Daphne’s anxieties fade in the face of the gaiety that reigns at Ferryside, the house decorated with holly and ivy, piles of presents, the Christmas dinner, all the festivities supplied by Muriel with her habitual expertise. This is the first Christmas at Ferryside, and it is a success. Geoffrey is there, without his wife, sick in hospital, and he seems to feel no remorse at all when he caresses Daphne’s knees under the dining room table, under the very noses of her parents. But she no longer feels the arousal she felt six years before. The truth is that she pities Geoffrey, just as she does her father.
As the year ends, Fowey shivers under a fall of unexpected snow. 1928 begins with a series of domestic troubles: the boiler breaks down, and so does the oven. No more hot water, no more heating. Gerald complains, Muriel grows agitated, and everyone decides to head back to London. Everyone except Daphne. How can she make them understand—all these people who call her selfish—that she doesn’t care about discomfort, that she finds it a thousand times more enticing to brave the cold of Ferryside than to be speared with boredom in Hampstead, that she wants to live without them, that she feels happy when she is alone? Is it really that complicated? Intense relief floods through her at the sight of them leaving on the ferry, headed for the train station. Quick, time for a walk with Bingo! She climbs the road up to Lanteglos, contemplates the silvery beauty of the bay, taking deep breaths, delighting in her solitude, finally at peace.
Back in the calm of the house, she gets down to work, wrapped up in a blanket, a hot water bottle on her knees. She sits facing the view she loves so much: the river, the passing boats, the ballet of seagulls. Here, in her room at Ferryside, the words come effortlessly; she doesn’t have to wait for them as she does at Cannon Hall, in the room above the garage where nothing ever happened. Words fill the pages. Never before has she written with so much energy. Time passes, and she doesn’t even realize. She is working on a new short story, so extreme in its darkness that she wonders if it’s not a bit too much, perverted even, then decides not to worry about it. She keeps writing. Her heroine is a young girl who keeps a secret. She must find her a name, this beautiful brunette with her swan neck, her crazy eyes. A powerful, captivating name, the kind of name a man might scream or moan. She scrawls a few at the top of the blank page. Jane. No. Olga. Not that either. Lola … Perhaps. May … Suddenly her pen traces the letters of Rebecca. Yes, that’s it: Rebecca! She will call her Rebecca. It sounds right, strong, the shivering r, the b forcing upper and lower lip together like a kiss, the two c’s stuck together, hard as a k. And that final a, a complaint, a groan. Rebecca lives in Bloomsbury, on the top floor of a tall building. What will we discover through our narrator, a young man dangerously attracted to her? What lurks behind the door of her attic apartment, in a round room, the walls covered in velvet, with thick curtains that muffle every sound? A disturbing truth. Rebecca prefers making love with a life-sized robot that she names Julio; this is her drug, her obsession, the only way she can feel pleasure. The title of her story? “The Doll.” Daphne smiles as she imagines the look on her parents’ faces. Maybe she shouldn’t show this to her mother: What could she take from this cruel tale, after all, other than that men are just toys, replaceable at will?
The next day, Daphne is invited to tea by the Quiller-Couches, the friends of J. M. Barrie, in their house on the Esplanade. She wears a dress instead of her customary pants, makes an effort with her hair. The atmosphere is cheerful and welcoming. Lady Quiller-Couch is charming, elegantly dressed in lilac satin. Daphne gets on wonderfully well with Foy, the writer’s daughter. It is Foy who introduces her to Lady Clara Vyvyan, an eccentric author and indefatigable traveler who lives in the manor house of Trelowarren, near Helford. Foy and Daphne share the same passion for the sea and for boats. What’s that, Daphne doesn’t have a sailboat? But she absolutely must, now she lives in Fowey. This is now all Daphne can think about. The Cora Ann is a motorboat, fine for the river or for a calm sea, but really, there’s no comparison. She talks about it with Adams and convinces her parents by showing so much enthusiasm that they can’t help but be charmed. She has won: she will have her boat. But, in the meantime, she must return to London, to the damp February cold.
