Rebecca's Tale

by Sally Beauman

  “In any case,” Elinor was saying, “those old tales are all twaddle.”

  “Oh, Elinor, you know you don’t believe that,” Jocelyn said, in an obstinate way. “Beatrice always said that Caroline de Winter brought bad luck. And she was right. Rebecca wore that costume, and then she died, God rest her. And the second Mrs. de Winter chose the very same costume for the one and only fancy-dress ball she gave at Manderley. We didn’t attend that ball, did we, Elinor?”

  “We did not. Others did—people who were more forgiving than we were.”

  “But we heard all about it—Beatrice told us! Such a calamity! The dress was to be a surprise, apparently, so of course no one knew, and no one was able to warn Mrs. de Winter. When she came downstairs…well, for one terrible moment everyone thought she was Rebecca’s ghost. Maxim went as white as a sheet—Mrs. de Winter had to change and wear an ordinary frock. She was in floods of tears, Beatrice said. Maxim had been rather cruel about it, I understand, and, at one point, she was refusing to come downstairs at all.”

  “That girl lacked spine,” Elinor put in. “Mousy hair, no dress sense, and no backbone.”

  “And then look what happened! She chose that costume, and there was more disaster! Rebecca’s boat was discovered, and then there was the inquest, and then Manderley burned to the ground. It made us very uneasy. There was a disturbance in the spirit world and I could sense it. I felt someone was trying to contact us from the other side. I felt sure there was a message…. I wanted to consult my Ouija board, but Elinor wouldn’t let me.”

  “Jocelyn had a Ouija board phase,” Elinor said, in a very firm tone. “She also had a Tarot card phase. Both phases are now over. It is very unwise to meddle with such things, as I’m sure you’ll agree, Rector.”

  “I do agree,” said the rector. “Unwise—and dangerous.”

  After that, Jocelyn was chastened, and Elinor changed the subject firmly. I had to wait until we had all returned to the sisters’ drawing room for the warm water that passes for coffee in Kerrith before I could raise the issue of Manderley again. This time, I was helped by the sisters, who had turned the conversation to the question of weddings—a topic of which they are exceedingly fond, and which they never discuss without numerous little nods and smiles in my direction.

  The rector, to my relief, took the subject out of their hands, and began to discuss the baptisms, marriages, and funerals at which he had recently officiated. He was probably going to decide I was a monomaniac, but I didn’t care; I steered us toward one wedding in particular—the extremely mysterious wedding of Rebecca to Maxim de Winter. Had the sisters attended it, I asked. (I’d asked them this about ten times before, but somehow they’d always veered off the subject.)

  “Oh, didn’t we explain?” said Jocelyn. “We missed the great event, didn’t we, Elinor? It wasn’t long after our dear Mama had died. We were in a sad state, with St. Winnow’s having to be sold, and there was that cook—do you remember her, dear? She kept giving warning. It was a very trying time…. So we decided to visit our cousins in Kenya. We went on safari, and we saw lions.”

  “We stayed with those friends in Happy Valley!”

  “We did. We were away four months, maybe five, I forget. So we missed all the excitements at Manderley! By the time we returned—and we called at once, of course—dear Maxim and Rebecca were already married. We told her all about our trip; that’s why she gave her valley its name. Happy Valley! So charming! How lovely she was—do you remember, Elinor?—that first day we met her. Some people found her disconcerting, but we never did, did we dear?”

  “Disconcerting? Certainly not. It was just that she had this very direct way of speaking, and that was unusual then.”

  A direct way of speaking? I sighed. I could have done with that there and then—but, as I’m beginning to learn from long conversations with elderly people, directness is rare. And it’s a mistake to press too hard, or to show the least sign of impatience. Then they clam up completely.

  The Briggs sisters were not alone in missing this famous wedding. Colonel Julyan had also missed it; he was still in Singapore on his last Army posting at the time. So far, although I’d tried all the obvious candidates, I hadn’t found a single person who had attended it. Nor—and this was odder still—could I trace any newspaper coverage of it, beyond its de facto announcement in The Times. And that puzzled me greatly, for it took place at a time when society weddings attracted crowds, full reports, and photographs.

