Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  More recently, the letters turned querulous. Lionel had enough nagging to contend with on the home front, he said; didn’t his little Isolda know that men hated women who made complaints all the time? It was wearisome. None of this was his fault. Yes, he could see things must be hard for her, and she might sometimes be lonely, but she was better off in a nice comfortable house in France. If she came back to England, there would only be more talk—especially if she turned up with a child in tow. People would get the wrong idea then; they’d leap to the wrong conclusions, he would be compromised, she would be shunned. The notion was insane; would she please forget it immediately?

  I stole the last of those letters, to fuel my hate—and just as well I did, because someone (Danny probably) made sure the rest of them were destroyed when my mother died. I know its cheapnesses by heart; here’s a specimen. Here’s lionhearted, lily-livered Lionel de Winter; here’s my husband’s father writing to my mother:

  Sweetheart, I’m going to be frank: You know I’ve always been very fond of you, and always will be. You’re a dear girl in many ways—but you are headstrong. I’ve always made the situation perfectly clear; you can’t deny that. This entanglement wasn’t of my making, you know, Isolda. It’s all very well now to say you were just a child, and you fell in love—but if we look back, the betrayals bothered me more than they did you. It was I who had the conscience, dear. Remember that day at the boathouse?

  You don’t seem to appreciate the difficulties I was laboring under then—a sick, complaining wife, a nagging mother, loneliness, and boredom. I was wretched, dear, so of course I responded to your youth, your gaiety, and sympathy. All men have needs—and when they can’t or won’t be met in the rightful way, then there’s always danger, and the man isn’t to blame, in my view.

  I’ve always promised you that I’ll take care of things, and I will. Meanwhile, accusations don’t help, frankly. You’re not “buried alive” as you put it, Isolda—you’re living in comfort, as I understand it. It was your family that decided to separate us after Virginia died. It was they who whisked you away to France; Mother and I had nothing to do with that decision—I don’t know why you should think we were involved in any way, dear. You then made a hasty and impetuous marriage, which hurt me very much, and which I advised you against, if I recall correctly. It might help if you’d remember that occasionally.

  I’m not under any obligation to you, dear, let alone your child, and in view of the attitude of your own family, I feel you should appreciate more the generosity I’ve shown you as a friend and brother-in-law.

  I’ve told you, Isolda, I haven’t been well recently. I’ve been laid up for months now in considerable pain, and it’s made me very depressed in spirits. I’ve had to make a will—a gloomy process—and insofar as I can, I’ve made provision for you. It took up days of my time, and it wasn’t easy; all of the estate and too damn much of the money is tied up in trusts, but I was determined to do the right thing by you, dear. I think you should be grateful for that, and not nag and threaten, when I’m in no condition to cross the Channel and pay visits, and if you thought for one second, you’d see that.

  So, if anything should happen to me, you’ll be nicely set up—I haven’t forgotten your pretty ways, you see! But for God’s sake don’t mention this when you write; there are certain persons in this house (you’ll know whom I mean) who are more than ready to read private correspondence. In fact, Isolda, I think it might help if you wrote less often. Your letters are very long, sweetheart, and they only increase your anxieties, especially when I can’t answer them as swiftly as I might like. I have a thousand and one demands to deal with, you know. The tenants are an ungrateful lot—they never stop complaining. I’ve had to spend most of this last week at the estate office, sorting out the North Farm, and the Carminowes, for instance—the widow was making difficulties. So I have many calls on my time, dear, and I wish you’d realize that, occasionally.

  Now, chin up! Be my smiling girl again. I’m sending some pretty gloves for my naughty little Isolda! Frith will parcel them up and they’ll be with you shortly.

  How I hated this man, with his cheap words and his cheap promises, his disguised threats and his patronage. All my past turned upside down and inside out. Maybe Maman hadn’t been crying over the untuned piano strings, I thought. Maybe she was crying because he’d sent a letter like this. I sniffed the paper; it reeked of fraudulence.

