Mrs De Winter

by Susan Hill

  At the inquest, I had fainted, and in the turret at the Italian villa, I had fainted too. Now, I willed myself to faint, I wanted to be unconscious, it was the only way I knew I could escape her, the black figure, the white skull of a face with its burning cheeks and eyes, the terrible, relentless, insane voice.

  But I could not faint. I only sat, trembling, on the edge of the bed.

  In the end, she released me.

  It was as though she had been in some kind of hypnotic trance, thinking and talking of Rebecca, and that, within a few seconds, she had come out of it. She said, in a perfectly normal voice, ‘When you are ready, please come into the sitting room. I shall ring for tea,’ and she went quietly out.

  I did not want to stay there, in that cold, prettily decorated shrine, a room dedicated to the memory, not only of someone long dead, but who had never been there, a morbid fantasy of a place, peopled by the shadowy figures of one woman’s imagination. But I did not get up at once to follow her, I felt too shaken and unsteady.

  She had left one drawer slightly open and a piece of flimsy pale apricot silken stuff trailed out of it like breath. I wondered if she had ever worn it, but I was not troubled by it, I felt no fear of Rebecca’s ghost, she was not the one who threatened me.

  I heard a knock on the far door, voices. I stood up and went, without glancing back, into the outer room where a young maid was setting out tea on a small table, watched sharply, critically by Mrs Danvers, and where there was an air of everyday reality from which I could draw some relief and courage.

  ‘Please sit down, madam.’

  I saw the girl glance at me. It sounded odd to her too, that she should call me that, but what else was there? I knew that ‘Mrs de Winter’ would never cross her lips in relation to me.

  The tea was well made and hot and I drank it greedily, but we sat in silence for some while, for how could I begin to make normal, light conversation with her after what had happened? She sipped tea, watching me, neither of us ate, the cake was uncut, the scones left to go cold.

  I wanted to ask her if she had sought this position out deliberately, as soon as Favell had told her our whereabouts, I wanted to say I saw the wreath you sent, I have the card you wrote. You sent it to frighten me, didn’t you? Why? Why? You say that she whispers to you and that you will never let go, never leave us alone until – until what? What will you do? What will satisfy you? Haven’t you done enough in destroying Manderley? You did do that, it was you, wasn’t it?

  All of those questions hung in the air between us, the silence was electric with them, and they could never be asked, some words would never be spoken.

  All I managed to ask, blurt out, and without preparation, so that the question surprised me, I had not known that I was going to put it, was, ‘Are you happy here, Mrs Danvers?’

  She looked at me pityingly, as one would look at a very stupid person, or a young, silly child. ‘Happy? I have never been happy since my lady died, surely you must know that, and I never expect to be so.’

  ‘Surely you should try and make some sort of new life now – I know –’

  ‘You? What do you know? That she meant everything to me in life, from the first day I set eyes on her and will do until the day I die. If you do not know anything else, know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ I felt suddenly, desperately tired. I thought I could have laid down then on the floor and slept.

  ‘I count myself blessed to have had her, to have loved her and known her. Nothing else could possibly be of significance.’

  There was nothing to say. I finished my tea.

  ‘Purviss will bring the car round for you whenever you are ready, madam.’

  Could this be all then? Had she simply wanted me to see the room, to remind me of the past? To have afternoon tea and go home again? It seemed unreal. I wanted to laugh, hysterically, sipping the last of my tea opposite to her, as she sat stiff backed and motionless, black, gaunt, staring. You are an old woman, I thought, alone and pathetic, you live in and for the past, while we have a future. And I saw the children running down the slope, saw Maxim come into the house, smiling his familiar, languid smile.

