My husband is equally damning, except I don't think Paul has ever read Rebecca, and he won't read it now, he is far too busy finishing a paper on Henry James. Don't get me wrong: I really admire James, of course I do. But I've never stayed up all night finishing any of his novels, apart from The Turn of the Screw, and Paul says, 'that's James at his most unashamedly populist', as if in fact I should be ashamed to find this particular story quite so absorbing. I've never obsessed about a possible sequel to The Golden Bowl, which is Paul's favourite novel, as it happens; and I'm always obsessing about the aftermath of Rebecca. What became of Mrs Danvers? Did she die in the flames that consumed Manderley? And was it actually Mrs Danvers that set the house alight in the first place? Could it have been the ghost of Rebecca - who was shot by her husband and then sent to a watery grave in a boat called Je Reviens, from where she returned to dry land, rising from the dead, filled with fiery vengeance?
Sometimes, it seems inconceivable that I am married to my husband, that Paul chose me, rather than anyone else, as if I must have invented it. But I didn't. The wedding was less than six months ago, a very quiet affair in the local registry office at the end of last summer, and I felt so happy that day, but dazed, as well. It was just the two of us - he said he didn't want anyone else there, that I was all he needed - and so our witnesses were strangers, an elderly couple that were sitting on a bench outside the registry office when we arrived. I wore a white cotton summer dress and dove-grey ballet slippers, and carried a small bunch of rose buds, tied with a forget-me-not blue ribbon that had belonged to my mother. Afterwards, on our way out of the registry office, we passed another, much bigger wedding party, and I heard one of the guests say, 'What a shy-looking young bride she is . . .' I blushed, because it's true, I was shy, and I wonder if I also looked childish beside Paul, who was so much more confident than me. I was still a student when we met - not his student, I hasten to add, he'd never do anything as cliched as that, but I was his friend's lodger. I was in my final year at Cambridge, and Paul was (still is) an academic in London. Anyway, we met at Paul's friend's house, just over a year ago. I was living there, in the attic room at the very top of the house, and Paul came to stay for a week or so in December, while he was doing some research at the University Library, into the correspondence of Henry James.
And we got talking - not about Daphne du Maurier, I'd learnt by then to keep my mouth shut on the subject at Cambridge, where she was generally seen as irrelevant to the study of English literature - but about other stuff. I was alone in the kitchen when Paul got back from the library, and the house was empty, because my landlord, Harry, had already gone away for a few days. Paul hadn't appeared to take much notice of me when we first met the evening before, but now he glanced over as I filled the kettle to make us both a cup of tea.
'I don't suppose you know anything about George du Maurier?' he said, raising an eyebrow, quizzically.
'Actually, I do,' I said, which was true, because George was Daphne's grandfather, and I'd read everything she'd written about him, though I didn't say that to Paul. 'He was a fascinating character - an artist and illustrator who started writing novels very late in life, and had a transatlantic bestseller with Trilby, which I always thought must have been hard for Henry James, who was one of his closest friends, but not nearly as commercially successful as George.'
'Full marks!' said Paul, though I wasn't sure if he was being ironic or not. 'Most people make the mistake of seeing him only as Daphne du Maurier's grandfather, which simply cheapens him and his literary circle. So, guess what I've just come across in the University Library?' He didn't wait for an answer, but I knew he wanted me to listen, which is something I'm good at. 'I've unearthed a couple of rather intriguing letters written by Henry James, that offer some insight into his relationship with George du Maurier. James also happened to be friends with J. M. Barrie, who of course wrote Peter Pan for some of George's grandchildren, the five Llewelyn Davies boys. Barrie became the boys' guardian after they were orphaned, as you may already know?'
