Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  If so, he has said nothing, to me or to anyone else—and I admire that. I’ve kept so many secrets to myself for so long, and I’ve learned that unshakable discretion is the rarest of gifts. One of these days, I’ll thank Arthur Julyan for it.

  He didn’t stay long today, and he didn’t miss much. Once he’d gone, I slept for a while, and now I feel stronger. I’ve locked the door on the wind and the rain, and I’ll continue. Here’s the rest of your inheritance, my darling.

  FOR THE FIRST SEVEN YEARS OF MY LIFE, AS I’VE TOLD you, I never moved from the same place; for the next seven, I never stopped traveling. Those were the years I learned to act—and very useful those lessons have been. Up and down the spine of England we went, prop baskets and trains, nine performances a week, then pack up, wave good-bye, and on to the next city on Sundays. “We’re no better than gypsies, Becka,” Maman would say, and she laughed off her sister Evangeline’s shock and disapproval. “I will not live on charity,” she said. “We need to eat. I told Evangeline, it’s Shakespeare. I’m not strutting about in some music hall.”

  Can you imagine, darling, living with those words, those plays, six nights a week, and three matinees—a crash course in murder, adultery, and usurpation, in doubles and doomed love, in witchcraft, white magic, and weddings? We were never in Halifax or Hull; our travels took us way beyond those boundaries. Illyria on Monday; Tuesday, a wood near Athens; Wednesday, a battlefield; Thursday, a blasted heath; Friday, deaths in Venice; and, on Saturday, my best-beloved place, Caliban’s enchanted island, the domain of his mother Sycorax—what an education that was, better than any school or governess, my dearest!

  Some nights I’d be on stage myself, because the leader of our company, Sir Frank McKendrick, roped me in to play boys’ parts from the beginning. Other nights I’d crouch in the prompt corner, listening to those winged words, learning those winged words. I know tracts of them by heart, yet; they still light up my mind. I hear the meanings behind the meanings under the meanings—what an echo chamber! Max always wants words to be shackled, so “love” means this and “hate” means that. Lock them up in a poor prison of sense and slam the door on them. I don’t agree. Words should take you on journeys—and the journey that taught me that began and ended in the same place: Plymouth, in a street called Marine Parade, in a house called St. Agnes.

  When we arrived in England for the very first time, Maman’s courage faltered. She had been so full of plans and excitement on the journey. “Farewell to my youth,” she said when we locked up our foursquare gray house. She looked at the rocky shore, her eyes blazing defiance; but once we’d left St. Malo, something went wrong. Problems, from the instant we crossed the Channel. No one was there to meet us off the boat; we went to the Portsmouth hotel Maman had written to, just as planned, but the letters she’d been expecting weren’t there waiting for us.

  I’m still not sure who it was she hoped would come to claim us. It might have been her sister, or that admirer who had been so remiss, lately, with the checks and the pretty presents. Whoever it was, we were left in the lurch, and Maman tried to make light of it. “We’re like an unclaimed parcel, Becka,” she said, looking around the grim little room they’d given us. “But we shan’t be downhearted. I shall tell them, we need a fire, and I want supper sent up, and maybe a little wine. It will be cozy in no time, you’ll see, darling.”

  Maman had great charm and style and determination—just as well, in view of what lay in store over the next seven years—so the fire was lit, and the food arrived, and Maman drank two glasses of red wine to give her strength and I drank one glass of wine and water. Then we emptied our purses and counted up our worldly goods—total: seven days, if we economized. “A whole week, Becka—why, we’re rich, darling,” Maman cried. She put me to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Maman stayed up half the night, pacing the room and fetching out her little traveling desk, reading, and writing letters. We took them to the post in the morning, and waited to be rescued.

  It took five days for that rescue to be effected—and when it finally was, our rescuer was not, I think, the person Maman had hoped for. It was eleven in the morning when the visitor arrived, announced by one of the slatternly hotel maids. Maman was asleep—she’d been up half the night again, writing and pacing—so I went down to discover our benefactor. Would it be sister Evangeline, or would it be the admirer? By then, I had a very clear image of him: tall, dark, rich, and resolute—maybe with a moustache.

