Rebecca

'Oh, yes, it was quite an excitement. We love anything like that. We keep a scrapbook you know, and paste anything to do with the family inside it. Anything pleasant, that is.'
'How nice,' I said.
I caught snatches of Beatrice's conversation on the other side. 'We had to put old Marksman down,' she was saying. 'You remember old Marksman? The best hunter I ever had.'
'Oh, dear, not old Marksman?' said her grandmother.
'Yes, poor old man. Got blind in both eyes, you know.'

'Poor Marksman,' echoed the old lady.
I thought perhaps it was not very tactful to talk about blindness, and I glanced at the nurse. She was still busy clicking her needles.
'Do you hunt, Mrs de Winter?' she said.
'No, I'm afraid I don't,' I said.
'Perhaps you will come to it. We are all very fond of hunting in this part of the world.'
'Yes.'
'Mrs de Winter is very keen on art,' said Beatrice to the nurse. 'I tell her there are heaps of spots in Manderley that would make very jolly pictures.'

'Oh rather,' agreed the nurse, pausing a moment from the fury of knitting. 'What a nice hobby. I had a friend who was a wonder with her pencil. We went to Provence together one Easter and she did such pretty sketches.'
'How nice,' I said.
'We're talking about sketching,' shouted Beatrice to her grandmother, 'you did not know we had an artist in the family, did you?'
'Who's an artist?' said the old lady. 'I don't know any.'

'Your new granddaughter,' said Beatrice: 'you ask her what I gave her for a wedding present.'
I smiled, waiting to be asked. The old lady turned her head in my direction. 'What's Bee talking about?' she said. 'I did not know you were an artist. We've never had any artists in the family.'
'Beatrice was joking,' I said: 'of course I'm not an artist really. I like drawing as a hobby. I've never had any lessons. Beatrice gave me some lovely books as a present.'

'Oh,' she said, rather bewildered. 'Beatrice gave you some books, did she? Rather like taking coals to Newcastle, wasn't it? There are so many books in the library at Manderley.' She laughed heartily. We all joined in her joke. I hoped the subject would be left at that, but Beatrice had to harp on it. 'You don't understand, Gran,' she said. "They weren't ordinary books. They were volumes on art. Four of 'em.'

The nurse leant forward to add her tribute. 'Mrs Lacy is trying to explain that Mrs de Winter is very fond of sketching as a hobby. So she gave her four fine volumes all about painting as a wedding present.'
'What a funny thing to do,' said the grandmother. 'I don't think much of books for a wedding present. Nobody ever gave me any books when I was married. I should never have read them if they had.'

She laughed again. Beatrice looked rather offended. I smiled at her to show my sympathy. I don't think she saw. The nurse resumed her knitting.
'I want my tea,' said the old lady querulously, 'isn't it half past four yet? Why doesn't Norah bring the tea?'
'What? Hungry again after our big lunch?' said the nurse, rising to her feet and smiling brightly at her charge.

I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite. I sat with my hands in my lap ready to agree with what anybody said. The nurse was thumping the pillows and arranging the shawls.

Maxim's grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o'clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim's grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, 'Well, that clears my conscience for three months'?

Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining-room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold?

I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with colour in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head.
'We've got a treat today, you know,' said the nurse, 'watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don't we?'

'Is it watercress day?' said Maxim's grandmother, raising her head from the pillows, and looking towards the door. 'You did not tell me that. Why does not Norah bring in the tea?'
'I wouldn't have your job, Sister, for a thousand a day,' said Beatrice sotto voce to the nurse.

'Oh, I'm used to it, Mrs Lacy,' smiled the nurse; 'it's very comfortable here, you know. Of course we have our bad days but they might be a great deal worse. She's very easy, not like some patients. The staff are obliging too, that's really the main thing. Here comes Norah.'
The parlour-maid brought out a little gate-legged table and a snowy cloth.
'What a time you've been, Norah,' grumbled the old lady.

'It's only just turned the half-hour, Madam,' said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the nurse. I wondered if Maxim's grandmother realised that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, "They think I'm getting old, how very ridiculous', and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background. But the young woman with the chestnut hair and the narrow waist who gave sugar to the horses, where was she?

