Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  So, what was the meaning of that scene, my darling? I was such an ignoramus then; I didn’t really know where babies come from. I was still putting clues together, and my understanding was imperfect. But I have the double vision that comes with age now: I have hindsight, second sight—look at the chart and I score a perfect 20/20. Now I’m carrying a child, just as she was, so I ask myself, Was Orlando, younger than my mother by twenty years, the father of the baby I didn’t even know she was expecting?

  It’s possible, but there are other possibilities, too. Sir Frank had always felt a tendresse for Maman, and she had been promoted recently. There had been other men, from time to time, who had admired Maman, who liked her “pretty ways,” and to whom she responded. Maman was headstrong; she was vulnerable to men’s interest and flattery; without a second thought, without caring how dangerous it might be, she followed where her heart led her.

  I love her for that generosity of spirit, but she was not a good judge of character, and she trusted too easily. Dear Maman! She remained an innocent until the day she died—far more innocent than I was. But then I’d learned my lesson years before on a beach in Brittany. I always knew that men were the enemy.

  ONCE ORLANDO HAD LEFT THE COMPANY, MAMAN’S strength declined rapidly; she fainted twice in the wings. I knew that my wiles and Sir Frank’s gallantry wouldn’t protect her from the wife’s yellow jealous cat eyes much longer. When the season ended at Plymouth, and the company made ready to move on to Bristol, the crisis came. A shamefaced Sir Frank explained that takings were down yet again, and economies had to be made; bearing in mind my mother’s indisposition, and my unfortunate tendency to grow….

  “Dear Lady, I fear we must part,” he said, shifting from foot to foot in the St. Agnes front parlor. “In view of my indebtedness to you and to Missy here, if you will permit…” He reached his hand into his waistcoat pocket.

  “I will not permit!” Maman cried, those two scarlet flags of color mounting in her cheeks. “Frank, you are a dear good man, but I couldn’t.”

  We were broke, no savings, and I wasn’t so scrupulous. I followed Sir Frank out, and bending down from his great height, he kissed me on both cheeks, called me “Missy” one last time, begged me to write, and gave me the waistcoat check. Written with a flourish: Pay to Mrs. Isabel Devlin the sum of ten guineas.

  The check bounced, and Sir Frank never answered the letters I sent, but I don’t hold that against him. He was a fraud, but he was also a hero (and they’re thin on the ground, my darling, as rare as unicorns). We managed without that money anyway. There was a week’s kerfuffle at St. Agnes, much toing and froing and whispering behind doors; there was an atmosphere of malaise, panic, and hopelessness. Doctors came and went; Millicent and my mother were thick as thieves, but Millicent was old by then and didn’t know what to do, I could tell. Maman wept into that scrap of a lace handkerchief of hers—and I was excluded.

  I walked Marine Parade and looked at warships. I talked to the gulls. I couldn’t help, all my offers of help were rejected. “You’re just a child, dearie, and your mother doesn’t want you worried,” Millicent said—but I knew that wasn’t true. I wasn’t a child anymore; I wasn’t a woman, either. I couldn’t be a doomed boy. I had no function, no gender, no identity; others were making decisions, making arrangements, the females were rallying, I could sense it—and meanwhile I was trapped in a hinterland; I was down there with the unborn and unbaptised, in Limbo.

  The next thing I knew, Danny had arrived. She was taking charge—and how she relished it! Danny’s always been drawn to crisis; she flies to it the way iron filings fly to a magnet. Suddenly, she’d given up her position, was back at St. Agnes, and was ordering everyone around, me included. Maman was quite seriously ill, she said; she needed a rest cure; all the doctors were unanimous: She’d been overworking, and her nerves were strained from fatigue and fretting about my welfare. Maman needed to rest and build up her health for a few months. It was possible Danny might be able to get her into a convalescent home she knew of; if so, Danny would be going with her, she wouldn’t dream of leaving her side. Meanwhile, such excitement, a sanctuary had been found for me. Just for a while, a few months, until Maman was quite recovered, I was to stay with Maman’s sister, Evangeline, in her beautiful house, St. Winnow’s.

