by Susan Hill
‘No,’ he said wearily, ‘no.’ But he took his hands away from me, and moved back.
‘I didn’t want those secrets. They gave me no – no satisfaction, no pleasure.’
‘I know.’
‘I couldn’t help it. One led to another, but I wanted to protect you – to keep things from hurting you.’
He bent and kissed me, very lightly and chastely, like a father kissing a child, and I could not make any move to draw him closer to me. Tomorrow, I thought. We are both tired, we don’t know what we are doing or saying.
‘Tomorrow.’
He looked at me. ‘Go to bed now.’
Tomorrow, we would begin all over again. The secrets were over, there would be no more of them. And no fears, I told myself. No fears.
As I went towards the door, unsteady, dizzy, with exhaustion, I said suddenly, ‘Will Frank leave Scotland and come here? Have they decided? Did he tell you?’
He paused, looking at me as if my voice came from far away and he had difficulty in focusing on what I said or even recalling who I was. Then he said, ‘Oh – yes, yes, I think perhaps they may.’
Then it would be all right. That was my last thought, as I left the room. Frank would come and there would be a new beginning. It would be all right.
As I got ready for bed, I heard the storm rising, tossing the trees, rushing down the slopes and across the garden, to beat and beat at all the walls and doors of the house. But I pulled the covers high over my head and then there was only a sound like the sea, racing up the shingle and over me, pulling me back and down, down into itself.
All that night, I was tossed about by my dreams, and by the sound of the storm. Several times I struggled to the surface, and did not know whether I slept or woke, and each time, I was dragged under again. There was never wind like it, crashing though the trees, hurling itself again and again about the house, the whole world seemed to have gone mad and run loose, I heard myself call out to Maxim and thought that he replied quietly, soothing me, but then his voice seemed to be sucked into the eye of the storm and swirl about within it, receding further and further away. My dreams were dreadful, crazed, confused, full of whisperings and sudden wild gusts of wind, and moving, menacing shadows, but more than anything else, they were dreams in which my feelings were most vivid of all, fear and bewilderment, and a terrible hollow yearning, a searching after someone, something, and flying after my own voice which kept escaping from me as if it had a separate life. But then, there was only sinking down into a heavy, bottomless depth of sleep, where no sound or light could penetrate.
*
I woke in a panic, not only because of the ravenous, angry, tearing sound of the wind outside, but because of a dreadful sense of unease with myself. I switched on the lamp. Maxim’s bed was in disarray, but it was empty, and the wardrobe door was hanging open.
In my sleep, in some place below my dreams, I had been talking to him, arguing passionately with him, and now, the same strength and anger I had felt at Mrs Danvers, was like the storm, battering at me, urgently, and I knew it would not let me rest until I had found him, said what I must, made him understand.
Ten years of guiding him, protecting him against the truth and the past, shielding him from reminders, preventing him from brooding, of deciding and building up my own frail confidence, ten years of growing up, seemed to have come to a head. I knew what I thought, could see sense from nonsense, I would fight for what we had achieved, how we had won. I knew what I wanted, what must be, I was not prepared to throw any of it away, or to let Maxim fly off on a whim, in confusion and distress.
I ran down through the house, pulling the belt of my dressing gown into a tight knot as I went, not stopping to put slippers on my feet. The wind kept dropping, and there would be a minute of absolute quiet, before it gathered its strength and hurled itself at the windows and around the chimneys again.
There was a line of light under the study door.
‘Maxim.’ He looked up. I saw that he had been writing something. ‘Maxim, why are you dressed? Where are you going? You can’t go out, it’s the most terrible storm.’
‘Go back to bed. I’m sorry I woke you, I didn’t mean you to wake.’ He spoke very gently again, with extreme care and concern.
‘Maxim – I need to talk to you. There are things I have never said and I must say them.’
‘It would be better not, don’t you think?’
‘Why? To create misunderstanding? What use is that?’
‘There’s no misunderstanding between us. None.’
‘Yes. You haven’t understood me. Maxim, we have everything here, we have come through to this.’
‘Have we?’
‘Yes, yes, I was right to come – you know it. Nothing can change that. Are you telling me you are afraid? Of what? I’m not afraid.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you’re not, are you? Not now. I see that.’
‘And I’m not wrong. I won’t be made to feel that coming back was foolish. I’ve watched you – I know. It is what was right for you – what you wanted.’
‘Yes. Perhaps you’re right.’
‘You were tired and shocked and upset. You talked under strain – but you have nothing to fear, nothing to hide.’
‘Yes, I have. You know that I have.’
‘What can they do?’
‘I don’t know, but they will do it. And I can’t live with it – or live under that shadow, not any longer.’
‘And I?’
‘You?’ He looked distant for a second, then he came to me, and touched my face gently.
‘I think of you,’ he said, ‘believe me. All the time.’
‘No, you don’t, you can’t.’ But he did not reply, only made to go past me, out of the room. I went after him.
‘Maxim, come upstairs and sleep. We can talk about it tomorrow, if we must.’
He did not seem to hurry and yet he moved quickly, walking across the hall, taking down his coat, picking up the keys to the car from their peg.
