Not for anything in the world would Daphne admit to them the true genesis of her novels; not for anything in the world would she reveal that a book came from a visceral feeling, that her characters are sorts of “pegs,”* a code word of her own invention, hooks on which she hangs a personal blend of fantasy and truth. The prosecutors, Rosenschein and Ross, are right: yes, writers are liars, con artists, constantly reinventing other people’s lives, using smoke and mirrors to mislead their readers, concealing themselves under a smooth, kind, generous façade in order to facilitate their lying. They are supreme falsifiers, because their world, like the world of actors, is created from mystification, illusion, appearance; in this way, and only in this way, are novels born. But Daphne says nothing of all this. She follows through with her plan, choosing her words prudently, calmly, not raising her voice, not flinching as she explains how she imagined Manderley as a cross between Milton Hall and Menabilly, the first house captivating her as a child and the second exercising an enchantment over her life that still holds her spellbound today.
When she leaves the witness box, she is pale, but her head is held high, and it seems to her that Kicky and Gerald are applauding from somewhere up above. Arriving at Barberrys, she collapses. Ellen sits at her bedside for hours on end, and in spite of her exhaustion, Daphne savors this delightful closeness. How happy she feels, in this cozy bed, in this enveloping comfort, and, above all, in the glow of that velvet hazel gaze, with the touch of that soft little hand which she holds tightly. The judge will deliver his verdict in January 1948, but Doubleday’s lawyers have no doubt: Daphne has nothing to worry about: she won hands down. Why not spend Christmas here? Ellen suggests. Daphne could continue her recuperation at Barberrys. Daphne is tempted, but Tommy and Tessa are waiting for them, and everyone is ready to spend Christmas together at “Mena” after their long absence. The tickets are booked on the Queen Mary, and the time has come to say good-bye to the Doubledays. Once again, their cabins are filled with gifts and flowers; Ellen has even given each child one present to open for each day of the crossing. The return trip is spoiled by the terrible weather, however, the Queen Mary enduring one of the most horrific journeys in its history. There is nothing to do but lie in their beds as the ship violently rolls and pitches all the way to their arrival in the Channel. When Daphne finally reaches Whitelands House, in London, she is so worn-out, so thin, so pale, that Tommy calls the doctor. His verdict: Lady Browning is exhausted and is in need of complete rest. Her despondency resembles the hollowness she felt during her separation from Fernande, in November 1925. Who could imagine, twenty-five years on, that the person she is missing so desperately is none other than Mrs. Nelson Doubleday, her publisher’s wife?
* * *
Daphne returns to “Mena” for Christmas 1947. Tommy has been named Comptroller and Treasurer to the young Princess Elizabeth and her new husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at Clarence House, a prestigious position he is proud to accept, and which means he will spend the majority of his time in London, assisted by the faithful Maureen. But for the still-weak Daphne, Ellen is the only person who matters; she sends her letter after letter, confessing her feelings, trying to describe this coup de foudre, this thunderbolt of love. From her bedroom, she writes: Go right back into the past and see D. du M as a little girl like Flave, very shy, always biting her nails. But never being a little girl. Always being a little boy. And growing up with a boy’s mind and a boy’s heart. Writing to Ellen, she at last admits what she thinks she is: a strange hybrid, a woman with the soul of a boy, an oddity she has never confessed to anyone before, keeping the secret for so many years. To Ellen, she can—she must—tell everything about the being that lives deep inside her: Eric Avon. A boy with nervous hands and a beating heart, incurably romantic, and wanting to throw a cloak before his lady’s feet. At eighteen, this half-breed fell in love, as a boy would, with someone quite twelve years older than himself who was French and had all the understanding in the world, and he loved her in every conceivable way.11 However, there is no question of her wanting to confess any “Venetian”* tendencies to Ellen. By God and by Christ, if anyone should call that sort of love by that unattractive word that begins with “L,” I’d tear their guts out, she makes vehemently clear.
