While researching the book, Daphne went out to explore the pastures and farmland around Kilmarth in her little red car, armed with binoculars. I am sure people think that I am a spy, she wrote to Oriel. It’s so childish, really, and so like the games I used to play on Hampstead Heath, when I was a child! On revient toujours à ses premiers amours.*8
Through studying maps and documents, Daphne realized how much the landscape had been transformed in recent centuries. The water level had varied, the courses of streams and rivers changed. To make her hero’s wanderings plausible, she had to attain a perfect knowledge of the medieval topography and to call the villages and hamlets by their old names. Married to a stern, controlling American woman, Dick has trouble making her believe that he is simply working at Magnus’s house. He just can’t stop, Daphne explained to Oriel, and his wife can’t think what is the matter with him, and imagines he is drinking, or has some woman on the side.9
Daphne made progress on her novel, feeling certain that what she was doing was genuinely original. Her research in the parish archives had provided her with precious documentation regarding families from the Middle Ages, with surnames that inspired her: the Champernounes, the Kylmerths, the Bodrugans, and the Carminowes. As she did with The King’s General, Daphne merged history with fiction, with brilliant results. All the themes that most interested her were brought together here: psychology, scientific advances, the weight of history, and her grandfather Kicky’s beloved “dreaming true.” Sheila, her faithful editor, came to see her at Menabilly as Daphne was finishing the novel, in the early summer of 1968. Together, they visited the lands around Kilmarth, Daphne wearing her cap and holding her walking stick. Sheila was impressed by her vigor and the extent of her knowledge. The other unforgettable event of that summer was the famous ceremony in honor of Tommy, in Aldershot, Hampshire, by the Parachute Regiment. Daphne went, accompanied by Tessa, Kits, and Hacker. Three parachutists landed precisely at Daphne’s feet, and one of them presented her with a bronze statuette, of which she would remain very fond.
At the same time, Daphne was visited at “Mena” by her late editor’s widow, Ruth Gollancz, a dignified and perceptive sixty-eight-year-old woman. The two women talked about grief. Daphne wrote to Oriel: Ruth said she understood that thing of feeling out of things, she does find Victor’s friends rather cliff* her. But she is nobly turning to new interests, and goes to lectures and classes, things she never did before, which is wise.10 Exactly what Daphne herself learned to do by leaving Menabilly.
* * *
Daphne at last gets her bearings at Kilmarth in August 1969. She described her handover to the Rashleighs in a letter to Oriel in April: Philip Rashleigh and his mother came to lunch and I showed them all around Mena. Poor Philip, waine* and shaking with nerves, but the little mother rather sweet and frail. Very nice letter from them both afterwards. So it shows it is right to turn the other cheek.11 Now, however, passing the gates of “Mena” is like passing a gravestone, giving her a gloomy, oppressive feeling, and Daphne finds it a relief to get home to the light-filled welcome of Kilmarth.
The House on the Strand is published to great acclaim. Good Housekeeping magazine writes of Daphne: “She’s a virtuoso, she can conjure up tragedy, horror, suspense, the ridiculous, the vain, the romantic.” The New York Times goes even further: “The House on the Strand is prime du Maurier, she holds her characters close to reality, the past she creates is valid, and her skill in finessing the time shifts is enough to make one want to try a little of the brew himself.” The English edition bears a cover illustration by Flavia Tower, which adds to Daphne’s pride, and the book goes straight into the bestseller lists, another satisfaction.
From that first bright summer, Daphne has the impression that Kilmarth is embracing her, softly and compassionately. She begins to love this house. Will she be able to write here? And where will she write? There is no hut, and the little summer cabin will never be warm enough in winter. Difficult to find a spot where she will be able to sit and work when the urge returns. She doesn’t think about this for the moment, however, welcoming her grandchildren in August and remarking ironically to Oriel that the “Zulus,”* the teenagers, do not know what to do with themselves. They have their bikes here, there are plenty of buses at the top of the hill going to Fowey or Saint Austell, but all they ever do is lie on their beds and listen to pop music! A book is never opened, sailing bores them, walking bores them, so one is really rather defeated.12 In the late afternoon, once she is alone, Daphne reclines on an old blanket near the wall, at the bottom of the garden, toward the sea, and she is overcome by a feeling of peace and freedom. Watching a plane move across the blue sky, she feels completely happy for the first time in a long while.
