THAT NIGHT, MY FATHER—TO MY RELIEF—SLEPT soundly, though I did not. In the morning, I took him breakfast in bed, but found him already up. I’d been expecting questions about Mrs. de Winter—there had been remarkably few the previous night—but my father’s new capacity to dismiss the immediate past had already reasserted itself; these last weeks he’d made himself learn the art of forgetfulness. He had focussed his mind on the lunch that would take place that day, and the arrival of Tom Galbraith and his friend Nicholas Osmond. Preparations were already under way. Several of my father’s suits lay on the bed, he was holding a fistful of ties, and staring beakily at his wardrobe.
“Have to look presentable. Best bib and tucker. Francis Latimer’s joining us—did I mention that, Ellie? Thought he might liven things up a bit. Now—I need a woman’s eye. Which suit, Ellie—this one or that one?”
Francis’s presence had certainly not been mentioned, as my father well knew; both the suits he was proposing were of heavy tweed. It was nine o’clock in the morning, the sky was cloudless; the temperature was in the seventies, and rising. I tried to guide my father toward one of the lightweight suits that dated from his Singapore days, but he was having none of it—and I knew why: He hates people to notice how thin and frail he’s become, and the tweeds disguise that. I gave in, and he finally selected a bristling greenish tweed with a clashing regimental tie.
“Just the ticket,” he said, holding them up. “Looking forward to this, Ellie. What time are those two whippersnappers arriving?”
“Twelve-ish, Daddy.”
“Ish? Ish? In my day, people were punctual, made a point of it. Still, better get a move on. I must see to the drinks, have a rummage about in the cellar…. Can’t seem to find that bargain sherry of mine. I know there are a couple of bottles left, and I can’t damn well find them anywhere.”
I hurried downstairs. I hid the bottles of bargain sherry in an even more effective place, then Rose and I moved the lunch table into the shade of the monkey puzzle. “Tweeds,” I said. “The green tweed at that….” I placed a jug of flowers on the white tablecloth; the air felt full of expectation, the sea sang, and the future beckoned. “Oh, Rose,” I said, “what a glorious day.”
“How pretty you look,” she said. “I hope your father’s not going to be difficult. When I serve the mussels, don’t say a word—that Mr. Galbraith of yours promised to bring me some garlic.”
TOM GALBRAITH WAS A MAN OF HIS WORD. HE ARRIVED with his friend, in his friend’s exotic car, at five minutes past twelve exactly. They’d come off the ferry from St. Malo early that morning, and they came bearing the fruits of France, all of them unobtainable in Kerrith. There were bottles of champagne and some glorious young wine; there were bunches of pink grapes, baskets of black cherries, a plaited string of rosy garlic, bundles of pungent thyme, marjoram and rosemary, a bag of black coffee beans, and, in an exquisite box tied with ribbons, a collection of tiny handmade biscuits shaped like palm leaves. Rose fell on these delights as they were unpacked from a hamper in our kitchen; I stared in wonderment, first at this luxury, then at Tom Galbraith and his companion.
Two weeks in Brittany had transformed Tom, who was sunburned, smiling, more at ease than I’d ever seen him. And his friend? I could only stare: I had been expecting a dry scholar, a sad widower. Nicholas Osmond was a golden young man, probably the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, or am ever likely to see. He had golden hair and golden skin; his eyes were the clearest sapphire; when he stood still—which he rarely did—he had the poise, perfection, and gravity of an angel in an Italian Renaissance painting. He didn’t belong in a kitchen, by a range that broke down every other week; he belonged under a fresco blue sky, handing a lily to the Virgin Mary.
Even Rose was rocked; when she was introduced and shook hands, she was visibly stunned, and had to divert quickly to the joys of that hamper, and the cunning way it had been packed, with containers for ice, and straw, and wax papers. “May we open the champagne, Dr. Julyan?” Osmond said to her, lighting the room with his smile. “It’s just about cool enough, I think—one of the stewards on the boat gave us fresh ice this morning. And we must celebrate—I’ve heard so much about you all…. What a marvelous house! What a glorious day! Miss Julyan—that’s no good, I can’t call you that—may I call you Ellie? Ellie, where’s your father? How is he? I’m longing to meet him. Tom’s told me so much about Colonel Julyan, I feel I know him already.”
I knew where my father was; he was skulking in his study. I persuaded him as far as the French windows. “Good to see you again, Galbraith,” he said, shaking hands with Tom—and then he was introduced to the angel. I saw him resist: I saw the cold blue stare that was bestowed on the golden hair, which curled unashamedly, and touched Osmond’s collar. I saw the cold blue glare fixed on Osmond’s open-necked shirt and lack of tie; both my father and his suit bristled.
Osmond, joyfully unaware of this, clasped his hand. “I’m glad to meet you at last, sir. Tom’s told me so much about you,” he began—and then he spied Barker. “Oh, what a magnificent dog,” he said. “I love dogs like that. A Newfoundland cross, sir? I had one as a boy—they’re always highly intelligent—we went everywhere together. It’s Barker, isn’t it? No, don’t get up, old boy.”