  It wasn’t the sister, and it wasn’t the hero of the suede gloves, either. It was a tall, thin young woman, dressed in black from head to foot, with a black hat jammed on her black hair, and eyes as sharp as the jet on her jacket.

  She was waiting in the hall downstairs, standing as still as death. When I approached, and she looked down at me, I thought she was very curious indeed. She was so still and so pale complexioned, but I could feel she was humming with energy, a strange whirring energy, as if her heart ran on clockwork, and the mechanism was rusty or wound up too tightly.

  She looked at me, and I looked at her. She was yellow-white as a waxwork, and equally inanimate, but as we examined each other, a change came over her. Faint color beat up from her thin throat to her thin face; she flexed her fingers in her thin cheap gloves; I could just see her ankles under her long narrow skirt, and I saw one of her black stockings had a perfect, meticulous darn in it. The gloves and that darn said: I’m poor. The tight mouth said, I’m proud. And the eyes—what did they say? They had a yearning look, I thought. I could feel tentacles of neediness, reaching out to me, suckering onto me.

  When she spoke, her voice was so odd! I didn’t understand the messages of English accents then; it was only later that I could see her accent was West Country, painfully and painstakingly overlaid with gentility. She spoke in a flat inharmonious tone, the way the deaf do. What a strange, grating voice. It negotiated a sentence like a minefield. Emotion avoided, but lurking under every word and liable to blow up at any minute. How I longed to mimic it! “Rebecca Devlin. Rebecca Devlin,” she said, clasping my hand too tight. “Let me look at you. You poor child. How dark your hair is—I came at once. Will you tell your mama I’m here? Tell her Millicent sent me the instant her letter arrived. Tell her—”

  “Who are you?” I said in a haughty way. I didn’t like being called a “poor child”—not by anyone.

  She might have taken offense at my haughtiness—people did. But her reaction was just the opposite. She gave me a worshipping look, as if she liked to be put in her place. In her black eyes I could see an oil of obsequiousness, a match flare of admiration. Something smoul-dered in her, then ignited. I’ve seen that fanatic look a million times since. I loathe it, but I’ve learned to live with it.

  “Just like your mama!” she said. “I see the resemblance now. I am Edith Danvers. My mother had the care of yours when your mama was a child, didn’t she explain that?”

  I watched her carefully; Maman rarely explained anything, but I was reluctant to say so.

  “Your mama will remember me,” she went on. “If you’d just tell her: Danny’s downstairs. There’s a room ready for you both at St. Agnes, and, if your mama would permit me, I’d be only too glad to pack for her.”

  I went upstairs, woke Maman, and gave her this message. At the name “Danny,” she rolled her eyes and made one of her impudent faces. “Oh heavens,” she said. “That woman clings like ivy. Her mother’s a dear sweet thing—she was my nurse, darling, and I’m devoted to her—but the daughter! Ah, well, beggars can’t be choosers. I’d better go down and face her. Toss me my dress, darling—no, not that old thing. Must keep up appearances—I’ll wear the silk one.”

  I laced Maman into her dress and helped her arrange her hair. Seconds later, she looked grand and headstrong and beautiful. What an actress my maman could be! Not onstage, I’m afraid—there, she was always a little stiff and self-conscious; but offstage, she was a marvel—always very quick-witted, so warm and charming, not a sniff of insincerity, you
’d have said. She swept downstairs that day like a duchess, and greeted that grim waxwork figure waiting below with the greatest affection. No one would have known she was less than pleased to see her; no one could have guessed we were down to our last guinea. Strange stiff Danny melted in the face of this performance like ice before the sun. Her pale face lit; her eyes grew moist; she could scarcely speak for the strength of her emotion. So feudal! I felt quite sorry for her.

  “Oh, Miss Isolda,” she said. “I can’t believe—it’s been so long. My mother says if there’s anything we can do…”

  “Dearest Millicent—I’m so looking forward to seeing her,” said Maman. “Will you pack for me, Danny? You do it perfectly, I remember—and I can’t bear the thought of another night in this horrid place.”

  “Of course, madam,” Danny replied, instantly subservient. And with that brief exchange, the course of our next seven years was decided.

