Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  I think he believed me, but the denial seemed to increase his anxiety. He gave me a bewildered look, then tipped the ring back into the envelope, and replaced it in his pocket. He drained the last of the champagne in his glass and rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked so dazed that I thought he was about to pass out.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation for this.” I reached for his arm to steady him. “You’d better sit down. If you think about it, there’s any number of people who could have removed that ring—the undertakers or the pathologist or the police. There’s probably a reason why it’s been sent to you. Maybe…”

  I wasn’t convincing Favell—I wasn’t convincing myself. Favell was swaying on his feet; he now looked desperately ill. “I know why it was sent,” he said thickly. “I know who sent it. Christ, she’s remorseless….”

  I tried to persuade him into a chair, but he shook me off. He stared around him, peering into the corners of the room. He passed his hands across his face. “Jesus. Christ,” he said. “What a hellhole. What a hopeless miserable pit. That damned monkey on the door. And those girls—just take a look at those girls. Death’s heads, the whole lot of them. What am I doing here? What in Christ’s name happened to my life? Get me out of here, will you?”

  He fumbled his way past me to the door. He lurched up the steps and into the street. Perhaps the alcohol had just kicked in, perhaps he’d been drunker than I’d realized in the restaurant. He seemed very drunk now, unsteady on his feet, his face white and ghastly in the street light. I realized that he almost certainly had been drinking before he met me, that all the alcohol he’d tipped down his throat since had been a constant topping-up process, his way of keeping his particular demons at bay. Maybe the whole evening had been a part of that process.

  “Here,” he said, clutching at my arm and fumbling in his pocket as I reached his side. “Here—you can bloody take this. I don’t want it; I wish I’d never set eyes on it. Take it with you to Kerrith next time you go. Throw it in the sea. Sell it—I don’t bloody care what you do with it. I’m not keeping it….”

  He pulled out the small envelope with the ring and tried to press it into my hand. I tried to argue with him, but he wouldn’t listen.

  “I don’t bloody want it. I don’t want it anywhere near me; my luck’s bad enough already. Either you take it or it goes down this drain, right now.” He pushed me hard in the chest and leaned over the grating in the gutter, envelope in hand, his face white and fixed. I knew that if I didn’t take it, he’d do exactly as he threatened, so I took the envelope from him. Favell straightened, staggered back a few paces, and looked wildly up and down the street.

  “Look, just get me a cab, will you?” he said. “I’ve had a shock, I’m not well anyway—I knew it was a mistake to talk to you.”

  There was a taxi coming along the street then, and I hailed it. I offered to go with him, but he refused. In the end, I had to give in. It occurred to me that wherever he was heading, he preferred me not to see it. When the cab was out of sight, I looked at the ring. It glittered in the light from the street lamps; it was exceptionally tiny. I knew I couldn’t keep it, much though I wanted to do so; once Favell was sober, he’d want it back anyway. I decided to return it to him at the car showroom some time tomorrow.

  I SET OFF TO WALK BACK TO REGENT’S PARK. I HOPED THE night air would clear my head and lift my spirits, but it didn’t. It was just after eleven when I reached the house. Mrs. Henderson was about to go to bed; she said no one had called for me. That depressed me further. I had given Ellie the number here, in case there should be any emergency with her father; there could be no other reason for her to call, yet I wished she had. I’d have liked to talk to her. I’d have liked to talk to someone.

  I made myself some coffee and sat with it in the kitchen. I felt confused and restless: Too much had happened too fast. I listened again to Favell’s accusations against Rebecca. Could she really have intended him to die? I saw a young girl in a black dress in a restaurant, sitting silently at a table, not speaking all evening. I saw a little shrine of photographs to her dead mother. I saw a house called Greenways, in a Berkshire village whose name Favell couldn’t remember exactly. Near Lambourn; Hampton something, he had said. The village was Hampton Ferrars—and why was I so sure of that? Because I knew of that village already: My adoptive mother, May, grew up there.