We drew our chairs to the gate-legged table and began to eat the watercress sandwiches. The nurse prepared special ones for the old lady.
"There, now, isn't that a treat?' she said.
I saw a slow smile pass over the calm, placid face. 'I like watercress day,' she said.
The tea was scalding, much too hot to drink. The nurse drank hers in tiny sips.

'Boiling water today,' she said, nodding at Beatrice. 'I have such trouble about it. They will let the tea stew. I've told them time and time again about it. They will not listen.'
'Oh, they're all the same,' said Beatrice. 'I've given it up as a bad job.' The old lady stirred hers with a spoon, her eyes very far and distant. I wished I knew what she was thinking about.
'Did you have fine weather in Italy?' said the nurse.
'Yes, it was very warm,' I said.

Beatrice turned to her grandmother. 'They had lovely weather in Italy for their honeymoon, she says. Maxim got quite sunburnt.'
'Why isn't Maxim here today?' said the old lady.
'We told you, darling, Maxim had to go to London,' said Beatrice impatiently. 'Some dinner, you know. Giles went too.'
'Oh, I see. Why did you say Maxim was in Italy?'
'He was in Italy, Gran. In April. They're back at Manderley now.' She glanced at the nurse, shrugging her shoulders.

'Mr and Mrs de Winter are in Manderley now,' repeated the nurse.
'It's been lovely there this month,' I said, drawing nearer to Maxim's grandmother. 'The roses are in bloom now. I wish I had brought you some.'
'Yes, I like roses,' she said vaguely, and then peering closer at me with her dim blue eyes. 'Are you staying at Manderley too?'

I swallowed. There was a slight pause. Then Beatrice broke in with her loud, impatient voice, 'Gran, darling, you know perfectly well she lives there now. She and Maxim are married.'

I noticed the nurse put down her cup of tea and glance swiftly at the old lady. She had relaxed against the pillows, plucking at her shawl, and her mouth began to tremble. 'You talk too much, all of you. I don't understand.' Then she looked across at me, a frown on her face, and began shaking her head. 'Who are you, my dear, I haven't seen you before? I don't know your face. I don't remember you at Manderley. Bee, who is this child? Why did not Maxim bring Rebecca? I'm so fond of Rebecca. Where is dear Rebecca?'

There was a long pause, a moment of agony. I felt my cheeks grow scarlet. The nurse got to her feet very quickly and went to the Bathchair.
'I want Rebecca,' repeated the old lady, 'what have you done with Rebecca?' Beatrice rose clumsily from the table, shaking the cups and saucers. She too had turned very red, and her mouth twitched.

'I think you'd better go, Mrs Lacy,' said the nurse, rather pink and flustered. 'She's looking a little tired, and when she wanders like this it sometimes lasts a few hours. She does get excited like this from time to time. It's very unfortunate it should happen today. I'm sure you will understand, Mrs de Winter?' She turned apologetically to me.
'Of course,' I said quickly, 'it's much better we should go.'

Beatrice and I groped for our bags and gloves. The nurse had turned to her patient again. 'Now, what's all this about? Do you want your nice watercress sandwich that I've cut for you?'
'Where is Rebecca? Why did not Maxim come and bring Rebecca?' replied the thin, querulous voice.
We went through the drawing-room to the hall and let ourselves out of the front door. Beatrice started up the car without a word. We drove down the smooth gravel drive and out of the white gates.

I stared straight in front of me down the road. I did not mind for myself. I should not have cared if I had been alone. I minded for Beatrice.
The whole thing had been so wretched and awkward for Beatrice.
She spoke to me when we turned out of the village. 'My dear,' she began, 'I'm so dreadfully sorry. I don't know what to say.'
'Don't be absurd, Beatrice,' I said hurriedly, 'it doesn't matter a bit. It's absolutely all right.'

