Rebecca's Tale (49 page)

“I shall have to go now,” I said after a further interval; and I left him standing there by the path, staring out at the reef that runs across the bay. He’d forgotten me by the time I was ten yards away—I wasn’t memorable then, dearest, though I’ve made myself memorable since. I ran back to the house, where Evangeline and the old beast were deep in conversation.

I
DIDN’T SEE THE OLD BEAST AGAIN FOR YEARS; A GREAT
tract of years went by. The next time I entered her lair, I was twenty-five, tall, transformed, and Max’s fiancée.

“You’re the butterfly girl, aren’t you?” she said to me when we
withdrew after dinner—she’d been watching me with her blue raptor eyes, all evening. Maxim and the only other guest, Frank Crawley, had remained at table with their port. This was obviously the ritual moment in which Grandmama assessed the bride-to-be. The next day, at a larger gathering, sister Beatrice was due to inspect me.

Grandmama looked me up and down. She looked at my dress, which Max had bought me; its rich velvet was the color of my engagement rubies; it was the color of blood, as glowing as the heart of a fire. It was exquisite.

“It’s a very good disguise, my dear,” she said. “Most accomplished—even I didn’t recognize you at first. But then you’d disappeared into thin air. No one seemed to know what had become of you—and now, here you are! The little fighter. The eyes are unmistakable. Tell me, did you set your cap at Maxim?”

“No. I despise such techniques. Anyway, I didn’t need to.”

“That I can believe.” She gave me a sharp look. “Three qualifications are required in a wife, as I’ve told Maxim since his childhood. They are: beauty, brains, and breeding. You have beauty, my dear—and to a dangerous degree. Brains, undoubtedly; I could see just how sharp you were the first time I met you. Breeding? Well now, I remember Isolda
very
well. And I haven’t forgotten the Irish adventurer either. Old families require fresh blood from time to time…. An unusual pedigree, but not a bad one, all considered.” She frowned, mused a little, and beat a tattoo with her fingers. “Of course, I could break this engagement—you do realize that? I’ve done it before, when Maxim has fallen for some inappropriate girl, and I could do it again. Does that worry you?”

“Not in the least,” I replied. She sat down on a funereal sofa, and I sat next to her.

Seventy-ish? Eighty-ish? She was still a magnificent gorgon, but she was stooped now and lined; she was tiring. I had the advantage of youth, and I had another advantage, too: Max was fathoms deep in love with me.

I haunted him. He couldn’t breathe for want of me. I’ve always liked the idea of evermore, and Max used the word “forever” constantly. He said I was the only woman he’d ever loved, the only woman he ever
could
love; he said he needed me and would always protect me. He wanted to be with me all day and all night; all night
and all day he wanted to be
in
me. Sometimes he couldn’t wait to undress. Hurry, my darling, he’d say; he’d touch me under my skirt, and when he felt how wet I was, he’d groan, and he’d say, Quickly, quickly. He said he dreamed of my small breasts and my pale, pale skin. He’d bury his face in my long black hair and just the scent of it made him hard; he said he drowned in my eyes—he’d die if I didn’t marry him, and I’d die if I refused him. All these potent things he said. They were true then—and they’re still true. They were as immutable and inevitable as the tides, all the things he told me.

Knowing this, and pitying Mrs. de Winter a little because time vanquishes even the most indomitable of women, I was gentle with her.

“If you tried to part us, you’d fail. I’m more than a match for you,” I said. “In any case, you
won’t
try. You can’t rule Manderley forever. You’re old. You need an ally and a successor—won’t it be a relief to have the right successor?”

She threw back her head and laughed in exactly the way I remembered. “Very direct. I recall that from the first time I met you. A plain-speaker—up to a point. Does Maxim know you’re Isolda’s girl? Does anyone know?”

“No. I’m Isabel’s child. An actress’s daughter.”

“And so you are, my dear,” she said. “In the blood, I’d say, given your bravura performance at dinner. Don’t worry, I can keep a secret, if that’s how you prefer it. What about your father? Maxim has no reservations there? Maxim can be fastidious. I’d have thought he might have done.”

“My strength comes from my father,” I replied. “And Max knows that.”