  I asked the Briggs (as I’ve asked others) whether, having missed the great event, they had ever seen any wedding photographs at Manderley. This put both sisters in a flurry: They had; they hadn’t; they thought they might; no, now they considered it, they probably didn’t—but Rebecca had described her dress with its twenty-foot train, so they felt as if they had seen it. I made one last-ditch attempt, though the rector was getting very restive. I asked if they could remember where the wedding had taken place. “Someone told me it wasn’t in London,” I said, and this was true. I could name umpteen places where the marriage hadn’t happened.

  “Oh, no, definitely not London,” said Elinor. “If it had been there, our Wyckham cousins would have gone, wouldn’t they, Jocelyn? And they didn’t go, either, though they weren’t away, and dear Maxim would certainly have asked them. Let me think—it seems absurd not to know, but it was so long ago! Her people would have arranged it, of course—but were her parents alive?”

  “Rebecca’s? I don’t think they were, dear.”

  “It was in the winter, I feel sure of that, because I remember our dates in Kenya. So it was rather an odd time of year for a wedding. I always think a June bride is such a lovely idea…. February? March?”

  “Abroad!” Jocelyn cried, making me jump. “I’m sure it was abroad, dear—Italy, perhaps? Somewhere remote and romantic…. Didn’t someone mention canals, Elinor? Venice?”

  “No, no—they’re weren’t married in Venice, they went there on their honeymoon, I’m almost sure. They went to France first—did dear Rebecca have family in France? You know, I rather think she did. I’m sure I recall some chateau’s being mentioned. And I’m almost certain they went on to Monte Carlo, which Maxim took against for some reason, and then Venice. I do remember Rebecca’s telling me about gondolas.”

  “Ah, gondolas,” said Jocelyn with a sigh. “Do you know, I’ve always wanted to ride in a gondola. I’ve always wanted to go to Venice and I never have.”

  “I understand it can be very unsanitary,” said Elinor in a final way. “You’re much better off here, dear.”

  I could have tried one more time, I suppose. I could have asked about the “family in France,” but I’d missed my chance, and I could see the rector was chafing. I gave up. I fielded a few questions about Scotland, and when I glimpsed the glint of sectarianism in the rector’s eyes, so I knew that if I stayed I’d be grilled on Presbyterianism, I rose to leave.

  Both sisters saw me out, and in their tiny hall, hemmed in by ancestral oils, they exchanged glances. Becoming a little pink, they told me I must be sure to call on them as soon as I returned from London. “We’re planning a dinner,” Jocelyn cried. “A small dinner,” corrected Elinor, “with dear Arthur, if he’s well enough. And Ellie, of course….” The sisters exchanged meaningful smiles.

  “I shall look forward to it,” I said. “I’ll come and see you as soon as I get back. And I’ll bring you some chocolates from London.”

  “Dear Mr. Gray! Chocolates! We wouldn’t hear of it!”

  “Violet creams,” I said. “You have my word on it.”

  Ellie had told me about their weakness for violet creams. Violet creams, along with malt whisky, drinkable sherry, coffee beans, and most of the other necessaries for a civilized life, are unobtainable in Kerrith. Both sisters blushed crimson. If I’d discovered they had a weakness for lacy camiknickers, they couldn’t have been more embarrassed.

  FROM THE SISTERS’ HOUSE, WHICH, LIKE COLONEL Julyan’s, is on the eastern side of
Kerrith, I set off to walk upriver. St. Winnow’s Nursing Home for the Elderly is about a mile beyond the town, on a beautiful bend of the Kerr, and close to the tiny fishing village of Pelynt.

  It was a pleasant walk, the narrow road winding along the riverside. The fine weather had brought people down to the water; I was passed by several yachts and skiffs, out practicing for the Kerrith regatta, a great event on the local calendar. I passed the dark narrow creek, accessible only at flood tide, which Ellie had described, the creek where Rebecca’s boat was taken, and her body finally identified. I came to a halt at the boat builders’ yard once owned by James Tabb, the man who had adapted Rebecca’s Breton boat for her.