  Evangeline had been to see Maman the previous day, it seemed, when I’d happened to be out shopping with Millicent. It was all arranged, there was nothing to worry about. My aunt would pay any nursing home fees; meanwhile, it would be a great opportunity for me. St. Winnow’s was a fine establishment; I would move in the best circles, and no doubt pick up all kinds of useful instruction from those two fine young ladies, my cousins Elinor and Jocelyn.

  Such an arrant lie. Danny’s eyes slid away. I stared at the aspidistra in its brass pot; I dug my bitten nails into my palms. My aunt? My cousins? They’d ignored my existence since the day I was born—for nearly fourteen years, they’d ignored me. Evangeline had made Maman feel like a pariah. I knew what this lie was hiding: I was being bundled away from some terrible truth. What was it, was Maman dying?

  I left Danny there, talking to the walls; helter-skelter up the stairs to the new room where they’d put Maman. She was lying in bed, blue shadows under her beautiful eyes; that cunning locket was around her throat; Tennyson’s Complete Works lay on the counterpane. I flung myself across her, and Maman held me tight; she stroked my black Devlin hair; we were both crying.

  “Darling,” she said. “I love you with all my heart. You know that, Becka. You’re the only thing that matters to me, and I would never lie to you. I promise you, I’m not dying. I’m not seriously ill. I just need to rest for a while—we’ll be together again in just a few months, my sweet, I swear to you.”

  Fait accompli. Dispatched to St. Winnow’s. There, no one explained to anyone who I was. I was just a relation, one of the tribes of Grenville connections. I was camouflaged by vagueness. They walled up my mother, brick by brick; they entombed her in reticence. Maman must never be mentioned; her name was never uttered except by Evangeline, and then only when she was alone with me. I’m sure they’d never have taken me in, had straitlaced Sir Joshua not been away for months, making a tour of foreign shipping yards. I was put in a cold attic room, and forbidden to speak to the servants. Everyone in this house was half dead; they were dying of anemia. I was expected to sit, to take tea, to sew, to modulate my behaviour, alter my way of speech and reform all my attitudes. I mustn’t wear my hair loose. I mustn’t face the air without gloves, and a hat, an umbrella or a parasol. I mustn’t walk alone anywhere, except in the garden. I mustn’t run or raise my voice, and I should speak only when spoken to.

  Dearest, I started dying inside. My heart shriveled. Danny sent twice-weekly bulletins and said Maman was too weak to write. Only my anger kept me going.

  No one was unkind, exactly. They kept me in the cage, and they fed me regularly—no red meat, though! They put their hands through the bars and stroked my fur and remarked on my odd habits and appearance. I was a very exotic little beast, a chien mechant—and they were wary. Who bred this little bitch, with her doubtful pedigree? I might bite the hand that stroked and fed me, look how I snarled, look what sharp little teeth I had! Careful, careful: I might shame them all by some sudden unspeakable bestial barbarity.

  What fools! I could mimic them and their milksop ways inside a week. I could do their accents and their gestures within a day. I could speak their language if necessary. And when Evangeline saw that, she grew a little bolder and a little bolder. I was allowed outside the kennel occasionally.

  First, Elinor, the elder and sharper of my cousins, took me out on the leash. Elinor was not living at St. Winnow’s, she was training to be a voluntary nurse, a VAD, at a hospital in Exeter; on one of her rare visits, she took me to Kerrith, and when I didn’t disgrace her in the shops or streets, took me to a house called The Pines, to call on her friends, old Mrs. Julyan, and her soldier son, Arthur. “He’s a fine man
,” Elinor said, striding briskly up the hill. “Two days’ leave from his regiment. His wife’s expecting their first child. I must inquire after her.”

  No sign of the wife—too far gone to be presentable, I think now. But Captain Julyan was a very handsome man: tall, thoughtful, and lean, with clever blue eyes—I liked him instantly. We took tea in a garden between a palm and a monkey puzzle. Elinor was brusque, but I scented a tendresse; if Elinor had once had expectations that had not been fulfilled, however, she hid them. How perfectly I behaved; scarcely spoke, didn’t swing my legs, made myself invisible.

  My identity was being smudged again. No one mentioned Maman. I looked at the great billowing banks of roses by the house. They had bloodred heps, big as a baby’s fist. Old Mrs. Julyan said they were scions of the famous Grenville roses. Elinor changed the subject immediately.

