Rebecca's Tale (54 page)

I was a faithful amanuensis. I made only one change. I’d already decided that it would be this copy of her tale that would be given to my father (Tom could whisk the original away). This meant that I could make one small adjustment. When Rebecca wrote that if she were to die or disappear suddenly, she could rely on her “good friend Arthur Julyan” to insist on a full investigation, I edited. I sliced that sentence out. My father already feels guilty enough in this regard; I was determined to protect him from a remark I knew would pain him. I censored, in other words.

By the time I’d completed my task, a week had gone by, and I believed we were due for our next installment. Rebecca’s diamond ring, Tom said, had been sent to Jack Favell on the same day the first notebook had been sent to my father. There had then been a seven-day interval before the second notebook arrived. This anonymous sender was oddly methodical! I was convinced that a third notebook would turn up by the first post that Wednesday morning. Barker and I hung about in the hall, waiting for the postman. He delivered a communication from the Inland Revenue and a grocery bill. We waited for the second post: nothing.

I was disappointed and frustrated. I itched to know more. Tom Galbraith was busying himself with his dreary tasks of verification; he’d returned to London in search of backup secondary sources. I was impatient with that. I wanted to tap straight into the primary source, I wanted to hear Rebecca’s voice again. Transcribing is a strange process; she’d become my friend and confidante by then, and it’s possible that I was especially vulnerable to her seductions: I was lonely at The Pines without my father, and I knew that worse lonelinesses inevitably lay in wait for me. I wished I could learn how to grab life by the scruff of its neck as fearlessly as Rebecca had.

When no further installment arrived I gave in to temptation. I went into my father’s study and looked at the folders he’d laid tidily on his desk before he left for the hospital. Inside them were the fruits of those searches he’d been making these past weeks. He’d not forbidden me to open those folders, but he hadn’t encouraged me to do so, either.

I circled his desk. I looked at the ramparts of books. I slid open and slid shut the specimen drawers with their butterflies. With a grumbling arthritic sound, Barker lay down on the hearthrug, and looked at me expectantly. I battled briefly with my conscience, then gave in. I opened the folders and box files. Poor Daddy.

No wonder he’d been so defensive of this “archive,” as he likes to call it. No wonder he’d delayed showing it to Tom or to me: His pride would have been badly wounded by such an inspection, for the contents here were pitiful. What did my father’s much-vaunted special information consist of? His own account of his “quest” which I’d read another time, if he permitted; invitation cards to Manderley parties; a few scrawled notes from Rebecca concerning local charitable events; the annual programs for the Kerrith regattas in which she always took part; some Manderley recipes that my mother requested.

I felt I was trespassing, but I went on with my search. Initially, the only evidence of interest I found was a photograph of four women in elaborate dresses taking tea in the gardens at Manderley; they were identified on the back, in my father’s handwriting, as the three beautiful Grenville sisters and Max’s grandmother, the “old beast” of Rebecca’s tale.

The grandmother looked magisterial; Evangeline’s features were obscured by a huge hat; poor Virginia had averted her face; beautiful Isolda was here aged about sixteen; she was sitting on the grass at Virginia’s feet, her lovely hair unbound, and tumbling across her shoulders. I fetched my father’s magnifying glass: Isolda’s sepia expression was irritable; she was frowning at the camera, her lips slightly parted. In all photographs, there’s a secret force, a missing person—the cameraman. Who had taken this picture? Lionel de Winter?

Apart from this photograph, the only other item of interest was a batch of letters from Maxim de Winter; at first these, too, proved dry and disappointing. Then, at the bottom of the pile, I found the last of
them, sent to Singapore, written in a small close slanting hand on thin air-mail writing paper:

My dear Julyan,

It was good to hear from you—it’s excellent news that you and your family will shortly be returning to Kerrith. Don’t worry about being “underemployed” as you put it. Once you’re here, you’ll quickly find that every damn committee of do-gooders will be trying to co-opt you. A vacancy on the Bench is coming up, I hear, so, if taking on the burden of J.P. and magistrate interests you, just say so and I’ll put in a word. You may regard your appointment as a certainty.