I nodded, and Paul went on. 'Well, the first letter I read today was one that Henry James sent to various newspapers at the time of J. M. Barrie's divorce proceedings in 1909, asking the editors to keep the matter private. Here, take a look at it.' He pulled a photocopy of the letter out of his briefcase, and came to stand next to me, close enough for me to be able to smell the faint scent of lime on his skin. 'Look,' he said, his finger tracing a sentence in the letter, 'James said they owed this discretion to Barrie, "as a mark of respect and gratitude to a writer of genius". George du Maurier was dead by then, but my theory is that James's real reason for protecting Barrie from unwelcome publicity might have been because of Barrie's involvement with George's daughter, Sylvia, and her sons. Which is why the second letter I've been looking at today is also interesting. Here, let me show you.' He bent down to his briefcase again and his hair was long enough to fall over his face, in thick, unruly curls. 'James wrote this the following year, to George du Maurier's widow, Emma, just after Sylvia died of cancer, and see here, he says "she leaves us an image of such extraordinary loveliness, nobleness and charm".'
I didn't think this was much of a theory, to be honest - the letters didn't necessarily prove anything, and it all seemed rather obscure and convoluted to me, I wasn't sure what he was getting at, exactly. But Paul was really excited about the letters, and so I carried on listening, while he told me that he was trying to work out whether Henry James believed that J. M. Barrie had been in love with Sylvia, as well as her five boys. And then we talked about whether Barrie had been a corrupting force, or an innocent, and from there we got on to The Turn of the Screw, and whether its ghosts were supposed to be real, or the projections of a neurotic woman. Paul was for the neurosis, I thought there was something to be said for the supernatural, but I didn't argue the point too vehemently. I wanted to agree with him, because I liked the way it made him smile at me, I liked his smile, and I wanted him to like me. Which might seem a bit pathetic - but I couldn't help it, he seemed so grown-up and sophisticated, with such breadth of knowledge, because I was only twenty, and he was twice my age, and very handsome, dark-haired and dark-eyed and sort of craggy looking, with lines etched on his face that I took as a mark of suffering. And yes, I confess, when I looked at him, I thought of Heathcliff and Mr Rochester and Maxim de Winter . . . and how could I not, when I had been waiting for them to step out of the pages of the books I loved; when I knew them so well, read them inside out and into myself?
It happened very quickly. We'd been talking for an hour or so, and then we went out for a walk, because he needed some fresh air after spending so long in the library, and we kept walking and talking, down West Road and then circling back again, past Newnham and on into the gothic grounds of Selwyn College, and he said it felt like walking into another century, being there, looking up at the mullion windows, all darkened now, and the castellated towers that rose up out of the clutch of the ivy. 'And you,' he said, 'you look like the heroine of a nineteenth-century novel, with your beautifully serious face and your grave, grey eyes. So do you have a suitably romantic story to tell?'
'Not very,' I said, 'though I suppose it's quite Victorian, being an orphan. My father died when I was very young, just before my fourth birthday, I barely remember him, and then my mother died, a month after I started in my first year at Cambridge, and I don't have any brothers or sisters.'
'That makes two of us,' said Paul, and then he kissed me. It was the most astonishing thing that had ever happened to me. He took my face in his hands, very gently at first, and kissed me in the twilight of the college gardens, in the long shadow of the chapel, on a frosty winter evening, close to the turning of the year. No one else was around: it was the holidays, the other students had all gone home for Christmas by then, but I was staying on in Cambridge. I didn't have anywhere else to go, which was fine by me, I liked it there. And I adored Paul, I loved him kissing me, the way he pulled me towards him; he seemed so mu
ch more expert at it than the boys I'd kissed before, not that there were very many of them, no more than two or three; two, in fact, to be honest, and one of them was so drunk he could have been kissing the floor.
We ended up spending that New Year's Eve together, a night which might have meant nothing to another girl, but it meant everything to me. 'You've never done this before?' he said to me, in the darkness, in my bed, in the empty house, sounding amazed; and my voice was trembling when I said, 'This is the first time . . .'
I told him I loved him that night - I could not stop myself -as soon as he started making love to me, as if he was somehow creating me as he did so, as if he was making me, so that I felt my limbs, my body, come to life as he ran his hands over me, wordlessly, his lips just touching my skin. His first wife had left him, and he was lonely, I could tell that he was lonely, because he was so hungry for me; he couldn't bear the sudden emptiness around him after she'd gone, and the sense of failure, and then I came along, and he saw me as something fresh and unspoilt. Paul said that to me, he said, 'You are my virgin territory.' He felt like a blessing to me - a miracle, appearing out of nowhere; and maybe that feeling swept us along too quickly, a joyous, impulsive urgency, though it didn't last long after our wedding day, it couldn't, not when the dark failure of his divorce was lurking in the corner, ready to spring out at us again, and I was no longer his virgin: he had conquered me. Of course, all his friends were disapproving, you could tell they thought he'd ended up with me on the rebound: a sweet young student, a blank page, no threat to his equanimity, but no real match for him, either, nothing but an easy salve to his wounded feelings after Rachel abandoned him and ran away to a new job at an American university, leaving him and everything else behind.
