Free Mrs De Winter by Susan Hill Page B

the old way, and all was light and easy between us, the secrets I held close to me remained concealed. And what pathetically small things they were, I thought suddenly, going back up to our room, little enough, God knows, to suffer such guilt about.
    It was agreed very easily. We would stay here with Giles and Roger until the end of the week, and then go at once to Scotland, to stay with the Crawleys. Maxim seemed quite happy, and I knew that my reassurance about not returning to any of the old familiar places, or anywhere with family connections, but most of all, any places in which we would be remembered and recognised, had meant a great deal and, I thought, quietened his most serious fears. He wanted to see nothing, go nowhere, meet no one, who had the slightest connection with his past and the old life, with Manderley, and most of all, with Rebecca, and Rebecca’s death.
     
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    This house, Beatrice’s house, he could cope with now, I thought, and he might even enjoy ambling gently about the lanes and fields within a short distance. That was what I told myself.
    And I - I was wonderfully, gloriously happy, that we could be here longer, and then go to Scotland, and, after that, perhaps, though I scarcely dared to make my ideas coherent, to spell it out even to myself — after that, when Maxim was more relaxed and unafraid, when he had discovered how easy it was to be here and that there was no threat — after that, might we not stay even longer, go elsewhere, spend the last golden autumn days gently exploring this or that quiet corner of England that was unknown to us? Would that not be every bit as good, as restful and unthreatening to him, as being abroad? So long as we kept far, far away from the old places — from Manderley.
    I sang as I went upstairs to change, and realised, when I caught myself, that it was ‘On Richmond Hill’, and that I had not sung or heard it for years, not since I had learned it at school, and yet it came into my head now, fresh and clear. I found that I remembered every word of it.
    I could not persuade Maxim to come out. He would wait for Giles to get up, he said, he must try and talk business matters to him, in case there was anything he had to know or attend to concerning Beatrice’s affairs. I was surprised. I thought he would have avoided anything that might bring him close to learning about how things had been disposed over Manderley, but he was curt, took The Times into the morning room and closed the door, and when I glanced there, from the garden on my way out, I saw that he had
     
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    his back to the window, and the paper held high, and knew then how much it hurt him to be here, and that he could not bear to look out even at Beatrice’s and Giles’s old garden and orchard, which were nothing, nothing like any of the gardens at Manderley.
    He is doing it for me, I thought. He is doing it out of love. And within me rose, as well as love in return, a flicker of the old insecurity, the disbelief that I could be loved — by any man, and this man, above all, for I still saw him in some sort, as a God, and in spite of the way things had been between us for all of our time in exile, how much stronger I had tried to become, how dependent he had grown on me, in spite of it all, deep down, I had no real confidence, no belief in myself as a woman who was loved in that way. Occasionally, still, I caught myself staring down at my wedding ring as though it were on some stranger’s hand, and could not possibly belong to me, turning it round and round, as I had done the whole time on our honeymoon in Italy, as if to convince myself of its reality, heard my own voice on that sunlit Monte Carlo morning, Tou don’t understand, I’m not the sort of person men marry.’
    But I smiled to myself, hearing it faintly again, as I walked up through the thick dew drenched grass of the paddock, towards the slope and the trees and the hedgerows of the open, glorious, golden countryside beyond.
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