  It was Tabb who, giving evidence at her inquest, had revealed that Rebecca’s boat, Je Reviens, had been deliberately scuttled. It was he who had insisted on inspecting it, and he who found that the sea-cocks had been opened, and holes had been driven into its bottom boards. His evidence caused a sensation at the time, as the newspaper accounts make clear, but his honesty seems to have caused him problems afterward. In the atmosphere of gossip and rumor that attended the inquest, James Tabb lost custom—or so the Briggs sisters, great champions of his, have told me. He went bankrupt a few years later. His family had been boat builders here for four generations: Now, the yard was derelict.

  Tabb is still refusing to speak to me, and looking up at the faded letters on the side of the building, JAMES TABB & SON, BOAT BUILD-ERS, I could understand why. The son named on the sign was killed during the D-day landings. James Tabb now runs a small garage on the outskirts of Kerrith, and ekes out a living as a mechanic. I could see that he might be embittered, that the subject of the de Winters, and Rebecca’s death, was not one that he’d discuss willingly.

  Tabb’s former premises were fine, honest, foursquare buildings, impossible to date, but probably centuries old. I thought of the loving and highly skilled work that would once have kept men employed here—and I felt melancholy. I remembered that long, punning, coiling tail the young Rebecca had drawn on the final “e” of her “Tale.”

  Twenty years after her death, her story was not over. Rebecca’s tale continued. A great house lay in ruins; her husband was dead—and died a broken man, or so people have told me. Her friend, Arthur Julyan, gave up his seat on the Bench, and endured years of vilification. Frith sits in a wheelchair, and mourns a lost world. And James Tabb, a man on the very periphery of Rebecca’s story, even he has been affected. He lost his yard and lost his livelihood—and, to me, that loss, after generations of skill and labor, weighed as heavily in the scales as the destruction of Manderley.

  Standing there by that boatyard, I tried to tell myself that this story and its repercussions were almost done, that I was here just in time to see the tail end of them. Another few years and all those who knew Rebecca, all those whose lives had been altered or affected by her, would be gone.

  But was that the case? I doubted it, even as I thought it. I could see its aftereffects in Ellie. Once her father had retreated to The Pines, cutting himself off from his malicious accusers in Kerrith, she was forced to share his isolation; they see few people now, apart from the Briggs sisters, so Ellie, a young, intelligent, pretty woman, is imprisoned by the events of twenty years ago every bit as much as her father is. She would no doubt deny that analysis fiercely, but I wondered sometimes if she longed to be rescued from the fortress her father constructed—and who might do the rescuing. And what about the second Mrs. de Winter, Maxim’s widow? She was still a comparatively young woman; I doubted she would feel that the story was over yet. She went to live in Canada after her husband’s death, but she must have taken the story with her; she was part of its continuation. Nor was I exempt myself. I never intended to be that involved—I meant to come to Kerrith for three months at most, find out what I wanted to find out, what I needed to find out, and then leave it behind me.

  After six months, I was still here. And I was more deeply involved, more caught up in this, than ever. Sometimes I felt as if I had always been part of this story, hidden away in its recesses. And sometimes I felt I was willfully writing myself into it—and that idea disturbed me.

  I walked on rapidly, and took the lane that led up to the higher ground where St. Winnow’s was situated. I walked up to the house through the well-kept gardens. As I had expected on such a warm day, Frith was outside on the sheltered terrace in his wheelchair; from there, he had a perfect view down the river and out to sea. In the far distance, as he had reminded me at regular intervals during my last visit, was Manderley.

  I checked that I’d brought the copy of Lionel de Winter’s death certificate with me, though I knew I had, and then joined him on the terrace. I was sure he had very little idea of who I was, but that didn’t appear to bother him at all. He remembered me from my previous visit and seemed pleased to see me.

  FOURTEEN

  BEFORE I MET FRITH, HE HAD BEEN DESCRIBED TO ME BY the Colonel in unflattering terms: He was ninety-five at least; he was senile; he was a martinet, a nosy-parker, a fusspot, a terrorizer of maids, an old fool, and a wily operator with an eye for the main chance. “One minute he was the boot boy, the next he was butler,” said the Colonel. “Draw your own conclusions.”

