The first night is set for the end of November 1948 at the New Theatre in Oxford. After that, the play will be performed at the Aldwych Theatre in London, from December 15, with Michael Gough as Evan and Anne Leon in the role of Cherry. Gertie’s American husband, Richard Aldridge, comes from New York for the occasion. All of London rushes to see the play performed at the Aldwych. Queen Mary, Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret go, too, accompanied by Tommy. It is a success, Gertrude Lawrence’s comeback, a triumph. September Tide will be performed for months and will mark the birth of a deep friendship between Gertie and Daphne. Daphne calls her Cinders, after Cinderella, while Gertie calls her Dum, for her initials. During the dinner to celebrate the first night, Michael Gough, the handsome young actor who is playing the part of Stella’s son-in-law—visibly charmed by Lady Browning, as so many people are—asks Daphne how she invents her characters. She replies, with a mischievous smile, Most of my characters are based on real people, only sometimes are they invented out of thin air.20
Thanks to Gertie, Daphne’s desire to go out is rekindled; once again, she enjoys making herself beautiful, having lunch at the Savoy, at the best table, where Gertie flirts outrageously and hilariously with the waiter. Daphne wears a new perfume created by Germaine Cellier, Vent Vert from Balmain, leaving an audacious, green scent in her wake—an avant-garde fragrance described in the press by Colette as having the bittersweet tang of crushed plants. The kind of thing that will please those she-devils of today. Daphne likes to go to Dover for the day with Gertie, to visit Noël Coward, who wrote the hugely famous play Private Lives just for Gertrude, his childhood friend. At White Cliffs, Noël’s spectacular white villa, built into the cliff, Daphne rejoices in the company of actors such as Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, enjoying the sometimes scabrous, mordant, droll conversations. She succumbs to the champagne that flows like water, the wreaths of cigarette smoke, the open-throated laughter, to that sparkling atmosphere that her father was so good at distilling when they lived at Cannon Hall. Swept along on this wave of sociability, she accompanies Tommy to a ball at Buckingham Palace, in a shoulderless lilac dress lent to her by Molyneux, on the astute recommendation of Gertie. Later, in a letter to Ellen, she describes the outfits and fineries glimpsed at the palace.
Daphne’s newfound joy is tempered by the death of Nelson Doubleday, at fifty-nine, on January 11, 1949. It is time now for her to console and comfort her friend, to be present, even if she is distant in a physical sense. Her passion for Ellen is undimmed and as secret as ever; no one knows to what extent Ellen haunts her days and nights. In February 1949, the idea of a novel germinates, and she is able at last to get back to work. First piece of business: leaving her bedroom, which is too noisy, too close to the sounds of slamming doors and footsteps. She moves a table, chair, and typewriter into a rudimentary little cabin at the bottom of the lawn, heated by an oil stove, where she is tranquil. She calls it her hut.
Her novel is personal, inspired by the world of the theater, rediscovered with such glee, and her own family. The title? The Parasites. The family’s name is Delaney: a clan of wealthy, bohemian artists, whose father, Pappy, is a famous opera singer and mother, Mama, a famous dancer. The beautiful Maria (the heir to Gertie’s extravagance), the illegitimate daughter of Pappy and an Austrian actress who died in childbirth, is now a spoiled and idolized actress, married to a rich, kind man. Niall, a composer, is the son of Mama, his father unknown. Celia is the Delaneys’ only legitimate child, and since the death of her mother she has spent most of her time looking after her sick father. Daphne enjoys exploring a new, satirical side to her imagination, and the book’s tone is at once maliciously amusing and languid, slightly weary. Her caustic gaze oversees a series of journeys, hotel rooms, previews, dazzling parties, featuring her egocentric, arrogant characters, but the heart of the book is the emotionally incestuous relationship between Maria and Niall, a theme she already touched on in The Loving Spirit and The Progress of Julius, and which obscures the light of happiness. It is Charles, Maria’s miserable husband, who proffers the truth (a truth that would certainly make Jeanne and Angela du Maurier smile): A parasite. And that’s what you are, the three of you. You always have been and you always will be. Nothing can change you. You are doubly, triply parasitic; first, because you’ve traded ever since childhood on that seed of talent you had the luck to inherit from your fantastic forebears; secondly, because you’ve none of you done a stroke of ordinary honest work in your lives, but batten upon us, the fool public who allow you to exist; and thirdly, because you prey upon each other, the three of you, living in a world of fantasy which you have created for yourselves and which bears no relation to anything in heaven or on earth.
