Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  “My strength comes from my father,” I replied. “And Max knows that.”

  I looked at her lined face; should I tell her my father came back from his underworld when Maman died, then returned there the day I came of age? Should I explain how his love gave me strength? No point. I could see she’d forgotten his name, and I didn’t want to waste him on her.

  She gone off into another of those musing states. I saw her look around that airless room; her eyes rested on its shadowy corners. “So, how did you meet Maxim?” she asked. “You came upon the scene very suddenly. Did you give fate a nudge? I always did. Men need their minds made up for them.”

  I saw no reason to lie, so I told her some details, though not all of them, my darling! I’d been in New York with one of the suitors who buzzed around me after my father died—this suitor being especially persistent. We were supposed to be going on to meet his ancien régime family somewhere dull, patrician, and inland, when I heard from a friend that among the passengers on some queenly ship about to sail to England was that catch, the owner of legendary Manderley, Maxim de Winter.

  The next morning, I sold a necklace the suitor had bought me the previous week—I had some money of my own, but not enough for a first-class ticket, and I disliked the necklace anyway: icy stones and too tight around my throat, it strangled me. I took myself off to the shipping offices, acquired the last available stateroom, and sailed that same day. I didn’t bother to say farewell to the suitor—he’d begun to bore me. And, once on the ship, I made no attempt to waylay the son and heir, or get myself moved to his table—I knew there was no need for ruses like that. I’d been in a bad way after my father broke his neck, but I’d recovered my selves in the years since. I’d been reborn behind the green screens in that hospital ward I mentioned, and I’d made myself into the weapon of a woman I am now, not Becka anymore, but Rebecca.

  The son, meanwhile, had inherited; he was still unmarried, and I knew that he was waiting for me. I’d kept an eye on his progress for years—little magazine references, anecdotes from friends. We’d almost met several times, at parties; sometimes I’d hear he’d arrived just as I’d left, but that never worried me. I was becoming famous for being myself by then, so I knew: Sooner or later, if not here then elsewhere, we’d meet—and this time he’d notice me. It was inevitable.

  We did finally meet on that ship, two days into our sail; it was a rough crossing, and most passengers had retreated to their cabins. I was standing on deck, leaning over the rail, watching the gray cold swell of the empty Atlantic. The wind was gusting and keening; I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He looked much as before, though less interesting minus the uniform and the gun. He was then in his midthirties; people were beginning to remark on his still being unmarried.

  “You’re not thinking of jumping, I hope,” he said, and because I could tell the quiet inquiry was serious, not some witless joke, I replied honestly.

  “Not now,” I answered.

  I wasn’t wearing a hat, and I wasn’t wearing gloves. He looked at my face, then down at my hands gripping the rail, and I saw him note the narrow band of eternity diamonds on my wedding finger. His expression altered, and he looked so dejected that I had to put him out of his misery.

  I explained that my father had given me the ring, made from diamonds he’d brought back from a mine in South Africa. I didn’t tell him that my father had put it on my finger the very first day I met him, as a symbol of our reunion, when I came downstairs from the sheeted mirrors in Maman’s bedroom. But I did explain that my father was dead now, so I wore it in remembrance of him.

  “On that particular finger?” he said, with a small frown.

  “It’s the only one it fits,” I replied, which was true. And the ambition to replace that ring with his own came to him then, right then, or so Max always claimed to me afterward…

  “And after that, my dear?” prompted the old gorgon of a grandmother beside me. But I didn’t answer her that time. It was none of her business!

  Max and I weren’t apart for one moment for the rest of the crossing. We ate dinner together that night, in a near-deserted dining room; a pianist was playing edgy jazzy tunes; the ship pitched and rolled—it was supposed to have the very latest in stabilizer devices, but they weren’t effective on that voyage, my darling.

  I told Max that I refused to call him “Maxim”; the word had two meanings: it was either an artillery gun or a rule of conduct expressed in a sentence—and neither of those meanings was attractive to me. I prefer small guns that nestle in your palm to large ones, and I despise all rules, especially those foolish arbitrary ones that govern conduct. I think Max liked his new name, and perhaps it influenced him. He came to my cabin that very first night—not his usual “conduct” with women, I’m sure—and we talked all night, never touching once, then walked the wet decks at dawn the next morning.

