Mrs De Winter (24 page)

We reached the lane in which we had first stopped, beneath the old wooden signpost.

‘Stop here,’ I said. I opened the door, and in the faint ticking silence after the engine had died, I heard the low coo of wood pigeons, high in the trees above our heads. The air was balmy, and damp smelling. ‘You take the car.’ I climbed out. ‘I’d like to walk.’

I did not want to arrive, grandly, down the drive to the front door. I wanted to approach it by degrees, by accident almost, to see it again from the grassy bowl in which it lay and then slip quietly and alone down the slopes and in at some small side door. And quite suddenly, fiercely, I did not want to share that even with Maxim, the rush of desire for the house to be absolutely mine, for a short time, was intense within me.

He understood. He smiled, turned the car and let it slip away, back down the lane, and then I was alone. I stood, with my eyes closed, feeling my own heart beat, hearing the branches of the trees stir as some bird flew among them. And

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then I began to walk, clambering down the narrow track that was overgrown now with wild garlic and tall nettles, grass, and low overhanging branches which I had to push aside. The light was an undersea green, but there was nothing sinister here, everything was fresh and newly grown and innocent; there were no blood red rhododendrons towering over my head, nothing rare or strange, all was familiar and right. A rabbit ran across the path and into a hidden hole, I caught a glimpse of a single, startled, translucent eye as it glanced at me.

The last time I had come here, the light had sifted through the almost bare branches so that I had had a sight of the open space ahead, but now, the growth of the trees was so full and high that I was enclosed in my green tunnel until, abruptly, I shoved aside a last, sweeping branch, and was out into the evening sunlight. And there it lay, Cobbett’s Brake, calm and quiet and beautiful.

I saw it and could look down on it all of a piece, it was not too big to contain within a single focus. I seemed to hold it still, the gates, the drive, the walls and chimneys, the windows and gables, the gardens surrounding it. It was like meeting someone with whom one has fallen in love after an absence and the doubt and anxiety which that has brought have been swept away by the first, new sight of them, and there is only certainty.

I began to climb carefully, half slipping, balancing with my hand outstretched, down the slope between the grazing sheep, to where I saw Maxim, at the entrance to the house.

There was a jug of country flowers in the hall, and a second, smaller one in the middle of the kitchen table,

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beside eggs and milk, and a fruit cake; fires had been laid, though not lit, the boiler was stoked. It was a strange house, we had never set foot inside it, the furnishings that had been left were old and unfamiliar, and yet it was home, and ours at once, we were not intruders.

‘I could stay here,’ I said, ‘live here now, we’ve no need to go anywhere else.’

We went quietly from room to room. It had been cleaned, polished, and tidied, but there was more than that; it had been loved and cared for, for years past, I thought, even though some of the rooms were clearly long unused. There was nothing too formal or cold about them, nothing I did not like. I looked round and saw that a chair needed recovering, a door rehanging, some pictures chosen to fill blank pale spaces on a few of the walls, but nothing had to be done urgently, and there was nothing I greatly disliked.

“We will make it ours,’ I said. There isn’t any hurry.’

We had nothing, after all, the fire had burned our possessions; we would begin again. I was happy about that. Those beautiful, precious things, the china and portraits, the silver and rare furniture, had not been mine, I had never felt at home among them. They had belonged to Maxim’s family — and to Rebecca. These things that furnished Cobbett’s Brake were not mine either but I did not feel the same about them, I felt even now that we had not so much bought as inherited them, they were part of the fabric of the house and we were to look after them in the same way.

We went up into the attic rooms, dusty and empty now, with bare white walls, but I furnished them in my mind, for

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the children, and put linen in the cupboards and china and glass in the cabinets.

I turned and looked at Maxim, filled with my new found delight and pleasure. I said, ‘Now I am happy. Do you understand?’

But then at once regretted the words and would have taken them back, for perhaps he was not so sure, perhaps he had done this only for me and would never settle here — it was not Manderley.

‘Come outside,’ Maxim said.