She agrees to an interview in the English magazine The Lady and poses proudly in her new kitchen and in the garden. Each morning, she replies to all the letters she receives on her Adler typewriter. Esther helps her sometimes. Mail comes from all over the world, and Daphne reads and responds to each and every letter. Although she never does book signings or bookshop appearances, she enjoys this contact with her readers. Sometimes, her fans, as she calls them, come to Kilmarth to get a book signed. Esther opens the door to them, and Daphne signs the book inside the house, often without seeing them. It happened at “Mena,” too: her bolder readers, ready to do anything to catch a glimpse of their favorite author, would regularly ring the doorbell. She smiles sometimes, thinking of how the Rashleighs must react, confronted with this flood of unexpected visitors bearing books.
While tidying up her papers after the move, Daphne comes across her private journal, that old black notebook she received as a Christmas present in 1920, and the others, all filled with her cramped handwriting. She takes the time to reread them. So naïve, she writes to Oriel, and in the middle of it I had this awful thing for my cousin Geoffrey, aged thirty-six.13 All the same, reading this journal affects her much more than she admits. A lot of it is devoted to Fernande Yvon and those secret, intense moments they shared between 1925 and 1932. Daphne does not want her family, her friends, never mind her millions of readers, to find out about those pages. For now, she puts the journal away, promising herself she will find a solution to ensure it is not read by anyone for a long time to come.
The year 1970 begins. Daphne feels optimistic: I like the sound of the 7 next to the 0.14 Tessa gets engaged to an elegant man in his forties with lively blue eyes, named David Montgomery, son of the famous “Monty,” General Bernard Montgomery, an army comrade of Tommy’s. Daphne finds him charming, if a little too chatty. Perhaps he is just trying to make a good impression on his future mother-in-law? Their wedding is set for the beginning of the year.
Daphne settles into her new “routes,”* with friends coming over for lunch, including the historian Alfred Leslie Rowse, a St. Austell neighbor. He has a soft spot for her, which provides her with a pleasant distraction. He invites her to his own house in return, but Daphne refuses to leave Kilmarth, prompting him to nickname her Madame Non-Non, a moniker that makes her laugh. She is as close as ever to her sisters and helps both of them financially. She talks to Angela, at Ferryside, every single day on the telephone. Jeanne she sees less often, but they remain in regular contact. She also watches over her aunt Billy, her mother’s sister, who is aged and sick and has recently moved to the region. Daphne helps to find her a house and pays all her medical bills. Behind the wheel of her little red car, Daphne drives at such speeds that her son dubs her “the Niki Lauda of Cornwall.” Her letters to Oriel retain their mordant wit, as with one recounting a morning she spent at the hairdresser’s: I tried on a curling, rather menacing* wig, and God, I looked such a fool! You see, it didn’t go with one’s age and it gave me quite a shock! And then, one of the girls came whisking through and saw me, and I felt such an ass. I bet she said to the others afterwards, “I saw Lady Browning trying on one of the wigs, I wonder if she wants to make herself look younger.”15
It rains constantly throughout Jan
uary and February. When she is asked to contribute to an album celebrating Prince Philip’s fiftieth birthday, Daphne agrees. Her text, “A Winter Afternoon, Kilmarth,” describes a Cornish walk in terrible weather, with massive clouds, driven by some demon force, reminding me of a rather too elaborate production of Macbeth, before evoking her own outfit for braving the elements: Dressed like Tolstoy in his declining years, fur cap with ear flaps, padded jerkin and rubber boots to the knee, I venture forth. Moray, my West Highland terrier, taking one look at the sky, backs swiftly into the porch, but brutally I urge him on.16
Daphne enjoys writing a spirited, funny little essay like this, working on it for several days in a row. She portrays herself, facing the sea, watching the ships trapped in the bay by the raging storm, and tells how she lifted her arm, not in salute, but to protect her eyes from the hail. When she has finally battled through the gusting wind to reach her home, she is greeted by black, foul-smelling smoke. The fire in her hearth has died, and she must spend the rest of the evening wearing sunglasses to prevent her eyes from watering. Going up to her bedroom, followed by her dog, who is terrified by the screaming of the wind outside, Daphne senses that she is unlikely to have the most tranquil of nights. And indeed, as she starts to read the newspaper in bed, an ominous drip … drip … wets her pillow. I look up to the ceiling, and perceive, all complacency gone, that a row of beads, like a very large rosary swinging from a nun’s breast, is forming a chain immediately above my head and fast turning into bubbles.17 The only solution is to risk a hernia by dragging her bed over to a dry corner of the room, watched by the incredulous, half-asleep Moray. And all of this in front of the portrait of Tommy in his military beret, spryly smiling.
