Mrs De Winter (12 page)

I saw nothing.

Saw only the mound beside the gravel path.

Fresh turf had been laid over it loosely now, and on the top of the turf, was a single cross of bronze chrysanthemums. I did not need to look closely at it, I remembered that it was from Giles and Roger.

The rest of the flowers had gone. When I walked around to the far side of the church I found the wooden frame on to which they had been heaped by the gardener. Earth had been thrown on top of them and a few trimmed branches from one of the trees, so that whatever wreaths lay there,

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lay quite concealed.

I turned away, giddy with relief, but as I passed the holly bush that stood at the corner, I noticed something in it, a piece of card caught by a torn wisp of ribbon among the prickle of dark green leaves. I put my hand in and took it, held it, mesmerised by the cream surface with its black edging, black words, and by the black initial in that sloping hand.

R.

And the holly had pricked my finger, so that when I stuffed the card away, deep into rny pocket, I marked it with my blood.

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Eight

It rained all the way up through England, dull, steady, relentless rain, and the sky bulged with pigeon grey clouds, and after a while, even I grew weary of it and turned away from the window to my paper or my book.

I should have been very happy, I had fully expected to be, but tiredness and the after effects of those things that had happened, the distressing and the frightening things, made me feel stale, there seemed no pleasure, no excitement, in being here, after all. I was growing used to it already, and taking it for granted. The sense of freedom I had longed for was missing too, I felt confined, and oppressed. I wished that I were a woman who embroidered or tatted, so that I would have had something to do with my hands when I grew tired of reading. It would have given me the appearance of busyness, and Maxim would have preferred that, I knew, he relied upon me to be equable, a restful companion, he did not like to sense any edge to my mood, and for so long I had tried to give him what he wanted, to reassure him.

The Midlands were slate coloured, roofs gleamed black.

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The rain slanted like pins across the hills as we travelled north, there was mist on the peaks.

Home, I said, we are home, but did not feel it now.

Maxim read, newspapers, a book, and once or twice, went to stand in the corridor, leaning on his elbows against the window frame.

I had looked forward to this and it was spoilt, soured, and he seemed far away, and it was my own thoughts that divided us, for I had secrets now, and must keep them. The questions that had chanted inside my head still ran on, but in whispers. Who? How? Why? Where had the wreath come from? Who had sent it? Or had it been brought and left? What did they want? They? Who? And why? Why? Why? The words kept pace with the rhythm of the wheels of the train.

The door slid open again. Maxim came back.

‘Shall we go for some coffee?’ I asked.

But he shook his head and went back to the paper, the paper I was sure he had already read, and did not speak to me. Did not want to speak. It was my fault, I knew it, and I could do nothing.

The train ran towards the Borders, and the hills were bare and bleak. England was empty, and I felt nothing for it, and the rain streamed down the window, taking the place of my tears.

Once, I saw a woman pass by our compartment, down the corridor, and glance in, and I happened to look up, by ^chance, and catch her eye, for a split second. Nothing. But I saw the flicker of a question, an awareness, on her fece, and she stopped, took a step back, and peered at us both more closely. I raised my book hastily and turned

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myself away, and when I dared to glance up again, she had gone.

It was nothing, I said, nothing at all. We have not been in England for more than ten years. It is all over and quite forgotten. There has been the war like a great ravine that has opened up between then and now.

But a little later, we went for the first silling in the dining car, and as I unfolded my napkin and crumbled the hard bread on to my plate, I knew that she was there, at the table across the aisle, she wore a purple blouse, I could see it out of the corner of my eye.