  I felt a huge anger stir up under my heart; I wanted to take those trinkets he sent, and rend them and smash them. I wanted to rip the gloves, and grind that locket under my foot. I fetched the locket, and opened its secret clasp, and looked at that lock of cunningly plaited reddish fair hair: Lionel de Winter’s hair—I knew that now. I hated his hair, and I hated him; he had lied to my mother and let her down. Well, I didn’t intend to let him get away with that. I would avenge Maman, and I knew just how to deal with Uncle Lionel.

  I stayed as cool as a knife blade. I put the sneaking letters back in their envelopes and back in the writing desk. I replaced the key and the locket, and, when everything was as neat as neat could be, so Maman would never suspect, I summoned up my Devlin father once again, just as I’d done that time in Brittany. I willed his strength into me, and when I was as strong as any man ever was, brimful of anger and hate, I put a curse on Lionel de Winter, his house, and his offspring for all eternity.

  IT DIDN’T OCCUR TO ME THAT I MIGHT BE CURSING myself. I was an ignoramus then, my dearest. I knew about love, but not about sex, et cetera. It was only years later, when my mother confessed some of this to me, that I started to wonder. “I was only sixteen when I had my first admirer,” she said. “I was a child, Becka, I knew nothing. He was a married man, darling, but I adored him. And he was so plausible. He could wind me around his little finger.”

  A little worm of doubt gnawed away then—but those doubts don’t bother me now, and they need never bother you. They vanished, I promise you, the very second my Devlin father came back from the dead and I walked into the Greenways room and saw him. I have his hair and his blood and his Irish luck—so the curse has passed me by, and it will pass you by, too, my love.

  But Lionel didn’t escape. You’ll be pleased to know that he died exactly the way he deserved: slowly, and in agony.

  THAT DAY WAS THE DAY MY CHILDHOOD DIED—THAT’S what I think now, looking back. After that, I had to grow up very fast. I had to take the reins from Maman because her grip was slackening. I was afraid that when she made those afternoon visits of hers, she was looking for a handout and a refuge. I was sure she’d have tried Evangeline—and I was right, as I found out later. I was very afraid she might try Manderley, too, if she were desperate enough—and I wasn’t having that. Maman had such courage and spirit, and I refused to see her pride brought low. So, somehow, somewhere, by some means, we had to acquire, or earn, some money.

  How did women earn money? I asked everyone. I asked old Mr. D., who was allowed out more often now that Millicent said I was “part of the family.” He’d been a carpenter in the Plymouth naval yards; he used to sit in the St. Agnes garden and whittle little boats for me—just like the boats I’ve made for you, my dear one. He had capable steady hands, and gentle ways and he was dying of emphysema, but he couldn’t help with this problem. He said a man had a trade, but it was different for women—and very different for ladies.

  Millicent suggested companions and governesses in a doubtful way, and, one day, when Danny came over to tea, Millicent mentioned that in certain establishments, where they sold dresses, for instance, some of the women serving were really quite genteel. Danny threw down her napkin, and went scarlet. “Don’t talk such nonsense, Mother,” she said. “Putting ideas like that in the child’s head. What are you thinking of?”

  Can you imagine what a world that was, a madhouse where a woman lost status by working? Not that it’s changed so very much in the years since. Ridiculous! I despise such ideas from the depths of my heart. They’re evil. They turn women i
nto slaves or schemers. Years later, when my father died, and I was left with nothing except debts and odious creditors, I went out and earned. I didn’t give a tuppenny damn what anyone said or thought. I’d have scrubbed floors if need be. But it was different for me. I was brought up by the beaches of Brittany and Marie-Hélène, so I was a practical little savage, and I knew that the Religion of the House could always save me.

  Maman’s case was different; she had a fatal disadvantage in life. She’d been born and brought up a lady—and that crippled her for good, believe me.

  MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. IT WAS ALL I THOUGHT ABOUT for an entire month. Millicent said, Don’t you fret, dearie. She said I was doing the work of two maids, chopping all those vegetables, and keeping Mr. D. amused, the way I did—but I knew that wasn’t true; she was just being kindly. Money, money, money. I’d go to bed at night and dream of fat purses, full of guineas.

