Mrs De Winter (32 page)

‘Oh, no—’ I should have said at once, ‘No — I do not want to come. No, it will not be possible, Mrs Danvers. I had much better say so at once, for fear there is any misunderstanding. Mr de Winter and I would prefer not to have any reminders of the old life. I know you will understand.’ Or simply, ‘No, my husband will be home tomorrow.’

It was not true but she must not know it. But I said nothing and the chance was lost. I dithered, nervous and awkward and uncertain of myself, she reduced me to the old, inferior, stupid creature she had known previously. I am not like that now, a voice within me was struggling desperately to say, I am older, I am confident, I am secure here. I am not afraid of you.

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‘Shall we say three o’clock, madam? Purviss is always free in the afternoons, my employer rests then.’

She stood, tall and gaunt and black, a few steps away from me. The garden at her back and the slope that rose behind that lay golden and tranquil in the still evening sunlight, but I could not reach them. I was frozen before her, and in the brief silence, as I looked at her chalk white, impassive face, she seemed to grow taller, to tower above me, higher and higher, menacing me, and I shrank back, I was a poor, small thing of no account, and she might step forward and trample me.

‘I shall look forward to tomorrow,’ she said softly, her eyes steady on my face. ‘It is such a pleasure to me to know you and Mr de Winter are nearby.’

I heard my own voice, though I did not know how I spoke for my tongue seemed to have swollen and stiffened, I was not sure I could make any sound come. Thank you, Mrs Danvers.’ But it was not my own, natural voice and I do not think that she heard it. She had turned and moved away, and I did not go with her, I could not move, but only stayed in the quietness, looking up weak with relief at the sky and the rising slopes that were no longer shadowed by her. But it seemed to me that where she had stood, the patch of grass was scorched and blackened.

I would not go, of course I would not, why ever should I? I did not have to do what she said. Whatever she had to show me could not be anything I wanted to see.

I sat in the kitchen huddled at the table. I would not go, and then Maxim would be back, I had only to endure

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another three days. She would never dare to come when Maxim was here.

But she would watch, the voice inside me said, she would spy and know, and when he went out, as he did for a good part of every day, she would see and come then. I could not tell him. He had never understood why I feared her, to him she had always been merely the housekeeper. He had neither liked nor disliked her, that was not what you did with servants — though I think he had always admired her efficiency. Well, so had I, she had run Manderley impeccably. We had shared everything, Maxim and I, in the years away, but I had never been able to tell him what had passed between Mrs Danvers and myself, what things she had said, gloatingly, about Rebecca, hatefully about him, and derisively about me. There would have been no point, even had I found the words. It was over, I had told myself, she had gone. I would never think of her again.

But deep down, there had always been the whispered doubt, the small nag of fear. And it had been right, of course, and just as I had always known.

I would not go. I need not.

I would go out. Not be here. I would drive over to the Butterleys’.

But the next morning, Bunty telephoned to say that they were off to Paris for a week.

The dear old boy decided I needed a bit of a treat. God knows what it’ll be like at the fag-end of the summer —fermeture annuelle and all that but if it’s dead as a doornail we’ll drive on down to the coast - Biarritz I should suppose.

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You ought to join us - can’t you get Maxim to drop everything and come?’

I had not thought I would want to run away abroad ever again, I had thought I would want to spend every day for the rest of my life here at Cobbett’s Brake. But as she spoke, I had a wild urge to agree, and to persuade Maxim, the thought of getting away, to be free, to sit on a terrace in the sun and drink pastis idly under an awning, of going where she could not follow, was quite desperate.

And of no use. Maxim would not dream of going away, and I could not possibly explain why I wanted to so badly.

I could not run, I must not, it was a feeble, childish, cowardly thing. What are you afraid of? I began to ask myself over and over again, what can happen, what can she do?

Nothing, I said. Nothing. Nothing.

And I realised that when the car came for me, I would go, because I must confront her, there were things I would say, questions I wanted to ask. I must show her that I was different now, and quite in command, and I would tell her never to come to Cobbett’s Brake again, that it would anger and upset Maxim.

I practised the sentences, mouthing them to myself as I went about the house and garden, I heard my voice sounding calm and reasonable, cool but not unfriendly. I would act, pretend, and the pretence would become real.

I dressed with a great deal of care that afternoon, choosing a smarter frock and jacket than I would normally bother to wear in the country, brushing my hair so that it hung well. She had known that I had no clothes sense, dressed timidly

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in the wrong cuts and colours for my age, compared me, whenever she looked me up and down, with Rebecca, who had such taste and style.

I was pleased, looking in the mirror, the blue I had chosen suited me, I felt confident.

‘Oh, London clothes, London clothes, Mummy,’ the boys would say, dancing gleefully around me; but the little one would turn away quietly, not wanting me to go.

The car came slowly over the gravel, scarcely making a sound. I was waiting, so that as soon as I heard it I opened the front door, and of course that was not correct, I should have been a few moments in coming, I could see that he knew it. He was a dour, thickset, silent man.

Thank you,’ I said, as he opened the car door, and bit back some friendly remark I almost made about the hot weather, for he would tell her, I was sure, they were two of a kind, Purviss and Mrs Danvers.

As we slipped up the drive and through the gates, I looked back to where the house rested, in the sun, all of a piece and contained within its green slopes, beautiful. But I thought that it had somehow become impervious to us, and to our doings there, it simply existed as it had always done and we came and went about it like ants on the surface of some ancient hill, scarcely making any mark with our presence.

It will be all right, I said fiercely, it will be as it was, I shall not feel like this after today, it is only the shock and the effect her coming has had upon the house. It will not be like this for very long.

Must not.