  How could she touch that, how could this one old woman take any of it away? And then, I felt a great surge of new strength and resolve rise up within me; I was no longer a timid, shy, uncertain little thing, I was a woman, I had confidence and some experience, I was not afraid of Mrs Danvers. I was angry with her, angry not only with what she was trying to do now but with what she had previously done and been, the way she had tried to belittle and humiliate me, drive me from Manderley, part me from Maxim. For a moment, we looked at one another across the anonymous sitting room. She does not know me now, I thought, she is remembering the girl I was and playing upon my old fears.

  I stood up. ‘Mrs Danvers, I don’t think you understand how very different things are now. You are living in another world – another time. Everything has changed.’

  She stared at me, her eyes were hard, very bright. I could not tell what was going on in her mind.

  ‘Please listen to me. I find it very strange and very sad, too, that you are living like this – that you dwell on the past – talk about Mrs de Winter – Rebecca – keep that – that shrine to her; doesn’t it seem strange to you? A morbid thing? What can you hope to gain from it? You will only make yourself more unhappy – you cannot live like this – don’t you see that?’

  ‘How dare you tell me what I can do? You? What do you know? You know nothing. You never knew her.’

  ‘No, though I feel as if I do – I have lived in her shadow – lived with other people’s memories of her for what feels like half my adult life. It seems odd that I never knew her.’

  ‘She would have despised you – laughed at you.’

  ‘Probably. Yes. As you do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you see, that doesn’t hurt me – doesn’t affect me. I don’t care about that. I have Maxim – we have a new home – a new life. A future. The past cannot touch us now.’

  The laugh she spat out then was a harsh, bitter, dreadful thing.

  ‘Leave us alone. Leave us. There is nothing you can do, no possible harm. Don’t you see that? That I cannot be afraid of you.’ It was the truth. I meant it. It would not be Mrs Danvers who could hurt us. It was not pleasant to be in the room with her, the black figure and gaunt, white, impassive face still made me shudder. But I had drawn her sting, I felt superior to her, standing there now, something had happened and I drew courage from it, courage and resolve. I wanted to laugh in her face. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Danvers,’ I said, and held out my hand to her. She did not take it, only went on staring at me, but I did not feel embarrassed or awkward, I simply withdrew my hand, and met her gaze without flinching.

  As she crossed the room towards the bell and the outer door, and I followed her, she paused and without looking at me now, said, ‘He should confess. That will be the best way of all. It is what she wants, you know, to have it out in the open and dealt with at last. Then it will be over. She will not let me rest until then, you see. It is what I am for now, all I live for. But you know that, don’t you? You understand.’

  And she went ahead of me, down through the silent, cold house, without another word, and once I was in the car and it was moving slowly away, stood watching me intently, her white face quite stiff, quite expressionless, until we had rounded the bend between the great, spreading laurel bushes that lined the drive, and I lost sight of her.

  Nineteen

  I could not eat that night, and I had not expected to sleep, but the afternoon had drained me, and I slept the instant, heavy sleep of extreme exhaustion, lying on my bed with the covers thrown back, which helped me to be cooler. There were no dreams of any kind, no voices, and I awoke quite peacefully, into silence.

  Moonlight flooded the room. I got out of bed, went to the window to look at the garden, and as I did so, remembered Manderley on a summer night, and the garden after Beat
rice’s funeral, and it seemed that I had never been easy and peaceful for long, that some dreadful thing had always threatened, or else I was in the midst of turmoil. And so it was now, and I wondered if it would ever be different. There seemed every reason why it should not.

  I did not want to be there for hours, brooding, going over and over the previous afternoon. I thought I might as well be outside, sit in the garden that had come to mean so much to me and where I had, for a few weeks, been so happy.

  It was hot and still but as I went through the side door and on to the terrace, what I was most aware of, apart from the silver-white moonlight that overlay everything, was the night scent of the flowers, the honeysuckle that hung in thick overgrown swags on the brick side wall, and the white stocks in the border, the trough full of pinks beside the gate. I stood still and breathed them in and could not get enough of them, the scent filled me and calmed me, and brought the recent past back to me too, and the sweet smelling climber whose starry flowers were pricked out against their green foliage on the wall in Italy.