  Frith was never a boot boy, and the rest of the Colonel’s description was similarly inaccurate—with the possible exception of that eye to the main chance. Frith was very far from senile; he was born in 1867 (I checked) and was now eighty-four, though he claimed ninety. His father had been in service elsewhere in the West Country, and Frith had gone to Manderley as a boy; before becoming butler in 1915, he had worked his way up the chain of command, serving time as a footman, and as Lionel de Winter’s valet. He was exceedingly well informed about the de Winter family, and prided himself on his unique knowledge of their history. As he liked to hint to me, his was the inside story.

  He was a shrewd, small man, much shrunken, I think, from his former stature. He had a head of neat white hair, and poorly fitting false teeth that were a constant source of distress to him. In the very distant past he might once have had a keen eye for pretty girls— certainly he was very jealous of the nurses’ attentions, preferring the younger ones. I had the impression that this taste had been kept firmly in check. Frith had never courted or married, had no children. Why would he have wanted to marry, he’d said to me scornfully. Why would he have wanted a family of his own? He had a family: the de Winter family.

  His de Winter pension pays his bills here, but he receives no visitors, or so the young red-haired nurse who was Frith’s favorite had told me. And he is mindful of his status, even now. This afternoon—and I gather this is his usual practice—he had seated himself at a distance from the other nursing home patients. At one end of the terrace was a group of women, several of whom were knitting; toward the other end was a group of male patients, clustered around a wireless set, listening to a concert. Frith had segregated himself from both groups, and was occupying pride of place on the terrace, shaded by a canvas awning. From there he could watch the boats on the river below, and look out beyond Kerrith to the hazy shape of the Manderley headland. He has cataracts on both eyes, however, so his vision is dimmed, and I feel sure he cannot see it.

  He had had a good lunch, and a little sleep after lunch, and now he was ready to talk about old times again, which he liked to do. “It brings it all back,” he said, clasping my hands in his, and urging me into the chair next to him. “Things I haven’t thought of, not in years, I see them again, as sharp as I see you now, sir. Mr. Lionel as a young man—and his wife, poor Mrs. Lionel—a Grenville, she was, Virginia Grenville, sister to Miss Evangeline and Miss Isolda, God rest them. Ah, things were different in those days. One afternoon off a month I had. And work! These nurses complain about the work—I tell them, you don’t know you’re born. You should try cleaning the plate at Manderley, I say. I’d be down in the silver room for days at a time, knives, forks, spoons, place settings for fifty. And then all the big pieces, and if you left s
o much as a smidgen of the silver powder in one tiny little crevice—well, you knew you were in trouble then.”

  He gave a wheezing sigh. “And when I got to waiting on table—one tiny mark on my gloves and I was for it. Mrs. de Winter the elder—Mr. Lionel’s mother, that was—she had eyes in the back of her head, she had. Nothing went on in that house that she didn’t know about. Mr. Lionel, he’d be up to his tricks, and he’d take me on one side, and slip me the wink, and say, ‘Just between you and me, eh, Frith? Make sure the old girl doesn’t get to hear about it.’…But she always did. And sometimes she minded, and sometimes she didn’t. You never knew with her. And if Mr. Lionel went too far—which he did, and many a time, too—he’d go to her. And she’d take care of all the arrangements….”

  I was listening intently—particularly to those last remarks. This was the difficulty. With Frith, as with the Briggs sisters, it was hopeless to chivy or overdirect. I had to wait. I had to listen to a million details about his methods of polishing silver or cleaning livery or storing claret, until Frith finally meandered in a direction that interested me.

  On my last visit, I’d tried to direct Frith toward more recent events at Manderley, but had met with little success. He had virtually no memory of the second Mrs. de Winter—he seemed to have erased her brief time at the house almost completely. On the subject of Rebecca de Winter he refused to be drawn, telling me only that she had taken both Maxim and his grandmother by storm, which had surprised him because he’d expected resistance on the grandmother’s part to any bride selected by Maxim.