Mrs De Winter (33 page)

Time — helps things to fade.’

‘Does it? I have not found so.’

*We are very happy now.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’ I burst out angrily, and I heard the tears rise into my voice and was powerless to control them.

Tes — we love Cobbett’s Brake, it is all we ever wanted. It is beautiful and we will make it even more so.’

‘But it is not Manderley.’

That is why we love it,’ I whispered.

I could not look at her, but I was dreadfully conscious of her dark presence, silhouetted against the window. I struggled

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to summon up all my courage and self possession, my fingers gripping the edge of the chair.

‘Mrs Danvers, there is something I must say.’

She did not reply.

‘I find it — I find it such a strange coincidence that you should be here — so near to us. And of course, it has been very pleasant to find you — well, and so — so comfortably settled, but Mr de Winter must never be reminded of-of the past. I very much hope that you will not come to the house again — in case he should see you and —’ I paused, and then I stood and confronted her, my courage strengthening as I spoke. Why should I fear her, why? What could she possibly do to me? I was contemptuous of my own feebleness. ‘Mrs Danvers, have you been — been writing to me? Sending me - things?’

Her face remained quite blank.

‘Certainly not, madam. I have never addressed you at your house.’

Then it must have been Mr Favell. I met him in London. He - he has been sending things through the post - newspaper cuttings and — other things. He has been trying to blackmail me. But you knew that, didn’t you? You have been in touch with him. You found out our address because he told you.’

I waited. Surely I was right. I must be right, and why would she bother to deny it?

She went on standing, without moving, without speaking, her eyes on my face. It was all she had to do, she knew that. My hands were trembling.

And then she stepped forward, and walked past me to

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a door at the far side of the room. She opened it wide, and then turned to me.

‘I told you that I had something to show you,’ she said. ‘Come in here.’

She did not ask me pleasantly, I heard a note in her voice I could not disobey. I went slowly across the room and through the door she was holding open. ‘I’ve tried to make it a pretty room,’ she said softly.

Oh, it was … it was. There were delicately printed curtains and drapes to the bed and the dressing table, a rose patterned needlepoint rug, beautifully stitched. For a split second, I thought it was surprising that Mrs Danvers should have such an airy, light room to sleep in, with the things so immaculately placed and chosen with such care. But almost before I had thought it, I looked at the dressing table top, at the brushes that were set out there, their silver backs gleaming.

Tes, of course, you recognise them. You touched them once, do you remember? You picked them up, thinking that you were alone and that no one in the house knew where you were. I had so few things of my own and they did not matter, they were of no account at all - easily replaceable. All I packed and took with me that day were her things everything I could carry. I’ve had them with me all these years. I have never been parted from them. I was wailing, you see, for a home where I could place them as I wished — as perhaps she would have wished. Of course it is not the same - it could never come up to her standards of taste and luxury. She would not like the house. It is an ugly house, so dark and unappealing. I’m sure you agree with me. But that

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does not matter at all, because it suits me so well — I have been able to do exactly as I wish — I have been given a free hand to decorate and furnish as I choose, my employer takes no interest in it but she is glad that I want to stay. She had difficulty finding anyone prepared to stay, but the moment I was shown up here to these rooms and told that I was welcome to use any of them, I knew I had found what I wanted.’

I thought that she must be mad. Yet her voice did not sound so, it was soft and monotonous as always but quite reasonable, quite plausible. Her face was pure white, the eyes burning. Was that a sign of madness? I remembered Jack Favell’s wild, bloodshot eyes. They had seemed mad.

‘Look,’ she said. She was holding open the wardrobe door. I did not want to look, I knew what would be there well enough.

‘I could not bring dresses and furs and so on. I left almost everything. It did not matter. Only this one dress. It was always her favourite and so naturally it was mine. Look at it.’

