Rebecca's Tale

Rebecca’s Tale

Sally Beauman

For Alan

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today, neither of them is alive.

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

—“Encounter,” C
ZESLAW
M
ILOSZ
,
The Collected Poems, 1931–1987

…They thought death was worth it, but I

Have a self to recover, a queen.

Is she dead, is she sleeping?

Where has she been,

With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying

More terrible than she ever was, red

Scar in the sky, red comet

Over the engine that killed her—

The mausoleum, the wax house.

—“Stings,” S
YLVIA
P
LATH
,
Ariel

Contents

Epigraph

1.
   Julyan, April 12, 1951

2.
   Gray, April 13, 1951

3.
   Rebecca, April 1931

4.
   Ellie, May 1951

About the Author

Praise

Other Books by Sally Beauman

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

Julyan

A
PRIL
12, 1951

O
NE

L
AST NIGHT
I
DREAMT
I
WENT TO
M
ANDERLEY AGAIN
. These dreams are now recurring with a puzzling frequency, and I’ve come to dread them. All of the Manderley dreams are bloodcurdling and this one was the
worst
—no question at all.

I cried out Rebecca’s name in my sleep, so loudly that it woke me. I sat bolt upright, staring at darkness, afraid to reach for the light switch in case that little hand again grasped mine. I heard the sound of bare feet running along the corridor; I was still inside the dream, still reliving that appalling moment when the tiny coffin began to move. Where had I been taking it? Why was it so
small
?

The door opened, a thin beam of light fingered the walls, and a pale shape began to move quietly toward me. I made a cowardly moaning sound. Then I saw this phantom was wrapped up in a dressing gown and its hair was disheveled. I began to think it
might
be my daughter—but was she really there, or was I dreaming her, too? Once I was sure it
was
Ellie, the palpitations diminished and the dream slackened its hold. Ellie hid her fears by being practical. She fetched warm milk and aspirin; she lit the gas fire, plumped up my pillows, and attacked my wayward eiderdown. Half an hour later, when we were both calmer, my nightmare was blamed on willfulness—and my weakness for late-night snacks of bread and cheese.

This fictitious indigestion was meant to reassure me—and it provided a good excuse for all Ellie’s anxious questions concerning pain. Did I have an ache in the heart region? (Yes, I did.) Any breathing difficulties? “No, I damn well don’t,” I growled. “It was just a nightmare, that’s all. Stop fussing, Ellie, for heaven’s sake, and stop flapping around….”

“Mousetrap!”
said my lovely, agitated, unmarried daughter. “Why don’t you listen, Daddy? If I’ve warned you once, I’ve warned you a thousand times…”

Well, indeed. I’ve never been good at heeding anyone’s warnings, including my own.

I finally agreed that my feeling peckish at eleven
P.M.
had been to blame; I admitted that eating my whole week’s ration of cheddar (an entire ounce!) in one go had been rash, and ill-advised. A silence ensued. My fears had by then receded; a familiar desolation was taking hold. Ellie was standing at the end of my bed, her hands gripping its brass foot rail. Her candid eyes rested on my face. It was past midnight. My daughter is blessed with innocence, but she is nobody’s fool. She glanced at her watch. “It’s Rebecca, isn’t it?” she said, her tone gentle. “It’s the anniversary of her death today—and that always affects you, Daddy. Why do we pretend?”

Because it’s safer that way, I could have replied. It’s twenty years since Rebecca died, so I’ve had two decades to learn the advantages of such pretences. That wasn’t the answer I gave, however; in fact, I made no answer at all. Something—perhaps the expression in Ellie’s eyes, perhaps the absence of reproach or accusation in her tone, perhaps simply the fact that my thirty-one-year-old daughter still calls me “Daddy”—something at that point pierced my heart. I looked away, and the room blurred.

I listened to the sound of the sea, which, on calm nights when the noise of the wind doesn’t drown it out, can be heard clearly in my bedroom. It was washing against the rocks in the inhospitable cove below my garden: high tide. “Open the window a little, Ellie,” I said.

Ellie, who is subtle, did so without further comment or questions. She looked out across the moonlit bay toward the headland opposite, where Manderley lies. The great de Winter house, now in a state of ruination, is little more than a mile away as the crow flies. It seems remote when approached by land, for our country roads here are nar
row and twisting, making many detours around the creeks and coves that cut into our coastline; but it is swiftly reached by boat. In my youth, I often sailed across there with Maxim de Winter in my dinghy. We used to moor in the bay below Manderley—the bay where, decades later, under mysterious circumstances, his young wife Rebecca would die.

I made a small sound in my throat, which Ellie pretended not to hear. She continued to look out across the water toward the Manderley headland, to the rocks that mark the point, to the woods that protect and shield the house from view. I thought she might speak then, but she didn’t; she gave a small sigh, left the casement open a little as I’d requested, then turned away with a resigned air. She left the curtains half-drawn, settled me for sleep, and then with one last anxious and regretful glance left me alone with the past.

