Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  I gave a tube of red red blood for them to practice their juju on, made an appointment for seven days’ time (only two more to wait, now, my darling). Then I went out into the spring streets, with the leaves just beginning to show and the cherry blossom foaming in gardens. I went to a babies’ palace of a place in Bond Street, and blew a small fortune on a layette. I bought you nightgowns with ribbons, and a shawl so fine you could pass it through a wedding ring. I bought bonnets and booties, and a silver rattle with coral, and two dozen best terry-towel nappies, just to be practical. It was the best extravagance I’ve ever known. I was drunk with the joy of it. They packed them up in white boxes; I took them back to my river flat, and gloated over them for a whole afternoon. I wrote down lists of names—I still haven’t decided on the right name. I’m giving birth to a girl-boy. What do you want to be called? I’ll know when I hold you.

  Now I’m going to hold fast to what they said, that doctor and that nurse, and not worry about anything. I looked back in my appointments book, and decoded my signs, and I see you might have been conceived a few weeks later than I’d thought, just as Dr. Baker suggested. So that’s why you haven’t moved yet. I must wait a little while longer and not be impatient.

  I’d decided you’d been conceived at my river flat, but I now see it could have been here, in this boathouse—one winter night, when I was at my loneliest. There was a white fat disc of moon, and the sky looked huge and unyielding.

  I’m glad it was here. And he was an appropriate man, rougher than the London candidate, a man on the edge of something. He made love to me by the fire in the moonlight. Let’s see, what else can I remember? He had dark hair and thoughtful eyes; he was a poet— and of Irish extraction, as it happens. He isn’t important anyway, none of them are. They’re just glue, a white measure of usefulness, that’s all. And, never fear, there will be no entanglements. Once, I say—and I mean it—before I lie down with them.

  You should know: He resembled Max to a degree, as they all do, my one-a-month men. I’ve been careful in that respect, as I’ve no particular wish to humiliate my husband. You’ll have to pass as his child, you see, dearest; I won’t tolerate gossip about you or your legitimacy for one instant. Umpteen of Max’s ancestors came from the wrong side of the blanket anyway, so who cares? Hybrids invigorate a strain, as any gardener will tell you.

  Besides, suppose I were Lionel de Winter’s child? I’m certain I’m not, but I wouldn’t want you to have a double dose of blue de Winter blood in your veins—and dear fastidious Max would faint at the idea of incest. So, you could argue I’m doing him a favor, by crossbreeding. Besides, this way we avoid my St. Agnes curse—better safe than sorry! And what alternative do I have? It would break most women to endure what I have. I’ve wedded an iceberg, I’ve coupled with coldness. If I have splinters of ice in my heart now, I blame the de Winters and their unnatural blue blood for it. It’s been an Antarctic, my marriage.

  Dearest, I want you to know this: This is my creed: There is only one true legitimacy, and it’s bestowed by love, not male lineage. I love Manderley and I love you. Everything Manderley now is, I made; I took this place, wedded myself to it, and made it perfect. It was a sepulcher when I came here. It was I who opened the windows and let life in: I will not let that count for nothing. Remember, your rights come from the female line. You are my rightful heir, and I’ll ensure you inherit.

  You mustn’t think about the centuries of patriarchy and primogeniture, you must forget all those fustian fathers and sons, my darling. Their rule is about to be overthrown. Listen: Can you hear those whispers? It’s an insurrection! Revolution’s in the air; the women of the house have waited long enough, and now there’s an uprising! I’ve made Manderley my domain. I am sovereign here, and every chimney stack, every blade of grass knows it. I claim it on behalf of all the women who labored and bore children here; all the women who sacrificed their names and lost their identities, who were subsumed, who were relegated to a portrait in a gallery, a footnote in a family’s history. I claim it for women long dead, and women who have died recently, women who lie in the de Winter crypt, and whose voices speak to me. I claim it for Virginia, and my mother. I claim it for myself, because I am not just a wife, some poor adjunct to a husband. I speak for a long, long line of the dispossessed. I am the one who breeds: I belong here.

  And I’m armed, too, never fear; I’m ready for any skirmish that’s necessary—and a battle or two may well be necessary! I have old injustices in my veins; disrespect and neglect have helped to forge me. My weapons are anger and guile—and no man is going to put his hand on my neck and subdue me. Women the weaker sex? I don’t think so, my darling!