'I had no idea she would do that,' said Beatrice. 'I would never have dreamt of taking you to see her. I'm so frightfully sorry.'
'There's nothing to be sorry about. Please don't say any more.'
'I can't make it out. She knew all about you. I wrote and told her, and so did Maxim. She was so interested in the wedding abroad.'

'You forget how old she is,' I said. 'Why should she remember that? She doesn't connect me with Maxim. She only connects him with Rebecca.' We went on driving in silence. It was a relief to be in the car again. I did not mind the jerky motion and the swaying corners.

'I'd forgotten she was so fond of Rebecca,' said Beatrice slowly, 'I was a fool not to expect something like this. I don't believe she ever took it in properly about the accident. Oh, Lord, what a ghastly afternoon. What on earth will you think of me?'
'Please, Beatrice, don't. I tell you I don't mind.'

'Rebecca made a great fuss of her always. And she used to have the old lady over to Manderley. Poor darling Gran was much more alert then. She used to rock with laughter at whatever Rebecca said. Of course she was always very amusing, and the old lady loved that. She had an amazing gift, Rebecca I mean, of being attractive to people; men, women, children, dogs. I suppose the old lady has never forgotten her. My dear, you won't thank me for this afternoon.'

'I don't mind, I don't mind,' I repeated mechanically. If only Beatrice could leave the subject alone. It did not interest me. What did it matter after all? What did anything matter?
'Giles will be very upset,' said Beatrice. 'He will blame me for taking you over. "What an idiotic thing to do, Bee." I can hear him saying it. I shall get into a fine row.'
'Don't say anything about it,' I said. 'I would much rather it was forgotten. The story will only get repeated and exaggerated.'

'Giles will know something is wrong from my face. I never have been able to hide anything from him.'
I was silent. I knew how the story would be tossed about in their immediate circle of friends. I could imagine the little crowd at Sunday lunch. The round eyes, the eager ears, and the gasps and exclamations — 'My Lord, how awful, what on earth did you do?' and then, 'How did she take it? How terribly embarrassing for everyone!'

The only thing that mattered to me was that Maxim should never come to hear of it. One day I might tell Frank Crawley, but not yet, not for quite a while.
It was not long before we came to the high road at the top of the hill. In the distance I could see the first grey roofs of Kerrith, while to the right, in a hollow, lay the deep woods of Manderley and the sea beyond.
'Are you in a frightful hurry to get home?' said Beatrice.
'No,' I said. 'I don't think so. Why?'

'Would you think me a perfect pig if I dropped you at the lodge gates? If I drive like hell now I shall just be in time to meet Giles by the London train, and it will save him taking the station taxi.'
'Of course,' I said. 'I can walk down the drive.'
'Thanks awfully,' she said gratefully.
I felt the afternoon had been too much for her. She wanted to be alone again, and did not want to face another belated tea at Manderley.
I got out of the car at the lodge gates and we kissed goodbye.

'Put on some weight next time I see you,' she said; 'it doesn't suit you to be so thin. Give Maxim my love, and forgive me for today.' She vanished in a cloud of dust and I turned in down the drive.

I wondered if it had altered much since Maxim's grandmother had driven down it in her carriage. She had ridden here as a young woman, she had smiled at the woman at the lodge as I did now. And in her day the lodge-keeper's wife had curtseyed, sweeping the path with her full wide skirt. This woman nodded to me briefly, and then called to her little boy, who was grubbing with some kittens at the back. Maxim's grandmother had bowed her head to avoid the sweeping branches of the trees, and the horse had trotted down the twisting drive where I now walked. The drive had been wider then, and smoother too, better kept. The woods did not encroach upon it.

I did not think of her as she was now, lying against those pillows, with that shawl around her. I saw her when she was young, and when Manderley was her home. I saw her wandering in the gardens with a small boy, Maxim's father, clattering behind her on his hobby horse. He would wear a stiff Norfolk jacket and a round white collar. Picnics to the cove would be an expedition, a treat that was not indulged in very often. There would be a photograph somewhere, in an old album — all the family sitting very straight and rigid round a tablecloth set upon the beach, the servants in the background beside a huge lunch-basket. And I saw Maxim's grandmother when she was older too, a few years ago. Walking on the terrace at Manderley, leaning on a stick. And someone walked beside her, laughing, holding her arm. Someone tall and slim and very beautiful, who had a gift, Beatrice said, of being attractive to people. Easy to like, I supposed, easy to love.

