Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  I could recognize all the people there; most of them were infernal bores, and I’d been skulking in the shrubbery in a desperate attempt to avoid them. I expect Rebecca knew that. But what happened next? Rebecca returned to her guests, I suppose, for, despite her remarks, she was assiduous on such occasions. I was flattered, though I think flattery was not Rebecca’s intention. And we did become friends—for which state, I suppose, I have these roses to thank.

  I looked for the heaven scent rose now—was it the third on the left, or the fourth? The labels have long gone, and I couldn’t be sure, and besides, thanks to my unconventional pruning techniques the roses look very different now. What were once great billowing bushes bowed down with flowers are now small twiggy affairs that reach knee height. I like flowers in serried ranks, as if drawn up on a parade ground. This taste is not universally shared, of course.

  There was a small danger that I might take this failure to locate the rose as an omen: I find I’m now given to seeing omens at every turn; I’m also becoming superstitious. I catch myself walking ostentatiously around ladders, or knocking on wood like some damn woodpecker. This is not a good sign. If softening of the brain (and what an unpleasant phrase that is when one thinks about it) first manifests itself in this way, I’m alarmed. I do not intend to give in to weaknesses of that foolish kind. I stumped up to the French windows in a purposeful way. “Barker—down,” I said, very firmly indeed, pointing at the hearth rug. Barker walked round the room four times, scratched himself, looked at me soulfully, and, finally, having demonstrated his independence of mind as he likes to do, lay down and went to sleep.

  I reached for the telephone to speak to Gray—I’d decided Terence Gray could definitely be useful to me; given his interest in Manderley matters, I could do worse than co-opt him, and make him my assistant on my new “quest.” Before I took him into my confidence, though, I’d stick to my resolve, and watch how he conducted himself on our Manderley walk. Then I remembered that I still hadn’t invited him for this walk. I began to dial his number, then changed my mind. I had forgotten all about my package, I realized, picking it up and examining it. Bound to be bumf, I said to myself, but even so I felt a little thrill of anticipation. I’d have felt a great deal more, had I known what the content was.

  Inside the envelope was a small black-covered exercise book, smaller than, but similar to, those once used in schools. It had an unusual detail, in that it fastened shut with its own attached leather laces, which wrapped around its width, and were tied in a neat bow on its spine.

  For reasons I then couldn’t put my finger on, this notebook looked familiar—and it engendered an unspecific but definite unease. I felt around in the envelope. I held the book by its spine, undid the laces, and shook it; to my surprise, an old sepia picture postcard of Manderley fell out. I saw that this had come loose from the notebook’s back page. There was nothing written on the card, however, and there was no letter enclosed with the little book. Curiouser and curiouser: an anonymous offering, then.

  I could already see that most, if not all, of the pages were blank. My unease deepening—who would send me an empty notebook anonymously, and why?—I laid it down on my orderly desk to examine it more closely. It was not entirely empty after all: One page, the first page, had been decorated. A small black-and-white photograph had been pasted in.

  This photograph, somewhat faded and with sepia tones, showed a small child—a girl. She appeared to be around seven or eight. She had an abundance of tumbled, inky, gypsyish hair, unusually large eyes, very striking eyes, and a suspicion of paint about the lips; they were far too marked and voluptuous to be their natural color. I frowned. I do not approve of women’s wearing makeup, and I certainly don’t approve of face paint on would-be appealing little girls. This child, to give her the benefit of the doubt, might have been taking part in some amateur theatricals, or had perhaps been dolled up for some fancy-dress party—or so I realized on inspecting the photograph more closely, with my magnifying lens. I then saw that, affixed to this curious child’s back, were a pair of wired, gauzy, spangled wings.

  Fairy? Imp? Angel? It was impossible to be sure what the costume had been intended to convey, and the child’s expression was certainly not angelic. It was difficult to date the picture, too, but from the style of the painted backdrop behind her (some canvas studio artifice by the look of it, featuring lushly unlikely foliage and funereal urns) I decided it had been taken at least forty years before; this little fairy had donned her wings around 1910 or 1912—certainly before the first war.