‘Where are you going?’
But he would not answer. I ran and put myself between him and the door, and he stopped then and kissed me, as if he were leaving for an hour, and I took hold of his hand hard, but he was stronger than me, and had no trouble in pulling away.
When he opened the door, the wind raced into the hall like a demented, howling thing, I could not hear what Maxim said, if he did say anything. I wondered if he were planning to go to Frank, or to London – I could not think. The wind was driving any coherent thoughts from my head, I wanted to slam the door and retreat, to protect myself from it.
‘Maxim – Maxim, come back! Wait – wherever you are going, don’t go now. Please wait!’
But he was walking very fast across the drive in the teeth of the wind, and it was pitch black, I could not see him. I tried to follow him but the wind was tearing at my hair and my clothes and I cut my feet on the gravel. The headlamps of the car went on, and then I did run, not caring about the storm, I ran almost into the path of the car but he swerved easily around me, I saw his face, set and white, staring ahead, and not looking, deliberately not looking at me, and then he had gone, out of sight up the slope and into the raging wind and rain and blackness.
When I returned to the house – because there was nothing else that I could do, I went at once to the telephone, although I knew that it was in the middle of the night – waking them did not matter, it would be what they would want. I did not think about it twice. I knew that he could not have thought for a moment of driving up to Scotland, but somehow, I believed he would contact Frank, somehow he might get there.
There was no sound. The lines were down in the storm, the telephone was dead.
After that, I could do nothing, only sit alone in dread, listening to the battering of the gale and the rending and crashing sounds as trees were uprooted and torn down. It was terrifying, and I dared not imagine what it would be like to drive the car through such a wind, could not let myself think
of that. I prayed, desperate, bargaining, blackmailing prayers.
In the end, I went and lay on my bed, and heard the wind and begged for Maxim to be safe, as if willing it with all my new found confidence and strength.
I must have slept at last, more disturbed, haunted sleep, rent by dreams and terror and the sounds from outside.
I awoke to an unnaturally quiet morning. The light coming into the room was curiously pale. I went to the window and looked out, and saw a world washed clean and clear and a scene of devastation. The garden lay on its side. The slopes were strewn with branches and half trees where the storm had hurled them, and above the grassy bowl, there were jagged gaps, and daylight and sky where no sky had been before.
I went downstairs. Maxim was not back. I could see from the window that the car was still out of the garage. I tried the telephone again but it was still dead, and so because there was nothing else that I could do, I dressed quickly, and went outside, fearfully, to look at the damage the storm had done, and my fear about Maxim, and all the memories of the previous night stood a little way off, watching, waiting, and I was able to hold them there and not turn to them, simply because of the horror of what the wind had done. I picked my way over this or that uprooted, felled, broken thing, not touching, only looking, looking. I did not cry. Tears were poor, irrelevant things, no sort of a response to this.
I went into the kitchen garden. I thought that the walls would have sheltered it but the whole of the far one had fallen into a heap of rubble, so that the wind had been given a way in and roared about like an insane thing, tearing, uprooting, flinging about. The gate was off its hinges, I had to push and push to get through. And when I did, half stumbling over, I wished that I had not.
The nut walk had gone. Where the beautiful, slender young trees had arched up and over, where I had walked up to the view of the open countryside in the distance and the shining silver spire, was a tangled mess of broken branches and poor, pale, raw stumps.
I wept then, as I stood there, but they seemed pointless tears and were soon over.
It was quite cold. The sky was an even wash of grey, the light watery. My shoes were soaking wet and the hem of my coat clung to my legs.
And then fiercely, desperately, I wanted Maxim and nothing else. I could not bear to be alone here. I did not remember what we had last said to one another, how much misunderstanding there was between us. I knew that I had not explained everything properly, I had not made him understand why, why, the reasons for everything going back over this past year or even further. I had not said that I was sorry.
I half ran over the grass and up the terrace to the house. I must somehow try to find out where he had gone, and get him to come home.
But as I crossed the hall, I saw the door of the study standing open, and that there was a letter propped up on the inkstand. I went in. It was in a plain, white envelope, not addressed. But I knew that it was for me, and sat down on the chair, and opened it, and read what was there.
Though I knew. I had no need to read it. I knew what had been in his mind and in his heart, what had come to obsess him, knew about his guilt and how he perceived the truth of it all to be.
We are not punished for our sins, we are punished by them. We cannot live with guilt for the whole of our lives.
And as I finished reading, I heard voices, Dora calling my name.
They had come to find out if we were all right, what damage there was, they were concerned. I wept then, at their kindness and gentleness, and in weeping, told them what I could about Maxim, and then it was all taken out of my hands, messages were sent, people came and went and after that, for hours, all I could do was wait, wait for news, and for the telephone to be repaired, as in the end it was, so that when it rang for me, I could answer it, and listen to what they were telling me, about Maxim.
Twenty Two
He was almost there. They had found the car off the road, crushed against a tree, down on one of the narrow, twisting lanes not far from Manderley. I had driven along it myself the year before, we had both driven there so many times.
