Rebecca's Tale (13 page)

Later in the year, when the brambles and weeds have had time to recover from winter, to spring up and re-establish themselves with new vigor, it becomes very difficult to make a circuit of Manderley. But in early April, especially in years like this when the winter has been hard and prolonged, it’s still possible. Clutching my stick, wary of rabbit holes, I stepped onto the once-smooth grass and made my way around the great ruined northern flank of the house, to its once-famous, long west front, with its heady view straight out to the ocean.

In this central section of the west wing, the most beautiful part of the house, Rebecca and Maxim made their rooms, ignoring tradition and refusing to occupy the more sheltered south-facing bedrooms that had always been occupied by the heads of the family. Here, on the ground floor, was the great drawing room where I first saw her on my return from Singapore; here she came running in from the gardens in her white dress, astonishingly young and three months married. Here, farther along and on the first floor, was the room I never saw but that I know she made her bedroom. “I can always sleep there,” she said to me. “I have the windows opened wide. Even in a storm, I open them. I can hear the sea. I can
smell
the sea. It always calms me.”

There is no trace of those rooms now. I believe the fire first sprang up in this part of the house—that was what I always heard, anyway—and it was in this wing that it burned most intensely. I touched the blackened stones that were all that was left; I leaned against a crumbling stone quoin that had once framed a window. I peered through into the interior, trying to make sense of the rubble, the charred and fallen beams, the windings of brambles. I tried to reorder it in my mind’s eye, to reassemble the walls and restore the dimensions to what they had been, to decide that there was the fireplace, there a doorway, but the chaos confused and saddened me.

I turned away and looked at what was left of a lawn: Over there, under that beech tree, a little boy in a sailor suit had once sat and taken tea with the Grenville sisters, and fallen in love with pretty
Isolda. Over there to my right, I had once watched Rebecca cut great branches of white lilac. She walked toward me now, carrying them in her arms. All this past, so visible to me, so invisible to others. I looked at the sea and the sky, my vision blurring.

For a moment, I felt my age. I felt infirm, my hands trembling slightly. Then Barker, who always senses my moods, returned to my side and pressed his damp gray muzzle against my legs; a breath of salt freshness came to me on the air, and I rallied. I had a reason for coming here today, I reminded myself. Every year on this date, I make this no doubt foolish pilgrimage as an act of…what? Contrition? Respect? Sentiment (since I am not, alas, devoid of sentimentality) ? But this year I had a secondary purpose—and I was forgetting it.

“Come on, Barker,” I said, and set off across the rank tussocky grass toward my daughter and Terence Gray; they had been wandering ahead of me, and had come to a halt at the southwest corner where Lionel de Winter had had his rooms. This extremity of the house was the least damaged. The towerlike structure where Lionel inched out his last hideous years, and where he finally died, was still standing, though its roof had long gone, and owls now nested behind the thick ivy that shrouded it. I looked up at the window that had been his; my younger self, wearing uniform, looked down at me.

The year 1915: I was in England on two days’ leave, to see my wife and newborn son; by that evening I would be back on a troopship; by tomorrow I would be back in France; by the day after, or the week after, I would most probably be dead, as so many of my friends were. Meanwhile, I had been summoned to Manderley once more by the elder Mrs. de Winter. I was to be one of the witnesses to her son Lionel’s newly revised will; Frith, who was shortly to be promoted to butler, was to be the other. Why me? Because Mrs. de Winter had learned years before how far she could push without my resisting? Or because statistics suggested I was unlikely to survive Lionel very long and was therefore unlikely to talk? Lionel was surely too ill to understand what document he was signing, though his mother claimed otherwise. He died later that same day; I’ve defied statisticians to live on for thirty-six years—and that action of mine remains on my conscience. Twice in my life, as I’m now bitterly aware, I’ve allowed myself to be taken advantage of by the de Winters.

This is a part of Manderley that I have never liked. Beatrice once
brought me here as a child, claiming its corridors were haunted, and we would see some fearsome apparition—a headless man or the wicked deadly ghost of Caroline de Winter. We saw nothing, but I felt much, and I’ve never succeeded in shaking off that childish dread entirely. I approached it now, even now, with reluctance, and was relieved to see that Ellie was waiting for me. Gray was no longer with her; he was already moving off at a rapid pace in the direction of the sea. I halted.