Finishing the novel several months later, Daphne suspects that it will disconcert readers, who risk being unsettled by that new tone, half-cruel, half-disillusioned, never mind the three main characters, wallowing in a selfishness that, although comic, is utterly reprehensible—and very difficult to identify with. Another pitfall is the book’s structure, which is ambitious to the point of being confusing, with the narration moving between “I” and “we,” as if Niall, Celia, and Maria were speaking together, and it is sometimes hard for the reader to work out who is narrating. Angela is enthusiastic, convinced that Gerald would have loved it, while Gertie already sees herself playing the role of Maria, and Victor seems thrilled. He is banking on a first print run of one hundred thousand copies.
When The Parasites is published, in the fall of 1949, Daphne discovers she was right to beware the book’s critical reception—dingy, according to her. In the Daily Herald, the famous poet and literary columnist John Betjeman shoots down the novel almost angrily, reproaching Daphne for her “heavy, dull and obvious sentences,” written only “to titillate the public and secure sales.” Victor sends him a stinging letter in defense of the novel and its author, the first time he has done such a thing in twenty-seven years as a publisher. There is one pleasant surprise, however: Ivor Brown, another eminent journalist, writes in the New York Times Book Review that the book is “magnetic” and wonders why so many of his fellow critics persist in scorning Daphne du Maurier’s work for being “so wickedly readable.”
Daphne has developed thick skin, and she no longer lets the book’s reception affect her, accepting that it will not be a great success and instead concentrating on an event that overwhelms her as a mother: the departure of eight-and-a-half-year-old Kits for his first boarding school, West Downs, in Hampshire. No matter how she tries to reason with herself, to get a grip on her emotions, she remains inconsolable after her beloved son has gone. Her reddened eyes draw the sarcasm of Angela, there to eat lunch. Pull yourself together for a start, Bing!21 she tells her sister, in an irritated tone.
Flavia, age twelve, finds herself alone at Menabilly. Tod gives her lessons every morning, and in the afternoons she goes walking with her mother for a few hours. What a privilege, having her mummy all to herself! They are accompanied by Mouse, Daphne’s new Westie, and even when it rains they walk along the beach to the Gribbin, dressed in rubber boots, sweaters, and oilskins. Daphne grows closer to her daughters, whose very different personalities she enjoys. In the letters she sends each week from her boarding school, and which begin with My darling Bing, Tessa writes openly and humorously to her mother, signing off With all my love, from your little pup.22
Soon after Kits’s departure, Daphne joins Ellen in Paris, in September 1949, for a long-planned trip to Italy, just the two of them. Ellen had postponed this journey on numerous occasions, as if she doubted her friend’s motivations. The week proves hurtful and sad for Daphne, with Ellen calmly but firmly putting things straight on the very first night: no, there is no possible “Venice”* between herself and Daphne. At last Daphne admits, to her pain, that the fervor she feels for Ellen—a mix of hope, delusion, and idolatry—will never be reciprocated. Prey to a bitter melancholy, Daphne watches Mrs. Doubleday walk so elegantly through the Tuscan light, and the
idea of a novel comes surreptitiously to her mind. The story of a beautiful and irreproachable widow around whom floats an obscure aura, a barely visible cloud beneath the veneer of perfection. Angel or demon? Manipulator? Victim? Executioner? Daphne scrawls a few lines in Kicky’s favorite notebook, which she takes everywhere with her. It is hard for her to distance herself from this romantic disappointment. Writing will help. When she returns to Menabilly, she is cheered by Gertie’s joyful, almost childish postcards from Florida, begging her to come and visit. Not that this prevents her sending a few vicious, resentful letters to Ellen, which she will later describe, when apologizing to her friend, as her gin & brandy letters. Thankfully, Ellen retains her sangfroid and is not angry with Daphne for very long.
It is once again Ellen, unattainable, inaccessible, who provides the driving force for her new novel, though still no one suspects a thing. The whole complex range of her feelings for Ellen is at work here: her gratitude, her passion, but also her bitterness; everything she has experienced since that day of enchantment on the Queen Mary in November 1947, three years ago already, and also the bereavement she is attempting to go through for this impossible love. By writing about the “Ellen peg”* perhaps she will be able at last to get it out of her system, to drain it, to vanquish it forever?