Barker, who is always aloof with strangers, was rising arthritically to his feet. Osmond crossed to him and held out his hand. Barker sniffed it, looked up at him, sniffed again, and licked him. This, at first meeting, was unheard of. Osmond sank to his knees and cradled Barker’s malodorous head. I looked at my father. The blue glare was vanishing away; a glint of amusement had come into his eyes, and he was smiling broadly. The angel, I told myself, had conquered.
IT WAS A WONDERFUL LUNCH. WHEN I LOOK BACK ON IT now, I can recall few of the actual details, and I certainly can’t recall any signs that might have indicated to me then how much my life was to alter afterward.
Before we sat down, Tom drew me to one side; taking my hand, and with no sign of his usual constraint he told me that he’d finally decided what he must do with Rebecca’s eternity ring—he’d decided where it belonged. Would I come to Manderley with him and his friend that afternoon? He needed to talk to me. “It’s so good to see you again, Ellie,” he said, putting an arm around my shoulders. “We have so much to catch up on.”
Indeed we did, and the prospect of this visit was enough to color the meal that preceded it. I don’t recall how long that lunch lasted; a couple of hours, I suppose, but they seem to be held in a golden haze that is timeless.
I can see my father seated at one end of the table, with Rose on his right hand, and Nicholas Osmond to his left; I can see myself, seated at the other end, between Tom and Francis Latimer, who arrived late from some emergency at the hospital. I can recall the food—Rose is a very good cook—so I remember the iced soup, and the fish mousse, the salmon-trout fresh from the sea that morning, and the mussels, which my father ate without complaint, seeming not to notice that they’d been adulterated with garlic. I can remember the strawberries, and the palm-leaf biscuits, and the strong wonderful coffee we drank. I can remember the wine, which tasted of summer, and the shadow of the monkey puzzle blueing the white cloth, but all these are background components. What I chiefly remember is intangible, and it was happiness.
It was at that lunch, I think, that I understood the gift of charm. For years, when people had spoken to me of Rebecca, they had emphasized her charm—and I, too, could remember it. But I’d forgotten how truly powerful a force it can be, and how rare it is, until I encountered it that day again in the person of Nicholas Osmond. When people speak of “charm” they can mean something synthetic, a mere manipulative technique; true charm, I think, is a gift from the gods, it is never conscious and is always natural. It comes welling up from a person, and its effects, akin to magic, are irresistible.
Nicholas Osmond did not set out to charm, any more than Rebecca did. From both of them emanated a pure joie de vivre that affected everyone. Watching him that day—and it was difficult not to watch him, just as it had been difficult to drag your eyes away from her—the details of a day altered. The ordinary became extraordinary, the light that shone on us all was crystalline. I had the sensation, which I cannot explain, that Rebecca watched over us.
I can’t remember now what we talked about—Brittany, certainly; Cambridge, I think; cabbages and kings, probably. Even watchful Francis Latimer fell under the spell—I know I learned more about him at that lunch than I had in weeks of previous visits. He had seemed ready to dislike Tom Galbraith when they were introduced—maybe he’d heard gossip in Kerrith about Tom, or my father may have made some comment about him; but, during the meal this hostility vanished, though I noticed he watched both Tom and his friend very closely. Francis’s presence, as always, put my father in a good humor. He forgot to be testy, and told tales of Singapore that I hadn’t heard in decades. He ate his small portions of food with enjoyment, and none of his usual complaints about “fancy cooking.” “Not for me, Galbraith,” he said, when Tom attempted to refill his wineglass. “Under doctor’s orders, you know. I’d risk a second, but he’s down there at the other end of the table, blast it, keeping his eye on me.”
“Not true. My attention is elsewhere,” Francis replied with a smile, and I saw a small glance pass between him and my father, as if the two of them were enjoying a private joke, from which the rest of us were excluded.
“Look here, Osmond,” my father said, in a magnanimous way, as the meal drew to an end, and he prepared to retreat indoors for the regulation rest. “Come and see us again, won’t you? Make Galbraith there drive down with you one weekend. If the weather’s good, Francis will take you out in his boat—he’s teaching Ellie to sail, you know. We can put you both up. Be delighted. Too many bedrooms in this damn house. Never get used, half of them. Ellie, you persuade them.”
Rose’s eyebrows rose. Apart from her, no one has stayed at The Pines since the end of the war; six people for a meal was a ten-year record. I frowned: I couldn’t see why the sailing lessons needed to be mentioned; I’d only had two of them.
I went inside to see my father upstairs. In his room, I opened the window and went to draw the curtains. I could see Francis Latimer in the garden below; he had left the other guests, and was standing alone near our boundary wall, watching the sea. As I watched, he began to pace back and forth, as if something were agitating him; I saw him glance at his watch and then back at the house. He looked up toward my father’s window, then turned abruptly away. The sun would have been in his eyes, and I’m not sure if he saw me.
I half drew the curtains. Barker settled himself on the hearth rug. My father removed his terrible tweed jacket and his brogues, and lay back on the bed. He closed his eyes at once, and I thought he was sleeping. I tiptoed toward the door, and just as I reached it, he opened his eyes, and fixed me with a blue glare.
“Want to see you settled, Ellie,” he said. “That’s all I want now. Once I know you’re settled, I can die happily. Shan’t turn up my toes until I’m sure—I hope you realize that.”