“Doesn’t it look beautiful in this light?” Ellie said, coming to join me. “Sometimes I think it looks even more lovely like this than it ever did before. It was splendid then, of course—but now it’s so still and quiet. It’s magical. There’s a foxes’ den under the tower there—she has cubs, I think. I could hear them. In another few years, there’ll be nothing left of the house. Nature will have reclaimed it for the birds, the foxes, and the badgers…. The ivy will win—and the brambles.”

“Maybe. Maybe,” I said. “
Sit
, Barker.”

Ellie rested her hand on my arm; the breeze lifted her soft hair away from her face; it had brought color to her cheeks. For a few moments, neither of us spoke, and Ellie continued to look toward the woods, just coming into leaf, the light slanting through their branches. She looked at the pale pools of primroses; beyond them, in the cool of the trees, there would soon be bluebells, thousands upon thousands of them. In the distance, the sea moved and turned, crested and sparkled. I could feel spring: Its restlessness and promise were in the air—and I could see spring in my daughter’s eyes: Its loveliness touched me to the heart; it also dismayed and pained me.

Ellie is attuned to me; I think she sensed this, for she gave a sigh and shook off her reverie. “Well, at least we didn’t meet anyone,” she said, the dreaminess leaving her voice as if she had decided, for my sake, to concentrate on more everyday matters. “I’m glad of that. I wonder if they employ a keeper now, to patrol the woods? Or maybe they’ve sent someone in to look at the house—to shore it up, perhaps? It’s so dangerous—those agents ought to have done that long ago. I think they’ve finally got around to it. Someone’s certainly been here, Daddy—did you notice?”

“No. What makes you think so?”

“Well, look—” Ellie pointed. “That patch of nettles and briars is
all trodden down. And over there—on Lionel’s tower—you remember the windows had been boarded up years ago? They’re not boarded now. The planks have been been pried off.”

“Could have been a storm. During the winter—wind damage. Those boards were rotten.”

“No, it’s not storm damage. Someone’s used a tool to lever the boards off. You can see the marks at the edges. And look, the ivy’s all ripped away, and there’s mud on the sill. I think someone’s climbed in there, and recently, too. Terry said it was probably just children, daring one another, something like that. I told him children never come here—”

She broke off with a frown. Following her gaze, I looked at the window in question; someone had, indeed, forced an entry—and Ellie was right, it was unlikely to be children. Tempting though ruins and deserted places are, not only to children but to others who seek privacy, solitary walkers, courting couples, Manderley has remained strangely unexplored, neither vandalized nor violated.

And both Ellie and I knew why: The atmosphere here by the house, and in the encircling woods, too, has a virgin and forbidding quality. Ancient forces protect it—or so I sometimes feel—and to walk here is to feel one is entering a sanctum. I’ve felt something similar in the past when I’ve walked through ruined temples in the Far East, or sacred groves in parts of Greece or Italy. The fact that one may not believe in the deities once worshipped in such places is immaterial; one can sense their powers, and I’ve always felt it was an unwise man, a foolhardy man, who dismissed or denied them. Call it instinct or superstition; I would not relish coming here alone now, especially after dark, and I would never allow Ellie to do so. I looked at the window Ellie indicated; I looked at my daughter.
Terry
…She had never used that name before; when had that change happened?

A faint breeze came from the sea. I thought of that zephyr of my childhood; I gave a small shiver, and turned away from the window; that fearful tendency I’ve recently noticed in myself was creeping upon me, and it made me irritable. I gestured toward Gray, still in view, but now some distance away. “Where’s he off to?” I said. “He seems in a devil of a hurry—he might have waited….”

“He wants to see…well, the place where Rebecca’s boat went down, I think. The cove. Her boathouse cottage…” Ellie gave me
an anxious look. “He knew it was too far for you, and he didn’t want you upset, so he said he’d just walk down quickly on his own, and then come back.”

“Too far? Too far? It’s a quarter of a mile at most.” I bristled. “Whippersnapper. Who’s he to decide what’s too far and what isn’t?”

