Daphne

by Justine Picardie

  At least he had been able to ensure that some of the most precious items of the Brotherton Collection were secure in his house, where they remained, hidden away from the dirty fingers of careless students and fumbling academics, along with those manuscripts he kept safe from the bungling amateurs at the Brontë Society and the Parsonage Museum. Of course, he had been forced to sell some of his collection to an acquisitive American university a decade ago; and very handsomely they had paid, too, agreeing to his asking price of $10,000, which kept Beatrice from grumbling, at least for a time. And the Americans took him seriously - which was, in part, why he had decided to sell to them, for they were very respectful, those representatives from Rutgers University.

  Even so, Symington's stomach lurched whenever he thought of Branwell's 'History of Angria' that had gone across the ocean to New Jersey, one of Branwell's most minutely written manuscripts, nine pages of microscopic, indecipherable text. It had defeated Symington for twenty years, remaining almost entirely incomprehensible, despite the hundreds of hours he devoted to it, poring over it with his magnifying glass, ruining his eyes. And it was for that reason, perhaps, that he let it go to America; suddenly feeling that he wanted to be free of it, to abandon Angria, but instead of fleeing it, he banished it as far away as possible from himself, as if it were an island that could be set adrift.

  But now Symington did not feel liberated, but bereft and thwarted. For long before Daphne came along, with her own literary ambitions, he'd hoped to prove that Branwell was the author of much of Wuthering Heights; yet he had not even been able to prove that the manuscripts of Branwell's best poems were sold off by Wise, with Emily's signature forged upon them, or that Wise had copied Charlotte's signature on to Branwell's Angrian manuscripts, in order to fetch a better price for them.

  As for the handwritten notebook of Emily's poems he'd borrowed from that pompous ass, Sir Alfred Law (a man who called himself a collector, using his considerable fortune to snap up Brontë manuscripts, outbidding Symington whenever he could), well, Symington had kept it safe for nearly quarter of a century, to serve as a true comparison with Branwell's writing. No one could possibly accuse him of stealing the notebook of poems - he had simply taken it on loan from Law's collection, to get it copied as a facsimile for the Shakespeare Head edition, and then Law had died in 1939, and to whom, exactly, was Symington supposed to return the notebook, after that?

  Since then, other collectors had searched for Emily's notebook for so long, and bewailed its loss so loudly, that Symington could not possibly admit to having it now. And there were further complications, too. If he was to make his case for Branwell, he would need money to pay for scientific analysis of ink and paper, to establish when and how the signatures were faked, and just suppose he did find the funds, somehow, and the investigations proved beyond any doubt that Wise forged Charlotte and Emily's signature on Branwell's papers, then where would that leave Symington? He would be labelled as the owner of a library acquired from a forger and a cheat: Wise's collaborator, when all was said and done. And this would not do, this would not do at all.

  So, thought Symington, round and round in circles, there was no escape, no way out of this hard place; he was locked up with his remaining manuscripts, in a limbo of his own making, along with the papery ghosts, and the shadows in the corners of the room.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hampstead, February

  I had never realised until recently what a colossal number of pieces of paper are stored, most of them untouched for years at a time, in archives and libraries around the country: millions and millions of sheets, some of them indexed, some of them not, just boxed up without being catalogued, abandoned like ancient, yellowing bones in the catacombs beneath a city.

  I suppose I should have known this before, as the daughter of librarians, and actually, one of the very few memories I have of my father is going with him to where he worked, to the Reading Room of the British Museum, and him showing me what must have been a card index. I'd never seen so many pieces of paper, there were far too many to count, and anyway, I didn't know what a card index was, I just remember him saying, 'look, these are the As.' Then he wrote out the alphabet for me on a piece of paper, 'A is for apple', and so on, which I didn't understand, because A didn't look like an apple, it looked like one of the step-ladders in the Reading Room that my father climbed up to reach the highest shelves. When I tried to follow him, he said, 'You're too small to go up the ladder', and it somehow stayed in my head, the ladder, not the apple. He must have died soon afterwards, and so it was my mother who taught me the alphabet, just by reading to me every evening, me sitting by her side, looking at the pictures, until one day the words and the pictures seemed to merge into one; she was showing me a picture of Peter Pan, and then she pointed at his name on the page, and I could read it, I could see that it was the boy who could fly in the picture, and the feeling I had was like flying, it was like a swoop inside me.

  I was thinking about that when I fell asleep last night, and about my parents, and what they would make of me now, carefully picking my way through the catacombs, searching for documents relating to the almost entirely forgotten Mr J. A. Symington. It would all be second nature to them, but it still seems astonishing to me, to discover that there are thousands of pages that have passed through Symington's hands, once you start looking, and I have been looking, trying to follow the faint trail that is left in library catalogues and archives. I've sent dozens of emails to various librarians, and phoned several of them to pester them, and they've all been helpful with suggestions about where his letters might be stored. Some of Symington's papers seem to have ended up in New Jersey, at Rutgers University, but as far as I can tell, that acquisition dates back to the late 1940s, which was almost certainly before his correspondence began with Daphne du Maurier. Then a couple of days ago, I found a reference to another cache of papers, tucked away in the far reaches of a West Yorkshire municipal archive, donated by Symington's widow soon after his death. No detailed catalogue exists for this bequest, aside from a note that it contained a collection of his printing blocks (over 3000 of them), a huge quantity of apparently random newspapers and magazines from the 1920s and '30s, and what was simply referred to as 'various correspondence'. So it was obvious that I had to catch a train to Yorkshire and search through the archive myself.