  DANNY BORE US BACK IN TRIUMPH TO ST. AGNES—AND IT wasn’t a church, as I’d imagined it might be, but a very clean, very organized boardinghouse, everything spruce: “Shipshape and Bristol fashion,” said Millicent.

  It was set up high, overlooking Plymouth Sound; you could watch warships from the window. There were starched antimacassars on every chair, aspidistras in brass pots in every window, and there was English food. When we arrived, Millicent Danvers gave us hot herring roe on toast. She introduced us to her husband, “Mr. D.,” who was old; he had false teeth, a wing collar, best clothes, and some mysterious ailment. He was presented, then whisked out of sight. Daughter Edith poured the tea, and I could see she was ashamed of the hot herring roe, and her father’s false teeth, and her mother’s apron. “Oh, I forgot the serviettes, Edie, dear,” her mother said, and Edith went crimson. “Napkins, mother,” she said, very sharp. “I’ll fetch them.” I ate a small bit of the herring ovaries. I thought, If we stay here, I’ll get as thin as a pin. Maman was very gay and charming and defiant—but I was beginning to recognize the danger signals now. I knew there’d be a lapse, and there was. Within a day, once the initial relief and euphoria had worn off, Maman would rally, then languish.

  Every afternoon for a week, she put on her best dove gray dress, her prettiest hat, and those exquisite mauve suede gloves. She pinched her cheeks to give them color, and tilted the hat over her eyes in the most becoming way; she adjusted her veil and with a determined air she set off on mysterious visits.

  Edith Danvers had returned to the house nearby where she was in service, so I stayed with Millicent. She was kind. She told me all about her tenants, two clerks, one traveling salesman, and regular “theatricals.” She introduced me to lavender water, and baptized my wrists with two special drops—it smelled like tomcats, I thought. She let me help her in the kitchen; she said all her vegetables were boiled for an hour with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda—that was the secret. I stood on a stool by the sink and swished soap over greasy dishes. I helped sacrifice mountains of poor vegetables daily, and Millicent told me stories. Up out of the dark came shapes: No news on my dark dead Devlin father, alas—Millicent never mentioned him—but she fleshed out the ghosts of my English family for me.

  Maman was the youngest of three lovely sisters—and the youngest by a long way: She was an afterthought, said Millicent mysteriously. The eldest sister, Miss Evangeline, was now Lady Briggs; she lived in a lovely house called St. Winnow’s not so very far from here, and she had two charming daughters, Elinor and Jocelyn. Her husband was rich as Croesus. His family wasn’t a patch on Evangeline’s and my mother’s—their branch of the Grenvilles was not well-off, but they could trace their ancestry back to kingdom come, whereas Sir Joshua’s background was nothing to write home about, and he was said to be a difficult straitlaced narrow-minded man—but there, he was rich, and he’d been handsome when young, and Miss Evangeline had set her heart on him, and, like most Grenville women, she was determined, not to say headstrong.

  The second sister, now dead, was the poor dear sweet good Miss Virginia I recognized from Maman’s stories. A fine match she’d made. She’d married the catch of the neighborhood, the owner of Manderley, Mr. Lionel de Winter, no less—and a merry dance he’d led her, Millicent said, chopping up a carnage of cabbage. Poor Miss Virginia, God rest her, had had two children, first a girl, Beatrice, and then a boy, Maximilian, the son and heir. But she’d never lived to see the son and heir grow up; she’d taken a fever when he was three years old. “Dead in a week!” Millicent said. “So, the grandmother reared him. Miss Virginia never was strong, not even as a child, poor thing. She was nervous—sensitive—I always said as Manderley wouldn’t suit her. Great gloomy place, to my mind. Exposed. Too near the sea. You wouldn’t want to be up there in a storm, Miss Rebecca, I can tell you.”

  “I’ve seen a photograph of Manderley,” I said. “Someone sent it to Maman. I think it’s beautiful.”

  Millicent dropped her chopping knife, bent to pick it up. “Yes, well,” she said in a flurried way, becoming flushed, “It’s a fine place—in its way. Tastes vary.”