It was still warm but the air smelled of evening now; a thrush was singing madly from a lilac bush. We began to walk through the garden, beneath an old pergola that ran along the south side. Roses and clematis had scrambled rampantly up and over, and cascaded down like wild, tangled, unkempt hair. They needed to be restrained, shaped and cut back, and yet for now, they were right, the starry white clematis flowers already out, the roses fatly in bud.

All around us, flowerbeds, shrubs, climbers, had been left to riot, but I was happy to see it like this and planned to bring it gradually, gently, to order. I did not want a neat, clipped, sterile garden, organised by a team of men I scarcely dared speak to for fear I would offend them, or reveal my own ignorance. I was ignorant, but my father had had a garden, and I remembered it still. I would learn quickly, I knew, it was in my blood.

‘I thought,’ Maxim said now, ‘that this would be a place that you wanted, but it is what I want now. When I saw it again today and went inside the house — I realised that it would be mine too.’

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He stopped, and looked slowly around — at the grassy slopes and the sheep grazing on them, the trees beyond. ‘I never thought that I would be able to lay the ghost of Manderley — but I will. It will happen here. That is over and past. Manderley is dead to me.’ He looked at me. ‘It has taken over ten years. I’m sorry it has been so long,’

I went to him, but as I did so, a voice inside me said, ‘But not only the house, not only the house.’ I did not speak, we simply went on, walking, looking around us, and Maxim began to talk of buying more of the surrounding land, a farm perhaps.

‘I shall try and tempt Frank down here again — we can manage it together.’

‘He’ll never want to leave Scotland.’

We’ll see.’

I thought that we might, because Frank’s absolute loyalty and devotion had been not so much to Manderley as to Maxim, and perhaps he would want to work with him again.

And so we went on, making small, happy plans, as the light faded and night crept over the house and garden, and there was nothing but joy to look forward to.

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Thirteen

I was like a child, playing at houses, Maxim said, and it was true that with such happiness, such daily pleasure, it did seem a little like a game, moving into Cobbett’s Brake, going over each room carefully, deciding what to keep, what to replace. But beneath the play, I felt as if I were living real life for the first time ever. The present mattered more than any past, and the future was only important so long as it was a simple continuation.

Mrs Peck from the farm came in to help me at first, and after a few weeks, found a young woman, Dora, who bicycled from the next village, willing to do anything in the house. I felt at ease with her, I suppose because she was young, and there was nothing in the least difficult or intimidating about her, she was only friendly and anxious to suit. I did not feel that she was a servant. As we made lists and took down curtains and examined the insides of cupboards together, we giggled and she told me about her family, and only fell silent and seemed in awe if Maxim appeared. Once or twice, I caught her glancing at us, puzzled, perhaps, at the disparity in our ages

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or the difference between us - for every day, when I woke, I felt as if I were growing younger, retrieving years I had lost, shedding all the staid, depressing intimations of middle age. I sang about the place, I felt giddy and light hearted.

And gradually, the house began to come under my control, I got to know its ways, which door did not close properly, which windows let in a draught, where the morning and the evening sun fell, how uneven the boards were on the upper landing. Men came in to paint, room by room. Some of the wormy old kitchen furniture and a few ancient rugs were thrown away and I decided to have new chairs in the long, light drawing room that looked out on to the best part of the garden. Cobbett’s Brake felt friendly, when I walked about it, early in the morning, from kitchen to dining room to hall, opening windows and doors, looking out at the grassy slopes rising around us, I felt that it welcomed me, almost that it had been waiting, expecting us.

Maxim had begun to go about the district, talking to farmers and landowners, finding out which land he might buy, what farm was to let. He would have sheep, he said, and plenty of woodland, a dairy herd, and good grass - but he meant to take advice, and move slowly. There were four cottages, as well as the Home Farm, belonging to Cobbett’s Brake, and he began to look for help, too, to get to know men in the village: it was not a large estate, not after Manderley, but because we would not have anything like the number of staff, there would be more for Maxim to do. I watched him grow younger too, saw him stride out and down the drive, climb fast up the slopes, saw the colour come to his skin as the sun shone - for we had a warm, dry, perfect spring and

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early summer. He was well, he was entirely content, I thought, this was our happy ending.