Maybe his friends were right. But here we are, married now, in his house in Hampstead, not far from the rented flat where I grew up on the other side of the high street, in Frognal. Yes, he's got a whole house, handsome redbrick Victorian, on a quiet road that leads straight to the heath; though it's not paid for out of an academic's salary, this was his father's house, and he left it to Paul in his will, ten years ago. That's one of the things we've got in common, Paul and me: our parents are dead, though his lived a little longer than mine, long enough to see him into adulthood. But we share some of that same feeling of weightlessness, of being adrift, though I suspect I have drifted further and faster than he has, carried out of my depth. He felt lost, of course, after Rachel left him, but he has the anchorage of his job, which he is very good at, and the house, and me. And I know I should be grateful, I should feel like the luckiest girl in the world, chosen by a handsome, intelligent man, the first man who ever told me that I was beautiful, who brought me to live in his house, this lovely, gracious house, filled with books and comfortable chairs in which to curl up and read. The light streams in through big, generous windows, and is reflected on polished wooden floors, and in the garden there are espaliered apple trees, and scented creamy roses that Paul's mother planted, entwined with evergreen clematis and a climbing jasmine that smothers the brick walls, even now, in the depths of winter.
But sometimes I feel like a lodger again, as if I am just staying here until Rachel comes home to reclaim what belongs to her; cleaning her house, keeping it pristine and fresh for her; camping out in her bedroom, sleeping on her white linen sheets, beneath her feather duvet; borrowing her husband, who might already be missing her, or maybe he's just beginning to get bored of me. I have very few belongings of my own in this house, just my books, a pitiful collection, when compared to Paul's library, and my clothes, huddled like refugees in a corner of Rachel's empty mahogany wardrobe. And my face in her wardrobe mirror is washed-out and pale, and my fair hair turned into a colourless reflection, a curtain that shadows my eyes.
I'm not quite sure why I seem to be spending more and more time alone here, looking after the house, wiping and washing and ironing, just like I used to do for my landlord when I was a student, earning some money to supplement my grant. I don't think Paul notices all the cleaning I do when he is at work (though he might notice if I stopped doing it), but he is encouraging me to concentrate on my PhD. 'You're a very clever girl,' he says. 'You got a Cambridge scholarship, and a First in your finals, and funding for your PhD - so don't let it go to waste, don't fritter your time away like this . . .'
But I wonder, sometimes, if he says all this in order to make himself feel better about having married me; to make me seem more grown-up, less of a pointless appendage, an embarrassment in the eyes of his friends (and himself? Maybe that, too . . .) We hardly ever saw his friends before we got married - I was still at college during term-time, and in the Easter holidays, I stayed in Cambridge to revise for my finals. And then we went away for three weeks in the summer, to a rented cottage in the Cotswolds, just the two of us. It was idyllic, like a honeymoon before the wedding, with long, languorous days in the garden, and night after night entwined in bed together, when he said I made him feel young again. But afterwards, in September, he went back to work, and back to his previous life, too, seeing several of the friends he'd lost touch with after he and Rachel had split up. At first we saw them together, in the pub around the corner from his office at the university but I always felt uneasy with them, tongue-tied and gauche, while they traded jokes and told stories about people that I didn't know, and episodes in the lives they'd shared long before I came along.