  And it seemed extraordinary that no one else should care; that no one else has thought to look, that I was going there alone. But none of that mattered, really, because it was like setting off on an adventure when I left the house this morning at the same time as Paul, and it was good to feel that I had a purpose, that it wasn't just him on his way to work as we stepped into the lift at Hampstead tube station together, going down underground. It was already busy, and I was pushed up close to him on the Northern Line carriage, and he took my hand, then brushed his lips against mine as I got off before him at King's Cross. 'Good luck,' he whispered into my ear, and smiled.

  He wouldn't have smiled if I had told him I was looking for Daphne du Maurier's letters, but I hadn't gone into that much detail, I'd just said that I was spending the day at a West Yorkshire archive, and I had a hunch it might yield some original research for my PhD. 'Very romantic,' he'd said, 'though romantic with a capital "R", hopefully, if your quest yields some interesting Brontë material . . .' But I knew what I was looking for in the archives, and it had Daphne du Maurier's name on it.

  Not that any of the Symington collection was properly indexed, so it was hard to know where to start. There was no explanation for the printing blocks, no documentation to give clues as to why they had formed part of the collection; but there they were, in a packing case, along with a load of ancient periodicals, Picture Post, the Radio Times, and magazines I'd never heard of, like John Bull. A lot of the collection was tied up in brown paper and string, dusty and faded and mouldering, as if no one had touched it since Mr Symington's death, as if no one had been interested to discover what lay inside. The frustratin
g thing was that I didn't have time to go through all of Symington's files of correspondence - there were hundreds and hundreds of pages - and the journey had already taken most of the morning, first the train to Leeds, then a slow bus to a suburb in the north of the city, and then a fifteen-minute walk to this redbrick civic building that housed a section of the local archives. There was only one other researcher inside, an elderly man researching his family genealogy, or so I guessed from his whispered questions to the solitary archivist, their faces solemn beneath the fluorescent light, their voices hushed, as if we were in a church rather than a windowless room that felt like it hadn't been aired since it was built in the 1950s. Why, precisely, Symington's widow had decided that his correspondence should be deposited here, I have no idea; though I can see it made slightly more sense that it had stayed in Yorkshire, unlike other parts of his collection of manuscripts and rare books, which appear to have been sold to the university library in New Jersey while he was still alive.

  But what matters is that Symington kept Daphne's letters to him, and the local archives preserved them, and I found them - or maybe they found me . . . It was the address that leapt out at me from the vast jumble of files - her address, typed on her typewriter: Menabilly, Par, Cornwall. I wanted to call out to someone, 'Look, over here, just see what I've found!' but instead, I made a small yelping noise as I flicked through the pages of her letters. There was something so astonishing about their physical existence: the pattern of the ink on the yellowing paper, and the shape of the words themselves on the page, in her irregular typescript that sometimes slopes downwards, instead of keeping to a straight line. I thought of saying that to the archivist, when I was asking him if I could make photocopies of the letters, but then I thought that might seem a bit obsessive, rather than professional, so I just showed him my postgraduate card from London University, and he nodded, and gave me a form to fill in.

  Even the photocopies of the letters seemed precious, and it felt like a privilege to be taking them away with me on the slow train back to London. I was wide awake, reading them over and over again, while the other passengers began to doze, lulled by the rocking carriage and the fug inside, as the rain ran down the windows. By the time I got home, Paul was already asleep in bed, so there was no one to talk to about my discovery, but that was just as well, because I couldn't have told him that I'd unearthed the du Maurier letters, he would have been too angry, and the day would have been spoilt by his disapproval, so I hugged the secret all to myself.

  Of course, I don't have Symington's replies to Daphne; but the thrill of possession hasn't yet gone; I can't stop looking at her letters, can't bear to put them away in a drawer, even though it's really late, and I should be sleeping next to Paul. So now I've got them on my desk, right beside my computer, and I know it sounds childish, but I still feel excited just seeing her address. These pages were written in the house that became Rebecca's Manderley; they came from inside the walls that I have imagined so many times - slipping into Menabilly, exploring its rooms in my head - which is why her letters seem almost like a series of clues or a kind of key into a closed and hidden place that Daphne called her house of secrets.

