Mrs De Winter (11 page)

No one would speak to me of it. I did not dare to ask. The only person I had mentioned it to was Frank Crawley and even then, the name had not passed my lips… Manderley.

There are some temptations that cannot be resisted, some lessons we never learn. Whatever happened, whatever the outcome, I had to go there, see for myself at last. I had to know.

Manderley. It had me in thrall, half in love, half fear, but it had never let me go, its spell was all powerful still. I realised that, as I set the old black, bull nosed car towards where the road would bend and turn a little, before running straight on, in the direction of the sea.

It was thirty miles away, on the other side of the county, so that, at first, the villages and lanes and little market towns were unfamiliar. I saw the sign to Hemmock, where I had said I wanted to go, wander round the market, perhaps have a

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light lunch in a little shop overlooking the square. But I passed the turning. I was going another way.

I did not allow myself to brood upon it, did not linger over any of the scenes of the past, I enjoyed the sky and the trees and the high, open moor, I wound down the window so that I could smell the autumn earth. I felt free and happy and I liked driving the car. I was an innocent on an outing, I dared not be anyone else.

But at the end of it, what did I expect to find? What did I want there to be? An empty shell, amidst the tangle of the deep woods, charred, and twisted, and hollow, the ashes long, long dead and cold, the creeper strangling it now, weeds choking the drive, as in my recurring dream? But I could not be sure, no one had ever dared to tell us what there was, we had refused to let the name cross anyone’s lips, no letters had come with news, during our exile.

I think I half convinced myself that it was a romantic pilgrimage, that what I would find would be a sad, poignant, melancholy place, unhaunted, fallen into a strangely beautiful decay. I was not apprehensive, not afraid. Other things frightened me, the silent cat poised in the shadows waiting to spring. The white wreath — the card, the initial. Some unknown person’s carefully, cunningly directed malevolence.

Not Manderley.

I stopped once, in a village halfway there, to buy myself a drink of orangeade from the small shop, and as I said goodbye to the woman and went out of the door into the sunlight, hearing the ting of the bell brought a surge of memory back like a wave, and I realised, blinking, looking around me, that I had been here before, many years ago, when I had been a girl

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on holiday with my parents and bought a picture postcard for my collection, because the house it showed appealed to me, and the house had been Manderley.

And, standing there, looking across at the low, whitewashed thatched barn of the farm opposite, that past was with me and I within it, more vividly than anything for a long time, I could touch it, feel it, nothing here had changed at all, I thought, and nothing might have happened to me in between.

I sat in the car for a long time, sipping at my bottle of sweet, warm orangeade, and I was in a strange kind of trance, suspended, frozen there, I was not fully aware of who or what I was, and why I was here, on this October day.

After a while, I started the car and began to drive on again. I left my girlhood behind in that quiet village, and then, suddenly, the road became familiar, rounding a bend I saw a signpost. Kerrith. 3 miles.

I stopped and switched off the car engine, and through the windows, borne on the breeze, came the faint salt smell of the sea.

My heart was beating very fast, the palms of my hands damp. Kerrith. Kerrith. I stared at the name until the meaningless marks, they jazzed together like again, they hurt my eyes, village and its harbour and its boats, the lows, and the cobbles down to the quay, inn sign and the way the church gate had saw it, in every detail. le, I would round a bend and then I would

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see the brow of the hill with its belt of trees sloping to the valley, with a faint blue line of sea just visible beyond.

I heard Maxim’s voice. If I glanced round, I would see him beside me. ‘That’s Manderley, in there. Those are the woods.’

It was the first time I came here, that day, like so many other days, strung out separately, distinctly, like a run of beads, and each of them so perfectly remembered.

Then, quite casually, unexpectedly, I heard another voice, and remembered a woman I had seen with her little boy the day the ship had run aground in the fog, on the rocks below Manderley. They had been holiday makers come over for an outing, from Kerrith.

