Mrs De Winter (23 page)

It was May when we left, to sail for Istanbul, and I did not think that I wanted to go there, for some reason I was afraid of the idea of a place so entirely foreign, so strange in every possible way, I wanted change and new sights, yet at the same time to remain within certain bounds. It would have been easier if Maxim had not been strange too, and far away from me, distracted by something, often staring ahead of him with a slight frown. I dared not ask him why, it seemed

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safest to be ignorant, but I speculated endlessly; that it had to do with what Mrs van Hopper had said, or that there were problems to do with the family’s affairs, after Beatrice’s death; even financial anxieties.

The last two days of our time in Greece were tense and miserable, the distance that Maxim seemed to be putting between us was greater than ever. We spoke calmly, coolly, talked of what we saw, what the next stage of our journey was to be, and I longed for the old closeness, the way he had been dependent upon me, but growing older takes the edge off impatience. This had happened before, I said, I would ride it out. He would come back.

I could not have dreamed how.

The weather was perfect, warm, scented, glorious spring, the world washed clean. The day had been held, poised between cold dawn and the chill of night, so that I had spent much of it on the deck of the steamer that was taking us down the Bosporus towards Istanbul. And now, we were almost there, I had seen the domes of the old city come riding towards us, seeming to float, insubstantial, glittering things haloed in the light of the setting sun which lay, gold leaf upon the surface of the quiet water.

Maxim was standing beside me in silence. The light changed, flushing rose red, the whole western sky was suffused with it, and the line of the buildings darkened and flattened, the domes and turrets and thin spires were paper on coloured cloth.

I had not expected to like this place, I had thought

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everything about it would feel alien, and, when we finally reached the shore, perhaps it would, but now, looking, looking, I was caught up in it and moved as I had rarely been by the simple sight of anything. Except the house. The rose red house.

‘And now look,’ Maxim said, after a moment.

I followed his glance. Above the line of the city, above the colours of the sunset, the night sky began, miraculously dark, and against it, a crescent moon was set, the thinnest, most brilliant paring of silver.

If I close my eyes I can see it now, it comes back to me at moments with absolute clarity, a comfort as well as pain, and I rest on it and feed from it, and I hear Maxim’s voice, again, the next words he spoke.

‘Here,’ he said. I saw that he was holding out an envelope. ‘You had better read this now,’ and then he turned his back and walked away to the other side of the ship.

The envelope might be between my fingers now, I can feel it, smooth, but torn at the top where it had been opened. I stood holding it, looking at the sky, but the sun had gone and the last stain of bright colour faded, the domes had been absorbed back into the darkness. Only the moon remained, the pure, bright wire.

My heart was beating too hard. I did not know what the envelope might contain, what words I would have to read. I did not want to, I wanted to stay unknowing, poised in this time when all was still safe and contained and I had nothing to be afraid of. But I was afraid.

Everything will change, I said. This will in some way put an end to things as they are. And so it did.

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I sat down on an uncomfortable, slatted bench in the shelter of the bridge. There was a storm lantern with just enough light to read by, it threw a grubby orange glow down on to the paper. I wondered why Maxim had left me alone, what he feared. It must be some dreadful thing in this envelope, something he could not put into words, it could not be simple, ordinary, bad news, some death or illness or disaster, or surely, surely, he would have stayed with me, told me, we would have been together. But we were far apart. I could feel tears stinging at the back of my eyes, small, hard tears of some bitter substance, not tears that would spill easily and so be in some way a release and a comfort.

One of the crew went by, the band of his cap bone white against the darkness. He glanced at me curiously, but did not stop. From where I sat I could not see the moon, only a few distant, pricking lights from the shore. I smelled the oil from the engines, heard the noise they made, throbbing away at my back.

Please, I said, though I did not know for what I was so desperately asking. Please. A cry for help.

And then, I took the single sheet of paper out of the envelope, and held it to the light.

Inveralloch. Wednesday.

My dear Maxim,

In haste to let you know the final outcome. I am sending this by express, poste restante to Venice, in the hope that it will reach you before you leave.

I have this morning heard that my bid on your

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behalf for the freehold purchase of Cobbett’s Brake has been successful. As soon as you receive this, will you please telegraph final confirmation so that I may see Archie Nicholson in London next week and have him draw up the deeds and covenants ready for you to sign as soon as you return.

I will be glad to know a final date. There are some details to be gone over but once the documents have been completed, the house will be yours to move into as soon as you find convenient after returning to England. I am as delighted by this as I hope you will both be,

Yours ever, Frank

My hand trembled, I had to clutch the paper, for fear that it would fall from between my fingers and blow away.

I looked up. Maxim had come back. We’re almost there,’ he said.

And so we went to stand at the rail of the steamer, and rode slowly in, to where the old, mysterious city held out its arms to greet us.

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Twelve

We came home to Cobbett’s Brake in May, just as we had to Manderley. But how different it was, how different in every way. A new beginning. And whenever I recall it, even though it is in the light of what happened, it is the light, there are no shadows, and my memories of that time are perfect and joyful, I do not regret anything, I would not have had it any other way.

Remembering Manderley, which I still do, I remember how inadequate I was, how out of place, I remember the awkwardnesses and the way the house overpowered me. I was tremulous with a nervous, disbelieving happiness when I first went there, and it changed, almost at once, merging into mere anxiety. But I came to Cobbett’s Brake on a great surge of confidence and release, of re-kindled, intense love for Maxim, who had done this thing, with optimism and sureness of purpose. I felt that I had been waiting for years for life properly to begin, that everything else had been a preparation, but also something I had looked on at, a play in which everyone else had real parts, but I had been

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only pushed dumbly about the stage, not speaking, never belonging, never making any move to rush the action along. Everyone had stared at me, there had been peculiar, menacing silences sometimes when I had appeared under the lights, and yet I had been of no consequence. Now, it was not a play, it was life, and I plunged into the midst of it and was carried by it, with such eagerness.