I looked at her lined face; should I tell her my father came back from his underworld when Maman died, then returned there the day I came of age? Should I explain how his love gave me strength? No point. I could see she’d forgotten his name, and I didn’t want to waste him on her.

She gone off into another of those musing states. I saw her look around that airless room; her eyes rested on its shadowy corners. “So, how did you meet Maxim?” she asked. “You came upon the scene very suddenly. Did you give fate a nudge? I always did. Men need their minds made up for them.”

I saw no reason to lie, so I told her some details, though not all of them, my darling! I’d been in New York with one of the suitors who buzzed around me after my father died—this suitor being especially persistent. We were supposed to be going on to meet his ancien régime family somewhere dull, patrician, and inland, when I heard from a friend that among the passengers on some queenly ship about to sail to England was that catch, the owner of legendary Manderley, Maxim de Winter.

The next morning, I sold a necklace the suitor had bought me the previous week—I had some money of my own, but not enough for a first-class ticket, and I disliked the necklace anyway: icy stones and too tight around my throat, it strangled me. I took myself off to the shipping offices, acquired the last available stateroom, and sailed that same day. I didn’t bother to say farewell to the suitor—he’d begun to bore me. And, once on the ship, I made no attempt to waylay the son and heir, or get myself moved to his table—I knew there was no need for ruses like that. I’d been in a bad way after my father broke his neck, but I’d recovered my selves in the years since. I’d been reborn behind the green screens in that hospital ward I mentioned, and I’d made myself into the weapon of a woman I am now, not Becka anymore, but Rebecca.

The son, meanwhile, had inherited; he was still unmarried, and I knew that he was waiting for me. I’d kept an eye on his progress for years—little magazine references, anecdotes from friends. We’d almost met several times, at parties; sometimes I’d hear he’d arrived just as I’d left, but that never worried me. I was becoming famous for being myself by then, so I knew: Sooner or later, if not here then elsewhere, we’d meet—and this time he’d notice me. It was inevitable.

We did finally meet on that ship, two days into our sail; it was a rough crossing, and most passengers had retreated to their cabins. I was standing on deck, leaning over the rail, watching the gray cold swell of the empty Atlantic. The wind was gusting and keening; I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He looked much as before, though less interesting minus the uniform and the gun. He was then in his midthirties; people were beginning to remark on his still being unmarried.

“You’re not thinking of jumping, I hope,” he said, and because I
could tell the quiet inquiry was serious, not some witless joke, I replied honestly.

“Not now,” I answered.

I wasn’t wearing a hat, and I wasn’t wearing gloves. He looked at my face, then down at my hands gripping the rail, and I saw him note the narrow band of eternity diamonds on my wedding finger. His expression altered, and he looked so dejected that I had to put him out of his misery.

I explained that my father had given me the ring, made from diamonds he’d brought back from a mine in South Africa. I didn’t tell him that my father had put it on my finger the very first day I met him, as a symbol of our reunion, when I came downstairs from the sheeted mirrors in Maman’s bedroom. But I did explain that my father was dead now, so I wore it in remembrance of him.

“On that particular finger?” he said, with a small frown.

“It’s the only one it fits,” I replied, which was true. And the ambition to replace that ring with his own came to him then, right then, or so Max always claimed to me afterward…

“And after that, my dear?” prompted the old gorgon of a grandmother beside me. But I didn’t answer her that time. It was none of her business!

Max and I weren’t apart for one moment for the rest of the crossing. We ate dinner together that night, in a near-deserted dining room; a pianist was playing edgy jazzy tunes; the ship pitched and rolled—it was supposed to have the very latest in stabilizer devices, but they weren’t effective on
that
voyage, my darling.

I told Max that I refused to call him “Maxim”; the word had two meanings: it was either an artillery gun or a rule of conduct expressed in a sentence—and neither of those meanings was attractive to me. I prefer small guns that nestle in your palm to large ones, and I despise all rules, especially those foolish arbitrary ones that govern conduct. I think Max liked his new name, and perhaps it influenced him. He came to my cabin that very first night—not his usual “conduct” with women, I’m sure—and we talked all night, never touching once, then walked the wet decks at dawn the next morning.