“In that case, I’ll keep you waiting for a good time yet,” I answered.
“None of your impudence,” my father replied; he gave a sigh. “Listen to the sea, Ellie. The tide’s coming in.”
I turned to leave him, then I stopped. I could hear the sea, and I suddenly felt right on some edge, tears and happiness in absolute equilibrium. I went back to the bed, and kissed his forehead.
“That was a good lunch, Ellie.” My father’s eyes were closing. “I took to that Osmond chap. A widower, I hear…Needs a haircut. Galbraith was in very good form, I thought. Hardly recognized him when he walked in. Latimer enjoyed it, I know. Never seen him look so happy. Pity Rose put garlic on those mussels, they’re much better without it. Where are you off to this afternoon?”
I evaded this question, asked on the edge of sleep. I said Nicholas, Tom, and I were going for a walk; they were then going to see the Briggs sisters, but I’d be back for tea. Francis Latimer was staying. Another sailing lesson was planned for this evening.
“You’re a good girl, Ellie,” he said, and clasped my hand. “Willful, of course—always have been, always will be. Mind of your own, a bit too damn independent to my way of thinking, and secretive, too; play your cards very close to your chest. Your mother was just the same. But she’d be proud of you, Ellie, I know that. I’m proud of you. Don’t know what I’d have done without you. That’s the long and short of it. Off you go now.”
I WAITED UNTIL I WAS CERTAIN MY FATHER WAS SLEEPING peacefully, then I sped down the stairs, and out into the sunlight. It was a glorious afternoon, the sea calm, the sky unclouded. I touched Rebecca’s butterfly brooch, which I’d pinned to my blue dress that morning. I wanted to run, or sing.
“You look happy. It suits you, Ellie,” Francis Latimer said with a smile as I passed him by the monkey puzzle.
“I am happy,” I replied.
“Where shall we take the boat this evening? Upriver, or out to sea?”
“Out to sea,” I said, dancing past. All questions have a right answer and a wrong one and I knew this answer pleased him—I saw his face alter. I left him talking to Rose in the garden, and we set off in Nicholas Osmond’s low-slung car; I sat in the passenger seat next to the angel, and Tom crushed his height into the tiny jib seat behind us. The tonneau cover was down, the air rushed past. I’d never been in a sports car before; I’d never known it could be this exhilarating.
We drove fast round the blind bend near Tom’s former cottage, then up the steep hill toward the woods of Manderley. We parked at Four Turnings, pushed back the heavy gates, and entered the cool blue shade of the trees.
“You’ve brought the ring with you, Tom?” Osmond asked. Tom nodded, and I saw a small glance, a silent message, pass between them.
“I might just wander off and look at Manderley itself,” Osmond said. “I have to see it, after imagining it all these weeks. I’ll meet you both at the beach, shall I?”
He disappeared between the trees, and I tensed. I was now alone with Tom Galbraith—and in no doubt that this had been prearranged between them. Had Tom been as reserved as he usually was, I would probably have remained tense, but even now we were alone his new mood of confidence did not desert him.
I wished I knew what had caused this transformation—he had the air of a man who’d made up his mind, and was now at peace with himself; but I quickly forgot that as we began to walk through the trees. I could hear the sound of the waves, inviting us forward, and I began to tell him what had happened in his absence. I described my encounters with Mrs. Danvers and Mrs. de Winter. I told him about the books I’d found in the boathouse, the list of children’s names, the butterfly brooch, and the last, censored notebook.
He listened intently—and he questioned me, as I’d expected. But, by the time we were reaching the edge of the woods, with sunlight ahead of us, I’d become aware of a certain distancing in him. Even when I told him of Mrs. de Winter’s revelations regarding Rebecca’s death, his response was curiously muted. He was interested in what I was telling him—but not as interested as he would once have been; I could sense his mind was on something else. Once or twice I saw him glance at me with an amused affection, but I knew he was preoccupied.
I decided I’d been dwelling too long on these details, and all the questions they raised; he must want to tell me—and I wanted to hear—about Brittany, and what he had discovered there.
“Well, as I said at lunch, we had a wonderful time there,” he said, as we came out into the sunlight, and turned toward the sea. “The coast is very similar to this. I could see at once why Rebecca felt she’d come home when she first came here. Nicky and I found some very beautiful fishing villages, quite untouched. The churches are interesting—”
“But you went to St. Croigne Dulac itself?”
“Eventually. We drove about for a bit first. Nicky needed a break, and I wanted to get my bearings. So we made our way down the Brittany coast quite slowly. We went to St. Croigne our second week.”
“You waited a whole week? Heavens—I’d have rushed straight there. Oh, Tom—did you find Rebecca’s house, the foursquare house set down by the shore?”
“Oh, yes. Well, you couldn’t miss it, really. St. Croigne’s a tiny place. That house is set apart from the rest of the village. You step out of the door, onto the sand. It’s exactly as Rebecca describes it, I suppose, but the house was empty, and shuttered up, so we couldn’t see inside. We did hope to track down the key—one of the fishermen acts as a gardien for the place—but we never quite managed it. We kept missing him.”