  We only had to look in each other’s eyes to know: Everything was already decided; weddings, et cetera, were mere details. Dear Max! He was lonely, I suspect, searching for something and unable to find it. He wasn’t at ease in the brave new postwar world. It suited me just fine, but it went by too fast and too carelessly for Max. How scrupulous he was, worrying that I’d misinterpret him, fearing I’d think he’d treat this as a shipboard romance; tempted, but terrified I might view this as a casual seduction on his part. “That isn’t what I feel,” he said, standing like a lost boy in my stateroom. “I want you to know that.”

  I told him I knew what he felt—and, if I was wrong, on my head be it. I think he’d have wasted half the night with his English arguments and moral anguish. Well, I had no patience with that. I was wearing an avant-garde witchy dress; a Scheherazade dress; it fitted like a second skin, with hooks and eyes down the line of my spine. I made him undo them; the dress slipped down and made a red pool about my feet. I knew this event mattered, it was like a birthing, so I was nervous then, but only for a second. I stepped out of that pool to the sound of the ship’s turbines powering the ship inexorably on—and what happened then, when I relented, I’d never reveal to a living soul, not even you, my dearest.

  Max and I meshed. We exchanged bravery for vulnerability. I was a little blind, I suppose. I didn’t notice then that he was very possessive. I didn’t equate marriage with ownership, so it didn’t occur to me that he might. If I had realized, I’d have told him that the idea of owning anyone was impious and stupid! I could see I’d revealed pleasures and possibilities to Max that he’d imagined, but never experienced. I gave him carte blanche with my body, though that’s nothing special, a man can pay a woman to do that for him. I also gave him carte blanche with my heart and mind—and perhaps that’s rarer. Max seemed to think so.

  As a result, we were both entranced—and that’s no state in which to make decisions. So I was fair; I made Max wait until he was sure what he wanted, though in essence I’d promised to be Rebecca de Winter before we docked at Southampton. It’s what I’d intended since the age of fourteen, after all. I always meant to usurp the name, and I always knew it would fit me. Rebecca de Winter—and no mealy-mouthed nonsense about Mrs. Maximilian!

  I didn’t intend to sully any of this by recounting it to the gorgon, so I diverted her away from the truth—which I’m good at, dearest; there’s a thousand techniques, and one day I’ll teach you them. She listened intently, and an expression came upon her face that I remembered from the last time I’d met her. I think she was anxious on Max’s behalf—with reason, as it turned out; but she was also anxious for me, which I found peculiar. There was a certain concern in her old eyes, and a sympathy I couldn’t understand, as if she not only pitied me, but feared for me.

  “Why do you look at me like that?” I said.

  “Because I’m not as hard as I’m believed to be, and you’re not as impervious as you pretend,” she replied with a shake of the head. And I took no notice of that, as you may imagine. Not only was she aging, as I’ve said, but with age she was becoming sentimental, and I l
iked her the less for it. Not impervious? Wrong, wrong, wrong, Grandmama. I’m granite.

  “And this is what you want?” she said finally. “You’re sure it’s what you want? Manderley makes demands of wives, you know. It requires…sacrifices.”

  What a shivery way that was said! She might have meant “sacrifice” in the conventional sense, but I’m by no means sure she did. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking of her dead son, of past sacrifices or future ones. I had a vision of Manderley brides being led in procession to the ancestral altar; there, anointed and accoutred, with a patient acquiescence, they prepared themselves to be offered up to their wintry bridegrooms. Stifled? Strangled? Wedded?

  I smiled. Virgins make the best sacrifices, as everyone knows—and my blood wasn’t virgin. I had darker powers; I was protected by my own strength of will, a more reliable weapon for a maiden than virginity. Being sexually pure in that limited sense was always a useless defense in any case—at least in the stories I’d read. Manderley held no dangers for me. And this was fact, not hubris.

  I told Mrs. de Winter that it was what I wanted, and what I was determined to have. She gave me her imprimatur—which was useful, though not essential: Max was so deep in love by then that, even if she’d banned me from the house, he’d have defied her. Or so he claimed; he was never put to that particular test, so the daring remains in question, though if I point that out, Max at once becomes angry. How odd men are! I speak truth, and Max takes it as a slur on his virility.

