Daphne watches the waves crash against the cliff. She opens the window, breathes in the salty sea air. That makes her feel better, for a few moments. But the pain returns, throbbing. A novelist who can no longer write is a being without life. One of the walking dead.
Daphne’s gaze wanders over to the medications on her bedside table. In her last letter to Oriel, in January, she wrote, hypocritically: Otherwise feel OK, and sleeping well, with Mogadon tablets.40
It only takes a second. A few Mogadon pills in the hollow of her palm, which easily finds its way to her mouth. A mouthful of water, and it’s over. She lies on the bed and waits. But instead of calming her, this action sends her into a panic. She feels like she’s suffocating, gets to her feet, paces the room. She hears the front door bang, Esther’s quick footsteps back from buying groceries. Daphne goes out to the top of the stairs, calls her housekeeper’s name. She’s done something stupid. They must call the doctor, right away. In her ears she hears the muffled thud of her heartbeat. Before her eyes, a thick fog blots out all light.
* * *
Every evening, after her tea, she rolls the little rubber ball along the living room floor for her dogs. Again and again, she watches Mac and Kenzie rush over to bring it back to her. In the background, her favorite songs are playing on a tape made by Kits: “Stardust” by Nat King Cole, “For the Good Times” by Perry Como, “Nice and Easy” by Frank Sinatra. The music does her good. Always those damned pills to take every morning, noon, and evening, and those damned nurses always there, watching her. She doesn’t want to talk to them, has nothing to say to them. She hides behind her newspaper, turns the volume up on the television, pretends she’s alone.
The fog is still there. It spreads around her, soft and oppressive. One night, she doesn’t remember when, Esther invites a famous television presenter whom she likes, Val Doonican, to Kilmarth. He’s passing through on his way to Fowey. Daphne never misses his appearances on TV. It makes her smile to see him in real life. Then she forgets. She forgets everything. Her memory is a jigsaw puzzle, with pieces missing. They vanished in the fog. It ate them, one by one, and slyly, it is now eating her, from inside. The only way to stop it, to defend herself against the encroaching fog, is to create new “routes.”* Each morning she decides on her plan for the day, and sticks to it, come what may. Her schedule doesn’t vary much. Every day, she goes for a walk on the beach at Par. On Mondays, she walks to Menabilly. The next day, she visits a neighbor, Mary Varcoe. On Saturdays, she goes to see Angela at Ferryside. All of this at the set time, accompanied by a nurse. If a TV program finishes after 10:30, Daphne turns it off anyway. Who cares what happens next? Crosswords kill time, which is good. The sofa cushions have to be placed in a certain order. Often, Daphne gets angry. Nothing is going right. If her “routes”* are not respected by other people, if her meal is more than five minutes late, she screams, has a tantrum. Everything makes her furious. She is given more pills to calm her down, and the fog grows thicker. Sometimes she wants to fight against it. She hates it. It stops her remembering. It has destroyed everything, sucked it all up. But at other moments, she succumbs to the fog like a drug, so she can have peace, not have to speak anymore, not have to respond.
On good days, when Daphne feels in top form, she peppers Oriel with questions, eager to take control of her memories again. Tell me, did I write Gone with the Wind, or was it someone else?41 Daphne notes down what she has forgotten on sheets of paper, trying desperately to remember. When she succeeds, a rare joy lights up her face. Her favorite moment, the only one that gives her any pleasure in these long, awful days, is the glass of whiskey she is allowed each evening. No more cigarettes; she stopped smoking a while back. The fog lifts during that moment, her head feels less empty. She likes to evoke the past, little by little. One evening, Oriel asks her if she misses writing. Daphne shrugs, looking glum, and says that she doesn’t miss anything anymore.
The only place where Daphne feels good is in her little basement chapel. She likes the smell of damp and mold down there. She kneels down, closes her eyes. God? Prayers? Not really, just the serenity of old walls, an unexplained and comforting mystic presence, as if someone is embracing her. Tenderness … it seems so long ago. She no longer knows how it feels. To give it, or to receive it. And love? Love is so distant. Passion, kisses, all that was in another life. When her family comes to visit her, it makes her happy, but not in the same, jolly way it used to. She remains taciturn in their company, leaves the table in the middle of a meal. Even Angela finds that conversations with Daphne lack liveliness now.
She approves of one of her nurses more than the others. Margaret. She enjoys conversations with her. With Margaret, she doesn’t coldly order her to put another log on the fire or to make her bed. Margaret is from Yorkshire, and she is a fan of the Brontë sisters’ novels. The fog has taken all Daphne’s books, but not Wuthering Heights, which she is able to discuss in detail with the young nurse. One evening, after playing ball with the dogs, Margaret starts dancing to Nat King Cole’s “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.” Daphne admires her, astonished, then suddenly she gets to her feet, too, so thin and frail, and she begins to turn around, swept along by the music, a smile on her lips. She had forgotten what a pleasure it is to dance. She abandons herself to it now, happily, but a few days later she tells Margaret that she doesn’t want to dance anymore. Ever.
