Authors: Sally Beauman
I knew his mother once, poor woman—she is dead now—and I’ve only recently discovered that her son is alive. She would bless you, I know, and so would I, if you took care of him. You will make him a good mother, and I’m sure Edwin will make the best of fathers
.
Telephone me as soon as you receive this, and I will tell you where to find him
.
Rebecca
Every time I’ve read this letter, I’ve put a different interpretation on it. When I first read it, I felt a painful certainty that I had found my mother at last. Later, I told myself that I had at best found my mother’s friend—and that was no help to me, for the friend was dead now. Then I discovered that, in this predicament, I can believe everything and anything—and, such is my need, I can believe in any number of opposing ideas simultaneously. So my mother is Rebecca and is not Rebecca. She is her friend; she is that woman failed by the gin and the knitting needle; she has a hundred faces—and I cannot rest until I find the one face that is hers, and the one name that fits her.
But, today, sitting under that tree, with the petals falling on the page as I read that letter, I saw another face looking over my mother’s shoulder—the features were indistinct but I knew it was the face of my father. I was born in 1915, and my birthdate is approximate; it was calculated by the orphanage authorities, or so I was always told. But it cannot be more than a few weeks out at most; that means that if I were Rebecca’s child, she would have still been a child herself when she had me—she would have been only fourteen, living at a house called Greenways, with a cousin I’d detested on sight, and a father who had doted on her.
So did I want to go on? Was I sure I wanted to go on?
I folded up the note and replaced it in my pocket. I heard the traffic of the city for the first time that morning. I
had
to go on, I knew that in my heart. There were numerous arguments against that course of action; I could see that this Pandora’s box might be better left unopened. Even so, I had to discover the truth—and, besides, how could I give up now, when I knew that, at last, I was getting closer?
N
INETEEN
R
EACHING THIS DECISION GAVE ME A NEW SENSE OF PUR
pose. I went back into the house to decide on my route for the remaining hours I had in London. I was booked on the evening train, which would get me to Lanyon just after midnight, but I had the rest of the day to follow up my new leads. I tried calling Favell, but received no answer from either number. Presumably he was lying low, nursing a hangover.
I sat down in Sir Archie’s study and borrowed his desk, with its view out over Regent’s Park. Nicky’s father is retired now, but he was a distinguished civil servant, a man of neat habits, with an orderly mind—and his desk was exceptionally neat. Its only adornment was a wedding photograph of Nicky and Julia, with myself as best man, standing just off to the side, and looking away from the camera. I didn’t want to be reminded of Julia’s beauty or Nicky’s happiness that day, and I certainly didn’t want to be reminded of my own feelings on that occasion. I turned the photograph away from me, and spread out my journals, notebooks, and newspaper cuttings.
The person I most wanted to speak to now was Mrs. Danvers, the woman whose knowledge of Rebecca went further back than Jack Favell’s, the woman who had remained close to her throughout her marriage; I’d been banking on Favell’s knowing her whereabouts.
Since he couldn’t help, and on the whole I believed him when he claimed he’d lost touch with her, I still had no way of finding her—though it wasn’t for want of trying. Thinking she might still be employed as a housekeeper, or as a companion perhaps, I’d approached every single one of the large domestic service agencies, and most of the smaller ones. I’d tried questioning all the former Manderley servants still living in the Kerrith area, and I’d obtained no clues as to her whereabouts.
A concretion of myths and stories had attached themselves to her, as they had to the de Winters and Rebecca: A number of those who had worked under her or alongside her, including Frith, felt she was in some way connected to the fire that destroyed Manderley. They stopped short of accusations of arson, but they felt she was
involved
; on one point, they all agreed—no one had laid eyes on her, or heard of her, since the night of the fire. She had packed up her belongings that day, they said, announced she was leaving for good—and vanished.
As I unpicked this story piece by piece, I came across Mrs. Danvers again and again. Mrs. Danvers was the obvious route back into Rebecca’s childhood. If any links did exist between Rebecca and Manderley before her marriage, then Mrs. Danvers would be the person who knew of them. If Favell could be believed, Mrs. Danvers had been involved in the key transition period of Rebecca’s life, when her mother died and she went to live with her father at Greenways. Might she not therefore have information about me, too? Someone had deposited me as a baby at an orphanage in 1915, and had done so, if Rebecca’s letter to May was to be believed, without Rebecca’s knowledge.