I suppose that was when Paul began to see me differently; it was as literal a change as that, when his eyes narrowed slightly after one of those uncomfortable evenings in the pub, and he tilted his head to one side, and stared at me, appraisingly. 'How about getting a haircut?' he said. 'You look like a schoolgirl auditioning to play Alice in Wonderland, with your hair brushed straight down your back like that.' So I went to the hairdressers, hoping for a transformation, but not really wanting a radical crop, and the stylist just trimmed a couple of inches off, saying, 'You've got beautiful long glossy hair, you should enjoy it, at your age, while you're still young enough.' Paul didn't comment on it; I'm not sure he even noticed, he seemed quite preoccupied with work by then, and as the weeks passed, I realised that he was seeing his friends by himself, straight from the office, before coming home later in the evenings. I didn't mind that - I didn't particularly like his friends; they seemed so pleased with themselves, and competitive, like the contestants in a radio quiz, all eager to get the first word in, and score points over one another.
But what I do mind is that there's this niggling tension between us now, even when we're alone together, that wasn't there before; or at least, I don't think it was there until I finally admitted to him that I was just as interested in Daphne du Maurier as the Brontës. 'Oh God, not her again,' he said, when I told him this a few weeks ago, after he'd discovered me in my study re-reading Rebecca, instead of getting on with my thesis. 'Why is it that adult women have this obsession with Daphne du Maurier? I can just about understand why an immature teenage girl might be fixated on her, but surely it's time to grow out of her? I can't believe that you would be as predictable as that.'
He sounded dismissive, but furious, as well, and I couldn't understand what I'd done to make him so angry; his outburst was illogical, and completely disproportionate. 'This is absurd,' I said. 'I happen to think du Maurier is an intriguing writer, and to dismiss her seems to me to be a kind of knee-jerk intellectual snobbery.'
'Better to be an intellectual snob than a dimwit,' he said, and then went downstairs and turned the television on, while I slipped out for a walk in the dark wintry evening, which wasn't very satisfactory as a protest, because he fell asleep on the sofa and didn't even realise that I'd gone.
Still, I want to make everything right between us again, but it keeps going wrong. I can't seem to find the right thing to say to him, or the right way to touch him, so I wait for him to reach out to me, which happens less frequently than before, so that sometimes when I'm with him I feel like I'm shrinking and disappearing, blurring at the edge
s into a nobody; though when I'm alone, and away from this house, I feel more myself again.
And now I have this odd sense that there's an unspoken secret that stands between us; a secret, which shouldn't be a secret, that has something to do with what he sees as my obsession with Daphne du Maurier. But at the same time, it's hard to stop thinking about Daphne, because Paul's house is just across the road from where she lived in Hampstead, when she was growing up as a child in Cannon Hall, one of the grandest mansions in London. I don't understand why Paul isn't as fascinated as I am; in fact, his antipathy seems down-right perverse to me, given his interest in Henry James and J. M. Barrie and so on. After all, this is the very same house that Barrie used to visit every week; Daphne writes about it in one of her memoirs; she'd call him 'Uncle Jim', and play games pretending to be Peter Pan, while one or the other of her sisters was Wendy, and her aunt Sylvia's boys might be there, too, the Lost Boys, playing hide and seek with their younger cousins.
I can see into what used to be her back garden from my study on the top floor; I can see into it now, when the leaves are all fallen from the trees, and the bare branches look like a dark lattice against the sky, and the earth is black and sodden, with just a few snowdrops in the ground. But if I close my eyes, it's easy to imagine the du Maurier family are still there, Daphne and her two sisters, Angela and Jeanne; three girls, invisible yet very close, calling out to one another at the end of a summer's day, when the light is slanting, soft and golden, and the roses are in full flower. It's the most wonderful place, a secret garden that is hidden from the street by a circle of very high brick walls, and built into the side of the wall, at the point furthest away from the house, is the old Hampstead lock-up, a tiny prison cell with barred slit windows. But there's nothing confined about the garden - it's an acre or so of terraced greenery, south-facing, with a view over the whole of London - and it was once even more rambling, before the vegetable patch and tennis court beneath the parapets were sold off to provide a building plot for a multimillionaire. Cannon Hall itself is as beautiful as its garden: a graceful Georgian house, amongst the biggest in Hampstead; elegantly symmetrical in design, tall sash windows filling it with sunshine, I imagine, and a grand sweeping staircase, though I have never been inside, only examined it from my vantage point, my attic eyrie.
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