When the waiter came with our soup it splashed a little on to the tablecloth with a sudden lurch of the train, and Maxim asked irritably for a clean cover, and I tried to soothe him, and in the midst of the small, silly fuss, looked up and straight into the woman’s eyes again. I felt my face grow hot, and was furious with my own gaucheness. She had a companion, a younger woman, and now, recognition shining in her eyes, she was leaning eagerly forward. I saw her plump mouth forming the words, saw her whisper, felt what she was saying, though for the moment it was not a lot, our names, perhaps; only later, safe in their own compartment, after some more confirmatory, covert glances, she would tell. Well - Maxim de Winter - that’s his second wife been abroad for years — they say he had to — Manderley - Rebecca. Surely you remember …’

She reminded me hideously of Mrs van Hopper, putting down her fork and raising her lorgnette, in the hotel dining room at Monte. ‘It’s Max de Winter … the man who owns Manderley. You’ve heard of it, of course…’

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I put my hand over Maxim’s, said something quickly about the view from the window, some inane remark, I remember, about there being a lot of sheep. I was desperate for him not to notice, being recognised and pointed out was the one thing he dreaded. And besides, I wanted by some touch, some slight gesture, to bring him back to me.

He smiled thinly, and said, This fish is disgustingly dry.’

‘Never mind,’ I said, ‘never mind.’

‘All right. Let’s just look at the sheep.’

It made me giggle and he raised an eyebrow, his face softening with his own amusement, and I took a very large gulp of my wine out of relief and a sudden upsurge of happiness, and looking out of the train window again, saw that it was growing dark.

“We’re in Scotland,’ Maxim said, and there was a lift in his voice, a new lightness.

Scotland was another country.

We spent that night in a small hotel in Dunaig, the nearest town to the estate Frank Crawley managed. He had made the arrangements, thinking that it would be too late when we arrived for us to want a further journey, a message was waiting to say that he would be there to collect us soon after breakfast. The rain had petered out during the final miles north and a raw wind was blowing, we were glad to be in, welcomed with reserved friendliness by the proprietress. Only a single elderly couple were staying besides ourselves, we could relax now, in die high ceilinged, old fashioned rooms, we need not worry about being recognised up here.

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It felt strange, like one of our foreign hotels, but after all, I was used to that, used to putting my clothes away in yet another great hollow wardrobe on padded hangers that other people had used, used to sitting carefully on the end of a strange bed to see whether it was hard or soft, used to anonymous bathrooms and noisy plumbing, curtains too thin or too thick, drawers that did not open smoothly. It was only for one night and then we would be staying in a house again.

But I thought, placing my slippers beside the bedside table, that I did not want that, good as it would be to spend some time with Frank and to meet his family, I had had enough of hotel rooms and other people’s houses, I wanted my own. I did not want to be in exile any longer, rootless, unsettled in anything but a temporary way, I was too old for it. I had never had a house, not since childhood, and that is quite a different thing. There had been hotels and, for a brief time, there had been Manderley.

But Manderley had not been mine, I had been a visitor there, too, for all the pretence, tolerated, never belonging.

I had expected to be wakeful that night, there were too many shadows at my back. I felt tense and wary, almost afraid to speak for fear I should blurt out some word that would alert Maxim. The wreath was never out of my mind, it lay there, still and white and beautiful, a picture I was obliged to look at, and when I dug my hand down into my pocket I started, feeling the hard edge of the card, and was terrified. How stupid, stupid I had been to keep it, why had I not stuffed it into the heart of the gardener’s careful heap, to be burned with the flowers?

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The woman’s face haunted me, too. I saw again the flash of recognition, the head bent to whisper excitedly.

Maxim had been right. We should never have come back. This was how it would be for ever, this dreadful knife edge of fear, that something would happen, someone would see us, know, speak, ask, break into our peace.

But it had been broken already, a poor, fragile, transparent thing; we had never been safe.

So I thought, in despair, sitting opposite Maxim in the dark dining room of the hotel, and later, upstairs. The wind rattled the casement, and beat wildly at the side of the house, I had not heard such a wind for years. Home, it said, but where was home? Nowhere.

‘Poor darling, you’re white with tiredness — it’s been the most appalling strain hasn’t it, and I have been no help to you at all. I left too much to you, I’ve been hideously selfish.’

Maxim was holding me, loving, solicitous, tender, his mood changed in an instant, as it so often did, some blackness and irritability that had distanced him lifted, dissolved. I realised that I was, as he said, exhausted, I was weak with it, confused, my head aching.