  Not that she says anything so explicit to Mr Symington. Her first letter is brisk and to the point, but with sufficient detail to make it clear that she'd already done quite a lot of Brontë research, and therefore had some basis for her belief that Branwell was talented. But it's curious going through these letters, trying to map Daphne's thought processes, because of course I've already read her Branwell biography, the unwritten book that was taking shape in her head during the correspondence with Symington; a book which explores, amongst other things, what Branwell might, or might not, have written, as well as the blurred borderline between his fantasies and the reality of his short life.

  Anyway, the letters continue for about a month - and you can tell from reading them that Symington has responded enthusiastically to Daphne's approach, has even sold her some rare books and papers from his Brontë library. And then the flurry of correspondence appears to stop until the beginning of 1959, a year and a half since it first began in the summer of 1957.

  Oddly, in her last of these early letters to Symington, Daphne tells him that she has to go to London for a week or so, and perhaps they might arrange a time to see each other there. That's when it all goes quiet, which makes me wonder what, exactly, happened next, in that long, extended silence? Did they meet? Did they fall in love, and then out of love, did they quarrel or did they become disillusioned with one another? Somehow, this silence of theirs feels oddly reassuring; to me, that is. It makes me feel less alone, knowing that there are gaps in their lives, as well as their letters; spaces that I might fill, if only I could find a way into them.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Menabilly, October 1957

  Daphne was not writing, she did not want to write; she did not want to think, she did not want to think about what was happening to her. She whispered instructions to herself, so quietly that no one else could hear: 'You need a good shake,' she murmured, but this did not help, for she was already shaking, like Tommy. 'Get a grip,' she said, but it was no good, she was already gripped, body and soul, and it was all out of her control, she could not break free. If only she knew what was behind the vice she was fixed in, it would be easier; perhaps it was her own vices, she thought, perhaps it was these that held her in their grip, so tightly that she couldn't breathe.

  In her more lucid moments, she feared she was going mad, driven mad by Branwell, as much as by Tommy, by knowing and not knowing; by not knowing enough. And it was this that made her curse herself, for believing that Branwell could rescue her from Rebecca, that he was powerful enough to push Rebecca aside, but now she saw that he was as bad as Rebecca, that the two of them would consume her; for they should never have been exhumed from the crypt.

  At other times, the worst times, she suspected conspiracies all around her; and if they were not real, then someone must have slipped a sliver of ice into her eyes, so that she could not see straight, she could not see things as they truly were. Or maybe she could see the truth, when no one else was able to see straight; perhaps she was the only person who really saw through everything, even though she could not unravel the words in Branwell's manuscripts, those impossible manuscripts, that were ruining her eyes, along with everything else.

  The troubles started on her trip to London, for a fortnight in September. Tommy had refused to go back for any further appointments at the nursing home. 'You'll not force me into that torture chamber ever again,' he said to Daphne when she suggested that he consult the doctors there before attempting to return to work. But after four weeks of convalescence at Menabilly, he was judged well enough by the local doctor in Fowey to resume his duties at Buckingham Palace, though Daphne wasn't convinced by Tommy's apparent show of good health. True, he was less grey-faced than when he had first arrived home, and he no longer wept and had cut down on his drinking. But after the children and grandchildren left Menabilly, his silence in Daphne's presence did not abate, and she wondered if he had convinced the doctor to let him go back to work as a ruse to resume his relationship with the Snow Queen. Daphne was almost certain that he still spoke to her on the telephone, whenever she was safely out of the way in her writing hut; though she could not bear to confront him with this suspicion, it seemed too humiliating, too reminiscent of her father's displays of jealousy towards her. Instead, when the time came, she travelled back to the flat with Tommy to settle him in; those were the words she used to describe what was happening, but she knew that he knew that she wanted to keep an eye (both eyes) on him.

  The journey from Cornwall was almost silent, the two of them sitting opposite one another in a stuffy first-class compartment; Tommy hidden behind a newspaper fortress, Daphne staring out of the window, as the train trundled through woodland and moors, where the leaves were beginning to fall, and the bracken was fading. After the train crossed the bridge at Plymouth, high over the Ri
ver Tamar, Daphne felt her heart sink, dragged down by the sense that she was leaving her own country, losing her safe haven. She knew the journey so well, but dreaded it in this direction, even her favourite part of it, when the railway line snaked along the edge of the Devon coastline, seeming to hover almost above the waves. 'Darling, do look,' she said to Tommy as they skirted the wide estuary at Dawlish, where the low tide had left a flotilla of boats grounded on the mud flats.

  Tommy put down The Times for a moment, and said, 'Faintly depressing on a grey day, isn't it? Endless vistas of mud from here to the horizon . . .'

  'I think it's always beautiful,' said Daphne.

  'Do you?' he said. 'Maybe I've just seen this view too often, trailing up and down from London, week after week, for all these years.' He picked up the paper again, lifting it so that his face was obscured, and Daphne suppressed a sigh, swallowing it back inside her. She wanted to say to him, 'I've been doing this journey, too, for the last thirty years,' but she knew it was pointless to remind him of that, and anyway, it was to be expected that she felt differently from Tommy; they were, after all, such separate entities.