Mrs De Winter (20 page)

I saw her standing at the head of the staff arrayed on the steps of Manderley to greet me so formally there on my first arrival as a bride; at the top of the great staircase beside the minstrel’s gallery, looking blankly, coldly down upon me; and in the doorway of the bedroom in the west wing, gloating, triumphant, catching me guilty and unawares. I saw her eyes, filled with satisfaction and exultation, the night of the Manderley ball, when I had fallen so easily into the trap she had set for me.

I heard her, too, her voice whispered again, intimate, unpleasant, soft as a snake.

I did not know where she was now. We had never seen her again, after we had driven down to Manderley from London, that last, terrible night. She had packed her things and left, they said, her room had been found empty that afternoon. And after that, the fire. I did not want to know about her, I wanted rid of her from our lives, and from my mind, I never thought of her, never let her shadow fall across my path or come between us.

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Mrs Danvers had been Rebecca’s, she had belonged with her and with Manderley. I wanted none of her. But Mrs Danvers had sent the wreath. I knew it. I knew.

I went out without taking my jacket or a bag, half ran, from the pensione, down through the narrow sidestreets, to the fountain. He was there already, sitting with his legs crossed and his glass of tea on the table before him.

‘Maxim,’ I called, out of breath, but trying to gather myself, trying to be as easy, as nonchalant, as he was.

He looked up.

Tm better,’ I said, brightly, ‘isn’t it lovely? It’s still quite warm in the sun. I’m really perfectly all right.’

I saw a faint frown between his eyes, a look of puzzlement. Why was I so anxious to reassure him, why did I have to protest, at once and so urgently and lightly, that I was well?

I ordered tea, and a lemon ice. I was calm, very calm. I sipped my drink and ate tiny mourhfuls of the ice slowly, from the slender bone handled spoon, and in between them, I smiled at him. I did not blurt it out.

But at last, I said, ‘Let’s leave here soon. I’d like a change, wouldn’t you? Surely we can enjoy somewhere else, before the winter comes.’

We had not discussed that. I supposed we must settle somewhere, when the weather changed, but it had not seemed to matter where. It still did not. I was only desperate to leave here, because it was tainted now, I could no longer be peaceful here, no longer walk about these streets and squares without feeling that I must glance behind me. We had to move on again, to find a place which was not yet spoiled. Now, I was the one who was restless, I was the one who needed

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to run and run away, even though it was futile, and what I ran from was in myself, I carried it with me no matter how far we went.

Maxim watched me. The cold ice made my throat ache as I swallowed it. I could not ask again, I thought, he would be suspicious and question me, and I could not have answered. I could never say her name, any of those names, out of that other world.

And then he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I thought that we would go to Venice again.’

It was dark by the time we went back to the pensione^ the air was cold. On a whim, I did not turn into the front entrance, but went a few yards on, and up the little alley way, leading to the courtyard gate.

There’s something I want to show you,’ I said to Maxim. ‘I hadn’t noticed it properly before, but then, when I woke this afternoon, I saw it. It’s lovely — it smells so sweetly — but I don’t know what it is.’

Why did I want to see him standing there, beside the creeper? I was not going to tell him about the wreath, and yet, showing him this seemed to be a way of telling, a way of linking them together in my mind and the need to do that was so clear and so powerful that it frightened me.

‘Look.’ In the dusk, the foliage receded and the tiny flowers stood out, pale and ghostly against it. I reached out and touched a petal with my finger. Maxim’s face was pale, too, in profile.

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‘Yes,’ he said, ‘pretty thing. You often see it in Mediterranean countries - a late flowering, before the winter.’ He reached out, and broke off a twig of it, and held it out for me. ‘It’s called Maiden’s Bower,’ he said, and waited, so that in the end, I was forced to take the flowers and carry them with me, into the house.

By the time we reached Venice, riding at last across the open water of the lagoon towards that magic city at the end of the day, summer and autumn had withered away to winter, leaving no trace.