  Captain Julyan was gallant. He looked at me intently. He admired my blue butterfly brooch—and I wouldn’t be silenced then. I said Maman had given it to me.

  As we left, Captain Julyan took me into his grandfather’s study: such a room—books, books, it was barricaded with books, all four walls, floor to ceiling. He showed me the collection of butterflies he’d made as a boy, and there was one just like my brooch. He’d caught it in the Manderley woods, when he was seven; it was a Meadow Blue, not as rare or showy as a Painted Lady or a Swallowtail, but intensely blue, and one of his favorites. Poor papillons! They were finished off with chloroform, then pinned through the furry heart; there were thousands in those specimen drawers, as many butterflies as books, my darling.

  He packed the Meadow Blue up in a small box, and gave it to me—and I treasured it, but it was lost in the rush and confusion some months later, when Danny summoned me, and I had to go to my mother’s bedside at Greenways. Or maybe I took a dislike to it and destroyed it. I forget now.

  “You’re a good girl, Rebecca,” Elinor said, striding back down the hill again. “You can behave so nicely when you want, my dear.”

  “I can act,” I said scornfully, tossing my head. “Of course I can act. I’ve been doing Shakespeare for seven years. Tea at The Pines isn’t difficult.”

  “I would imagine not,” she replied calmly. She was not a fool, Elinor, I realized. How old was she, I wondered. Twenty? Twenty-four or-five, maybe.

  “Everyone acts, in any case,” she went on. “You’re not unique in that respect. Nurses have to act, for instance, as I’m learning at the hospital. Nurses have to be great concealers of the truth…” She frowned, slowed, sighed, then picked up pace. “Still, never mind that. Let’s go home, dear. Don’t scuff your feet now.”

  My first outing. My first sniff at this new world. A repetition wasn’t risked, not for weeks. Elinor returned to her hospital; younger sister Jocelyn used to talk to me sometimes, but plump pretty Jocelyn was in love, sighing for a subaltern fiancé somewhere in France. She wrote letters to him every day, and sometimes I’d walk with her to the box. Before she posted them she’d kiss the envelope flaps for luck. She was sweet natured but moony and not much use to me. My nosings scared her: “Do you remember my maman?” I said. “Did you meet her when you were little, Jocelyn?”

  Jocelyn crimsoned, and looked at me with round blue eyes. She said she couldn’t remember my mama, that she wasn’t allowed to discuss my mama, her father wouldn’t have her name spoken in the house. “Why not?” I cried, stamping my foot. “Why not? She’s a Grenville. The Grenvilles go back to kingdom come. Your father’s family’s nothing to write home about.”

  “Papa didn’t approve of her marriage,” Jocelyn blurted. “And you mustn’t speak of Papa in that way. It’s very rude and wrong when Mama’s been so good to you.”

  “That for your mother,” I shouted, snapping my fingers in her face. “Damn your father! I hope his ships sink! He’s food for worms, he is!”

  Jocelyn ran away. She was packed off to stay with friends before the week was out, and it was back to the kennel for me: Obedience lessons with Aunt Evangeline every morning—it didn’t do to challenge the authority of the master of the house, you see, and as for swearing…No beatings, don’t imagine that. Evangeline was not a bad woman or a stupid one; she tried the reasonable approach. We’d sit side by side on the verandah if the autumn day was warm enough. Evangeline would work on her embroideries and tapestries; I would sort the wools and line up the rainbow silks. Vermilion and violet. Down below us, the river Kerr wound; I’d watch its windings, I’d hear Maman’s voice reading Tennyson, and imagine the river was winding all the way to Camelot.

  “I try to help,” Evangeline said, her needle moving deftly back and forth, little flashes of silver, always work in the same direction and keep the tension even, she told me. “But Isolda always was so headstrong! She will not listen to reason. She will rush in where angels fear to tread, you see, Rebecca.”

  Had angels feared to tread at Manderley, I wondered? Why was Maman banished to France? I asked Evangeline.

  “Heavens, she wasn’t banished! What a word! It was just felt…well, that it would do Isolda good to spend some time abroad. Your mother’s very sensitive, and she’s easily influenced, and she was terribly distressed by our sister Virginia’s death. It made her quite ill. She wasn’t herself for a long while afterward. So she went to France, and then she married in France, of course—pass me the mauve silk, would you, dear? I’m going to do this flower next. I must change color.”

