Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  The cab lurched forward across an intersection. Favell slumped back in his seat again. I tensed; I hardly dared speak in case he balked, or shied away from what he’d just told me. I waited until we were turning into Piccadilly Circus, with the Eros fountain ahead of us.

  “Jack Devlin?” I said, watching him.

  Favell gave me an irritable glance, as if I were being very slow. “Jack Devlin. My uncle. My mother named me after him—he was her favorite brother.”

  I waited. I’d waited six months for this, so I felt I could wait a little more. We turned left. The restaurant was now in sight; the lights of Soho glittered, and Favell seemed to rouse himself. He gave me a sharp glance, then smiled.

  “Oh, I see,” he said. “You mean you didn’t know? Jack Devlin was Rebecca’s father. At least, he was married to her mother at one time. So maybe he was her father—but it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions, would it, old boy?”

  No, indeed. We climbed out of the cab. I knew there was no danger of Favell’s wallet’s reappearing, so I paid off the driver.

  SEVENTEEN

  I HAD CHOSEN THE RESTAURANT WITH CARE. I COULDN’T risk any of the places I used to frequent with Nicky and Julia, where I might be recognized; I wanted to avoid anywhere too noisy and fashionable, where Favell might be distracted. Chez Vincent, unchanged since I first went there before the war, seemed a good choice. It was a small, unpretentious place of the kind all too rare in London; it served excellent food, and had a good wine list. The tables, each plainly set with immaculate linen cloths, were divided from each other by high wooden banquettes, which created the perfect conditions for private conversations. On a Monday night, it was not crowded; we were shown to a quiet table; Favell’s first reaction, I could tell, was not favorable.

  “Bit of a hole in the corner place, isn’t it, old boy?” he said. “Still, I hear the food’s good. Mind if I have an aperitif? Tell the boy I’ll have a fine a l’eau.”

  I asked the waiter for this; Favell examined the menu. His brandy was brought swiftly; by the time he had ordered the most elaborate and expensive items on the list, and had lit another cigarette, he seemed to decide the place might suit him after all. Surfacing from his former preoccupied and gloomy state, he remarked that it wasn’t exactly the Savoy Grill, but sometimes these little places could be surprisingly good. He turned his pale eyes toward me and gave me a long assessing stare.

  “So where d’you want me to start, old boy?” he said. “Rebecca’s father? Her putative father? I can tell you a few stories about him. I think Jack Devlin had a few doubts about his paternity, to put it mildly. But he kept quiet about them. Didn’t want to hurt Rebecca, I expect. He adored her, you see. Never laid eyes on her till her mother died—but once he did…well, nothing was too good for her. She could wind him around her little finger.”

  For the first time that evening, I felt a little uneasy. There was an odd, brooding quality to that stare of Favell’s. Perhaps he was now leading up to some suggestion of payment for information; if so, I’d deal with it when it came. Meanwhile, I’d already begun to see that Favell disliked interruptions, so I decided to let him tell this his way. I could always backtrack later. Favell took a deep swallow of brandy, and, with every sign of enjoyment, launched himself.

  “Jack Devlin was quite a character—‘Black Jack’ Devlin, people called him. He was a buccaneer, always ready to chance his arm, a bit of a desperado. I take after him in that respect…I’ve always been a risk taker. Of course, he was luckier than I’ve been. He really had the luck of the Irish—and it made him a fortune. As for charm, Jack Devlin could charm the birds out of the trees. When I first met him, he was in his late thirties—and he was one of the handsomest men I’ve ever laid eyes on. Flamboyant. Wasn’t a gentleman, and didn’t pretend to be. Six feet tall, black hair, blue eyes. He was a one-off. Had a taste for the gee-gees, and what he didn’t know about horses wasn’t worth knowing.

  “Jack Devlin could drink any man under the table,” he continued, lighting another cigarette. “He was a gambler—that’s how he got his nickname, apart from his looks—and it wasn’t too smart an idea to play cards with him, I can tell you. And if you were a woman—watch out. Not that they ever did, old boy. Jack was only too successful in that department. It wasn’t just his looks, he was polite to women, considerate. He was a hell-raiser, but there was this dreamy gentle side to him, and women liked that. And he never lost his brogue—he had this soft Cork accent, and when he told you a story you’d be spellbound. He could talk like an angel, Jack Devlin.”