The wind was cold, it blew in our faces and whipped up the water, so that we retreated under cover inside the boat, and when we disembarked at the San Marco station, the stones of the streets and the square ahead gleamed with rain. It was quiet, too, only Venetians got off with us, men with briefcases, putting up their coat collars and striding quickly away, going home, a few old women in black, carrying raffia shopping bags, heads bent.

But it was still beautiful, I thought, it could never fail, I gazed across the water behind me at the dome of the Salute, and further across, to the island out of which the tower of S. Giorgio rose, so perfectly, and back as far as I could see, up the course of the Grand Canal, before it bent into the dusk, receding between the overlooking houses. I gazed not only in pleasure, but with a strange sense of unreality, as if I might close my eyes and blink the scene completely away. The last time we had come here it had been spring and the buildings had glittered in the thin, pale early sunlight, and I had had

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an even greater sense of disbelief, for then, I had been newly married to Maxim, and quite disorientated, shaken by the surprise and swiftness of it all, carried along by him, and by the event itself, unthinking, willing, bewildered, ecstatically happy.

I remembered so little of that time, I never had, it had been an interlude of uncharacteristic, carefree joy and irresponsibility, before we had returned to the real world, and its pains and cares and shocks had overtaken us again. Of all that followed, at Manderley, I recalled every detail, it was like a film that I could re-run on demand.

But of Venice, and the other places we had first visited together, it was only small, irrelevant things I could remember out of the vague, overall blur of optimism and light headed ness.

Now, I saw it again as a very different place, with a sombre, darker expression; I admired it, I looked at it in awe, but, walking up the narrow alleyway beside a canal, following the porter who carried our bags, I shivered, not only because I was tired and chilled, but because I felt afraid of this ancient, hidden, secret city which seemed never to present a true face to us, but a series of masks, that changed, according to mood.

We had found yet another quiet, modest pensione — we had a genius for it, I thought, the places so suited us, and the way we always seemed to be in retreat, always carefully turning away our faces. I was used to it now, I did not mind; only, as I hung up clothes, folded things, slid open heavy drawers, I felt a spurt of raw longing, for my own rooms, my own furniture, home, and I indulged it, and Cobbetr’s Brake came, still and quiet and undisturbed, into my mind.

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I measured out the time I allowed myself to spend on it most carefully, before going in search of Maxim.

We settled down quite quickly. We would stay, Maxim said, stay for the winter — why not? Indeed, we had had our share of sunshine. I was surprised how easily the routine of days together came back to us, how we fell into a pattern of fetching the newspaper, eating a late breakfast, walking, exploring, looking at pictures, at churches, at houses, at the faces of Venetians, at the boats gliding silently across the silky black water, at the sky, morning and evening, over the campanile. When we had last come here, we had looked at one another, so that I did not see the city, only Maxim’s face.

The weather was mostly bleak, the wind bitter, snaking down alleyways and across the open squares, driving us indoors. But sometimes the clouds cleared, and then the reflections of the houses shone back from the face of the water and the gilding on the walls and the painted domes were sparkling. There was fog, too, when the footsteps that never cease in Venice and the bells and the stroke of the oars were muffled in it, and we did not leave the dark, red plush lounge, except for our private cafe, and then the time hung heavy, then I wanted open, wide skies, I thought of ploughed fields and bare trees and sometimes dreamed that I was standing on the cliffs above Kerrith, watching the breakers race in and crash up over the black rocks.

Maxim was at first quite unchanged, retreating into the old, familiar ways of our earlier years in exile, wanting my company, reading a great deal, interested in the dull, ordinary news from home, that came a couple of days late, not wanting to be reminded of painful, former things, so that I grew

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used again to being careful what I said, to sparing him, to concealing some of my own thoughts. We came to know Venice and a very great many of its works of art and ways of daily life as well as inhabitants, we were experts, we scarcely needed our guide books, we quizzed one another about dates and styles and history and doges and painters, and it was a pleasant and perhaps fruitful way of helping the time to pass.