I saw her fat face now, blotchy after exposure to the sun, the gingham blouse she had been wearing. ‘My husband says all these big estates will be chopped up in time, and bungalows built,’ she had said. ‘I wouldn’t mind a nice little bungalow up here, facing the sea.’

I felt suddenly sick. Was that what had happened to Manderley after all then, and what I should find if I went on? The woods cleared, the house razed, dozens of bungalows, neat, with pink and green and light blue window frames, and the last ragged summer flowers fading in the gardens, and was there, perhaps, a bank of rhododendrons, tamed and trimmed back, all that was left of the banks and banks there had once been? Would there be holiday boats tied up in the cove, and a line of wooden beach huts with names painted over the doors and little verandas?

Perhaps this would be what they had thought it kinder to keep from us, this desecration, this dreadful, mundane

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end to it all.

There was no way of telling and so I started the car again and drove on a little further, tempting fate, risking everything, probing at the old wounds. I rounded the bend. I saw the belt of trees on the brow of the hill, the beginning of the slope down to the valley. There were no new signposts, all seemed to be the same. If there were bungalows, they were hidden.

But, then, I knew that there were not, and that it was all there, as I had dreamed it, the ruin, the house, the overgrown drive, the woods crowding in upon it all, and beyond them, somewhere, the cove, the beach, the rocks, and those would be quite unaltered.

There. I got out of the car and took a step or two forwards. Looked ahead — there, oh, there, so near, I could go. Just beyond the rise. Why did I not? Why?

Go, go, go, said the voice in my head, a seductive, whispering, cold little voice.

Come.

Manderley.

The earth was spinning, the sky above me seemed made of some transparent, brittle, fragile substance and at any moment might break open.

A breeze blew, riffling the grass, caressing my face like i*. soft, silken, invisible hand.

I fled.

Fled back through the lanes and across the open road ran over the rnoor, driving insanely fast, though with tremendous concentration born of panic, flinging the car

id blind bends, hurling it at hills, once almost colliding

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with a farm wagon, catching a flash of the man’s startled face, his mouth open in an O, once almost killing a dog, fled back through the villages and past the signs that had led me here. Fled, back into the open gateway, and out and across the drive, fled, into the house, and saw Maxim at once, coming out of the study, and beyond him, through the open door, the others, two men in dark suits, one standing beside the fireplace with Giles.

I did not speak, there was no need. He opened his arms, caught and stilled me, and held me until I had stopped shaking, stopped crying. He knew, I did not have to tell him anything at all. He knew and there would never be a word spoken about it, and I was forgiven, I knew that too, though would not have dared to ask it.

The lawyers stayed to lunch, but I did not have to join them. I had sandwiches on a tray, sitting peacefully beside the fire in the drawing room, though I was not at all hungry, and scarcely managed a couple, and a piece of fruit, so as not to offend the housekeeper. After that, I simply sat, looking at the garden out of the window, and the afternoon sun came shafting in, and that was another small, fierce pleasure, and I cherished it. I felt exhausted, and I felt relief. I had escaped, no thanks to myself, escaped the consequences of my own wilfulness, and the demon that had driven me, and I was safe again, nothing had disturbed me, nothing had harmed me, but more important still, nothing had been disturbed, the smooth surface of the past lay untroubled.

Whatever Manderley was now did not concern me. It belonged only to the past and, sometimes, to my dreams.

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T

I would not go back again.

Later, after they had gone, we walked up to the paddock, Maxim and I, and he only spoke a few words, about Beatrice’s affairs, and those were not of any consequence.

‘It’s done with,’ he said. ‘All settled. There are no problems, nothing to concern us any more.’

I stopped, beside the gate. The horses were at the top of the field and did not come to us, or even lift their heads from their grazing. I shivered.

Maxim said, ‘Scotland tomorrow. I should like to go off early.’

‘I’ll pack after dinner. There isn’t much.’

Will you have enough warm things? Will you need to stop off anywhere? I suppose it may be rather cold.’

I shook my head. ‘I just want to get there.’

Tes.’