While preparing “Mena” for the New Year festivities, Daphne continues her interminable correspondence with Ellen, watching out for the mailman’s red van with the same impatience she used to wait for letters from her darling Ferdie. Walking through the forest to gather mistletoe and holly branches so she can decorate the house, she is already thinking of the next letter she will write to her: And then the boy realized he had to grow up, and not be a boy any longer, so he turned into a girl, and not an unattractive one at that, and the boy was locked into a box forever. D. du M. wrote her books, and had young men, and later a husband, and children, and a lover, and life was sometimes lovely and sometimes rather sad, but when she found Menabilly and lived in it alone, she opened up the box sometimes, and let the phantom, who was neither girl nor boy but disembodied spirit, dance in the evening when there was no one to see.12
Christmas, this year, is spent with Muriel, Angela, Jeanne, and Aunt Billy, Mo’s sister, plus another Angela, a good friend of Piffy’s, whom everyone calls Shaw, accompanied by their turbulent Pekinese. The Browning children have never believed in Santa Claus; Daphne has always told them the truth, disapproving of those fables children are encouraged to believe, and they recognize the presents under the tree wrapped by their mother, the ones in crumpled paper with lopsided ribbons. During the Christmas dinner, as the guests laugh loudly and Tommy carves the turkey, kicking the dogs out of the room, Daphne thinks about Ellen, who must be celebrating at Barberrys with her husband and children, Madeleine, Pucky, Nelson Junior, and Neltje, and the smile fades on her lips. Is Ellen wearing that black-and-red dress that suits her so well? At the end of the day, when the guests have left, Daphne goes to her bedroom, closes the door, and begins a new letter, looking up continually at the photograph of Ellen that now stands atop her chest of drawers. I pushed the boy back into his box again and avoided you on the boat like the plague. Watching you at Barberrys was very hard to bear. You looked lovelier every day. It just defeated me. I wanted to ride out and fight dragons for you, and bring back the Holy Grail.13 What if, one day, someone were to read these letters, these private missives in which she pours out her heart, strips herself bare? Her husband, or Ellen’s husband? She doesn’t think about it; these pages are a sort of liberation for her, and the more she confides, the lighter she feels, as if the act of telling Ellen everything is a balm for her soul. Daphne lies down, exhausted, and as she dozes, Kits silently joins her in bed and falls asleep beside her. Downstairs, in the empty living room, Tommy looks for another bottle of champagne, but it’s all gone, so he pours himself another gin and tonic, smoking cigarette after cigarette. His bad mood gets the better of him and he starts kicking his presents. Tod and the girls leave him to his rage.
Ellen’s replies arrive in dribs and drabs and reflect their author: gentle, comforting, levelheaded. For six letters sent from Menabilly, only two come from the United States. Ellen explains to Daphne, with infinite tact, that she feels a deep friendship for her, but that this affection could never be transformed into anything else. Daphne is not downcast by Ellen’s gentle rejection because she refuses to recognize it for what it is. Thanks to Ellen, her new “peg,”* she is inspired once more and she begins “to brew” a new novel; she feels herself come alive again, grow stronger, regain her sense of humor, and laugh with her loved ones, especially seven-year-old Kits, who seems to have inherited his grandfather Gerald’s talents for mimicry and mockery. The code words she used with her sisters when she was young are now part of the daily vocabulary of the Browning children, remaining a mystery for guests, who are never able to guess their meanings. And in truth, it is not easy to imagine what is meant by “crumb,”* “royal,”* “waine,”* “honky,”* and “Nanny.”* The c
hildren also know the meaning of “Robert,”* because Daphne, traumatized by her own mother’s silence concerning menstruation, explained it all to them, even Kits.