“And where did you stay? Did you see the church, or the cousins’ chateau? Were any of Marie-Hélène’s family still alive? I thought, maybe the son who named Je Reviens for Rebecca might still live there.”
“We put up at a little hotel—a guest house, really. The wife was a marvelous cook. She took to Nicky—well, everyone does, I expect you’ve seen that. We didn’t manage to track down any of Marie-Hélène’s family though. The son had died in the last war. And we never did establish the truth about that boy who died in the fishing-boat accident—well, I didn’t really expect that we would. That coast is highly dangerous; there are too many accidents, too many drownings….”
Something was wrong. This, from the man who triple-checked everything?
“Not that it was a wasted journey,” he went on, glancing over his shoulder toward the house. I could see Nicholas Osmond in the distance, the sun glinting on his godlike hair. Tom and I began to descend the path to the beach. The tide was coming in fast, now; soon the rocks of the reef would be invisible.
“I hope not,” I said, feeling my elation begin to seep away and trying hard to hold on to it. “I’d so like to have seen it—I’d so like to go there.”
Tom took my arm. “Don’t sound so sad,” he said with a smile. “It’s just as Rebecca described it, I promise you. No discrepancies there.” He hesitated, then said gently, “In some ways, you know, Ellie, you see a place better with your mind’s eye anyway. Imagination gives you 20/20 vision—that’s what Nicky always says, anyway.”
Our footsteps crunching on the shingle, we walked across to the boathouse, but the land agents had completed their task of making it secure. The windows were boarded, the door padlocked. Looking at the building, I felt the conversation with Mrs. de Winter the day before had changed nothing. She had given me answers of a kind, but the questions—and many questions remained—were more interesting. We turned away, and began to walk back along the beach. I increased my pace, Tom slowed, and gradually a distance opened us between us.
I kicked off my sandals, and walked at the edge of the waves, letting the water wash over my feet. I could feel the promise and energy of the day emptying out of it. I stopped and turned to look at the sea. Rebecca had died in this place. Her body had lain under the water directly in front of me. Once that had mattered to Tom Galbraith as much as it did to me—but I was no longer sure that was the case. He had moved on, I could sense it. Maybe he was right to do so. Maybe all these events were of such importance to me only because the rest of my life was so constrained and limited.
Did I believe that? I watched the waves; no, I didn’t believe it. The past matters. The dead matter. And I wouldn’t have expected this reaction from a man who searched for truth in the small print, either.
“You’ve lost interest,” I said sadly to Tom as he drew alongside me. “You no longer care as much as you once did. That’s why you’ve brought that ring of Rebecca’s here today, isn’t it? You’re going to consign it to the waves, then go back to Cambridge and forget the whole thing. Oh, Tom, it will just be an episode for you, I know it.”
“Ellie, don’t look so downcast. It isn’t that, I promise you.” Taking my arm, he drew me toward him. “I couldn’t go on being as obsessed as I was—it wasn’t healthy. Going to Brittany and talking to Nicky made me see that. That visit, well, it’s shown me what my priorities have to be. I can’t spend all my waking hours thinking about the dead—neither can Nicky, and neither should you. I want to get on with my life, make plans for the future. I feel as if I know who I am now. It’s what a person does that determines who he is, not who his parents were—that’s what I believe now, at least I think that’s what I believe. Ellie, look at me—please. There are things I need to say to you….”
I turned to face him. He was looking down at me with an expression of concern and there was a tenderness in his face that I’d not seen before. “Ellie, listen,” he said, “there’s something I want you to know. I’ve changed, Ellie, I’ve been changed by the visit to Brittany. Rebecca’s influenced me, you’ve influenced me—but it’s more than that. A month ago, I couldn’t have said this to you. Two weeks ago I tried, but I couldn’t say it. Now I can. I expect you can tell what I feel in any case—it’s obvious, at least I feel it is. I can’t hide it.”
He stopped. Behind him, Nicholas Osmond was just descending the cliff path; he shouted Tom’s name, and Tom swung around to look at him. My mind was trying to follow Tom’s words, but my heart was swifter. In two weeks, I hadn’t entirely cured my propensity to hope, after all. I felt a rush of joy, as sharp and immediate as a jolt of adrenaline—and then I saw Tom’s expression.
He was looking at his friend, and he was transfigured. I suppose I knew then—or began to know. I saw love in his face, as I should have seen it before—and indeed when love is felt to that degree it is unmistakable. It lit his eyes, and I stepped back from its radiance. I looked at the figure of his friend descending the path, I looked at his bright hair and I knew that if Tom was changed it was nothing to do with me or with reading Rebecca’s notebooks. He might choose to believe that, but I thought it was the angel’s influence.
Halfway down the path, Osmond broke into a run, and in a carefree joyful way leaped down onto the shingle and approached us. He had mistimed his return, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t need Tom Galbraith to tell me what he felt, I could see it in his face and in his friend’s. No one looking at them could have been in any doubt that this love was reciprocated.
I think Tom knew there was no need for further explanation, he saw the comprehension in my face. “Ellie,” he said awkwardly, turning back to me. “You do understand now? I should have told you, but I didn’t know how you’d react. If I’ve done or said anything that misled you—”
“You haven’t. Of course you haven’t,” I said, speaking fast. “And I’m glad for you. I’m glad for you both. I told you before: You’re my friend, Tom. I hope you always will be.”