Sometimes, I caught him looking at me, and his face darkened, I could not tell what he was thinking. Sometimes I sensed that he had closed himself off from me, and I retreated, and that was easy, I had dreams in which I could snatch ten minutes of nostalgia and fragile fulfilment, when it was necessary.

Letters came. We heard from Giles, Frank Crawley wrote once, there were business envelopes to be attended to sometimes, but they seemed to be of little consequence, and to cause Maxim no distress. He only spent an hour or two dealing with them, at a table in the window of our room, and then I would go out alone, to wander about the streets of Venice, or ride up and down the Grand Canal, on the vaporetto, a cheap, harmless, hour of pleasure.

Christmas came, and it was as strange and alien as Christmas had been every year of our exile, and I was used to it, I thought, I would not feel any different. We would exchange our own presents and eat whatever it was the custom to eat and I would go to a foreign church and hear the service in a language I did not know, but otherwise, the day would pass much as any other.

I went not to one of the grand principal churches, with the dressed up crowds, St Mark’s or the Salute, I felt no more

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inclined than ever for public display. Instead, I got up early, leaving Maxim barely awake, and walked through sidestreets and obscure, empty squares, over the Rialto Bridge to a church I had found one day in my solitary walks, and which had pleased me because it was quiet and plainer than was usual in Venice, not very gilded or full of precious paintings, but a more modest, a more real church, I thought. No one would come here to see and be seen, I would slip by unnoticed in my grey fur collared coat and hat.

Maxim never came. He did not believe, he said, except for ‘some truths’ and I had never questioned him further. I was not, indeed, very sure what I believed myself, I was uneducated in theology as in most other things, though I had been brought up with the usual teachings, the familiar stories, but I had prayed my desperate prayers these last years, and had had our reprieve, and our quietness and closeness together, as answers.

I made my way with the families and the old, black coated women who shuffled, arm in arm, nodding in response to an incurious smile, slipping in to the back of the church, to hear the Christmas Mass, and now, among the blaze of newly lit candles and the great urns of branches and waxen flowers, the rise and fall of the priest’s voice and the murmured responses, I prayed again, to be scoured clean of the thoughts and memories, the reminders, the whispering voices, to forget, to forget. I meant to pray to be satisfied with what we had, too, to give thanks for it, to be modestly grateful; but as I knelt, I knew that I could not, I felt a tremendous, raw anger and desire well up in me, the house, Cobbett’s Brake, was there, in front of me, and I longed for it and could not let it go.

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I wanted Christmas, as it should be by now for us, Christmas in a house, our own house, with great green branches brought in and swathed around the mantelpieces and burning in the grate, scarlet and white translucent berries, the old words in English, the familiar carols, the hot, rich, comforting plates of food. I was bitter with longing, so that I could not pray, not decently, I only sat dumbly, enduring the chanting and the shuffling files of communicants and the clinking of the chain as the censer swung to and fro, waiting for it to be over, and I to be released.

The fog had come creeping off the lagoon and seeped into the slits between the gaunt old houses, it hung over the surface of the black water of the canal, sour and sulphurous, and I walked back very quickly, my head bent. Maxim was standing in the hall, talking in his fluent Italian, with great cheerfulness, to the hotel manager, holding a glass of wine.

There you are,’ he said, and put out his arm to me, his face full of pleasure that I had returned, and how could I not respond, and warm to it, how could I not go quickly to him, out of nothing but love?

I did, I did, and another glass was brought, and the proprietor kissed my hand and we wished one another a happy Christmas, in a foreign tongue, and I smiled, and it was not like Christmas at all.

But there was a rhythm with my moods, as with everything, and in any case, I kept them to myself, it had become the strictest point of honour with me not to let him know what I felt — and so, I supposed, also the ultimate deception. But I was used to it now, it was better that way.

And so the even tenor of our days resumed, and they were

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companionable, undemanding, pleasant, and we quickly grew accustomed even to that bizarre, extraordinary city, and in the end scarcely noticed it and might have been anywhere.