  And so, to come full circle, the bride was approved, and three months after we met onboard ship, Max and I crossed the Channel to my village birthplace in Brittany. We stood by a February sea, the sky wept salt rain, Max stroked my sealskin coat and kissed my eyes. We made our morning journey to the mairie; we exulted in each other. I dreamed of my house every night, like a secret lover.

  When I came back to claim Manderley, it was spring, just as it is now; there was bridal blossom on the trees; the lilacs were in bud; the earth was waking after winter; the woods smelled rich and fertile. Despite the difficulties of our honeymoon, I took possession of my house on a spring tide of optimism. I made them force open all the windows, one by one. It was the first thing I did.

  In gushed the air from the sea. I was certain I must be carrying our child, my dearest, but I proved to be mistaken.

  MY DEAR LOVE, MY SWEET LOVE—HOW LATE IT IS. I FEEL so restless tonight, but I must sleep soon, for both our sakes. In the space of half a page, between the paragraph above and this one, a great wash of despondency came in on the tide; I started to have doubts and fears. In the morning, they’ll vanish again. It’s always these hours after midnight that are the dangerous ones.

  I went out to breathe the cool night air; it’s so still, so still. The moon has risen and declined; she’s obscured behind the great dark bulk of the house above, but I could see by starlight. The stars tonight are ice bright in a cloudless sky; some giant god has scattered their cold seeds across the heavens; they’re profligate.

  How close my father is tonight. Even the waves were mourning him. I’ve scarcely written about him, I know—it’s hard to fit a life in a notebook, I’ve found, much harder than I’d expected. But you can see him circling around in my story, I hope, prowling on its periphery: hungry old wolf, baying at the moon. I’d made such a mythology of him; he was a giant in my mind and the flash of his lighthouse beam lit my childhood—but what was he really?

  He came back to England and bought a stockbroker’s house—not imaginative! He never explained his quarrel with Maman or his departure to South Africa. He told me he’d always stayed in touch with her and always cared for her in his way; he said he’d taken her in the instant he heard she was ill—but how true was that? I never saw any letters from him, and Maman hadn’t been ill, she’d been pregnant, though it was ten years before I discovered that.

  I was so hedged in with lies! Everyone lied to me. Maman always told me my father was dead; Danny told me Maman died of a fever; they whisked that little half-brother of mine away, and I still don’t know for sure whether it was my father who made Danny banish my mother’s newborn son, or whether she did it of her own volition. Danny finally confessed the truth to me, years later, not long after my marriage, not long after I came to Manderley. Was it when I realized I wasn’t carrying a child? It might have been. I know I was sad about something; I think I might have been weeping. I forget. Anyway, she told me about my little lost brother, my mother’s baby.

  She claimed the foundling home was all her idea, but I don’t believe that. I think it was the Devlin’s hand at work. I think that baby was still in a far room of that hideous house the day I came to Greenways and Maman died; I’m still certain it was that baby I heard cry as I sat by her bed—

  Danny was wrong; it wasn’t me crying, I couldn’t cry—I was in a trance. For weeks afterward I was sleepwalking.

  The Devlin was a hard man. He wanted to check the little bitch for mongrel blood. He’d have banished me like my brother, I expect—and wouldn’t have thought twice about it—had it not been for the fact that I was the living spit of him, his Devlin daughter, with his eyes and his black hair. I went down the stairs from Maman’s room, and there he was, back from the dead. His eyes locked on mine, and I thought, He’s air—I’ll be able to walk straight through him. I sleepwalked up to him, and he held me at arm’s length, looking at my face. Vain, vain, all he was interested in was his own reflection, a little chip off the old block, that’s what he wanted to see; and once he did, how his expression changed! He locked his arms around me. He put his ring on my finger.