As soon as the words were uttered, I knew they were true—I was glad for him. I still felt pain, so perhaps I hadn’t succeeded in relinquishing him as fully as I’d tried to do; I felt embarrassment at my own stupidity, too, but those emotions were unimportant, and, oddly enough, the happiness I felt for Tom and his friend almost wiped the pain out—at that moment anyway. I hugged Tom, and when the angel came closer, I embraced him, too. “The ring, the ring,” said the angel, who seemed to take the embrace in good part. “Hurry up. The tide’s coming in—another ten minutes and the rocks will be underwater.”
We all three set off across the shingle and began to clamber out across the rocks, Tom some way ahead, Nicholas Osmond and I behind him.
“I see Tom told you. You don’t disapprove?” Osmond said, glancing at me with those sapphire eyes.
“No. Why should I?”
“Most people do. It’s a hanging offense, virtually.” He came to a halt, and I saw him hesitate. He looked toward Tom, moving across the rocks ahead of us.
“I always have loved him,” he said. “Almost from the day we first met. I’m sure my wife knew, though I never told her. I never told Tom, either. I’m not as brave as he is, you see, Ellie. That’s the great difference between us. I used to be afraid to admit what I was—Tom never felt that. I thought that if I married, maybe I could turn myself into someone else, be what everyone had always expected me to be, and I did try….”
He hesitated, then his face lit. “Then Tom wrote to me, and asked me to go to Brittany for him. As soon as I opened the letter, I knew that wasn’t what he was really asking. I was being given a second chance. I’d promised myself I’d never live a lie again—so I took it.”
“Come on,” Tom shouted from the rocks ahead of us. Osmond rested his hand on my arm and looked at me closely. “You’re not hurt, Ellie? Were you in love with him?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, and as I said it, I realized it was true. “It felt like being in love. I’ve only been in love once before, so maybe I’m not a good judge. Tom told me not to be, in any case—he was very scrupulous about that. But it’s not so easy to stop, is it? Maybe it will be easier now. I’m sure to make a full recovery in due course. People do. Meanwhile, I don’t intend to pine away, I promise you.”
“Oh, I think pining away is a very unlikely fate,” Osmond replied, with a smile. “I was watching you at lunch and I rather thought that consolation was close at hand. Come on, Ellie.”
Taking my arm, he led me across the rocks. I thought about that word “consolation.” We clambered over rock pools, until we were as far out into the bay as we could reach. We stood next to Tom, who had taken Rebecca’s tiny ring from his pocket. To our left, we could see the reef curving out into the water in a scimitar shape, and beyond it, bone white under the translucent water, the sandbank where Je Reviens had gone down, the bank where Rebecca had listened to her sirens.
Above us, gulls wheeled and cried; behind us, the low dark bulk of Manderley crouched by its woods; there was a salt breeze off the water; the air smelled newly created. I looked up at the milky haze of the sky, then down at the azure of the sea. The waves washed and withdrew. I moved a little apart from the two men. I looked up at the path where fourteen-year-old Rebecca had seen this place for the first time and known she spoke its language. I looked at the tiny ring, glittering between Tom Galbraith’s fingers; I thought of who had given it to her and when, and what it might mean to her. I summoned her up, all her brightness of spirit—the water moved against the rocks with a new restlessness. Tom spun the ring high up into the air. It arced against the light, glittered and became invisible, sparkled one last time, then disappeared beneath the green-blue water by the sandbank.
I thought, I shan’t come back here again; that’s it, it’s over and done. I was wrong, in fact—I have been back once since then, but at the time I couldn’t have foreseen the circumstances.
I turned, and we clambered back to the shore. We climbed the path, passed the gorse at its crest, and walked back through the blue woods, reaching the gates as the heat of the afternoon began cooling. Tom and Nicholas Osmond drove me back to Kerrith, dropping me, at my request, by the Briggs sisters. They went in to say good-bye to Elinor and Jocelyn. Glad to be alone, I walked back through the town, and up the hill toward The Pines. I had no premonition, no sense of what was going to happen next, though I’d imagined this moment many times, and always believed that I would have.
I was looking at the honeysuckle and the dog roses entwined in the hedgerows; I was letting the events of the afternoon lie down in my mind, and an ache was settling about my heart. I could relinquish Tom, I realized, but it was hard, very hard, to relinquish Rebecca. Below me, in the mouth of the harbor, little boats were tacking back and forth; a future I’d allowed myself to imagine was eddying away, but I knew there must be another, over the edge of the horizon. I looked out toward the shimmer of the ocean; then I realized someone was calling my name. I looked up the hill and saw Rose standing at the gate of The Pines, her face a white blur of fear and anxiety. “Ellie, Ellie,” she cried. “Oh, thank God. Come quickly…”
I began to run. I ran up the hill, past Rose, who could scarcely speak, and then down through our gardens. I ran past the Grenville roses, between the palm and the monkey puzzle, toward a shape, a huddle, at the end of our garden. Francis Latimer was kneeling by our boundary wall, holding my father in his arms; my father was lying on the ground, half slumped against the wall, and his face…ah, his face was terribly altered.