And so I must. It was green, a slim, silken sheath of dark emerald, with a single halter strap to be worn around her neck. I remembered the magazine photograph, it was before me now in every detail, the head thrown back, the arrogant gaze, hand outstretched to the rail, the beauty. I thought this had been the dress she wore then.

‘She had such light, delicate things, they were so easy to pack into my cases.’ She was opening drawers now, as she had done that other time, pulling out underwear, nightdresses, stockings, a fur trimmed wrap, a pair of gold slippers. The

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dressing case embroidered with her initials. R. de W. ‘Look,’ she said, and her voice was greedy, ‘such beautiful, lovely things for my lady.’

You are mad, I wanted to cry out, you are quite insane, you are obsessed, and she drove you to it. I was terrified, fascinated.

Now, she had closed the cupboard and the drawers. ‘Come and look out of the window,’ she said. I did not move.

‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘No.’ I swallowed. ‘No.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t harm you now. I don’t want you to harm yourself either. I used to hate you. You are not my concern now. You are of no account at all. Less than none.’

“What are you trying to say to me? What is the point of all this? What do you want, Mrs Danvers? Is it money? Are you in league with Jack Favell?’

She gave a hiss of derision, but as I had spoken, I knew that I was wildly wrong.

‘He had a use,’ she said, ‘and I used him.’

‘He told you where we were.’

‘Let him beg for money, stupid fool. Let him get what he can. Why shouldn’t he? It has nothing to do with me — why should money mean anything?’

Then what do you want? What use is all this?’ I sat down suddenly on the satin quilt covering the bed, my legs would no longer hold me. I felt that I might cry, I was like a child who is a victim, I was in a trap and knew of no way out. I did not understand and I felt helpless, but she was not a monster, she was a human being, why could she not have

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some spark of feeling for me, and sympathy. I felt snivelling and pathetic before her. ‘Mrs Danvers, please tell me what you want and why you have brought me here. I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I know you hated me for marrying Maxim.’

‘Oh, no, I never cared a jot about that. Let him marry whoever he wanted. It was no interest to me. I only despised you for daring to try and take her place at Manderley.’

Tm sorry — but that is over, over long, long ago. Can’t you forget it? Can’t you let the past lie buried?’

The past is all I have, all I have ever had or will have. The past is everything to me.’

‘Surely that need not be — you should make another life for yourself. As we have done.’

‘Have you? Do you really believe that?’

Tes,’ I almost shouted. ‘Yes, if you will only let us. If you will leave us alone.’

‘Never.’

I looked up, startled by the venom that spat out of her mouth in the single word. There were two small blazing scarlet patches, hardly more than spots, on her cheekbones, and her eyes were horribly bright.

‘How does it feel to be married to a murderer? That is what he is and you know it and I know it and he knows it, and I wonder how many others know it? He killed her. He shot her. Suicide? Kill herself? My lady? Never. No matter what was wrong, what that doctor had found. She was the bravest one that ever lived. She would never have taken the coward’s way. Would she? Would she?’

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‘I - I don’t know. I never knew her. And there was the verdict - the inquest. You were there.’

Tools!’

‘You heard the evidence.’

‘But not the truth. Never mind. It will come out, one way or other … It’s what I Jive for, you understand that don’t you? It is what I have been living for for more than ten years, biding my time, quite sure it would come right. She is guiding me, you see. She is with me, leading me, telling me. She knows. My lady never leaves me. She never did. Of all the people in this world who claimed to love her, thought they loved her, from her own mother and father on, she knew only one who truly did. She knew I worshipped her and would have died for her, any time she crooked her little finger. She still knows it. Revenge, Danny, she says. Every night she comes to me. I wake and she is there, smiling, whispering to me. Make him pay, Danny, only you can. Make the truth come out. Don’t let me down. But she is teasing me. Let her down? Does she need to ask me?’

At the inquest, I had fainted, and in the turret at the Italian villa, I had fainted too. Now, I willed myself to faint, I wanted to be unconscious, it was the only way I knew I could escape her, the black figure, the white skull of a face with its burning cheeks and eyes, the terrible, relentless, insane voice.