On January 14, 1948, the verdict of Judge Bright and the jury members on the Rebecca affair is finally delivered: Miss du Maurier did not plagiarize Edwina MacDonald’s Blind Windows. Relief all around, but Daphne has already moved on to something else. In the silence of her room, she writes—for Ellen, and about Ellen. No one will know, though: it will be their secret. Daphne feels as if she is breathing in Ellen’s perfume, L’Aimant from Coty, with its scents of peach, jasmine, rose, and vanilla, a fragrance that suits her perfectly. By February 1948, Daphne has already finished it: a play, September Tide, written in barely two weeks, the story of a widow who falls in love with her daughter’s husband, a young painter. An impossible love. How good it feels to hide herself behind this young man, to adopt Eric Avon’s voice, to reveal in this way her attraction to the dazzling fifty-something woman, the mother of his new wife. Could anyone read between the lines, detect the feelings she has for Ellen-Stella? No, Daphne has covered her tracks too well. The one recognizable element, a source of amusement to her friends and family, is the décor of the living room at Ferryside, faithfully reproduced down to the sounds of foghorns and the backwash and the cries of seagulls. It feels good to write so quickly, with so much pleasure, to embellish a fantasy that will soon be played out onstage, made public, but the true meaning of which will be understood only by Ellen and herself. It is dangerous to be loved and desired by a writer; she went through this with Christopher Puxley, the “peg”* for her French pirate. That story left a bitter aftertaste, not to mention the Puxleys’ torpedoed marriage. Despite the danger of this new “Ellen peg,” she cannot resist the voracity of the desire to write that grips her once again, to the point that the rest of her life seems colorless and bland, and she emerges each evening from her room staggering like a junkie.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ellen is shocked by the advance of her husband’s cancer; the doctors give him only one year to live. He is recovering from a last-chance operation, and Daphne’s letters to her friend are full of tenderness. At Fowey, spring finally arrives, with the hyacinths and rhododendrons in bloom. Angela has a short story collection, Birkinshaw, published by Peter Llewellyn Davies, which vanishes unnoticed; this time, however, she is stung by its lack of success. The only way to battle her disappointment is to start on a new novel, and between two vacations this is what she does. As for Jeanne, she has moved to St. Ives to pursue her artistic career more seriously; she meets the painter Dod Procter there, with whom she embarks on a series of journeys to Africa.
* * *
At Menabilly, next to Gribbin Head, is the hut where Captain Vandeleur lives—a name that might easily have come from one of Daphne’s novels. Flavia claims he looks like a large, cap-wearing toad with bulging eyes. Captain Vandeleur is employed by the Rashleigh family to maintain and watch over the vast domain of Menabilly. He lives alone with his dogs and spends his days wandering the woods, paths, and fields of the farm. His garden includes a beautiful bed of camellias, Daphne’s favorite flower. There are twenty-eight vases to be filled with flowers at Menabilly, one of the few domestic tasks carried out by Lady Browning, and unfortunately there are very few camellias in her part of the property. It is tempting to pilfer a few from Captain Vandeleur, but this involves quite an operation. Kits and Flavia cycle along the path that leads to his hut, to check whether his car is in the garage. If the way is clear, Daphne quickly walks over there, secateurs in her pocket, while the children stand guard. She hastily cuts a few, here and there, from the profusion of white, pink, and red flowers, then hurries back home, followed by her escort. One day, Captain Vandeleur catches her red-handed. While she attempts to conceal the flowers behind her back, embarrassed, he tells her, with gentle irony, Good evening, Lady Browning, how nice to see you. Do please let me know if you would ever like some camellias, as I should be most happy to give you a flower or two.14
Only once did Captain Vandeleur blow his top. Carol Reed came to spend a few days at “Mena.” He was a movie director now. After dinner, Carol made Daphne laugh by announcing, like some juvenile prankster, Let’s have a huge bonfire! That rhododendron bush by your writing hut, you said yourself its height spoils the view of the sea.15 In a rush of enthusiasm, he went off to find paper, kerosene, and matches, followed by the children. After a few minutes, it was all ready, and the bush caught fire in a very cinematic way, a huge orange burst lighting up the night, accompanied by a loud crackling noise. The flames rose up in the dark sky and the nearest neighbors arrived, looking amazed. We thought t’was the blinking house on fire, like in the film Rebecca,16 joked one observer. While everyone was admiring the fire, Captain Vandeleur appeared, followed by his dogs. Upon discovering that the fire had been started by one of Lady Browning’s guests, he seemed wild with rage. You will be hearing from the estate, Lady Browning, and no doubt Dr. Rashleigh,17 he said, furious, as he was leaving. Thankfully for Daphne, she never received any complaints from her landlord regarding Carol’s bonfire. But Captain Vandeleur sulked about it for quite a while.
