable worry about not having conceived.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No worries at all.’

  For there were not, were there, not real ones? The unpleasantness about the wreath, the whispering voices, those were over, I dismissed them as trivial, fantasies I had made too much of, the evening Maxim had handed me Frank’s letter about Cobbett’s Brake, it was as though I had watched them slip over the side of the ship into the black water of the Bosporus and drown, and I had given no thought to them since.

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘You eat well – sleep – have plenty of things you enjoy doing – that sort of thing?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ I had told him about the house, and the garden, and all the joy of it, and he had looked pleased, had nodded and made a note. I felt he approved, and somehow that mattered, as though, if he were pleased with me, he could pronounce a hopeful verdict, as though he had magical powers over me by his approval.

  I had been nervous, not of the examination or the questions – I had always been perfectly easy about anything of that kind, I had had a sensible mother – but because of the significance of it. Everything seemed to be hanging by the finest thread in that dim, quiet room, with its moulded ceiling, its tall curtained windows, its important looking desk. He had not hurried, there had been silences while he thought about something I had told him, or made a note.

  As I walked past the ornate façades of the museums and the Brompton Oratory, along the wide pavement, I went over and over the scene in my head, watched it, like the repeated re-reeling of a film. I could not get enough of it, I wanted to be sure that it was lodged in my memory forever. I knew where I was, but I went ahead unseeing, unaware.

  He had leaned back in his chair, fingertips together. They were very clean fingertips, I had noticed, immaculately shaped nails, good hands, pleasing to look at. ‘Of course,’ he had said, ‘there are no certainties. I’m sure that you understand that. These are very delicately balanced, very sensitive human mechanisms – I often wonder whether, all other things being equal, it is not as much a matter of pure luck as anything else. But you have to remember, nature is on your side, and that is a tremendously powerful force. She is on the side of life – she wants you to have children – it’s in her interests. She wants us all to be fruitful and multiply – it’s her raison d’être.’

  I thought that he had probably made the speech before – perhaps he made it almost every day, but I listened to each word as if it were a divine pronouncement, and infallible.

  ‘I want to reassure you at once. I have found nothing whatever wrong with you – no physical or, indeed, other reason why you should not conceive a child – children. Naturally there are things I cannot be sure about from this sort of consultation and in time, if things have not gone to plan, I can make further investigations; but I suspect they will not be necessary. I want to give you every possible encouragement to be optimistic. Simply don’t worry about it. I have a feeling that now you are happy and settled in your life, everything will take its course – and that before too long, you will be coming to see me again and I shall be confirming the good news. I know it.’

  So did I, oh, so did I; he had told me he was sure too, it must be true.

  I began to be hot and tired, suddenly, and very thirsty. I had walked too far. I hailed a taxi, and asked for a street off Piccadilly where I knew there was a quiet hotel in which I could have tea, and sat in the back, and smelled the faint smell of the violets and knew that it would be bound up forever with this day, this feeling of confidence and new beginnings.

  At the end of the street a brewer’s dray was blocking the way, and the driver had to stop there. I could walk the few yards up to the hotel. It was very hot indeed now, the pavements baked, the tarmac was sticky and pungent as it melted here and there. I had thought that I might walk further, go along to the shops in Piccadilly, or to sit among the fountains of Trafalgar Square, but now, I wanted only to rest and have my tea, and then go to the railway station and home. I longed for the garden in the last rays of the evening sun, the smell of the roses, sitting talking to Maxim, my hand in the cool still water of the pool.

  I walked around the brewer’s dray, and the men rolling the great iron hooped barrels down planks and into the black cellars below the pavement made way for me, shouting cheerfully. Then, I heard another voice, a different sort of shouting.

  There was a telephone kiosk, with the door propped ajar as the man inside leaned his back against it. He had a suitcase propped up on it too, and protruding from the open door, a collapsing, ancient, stained cardboard thing tied across the middle with a frayed brown leather strap. Things were bursting out of it, bits of dirty cloth and what looked like yellowing newspapers.

  The man had hold of the telephone receiver as if it were a weapon, I thought, gripping and brandishing it, as he shouted violently. The words were incoherent, ravings, and I wondered, as I passed by, if he were one of the mad, war damaged who seemed to be about the London streets, frightening, odd figures, in their own, terrible, locked worlds, and I stepped back
instinctively, afraid that he would burst out of the door and into me, but I could not help looking at him as I did so. He wore a raincoat, with hair long and unkempt over the collar, and shabby brown trousers.

  He did not back out, but as I went past the half open kiosk door, he turned and looked straight at me. His eyes were wild and bloodshot, and I knew them.

  I began to run, stumbling in my shoes that had suddenly begun to feel pinched and hard after so much walking, anxious only to get away before he recognised and came after me, pushing hard in my panic against the revolving doors into the foyer of the hotel.

  But then it was safe, it was ordered and calm and dim, the receptionist looked up and smiled.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam.’

  I went up to her in relief, saying that I would like tea.

  ‘Of course – the porter will show you into the blue lounge. You’ll find it very cool and quiet in there, really pleasant after this heat.’

  ‘Thank you. Oh – and may I use the telephone – I realise I’ve left something at my last appointment.’ I had bought a silk scarf, on impulse, earlier in the day, meaning to give it to Bunty Butterley, to thank her, and I had realised in the doctor’s rooms that I had left it behind on the shop counter – it was not among my other things.

  It took some time to get through to the correct department and make myself understood, but in the end, the scarf was found, and I gave my name and address, for it to be sent on, annoyed that it meant there would be a delay – I wanted to see Bunty, I felt a great warmth towards her, because I had been able to talk to and confide in her, and it had been she who so promptly had found the doctor for me. ‘I would be so grateful if you would put it in the post today – it is a present, I don’t want it to be delayed,’ I said, and repeated the address slowly. But it would be perfectly all right, she assured me, they would send the junior to pack and post it at once, I should receive the scarf the following morning.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Thank you so much,’ and put down the receiver, and turned, to face Jack Favell, the man with the suitcase, who had come to stand very close to the telephone booth, so that as I stepped away from it, I had no escape, no means of avoiding him at all.