Daphne has polished up her dozen short stories and she is quite proud of them, despite the often sordid and chilling subjects, the texts marked by a cynical vision of sexuality that does not reflect her own life at all. In her stories, all is adultery, vanity, manipulation, madness. Her writing is biting, lively, incredibly caustic for someone so young. What do Gerald and Muriel think of it? Daphne couldn’t care less. She wrote all the stories with passion, and that is what counts, not her parents’ opinion. Her aunt Billy types them, then the stories are submitted to a literary agent, an acquaintance of Viola Tree, for an opinion.
The presence of Geoffrey, who has come to Cannon Hall to spend a few days before undertaking the long journey to Australia, lights up Daphne’s winter. His wife is still convalescing in Brighton. Late at night, when everyone is asleep, Daphne meets her cousin in the living room, on the first floor, creeping downstairs on tiptoes. She is in pajamas, and so is he, waiting for her in the dark. He draws her toward him and kisses her. A real kiss. Then another. A lover’s kisses. Night after night, they meet in secret. She writes in her journal: I suppose I oughtn’t to let him, but it was nice and pleasant. I wish he could have been more light-hearted about it, though, and then I would have no compunction. But men are so odd. The strange thing is, it’s so like kissing Daddy. Perhaps this family is the same as the Borgias! Daddy is Pope Alexander, Geoffrey is Cesare, and I am Lucretia. A sort of incest.6
Despite the pleasantness of their kisses, Daphne warns her cousin in a long letter that he should pull himself together, stop lying—to his wife, to himself—and face facts. The day before his departure, Geoffrey thanks Daphne for her frankness; she is right, and he will conquer his own inconstancy, his weakness, but he has one last thing to tell her. Gerald came to speak to him last night, a scowl on his face, and asked him out of the blue, Are you in love with Daph? And Geoffrey replied, I’ve been in love with her for seven years. A bitter grin from Gerald: Nothing can come of it, you realize that? Geoffrey’s reply: I know, uncle, I know.7
After saying good-bye to Geoffrey, Daphne stands by for a response from the literary agent regarding her short stories. The wait seems interminable. What if she went to see Fernande again? It is snowing when she boards the ship at Dover, but she doesn’t care about the weather: Paris welcomes her, as always. In her journal, in French, she describes the smell of tobacco and beer that float by in the dusty streets, mingling with the odor of freshly baked bread. She longs to go back in time, to keep these moments forever. Sitting at Montparnasse café terraces in the early springtime, she amuses herself by detailing the faces of customers and passersby, reading Colette, Duhamel, D’Annunzio. One morning, Fernande hands Daphne an envelope with an English stamp, forwarded by Aunt Billy. The agent enjoyed her stories, he wants to see more; he is certain he will be able to find her a publisher.
* * *
Daphne goes back to London for her parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, celebrated in great pomp at the Savoy Hotel on April 11, 1928. She notices that her father does not like the portrait of Muriel his wife gives him—it’s written all over his face—and when he tries to attach his gift for her, a bracelet, to her wrist, it turns out to be too small. Oh dear, it was so pathetic,8 Daphne writes in her journal. Only her return to Fowey and the splendors of spring give her back her joie de vivre. She will be twenty-one soon, and a wonderful gift awaits her. Adams let it slip: his brother-in-law, Ernie Slade, who runs the shipyard at Polruan, is taking care of it in tandem with her parents: the du Mauriers will have a sailboat, but it will belong, above all, to Daphne. The most exciting thing is that she will be able to oversee the boat’s manufacture from the beginning. She must start by choosing the wood that will form its keel. Daphne asks him if Ernie is from the same family as Jane Slade. The very sam
e, laughs Adams, the same family who have been building ships in Polruan as long as anyone remembers. And what about that box full of letters? Isn’t it time she took a look at that?
In the exhilaration of these moments, Daphne puts aside the stories she is supposed to write for the literary agent. The boat is the only thing on her mind, and she doesn’t miss a single stage of its construction. She knows its dimensions already, meets with Adams every morning at the shipyard, watches the men as they saw, cut, sand the wood. Ernie Slade answers every question she poses, charmed by her fervor. Jane Slade was his grandmother, a hell of a woman; the ship was named in her honor. Would Miss Daphne like to keep the figurehead as a souvenir? Daphne obtains her parents’ permission to have the wooden figure repainted and attached to the wall just below her bedroom window.