  I did not recognize her. I will write that again. I did not recognize her. Now I can see that the resemblance of this child to the woman I knew was evident—hair and eyes were unmistakable even then. Now I can see that I should have made the connection at once. After all, not a day has gone by in twenty-five years without my thinking of her. But, at the time, puzzled, uneasy, and flustered, I could not see the resemblance. Not until I turned the page and discovered the two title words written down in an otherwise empty notebook. They were written in black ink, in a child’s spiky hand, the tail of the last letter curling down the page in a long punning flourish: Rebecca’s Tale.

  I was shaken—very shaken. Who wanted to torment me now, and why? I’m ashamed to admit it, but I will: My first thought was that Rebecca herself had sent this, that it was a communication from the grave. I felt dizzy for a moment. I looked at the words Rebecca’s Tale, and my desk tilted. Could it be her handwriting? Was this, in embryo, the hand I knew so well? I thought it was. I looked at the size and swoop of the capital letters: I thought of that small coffin, that child’s coffin in my dream.

  I was very agitated. My heart started its bumping and thumping routine again. When I was sure I was more composed, I examined the sepia picture postcard. It had once been glued in on the final page, and the glue marks seemed old. I had never seen that particular postcard of Manderley before, and its presence in the notebook puzzled me. As far as I knew, Rebecca had no connection with this area in childhood and had never visited it, so why would she paste a picture of Manderley in a notebook she’d had as a young girl?

  The handwriting on the envelope bore no resemblance to Rebecca’s, or to the writing in the notebook, as I would have realized at once had the shock been less acute. The postmark was indecipherable. I examined the very ordinary heavy-duty envelope. It could have been bought anywhere in the country, in any one of a thousand stationery shops or village stores; I had a similar batch in my own desk drawers. I looked at the postmark through my magnifying lens; one of the letters might conceivably have been a “K,” though it could have been an “E.”

  I stared at this evidence. A sudden suspicion came to me, and I at once placed my call to Terence Gray.

  I made no mention of the lunch Ellie had proposed: Let the persistent Terence (or the Terrier or the Terror, as I sometimes call him) fend for himself. I had mixed feelings toward Gray at the best of times, and at that precise moment was not at all kindly inclined to him. Could he possibly have sent me this? If so, why? I’d get the answers to those questions, I resolved, before the day was out.

  “Has something happened, Colonel Julyan?” he asked as I made a few weather remarks. “There’s nothing wrong, I hope? You sound very agitated, sir.”

  I ignored the question. I proposed the afternoon walk, as planned. I said nothing of notebooks anonymously sent, nothing of winged children, and nothing of my dream. As expected, Mr. Mysteryman agreed at once.

  “I’m coming over to lunch anyway, sir,” he said. “I thought you’d know. Ellie called me earlier. So, I’ll see you about twelve-thirty. I’ll look forward to it, Colonel Julyan. There’s a great deal to tell you. I heard from Jack Favell this morning. He called me from London, and he’s agreed to see me at last. Oh, and I went over to see Frith yesterday, at that nursing home you mentioned….”

  “You did what?” I said.

  “I went to see Frith, sir. At St. Winnow’s. He’s very frail, of cour
se, but you’re mistaken as to his being senile. Whoever told you that was quite wrong. His memory was excellent. We talked for two hours, and he gave me some fascinating material….”

  Material? I hung up. Two shocks within half an hour was too much. Frith, whom I’d crossed off my witness list earlier, is one hundred and ninety years old—and that’s a conservative estimate. He was always a de Winter apologist; he never liked Rebecca, whom he regarded as an interloper; in short, the one-time butler is an unreliable witness and, if not gaga, a snob, a snoop, a fossil, and an inveterate nincompoop.

  Gray had no business to consult him without my being present, and the fact that he’d done so alarmed me. Gray has demonstrated these unilateral tendencies before (he went off to London to pursue his de Winter researches last week, and I still don’t know why, though it’s not for want of asking). Now, in the blink of an eye, he was about to see that liar Favell, and he’d already talked to Frith. Sometimes, I feel Gray plays his cards very close to his chest. Frith knows a great deal about me, as well as the de Winter family, and if he talked for two hours—two hours!—heaven only knows what rigmarole he chose to invent.