Now, I write with important news. I’m about to be married, so will be confounding all those confounded bores who’d made up their minds that I was turning into a crusty confirmed bachelor. I’ve finally met the only woman I could ever make my wife. Her name is Rebecca—her father, now dead, was an expat who made a fortune through mining investments in South Africa. We have acquaintances in common, and move in circles that overlap, though Rebecca moves with a faster and more fashionable crowd than I care for. I first glimpsed her last summer at various London parties, but couldn’t contrive to be introduced to her. She’s the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. I was bowled over the instant I set eyes on her.

Beyond this, I won’t attempt to describe her. By the time you return, we’ll already be married—we plan to marry in some style in France, where Rebecca has relations, and may honeymoon at a chateau they own there before traveling on to Monte Carlo in search of sun. We’ll return in the spring, when Manderley is at its loveliest. So, in due course, you’ll be able to see for yourself how extraordinary Rebecca is, and how lucky I am to have carried off this prize—in the face of some cutthroat competition, I may say! I think Beatrice wasn’t quite sure what to make of her—you know what a stick in the mud Bee is—but my grandmother has been utterly won over by her. If I’d had any doubts (which I didn’t, of course), Gran would have scotched them!

I brought Rebecca to Manderley for the first time last week—very nervous, as you may imagine—and she fell in love with the place the instant she saw it, which was a tremendous relief. Stupidly, I’d been afraid that she might find it too remote, or not up to her smart metropolitan standards; Manderley isn’t to everyone’s taste, and some women might find it daunting—but, as I’m discovering, nothing daunts Rebecca.

God knows, the old place is looking rundown. Since the war, I’ve had my work cut out getting the estate back into good order, and even with Crawley’s help it’s been an uphill task. When it came to the house, I didn’t know where to begin—it’s scarcely been touched since my father died—but that doesn’t dismay Rebecca; she can see its potential, as I can, and says she can’t wait to get her hands on it.

I can’t describe the turmoil of these last few months, and the alteration Rebecca’s made in my life, Arthur. I remember your once saying to me that marriage was like entering safe harbor. I can’t say that it

feels that way for me now—more like heading out for the open sea. Conditions there are unpredictable—I’m pulled this way and that by the most powerful currents. To love and to believe that one’s loved in return, to feel great joy, but be assailed by a lover’s doubts and fears…Well, I’m being paid back for years of romantic skepticism, I expect. I’m discovering at last all the agonies I used to scorn; as a result, I cannot write sensibly—or, I see, legibly. Forgive me
.

Come and see us as soon as you return, but be ready for some surprises: Rebecca is unlike any woman I’ve ever known. There is a brilliancy about her, she’s as fearless as any man, and she’s not, thank God, the kind of conventional woman people expected me to marry. You’ll find her manner astonishingly direct—and it may well cause some raised eyebrows here. But, knowing me better than most people as you do, I’m sure you’ll understand why I didn’t hesitate when I finally met her at last—utterly by chance, on board ship recently, when I was returning from that visit to America. In confidence, entirely between the two of us, and so you’re prepared, I’d like you to know that

I turned to the next page. There was no next page. I began shuffling the pieces of paper in the file, but, no, the continuation of Maxim’s letter was missing. I was not to learn, it seemed, what Maxim had wanted to tell my father in confidence.

Several weeks later, when I confessed to my father, and admitted I’d looked at these files, I questioned him about this missing page; he claimed it was lost long ago, and merely revealed that Rebecca’s mother had been an actress. I’m sure my father wouldn’t lie to me, but that day I was suspicious. Could he have censored for any reason,
as I had? Could he have destroyed other documents besides this, and might that explain the paucity of this collection?

I looked at the mound of ashes in the grate, but it told me nothing. We’d had fires there every evening until my father went into hospital.