Daphne writes the text in the living room, as she has no separate office. Should she work here in the future? It’s not ideal for writing a whole book, and the question is especially urgent as an idea has finally been “brewing”* within her since late March. She wants to write something set in Venice, which left a strong impression on her during her visit with Jeanne five years before. After the comic article, it is once again darkness that draws Daphne in—a terrible darkness to which she submits with rediscovered enthusiasm. It’s rather a nanny* story, very psychic,18 she tells Oriel. And so, sitting in the living room, looking out at sea, with a bouquet of dazzlingly yellow daffodils beside her, Daphne begins writing “Don’t Look Now,” the most terrifying short story she has ever written.
What keeps luring her into such black depths? The more morbid her work becomes, the more she pleasure she takes from it, just like when she was a young girl writing her first stories. With other people she puts on a show of carefree cheerfulness, smiling prettily, laughing infectiously, but in front of her typewriter she mines her inner darkness, the part of her that only ever comes out in her books. She has always made this choice, and she will stick to it. She would rather frighten her readers, give them the shivers, disturb their sleep, than produce something bland, easy, obvious, forgettable.
So she draws on the inspiration provided by the two old ladies in Menabilly’s Southcott cottage, twenty years before, and turns them into sisters, strange witch-like women, one of whom is blind, with milky, horrifying eyes. She invents a couple who have been through a terrible tragedy, the loss of a young daughter to meningitis. And she sets the story in Venice, the hidden Venice, with its crumbling old façades, its damp cul-de-sacs, its black gondolas like coffins. John and Laura thought they could forget the cruel past by coming here, but a chance meeting with the sisters in a restaurant by the lagoon will plunge them into the worst of nightmares. The blind sister has psychic powers, and she manages to convince Laura that she “sees” their daughter. The story ends with a terrifying, spine-chilling climax.
And yet, while her mind is busy with the macabre and the violent, Daphne is also planning a trip to Crete with Kits and Hacker, set for just after her sixty-third birthday in May. She has time to go shopping, as she tells Oriel, for a three-quarter length camel coat and a new shoulder-length bag and to see an optician for a checkup: Nothing wrong with my eyes, what a relief, didn’t even need my glasses changing. It’s so waine* going to the oculists, because they peer so closely into one’s eyes, one dreads having bad breath.19
The vacation in Crete is very welcome after a gray, rainy winter. In the fishing village of Agios Nikolaos, at the Minos Beach Hotel, she is recognized by two English fans—young Martyn and his aunt Bernice. Daphne likes them and invites them to go with her, Kits, and Hacker on a boat the next day to the islet of Spinalonga. Back in Cornwall, she settles down to work again, imagining a short story set in the glorious sunny landscape that she has just left. The title: “Not After Midnight.” Here again, the tale is rather dark, with a plot just as tragic as the one set in Venice. A lonely teacher, on vacation in Crete, is caught in the evil clutches of a shady American couple. The ambiguous denouement leaves her friends and her editor dissatisfied. Shouldn’t she rework it? Doesn’t matter: she is already working on another story, this time about a disastrous trip to Jerusalem made by a group of English tourists, where each one will face grim attonment. The most disturbing of her new stories is probably the one in which a young actress, after the sudden death of her father, is confronted with a particularly sordid truth. Tod, after reading this collection, exclaims: My dear, I didn’t like the first one at all, most unpleasant.20 Not that Daphne minds: she has once again successfully blended the subtle and the sinister, her trademark in the eyes of millions of readers.