  I considered this Irishman, this Celtic charmer, this riverboat gambler with a taste for the gee-gees: I thought that, as the Colonel might have put it, a fistful of salt was in order—but then I hadn’t expected Favell to be the most accurate of witnesses. I tried steering Favell toward some facts, and, eased by the fine a l’eau, he began to give me some.

  Jack Devlin, he said, was the youngest of a family of eight children, brought up in Cork. His father had built up a “nice little business.” Beginning with a small haberdashery store, he had ended up owning the largest and most fashionable ladies’ outfitters in the city, specializing in the import of the finest French silks and brocades. Both Devlin’s parents had considerable business acumen, were good Catholics, and deeply pious. Of the five children who survived into adulthood, three went into the family firm; the two youngest, the beauties of the family, struck out on their own. The daughter, Brigid, Favell’s mother, married up into the Anglo-Irish gentry, and the youngest child, Jack Devlin himself, left Ireland, made a disastrous marriage, and kicked over the traces.

  Favell was clearly sensitive about this background, and, as I’d noticed before, unease made him belligerent. “So, the Devlin grandparents were in trade,” he said as the waiter brought our first courses: I was having fish, Favell a rich concoction involving cream, mushrooms, and pastry. “I don’t apologize for that—why should I? I don’t know about you, old boy, but I’ve no patience with all those old snobberies. People looking down their nose at you, just because your grandfather earned an honest wage. My father was like that. Max de Winter was like that. Bloody snobs, the pair of them. You’d think the war would have put paid to all that—but it hasn’t. Well, I’ve no time for it myself. I’ve got a soft spot for the underdog, always been a bit of a socialist in my own quiet way….”

  The socialist who’d described his girlfriend to me as “common” took a swallow of the white wine I’d ordered, and settled down to explain yet another grievance.

  “My father thought he was so bloody grand,” he continued. “He was a second son, never stopped boasting about the ancestral home, all his bloody Favell connections—well, the ancestral home was some vast ruin, and what money there was went to his elder brother. When Pa discovered he couldn’t make ends meet despite his old school tie and his connections, he was more than ready to marry a draper’s daughter, especially when there was a generous marriage settlement—which he got through inside three years, incidentally. He dragged my poor mother out to Kenya because you could get land for next to nothing. Tried to ingratiate himself with the smart set, wrote to his old school pals, thought he’d make a go of it with a coffee plantation—and what did he end up as? A bloody pathetic little shipping clerk in a Nairobi office. Give me Jack Devlin every time. He never gave a damn what anyone thought of him. And he made a fortune, several times over. Of course, that really got up my father’s nose. Liked to say that if he earned a pittance, at least he earned it honestly.”

  “The implication being that Jack Devlin didn’t? Was that true? How did your uncle make his money?”

  Favell gave me a sidelong glance, then smiled. “In South Africa, eventually. And he may well have sailed a bit close to the wind; I told you, he was a born risk taker. But that’s jumping the gun a bit. He started out in the family firm to begin with. He worked for his father for a year or two, went to France, found new suppliers for the silks and the ribbons. Lived it up in Paris, I gat
her….”

  Favell paused to mop up the last of his food in a greedy way, as if he hadn’t eaten a square meal in days. I considered this information. From the first, my instinct had been that there was a French connection somewhere.

  “Did he meet Rebecca’s mother in France?” I asked.

  “What makes you think so, old boy?”

  “It occurred to me Rebecca could have had French connections. Someone mentioned to me that she might have had family in France. She chose to sail in a converted Breton fishing vessel, when she could easily have had a boat made for her locally. Her boat had a French name: Je Reviens. Also, there’s no record of Rebecca’s birth certificate. So, like you, she could have been born abroad.”

  “Well, well, so you have done a bit of sleuthing.” Favell smiled, and lit another cigarette. “I was beginning to wonder. Come up with anything else, old boy?”