When I lay down the room seemed to rock beneath my bed, the walls and ceiling to shift and then dissolve into one another, but I was not ill, I knew, it was only tiredness — tiredness and a deep, exquisite relief.

I slept, as I had not slept for a week, and quite dreamlessly, and awoke to the ice blue sky and delicate frost of a northern morning.

It was sleep that I had needed — and I was sure that it

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had helped Maxim too, his mood was lighter, the tight lines around his eyes and mouth smoothed out, my depression through the journey of the previous day had been fleeting and superficial, and lifted with the lifting of the rain clouds.

Frank arrived just before ten, in an ancient Land Rover, full of spaniel dogs and fishing tackle behind a grille, to drive us across to the estate, and his house at Inveralloch.

Tm sorry,’ he said, opening the doors, ‘it’s a bit rough and ready I’m afraid - we don’t go in for refinements up here.’

I saw him glance uneasily at Maxim, elegant as always, and at my light camel skirt, but the back of the wagon had obviously been cleaned out, with rugs laid across the seat. There’s such a lot of rough country to be traversed every day and in winter, of course, it’s especially difficult we’re generally snowed up for a few weeks on either side of Christmas.’ He sounded entirely equable and cheerful about it, and looking at him, sitting easily at the wheel of the jeep, I knew that he had found his niche for life and was completely happy, the strains of the past loosed and forgotten, his old ties to Manderley quite broken.

It was a journey of over forty miles and we scarcely saw a house, apart from the odd, isolated keeper’s cottage or shooting lodge. We climbed up and over the broad backs of hills, on a narrow rutted road, as the sun rose, and all around us more hills rolled away, one behind the other, towards a distant line of mountains. The earth and the trees were a blend of colours I had never seen, only read about, the shades of tweed, heather, peaty brown and deep violet, the line of the far peaks was silver. I glanced at Maxim once or twice and saw that he was looking ahead and around him

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with a greater interest and eagerness than he had shown once since our return. It was new to him too, another world, there were no memories here and so he could open himself to it.

I thought, perhaps he will want to stay, perhaps we can be here then, and never have to go back, and looking around me wondered if this northern Scottish landscape could be home to us.

I think I knew at once with certainty that it could not, that we were on holiday here, to rest and be renewed and suspended somehow in time and place, and that it could not last, was not right for us. For today though, it was perfect, and we perfectly content, and that day merged into the following three, as the Scottish autumn slipped down in gold and blue and late, last sunlight, towards winter.

I had not thought ever to retrieve such happiness. Maxim was a young man again, outside for most of the day and until it was dark, fishing with Frank, going with him about the thousands of wild acres of moorland and heather hills, forest and shore, walking, riding, shooting, his face glowing with pleasure and the outdoor air, the old, gay Maxim, yet more carefree than I had ever seen him.

Their house was whitewashed and four square, on a slope opposite the great loch. From its upper windows, you could see miles over the water whose surface changed and shifted a dozen times a day, from silver to steel to troubled, thunderous grey with black at its heart. Ahead, lay the opening between the hills, where the sky lightened, and there was an island. Near to ran the silver tongue of the pebbled shore with its quay and a couple of rowing boats; behind the house the heather slopes climbed up to the open

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hills. The village was eight miles away and there were no near neighbours. The owner of the estate was abroad much of the time and content for Frank to oversee the place and be in charge of its scattered work force. They lived a close, frugal, family life, the little boys energetic, wiry, full of friendliness after their initial reserve with us, Janet Crawley, a surprisingly young woman with a quick wit and sharp intelligence, as well as natural warmth.

It was an idyllic time, like a bubble, containing all of us within its transparent walls. We took the boats out on the loch, rowed to the island and picnicked there, Maxim and Frank tumbling and romping with the boys, so that watching, I was light headed with my own hopes and plans. We walked for miles, Janet and I sometimes, or all of us together, the boys and the dogs tireless — outstripping the rest, and every evening Maxim and I went out alone, walking more quietly, saying little, and the ghosts shrank back into the shadows and dared not show themselves.