Failing Mrs. Danvers, who was there to consult? I would have to go back to my only other strong lead, to Sir Frank McKendrick and that touring company of his. There was a strong possibility that the “old ham” Favell had spoken of last night was McKendrick, and that the photograph of her mother as Desdemona that Rebecca had placed on her “shrine” featured a McKendrick touring production. Find the mother and find the child, I told myself.
I called the information desk at the St. James’s Library, one of the best libraries in London, and my favourite workplace in the city. I was in luck. McKendrick had written an autobiography. It wasn’t out
on loan, I would find it in the stacks, and its title, the librarian said, sounding amused, was appropriately Shakespearean:
Taken at the Flood
.
It took me a moment to place the quotation. Brutus to Cassius, in
Julius Caesar
. I was by no means sure that there
was
a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune—but I felt encouraged. I tried calling Favell again, without success, then called The Pines to check on Colonel Julyan’s welfare. Ellie answered, and I spoke to her for some while before I left for the library.
In passing, I asked her about that mysterious call I’d received last night. Ellie confirmed that, as I’d expected, she had given this number to no one.
“Why do you ask?”
“Someone called yesterday, and didn’t leave a message….”
I hesitated. Ellie had been addressing me by Gray’s name, and that made me feel shabby. There were deceptions here, and I knew I couldn’t let them continue much longer. There was a moment when I almost confessed. I just stopped myself in time. If any confession were to be made, it had to be made face-to-face, and not on the telephone.
Ellie said that her father had been feeling tired the previous day, but seemed stronger this morning. Tomorrow, at the doctor’s suggestion, he was going over to the county hospital for some tests—but they were routine, she assured me. She would be with him at the hospital for most of the day, but would call me at my cottage tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, her father would be glad to hear I was coming back tonight; he was missing me, she said with some emphasis.
I thought this unlikely; I hesitated, then replied that I was missing him, too. This seemed to please Ellie; I heard the sudden lift in her voice—and her mood affected mine. I left for the library feeling purposeful, and considerably happier.
B
Y
10:15, I
WAS GOING THROUGH THE CARD CATALOG IN
search of Sir Frank’s autobiography, and by 10:20 I was in the stacks, searching the shelves for it.
The St. James’s Library is an old building, and its geography is confusing. The theatrical history section proved to be in a remote wing, on one of the upper stories, reached by a whole series of stair
cases, anterooms, and narrow passageways. Like certain other parts of the library, this section was ill-lit, cramped, and somewhat sinister. I was hemmed in by the stacks, which were only a few feet apart, and which ran in serried ranks across the width of the area. There were no windows; both the ceiling and the floor were constructed of iron gratings, so I could sense other searchers in the sections below and above me.
I moved between the narrow stacks, pulling the light cords, illuminating first this, then that section of shelves. Sir Frank McKendrick’s autobiography was not in its assigned place, and I assumed that the book had been put back on the wrong shelf by another browser; sometimes this happened. I began checking; along the books, spine by spine. I drew out a couple of general histories of the Edwardian stage, and Shakespearean touring companies, but their references to McKendrick told me little more than Francis Browne had already indicated. No mention of his Othello, and no details about other actors in his company. I felt a sense of angry frustration. That book
must
be here. A shifting sighing sound came up through the grating on the floor. Footsteps tapped on a metal staircase around the corner. Someone unseen moved between the stacks farther up the room. A door closed in a distant part of the building.
I went back along the relevent shelves three times. The book wasn’t there. I was about to return to the main hall and consult the librarian; I turned back toward the stairs and passed a dark corner where there was a small reading desk, little more than a shelf, really, to be used for reference rather than serious reading. I’d passed that little desk earlier, and was almost sure it had been bare; now there was a book on it. Picking it up, I found it was the missing autobiography.