  “Maybe that’s where Maman’s gone to visit today,” I went on, casual as could be. I burned to know where she went, and I knew Maman would never tell me. “Maybe she’s gone to call at Manderley; I expect she’d like to do that, when she’s been away nearly eight years, don’t you think, Millicent?”

  Millicent didn’t agree. She thought such a visit was very unlikely. After all, Maman’s sister was dead now, so the place would have very sad memories for her; she’d give it a very wide berth, Millicent thought, and the more she insisted on this, the less I believed her.

  “Did you go to Manderley today, Maman?” I asked, when she finally came home. We were in our St. Agnes bedroom, with its crucifix on the wall and a black marble tomb of a chimneypiece. Maman had flung herself down on the bed as soon as she came back; she was lying there now, looking white and exhausted, but when I asked that, she sprang up, and started pacing the room.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “Why should I? Who suggested that? Who’s been putting ideas in your head? For heaven’s sake, Becka, haven’t I enough to worry about?”

  “No one suggested it. Millicent was telling me about your sister Virginia, that’s all, and I wondered—”

  “Well, don’t,” Maman said, very sharply. “Poor Virginia’s dead. I hate that house. I hate everyone in it. Lionel de Winter, and that ghastly mother of his—she ran roughshod over poor Virginia. And she never liked me. She went out of her way to make my life a misery. Old beast! She’s an interfering, arrogant old woman. I wouldn’t call on her if she were at death’s door. She should have died years and years ago—she’s been widowed long enough, in all conscience. And I wish to God she had died. Everything would have been different, then. Lionel and I were friends once—when I was a girl, and poor Virginia was always so sick, and he had all these worries. We’d be friends still if it wasn’t for that mother of his.”

  “Why would you be friends? You said you hated him.”

  “We just might, that’s all. Stop interrogating me, for heaven’s sake, Becka…. He’s ill now, in any case—someone told me. He hasn’t been well for months. Oh, what am I going to do? Where are we going to go? We can’t stay here; there’s hardly any money left. I can’t pay Millicent, we’re living here on charity, on my own nurse’s charity. Evangeline can’t help—or won’t. She says I should never have come home. My own sister, and she treats me like a pariah. It’s insupportable. I don’t know which way to turn.”

  She burst into tears, and, flinging herself down on her bed again, turned her face to the crucifix wall. I began to feel very sick and queer. I’d never seen her like this; I didn’t know what to do, but I thought it might help if I knew the truth, so I fetched Maman some tea and some medicine for her headache; then I sat by her side and stroked her hair until she fell asleep. And when I was certain she was asleep, deeply asleep, this is what I did, my darling. I crept across the room, found the tiny silver key I knew she hid in her jewelery b
ox, and unlocked the drawers of her little traveling writing desk.

  I took out her secret letters—the admirer’s letters, all tied up in that rose-embroidered ribbon. First, he wrote every week, then every fortnight, then every month, then the gaps lengthened. By the time I was four, it was down to one letter a quarter, then once every six months or so. The last letter of all, stained with Maman’s salt tears, had been written nearly a year ago.

  They weren’t very long letters, fortunately, and they were easy to read because Maman’s correspondent had big, childish handwriting. I couldn’t understand all the words he was using, and some of the things he said he wanted to do sounded strange. They sent little furtive shivers all down my body.

  I’ll tell you what I discovered, my love. The admirer was Lionel de Winter, her dead sister’s husband, my uncle by marriage. He’d been writing to Maman for a long time, since before I was born. He’d been writing to Maman when my Devlin father was alive—months before he set off on that fatal sea voyage. It wasn’t right for Lionel to call a married woman his “sweet darling,” I thought. If my Devlin father had known about that, he’d have killed him stone dead, I felt sure of it.

  I wondered if Maman had noticed how these letters had altered in tone over time, and if it had hurt her. First she was “a sweet darling,” then Lionel’s “dearest girl,” then “dear Isolda.” First he was “wild” to see her; then he “wished” he could see her; then, if circumstances changed, he would certainly “try” to see her; meanwhile, he would “help out” whenever he could, and he’d send something pretty—as pretty as she was—to cheer her.