  “Quite a few things.” I thought of the McKendrick postcard and decided to take a gamble. If my suggestion was wrong, it didn’t matter. It still might provoke a revelation from Favell. “For instance, I think she had theater connections as a child,” I said. “I think her mother was an actress.”

  Favell raised his eyebrows, then laughed. “Not bad at all. How did you find that out? Rebecca kept very quiet on the mother question. Max probably knew, and I think that old Tartar of a grandmother of his knew as well—she didn’t miss a trick, in my opinion. But I don’t think they’d have been too keen on advertising the fact at Manderley, do you? Might have raised eyebrows among the county set down there. I mean—an actress! One step up from a loose woman in their eyes. They were still living in another era—probably still are. Even Max was a terrible old Victorian in some ways. Strait-laced. Full of inhibitions. Besides, there was the question of his father, Lionel. He never had any inhibitions about actresses, I hear. A regular stage door Johnny. He’d been dead for years, but his reputation lived on. You couldn’t spend five minutes in Kerrith without hearing about his exploits. So, Rebecca kept very quiet about dear Mama’s profession. Wouldn’t have gone down too well at her grander parties. Ah—food. And a Bordeaux. Pushing the boat out a bit, aren’t you, old boy? No complaints, mind you.”

  There was a pause while the waiters served us our main course. Favell refilled his wine glass, and then returned to his story, picking up its threads where he had left off. There was no sign of any reluctance to talk—that came later.

  “So—where was I? Paris, that’s it. Jack Devlin was based in Paris but he traveled a lot, visiting suppliers in France, but also Italy and England—and on one of those trips he met the fair Isabel. My mother used to say he met her on the Monday, married her on the Tuesday, and left her on the Wednesday—he didn’t hang around, Jack Devlin, that was the point. He was a young man, twenty-four, something like that, and he fell in love at first sight—one look. And I think that’s true, because he told me so, and he always said that to Rebecca, years later. Anyway, he married the fair Isabel at some little French country church, and he sent my mother a telegram and he was over the moon—and then something went wrong. Six months later there was another telegram: The fair Isabel was still in France, I think. But Jack certainly wasn’t. He’d left his wife; he was cutting his losses, making a new start, and he’d sailed for South Africa.”

  He gave me a pale glance. “And don’t ask—I can see the questions ticking over. Well, I can’t answer them. You have to remember, this is going back a long way. It must have been 1900, because he left before Rebecca was born, and she was born that November. I was three then, so all of this is hearsay, from my mother. She always said Jack had his heart broken; he certainly never divorced and he never remarried. But I didn’t even meet Uncle Jack for another fourteen years. I didn’t even know he had a child until I came to England, and I don’t think my mother knew, either…There’s always the possibility it was news to Uncle Jack, too. That idea crossed my mind more than once, I can tell you.”

  Favell was right: There were umpteen questions I wanted to ask, but I decided to wait. He began eating with gusto, and, as he ate, began to fill me in on Jack Devlin’s subsequent career in South Africa. The details he gave me were colorful and, I suspected, apocryphal.

  After some years of struggle, Jack Devlin, it seemed, had finally found his metier: It was mining, and he came into the mining business by accident. “He met some old panhandler in a bar in Jo’burg,” Favell said with a smile. “At least, that’s the way he told it. The old man was a standing joke, but he liked a drink, and a game of cards, so they played poker. Jack won. He won the man’s horse and his gun; by then the old boy had nothing left but the clothes he stood up in and the title he’d staked out on this little patch of ground in the Modder-fontein area, which the man swore had gold in it.

  “They opened another bottle of schnapps, and they played one more time. The man had a good hand, but Jack Devlin held all four aces. So Jack won a pair of worn-out pants and a worn-out shirt and a little bit of land everyone said was worthless. Then they shook hands, and Jack let the old boy keep his clothes and his horse, but he took the gun and the title to that land—and it made his fortune.” Favell laughed. “There was gold in them thar hills. And that’s how Jack got rich. Or so he said. And it might have been true; he kept the revolver—or a revolver. It used to hang on the wall over his desk in the house he bought in Berkshire. It was his lucky gun, he said. And until he came back to England, Jack’s luck always held….” He paused. “Something wrong, old boy?”