When I came to the end of the long drive at last I saw that
Maxim's car was standing in front of the house. My heart lifted, I ran quickly into the hall. His hat and gloves were lying on the table. I went towards the library, and as I came near I heard the sound of voices, one raised louder than the other, Maxim's voice. The door was shut. I hesitated a moment before going in.

'You can write and tell him from me to keep away from Manderley in future, do you hear? Never mind who told me, that's of no importance. I happen to know his car was seen here yesterday afternoon. If you want to meet him you can meet him outside Manderley. I won't have him inside the gates, do you understand? Remember, I'm warning you for the last time.'

I slipped away from the door to the stairs. I heard the door of the library open. I ran swiftly up the stairs and hid in the gallery. Mrs Danvers came out of the library, shutting the door behind her. I crouched against the wall of the gallery so that I should not be seen. I had caught one glimpse of her face. It was grey with anger, distorted, horrible.
She passed up the stairs swiftly and silently and disappeared through the door leading to the west wing.

I waited a moment. Then I went slowly downstairs to the library. I opened the door and went in. Maxim was standing by the window, some letters in his hand. His back was turned to me. For a moment I thought of creeping out again, and going upstairs to my room and sitting there. He must have heard me though, for he swung round impatiently.
'Who is it now?' he said.
I smiled, holding out my hands. 'Hullo!' I said.
'Oh, it's you…'

I could tell in a glance that something had made him very angry. His mouth was hard, his nostrils white and pinched. 'What have you been doing with yourself?' he said. He kissed the top of my head and put his arm round my shoulder. I felt as if a very long time had passed since he had left me yesterday.
'I've been to see your grandmother,' I said. 'Beatrice drove me over this afternoon.'
'How was the old lady?'
'All right.'
'What's happened to Bee?'
'She had to get back to meet Giles.'

We sat down together on the window-seat. I took his hand in mine. 'I hated you being away, I've missed you terribly,' I said.
'Have you?' he said.
We did not say anything for a bit. I just held his hand.
'Was it hot up in London?' I said.
'Yes, pretty awful. I always hate the place.'
I wondered if he would tell me what had happened just now in the library with Mrs Danvers. I wondered who had told him about Favell.
'Are you worried about something?' I said.

'I've had a long day,' he said, 'that drive twice in twenty-four hours is too much for anyone.'
He got up and wandered away, lighting a cigarette. I knew then that he was not going to tell me about Mrs Danvers.
'I'm tired too,' I said slowly, 'it's been a funny sort of day.'
Chapter sixteen

It was one Sunday, I remember, when we had an invasion of visitors during the afternoon, that the subject of the fancy dress ball was first brought up. Frank Crawley had come over to lunch, and we were all three of us looking forward to a peaceful afternoon under the chestnut tree when we heard the fatal sound of a car rounding the sweep in the drive. It was too late to warn Frith, the car itself came upon us standing on the terrace with cushions and papers under our arms.

We had to come forward and welcome the unexpected guests. As often happens in such cases, these were not to be the only visitors. Another car arrived about half an hour afterwards, followed by three local people who had walked from Kerrith, and we found ourselves, with the peace stripped from our day, entertaining group after group of dreary acquaintances, doing the regulation walk in the grounds, the tour of the rose-garden, the stroll across the lawns, and the formal inspection of the Happy Valley.

They stayed for tea of course, and instead of a lazy nibbling of cucumber sandwiches under the chestnut tree, we had the paraphernalia of a stiff tea in the drawing-room, which I always loathed. Frith in his element of course, directing Robert with a lift of his eyebrows, and myself rather hot and flustered with a monstrous silver teapot and kettle that I never knew how to manage. I found it very difficult to gauge the exact moment when it became imperative to dilute the tea with the boiling water, and more difficult still to concentrate on the small talk that was going on at my side.

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