  I couldn’t yet see inside that house, or see what might have happened there, but something had, and I could sense it tucked away in the convolutions of Favell’s stories. I looked at the occupants of Greenways: I saw two cousins, and a youthful, handsome, and doting father. I took out the little eternity ring that Rebecca had worn as a child and worn as a woman. Eternity rings are not worn by children or unmarried women. Who had given her that ring, and what had it meant to her? Why had Favell felt it brought bad luck? I was missing something, I could feel it. I had been missing something all evening, but, no matter how carefully I went back over the sequence of events, I couldn’t place it. Yet I felt a definite unease, a sense of trouble impending.

  I decided to go up to my room and begin writing up this account of my day. I went out into the hall, and was about to go upstairs when the telephone on the table right next to me began ringing. It startled me badly. I was suddenly seized by a certainty that the caller must be Ellie. Ellie was calling, it was almost midnight—and that meant something was wrong. I snatched up the receiver.

  A woman’s voice said: “Is that Tom Galbraith?”

  “Yes, speaking,” I replied. I was agitated, and spoke without thinking.

  There was a pause, a buzzing and a hissing, then the line went dead. I stood there, filled with a sudden superstitious fear. Then I came to my senses. The dead can make their presence felt in many ways, but placing telephone calls is not one of them.

  I’ve been thinking about that call ever since. The woman was definitely not Ellie. I did not recognize her voice, yet very few people have this number, and even fewer would have known I might be here. But whoever placed that call had good timing. On an evening when I’d never felt less sure of who I was, someone had wanted to confirm my identity.

  IT WAS VERY LATE WHEN I FINISHED WRITING MY ACCOUNT of the meeting with Favell, but the evening’s events had left me restless, and I had difficulty sleeping. I dreamed I was walking through the Manderley woods, and, just ahead of me, moving swiftly and silently through the trees, was a woman I knew to be Rebecca. I kept calling her name and trying to catch up with her, but I never succeeded. She was always just out of reach; once, when I despaired, she turned to me and held up her hand with its diamond eternity ring and then beckoned. When I finally woke, found it was light, and dragged myself out of bed, it was six in the morning. I felt exhausted and miserable. I was as close, then, as I’ve ever been to extricating myself from this search, and abandoning it.

  Mrs. Henderson was still not up—and I was glad of that. I didn’t want to speak to her, or to anyone. I made myself some coffee and took it outside into the paved garden behind the house; I sat there in the soft morning light, under the cherry tree that Julia and Nicky planted to mark their marriage. Its branches were bowed with blossoms; at the least breath of air, the petals scattered like wedding confetti.

  I told myself I had to decide: give up—or go on. Whatever I decided, I had to be honest with myself, and I had to abandon the pretence that this search of mine was objective. It was never objective. I always believed in my heart that there was a connection between Rebecca and myself, even if such evidence as I had was inconclusive. Why, then, when the conversation with Favell last night suggested that a link did exist, did I back away from it? It was because I could hear the secrets inside Favell’s stories, and they made me fearful.

  I knew I could no longer shy away from this, so I sat there under that marriage tree, and I went back down the corridor of my past, opening all its locked doors—including the one that is the most securely bolted of all, the door I slammed years ago on all those painful q
uestions about my parentage. I opened the orphanage door, and the adoption door, and I opened the door marked “Pelynt.” I looked at the summer I spent there with Edwin and May Galbraith, when I was eleven years old and newly adopted. I watched the weeks of that first holiday—and I watched myself as I was then, a little animal, resentful, afraid, tormented by fears and suspicions. I’d known I was damaged goods. I’d known it could only be a matter of days before I was packed up like a broken toy, and returned, with indignant complaints, to the place that had supplied me.

  If I was rude, sullen, and unresponsive, would that do it? What if I wet the bed? Or swore? Or stole from May’s purse? When Edwin discovered how stupid I was, or May found out how I lied, would that be when they decided to return me or exchange me? Would it be this week or next? Like a maltreated dog, I fawned and cringed, and then bit: I was determined to provoke the action I most feared—but then the only response I’d ever learned to provoke from adults was punishment, and punishment was preferable to indifference.