  And at once, the memory was spoilt, as my pleasure in the flowers had been spoilt there, by those other, perfect white flowers, lying on the churchyard grass. But I was used to it now, and I thought that I must simply accept and carry on. One thought led always to another and the thoughts danced in a ring around and around me, and I was coiled up in and snared by them.

  I wandered along the paths, across the dry grass, to where an old, comfortable bench stood, under an apple tree – the fruit was heavy and silver and before long it would ripen and fall. Already, in the afternoons, I had heard the grind of the threshing machines in the fields and the heavy wagons going along the lane at the end of the day. Harvest. Autumn. The turning of the year. I wondered how much it would matter, and whether I would mind the winter when it came.

  I sat down, and for a few moments, there under the beautiful tree, I seemed to float, to detach myself from my own body and look down upon the garden. I was very tired still, and the afternoon seemed like some odd hallucination, thinking back to that dark house, and to Mrs Danvers, in the pretty, nightmarish bedroom, I wondered if it had ever happened or whether I had made it up, as a child weaves a vivid fantasy that runs though its everyday life so convincingly that it cannot tell where reality begins and ends.

  And at that moment, as I sat alone in the night garden, I began to tremble with absolute, cold fear, that I was somehow mad, that at last everything that had happened, and that I had lived with and kept to myself for so long, had come together to turn my mind. Perhaps I was like Favell and Mrs Danvers, perhaps my eyes looked wild and strange, perhaps the craziness had begun to show in my own face. I put my hand out and touched the back of the other, ran it up my arm. It is all right, I said, it is perfectly all right. Maxim will be here the day after tomorrow. Everything will be better then.

  Maxim. I tried to picture him and could not. Every face I had ever seen in my life, it seemed, and which had never meant anything to me, was there, the faces of hotel porters and waiters in foreign cafés, of Clarice the maid and Jack Favell and the priest at Beatrice’s funeral, my father’s face, the young man who had been with Mrs van Hopper. Frith. Colonel Julyan. And then Mrs Danvers’ white bony skull, and hollow eye sockets and bright, mad, staring eyes. But not Maxim. Whenever I turned to him, there was nothing, a blur, a name, I could not see him, I had no idea what my husband looked like.

  There was a sudden rustle, a faint movement in the long grass close to the hedge behind me. The garden was a cold, unfamiliar, haunted place. I did not recognise anything. It was as though I had never been here before. Something moved again. It might have been some night bird or tiny, hidden creature but it was not, I knew that it was not. I waited for her to emerge, for her shadow to fall across the grass in front of me, curdling the moonlight, but it did not, and I supposed that she preferred to stay out of sight, and torment me more subtly and surreptitiously.

  I saw nothing, only the voice was there, the whispering voice, cool and soft and limpid as water flowing into me. ‘You are of no account at all. Less than none. He is the one who must confess. It is what I have been living for, that the truth will come out. She is guiding me, you see. She knows, and she tells me. He is a murderer. How does that feel? Surely you think of it. Yes – I know you do, I see it in your face, your eyes. When you look at him, catch sight of him in an unguarded moment. When you are together. When his hands touch you. His hands held the gun, his hands were covered in her blood, his hands lifted her body into the boat. His hands. I have waited such a long time. I am so tired. She is not. She will never tire. “I’ll wait forever, Danny,” she says, “but you have to help me.” I do. I am helping her now. It will come out, of course you know that it must. Did you really expect to come back, and live your lives out here quite happy and undisturbed, like innocent people? To enjoy this lovely house. So lovely, but not like Manderley. To have children here, and bring them up without their knowing the truth, pretending that the past did not exist. Of course you did not. I shall never rest. I shall never leave you alone until I have done what she wants. Make it easy for us. Then it will be over for you too.’

