Mrs De Winter (28 page)

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I can get hold of something. Not easy. You wouldn’t know, would you? Never wanted for a thing. Lucky old you.’ He leaned forward suddenly. ‘He should have hungj he whispered violently, spittle flecking his lips. ‘You know it as well as I do.’

I felt myself shaking inside, but outwardly I was so calm, quite calm. I said, ‘I imagine it is money you want, that is what you are working up to. You tried blackmail before didn’t you? Well, I will give you money, because I want Maxim left undisturbed. He is happy, very happy, we both are. Nothing must disturb that.’

‘Oh, of course not — of course.’ He mocked me with his face, his eyes.

Tell me how much you are expecting me to give you. I want to go home, I want this over with.’

Ten pounds?’

I stared at him, repeated his words stupidly. Ten pounds? Is that all?’

‘It’s a lot to me, my dear. But all right, if it will make you any happier, let’s say fifty.’

I did not understand. I had expected him to ask for hundreds, thousands perhaps, something to set himself up, buy a business. I reached for my bag, and began to count out some notes. ‘I don’t have as much as that. I can give you a cheque for the rest.’

‘Make it to cash then.’

I did. It was hard to make my handwriting clear and normal. He took the cheque and the money and folded them carefully together. His cigarette had burned down to a stub that hung from the corner of his mouth.

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Tou’d better pay for the tea,’ he said.

I hated him, I thought, I hated the way he spoke and how he was able to make me feel, embarrassed, ashamed, guilty somehow. I got up, not answering.

They were good days,’ he said, ‘at Manderley. Good times, before it all went wrong. Those days won’t come again. We had a lot going for us, Rebecca and I, good fun, tremendous larks. Poor old girl.’

‘Goodbye.’

He got to his feet and his hand shot out, I felt him grip my arm. It made me shudder, the thought of his dirty nails digging into my coat. Tou think that’s it, don’t you?’ he said. He spoke lightly, pleasantly almost, and as if he were greatly amused.

Tm sorry?’

Tes. Fifty pounds! My God!’

‘Please let me go and please keep your voice down.’

Tell Maxim.’

‘No.’ Tell him — money’s the least of it.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I won’t say I can’t do with it because I can and I won’t say I shan’t need any more because I will. But that can wait, that isn’t the point at all.’ He dropped my arm. ‘I want more than money out of him.’

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ I said, ‘you’re mad.’

‘Oh no.’ He laughed again, and his eyes were horrible, I wished I had not had to look into them, I knew I would not be able to forget them now.

‘Oh no. You’d better get off to your train.’

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But for a few seconds, somehow, I could not, I did not know how to do such a simple thing as walk away, out of that room, I felt confused, paralysed, as though my body would not work, my mind could not co-ordinate things.

Thanks for the nice tea.’ I had been expecting him to follow me but instead, he dropped down again heavily into the armchair. ‘I think I’ll stop on here until they deign to open up and then I’ll have some whisky. You might pay that at the same time, don’t you suppose?’

I went, angrily, in an awful, tearful muddle. I fled from the room, and, as soon as I could get the girl to take my money which she did so pleasantly with such unhurried politeness I thought I would scream, fled from the hotel and into the street, and the heat from the pavement came up and hit me in the face, and it was all I could do to hold on to myself and not to faint, as I waited to see an empty taxi.

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Sixteen

Happiness or unhappiness, whether we love or are alone, safe or in danger, and the final outcome — that day, I still believed these came from outside, the result of chance, and the actions of others. I had not yet learned that we make our own destiny, it springs from within us. It is not the outward events but what we allow ourselves to make of them that count.

It was the blindest chance that I had met Jack Favell. He had spoiled the joy of the day, because I let him: so that now I sat in my seat on the train staring out of the window, thinking, thinking of him, and what our meeting might come to mean. I took no interest or pleasure in what I saw, I could not have said how the light lay over the fields, or whether the trees were yet losing their most intense, fresh green, for the dustier, darker tones of late summer. I had had too much time at the station. I had drunk a cup of stale tea that furred my mouth and left a bitter taste, and then sat dully on a bench, looking at the pigeons pecking around my feet, and cared nothing for them. I bought

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a magazine and a paper and they lay unopened beside me.