He is not the only man in a bad mood: there is also Tommy, who takes his work at Clarence House very seriously and finds it exhausting. No one in his office suspects how tired he is, except Maureen, his devoted assistant. Boy Browning, complain? Never! He goes back to his small apartment at Whitelands House every night, alone and depressed, succumbing to one glass of gin, and then another. Little by little, alcohol becomes a pernicious influence in his life, along with cigarettes. Daphne knows this, guesses it; she thinks of her father, who had gone down the same road, and feels powerless. On Friday evenings, Tommy arrives late at Menabilly, having taken the last train from Paddington; he smiles at the idea of returning to the Fanny Rosa and his family, but his joy is short-lived. By Sunday morning, knowing that he must leave again that evening, his face darkens, his stomachache returns, and he locks himself away in his melancholy. The hardest moment, for him, is when he has to pack his suitcase, with his teddy bears that still go everywhere with him. Kits, unwittingly, finds a new nickname for his father. Daphne asks one morning where Tommy is, and Kits replies, In his room, moping.18 Moper. A soubriquet that will stick to him and that he will never be rid of. And yet he and Daphne enjoy some pleasant moments on the Fanny Rosa in that summer of 1948, sailing to Falmouth with Daphne at the helm, and for a few days she has the illusion that they have rediscovered their old closeness. It is a fleeting impression.
The challenge, in the fall of 1948, is to decide who will play Stella Martyn. Every famous actress over forty is in contention: Diana Wynyard, Carol Reed’s delightful ex-wife; Gertrude Lawrence, a close friend of the playwright Noël Coward, fresh from her success in Pygmalion: and the great Shakespearian actresses Fay Compton and Peggy Ashcroft. Daphne is invited to London to meet the casting directors, and Tommy takes advantage of this trip to introduce her to Princess Elizabeth and her husband, moments that she narrates in detail to Ellen in a letter. The princess is sweet, but sort of shy, and the prince a “menace,”* except too fair and pale.19
Fifty-year-old Gertrude Lawrence finally obtains the role. Daphne is not thrilled by this; she thinks her too old, dislikes her dyed hair, her artifice, and, above all, the fact that she is one of those actresses who once belonged to her father’s “stable,” with Daphne in no doubt as to the nature of their relations at the time. Gerald and Gertrude met in 1930, on the set of Lord Camber’s Ladies, produced by Hitchcock, and they played opposite each other in a play by John Van Druten, in London, in 1932. “Gertie,” with her cheeky wit, her fleshy lips, her piercing voice, her Cockney accent, her swearwords, her booming laughter, her dancelike gestures … no, none of this is right for Stella-Ellen, the epitome of class and distinction. However it isn’t Daphne who has the last word, but Irene Hentschel, the play’s director. Daphne attends the first rehearsals, but she is infuriated, ill at ease; sh
e feels as if she is witnessing a travesty of her work. No, that’s not right: Stella would not stand like that; she wouldn’t kiss Evan in that way. Daphne keeps quiet, bites her nails. She is so annoyed that she has to swallow two pills to go to sleep every night.
Breathing in the atmosphere of the theater, however, Daphne realizes that she is in the grip of an unexpected pleasure: reliving the ambience of her childhood, as if she might find her father again amid these dusty, familiar smells of dressing rooms and scenery, while enjoying the company of stage managers and actors, a unique and special world that she has missed. She thinks about Gerald as she watches her characters evolve on the stage, as if he were standing next to her in the wings, observing and joking.
Gertie, a will-o’-the-wisp, has a je ne sais quoi reminiscent of Gerald in the way she clowns around, the way she is always the center of attention, the way she absolutely has to win over everyone she meets, instantly. Gertie is capable of losing her temper over a trifle, flying into a rage, and unleashing a volley of insults, an exhausting and fascinating creature. Daphne knows exactly what makes her tick, because her father was the same—except that he would never have used a swearword. The most unexpected thing is the way Gertie inhabits the character of Stella, takes possession of it, adding her own personal touch, her emotions, and Daphne realizes, to her growing confusion, that Gertie is instinctively appropriating what Daphne tried to capture of Ellen, as if Gertie, on the stage, is channeling Ellen’s personality. How is that possible? The magic of the theater? The talent of the actress? Daphne opens up about it in her letters to Ellen, describing how Gertie, quite unconsciously, puts on an American accent, which makes Daphne miss Ellen even more. Once, she says, it was too much to bear, and Daphne had to leave the theater.