I couldn’t speak or cry out—but I wasn’t turned to stone, and I could move. I knelt down, and put my arms around my father. His eyes were still open, and he was still breathing, though very shallowly. I think he knew I was there, and I think he did sense my touch, though I could see from his face that he was traveling very fast to a place where I couldn’t reach him. His eyes were watching this place approach, and the journey there seemed to be taking all his energy and all his attention. He didn’t turn to look at me, but even so I’m sure he knew I was there, and my presence seemed to ease his passage a little. Some tension left his face; his hand jerked, then rested on mine. He said what I think was my name, though the syllables gave him difficulty.
Then he gave a sigh and rested in my arms. I waited for him to speak again, because I knew he must speak now, that it was of the utmost importance and urgency that he did so. The flood of love in my heart was so full, I knew it must revive him, so I held him tight and tried to instill it into him. I began to see he was asleep, and I couldn’t understand why he would sleep with his eyes open. Then Francis Latimer quietly put his hand on my arm and said, “It’s over. He’s gone, Ellie.”
“No,” I said. “No—you’re wrong.” But of course, he wasn’t. It had happened so stealthily that I still don’t know when exactly my father stepped through that door and it closed in my face. He left me, without words, between one quiet breath and the next, while I was holding him. Gone forever. I didn’t understand, or wouldn’t understand until, from the house where Rose had shut him in, my father’s shadow, his silent loyal companion, began barking.
THAT WAS THREE MONTHS AGO, AS I WRITE. NOW I CAN smell autumn in the air in the early mornings. The weather is warm; we’ve had weeks of long balmy days; we’re in the midst of an Indian summer. It’s the time of year when Rebecca believed she’d give birth to her girl-boy.
I am learning to live alone, to think of my father but pass my days without him. There were no further revelations after his death; there was no hidden cache of letters, no document that answered my questions and removed my uncertainties. I was glad of that. I was grieving, and I’d come to believe that uncertainties, not answers, were truthful. With the loss of my father, Rebecca’s story, for me, was over—but her influence was not.
In the time that’s gone by there has been a funeral, and many people have written letters to me about my father; sometimes I recognize the man they describe, more often I don’t, but I was prepared for that by the months I’d spent trying to rescue Rebecca from people’s stories and memories. The Pines has been sold to Francis Latimer, to whom I’ve grown close since my father’s death. He is a man who encounters grief on a daily basis at the hospital, and he understands that its processes are slow and labyrinthine.
During the summer, I spent many hours in his company. He told me the story of his life and his marriage; the hours I spent with him and with his two young sons—walking, picnicking, and sailing—were healing ones. In practical terms, too, Francis was the greatest possible help to me. My father had always protected me, as he had my mother, from the day-to-day realities of life. He had always flatly refused to involve me in, for instance, his financial affairs, claiming this was not a matter for women. So I was woefully ignorant, and ill prepared to deal with that great tangle of affairs, investments, probate, tax, and so on that inevitably attend a death. Suddenly I had to deal with a battery of supercilious lawyers, bankers, and executors, whose faintly impatient politesse did not disguise the fact that they expected me to do as they said, sign on the dotted line, and not bother “my pretty little head” (as one of them actually said to me) about the details of these male mysteries.
Here, Francis was invaluable. He explained, and, when I didn’t understand, explained again; he was endlessly patient, and if I wished he hadn’t seemed amused sometimes, as if this were just a temporary game we were engaged in, I put that thought out of my mind. It seemed ungrateful. “Don’t humor me, Francis,” I said to him once. “This is serious—I have to understand it.”
“Of course you do,” he said, giving me a thoughtful glance. “It’s unusual, that’s all, Ellie. Most women are content to leave that sort of thing to…” And he paused. “Well, to their fathers. Or their husbands.”
“Maybe I’m not like most women, then,” I replied, perhaps a little sharply.
“Now, that I agree with,” he said in a quiet way, and took my hand. He then kissed my hand—and there I was at once, pushed right to some edge, still raw with grief, longing for the protectiveness I knew he was offering, and at the same time fearing it.
Francis is intelligent, and he is subtle. He knows, I think, the dangers of overt opposition; he knows how that can make a person entrench, and I suspect—he mentioned it once in a teasing way—that my father had told him I could be obstinate. So, when I explained my plans to join Rose in Cambridge (she returned there late that summer), he always listened quietly and with sympathy—and he always found a way of changing the subject. The last time we discussed it, we were in my father’s study, packing up his books, some of which I was to keep and most of which—there were so many of them—would have to go to a saleroom.
I was kneeling on the floor, stacking Aquinas and Homer in packing chests; poor bereaved Barker was half asleep in front of a swept empty fireplace; Francis, who had been helping me, was due back at the hospital shortly; now he was pacing back and forth, only half listening to me—or so I believed. I should have realized that this pacing, and his slight air of edginess signaled something more than anxiety about time, but the task I was engaged on was a painful one. I can see now that it made me slow to understand a state that would have been obvious to most women.