The fog is voracious. It has gobbled up all her memories. Now it takes possession of time, stretching and condensing it at will, leaving her disoriented. The weeks and months blur together, as bland as one another. Daphne abhors that blandness, but there is nothing she can do about it. The years slide past and she doesn’t even see them, just wearily succumbs to the passing of time. Her dog Mac dies, and her sorrow deepens. With Esther, she goes to visit Tod, now ninety-five, in a nearby retirement home. Tod is thrilled to see her, but Daphne doesn’t open her mouth. She stays only twenty minutes. Inside her, everything is turning dull. No matter how rigid the “routes”* that structure her days, Daphne is losing her taste for life. If this is what life is, she’s had enough of it. No more appetite, no more urges, no more desire. No more books either, even if one last anthology of old short stories is published by Gollancz in July 1987. Her walks on the beach at Par grow shorter and shorter. For a long time, Daphne put on a brave face with Kits, managing to laugh with him, as she did before, but now, she can’t pretend anymore. She’s had enough of pretending. She wants the curtain to fall. She wants to bow out.
* * *
Don’t eat anymore. It’s as simple as that. Hide her food without them knowing, in her napkin, in the pages of a book. Give bits of food to the dog, on the sly, all of this right under the noses of her nurses, Esther, her daughters. Chew it up, keep it in her mouth, then spit it back into her hand, into a handkerchief, into a cup, as soon as their backs are turned. No one suspects a thing. The fog has won. It encloses her in its impenetrable cloak, and Daphne can see nothing but that thick gray mist. The weight falls off her. She’s just skin and bones now, wrapped up in sweaters because she is always cold. The nurses want to force-feed her, give her small snacks, but Daphne keeps her mouth firmly shut and shakes her head. They try to trick her, to threaten her: no more whiskey for Lady Browning tonight if she doesn’t finish her meal. But Daphne has made her secret decision. She will not eat anymore.
In the spring of 1989, aged eighty-one, Daphne stands on the bathroom scales and the nurses see that she weighs only eighty-four pounds. Her eyes have lost their sparkle; her smile has vanished. Does she know the effect she is having on her loved ones? Sometimes, from her bedroom, she will see Flavia’s car, motionless on the path in front of Kilmarth’s gates. Her daughter, hands gripping the wheel, petrified. What is she doing? Daphne doesn’t realize that she is working up the courage to face the skeletal ghost that her mother has become. One morning, Margaret, the kind nurse, comes back. What is she doing there? Daphne does not know, either, that her friends and family called the nurse o
ut of desperation, hoping that her presence would do some good to Lady Browning, whose emaciated appearance appalls everyone around her. Margaret does calm her down, but Daphne still won’t eat.
On Sunday, April 16, Daphne asks Margaret to take her in the car to the beach at Pridmouth. This request comes as a surprise—Margaret knows how obsessive Daphne is about her rituals—but she obeys, in spite of the rain. Slowly, holding tightly to the young nurse’s arm, wrapped up in a winter coat, Daphne walks down to the beach and looks out at sea for a long time, without a word, shivering in the cold wind and rain. She observes the waves, the remains of the Romanie, still there after fifty-nine years. Suddenly her voice rises up over the whisper of the waves, a remarkably strong voice coming from that feeble, fleshless body. She would like to go to Menabilly now, at once. Margaret can hardly believe it. On a Sunday? Menabilly is her Monday outing. But Lady Browning is so determined that she doesn’t dare refuse her. Slowly, they walk back to the car, then Margaret drives along the long, winding driveway that leads to the manor house. Still leaning on Margaret’s arm, Daphne walks across the lawn outside the house, then to the place where they scattered Tommy’s ashes. Her face is impassive. Impossible to tell what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling. The rain has stopped and a ray of sunlight caresses the façade of “Mena.” Margaret feels Daphne’s hand trembling under her sleeve. Back at Kilmarth, Daphne does not speak again, except to make a phone call to Oriel, as she does every Sunday evening, at 7:15 pm precisely. The conversation lasts a little longer than usual, and Daphne’s voice sounds assured, almost normal. When will Oriel come to see her? In ten days, her friend promises.