Yet we lacked something, though we never spoke of it, and as that early summer moved on, and the roses opened and cascaded over every wall and pillar and fence, glorious ramblers, blush and shell and blowsy pink, and billowing, purest white, as everything flowered and flourished and the trees were thickly green, so that we were drunk on high summer, I began to be conscious of it more and more. There was a hollow place at the heart of things.

One morning at the end of June, I woke at five and could not sleep again, the night had been oppressively close, and I felt stale and heavy eyed. The scent of the rose that hung in great swags from the low roof below our open bedroom window was musky sweet, overpowering in the room.

I went downstairs quietly, and slipped out of the side door. The air was fresh and quite cool, the sun not yet up, the sheep rested, heavy and still, scattered about the slopes. I walked under the arbour, and out on to the path that led to the big, raised round pond. We had not had a chance to clear it or mend the fountain, and I looked down between the mesh of old flat water lilies to the still green water below, wondering if there were great fish somewhere, moving about in an ancient, slow, secret life. I sat on the flat stone rim. The sky was pearl grey, the grass dark with dew.

This is happiness, I thought, and I am held within jit. Here. Now.

And I looked up and saw them, coming across the rden, from the glassy slopes, saw them quite as clearly

if they were there, three children, boys, as they had been

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boys when I had imagined them at Manderley — two older, strong, sturdy, vigorous, shouting and pushing one another, and the little one, quieter, more thoughtful, keeping more to himself. They ran across the grass, along the gravel path, one pulling at a flower head, another waving a stick in the air above his head. I saw their bright faces, that they were open and full of humour, saw their bodies and scruffy heads, the same beautiful shape as Maxim’s. I saw them so clearly, that I might have opened my arms and they would have run into them, tumbling over one another to be first, to tell me this, make me laugh over that, I felt them against me, I knew what their hair felt like, thick, slightly dry, springy to my touch. I looked over to the little one, beckoned to him, and he smiled, very seriously, but would wait to be close to me until later, when the others had gone bounding away and we could be quiet together. Then perhaps we would sit and stare down into the dark, deep water of the stone pond, and wait to see the pale streak below, the gleam of a fish. He would not speak or startle, he would be very still, very patient, quite content just to be with me, waiting, and the shouts of his brothers would come back from the end of the drive, as they went racing off again.

I sat on there, dipping my hand into the water and letting it trickle between my fingers, as the sun came up, slanting pale gold across the grass and touching the petals of the rose Albertine that grew over the east wall. I had spent every evening of the past week sketching out new plans for the garden, making lists, drawing what it would be like here, and here, and over there, in a few years’ time; and now, just as I had seen the children, I saw the garden as

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it would be, and longed for it, too. But that would be more easily accomplished, that was only a question of time and application. I heard a window open above, the faint sound of water running. In a few minutes, Maxim would come out to join me, we would go around the garden together, I would say, I think we shall take down this, prune back that, dig out a new border here, repair the trellis — I must see about the fountain - Mr Peck is sending a man who will do the vegetables — he may even come today.

All of this was easy, I could talk about it happily, feel confident, but the children — I could not talk about them. For some reason, I was terrified that if I spoke of it at all to Maxim, it would be bad luck and I would never succeed. Rebecca had not been able to have children, they had found that out at the end. I would not be like Rebecca, must not be. I stood up, my mind quite clear all at once, the decision made. I could not speak to Maxim, not at this point anyway, but nor could I drift on through the months and years, hoping, trusting to luck, doing nothing else about it. I had always assumed - we both had - that we would have children, so far as I knew there was no reason why either of us should not, but I did not know — I knew very little about myself at all, I was never unwell, had rarely visited a doctor. Indeed, I realised, now that my mind was made up, that I did not know any doctors. The last one I had set eyes on had been the specialist in London to whose house we had all gone on that terrible, stifling afternoon when we had needed evidence about Rebecca. Dr Baker. I could see him now, coming into the room in flannels, interrupted in the middle of his game of tennis.