  Could Gray be devious? That suspicion has crossed my mind more than once. Ellie will have none of it, of course. She claims I read too many detective stories; she says I’m getting unnaturally suspicious, and I’ll start suspecting her of plotting next. She is always trumpeting Gray’s virtues, chief of which (according to her) are neither his conspicuous good looks nor his unmarried status, but his kindness toward me. “He takes you out of yourself,” she says. “It’s good for you to have someone to talk to about the past and Manderley and…and so on. Especially when he’s so interested in the subject himself. Don’t be such a curmudgeon. He bucks you up—you said so yourself.”

  This particular refrain was repeated several times this morning. Ellie had changed her clothes, I noted. In honor of the Terrier, she was now twenty-one, that is, ten years younger than she was yesterday, and ten times prettier to boot. How do women effect these transformations? For once, she was sensibly dressed, not in trousers (she will wear trousers) but in a modest skirt and a plain blouse; she was wearing the string of pearls her mother and I had given her to mark her twenty-first. She looked innocent, mischievous, and radiant. Her soft brown hair was newly washed; her skin glowed; there was a brilliance to her candid eyes that made me fear for her. I want a happy future for Ellie, and I cannot bear the thought that in the pursuit of happiness she could be hurt.

  Ellen, my Ellie, is all I have left. My wife, Elizabeth, died during the war, after years of illness; my son Jonathan’s fighter plane went down, and was never recovered, two weeks before the armistice; my elder daughter, Lily, from whom I was estranged, died in childbirth in Australia five years since, her baby son surviving her for only two weeks. I never refer to this Greekish sequence of events, and I will not do so again here. I will merely state the obvious: I can hope and plan for no one now, except Ellie—and I thought deeply of my dearest Ellie during the course of the morning as I waited for Gray to arrive for lunch.

  I was at a loose end. I pottered about, first in my study, then in my garden, then in the kitchen, where I was a nuisance and got under Ellie’s feet. Somehow I could not settle. I was worried about Ellie’s future, haunted by that winged child in the photograph; once again I felt old, seedy, and maladroit. My fine resolve of the night before now seemed less and less possible. Write the truth? What was the truth? Perhaps it was not the past, but the present, with which I should concern myself.

  Then I was struck by an idea: If I did co-opt Gray, as provisionally planned, if I involved him in my Rebecca “quest,” he would of necessity have to visit The Pines more often. Ellie would then encounter him more often. That might not altogether please me, but it would certainly please her. We live quite a solitary life and Ellie does not get out much. This magnanimity on my part immediately made me feel perkier. I returned from a sortie to the melancholy monkey puzzle with a new spring in my step.

  Terence Gray was just arriving as I reached the house. And Ellie, who had been slaving in the kitchen all morning, making bread and a chicken pie, was informing him—without batting an eyelid—that he would have to take pot luck. I was delighted at this innocent deception. Like father, like daughter, I said to myself. I may be getting on in years, but all my faculties are still intact. I fought in the first war, and was back in harness, breaking codes, in the second. I’m still a wily old fox, I told myself. I felt I was more than a match for Gray, well able to steer him in the right direction, and well able to deal with any unilateral tendencies he might choose to manifest.

  It wouldn’t take me long to find out exactly what old Frith had told him, I decided—and with that comforting intention (among others) I plied Gray with a glass of my latest bargain sherry (not too bad at all; a bit on the sweet side, but a discovery nonetheless); then, taking his gray-suited arm by the elbow, I led him most affably into my study for a little chin-wag before lunch.

  SIX

  SO HOW WAS OLD FRITH THEN?” I SAID. NO POINT IN beating about the bush. “Learn anything interesting? Warm enough in here for you, is it, Gray? Nasty nip in the air this morning, I thought. Ellie got the fire going for me. How’s the sherry? I hope it’s to your taste?”