It fell open at one particular place, and a sweet familiar scent rose up from the page. I started, and almost dropped it. Pressed between the leaves of the book was a sprig of azalea—the same azalea I had seen woven into a garland at Rebecca’s boathouse. It was browned and crumpled, but the perfume was still strong. This was not an old specimen, pressed and dried; it could not have been in the book very long. I swung round and looked back along the stacks. Someone had been there earlier, I’d heard movement. The stacks were now empty.
I sat down at the desk, switched on the reading light, removed the azalea sprig carefully, and looked at the page it had served to mark.
On the right, there was a photograph of Sir Frank McKendrick, wearing an exotic costume. His face was blacked up, and he was bending over a bed; on the bed, her long fair hair tumbling over the pillow that would be used to stifle her, was a pretty young woman, mouth rounded in an O of pleading despair. The caption read:
Theatre Royal, Plymouth, September 1914. My three hundredth appearance as the Moor. My Desdemona was Miss Isabel Devlin. “A fine histrionic display in which Sir Frank surpassed himself,” was the verdict of the
Plymouth Courier.
Looking at the paragraphs opposite, I saw that someone had marked them with a faint pencil line. I began reading at the top of the page:
My hopes ran high for our regular three-week season in Plymouth, where we have always enjoyed lively and loyal audiences. We were to present our repertoire of nine plays, with my three hundredth performance as Othello being given on the first Saturday evening. As my dear wife was indisposed, the part of Desdemona was undertaken by a younger actress, Miss Isabel Devlin, who had been an adornment to our company for years and whose elevation to more testing roles was a well-deserved one. Miss Devlin was always of an original cast of mind, and she contributed some intriguing notions to our rehearsals, most of which I was, alas, forced to overrule; with Shakespeare’s plays, as I have always maintained, the tried-and-true traditions are ignored at one’s peril.
Miss Devlin looked charming, and sang the “Willow Song” with the sweetest of voices; her scenes with myself, and with Cassio (played by Mr. Orlando Stephens on this occasion; he was shortly to leave our company), were most tender and affecting. On the first night, I remember, I felt her Desdemona’s death stuggles were too desperate, and this caused some consternation, the more so as my wig fixings were unreliable. I had a discreet word with her about this afterward, and advised her against this tendency to “milk” the moment. I persuaded her that her belief that Desdemona might “fight back” was mistaken. Desdemona is a gentle and passive creature, and the attention of the audience as the terrible murder occurs must, I reminded her, be fixed upon the husband.
Miss Devlin took my advice to heart, and her performance improved thereafter. The critics were kind, though, as my wife had
cause to point out, Miss Devlin’s voice lacked strength, and she had perhaps not mastered the art of projection inborn in the greatest thespians. Despite these birth pangs, and teething troubles, however, the production was little short of a triumph. My own performance was greeted with many plaudits, and the traditional presentation of wreaths from my admirers. Had it not been for the recent advent of war, I feel sure more seats would have been sold, and our takings would have been more remunerative.
As a postscript, and by way of tribute, I should add that, sadly, Desdemona was Miss Devlin’s last role with our company—indeed her last on any stage. My wife, whose opinion of her abilities had always been lower than my own, had concerns as to Miss Devlin’s health, which had never been strong. When her condition did not improve, it was felt we should dispense with her services. Not long afterward, we heard that she had died, in the most tragic of circumstances. She was in her prime of beauty, with the prettiest golden hair; “April was in her eyes,” if I may misquote; she was a “lass unparallel’d,” and a lady to her fingertips, with great delicacy of mind and demeanor. My wife and I could not attend her funeral, but I grieved for her.
I should add that Miss Devlin’s daughter was also at this time a member of our little “band of brothers” and showed a precocious ability for the Bard. She was a most unusual and wicked Puck to my Oberon at a very early age, and was of great use to us in boys’ roles. I remember her as a swaggering but subtle young princeling to my Richard III, and her pitiful death as Macduff’s son in the Scottish play brought tears to many an eye. She might have had a future on the boards, I always felt, though my wife doubted she had the necessary discipline and temperament; but we heard no more of her after her dear mother died.