It was true. I wanted to be away from here, though not because of this house, or of Giles and Roger, nor even because it felt so bleak and hollow and unkempt without Beatrice. I had not dared to think of our returning abroad. I could not bear to, did not want to go. Instead, I imagined the journey, up by train through England, the hours I would be able to spend simply gazing and gazing at it through the window, towns, villages, the woods, fields, rivers, hills, land and sea and sky. I wanted great draughts of it, I could not wait.

We would borrow books from here, and buy more at the railway station. When I was not looking out of the window, we would read companionably, and eat in the dining car together, and play bezique, it would be a precious time, and everything that had happened here would recede

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and fade until it was quite unreal.

We walked back in silence, contentedly towards our last night in the house.

At dinner, Maxim said, looking up from his fish, speaking quite without warning, ‘I should like to go across to the grave in the morning, before we leave.’

I stared at him, my face flushing suddenly hot as fire, said, ‘But surely you can’t — I mean, there won’t be time, the car will be here at nine.’

Then I shall go at eight.’ He lifted his fork to his mouth and ate, calmly ate, while my own food went cold and leaden and sour in my mouth and my throat closed so that I could not swallow it, nor speak either.

He could not go, must not, and yet how could I possibly prevent him. What reason could I give? There was none.

I glanced across at Giles. He would go, too, I thought, he would see it, blunder up and read the card, and blurt it out, ask questions.

I saw that tears were coursing down his cheeks, quite unchecked, and that Maxim was looking at him in embarrassment and looking away again quickly, at his own plate.

‘Sorry.’ Giles’s knife clattered onto his plate as he stumbled up, fishing about for his handkerchief. ‘Sorry. Better get outside a bit.’

‘For God’s sake, what’s the matter with him?’ Maxim said furiously, the door had scarcely closed.

‘His wife is dead.’ I knew that my voice was harsh, and impatient, and should not be, that Maxim was simply

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pushing Giles’s distress away, not liking to witness it, that really he understood.

Well, the sooner we go tomorrow, and he’s back to normal, the better it will be for him. This is only prolonging the agony. He’ll have to get on with it then.’

‘Should I see if the car can come earlier - we can stop somewhere on the way for breakfast can’t we? I know how hateful it all is for you.’

I felt deceitful, sly, my eager, smooth words slipping so easily out of my mouth. But it was for his sake, to protect Maxim, spare him, it was all for him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Leave things as they are. Ring the bell, will you? I don’t want any more of this.’

I did so, and the subject of our departure the next morning was dropped, and I sat sick with dread for the rest of dinner, pushing food about my plate uneaten, and the question sounded over and over like a relentless pulse in my head. What shall I do? What shall I do? What shall I do?

I scarcely slept, I did not let myself do so, but got up just at dawn and dressed hurriedly, stealthily, like a guilty departing lover, and slipped out of the silent house, terrified of waking the dogs or disturbing the horses; but I did not, no one heard me, nothing stirred, and so I ran, taking off my shoes until I reached the lane, keeping on the grass so as not to make a sound moving the gravel, and the early morning world was still and pale and indescribably beautiful as the light strengthened. Yet I was scarcely aware of it, I was only conscious of my own footsteps, and my anxiety not to fall, heard the pounding of my heart, saw nothing.

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I remember that I was not faintly afraid, there was not room even for that, there was only secrecy and urgency, and as I ran and paused for breath several times and then set off again, walking now, very fast, I prayed that I would get there, and be able to do what I had to, and be back again, and never be found out. Once, a fox slipped through a gap in the hedge, and streaked straight across my path; once, glancing up, I looked into the wide eyed, morning face of an owl upon a branch.

It was very cold in the hollows, but I scarcely felt it as I ran. If anyone had seen me, what would they have thought? A woman, running, running, through the lanes, down the sloping fields, alone in the first light of morning, slipping at last through the gate, into the quiet churchyard.

Stopping.

I waited to catch my breath. Thought, suddenly, though still strangely without any fear, that if ever one were to see a ghost, surely it would be now, in such a place as this; but I did not.