  These tactics had never failed me before, but they did now. No matter how hard I tried, May never shouted at me, and Edwin never hit me. Once, when I lifted my arm to shield my face from the expected blow that never came, I saw that, for the first time, I had succeeded in shocking him.

  May and Edwin taught me about “tomorrow.” I’d never understood how that word could be full of promise until they took me to Pelynt. Under their tutelage, I began to discover that “tomorrow” meant something one could look forward to—and there were more sources of pleasure than I’d ever believed possible. It was pleasurable to go to the beach, to take out a boat, or to pack a picnic; it was pleasurable to be read to; to explore a castle or a church, to look at plants or birds and identify them. I can see now that Edwin and May were desperate to find something to which I responded; when they saw that I liked stories, though I read atrociously, and I liked places where the past could be felt, they encouraged me. In this way they began to tame me, but I knew it couldn’t last. I waited, and one morning—I must open that door now—May said she would take me over to the Saxon church at Manderley. She would show me how to do brass rubbings.

  This proposal was unusual. Edwin was not joining us, for one thing; for another, May’s bright tone of voice could not disguise a certain tension. I was suspicious at once. I looked at their smiling faces and smelled treachery. I refused to go, and when they both insisted, I saw through their plan. They weren’t going to take me back to the orphanage and exchange me—they were going to whisk me off to some strange place, and abandon me.

  “You’re going to leave me there, aren’t you?” I said to May as we wound our way up the hill from Pelynt in her little Ford motorcar. “You’re going to take me there, and lose me, and then jump back in the car and bloody leave me.”

  “Oh, Tom, how can you think that?” May said, with a sigh. “Of course I’m not going to do that. Why would I do something that made us both miserable?”

  “Wouldn’t make me miserable.” I said. “I couldn’t care less. Bugger it. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say…”

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” May replied. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

  “Boring. Stupid boring church. Stupid boring brasses.” I kicked the bag at my feet, which May had carefully packed with the special paper and black waxes. “Don’t want to go. Don’t want to be with you. Grumpy old bitch. I’m sick of you. I’m bloody sick of you.”

  “Give it a chance,” May said quietly. “Give me a chance, Tom.”

  I looked at her, struck by her tone, and I saw that she was crying.

  That silenced me. I stared at the road ahead and bit my nails. I had a sense of terrible power and a certain knowledge that I had just misused it. I could misuse it some more, it would be the easiest thing in the world. I could make May really weep. I could make her suffer—or I could stop. The choice was mine. I stared at the choice all the way along that road. I had the power to hurt, I’d never possessed it before, it made me muddled and afraid—and that is why, even before I met May’s friend, I remember every detail of that morning.

  When we reached the tiny church, it was deserted. May and I walked among the graves, in brilliant sunshine. I spelled out some of the names cut into the tombstones, scratching at the lichen: BELOVED WIFE OF…; DEAREST MOTHER TO…; HUSBAND OF…; FATHER OF…; even then, I liked to trace the relationships I’d never experienced. May and I walked down to the river; the tide was high, and the water was fast flowing. I tossed a stick into the eddies and imagined it traveling all the way to the sea at Kerrith, all the way across the Atlantic. If I could hurt May, I wondered, did that mean she cared for me?

  Then May took me into the cool, dimly lit interior of the church. It wasn’t much of a place, I thought in my ignorance. I glowered at the plain whitewashed walls, and the great thick pillars. The altar cloth was blue and gold. The dead were under my feet. I knelt down by the brass effigy of a de Winter knight, and glared at him. He was in full armor and helmeted, so I couldn’t see his whole face. His gauntleted hands were crossed on his chest; his feet rested on a small dog with a curly tail, and his inscription, on a banner above his head, was in Latin. I couldn’t read Latin. May, who could, said his name was Gilles de Winter, and he died on his return from the Crusades in 1148. His wife, Marguerite, who had born him ten children, four of whom survived, lay next to him.