I felt dead and sick inside. I had not forgotten the morning and my sense of joy and strength, they were simply gone, I could remember but not feel them any more. From being sure, I was in doubt, for what, after all, had been said, what difference was there? He could find no reason — yet things might never be right, reason or no. Plenty of people were childless, and there seemed to be no reason. He had only examined me briefly, only talked. What did he know? What had he changed?

I had not told Maxim where I was going, but as I came out from Dr Lovelady’s rooms, into that golden street, I had known that I would be able to say, at once, it would have been impossible to remain with my secret: We may have children.’ I had planned to say it in the garden that evening, walking quietly among the roses — ‘there is no reason why not and every reason, now we are settled and happy, why we will.’

I would not speak of it now. There would be dull talk of shops and the heat, I would make up this or that, drop the subject as quickly as I could. Above all, I could not tell him about Favell. There were still some things I had to protect him from whatever the cost. He was happy, he had said so, Manderley no longer mattered, and the past had no power over him — nothing must alter that.

I realised that I loathed and despised Jack Favell, that he disgusted me: I was angry with him for what he had done to this day, but I was not afraid of him. He was too weak, too pathetic. And gradually, as the miles increased between

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us, and London receded and I began to feel myself near to home, I felt that the worst was over, it had been a short unpleasantness, no more. He had not followed me, he did not know where we lived - even, I realised, that we had come back here for more than a short time. He had not asked -1 was surprised that he had not, but it meant that we were not very important to hint. Only a few phrases lingered in my mind. ‘You found out the truth. He told you, didn’t he? That makes you a guilty party too.’… ‘He should have hung. You know it as well as I do.’ Tell Maxim - money’s the least of it. I want more than money out of him.’ But he had always made hasty, empty threats, tried to impress me by insinuating things, dropping hints. He had not changed.

By the time the train slowed down, coming up to the village halt, I had put it into perspective, talked myself round, I thought, quite successfully, and dismissed Favell almost completely, so that I could go to Maxim, cheerful, smiling, ready to trot out all the little sentences I had composed for him, about my day.

But I dreamed of Favell. I had no power over my unconscious mind. He had come to Manderley bragging of the sports car he was driving - ‘much faster than anything poor old Max ever has,’ and today he had mentioned selling cars, until the war spoiled his luck, and so, it was of Jack Favell in a car that I dreamed. We were driving up a steep, narrow road, and I had thought that I was with Maxim, but then he had turned to grin at me and the face, the fleshy blue jowls and bloodshot eyes, was Favell’s, and it was his podgy hands with their dirty fingernails, on the wheel. It was dark, as if there might be a rainstorm at any moment,

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and the road was lined with tall trees, their dark, gleaming trunks rising above us threateningly, crammed together like teeth in an overcrowded mouth, and leafless until the very top, when most of them spread out overhead, blocking what was left of the light. I knew that soon, we must reach the brow of the hill and come out into the open, but the car was grinding, too slowly, I felt desperate to urge it on, to get ahead, because I knew that when I did, Maxim would be waiting for me, with his own car. I could not understand why I was not with him now.

Favell went on glancing at me, leering in an awful sort of gloating triumph, I felt he had made a fool of me and yet I did not know how, and so, could do nothing about it.

Then, at last, I almost cried out with relief and joy, the trees were thinning out, and sky was clearer here, a bright, brittle blue, the air was not foetid as it had been as we climbed between the trunks and mould damp, earth banks. I saw the sunlight ahead, framed in an archway. The car began to speed up, it was smooth now, oiled, we went without noise, faster and faster, hardly seeming to touch the ground.

‘Stop here!’ I said — cried out, for we seemed to be racing towards the light, no power could make us brake or slow down. ‘Stop, please - oh, stop! STOP!’