  Then one day I came downstairs, and there was salvation, there was our deliverer. The players had arrived. There was Sir Frank (he wasn’t knighted then, in fact, that came later, but he was born knightly, and was knightly by nature anyway). He was six feet tall, a most gorgeous gentleman; he touched up his gray hair with dye and you could hear him boom “Good morning” from half a mile away. He had a squat fat insect of a wife—how I hated her—in a maroon ensemble, with yellow jealous eyes and antennas, quivering.

  He was a “Balliol man,” as he liked to remind everyone at two-minute intervals. He had been destined for the Church, but the Bard had called; he had served his apprenticeship, straight from Oxford, with the greatest of the great: Henry Irving. “Who are you this morning, Mr. McKendrick?” I used to say, after breakfast. “Today I am Hamlet, Miss Rebecca,” he would reply, with a wink and a lordly waft of the hand. Today I am Hamlet, or Brutus, Richard III, or Macbeth. That’s how life should be, my love; one should be free as a bird to choose, every morning. Then he would stroll off to rehearse, though he never rehearsed for very long; all his company had been doing these plays since the year dot, so they knew all the parts anyway.

  Frank McKendrick had a very soft heart; some people couldn’t see beyond the carapace of vanity, but I could. I sensed the soft heart, and the weakness for fair ladies, especially fair ladies in distress. He was not without snobbery, too, so the Grenville ancestry went down a treat (Millicent had been gossiping). I spotted all this when he was introduced to Maman: a young and beautiful widow, of good family, fallen on hard times…irresistible! He bent over her hand most gallantly; the terrible wife bristled at once, so I knew we’d have to outmaneuver her, but I could see the possibilities instantly. I went upstairs and unpacked our books of poetry. Before the week was out, I had Maman reading The Lady of Shalott to an appreciative audience in Millicent’s front parlor, with the aspidistras and the antimacassars, and the warships passing. One fatal glance at Sir Lancelot, and the Lady began dying:

  Out flew the web, and floated wide;

  The mirror crack’d, from side to side;

  “The curse is come upon me,” cried

  The Lady of Shalott.

  How I love that poem! Maman read it aloud so well, in a sweet harmonious voice; we were all seduced by those rhythms. After that, all I really had to do was explain to Mr. McKendrick that we were experiencing a temporary financial embarrassment—he knew all about those—and my work was halfway done. I took him for a morning walk along Marine Parade. I recited some Puck for him; I made it clear that he’d be getting two actors for the price of one, as it were, and I reminded him that he was a lady-in-waiting short. I put my hand in his and told him we’d have to plot, he and I: In the first place, his wife might make difficulties….

  “True, alas, all too true,” said Mr. McKendrick meditatively.

  In the second, Maman would refuse. The stage? She’d never countenance such an idea, not unless she were very skillfully maneuvered into it. But if it was suggested to her that this was just a temporary arrangement; if the lady-in-waiting’s dress was pretty, and Maman was warmly encouraged and praised; if it could be implied that she was rescuing Mr. McKendrick and the company, because without her assistance the cast couldn’t be complete, and the performance of that play might even have to be cancelled…

  “Well, well, well,” said Mr. McKendrick, coming to a halt and looking down at me from his great height. “I doff my hat to you, young lady.” He doffed his hat. “You are a veritable Iago. You are an infant Richard III. You are a ‘notorious Machiavel.’ You are filled with plots and stratagems—and you’re not a bad Puck, Missy, either.” He walked on a few paces, mimed indecision, held his hand to his brow, gave Plymouth Sound an Old Hamlet ghost glare, then turned back to me with Fortinbrassy resolution. I nearly applauded.

  “We have a deal, Missy,” he said, shaking me by the hand. “A pact. Your mama would be a most definite adornment to our little company. She has breeding. She has very pretty ways. I will attend to Mrs. McKendrick, Missy. You will attend to your mama. We will divide, to conquer. A week, would you say?”

  “Three days,” I said, thinking of purses.

  “Ah, impetuous youth,” replied the splendid man, winking at me.

  We were a good team, Frank McKendrick and I. We pulled it off in two and a half days flat. Maman changed her name to “Isabel,” so as not to shame her family. That first week at the Plymouth Royal, I played two doomed little boys (doomed boys became my specialty). Maman played Lady Macbeth’s handmaid and understudied virtuous Hermione, victim of jealousy. At Dunsinane, Maman wore a blue velvet dress, and with her first week’s wage she bought me my blue enamel butterfly brooch, one of my two most sacred possessions—they’ll be yours one day.