I did not want to go. I asked them to send for Frank Crawley. He was an old friend, I said, he would identify Maxim, surely, what difference would it make? But that could not be, they did not allow it. I was his next of kin. His wife. Mrs de Winter. I must go.
He was strangely undamaged, there seemed to be only some faint bruising on his forehead. I could not understand why he was dead.
But I do not think of that. I do not see him there. I see him in every other place we were together, driving up the road at Monte Carlo, striding down though the Happy Valley with Jasper jumping at his heels, standing beside me with his hands resting on the rail of the old steamer, as we sailed into Istanbul between the sunset and the crescent moon, looking down from the grassy slopes on to Cobbett’s Brake, cupped below.
No, I do not see him there.
At first I did not want a funeral at all, not of any kind; but there has to be something, and others wanted it, Giles and Roger, Frank Crawley, old Colonel Julyan. But it must not be in the chapel at Kerrith, or even in the village church near Cobbett’s Brake. I wanted none of that, I was surprised how determined I was; and that there should be no grave.
He should not be buried in the vault, beside her. I could not have borne that, and there was nowhere else, and so he would not be buried at all, there should be no body left to bury. What there was I would look after in another way.
We went to a small, bland, new place, twenty miles from where the car had run into the tree, and I had never seen it before, and would never see it again, it was too anonymous for me even to remember. That was why I chose it, with Frank to help me. He found it, he made the arrangements.
There were seven of us, and the clergyman, it was soon over. I had made quite sure that no one else should know about it. But afterwards, when the curtains had parted and closed again, and he had gone, and we were walking out into the grey, damp air that smelled of autumn and the sea, I saw a figure in an overcoat, tall, thin, vaguely familiar, but he turned away out of respect, and when I looked back again he had gone. It was only a long time later that Frank said that it had been young Robert, the footman from Manderley, who had heard some rumour, and come from Kerrith, where he lived still, but had only hovered, not liking to intrude.
Robert. I put his name aside somewhere in my mind, to think of him later. Remember.
There was nothing else, no tea, no gathering. She did not come. Nor Jack Favell. But I had known that they would not, there would have been no need, they had what they wanted. Revenge, I would have said. But Maxim called it justice.
There was only one thing left to do and that was for me alone. Frank, dear Frank was desperate with concern, he would have come, thought he should be there, for me and for himself. But when I insisted, he did not press, only understood.
A car I had hired took me there and I collected the wooden box which bore his name, and then we drove to the harbour, where the boat waited, and I saw that it belonged to Tabb’s son, and although I had not wanted anyone I knew to be involved, I did not really know him, and somehow, it was right, and I was glad of him.
It was still damp and grey and misty. I felt the spray on my face as I stood in the boat and we crossed the bay, going towards the cove. The water was not rough. I suppose because he thought it was the right thing to do, he did not go fast, the motor was quiet, it seemed to take a long time. We said nothing at all to one another, until, suddenly, I saw the trees rearing up from the banks, the undergrowth climbing like a jungle, and beyond them, within them, completely hidden, whatever there was of Manderley.
‘Here,’ I said. ‘Stop here.’
He switched off the boat’s engine and then it was perfectly silent, except for the crying of the gulls. I saw the cove ahead, and the beach, but I did not want to go any nearer. I went to the side and waited a moment, and then I opened the small box, and overturned it gently, tipping its fine pale powder out, and as I did s
o, the ashes lifted, and blew away from me, carried towards Manderley with the salt wind from the sea.
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OTHER BOOKS BY BY SUSAN HILL
Black Sheep
The village of Mount of Zeal is built on three levels. Ted Howker, his father and his brothers live in Middle, stuck between Lower Terrace and Paradise. But, to the great shock of his family, Ted is not content to follow in the footsteps of his father.
A Kind Man
Tommy Carr was a kind man; Eve had known that immediately. But after the tragic death of their young daughter, Tommy’s personality is eroded by grief. What happens next is entirely unexpected, not least for the kind man ...
The Beacon
The Prime children grew up in a bleak country farmhouse called The Beacon. Only Frank got away. He left for a career in journalism: the publication of a book about his childhood brings the fame and money he craves – and tears his family apart.
The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read
A young school boy becomes friends with a beekeeper and begins teaching him to read; a country girl fights against becoming a downtrodden domestic skivvy; a gang of boys plans an unforgivable deed. In this collection of expertly crafted stories, Susan Hill presents us with an utterly captivating panorama of human nature.
The Service of Clouds
At the far end of the long white gallery is a painting of a woman, in pale flowing clothes and lying on a sofa beside an open window. This image is to prove the catalyst for the most significant event in Flora’s life. The Service of Clouds is a profound exploration of love, loyalty, friendship, growing up and growing old.
Mrs De Winter
Rebecca was Daphne du Maurier’s most famous and best-loved novel. Countless readers wondered: what happened next? Out of the fire-wracked ruins of Manderley, would love and renewal rise phoenix-like from the ashes of the embittered past?
The Mist in the Mirror
For twenty years Sir James Monmouth has pursued his fascination with the pioneering traveller Conrad Vane. His quest leads him to the old lady of Kittiscar Hall, and deep into a past that binds him to his hero in ways he never could have imagined