  I passed the silk. “Is Maman going to die?” I said.

  “No, no, no,” said Evangeline, rising quickly and putting her arms around me. “You mustn’t think that. In another few months she’ll be quite well again—”

  “How many months?”

  “In the new year, by February at the very latest, for sure. Now, that isn’t long to wait, my dear, is it?”

  Not long? It was an eternity. Three more months in the cage. By February, I’d have dwindled to nothing—and I didn’t believe Evangeline, in any case. Danny had written to say that I still couldn’t visit; all being well, Maman would be moving to a convalescent home in Berkshire shortly—and I knew what that meant. Once they ferried her there, once those gates clanged shut on her, I’d never see her again. She’d go down to join my dead Devlin father in his underworld; he’d reclaim his bride. He’d wind her in his arms, as he sometimes did in my dreams, and there’d be no escaping that long embrace. My father, my father. Somewhere around that time, I began to fear him.

  Did Evangeline see those thoughts in my face? Perhaps, for she tried harder and harder to divert me after that. She fetched out Jocelyn’s old dolls; she played the piano for me (a great Steinway: these strings needed no tuning). She gave me silly girls’ books to read, when I hungered for the meat and wine of Shakespeare. She produced jigsaws and scrapbooks; she taught me bezique and bridge, and one day, when inspiration was nearing its end, she brought me a pile of fat black notebooks, with strings that tied on their spines. My mother had had some very similar as a child, she said. I was such an odd little girl, imaginative, just as my mother had been; maybe it would amuse me to keep a diary, or write stories?

  THOSE LITTLE COFFIN BOOKS DREW ME. THAT AFTERNOON, while Evangeline was at home to her visitors downstairs, I sat in the old schoolroom. I took up a steel-nibbed pen and dipped it in black ink. I thought, I’ll write Maman’s story and mine. I’ll write our history, and, when she’s well again, I’ll present it to her.

  I didn’t get very far, my darling. I stuck in a picture of myself with Midsummer’s Night’s Dream wings—I’d been proud of that picture once, Maman had it taken specially. I stuck in a postcard picture of Manderley I’d bought that hot day Elinor took me out on the leash. I wrote the words “Rebecca’s Tale,” and curled the tail of the letter “e” all the way down the page like a fleshy serpent. It was potent; it was a python, an anaconda.

  What else? I wanted to give Maman our past; our idyll by the sea, and all the glories of my childhood—they would make her well again. I wanted to write about Brittany and our
foursquare house; the sound of the waves and the sin in a speck of dust. I felt certain that, if I wrote accurately enough, Maman would survive. She’d live then, for sure—but something was choking me. My head felt hot; my mouth was dry; the pages blurred. I missed Maman, I feared for her, and not a word would come to me.

  In the end, I left the pages blank, telling a tale only I could read. I closed up the black covers, tied the strings on the spine, and hid it away. Maybe my failure caused Maman’s death, I thought afterward; maybe I was responsible.

  I have that little book still, and it’s on the table here now. I took it out this afternoon to look at it. Such a change! Then I couldn’t write; now I can’t stop. I feel such an itch and an urgency; there’s so much I want you to know, my dearest. The memories come at me pell-mell. I can’t write fast enough—my story’s eating into me.

  Has my mother come back from the dead for you? I hope so. I want you to know her. Can you hear her voice? I can, so clearly. Now there are other ghosts to resurrect, and other twists in the tale to tell you. Not so very many pages left in this book, but enough. I’ll tell you how I first came to Manderley, how my Devlin father came back from the dead—and how I won myself a husband. Now there’s a fairy tale, and a Grimm one! Meanwhile, my love, it’s late; the sea’s silvery.

  I’ll have to go back to the house for dinner; I must put in appearances occasionally. I’ll continue tomorrow, my sweet—husband permitting. I’ll have to leave for my London appointment very early the next day, but I’ll take you out in my boat, and then finish my tale before I leave, I promise you.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  BACK FROM YOUR FIRST SAIL; CONDITIONS WERE PERFECT. You’ve seen this bay, the blue diamond in your Manderley crown, my dearest.