That same week, Adams knocks at the door of Ferryside while Daphne is drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen. He is holding a large box, which he hands to her with a smile: It’s for you, Miss Daphne. The box is stuffed full of old papers—letters, documents, notes. All about Jane Slade. Alone, filled with wonder, she leans over these yellowed pages with their old-fashioned handwriting; her tea goes cold as she is transported to another age. She takes the box up to her bedroom, grabs a notebook, a pencil, and hastily draws a family tree for the Slades going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Chewing the end of her pencil, then her fingernails, she dives back into her reading of the letters, only pausing to scrawl notes, and something begins to take shape. The colorful character of Jane Slade seems to dominate the entire family, leaving its imprint on her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and the ship that bore her name continued to sail for a long time after her death.
Daphne gets to her feet and begins pacing her room. Isn’t there enough material here for a novel? And it’s all there, within easy reach. Of course, she’ll have to work it, imagine the rest. Will she have enough energy to write a whole novel, she who hasn’t even managed to complete any more short stories for the literary agent? As she sits down again and leafs through the letters, intoxicated by their dusty, damp smell, ideas come to her, effortlessly. She sees the path of the narrative open up before her. Jane Slade’s son, the captain of the schooner, could also be a central character in the novel, connected to his mother by a timeless love.
The next morning, at the shipyard, Ernie Slade asks Daphne if she has thought about a name for the family boat. She talked about it on the phone with her father yesterday; he is as enthusiastic about it as his daughter, and they agreed that the boat should have a French name in honor of their French blood. Isn’t that a good idea? It will be the Marie-Louise. The schooner will not be ready for weeks, though, as construction is behind schedule. Daphne is disappointed. As a birthday consolation, on May 13, 1928, her parents give her a flat-bottomed rowing boat, painted black, with a little red sail, just for her: the Annabelle Lee. This eases her irritability, and she celebrates her twenty-first birthday at sea with Adams, who admires the dexterity of her oarsmanship. Despite her fine bone structure, Miss Daphne rows like a real sailor. It seems strange to celebrate her birthday without her family, but she finds that she likes it. How many girls of her age would prefer to be out at sea rather than dancing in a bar? She opens a few presents: a pretty notebook from Viola, a red scarf sent by Fernande that matches the Annabelle Lee’s sails. And a card from Geoffrey, posted from Melbourne. Those Borgiaesque kisses in the darkness of Cannon Hall seem so distant now. In her journal, she writes, in French: I no longer recognize my former actions.
Summer comes to Fowey and with it the rest of the du Maurier family. There is a long parade of guests, and as the sun shines down, Gerald seems to reconcile himself to Fowey. On July 2, 1928, British women are given the right to vote, but this news has little impact on Daphne, who is growing impatient because the Marie-Louise still isn’t ready. She wonders if Jane Slade suffered similar frustrations while waiting for her own ship to be built.
On September 13, the big day finally arrives. A bottle of champagne is ritually smashed against the bow of the Marie-Louise by Daphne. The sun shines and the east wind blows. Daphne’s knees tremble: she has been anticipating this moment for months! The Slade family is there, and the du Mauriers too, all gathered on the pontoon in the Polruan shipyard. Everyone walks aboard: a solemn, precious moment. The schooner slowly leaves the port; then suddenly the wind fills the sail with a sound like a whip and Daphne’s heart swells with joy. She takes the helm with a sure hand, feels the boat rear up, playing with the wind, and maintains her course under the watchful, protective eye of Adams. They leave the bay behind, and now they are out at sea, rushing over the waves, and she smiles, euphoric, the captain of the Marie-Louise.
A few weeks of sunlight and sailing, and then the fall is here with its cold weather, and they must store the Marie-Louise in a depot in Polruan for the winter. They scrub its hull, clean out its interior, and cover it with a tarpaulin to keep out ice, salt, mold. Daphne oversees the operations for the first time, saddened at the idea of having to wait for spring before she can see her beloved boat again. Ferryside becomes calm again; only Angela, Daphne, and the dogs remain, and they must close the house up soon. Has she made any progress with her stories? She can’t bear her parents asking her that question. Thankfully, they have left. No, she hasn’t made any progress, and she feels guilty about it. Why has she grown so lazy? She dreams of independence, of being able to live at Ferryside without financial help, and she’s not even capable of knuckling down to work. She has to get started again. Other girls of her age long to be married, to start a family. One day she might, too, perhaps, but for now writing is her priority: writing and earning a living from it, not having to depend on anyone else, whether it’s a husband or her parents.