  I’m pure steel now. Honed and polished, bayonet sharp. Nothing will stand in my way, I promise you. Last year I decided: If my husband won’t give me a child, I’ll get one without him. This year I resolved: If my husband tries to thwart me, I’ll kill him.

  So, husband Max had better be careful. I shall tell him, does he want an heir or doesn’t he? Don’t mention divorce courts to me, Max, I’ll say (not that he would, he’s too terrified of scandal and he knows only too well how invincible I’d be in the witness-box). I’d be wary of oiling that gun of yours, too, Max. I’ll say, don’t you know I keep the gun-room keys on my pretty little chatelaine? Think about it, husband, I’ll say, and remember: The ways of death are infinite. A shooting accident? A fall from a cliff? A drowning? Don’t expect womanly mercy from me, Max, and watch your back, because, come what may, it’s my child who’ll inherit.

  ANGER IS A FUEL, MY SWEET—YOU’LL LEARN THAT ONE day. It’s pure acetylene, it’s ninety-nine percent proof, it’s high octane. It is one of my legacies to you, but the energy’s very rich; it makes me shake, sometimes.

  I’m calmer now. I went for a walk with Jasper to Kerrith. Last week, James Tabb took Je Reviens out of dry dock; today I asked him to get her ready for me as quickly as he can. Twenty-four hours, he says—and because he always does what he says (unlike most men), that means I can take you out in my boat tomorrow. Pray the weather holds. We’ll take you for your first sail; the tide conditions will be perfect tomorrow night. I’ll show you the sea by moonlight.

  Meanwhile, all the guests have gone, and today Max is, as usual, at the estate office with Frank Crawley. I passed that building on my way back from Kerrith. I could hear the sound of their voices. I wondered what they were discussing. Acreages? Tenants? Plowing?

  I should confess: The wicked Rebecca in me toyed a little with Frank once. I was angry with Max; rejection makes you feel ugly, you know. I woke up one morning all alone in my great Manderley bed; I opened the curtains and listened to the sea and thought—I’ll show him. Besides, I was curious to know: Was our estate manager a saint or a eunuch?

  Neither, I discovered. But don’t worry—he’s a poor thing, with the soul of a dullard. It went no further than two schoolboy billets-doux, and a fortnight’s sighing. He took himself so seriously that he actually went to Max, confessed his sins, and resigned. What sins? Such conceit! He was reinstated at once, needless to say. I laughed at his presumption—and he’s never forgiven me.

  Pausing by the estate office today, a sudden idea came to me. I thought, Maybe he and Max aren’t discussing plowing and fertilizing; maybe they’re sitting there in that office and plotting my demise. It wouldn’t surprise me. This last year, Max’s suspicions have increased, fueled by frustration and my absences, among other things. Love and loathing are such a heady mix that he may well believe he wants me dead, but he’s too full of the milk of human kindness to make the best of assassins. He’d need someone to screw his courage to the sticking-place—though I can’t imagine Frank Crawley’s being much use in that respect; he’s far too timid. I could make Max kill; I could goad him to murder me easily enough, and I’ve often been tempted to do so in the past, Bridegroom Death being preferable to the bridegroom I did have.

  But supposing I were to meet with a convenient accident? Then Max might need some
one like Frank to provide him with a cover story. Questions would be asked; my good friend Arthur Julyan is magistrate here, and he’d insist on a thorough investigation, I know it. So Max might need Frank’s help to conceal the truth. Could they be planning such a thing now, I wondered.

  I moved closer to the windows and tried to hear what they were saying. I couldn’t hear a word—and, suddenly, I felt bewildered, dearest. I felt faint. I thought, How did this happen? How did Max and I come to this pass? Who fixed these stars? Can’t we alter these patterns?

  I believed that eventually I’d get used to being hated, you see, but I haven’t. Today, the hate stabbed at me. I’ve tried to make myself strong, but my strength fails me sometimes, even now. My womb hurt. I thought, I’ve started bleeding again; I’m bleeding internally, all these fibrous placenta bits, and gouts of blood, gushing out of me.