So, that trip to the United States … Why not? To feel the sun on her face again, and the warm welcome of husband-less Gertie, who is waiting for her there. Tommy is busy with his duties in London, Tessa and Kits are at boarding school, and Flavia is being chaperoned at “Mena” by Tod. The way is clear. Struggling against her fear of flying, Daphne takes the airplane during this cool early spring of 1950, landing in the tropical mildness of Florida. She discovers, to her amazement, the white beaches of Naples, the fine sand, the long pier stretching out into the blue-green water, so warm compared to the English Channel. Gertie is as puckish and bewitching as ever. Impossible to resist her pranks, her humor; being with “Cinders” is like rediscovering her youth, sharing the same teasing camaraderie she once shared with Carol, the jokes, the complicity, the giggles that Daphne so desperately needs. Gertie, fifty-two? Impossible. She is youth personified, and her irreverence, her wit, her charm remind Daphne so much of Gerald. As for Daphne, she no longer feels forty-three; she is Eric Avon once again, the perpetual adolescent who runs along the beach, hair blowing in the wind. Eric Avon admires Gertie’s sinuous figure, finds her beautiful, takes her hand. He could never take Ellen’s hand; she always pushed him away, gently but firmly. At sunset, Eric Avon savors a Sea Breeze on the terrace. His pale thigh rubs against Gertie’s tanned thigh. He laughs at her jokes, succumbs to her generous warmth, to her ocean-salty kisses. Life is offering him a brief interlude of happiness, pleasure, and sensuality, so why not take it? In this sunny refuge, there is no one to judge Eric Avon, no one to reprimand him, to order him back to his box, to lock him in and throw away the key.
* * *
At “Mena,” during her daily walks in the woods with Flavia and Mouse, Daphne makes a discovery: an old granite monument, engraved with the Rashleigh family’s coat of arms, hidden behind thick vegetation. Daphne crouches down and, with her daughter’s help, pulls the leaves from the crumbling stone. It will be perfect for Daphne’s new hero, Philip; here, he will sit down and daydream, alone beneath the trees, with only birdsong for company. Once again, Menabilly is the setting of a novel. Though never named, it is the manor that belongs to Ambroise Ashley, whose surname recalls that of the Rashleighs. For this tenth novel, Eric Avon writes in the first person, as with I’ll Never Be Young Again, this time in the person of Philip Ashley, the narrator, a twenty-three-year-old orphan, Ambroise’s nephew.
Each morning, Daphne goes to her hut, emerging three hours later, when Tod rings the bell, to eat a quick lunch, then working again until 7:00 pm. An oil lamp illuminates her desk, and to keep warm she wraps a blanket around her knees, as she used to do at Ferryside when she was writing The Loving Spirit. On her desk is a dictionary (rarely consulted, as it annoys her to have to break the flow of words so she can open it), a Thermos of coffee, and some Fox’s Glacier Mints, her favorite candy. Sometimes her fingers freeze on the Underwood and she stares vacantly through the little window. She recalls her Floridian escapade, feels the sun on her skin again, tastes Gertie’s secret kisses. Then she thinks about the ascendancy Ellen has over her, against which she must fight. Her only weapons are words on paper, her only strategy to construct a novel around Ellen’s influence in order to destroy it.
As with Rebecca, the story that is taking shape explores jealousy and obsession, but considered from a man’s point of view. Daphne describes this new book in a letter to Fernande as rather sinister and a bit creepy, and you will never really know whether the woman is an angel or a devil.23 The woman in question is Rachel, a petite brunette in her forties, with large hazel eyes, a distant cousin of both Ambroise and Philip Ashley, and the widow of a Florentine count. In a notebook, Daphne makes a detailed plan, and then the opening pages come to her suddenly. What she wants is a disturbing atmosphere similar to those of Jamaica Inn and Rebecca, an atmosphere lacking in her most recent novels. A return to the nineteenth century, to horse-drawn carriages, crinolines, and redingotes. Rachel has none of Rebecca de Winter’s fatal, flamboyant beauty. She is gentle, reserved, covered by a mantle of class and distinction, a woman who never raises her voice and is, at first sight, unremarkable. But beware. Rachel is the kind of woman for whom a man might do anything. A woman to make you lose your head.