All the time that had remained to us abroad we had lived on two planes. Letters and telegrams had flown in both directions between Frank Crawley, Maxim, the land agents and solicitors, Giles, the people at the farm. Maxim had spent hours on the end of a bad telephone line, shouting instructions, trying to discover whether this or that would be done, and all the time, we were plunged into the mysterious, exotic hubbub of life in Istanbul, and the countryside of Turkey, and I loved it; it did not frighten me at all, I adored everything about it and felt and saw and heard and remembered it with a piercing intensity because I knew I was leaving and these were the last days of our exile — only now, it was not exile, it was simply pleasure, and after it, we were going home, and life was about to begin. We wandered about the streets, choked with people and animals, buyers and sellers, beggars and babies, went into mosques full of bells and chanting voices, smelled heady, overpowering scents, cloying, odd, unpleasant, always unlike any I would ever smell again, so that now, they are locked away in a box somewhere forever and I have no key. If I had, if the box were to break open, that place, that time, those memories, that are packed so tightly together with the scents, would overwhelm me. There were tastes, too, sweet, spiced, smoky tastes always

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in our mouths, and sometimes, I have caught a faint trace of those, eating some piece of meat, or a pastry, and after a bewildered moment, been catapulted back to those days and nights.

There were no misunderstandings or silences between us, there was only love and resolution, and exquisite happiness, in time and place, so that I wept to leave, the beauty of Istanbul was more than physical, it was personal and poignant, imbued with a sense of fragility and impermanence. When we left, and the glittering, painted city was finally out of sight, I believed that it might indeed have simply dissolved, and ceased to exist at all because we could no longer see it.

We travelled back in quite a leisurely way across Europe, paving out the time gently, making it last. Frank had seen to the final details of the purchase, but we would not know until we arrived back and could finally go over the house, how much work might have to be done, whether we would want to keep any of the furnishings that had been sold with it. The old couple had not wanted to go back, and their son, newly demobbed from the army, had only cleared out all the personal effects and things of value, much of the furniture remained, but Frank had had no time to take an inventory and seemed to think little of it would be of use. He had rented a small house for us nearby where we could stay for a shorter or longer time — though I knew that even if we were forced to clear the whole of Cobbett’s Brake, and work upon it, I wanted to be there, I would not mind confining ourselves to a few temporarily furnished rooms. We belonged there, not in another place, discomfort and inconvenience would be of no consequence.

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It was the warmest May for years, people said, it didn’t really do to be as warm as this so early, no one knew what the weather was coming to; but ‘let’s make the most of it, we should enjoy it while we can.’

And we did, oh, we did. England smelled of spring and the flowers and the grass, the bluebells were almost over, but here and there, we passed a small wood or a quiet copse, and saw a flash of that incomparable blue, deep down below the first, fresh leaves, and stopped twice on the way, to climb over a fence. There was a latticework of sky between the branches over our heads, and at our feet the flowers were damp and cool. I bent down and plunged my arms into them, closed my eyes and let the smell overpower me.

‘No use taking them,’ Maxim said. They’ll be dead within the hour.’

And I remembered then, armfuls of the pale, yellow-green, etiolated stalks flopping over in the basket of my bicycle, when I had not been able to resist picking them as a girl, and giving them to my mother to put in jars, certain that in some magic way she would have power to revive them.

‘But she did not, of course,’ I said, standing up now.

‘And you learned your lesson.’

‘Perhaps.’

I saw then, as he stood looking at me, how his face had changed, softened and lightened, how he seemed suddenly younger — years younger even than when I had met him — but of course, he had seemed gravely old, then, that had been part of the point.

The daffodils and the apple blossom were over, but the lilac was out, a tree of it in every cottage garden,

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white and pallid mauve, and the hedgerows on either side of us were ribbons of dusty white — hawthorn in full flower, whenever we stepped out of the car, we smelled its curious, bitter scent, baked in the heat of the afternoon sun and that, too, was another smell of childhood, I remembered vividly how I had sat beneath a great bush of it in some old woman’s garden when I was five or six, picking off twigs of the little clumps of blossom and playing with them, spreading them on the earth, making patterns. It was as though my childhood, those happiest of early years that had been snapped off so sharply with my father’s death, were being given back to me now, they were clearer and closer than they had ever been; the years between, the time before Maxim and then, of Maxim and Manderley and after, all of them until now, receded, blurred and shadowy. This time was linked across them like a strong bridge, with that time further back.

As we drove deeper into the heart of the country, I realised that everything was white; there were white lambs, and the high creamy white heads of the cow parsley springing up from every ditch, and lily of the valley in the shady corners of gardens, over low stone walls. I felt like a bride again, as I had been on our way home to Manderley, but glancing at Maxim across the car, I did not say it, I did not want any mention or reminder of that time to throw the faintest shadow over this day. We did not hurry, there was no reason to hurry. We lingered over every sight, every detail, having a slow, pleasant late lunch, then stopping a little later to visit a cathedral, where we wandered and gazed up at the windows and the roof, the glorious stone arches, like visitors who had never seen such things before. When we came out, the light

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had changed, it was pale lemon coloured against the buildings, the day had slipped down a little towards late afternoon.

For the last few miles I made Maxim go very slowly, I was committing everything to memory, learning the lanes by heart. We had made arrangements for the house to be opened by Mrs Peck from the farm. We would look round briefly now, and come back first thing the next morning to begin the process of deciding, planning, making arrangements. But there would be no one waiting, no rows of uniformed staff on the steps and in the drive, no staring, curious, eyes following me — no Mrs Danvers. This was mine only, mine and Maxim’s.