  I’m back in my sea house now, my love, on my territory. I’m not bleeding. I imagined the pain. I’m feeling stronger already. Let them plot; I don’t care. The brother officers are far too unimaginative and honorable to act anyway—and they certainly won’t touch me once I tell them about you. To harm an unborn child would damn a man for all eternity…. I’m carrying a baby; I’m the holiest of holies.

  What witchcraft! I bear a charmed life now, my darling.

  IT’S COOL IN THE BOATHOUSE, THOUGH IT’S HIGH NOON outside. These thick walls protect us whatever the weather. I’ve opened the sea window; you can hear the rush of the waves; there’s a fresh salt breeze off the water; Jasper is chewing a stick. I have all my inks to hand, a virgin page, and my favorite pen: Today I’m going to wind the film forward seven years; I want to tell you about the summer of crisis.

  It was the summer war was declared—one of the hottest summers I ever remember. We’d been inching our way down England’s spine, city to city, theater to theater; Sir Frank had been knighted the previous year—but the knighthood wasn’t bringing in audiences. He was aging, and some of our best players had left; the words of the plays still echoed to infinity, as they always do, but our performances…well, they were lackluster, dearest. It was the summer Maman was promoted to proper speaking parts—and the summer takings were so low that we all had to accept reductions in our wages.

  By the time we reached Plymouth for our annual visit, the war was a month old, though everyone was still saying it would be over by Christmas. The advance bookings were poor, but Sir Frank was a man of boundless optimism. He insisted we give extra performances of Henry V; he thought it would suit the prevailing mood of patriotism. But even the spectacle of Sir Frank urging the outnumbered English to victory at Agincourt didn’t sell seats. “We soldier on,” Sir Frank said. “I shall give them my Moor on Saturday night. My three hundredth performance—that’ll bring ’em in, you may depend on it, Missy.”

  I think Sir Frank had a sharp eye for box-office potential, on occasion, despite his naïveté. It hadn’t escaped his notice that a grumpy frump of a fifty-year-old wife playing Juliet or Rosalind wasn’t exactly a draw; Maman had been playing Princess Katharine of France in Henry V for some time now, but that was her biggest role to date, and only given her because she spoke French, a qualification even Lady McKendrick couldn’t deny her. For the Othello, Sir Frank suddenly decided, beautiful Maman would be promoted to Desdemona. He announced it on the billboards before he told his wife, and, when I saw the expression in her yellow jealous eyes, I knew there’d be trouble. “Indisposed?” I overheard her hiss at our costume mistress. “I may have a sore throat, dear, but it’s not me who’s indisposed. You’ll have to let out the green taffeta, Clara, if Mistress High and Mighty’s going to wear it.”

  Maman had been in poor spirits all summer; she was nervy and on edge; she had no appetite—yet it was true, she was putting on weight; her Princess Katharine brocade had been let out around the waist and bosom to fit her. She’d been fretful and preoccupied for months; she was quarrelsome with Lady McKendrick; she was very snappy and short with our recent recruit, the handsome hothead Orlando Stephens, who was to play Cassio. She wouldn’t confide in me; my body was starting to change, and Maman hated that. She wouldn’t share a dressing room with me anymore, and Clara had to help me bind my chest with bandages when I played boys now. “When you put out the Red Flag the first time,” Clara said, giving me a kiss, “you come to me. I’ll show you what to do, dearie. It can’t be long, not the way you’re growing.”

  I didn’t know what the Red Flag was, and Maman wouldn’t tell me, but I knew red was a danger signal. I hated those bandages. I hated my budding breasts. I wanted to slice them off and be an Amazon. They were like a malignant growth, and I knew, if they grew any more, my princeling days were numbered. No more doomed boys for me—and then what would I do? I loved my doomed boys. I practiced their deaths; I died so well—everyone said so.

  When Maman learned she was to play Desdemona, her mood changed instantly; overnight, a transformation! Out came the sun, the clouds lifted, Maman’s eyes sparkled again and all the courage I loved and admired returned to her. I forgot about my bandages, and all my other petty selfish concerns. I heard her lines again and again; we practiced the “Willow Song” in the blue dusk of Plymouth Sound September evenings. She has a premonition she’s going to die, don’t you think, Maman? I said, and Maman frowned at the sea beyond the St. Agnes windows, and said, Perhaps, Becka. Maybe, my darling.