On August 17, 1970, Kits and Hacker’s third son is born—Edward, known as Ned. I do love boys!21 Daphne admits to Oriel, and this joyous gaggle of lads—her grandsons, her godson Toby, and Esther’s son—playing cricket on the lawn, begin to inspire her for a future book. Something amusing, for a change, a comic novel. Because it’s true that Daphne is humorous in real life, even if many people don’t realize it due to the horrifying nature of some of her books. Watching the boys make a racket, Daphne smiles, imagining a novel in the style of The Parasites, which she believes was widely misunderstood on its publication in 1949. She feels like taking that risk again, like changing her tune completely. She’s had enough of readers who are still writing to her about Rebecca, thirty years after its publication. She wants to get rid of that damned Mrs. de Winter, once and for all, and let her take Maxim and his silly new wife and that horrible old Mrs. Danvers with her!
* * *
Daphne chooses a large sweater with a pointed collar, in blue, her favorite color. She went to the hairdresser yesterday, and her white hair looks glossy and perfectly styled. No foundation or lipstick, as she suspects the TV people will provide her with a makeup artist who will apply a cloud of powder to her face. She doesn’t change her jewelry, wearing only her wedding ring, the blue-green cameo ring she wears on her right hand, a gold bracelet, and her watch. She is not going to transform herself into someone she’s not, even if the BBC is coming to Kilmarth for the entire day to film the first TV interview of her career. She prefers to stay true to herself. The hook is the recent publication of her short stories, with another illustration by Flavia on the cover, which has been well received by critics and readers alike. In another coup for Daphne, the British movie director Nicolas Roeg has bought the rights to “Don’t Look Now.” Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie have been given the principal roles and the film will be shot in Venice.
Esther has scoured the house from top to bottom, because Daphne has given the team the go-ahead, for the first time, to shoot the inside of her home. Kits encouraged his mother to agree to the interview, and she accepted, asking in return that the channel broadcasts one of her son’s films in the near future. While she waits for the arrival of the journalist—Wilfred De’Ath, a young man of Kits’s age, likable if rather pompous, whose finest hour was interviewing John Lennon, and with whom she already gave a radio interview a few years before—Daphne feels nervous, ill at ease. What a terrible idea, letting these strangers into her home. When she had been fil
med at Menabilly, in the early forties, she had refused to let them inside. But now, she knows, everything is changing in the world of books. An author no longer sells on her name alone; she must be seen, her voice must be heard. How long ago it seems that she told her friend Foy that writers should be read but never seen or heard.
Daphne glances through the window and sees three cars arrive outside the gate. Thankfully, the weather is good, on this day in July 1971. Taking a deep breath, she goes out onto the front steps to greet Wilfred and his team, wondering why on earth there are so many of them. She must learn to forget the big man holding a camera on his shoulder, filming every movement she makes, as she shows them into the house, pointing out Gerald’s walking sticks, Tommy’s arrows, telling Wilfred, I wanted it to look like Menabilly as much as possible. In the living room, a glass of Dubonnet in hand, she tries to act naturally, to blot out the microphone, the lighting, and concentrate on the journalist’s questions. No, I’m not lonely, and the children are always ringing up. I’d be far lonelier if I had to live in London. Her blue eyes are veiled with irony when Wilfred asks her if she thinks she will write many more books after the age of sixty-four, if she is not already past her peak. Obviously, what one writes today isn’t as fresh as it was when I was twenty, one goes through different phases, but I’m not aware of an awful decline or aching bones. She will prove this a little later, when she leads Wilfred along the cliff top at an energetic trot with her Westie Moray. The young journalist lags behind and looks out of breath while she gambols lightly, walking stick in hand.