  “No, nothing,” I replied.

  “Don’t believe me, eh?” Favell had seen me react, and he misinterpreted my reaction; he gave me a mocking glance. “I don’t blame you. But the point is, that’s the kind of man Jack was—and, the way he used to tell it, I could see him doing it. If it wasn’t true—who cares? It comes down to the same thing in the end: He went into mining, and he invested in mines—not just gold, diamonds, too—and he made money, big money. I don’t say it was all aboveboard, and there may have been more to it than met the eye; in fact, later on, Rebecca used to tease him and say he made his fortune in armaments.” Favell smiled. “Maxim guns, maybe—who knows? Maybe that’s why Rebecca called her husband ‘Max’—no one else called him that, except me, of course. I followed suit. I could see it irritated the hell out of him…. Rescue that bottle, will you? None for you? I’ll finish it up, then. No point in wasting it. Where’s the gents, old boy? Downstairs? I won’t be a second.”

  Favell rose to his feet. I considered the word “Berkshire,” which had come curling out of his story, and had hit me the harder for being unexpected. I must persuade him back in that direction, I decided. And when he returned, I tried to do just that. But it was then, just when I most wanted facts, that my difficulties began.

  UNTIL THAT MOMENT, FAVELL HAD SEEMED PERFECTLY willing, even eager, to talk. He certainly enjoyed his Jack Devlin stories, and I thought they were probably a regular part of his repertoire. When he returned to the table, I could sense his mood had changed. I noticed he looked pale, and his manner was irritable. He slumped down into the seat next to me, and waved the menu away.

  “Eaten too much, I think,” he said. “Rich food. Not used to it, old boy—not these days, that’s the trouble. Order another fine for me, will you, there’s a good chap. That always settles my stomach.”

  I ordered the fine, though I thought he’d have been better off without it, and some coffee for myself. I waited for Favell to revive a little, and then tried some questions. I wanted to move him on to the moment when, aged seventeen, he came to England for the first time—and met Rebecca. I wanted him to tell me about the house in Berkshire. But it was at this very point, when his story, Rebecca’s, and her father’s intersected for the first time, that he became recalcitrant. At first, I had to coax every answer out of him.

  “Jack Devlin came back to England in 1914—the summer the war broke out,” he said. “I don’t know why he left Africa. He’d had enough of it maybe. He’d made his pile; he was still a
young man, in his prime, not yet forty. And no, I don’t bloody well know exactly when Rebecca’s mother died. She was young, and it was sudden, and it wasn’t long before I came to England in 1915—I told you, Rebecca was still wearing mourning when I first met her. Beyond that, I don’t know a damn thing about her mother. I wasn’t interested in her mother. I never met the woman. I was interested in Rebecca.”

  “I’m wondering if Jack Devlin came back to Europe because Rebecca’s mother was ill or had died. How did he make contact with Rebecca, why did he make contact?”

  “Danny wrote to him, I think, and told him Isabel was ill. She traced him, and wrote to him. Danny was always in the picture, from way back. She was in service; she was in service her whole bloody life, and I think she’d worked for some family Rebecca’s mother knew. Danny was devoted to the mother and Rebecca, and it’s no good asking me the details, because, in the first place, I don’t know, and in the second, I don’t bloody well care. All I know is Jack Devlin came home and he bought this damn great house, stockbroker style, vulgar as they come, on the edge of the Berkshire Downs, and he went into horses in a big way. Built these vast stables, hired a trainer. Wanted to breed a Derby winner—not that he ever did. And by the time I arrived, they’d all been there a few months. Danny was looking after Rebecca for Jack Devlin, running his house, making herself indispensable—in like Flynn, was our Danny. And she was a pretty weird woman, even then. Never married. The ‘Mrs.’ was a courtesy title. Housekeepers were always called Mrs. Something then—God knows why.”

  He frowned, and took a swallow of the brandy. “Greenways,” he went on, gazing off into the middle distance. “That’s what it was called, the house: Greenways. Near a village called Hampton something. Not far from Lambourn…. Ever been to that part of the world, old boy?”