I was explaining the plans I’d nursed for so long; I explained I could sit the entrance examination this autumn, taking up my place—if I was awarded the scholarship I hoped for—the following year. I’d tried before, on other occasions, to make Francis see these plans as I did. I’d tried to tell him about that time I’d visited Rose, and the great ache of longing for a future I’d had to abandon that I’d experienced walking by the Cam, looking at the lights of the colleges. I’d sensed a faint male impatience then, so this time I kept the details dry, quick, and specific. I’d study; I’d actually use my brain at last, before it conked out completely like some rusty disused car; in three years, I’d have my degree, and I could—
“Do what, Ellie?” he said, and he stopped pacing.
“I don’t know yet,” I replied, looking up to meet that alert, intelligent gray gaze, still not seeing, even then, what was about to happen. I felt a sudden jab of emotion, right to the heart. “That’s the whole point, don’t you see, Francis? Anything could happen. I’d have a choice. For the first time in my whole life, I’d have a choice. I’ve never had that luxury. Can you understand that?”
“You have a choice now,” he said, in an odd abrupt way, with a sudden roughness of tone that startled me. Then he moved swiftly toward me, and knelt beside me. He knocked over a pile of books—Austens and Brontës, I think, not that it matters; I dropped a fat leather-bound complete Shakespeare; Barker growled. I’d seen the expression in Francis’s eyes by then, and, inexperienced as I am, there was no mistaking it. I knew what was about to happen.
He pulled me toward him and, with none of his customary gentleness, he kissed me. I’m not used to desire; I’d forgotten how sharply, and how swiftly, it digs in its claws. Ten minutes later, when we were both in its grip, standing in an empty dusty room, in a sea of books, the sunlight striping the walls, the sound of waves moving, moving in the distance, Francis asked me to marry him. We looked at each other, white-faced. “Marry me, Ellie,” he said. I was shaking; his hands were unsteady. It was the week before I was due to move out of my father’s house and he was due to move into it.
WHEN YOU’RE IN THAT STATE, YOU CAN’T THINK—AND Francis knew that. He took advantage of it with a ruthlessness I’d never have expected of him. “Every time you use the word ‘think,’ Ellie,” he said to me, “I shall kiss you. I don’t want you to think. You don’t need to think. I love you. If you haven’t realized you love me yet, you will. I’ll make you. I’ve waited months for this. I’ve been patient and forbearing and understanding, and I’m sick to death of it. Can you understand that?”
“I think I can,” I replied—with an inevitable result. Such games are seductive—but it was more than a game, and I knew that, so I wouldn’t give in, and I wouldn’t let him rush me. When I was with Francis, I wanted only one thing; when I was apart from him (I didn’t tell him this) I wanted something else. It was hazy this thing that beckoned to me. I used to ask myself what Rebecca would have called it—freedom, liberty? For want of a better word, I called it independence. How Francis disliked that term! If I used it, he could become irritable. He’d push it to one side; he’d tell me how he wanted to protect me and take care of me…. And into my head would come Rebecca’s voice, reacting to Maxim’s very same promises. “I’ve been taken care of all my life, Francis,” I said to him. “I can take care of myself, you know.”
And then he played his trump card—how I wished he hadn’t! “This is what your father wanted, Ellie,” he said. “Darling, he knew I could make you happy. He and I talked about this—we talked about it often.”
That touched me—and it frightened me. Day by day, hour by hour, I bought myself time. It was finally agreed that I’d give Francis my answer on the day The Pines was due to be handed over. I bought a one-way ticket to Cambridge that I could use that same morning—or not. Before I made up my mind, there was something I had to do, an act Francis would not have understood. I had to make one last visit to Manderley.
I’D SET MY ALARM CLOCK, BUT EXPECTATION WOKE ME; AS dawn was breaking, Barker and I were walking through the quiet of the Manderley woods. My trousers were soaked with the dew from the long sweet grass; the brambles barring the approach to Manderley itself were weighted down with black fruit. Through the trees, we watched the skimmed milk sky warm to rose on the eastern horizon; the sun was rising behind the dark shape of the house. Emerging from the woods, we walked toward the sea; the shore below was still in shadow, and the water in the bay was restless, its color metallic.
The wind was freshening; I sat down in the shelter of the gorse, and watched the many ghosts that inhabit this place, Rebecca’s, my father’s, and my own. I touched her blue butterfly brooch, which I’d pinned to my collar, and, instead of looking to the past, as I had so often here, I waited to see my way through the future. I looked at two fair prospects: on my left hand, love; on my right hand, liberty.
I tried to look at the options in a dry unemotional way. I could become Francis’s wife—was I ready to be a wife? That possibility brought with it everything I’d been taught a woman should aspire to, including children; I should like to have children. I could take my beloved university route, as I’d always hoped and planned. I could go to London, find a job—share a flat with Selina perhaps; after my father’s death, she’d written urging me to do that. With the money from the sale of The Pines, I could do almost anything and I could go almost anywhere. I could blow the lot if so inclined; I could sail to America or Africa, and see what happened. I stared at the sea, my arm around Barker’s neck. When you’re not used to freedom of choice, I was discovering, it’s bewildering.
I knew which course of action my father would have advised, and I was tempted by it because he would have approved it. Even though he was gone—because he was gone—I still sought to please him. I looked out at the reef and the sandbank where Tom had thrown that glittering ring that day. I was washed this way and that on a tide of indecision.