  I watched Maman die again and again. She would lie back on Millicent’s black horsehair chaise longue. We would imagine the murdering husband, imagine the ways he killed: stifle or strangle? Shakespeare doesn’t make it definite; Maman thought stifle. “Which is better, Becka?” she’d say. “With my head at this angle, or that one?”

  And those strange speeches Desdemona has after she’s apparently been killed—when the audience thinks she’s dead and gone and silenced forever. Those speeches obsessed Maman. She felt she should give a small premonitory flutter of her hand, then rise up very suddenly and speak. It must take them by surprise; it would be a true coup de théâtre. “I shall give a wild cry,” she said. “My Desdemona won’t die quietly—she’s always played wrongly, Becka. I know she’d fight back. This is a woman who defied her father and ran off with a blackamoor. She isn’t some milksop, she’s a woman of spirit, and that’s why the Moor loves her.”

  It made me desperately sad. I agreed with everything she said, and I hadn’t the heart to tell her. None of this would happen; Sir Frank wouldn’t countenance it for a second. He’d elbow Maman into an ignominious, invisible death no matter what she did; he’d interpose his body between her and the audience; he’d clamp the pillow on her mouth midspeech if necessary, and he’d drown her out. Maman’s low voice didn’t carry much beyond the front three rows of the stalls anyway. What hope did she have, with Sir Frank center stage, in the shaft of the limes, going at it with that terrible, magnificent male voice, full throttle?

  So I watched her die again and again, and my heart bled. The clock was ticking, ticking on the St. Agnes mantelshelf; she had four months to live and neither of us knew that. A black marble mantel and a black marble tomb. No rehearsals prepare you for what death’s actually like, my darling. When that change came to Maman, when she went through that door and it slammed in my face…dear God, it was horrible. No miraculous golden words, no tender gestures, just incoherence and ugliness. It happens so fast. It turned me to stone; I couldn’t move or think. It was Danny who closed her eyes and stroked the sheet over her. Don’t do that, I said. I said, Who’s that crying, Danny—I can hear a baby crying. And Danny said, Hush, hush—there’s no baby, what makes you think that? It’s you crying, dear—just you sit with her quietly for a while, then I’ll take you downstairs. Someone special’s waiting to see you.

  IT WAS MY DEAD DEVLIN FATHER, DEAREST, BACK FROM HIS underworld. But I’m ahead of myself. There was an interim—and it’s the interim that I promised you we’d step into.

  Imagine a murky tunnel; it’s four months long. At one end of it is my mot
her, St. Agnes, and a theater still lit by gas-jets; at the other, my father, and a house too far from the sea, called Greenways. In the background, pulsing away, is a war we’re supposed to win by Christmas, but don’t. All the women in the company have started knitting, knitting, mufflers for our brave boys at the front, and all the eligible men are talking tactics and recruiting officers.

  Maman died wildly, with wild cries, at the Othello first night, and I think Sir Frank never forgave her. Danny and I sat side by side in the audience; Danny’s clockwork whirred, and she shed tears when Desdemona was silenced. For those tears, I forgive her for much that happened afterward. I held her hand: I was afraid for Maman. I had cramps in my stomach; my head ached and I felt dizzy with nerves. I was bleeding, I discovered in the second interval. Was this the Red Flag? I wiped the blood off and went back to my seat. I wondered if I’d bleed to death, and how long that took. Who’d die first, me or Desdemona?

  The following week, it was Henry IV, Part 1; Orlando Stephens was playing Hotspur—he was born to play Hotspur, in my opinion. He was a dashing, sweet, hotheaded fool. He had a million ideas a minute, and none of them sensible. Maman and I were in the audience that night; we went backstage afterward to see him, and, still in costume, standing at his dressing room door, Orlando announced he’d joined up that afternoon. Maman went white to the lips, her eyes rolled back in her head, then she fell to the floor in a dead faint. Orlando gave her brandy to drink; I ran to fetch sal volatile. When I came back, she was in his arms, being called his “sweet,” being told he’d write every day without fail. A promise Orlando kept for less than two months: Food for worms, brave Percy. He died at the first battle of Ypres, that November.