  There was a racy side to Maman, and I know she took to our new world like a salmon to the sea—but she’d never admit that to anyone but me. Years later, when she was making her final appearance as Desdemona, she was still telling everyone in the company that, of course, this was only a temporary arrangement.

  Better things lay around the corner, she would suggest. They didn’t. Death lay in wait around the corner—but, until the final flurry that always precedes death, my comfort is that she never knew that.

  TWENTY-THREE

  IT’S A HEAT WAVE, MY DARLING.

  Scarcely a breath of wind, clear skies for almost a week now. I haven’t been able to write. Husband Max came back, the house has been filled with guests, and I couldn’t escape here once; whenever I had a free hour, and I set off for my sea house, Max would follow me jealously. He’s had those white tight moods of his all week—because I went up to London for a day, I think. He hates me to leave and hates me to stay: There’s no pleasing him! I went there five days ago to see that doctor at last—but I didn’t want to tell Max that, not yet—so he leaped to his usual conclusions. I slept one night in my river flat, quiet as a nun and equally virtuous—but as far as Max is concerned, that flat is my lair, and it’s a den of iniquity.

  The doctor’s name was Baker, and he’s the best women’s quack around, or so people tell me. His rooms are in Bloomsbury, just behind the British Museum. I was eager for my appointment, so I arrived far too early. I went into the museum to pass the time; I walked the marble halls, my high heels tap-tapping and echoing—I thought: Someone’s following me! I stared at stone conquerers and painted pharaohs; I lost myself in a wilderness of corridors. I ended up in a death room, hemmed in by white mummies. They remove their hearts, and wrap them up in a parcel at their feet, someone told me once; then they swaddle them in bandages like babies. How patiently they watched me.

  I sat in Dr. Baker’s waiting room, where the only thing to read was Max’s bible, The Field. I read the same article ten times, and couldn’t take in a word of it.

  Into the consulting rooms at last: very grave, with the doctor’s pen scratching away, and my heart beating like a bird’s—so fast; I was so excited.

  I’d called myself “Mrs. Danvers,” when I made the appointment—stupid, really, but I had some wild idea that if I used my name
, word might get back to Max. Every time Dr. Baker addressed me, I’d glance over my shoulder and expect Danny to be there. I wasn’t thinking clearly, my love. I was blurry with joy; I wanted to remember every detail, the tiniest things, because this was my turning point, and this hour was yours. It was momentous for both of us.

  It didn’t go quite the way I’d expected. I think doctors are cursed with caution anyway, and this one turned out to be caution and gravity personified. Probing, probing: first the questions, then an examination that went on and on. It hurt. Mother of God, spare me from speculums.

  He listened to your heartbeat—and I wanted to grab the stethoscope so I could listen, too. “When will my baby move?” I said. “Why am I sick all the time? Why hasn’t my baby moved yet?” He looked at a calendar on the wall and balled up his rubber gloves and said in a quiet way that I mustn’t be precipitate. In the first place, much depended on the exact date of conception; in the second, just to make absolutely sure, he wanted me to have some X rays.

  I refused at first. I’m sure I’ve read that X rays are dangerous for babies. But he assured me that in this case it could cause no possible harm and then I could come back in a week’s time, and he’d be able to answer all my questions.

  They put a lead bib round my neck to shield my breasts and aimed a fat one-eyed robot at my belly. “Heavens, Mrs. Danvers, what a lovely slim figure you have,” the nurse said, then ducked out of the room while it pumped its rays into me. I asked her how long women went on being sick, and when I could expect to put on weight, and when I’d be able to rest my hands on your curve—I can’t wait for the majesty of motherhood. I want to be calm and heavy and milky.

  She said every woman was different, and when someone was as thin and boyish as I am, why, she could be five months gone and you’d only just begin to see the difference. “Don’t you worry about it,” she said. I think she understood how anxious and impatient I was; I think she was sorry for me. She had hips perfect for childbearing (unlike mine), so I half wanted to laugh, but she meant well, and I felt so hectic that to me she was a ministering angel.