Another Philip disturbs Daphne’s concentration in April 1950: the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Elizabeth’s husband, invited to Menabilly by Tommy. Prince Philip will only spend one night there, but the family is thrown into a panic by this princely visit and the house is cleaned from top to bottom for the man Daphne nicknames P.P. The blue room, “Blue Lady,” the best in the house, is reserved for the prince (despite it being haunted, though no one has ever seen the ghost), and his valet will sleep in Tommy’s walk-in closet, close by. The bodyguard won’t be far away either, in the bedroom known as “Little Arthur,” also haunted, according to Flavia, by the noisy ghost of a little Rashleigh, who died at the age of seven within those walls. Daphne asks her young housekeeper to make sure that everything is impeccable in the prince’s room. The housekeeper replies with a smile that she doesn’t see why Lady Browning is making such a fuss: the prince is a human being, like any other. Infected by the general fluster, and mocked for it by Tod, Tommy starts polishing everything he sees. He decants port left, right, and center, while Daphne laments that there are only four presentable knives and the candelabra must be repaired. At the last minute, new wineglasses are bought and the children ordered to tidy their rooms, while Daphne agonizes over what to wear: Oh, Duck, do you think I have to put a skirt on?24 She feels like Maxim de Winter’s second wife, gauche, timid, and incapable, and makes her children laugh by telling them that she is bound to trip over while shaking the prince’s hand or spill her cup of tea.
When it comes to setting the table for their very important guest, Tommy is unable to remember in which order the little and large forks should be put and he loses patience. Everything was going so well, with new place mats and candlesticks, and the salt and pepper cellars polished to such a sheen that you can admire your reflection in them, but this thing with the forks makes him click his tongue (bad sign), gnash his teeth, then go red: Christ, why haven’t we got a butler? Why is everyone so bloody hopeless in this house? You two get the hell out of here!25 This last remark is addressed to Flavia and Kits, back at “Mena” for their school holidays. Tod makes a comment on how tables are set in France, which only serves to stir up Tommy’s wrath. What the bloody hell have the bloody French got to do with it? Silly arse!26 With this, Tod, incensed, goes up to her rooms. Daphne, as usual, does not deign to get involved with household preparations. Ignoring the conflicts around her, she concentrates only on arranging flowers in the house’s twenty-eight vases. P.P. is due to arri
ve around 4:00 pm, and after a moment of hesitation—should they stand in front of the gates in order to salute the royal Daimler as soon as it comes into sight?—the family ends up waiting outside the front door. Daphne and Flavia curtsey, while numerous suitcases are taken from the trunk of the car. P.P. is thirty years old, very tall and cheerful. The valet seems taken aback that there are no servants to carry the luggage, so the bodyguard takes care of this. Later, the prince greedily eats the dinner prepared by Mrs. Burt, the gardener’s wife. Daphne has finally swapped her usual pair of trousers for a very elegant dress that used to be Ellen’s. The next morning, Tommy gets up at the crack of dawn to set the breakfast table himself. When the prince leaves that morning, the children accompany the Daimler to the gates on their bicycles and P.P. gives them a big smile and a wave of farewell.
With Prince Philip finally gone, Daphne is able to get back to her own Philip, a tall, lanky, charismatic, dark-haired man, behind whom she is delighted to hide, taking more pleasure in the writing than she did when incarnating the immature and egocentric Dick. It is impossible not to become attached to Philip, not to be moved by his urges, his stubbornness, his loyalty, not to feel as outraged as he does when he learns one morning that his dear uncle Ambroise, the man who has looked after him since the death of his parents, is, at over fifty years old, going to marry a distant cousin encountered during a trip to Florence. Ambroise, an inveterate bachelor, marrying a perfect stranger? Incredible! And yet this is, horribly, the truth. But what most disturbs Philip are the vague, muddled letters Ambroise writes to him from Tuscany, letters that portend the worst. When Ambroise dies suddenly and inexplicably in Italy, Philip ponders the matter fearfully. Who really is this cousin Rachel? There is only one way to find out. He must confront his uncle’s widow. He must go to Florence right away.