Rebecca's Tale (67 page)

Authors: Sally Beauman

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.

W
HEN
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.

About the Author

SALLY BEAUMAN
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of
Destiny.
She lives in London, England.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

P
RAISE
FOR
R
EBECCA’S
T
ALE

“What a savory treat—a mixture of mystery and romance flavored with intelligence, compassion, and wit.”

—Sena Jeter Naslund, author of
Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette

“Sally Beauman’s companion to
Rebecca
is bold and clever…evocative.”

—
The Times
(London)

“Has more twists than a stick of barley sugar, enough shocks and surprises to keep you on your toes, and it will certainly have you dreaming that you went to Manderley again.”

—
Daily Mail
(London)

“I found it compelling, absorbing, captivating, haunting—Sally Beauman’s most ambitious and imaginative book so far.”

—Elaine Showalter

“Once you start reading a Beauman novel, you cannot put it down.”

—
The Guardian
(UK)

“A supremely stylish mystery that offers ingenious solutions to the enigmas posed by the original novel and a beautifully crafted sequel that is magical in its own right.”

—
BookPage

“True to the original and enhances it.”

—
Entertainment News

“Atmospheric and moody…vividly evocative of place, time, and character,
Rebecca’s Tale
is a page-turner in its own right.”

—
Richmond Times-Dispatch

A
LSO BY
S
ALLY
B
EAUMAN

Novels

Destiny

Dark Angel

Lovers and Liars

Danger Zones

Sextet

The Sisters Mortland

Nonfiction

The Royal Shakespeare Company: A History of Ten Decades

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Two final stanzas, used as epigraph, from “Stings” from
Ariel
by Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

“Encounter,” used as epigraph, from
The Collected Poems, 1931–1987
by Czeslaw Milosz and translated by Robert Hass. Copyright © 1988 by Czeslaw Milosz Royalties, Inc. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

REBECCA’S TALE
. Copyright © 2001 by Sally Beauman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-195577-8

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1