  May showed me what to do. She showed me how to fix the paper in place with tape; she showed me how to rub the black wax back and forth. I snatched the wax rudely out of her hand, and, with a sigh, May said she’d walk in the churchyard for a while, and leave me to it. I saw her look at her watch, and I knew she was hiding something. This was the moment when she’d drive off and leave me.

  See if I care, I said to myself. I scratched away with the stupid wax. I listened to the sound of the oak door closing, my heart beating very fast and a sick dread rising in my stomach. I listened for the sound of the car’s engine. The minutes passed; I thought maybe May hadn’t been lying after all. I wanted to go and see if she was still in the churchyard, but I was bitter with pride, and I felt I’d rather die than let her see I was anxious.

  I rubbed away with the wax; a pair of armoured feet began to emerge, Gilles began to emerge. I stared at him. He was there, of course, all the time, under the paper, and I knew that. Yet I felt I made him. I conjured him up. There was his helmet and his gloved hands, and his little dog with a curly tail and a lively eye. If I listened very hard, I felt I’d hear that little dog bark at me across the centuries.

  I grew absorbed in my task. I had almost forgotten about May, and, when I heard the creak of the church door, I assumed she was returning. Then I heard a footstep, too light and too swift for May. I sat back on my heels and looked up. A stranger had come to a halt a few feet away. She was tall and slender. She was gripping the side of one of the oak pews, and looking down at me.

  “It’s Tom, isn’t it? How quick you are!” she said. “Why, you’ve almost finished—and you’ve done it beautifully. I just met May in the churchyard, and she told me I’d find you here. I’m a friend of hers. How do you do, Tom?” She came closer, bent down and held out her hand to me. “I’m Rebecca.”

  I looked at her warily, and then, with reluctance, took the hand she held out to me. I was suspicious of everything then—but especially of strangers. The woman looked closely at me, and I inspected her in return. I saw her eyes rest on my hair and my face; her hair, long and worn loose, parted on one side, was as dark as my own. I thought she had the strangest eyes I’d ever seen. In the dim light of the church, I couldn’t decide if they were a very dark blue or a very dark green or a very dark violet. I decided they were sea-colored.

  She was wearing boating clothes: a loose striped cotton sweater, white trousers, and rope-soled shoes. Her hand felt cool in mine, and her clasp was strong, but as she drew back from me, I saw that she was trembling slightly. I thought it very curious that she should be as nervous as I was.
r />   She sat down next to me on the cold floor of the nave and, after a pause, I went on with my brass rubbing. I bent my head over the paper, and refused to look up. I knew that in a minute, just as all adults did, she’d start talking, she’d start asking questions. I waited, feeling for the ridges and crevices, rubbing back and forth with my wax. She said nothing.

  After a while, her proximity and her silence began to unnerve me. I looked up at her, to find that she was still watching me with her sea-colored eyes. I wondered if I were imagining her, or if she might be magic; she could be a river nymph, I thought—Edwin and May had given me a book with pictures of gods and goddesses; they’d been reading me stories about creatures who sprang from the waves, or from trees and breezes. They had strange names that I couldn’t spell, but was learning to pronounce. A zephyr. A nereid. A dryad. I tried closing my eyes, in case that would make her vanish, and, when that didn’t work, I thought I’d answer the questions before she asked them.

  “I live in Scotland now. I’m here on holiday,” I said, rubbing away at the brass plate. I gave her a quick glance. “I used to live in an orphanage. I’m adopted.”

  “I know that,” she replied, and then added: “May told me.”

  “I’m eleven. That’s old to be adopted. It’s unusual. Most people want babies.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “I have two names. My orphanage name and my new one.”

  I stole another look, to check her reaction. May said all this information should make me proud; it meant I was loved and chosen—but I wasn’t too sure I believed that.

  “That’s excellent,” said the woman in an easy way. “Everyone should change names from time to time, don’t you think? You have to find a name that fits—and once you do, you can keep it forever. Does ‘Tom’ feel as if it fits yet?”

  I considered this; it had never occurred to me that you could try names on, like a pair of gloves. “It might do,” I said cautiously.