But I could not faint. I only sat, trembling, on the edge of the bed.

In the end, she released me.

It was as though she had been in some kind of hypnotic trance, thinking and talking of Rebecca, and that, within a few seconds, she had come out of it. She said, in a perfectly normal

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voice, ‘When you are ready, please come into the sitting room. I shall ring for tea,’ and she went quietly out.

I did not want to stay there, in that cold, prettily decorated shrine, a room dedicated to the memory, not only of someone long dead, but who had never been there, a morbid fantasy of a place, peopled by the shadowy figures of one woman’s imagination. But I did not get up at once to follow her, I felt too shaken and unsteady.

She had left one drawer slightly open and a piece of flimsy pale apricot silken stuff trailed out of it like breath. I wondered if she had ever worn it, but I was not troubled by it, I felt no fear of Rebecca’s ghost, she was not the one who threatened me.

I heard a knock on the far door, voices. I stood up and went, without glancing back, into the outer room where a young maid was setting out tea on a small table, watched sharply, critically by Mrs Danvers, and where there was an air of everyday reality from which I could draw some relief and courage.

‘Please sit down, madam.’

I saw the girl glance at me. It sounded odd to her too, that she should call me that, but what else was there? I knew that ‘Mrs de Winter5 would never cross her lips in relation to me.

The tea was well made and hot and I drank it greedily, but we sat in silence for some while, for how could I begin to make normal, light conversation with her after what had happened? She sipped tea, watching me, neither of us ate, the cake was uncut, the scones left to go cold.

I wanted to ask her if she had sought this position out

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deliberately, as soon as Favell had told her our whereabouts, I wanted to say I saw the wreath you sent, I have the card you wrote. You sent it to frighten me, didn’t you? Why? Why? You say that she whispers to you and that you will never let go, never leave us alone until — until what? What will you do? What will satisfy you? Haven’t you done enough in destroying Manderley? You did do that, it was you, wasn’t it?

All of those questions hung in the air between us, the silence was electric with them, and they could never be asked, some words would never be spoken.

All I managed to ask, blurt out, and without preparation, so that the question surprised me, I had not known that I was going to put it, was, ‘Are you happy here, Mrs Danvers?’

She looked at me pityingly, as one would look at a very stupid person, or a young, silly child. ‘Happy? I have never been happy since my lady died, surely you must know that, and I never expect to be so.’

‘Surely you should try and make some sort of new life now — I know ‘

‘You? What do you know? That she meant everything to me in life, from the first day I set eyes on her and will do until the day I die. If you do not know anything else, know that.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ I felt suddenly, desperately tired. I thought I could have laid down then on the floor and slept.

‘I count myself blessed to have had her, to have loved her and known her. Nothing else could possibly be of significance.’

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IP

There was nothing to say. I finished my tea.

Turviss will bring the car round for you whenever you are ready, madam.’

Could this be all then? Had she simply wanted me to see the room, to remind me of the past? To have afternoon tea and go home again? It seemed unreal. I wanted to laugh, hysterically, sipping the last of my tea opposite to her, as she sat stiff backed and motionless, black, gaunt, staring. You are an old woman, I thought, alone and pathetic, you live in and for the past, while we have a future. And I saw the children running down the slope, saw Maxim come into the house, smiling his familiar, languid smile.

How could she touch that, how could this one old woman take any of it away? And then, I felt a great surge of new strength and resolve rise up within me; I was no longer a timid, shy, uncertain little thing, I was a woman, I had confidence and some experience, I was not afraid of Mrs Danvers. I was angry with her, angry not only with what she was trying to do now but with what she had previously done and been, the way she had tried to belittle and humiliate me, drive me from Manderley, part me from Maxim. For a moment, we looked at one another across the anonymous sitting room. She does not know me now, I thought, she is remembering the girl I was and playing upon my old fears.