Impatient with myself, knowing I needed guidance, I stood up, and turned back toward the house. I walked as close as I could, looking up at the broken crenellations of the walls, the dark empty windows almost invisible now behind the fingerings of ivy. I picked a handful of brambles; the dark fruits were cold with dew; they tasted sharply sweet; they stained my hands with their juices. I thought of the promise Rebecca had made to her child. I stood very still, as close to the walls of Manderley as I could get, and I listened, listened, listened for that voice, for that heartbeat.
WHEN I HEARD IT, AND HEARD IT FOR SURE, I RETURNED home. I was methodical. I packed up the very last of my belongings, including the faded snapshot of Rebecca and the creased photograph of my mother that I had found folded together in my father’s wallet. I packed Rebecca’s childhood notebook last. Before I did so, I looked at its blank pages, which told a story only she could read, she’d said. I felt they also told my own. I traced the faint outline of that winged girl’s wings, then I closed the notebook, and fastened my suitcase.
I went downstairs to empty rooms. I stood in my father’s study, where the shelves had been emptied of books. I waited there for Francis Latimer, and when he joined me, I refused his proposal.
It was very difficult to do that. He’s a good man, an attractive man, and an honorable one; I am not without feelings for him, either—if I had been, the decision would have been a simple one. He took it harder than I had expected; it was the first time I’d ever seen him lose his composure—and that pained me deeply.
“It’s too soon—is that it?” he said. “Ellie, please tell me it’s that. Should I have waited longer before I asked you? Dear God, I wish I hadn’t waited one minute now. I should have asked you the day we first talked at the hospital. I wanted to. Didn’t you realize that?”
I stared at him. I hadn’t realized. It had never crossed my mind. I said, “Francis, please try to understand. This is very hard for me. I’m not ready to be a wife. I’m thirty-one years old—and I’ve only just stopped being a daughter.”
“I’m not asking you to be a wife, I’m asking you to be my wife,” he said in a harsh way, and I saw I’d hurt him. “Darling—come here. Look at me. Don’t do this. I love you. Darling, please, listen to me.”
I listened. I listened to Francis, the man my father had chosen for me, and I listened to the other voices that had spoken to me so often these past months: to the second Mrs. de Winter, whose one object in life had been to make her husband happy; and to Rebecca, who warned of men who came bearing gifts, and extracted a price for them. The more I listened to all these voices arguing away, the more muddled and distressed I became. It went on and on—what a cacophony! But I’d made a decision, and it seemed feeble and wrong to go back on it, so when Francis was calmer, and I was much less calm, I refused him a second time.
There was a long silence. Francis moved away from me; my vision was blurry, and my mind a mess of indecision and inconsequentiality. I thought: It’s 1951—what will happen to me, where will I go, what will I become in the second half of this century?
Time ticked; Francis gave me a long, slow, measuring look. “Very well,” he said finally. He might have been amused; he might have been angry. “In that case, I’ll wait. And then I’ll ask you again, Ellie.”
“No, no, no,” I said. “You mustn’t do that. I might weaken.”
“That was the idea,” he replied in a dry way, and he then took me out to see his sons, who were waiting in the car. He knows how fond of them I am, so I thought this was a little devious of him.
The two boys greeted me, then ran into the house. I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in twenty years at The Pines: the sound of children. I heard their footsteps run up the uncarpeted stairs; I heard their shouts from the bedrooms. They opened one of the windows, and leaned out to look at the sea. I looked at the sea, too, one last, long, painful look while I made up my mind. Then I fastened Barker’s lead, kissed Francis good-bye, and turned my back on my home and my childhood.
I left for the station and my new life; for work, and the room of my own in Cambridge. Barker sat at my feet in the back of the taxi; we swooped down the hill into Kerrith; we passed through familiar streets, but my tears obscured them. The cottages, the harbor, the stations of my childhood. I could walk here blindfolded. I wound down the window and let the fresh salt air flood the car; at once I began to feel stronger. As we mounted the hill toward the Manderley headland, I found my tears had dried, and something had begun to creep along my veins, something new and alive that felt like exhilaration. Its energy was very rich. It was as intoxicating as wine, as shocking and powerful as freedom.
We were about to pass the Four Turnings entrance. I leaned forward to the driver. “Stop here, please,” I said, “Stop here for a moment.”
I climbed out and ran toward the gates. Suddenly the light was like diamonds and the air smelled of the future. My heart was beating fast, and my hands were shaking. The sea is inaudible from there, but that morning I could hear it. Had I made the right choice or the wrong one? I had made a beginning, I decided—and to begin felt perilous and joyful. For the first time in my life, I was answerable to no one. I was neither daughter nor wife; from now on, for better or worse, I alone would determine my future.
Beside me, Barker made a low whining sound. I felt the soft fur rise on his neck. I bent to reassure him, and then, as I straightened up, I saw—I’m almost sure I saw—someone moving through the trees toward me. She was very swift. I glimpsed only a passing brightness, a quick glitter of movement—but I felt the burn of her glance and it gave me courage.
I think a final salutation passed between us—I certainly felt it did, though I might have imagined it. I waited. When the air was ordinary again, I returned to the car, and told the driver to take me to the station.