  Oh, my darling—I won’t write about him; I won’t. I worshipped him for a while, and he worshipped me in return. What an idolatry that was! A ring on my wedding finger, bells on my toes. “I’ll make such a fine lady of you, Becka,” he’d say. The hell with him! I’ve never allowed anyone to make me into anything. Not him, not Max, none of them. My daddy tried to saddle me: bit, curb, and bridle—bring in the governesses, wear this dress, dance to this tune. Never trust men when they come bearing gifts, dearest, because, believe me, there’s always a price for them, and it’s always the same price, too—it’s liberty.

  I was jealously guarded at Greenways, and that’s all you need to know. I was my daddy’s princess, the widower’s queen; he kept me in his tower, and he was so sweet, so sweet, that it was years before I realized he’d taken the key, and he’d never give it back to me. First my cousin Jack was banished—not that I cared too much about that. He’s a sleek, weak apology for a man, as I pretty soon realized; a spy, a tittle-tattler with the mind of a vulgarian—and those weaknesses will be the end of him one of these days, you’ll see.

  Cousin Jack was the child of my daddy’s favorite sister, and he was taken in at Greenways for a while—until he looked at me in a particular way once too often. A kiss in a cupboard under the stairs; caresses that made me murderous. I scratched his face, and when my father saw the claw marks, that was cousin Jack, done for. I was glad to see the back of him—though you never really rid yourself of a succubus like that; he’s taken to turning up at Manderley, and, not having a forgiving nature, still blaming me for the failures of his life, which in truth are all of his making; he tells Max lies about me, lies that fester.

  I’ll punish him for that, one of these days; his card’s marked. He’s been stoking Max’s anguish nicely for months now, and I’ll repay him in kind. He’s always after money, so I’ll deal him a promissory note with my right hand, and with the left I’ll deal him some retribution. My daddy would approve; he banished him from Greenways without a second thought—but then, all males in the vicinity were banished sooner or later. “I won’t have them here,” my father would shout. “I won’t have them sniffing around—you understand me, Becka?”

  I had a friend named May, such a gentle girl, clever, and with no airs and graces. May lived in the manor house close by, and I was allowed to see her, but my friend May had brothers, three of them, and my dadd
y took agin them. May showed me endless kindness—and I was able to repay her for that one day, years later, as I’ll explain another time, my dearest. My father liked May, but if her brothers were home on leave, if I walked with them, or talked with them, or rode with them, how he watched! And then he’d brood and sulk, and drink. “Tell me you love your old father, Becka,” he’d say—and no matter what I said or did to show my love, it never contented him, it never satisfied him.

  Old Lear; tawdry old mountebank. He hung a revolver over his desk; there were trophies on the wall that he’d brought back from the bush: the head of a gazelle; the head of a lioness.

  “Damn that taxidermist,” he said to me once, when I reached up to stroke their powerful heads. “Kaffir. Look what a lousy job he did, Becka.” I looked. My daddy was a good shot, famous for it, he said. The great white hunter, the wild colonial boy. So it was a very clean kill; a tiny hole just visible where the bullet went in—but it wasn’t well stitched; it was leaking. Where the fatal wound was, the sawdust packing was leaching.

  What did I do, the seven years I lived with him? Nothing you need know about, my dearest. He taught me to gamble at cards. I’m a demon at card games to this day; never play poker with me! I’ll strip you of your winnings; I’ll have the shirt off your back. I can palm aces; I can deal from the bottom of the pack: I have to win, and will cheat every which way.

  He told me about mines—and I’ll tell you something interesting about mines that I never knew till my daddy revealed it: They have a hidden danger. It’s not just that the men have to work in the depths of the earth, down, down, in a tiny seam, so tight and narrow they have to lie on their bellies and they can’t stand up; it’s not just that the dynamite is unstable, and the roof props might collapse; it’s that, down there in the depths of the mine, it isn’t cold, as I’d always imagined, it’s hot, fiendishly hot, so germs breed. Those gold seams swarm with bacteria. They swim into the mouth on saliva. They thrive in the secretions of the throat; they get gulped down into the stomach bag. They worm their way into the lungs, they wriggle right into the cavities of the heart and spawn in the aorta. If you cut yourself down there, the wound infects; it can fester away for months, Daddy said, years even. Sometimes it never heals properly, however careful you are with hygiene, however often you change the dressings and swallow, swallow the medicine—