We only had to look in each other’s eyes to know: Everything was already decided; weddings, et cetera, were mere details. Dear Max! He was lonely, I suspect, searching for something and unable to find
it. He wasn’t at ease in the brave new postwar world. It suited me just fine, but it went by too fast and too carelessly for Max. How scrupulous he was, worrying that I’d misinterpret him, fearing I’d think he’d treat this as a shipboard romance; tempted, but terrified I might view this as a casual seduction on his part. “That isn’t what I feel,” he said, standing like a lost boy in my stateroom. “I want you to know that.”

I told him I knew what he felt—and, if I was wrong, on my head be it. I think he’d have wasted half the night with his English arguments and moral anguish. Well, I had no patience with that. I was wearing an avant-garde witchy dress; a Scheherazade dress; it fitted like a second skin, with hooks and eyes down the line of my spine. I made him undo them; the dress slipped down and made a red pool about my feet. I knew this event mattered, it was like a birthing, so I was nervous then, but only for a second. I stepped out of that pool to the sound of the ship’s turbines powering the ship inexorably on—and what happened then, when I relented, I’d never reveal to a living soul, not even you, my dearest.

Max and I meshed. We exchanged bravery for vulnerability. I was a little blind, I suppose. I didn’t notice then that he was very possessive. I didn’t equate marriage with ownership, so it didn’t occur to me that he might. If I had realized, I’d have told him that the idea of owning anyone was impious
and
stupid! I could see I’d revealed pleasures and possibilities to Max that he’d imagined, but never experienced. I gave him carte blanche with my body, though that’s nothing special, a man can pay a woman to do that for him. I also gave him carte blanche with my heart and mind—and perhaps that’s rarer. Max seemed to think so.

As a result, we were both entranced—and that’s no state in which to make decisions. So I was fair; I made Max wait until he was sure what he wanted, though in essence I’d promised to be Rebecca de Winter before we docked at Southampton. It’s what I’d intended since the age of fourteen, after all. I always meant to usurp the name, and I always knew it would fit me.
Rebecca de Winter
—and no mealy-mouthed nonsense about Mrs. Maximilian!

I didn’t intend to sully any of this by recounting it to the gorgon, so I diverted her away from the truth—which I’m good at, dearest; there’s a thousand techniques, and one day I’ll teach you them. She
listened intently, and an expression came upon her face that I remembered from the last time I’d met her. I think she was anxious on Max’s behalf—with reason, as it turned out; but she was also anxious for me, which I found peculiar. There was a certain concern in her old eyes, and a sympathy I couldn’t understand, as if she not only pitied me, but feared for me.

“Why do you look at me like that?” I said.

“Because I’m not as hard as I’m believed to be, and you’re not as impervious as you pretend,” she replied with a shake of the head. And I took no notice of that, as you may imagine. Not only was she aging, as I’ve said, but with age she was becoming sentimental, and I liked her the less for it. Not impervious? Wrong, wrong, wrong, Grandmama. I’m granite.

“And this
is
what you want?” she said finally. “You’re
sure
it’s what you want? Manderley makes demands of wives, you know. It requires…sacrifices.”

What a shivery way that was said! She might have meant “sacrifice” in the conventional sense, but I’m by no means sure she did. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking of her dead son, of past sacrifices or future ones. I had a vision of Manderley brides being led in procession to the ancestral altar; there, anointed and accoutred, with a patient acquiescence, they prepared themselves to be offered up to their wintry bridegrooms. Stifled? Strangled? Wedded?

I smiled. Virgins make the best sacrifices, as everyone knows—and my blood wasn’t virgin. I had darker powers; I was protected by my own strength of will, a more reliable weapon for a maiden than virginity. Being sexually pure in that limited sense was always a useless defense in any case—at least in the stories
I’d
read. Manderley held no dangers for me. And this was fact, not hubris.

I told Mrs. de Winter that it
was
what I wanted, and what I was determined to have. She gave me her imprimatur—which was useful, though not essential: Max was so deep in love by then that, even if she’d banned me from the house, he’d have defied her. Or so he claimed; he was never put to that particular test, so the daring remains in question, though if I point that out, Max at once becomes angry. How odd men are! I speak truth, and Max takes it as a slur on his virility.