If I had not been so tense, anxiously rehearsing what I

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must say, I suppose I would have found my situation that afternoon quite funny. That Mrs Danvers should have the use of a car with a chauffeur to take her out when she chose, and that she should so grandly have ordered it to come for me, was bizarre, laughable, and yet I could not laugh. I was struggling too hard not to feel powerless and inferior to her again, she had such effortless, sinister control over not only my actions but over almost every corner of my consciousness, the nooks and crannies of my feeling and thinking. I tried to fix my mind on the return home after it was all over, and on Maxim’s coming back but all there seemed to be was a cloud of concealment and deceit, through which I could not penetrate.

We did not drive very far — four or five miles perhaps, going east to a village I had not seen before. It was dull, a long straggle of uninteresting houses along the main street, and the fields around were flat. We turned up a lane beside the church, which had a spire not a tower, as was usual here, and seemed oddly out of keeping, in a rather suburban way, with grey slates and an ugly brown painted lychgate. To one side was the rectory, and beyond it, a single further house, not country looking but like some Victorian villa taken from a town. It was quite large, with tall narrow windows. The curtains seemed to be half drawn.

I did not want to be here, I would have given anything not to have to get out, this was a strange place, it might have been in another country, I wanted to go back home.

He had opened the car door and was waiting and when I looked up, I saw that she was waiting too, standing on the top step, her hands folded in front of her black dress,

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it was the same as it had been that first day, nothing had changed, nothing would. And though I stepped out of the car and across the path towards her boldly enough, she was not fooled, I could see that perfectly.

‘Good afternoon, madam.’

I had gone very cold.

‘Do please come in.’

No, I wanted to say, no. Let me stay out here, in the light, in the outside world, whatever it is we have to say can be said here, and then I can go. We need not meet again. She had taken a step inside and paused, waiting for me. The car had slid away, the drive was quite empty.

I turned and followed her into the house.

It was not pleasant, it was dark and stuffy and over furnished. When the front door closed I wanted to run out and down the drive, and as far away as I could.

Doors opened on to dim rooms with heavy, half drawn curtains, tables and chairs covered in plush, huge, sombre portraits in gilded frames, cases of butterflies and stuffed fish and dead birds. The countryside might not have been outside, I thought, no one ever opened a window here, no fresh, sweet smelling air ever drifted into these dreadful, oppressive rooms.

But we were not lingering, I was following Mrs Danvers as she climbed up and up the turkey red carpet, to the next floor, and around again, and up. Here, the doors were all closed. There was no sound except our footsteps. No one else might have been in the house at all.

Her dress swished softly. She did not glance round to see if I was behind her. She had no need.

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‘Please come in, madam. These are my own rooms, overlooking the garden.’

She held open a door at the end of a corridor and stood back in it, so that I was forced to pass close to her as I went inside.

‘I am very fortunate, my employer has made over quite a good portion of this top floor to me. I have a sitting room and bedroom - and then another room at my disposal.’

I was filled with relief; it was a plainly, comfortably furnished room with two tall windows that let in plenty of light, slightly anonymous but not unattractive, not threatening. There seemed nothing at all of Mrs Danvers impressed upon it, it was a neat, ordinary room that might have belonged to anyone or no one, a room in some private hotel.

‘Do sit down, madam. I will ring for tea in a while.’ She stood over me, smiling in an open, perfectly pleasant way, but the irony of her invitation, and her sense of position here was not lost on me.

‘How long have you been here, Mrs Danvers?’

‘Not very long, madam, a few months. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh - it seems — it seems such an extraordinary coincidence.’

She said nothing at all, and when I looked at her, she was still half smiling but in an odd, expressionless way.

‘I mean - that you should be so near to us.’

She walked to the window and stood looking out.

‘It is very quiet here, very peaceful and there are few visitors.’

Tour - your employer is rather old?’

‘Oh yes … I often stand here for a long time, looking

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out at the fields. I miss the sea of course. Do you ever miss the sea, madam? The sound of it drawing up the shingle so softly, and the crash of the waves when it was stormy, I often lie awake and think I hear it. Don’t you?’

I felt my lips go dry. Her voice was low and monotonous. ‘Mrs Danvers —’

‘Please sit down, madam.’

‘No — no thank you.’

There was a silence. She had her back to the light and she did not move, only looked steadily, expressionlessly at me. I realised that I did not know exactly where I was — I had not noticed the name of the house - and that the car and driver, my only means of getting home, had disappeared.

She was waiting and so as not to appear harried or in any way alarmed by her, I did sit down then and placed my handbag on the floor beside me.

This is such a pleasant room,’ I said. ‘You must be very comfortable here.’

‘Oh, yes, and I have such light duties. I am not young now, I would not feel up to the challenge of running a great house again.’

She did not sit herself. ‘Have you ever thought of it?’

I did not answer.

‘I think of it all the time. Every day. Surely you must too. Have you been back?’

‘No,’ I said. My voice came oddly out of my dry throat. ‘No.’

‘No. It is better not to go back. I went, once only. I had to see it. It was terrible. Quite terrible. And yet in a way right, don’t you think? Manderley was never happy after she

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had gone. You know that of course. You felt it too. Fire is such a cleansing thing. There was no other way.’

I stared at her, and her eyes bored back, two bright pinpoints, and I saw a flicker of triumph and excitement there. She was telling me now, and yet she had said nothing. If anyone accused her she would be easily able to deny it.

‘I found another place, in the north. I did not want to stay anywhere near, and then during the war, I was a governess and a nurse companion. Nothing was ever the same, of course. Nothing ever will be, but I never expected that. And it did not matter.’

Tm sure - I know we would like to think that you had - had settled happily.’

‘Did you, madam? Did you speak of it?’

“Well — no, no — we — Mr de Winter did not want to talk of that time.’

‘Of course. Yet he could never forget it could he? However would he be able to do so?’