  On and on the voice whispered and I sat and heard it in the cold moonlight and could neither stop my ears nor move away. She went, in the end, she released me as she had done before. There was silence in my head and the garden was empty. I went back to bed and slept like a dead thing until after sunrise.

  It was still early, I was heavy eyed and numb with sleep when the telephone rang.

  ‘Maxim has taken the first train,’ Frank Crawley said. ‘He thought he would get off once he’d decided, rather than wait to ring you himself.’ His voice sounded so matter of fact and cheerful, the old, dependable Frank, I almost wept to hear it.

  ‘Oh – Frank, thank you. I thought perhaps – no, well it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes – yes, of course.’

  ‘You sound anxious. Has something happened?’

  Why did I not tell him? I had no one I could confide in, knew no one else who would have understood at once every nuance and shade of meaning involved in the story, I needed desperately to talk to him, my head seemed to burn with the fears and thoughts and whisperings and memories that flickered about inside it, telling Frank would ease them, he would say the right, reassuring thing, know at once what I ought to do. Frank was a rock of steadfastness and sanity. He had been a friend to me at Manderley when I had been bewildered and afraid, he had told me about Rebecca, he had been my supporter, always on my side. I had had no one else to turn to and I still had not. I knew I must tell him.

  But I did not.

  ‘I’ve been by myself long enough,’ I said. ‘I’m glad Maxim will be home tonight. There’s nothing else, nothing wrong at all.’

  I spent the whole of that day alone. Dora sent a message up by Ned to say she had an abscessed tooth and must go into Harburgh, and he worked at the farthest end of the garden, I scarcely caught sight of him. No one telephoned, the post was thin and none of it for me, no one came to the house. I could not settle, I wandered from room to room, fiddling with this or that, unhappy, accomplishing nothing. It was still hot, but there was no sun now, heavy, close, copper coloured cloud pressed in from the hills and hung down over the house. Gnats jazzed in little clouds above the pond, under the trees. I felt suspended, restless, oddly afraid, but there were no voices, no whispers, no shadow or footfall came over the grass.

  It is all nonsense, I said to myself quite suddenly, she is mad, what harm can she do? and went upstairs to change, riffling through my wardrobe of plain, pleasant, serviceable things to find something I thought Maxim liked. I remembered the flimsy silks and chiffons, the rows of expensive, beautiful clothes, but not with envy, for what good had they done her, how had they made her loved and happy, what meaning did they have now, except for a furtive, obsessed old woman?

  I stood, and looked slowly around the room, it was calm,
I thought, a pleasant, unobtrusive room, a refuge, as steadying as the house itself, and it seemed that it had been waiting quietly for me to come to out of some feverish nightmare in which I had behaved wildly but was not to blame, and the house knew that and accepted me back like some wayward, passionate child who has had a tantrum of rejection.

  I had put on a cream linen frock and tied my hair off my face, and as I did so, looking in the mirror on my dressing table, I saw some streaks of grey at my temples, and began to push them out of sight, but they would not be concealed, and then I thought that they did not matter. There was something else, too. I was still quite a young woman, but I was older by some years than Rebecca had ever been, and it occurred to me as a sort of triumph. She had no grey hairs, I said, and for a second, the image of her in the picture came into my mind and I felt nothing but a mild, detached kind of pity.

  Where was Rebecca? Dead. Nowhere. I did not know, it was a line of thought I had never followed. I was not deep and questioning in that way, but now I remembered the child I myself had been, and the growing girl, and then the gauche young woman who had met Maxim, the bride arriving at Manderley, the passionate, loving, bewildered wife in awe and dread of it all, places, people, memories, I saw them all standing in a line, one fading and giving way to the other. They led here, to this woman with the beginnings of grey hair, staring out of the mirror. They were that person. Me. And yet they were not, they were ghosts, and they had vanished. Where to? Where? They were not dead, as she was dead, but they no more existed than the newborn baby or toddling child I had also once been. How many selves do we contain, like Russian dolls concealed within one another?