A thin bright band of moonlight bent into the room; on the air came a breath of salt and sea freshness: Rebecca rose up in my mind. I saw her again as I first saw her, when I was ignorant of the power she would come to exert on my life and my imagination (that I possess any imagination at all is something most people would deny). I watched her enter, then re-enter, then re-enter again that great mausoleum of a drawing room at Manderley—a room, indeed an entire house, that she would shortly transform. She entered at a run, bursting out of the bright sunlight, unaware anyone was waiting for her: a bride of three months; a young woman in a white dress, with a tiny blue enamelled butterfly brooch pinned just above her heart.

I watched her down the corridor of years. Again and again, just as she did then, she came to a halt as I stepped out of the shadows. Again and again, I looked at her extraordinary eyes. Grief and guilt rose up in my heart.

I turned my gaze away from that band of moonlight. Rebecca, like all who die young, remains eternally youthful; I have survived, and grown old. My heart no longer pumps very efficiently. According to our Jonah of a doctor, its arteries have narrowed and there are signs of some valvular disturbance with an unpronounceable name. I
might
keep ticking over for a few years more, or I might keel over tomorrow morning. In short, I may not have very much time left to me, and (as the good doctor likes to put it) I should “put my affairs in order before too long.” Thinking of this, and remembering my dream, I
admitted to myself that, for motives I’ve always chosen not to examine too closely, I’ve procrastinated, prevaricated, and (as Ellie rightly said)
pretended
for decades. I’ve concealed the truth about Rebecca de Winter for too long.

I felt a change come upon me. There and then, I decided to make my peace with the dead. It was a canny piece of timing, no doubt influenced by the fact that I might peg out and join them at any second, I’ll admit that. Nevertheless, I decided to record, for the first time, and, leaving nothing out, everything I know about Manderley, the de Winters, Rebecca, her mysterious life, and her mysterious death—and, for reasons that will become clear, I know more than anyone else does, I know a
very great deal
. There in my room, where the moonlight made the familiar unfamiliar, I made my resolve.

It was two o’clock in the morning. When I finally closed my eyes, afraid my dream might return, I could still hear the breathing of the sea, though the tide had turned, and by then was ebbing fast.

T
WO

I
AM AN OLD SOLDIER; MILITARY HABITS ENDURE, AND
once I’ve finally resolved on something, I act.

“Ellie,” I said, over a fine breakfast of bacon and eggs, “we’ll walk in the Manderley woods this afternoon. I shall telephone Terence Gray and ask him to come with us. He’s been itching to snoop around there, so I doubt he’ll refuse.”

A tiny silence greeted this announcement. Ellie, who’d been zipping back and forth between stove and kitchen table, dropped a kiss on my hair—a familiarity she can indulge in only when I’m sitting down as, standing, I’m too tall for such wiles. “How smart you’re looking this morning,” she said. “Very handsome! Is that a new tie? Are you feeling better? You look better. But are you sure that—?”

“Fit as a flea,” I said firmly. “So don’t
start
, Ellie. He’s been angling to go there for ages and I can’t stall him forever. Today’s the day!”

“If you’re sure,” said Ellie, in a meditative way. She sat down opposite me, and fiddled first with her napkin, then that morning’s mail; her cheeks became rosy. “Maybe he’d like to come for lunch first,” she continued in a casual way. “I expect you’d enjoy that. Oh, look, there’s a package for you. That’s unusual. Makes a change from bills…”

Did I have a sense of foreboding even then? Perhaps, for I chose
not to open my package in front of Ellie, although there was nothing especially remarkable about it—or so I thought at the time. A stout brown envelope, sealed with sticky tape, containing what felt like a booklet of some kind; it was addressed to A. L. Julyan, J.P., Esq., The Pines, Kerrith. This was unusual, in that most people still address me as “Colonel Julyan,” although I retired from the Army nearly a quarter of a century ago. The “J.P.” was inaccurate. It’s fifteen years since I served as magistrate here. I did not recognize the writing, nor could I have said if it was a man’s or a woman’s—and one can usually spot a female hand, I find. Women can’t resist certain florid calligraphic tricks and flourishes that a man would eschew.

I was pleased to receive it, I’ll admit that. I get very few letters these days, most of my former friends and colleagues having turned up their toes long ago. My sister, Rose, a don at Cambridge, writes occasionally, it’s true, but her scholarly spider’s hand is unmistakable (as well as unreadable), and this wasn’t from her. I carried it off to my study like a dog with a bone, my own ancient dog, Barker (so called because he’s profoundly silent; he’s now too old and toothless to bother with bones), trotting at my heels. There, Barker settled himself on the hearth rug, and I settled myself at my grandfather’s desk, facing the leaky bay window, with its view of a lugubrious monkey puzzle tree, a palm, some stunted roses, and—beyond a small terrace—the sea.