“Now, Daddy…”

“Anyone would think I was some useless old crock…. I brought him here, damn it. He has no right…. ‘Upset’? Certainly I’m upset.
He’s
upset me. Gallivanting here, there, and everywhere. Off to London, God knows why. Off to see Frith, without so much as a by-your-leave. Who told him where Frith was? I did. Writes to Favell, arranges to meet him. And now this. Prowling around, leaving you behind, no manners, wet behind the ears, I’ve had enough of it. ‘Too far’? I’ll show him…”

Well, I said something of this kind. It went on quite a while. I grew more and more peppery, more and more indignant, more and more confused and heated. All the time I knew that Gray was right; it
was
too far and too steep; all the time I knew it
would
distress me to go down to that cove—I haven’t set foot there in decades. The more I knew how right Gray was, how right
Terry
was, the more incensed I became. One second I was Colonel Julyan, wise old bird, the next I was King Lear. The fact that I knew this perfectly well made it all the more painful.

“Daddy, calm down—please don’t do this,” Ellie interjected at intervals. “This is ridiculous,” she said finally, growing visibly upset and losing patience. “Why are you so stubborn? You know what happened last time you went that way. We got as far as the Happy Valley and you collapsed. Oh, for heaven’s sake! The doctor’s warned you, I’ve warned you, your own
body’s
warned you. You’re not well, and it’s too far and it’s too steep—”

“Leave me alone, Ellie,” I cried. “Don’t interfere. Since when did I take orders from you?”

“I’m not ordering you, I’m
asking
you. I’m asking you, for once in your life, to listen to me, and think, and be reasonable—”

“Let go of my arm, damn it. Let go this instant. And don’t start snivelling, for God’s sake. Red eyes and a running nose will do nothing for you, Ellie. If you want to look pretty for Mr. Terence Gray, and I’m sure you do, that won’t be the way to go about it, believe me.”

“Daddy—stop this….” Ellie let go of my arm, and took a step back. The hurt and the apprehension in her eyes were so acute that I hated myself—and that enraged me further.

“Making him lunch! Making eyes at him at lunch! Don’t think I didn’t see. Sheep’s eyes! You’re making a damn fool of yourself, Ellie. It’s painful to watch—and he’s
not interested
. Look at him, waltzing off at the first opportunity. Bleating away—‘Daddy this’ and ‘Daddy that’—I expect he’s sick and tired of it. Damn it,
I’m
sick and tired of it. Leave me alone, and go and snivel somewhere else, for God’s sake….”

Color flushed up from Ellie’s throat into her face. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded terrible, all breathless and choked. She was very angry.

“That’s a hateful thing to say—
hateful
. I wasn’t…I didn’t…How can you say that, you of all people? I remember you—sighing and moping and snapping at everyone except Rebecca. It broke mother’s heart, and it made me miserable,
miserable
. Make a fool of myself? You made a fool of yourself for five
years
…. Well, go if you want. I don’t care any more. Go chasing off down to her beach. She never wanted you there then, and she wouldn’t want you there now. Maybe you’ll finally realize that, you stupid,
stupid
old man….”

She turned away with a coughing sound and covered her face with her hands. I could see she was trembling from head to foot. There was a terrible silence, a silence that seemed to me to go on for a very long time. A crying girl, whom I loved with all my heart; a pigheaded, frightened, indeed stupid old man. Tears came to my own eyes, and I brushed them furiously aside. I watched myself with disbelief, shame, and bemusement as I swung around, slashed at the grass with my stick, and then, without further speech, left her and stalked off seaward.

N
INE

I
WISH
I
COULD WRITE THAT
I
REPENTED AT ONCE, THAT
I turned back to Ellie, asked her forgiveness and made my peace with her, but I didn’t do that. I went on walking toward the sea, stumbling, shaking my stick at the air and shouting at poor Barker. I was in too great a passion of rage, fear, and self-hate to think, let alone act in any way that was sensible. I just set my face against the freshening wind, and forced myself on, my heart hammering in my chest, and each breath becoming more painful. I can’t really describe what it was like. I felt blind and deaf and
maddened
. Ellie’s accusations buzzed about my ears; there was a terrible tumult in my head, like the crashing of howitzers.