But we did not, we went faster, and I began to feel breathless, and to choke at the speed, and then, I realised, as I had realised once before, that the blazing light was not that of the sun, but of fire. Fire.

‘It’s fire!’ I came to, sitting up and gasping for air, and trying to shield my face from the heat.

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The window was open, the air was quite cold, and smelled of the night coming in from the garden. I had woken Maxim, he was there, leaning down to me.

‘It’s nothing. I got too hot and tired. London was so exhausting. You were right.’ I got out of bed, to go for a glass of water. ‘I do hate it.’ And I made up a confused nightmare, of baking pavements and hooting, jarring traffic, and told it to him in elaborate, lying detail, and allowed myself to be comforted, while Favell’s face went on smirking at me from the heart of the real dream.

It was over and done with, I said. Jack Favell could not touch us; but he did, because I let him, I could not forget. He was the past, and again and again, I turned to look at it over my shoulder, but he was the present, too, and I feared as well as despised him, because of the things he had said. He hated us, and he knew the truth, and I did not trust him. He was not quite sane either, and that frightened me. Every day I woke, I was aware of his existence, somewhere in London, and I let that awareness lodge like a thorn in my flesh, I could not pull it quickly and cleanly out.

We make our own destiny.

The weather changed; it turned cooler, the mornings were grey, and sometimes there was rain. Frank Crawley came down from Scotland for four days to go to a farm sale with Maxim, and then advise him about the future, and the plans for enlarging the estate. It was a pleasure to have him in the house, he brought his old, even tempered, steadying presence, his loyalty and cheerful common sense. Yet he, also, belonged

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/

too much to the past, so that part of me wished that he was not here. Manderley had been his, as well as Maxim’s; I realised that I did not want Cobbett’s Brake to gain a place in his heart, it was to be a new life here, and ours, only ours.

But I wished that I could have talked to him more easily. If he had been a woman, I could perhaps have told him of my new hopes for children, as I had told Bunty Butterley, for there was enough I had to keep to myself, I needed one person to share things with. She had been as I would have expected, supportive, interested and pleased. ‘Now, take my advice, my dear. I’m a good few years older, so I shall talk to you like a mother hen. Try and throw yourself into other things - cram your life absolutely full. Don’t brood about it, don’t watch and wait, it’ll do no good at all.’

‘No. I think you must be right.’

‘You’ve had your reassurance — and if it’s meant to be, it will be.’

I listened to her, and I was touched, and heartened too: she believed what she said, her own life had been guided by such simple, wholesome platitudes, they had not failed her. I should let her set me an example, I should not dread the worst, not brood, as she told me, not brood. More than ever, she reminded me of Beatrice, she gave me a little of what Beatrice had given. I welcomed and was grateful for it.

And gradually, over the next few weeks, as the summer drew out, I relaxed, and my fears lost their edge. We took a few days away, to walk in the Welsh Marches. Maxim and Frank bought a second farm, and a large tract of old woodland which needed rescue and restoration. We went to

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a drinks party at the Butterleys’, though Maxim was reluctant. ‘Someone will know,’ he said that morning. ‘Something will be said - or they will look in that way I can’t bear.’

But they did not. Our name seemed to mean nothing at all to any of them, we felt welcomed, we were of interest because we were new. No more.

There was only one moment of terror, so unexpected and violent that I felt the room begin to spin crazily. I could not focus. I do not know when it came. No one said anything, no one looked. It sprang from within me, I caused it.

Maxim was beside the window, talking to someone I did not know, and for a moment, I was alone in a space at the other side of the room, in one of those sudden, odd islands of stillness that appear in the noisy, swirling sea at a party. It was as though I were immured, I could see out, but not reach or speak to anyone, and all the surrounding talk was meaningless, the chatter of a foreign language.

I looked towards Maxim. ‘He is a murderer,’ I thought. ‘He shot Rebecca. That is the man who killed his wife.’ And he was a complete stranger to me, I seemed not to know him or have anything to do with him. But then I remembered Favell. ‘He told you, didn’t he? That makes you a guilty party too. You’re an accomplice.’