It is a pleasure to spend time with her older sister, an impulsive character, as dark as Daphne is blond. Angela is always in a good mood, she laughs easily, never complains. But who is she really? Daphne wonders sometimes. Does it bother her to be the least pretty one, the sister no one notices? There is a lack of finesse to her features, she has a chubby face; her eyes are brown, not an intense blue like Daphne’s. Angela’s curves are no longer fashionable; in the 1920s, the style is for girls with slender, boyish figures. At twenty-four, she does not seem ready to find a husband any more than Daphne does, but in contrast to her sister, she enjoys going out, having fun. There is nothing timid about her; she is at ease in her parents’ theatrical set, all those elegant, exuberant people who love to dance, smoke, drink, and laugh. The very people Daphne avoids. One evening, as they are walking along the Esplanade with their dogs, Angela admits that she too would like to write novels, like Kicky. This confession amuses her sister: Why not, after all? They have the same genes—Angela is a du Maurier, just like her, descended from the same artistic French lineage, and it is surely no coincidence that Jeanne paints and plays the piano.
One October night, while Angela is reading in her room, Daphne quietly leaves the house and crosses the river on the Annabelle Lee, her faithful dog Bingo by her side. She strolls through Fowey’s silent streets toward St. Catherine’s Point and climbs up to the ruins of the castle. The moon is shining on the black rocks, the dancing sea. Daphne can hear nothing but the lapping of the waves below. She thinks about the novel that is taking shape in her head, this book born of her passion for the sea and for Fowey. A shiver runs through her. Her novel will span four generations of a family, beginning with a powerful woman and her son, connected by a love that nothing can destroy. She can feel the book at her fingertips, but she must wait a while longer before she has the will and the perseverance necessary to write it. For the moment, it inhabits her. It is an imaginary land where she likes to wander, to lose herself, like Kicky’s beloved “dreaming true” that provided so much inspiration for his own books.
Before going back to London at the end of the week, the du Maurier sisters have tea one last time with the Quiller-Couches. How lucky they are to live here all year r
ound! Like Daphne, Angela has fallen in love with Fowey, and she tells her hosts, with her customary volubility, how much she finds pleasure in walking with her sister around town, especially up to Gribbin Head, above Sandy Cove, where the blue of the sea and the green of the countryside meet in perfect harmony. Daphne nods—a beautiful place, and as it happens she noticed, during one of their most recent walks, the gray roof of a distant house, just visible above the trees, inland. Lady Quiller-Couch pours her another cup of Darjeeling with a smile and says, Oh, that’s Menabilly.
Daphne hears the name for the first time. She pronounces it herself, as a question. Arthur Quiller-Couch replies in his calm, deep voice that Menabilly belongs to an old Cornish family who have lived in Fowey since the eighteenth century. That manor house was built during the reign of the Virgin Queen; it’s a very old house, its walls soaked with history. If those walls could speak … Daphne sits up suddenly in her chair, almost knocking over her cup of tea as her sister watches her, affectionate and amused. Couldn’t they say a bit more? It sounds fascinating. What exactly happened at Menabilly? Q stands up and walks over to the large window, facing out to sea, takes a sip of his tea, and begins to tell the story. One has to go back, way back to the bloody Civil War between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads that raged from 1642 to 1645. Menabilly was sacked by the parliamentary soldiers; it was carnage. Daphne listens, spellbound. For a long time, it’s been rumored that Menabilly is haunted, Q goes on, because when a new wing was constructed in the last century the skeleton of a Cavalier was discovered in a secret walled-up room. Lady Quiller-Couch reminds her husband about the ghost of the lady in blue, who can be seen in the same window of one of the house’s rooms. Daphne is restless with excitement: she wants to know who lives there now, how to reach the house. She is told that Dr. Rashleigh is the owner, but he doesn’t go there anymore; he lives in Devonshire and has no descendants. He had a troubled childhood in Menabilly, his parents are dead, and the house hasn’t been lived in for years. It must be in a terrible state by now. She wants to go there? It’s a few miles from the bay, quite easy to find from the Four Turnings crossroads, but she has to cross through thick, overgrown woods, because nobody looks after the property.