O
NCE MY FATHER RETURNED TO
T
HE
P
INES, AND
R
OSE
arrived to stay, I had to put these issues to one side for a while, until I was sure my father felt settled. Mr. Latimer had ruled out surgery; a multitude of pills had been prescribed, half of which seemed designed to counter the side effects of the others. There was also a rigid regime: light meals at regular intervals, plenty of rest, moderate exercise, no anxiety or excitement. I still had a superstitious fear that my father’s illness was partly caused by his guilt about the past, so I let Rose into the secret of the anonymous parcels, but I made both her and Tom Galbraith promise that neither Rebecca nor her notebook would be mentioned.

This was easier than I had expected, partly because Tom Galbraith was frequently away in London on his verification visits, and partly because my father had acquired a new favorite, as I rapidly discovered. Daddy has a suspicion of all doctors, and a deep contempt for medicine; but he’d taken a great shine to Mr. Latimer. Not only did my father swallow down without protest all the pills he prescribed, not only did he invite him to The Pines on several occasions, he also sang his praises at every opportunity. Francis Latimer was a brilliant doctor and a delightful man; he was astute and well-read; his politics were a little radical, but he was stimulating company and “an asset to the neighborhood.” What Latimer didn’t know about the workings of the human heart wasn’t worth knowing; he was solely responsible for my father’s much-improved state of health, and above all he “spoke his mind” and “got on with things” and didn’t “shilly-shally about”—unlike certain people my father could mention.

Latimer was making a new start after some unspecified difficulties in his life, and was temporarily renting a house close to the hospital, while looking for a permanent residence nearer the sea. He had two young sons, Michael and Christopher. He was also divorced, it emerged, and, given this information, I was even more astonished
that he and my father had struck up such a friendship. My father believes marriage is indissoluble; he is inimically opposed to divorce and will usually avoid those he regards as tainted by it. The final rift with my sister, Lily, was caused by her long affair with a married man, and I’d never seen the least indication that Daddy’s antique views had modified, despite the anguish that the breach with my dead sister caused, and continues to cause him.

In due course, Francis Latimer was to influence my own actions. Initially, I was somewhat suspicious of him. He visited us at least twice a week in the guise of a guest, but I could see there were deceptions here. I was sure the doctor’s motives were professional as well as social. My father’s motives were not as altruistic as he liked to pretend. Latimer was keeping an eye on a patient; my father, I saw to my astonishment, was lining Latimer up as a prospective purchaser of The Pines.

Every time he came, my father would take him on guided tours. He’d extol the view; he’d point out the palm and the monkey puzzle. He’d shuffle into the kitchen and sing the praises of the range, which broke down every other week, though that wasn’t mentioned. In an airy way, he’d pass over the leaking roof, the rusted guttering, the rotten window frames: “You can see the sea, Latimer,” he’d say. “And you can see it from damn near every window.”

Francis Latimer, who misses very little, was well aware of the dilapidations, I think; he was amused by my father’s boasts, but hid this behind poker-faced solemnity. Once, as we stood at the end of our garden by its crumbling boundary wall, he caught my eye as my father praised the vista behind me; I saw the flicker of amusement in Latimer’s intelligent face when he agreed that, yes, indeed, the view was beautiful—unforgettable.

I was puzzled by this new impulse to “get shot of The Pines,” as my father put it, when hymning the virtues of snug low-maintenance bungalows. When my father dies—and he’s always made this clear to me—The Pines will have to be sold. There is little capital left, so this rickety house is our only serious asset. It’s the money from the sale of The Pines that must provide for me in the future, my father says. I shall provide for myself, in fact; I agree with all of Rebecca’s remarks concerning women’s employment, so I’ve planned it all out. I shall go to university as I meant to do all those years ago; I’ll get a degree and
then I shall work—but I’ve never told my father this. It would hurt his pride dreadfully.

It had never occurred to me that my father might consider selling the house before his death; the only way he’d ever leave it would be feet first, he’d always told me. I couldn’t understand why he would change his views now—unless Latimer had planted the idea in his head. And I knew how fatally stupid an idea it was. I could no more imagine my father living in a bungalow than I could imagine him in one of those Manhattan skyscrapers. This house is as important to him as Manderley was to Maxim. To leave here would kill him.