  I had installed myself with my back to the fire, which was blazing away in a very satisfactory manner. Gray, as he tends to do when he comes here, was wandering around the room preparatory to settling himself. His eyes rested on my bookshelves, which cover all four walls just as they did in my grandfather’s day, and which are stacked floor to ceiling with a fine array of books. Before beginning any conversation with me, Gray likes to make a brief circuit of these shelves—and this morning was no exception. As usual, he began prowling about, peering at titles. I smiled to myself. Some visitors, as I’ve often observed, like to “read” one’s bookshelves, and make all kinds of rash deductions from them as to a man’s character, intellectual leanings, and so on. Gray is one such. Since I find the habit irritating, I’d made some alterations to the arrangements of these shelves since his last visit. I’d prepared a little test for him and was intrigued: Would he notice, or not?

  On the left, as you enter, are the older volumes, leather bound, that formed the backbone of my grandfather’s library. Gray, passing by, gave them a cursory look. Beyond them, by the bay window, come the sections devoted to natural history, military history, and the morocco-bound immortals my grandfather taught me to love, first the Greeks and then the Romans. Ellie keeps these dusted, but they don’t get read very often, I’m afraid. I was well-tutored by my grandfather, however, so I can still recite by heart great tracts of the Iliad. Barker is my only audience for these rousing recitations—and just as well, I expect.

  Gray paused by this section, then moved on to the far corner, where these deities join hands with their English counterparts. Here we begin with Chaucer and Malory: His Le Morte d’Arthur, much thumbed, was my mother’s favorite book, and mine, as a child. I owe to Malory my Christian names of Arthur and (God help us: I keep quiet about this) Lancelot.

  Gray dallied by Camelot, then moved more swiftly past all the obvious staging posts: Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope—all the poetry collections my dead son loved. He paused thoughtfully in the dark corner where the Romantics languish on a high shelf, came to a halt at Housman, and began on the novels. There, on the far wall, we romp through the eighteenth century via Sterne and the incomparable Fielding, dwell at length with Walter Scott, hop over that prissy Austen woman, skedaddle past those blasted Brontës, and finally reach the promised land, viz Dickens and Hardy. As grand finale, we have a seasoning of Russians, one or two German interlopers, and a couple of crafty Frenchmen who, in my opinion (which I never voice, obviously), are unbeatable on sex.

  Last, on the returning wall, which need not detain us (though it did detain Gray), we have a bit of a mishmash, namely the books I find useful at the moment. They include Tennyson; Conan Doyle (another
Arthur!); Miss Agatha Christie; Shakespeare’s Complete Works; a volume written by my grandfather entitled History of the Parishes of Manderley and Kerrith, with Walks; Bowman’s classic 1930 Great Murder Trials of Our Era; both of the books on the “Manderley Mystery”; the 1890 edition of the Boys’ Own Bumper Book of Adventure Stories; and the complete works of Marcel Proust.

  It was in this final section that I’d made alterations since Gray was last here. Would he spot the red herrings? Could he spot the clues? He misses very little and has a formidable memory. I caught a glint of amusement in his eyes; he took one of the volumes from the shelf (well spotted, Mr. Gray, you pass the test!) and smiled. Then—as I had also anticipated—he made a casual pass by my desk.

  It is orderly, as I’ve said, and I had left my morning’s parcel in a conspicuous position. There was the envelope, and—right in the center—there was the black exercise book, closed, and with its leather ties fastened up. I watched Gray closely. No sign of a reaction. This, unfortunately, did not tell me very much, since a) he may genuinely not have noticed, and b) he is a very cool customer in any case.

  He hove to, finally, by the fireside next to me, where he bent down to give Barker a pat and receive in return a malodorous lick. Barker was fonder of Gray than I was at this point; I was reserving judgment. Much depended on how Gray handled his cutlery at luncheon, what he said about Frith, and his demeanor once I revealed Manderley to him on our walk. I had given myself until the end of the day to make up my mind—and I did make up my mind, though not quite in the way I had anticipated, as will become evident in due course.