The next day, Monday April 17, there is another unexpected demand from Daphne: she wants to go see Angela at Ferryside, right away, whereas this is normally something she does on Saturdays. Margaret complies, troubled. The steep staircase at Ferryside is difficult to climb. Daphne takes it slowly, carefully, still with that same extreme determination. A kiss on her sister’s cheek, a few words, and the visit is over. In the middle of the afternoon, Daphne calls Oriel again. Her friend is startled to hear from her. They have talked only on Sunday evenings for years now. Oriel asks her if everything is all right. Yes, I just wanted to speak to you. Oriel senses that something unprecedented is happening and tries to reassure her by repeating that she will be there soon. Daphne nods, then pronounces this strange phrase: Are you writing? You must, it’s the only way! And before saying good-bye, Daphne whispers, I went down to the chapel today, and I said a prayer for you.42
On Tuesday April 18, around 10:00 pm, Daphne climbs slowly upstairs to her bedroom. Margaret helps her get ready for bed, then withdraws. Lying in her bed, Daphne closes her eyes, listens to the distant murmur of the sea, the sea she so often described in her books, and which is singing her to sleep now. The night stretches out in front of her, long and dreaded, despite the Mogadon that makes her feel sluggish. And yet she has done it, what she wanted to do, these past few days: she has said good-bye to the places she loved, to her dear sister. Eyes shut, Daphne sees herself again at “Mena,” walking from room to room, and the woman who is reflected in the windows, in the mirrors, is herself at forty, the mistress of Menabilly, self-assured, swaggering, the writer who has inspired the whole world, who has sold millions of books, invisible but famous, the writer who will be eternal, because of one novel in particular. On Sunday, when Daphne went to the beach, in the drizzle, it was Rebecca she saw in front of her, black hair blowing in the wind, dressed in her trench coat, a handkerchief embroidered with the intertwined initials R de W stuffed in the bottom of her pocket, its fabric stained with red lipstick, perfumed by her azalea scent. When Daphne had gone in the car with Margaret up the long driveway to “Mena” it was once again Rebecca who opened the gates of Manderley to them, with that triumphant smile that Maxim, her husband, so feared. Rebecca is the one to blame for all those critics who haven’t taken her seriously for the last fifty years, because she sold too many books, because they saw her as a storyteller rather than a writer. It is Rebecca’s fault that she was labeled with all those adjectives she hated: “romantic,” “Gothic,” “sentimental.” One would think they had never read any of her books, that they knew nothing about the darkness of her fictional world. But can she really hold it against that paper heroine who brought her so many readers, such glory? Perhaps the time has come for her to make her peace with Rebecca de Winter.
Through her closed eyelids, Daphne discerns the grounds of Menabilly in the spring, when the rhododendrons dazzle the surrounding greenery with their incandescence. The children are playing on the lawn, Tod is ringing the bell for lunch, and Tommy, at ease, cigarette between his lips, is looking up at the swallows flying above the treetops. It is good to see herself as a young woman again, beautiful, smiling, to feel the sunlight on her skin, to inhale the wooded smells of Menabilly’s grounds. The dreamer is all-powerful; her gaze is a colored kaleidoscope that snubs the present: that poor body stretched out on the sheets, that clinging fog that has been suffocating her for the last ten years. The long black ribbon comes loose, releasing her bound hands. The images rush past: her hut, her typewriter, her own fingers moving rapidly over the keys, the blank page filling with words. It is impossible to imprison a dreamer, because a dreamer can walk through walls, unlock doors, cast aside the weight of the years. The dreamer can do anything—Kicky whispered it to her. The dreamer is free.
QUOTES UPON THE DEATH OF DAPHNE DU MAURIER
Dame Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, died in her sleep at her home in Cornwall, aged 81.
—DAILY TELEGRAPH, APRIL 20, 1989
The death of a grand dame of popular literature.
—FIGARO, APRIL 20, 1989
The gentle romantic dies at the age of 81.
—DAILY MAIL, APRIL 20, 1989
Rebecca is the profound and fascinating study of an obsessive personality, of sexual dominance, of human identity and the liberation of the hidden self.
—THE INDEPENDENT, APRIL 21, 1989
Dame Daphne wrote 29 books, mainly historical romances.
—DAILY TELEGRAPH, APRIL 20, 1989
Skillful purveyor of romance and melodrama.
—THE TIMES, APRIL 20, 1989
Read all over the world after the 1938 publication of Rebecca, whose enormous success (30 million copies!) put her in the same league as Agatha Christie and Barbara Cartland, the queens of, respectively, suspense and romance.
—FRANCE-SOIR, APRIL 20 1989
Daphne du Maurier, string of bestsellers.
—THE FINANCIAL TIMES, APRIL 20, 1989
Daphne du Maurier, 81, Author of Many Gothic Romances, Dies
—NEW YORK TIMES, APRIL 20, 1989
Daphne du Maurier did not understand why she was seen as a romantic novelist. (…) Her prose wasn’t exactly purple, anyway. In fact, her prose didn’t really matter. What mattered was her sense of adventure and atmosphere.
—LIBÉRATION, APRIL 20, 1989
Miss du Maurier for most of her life, fought an unsuccessful battle to keep her from being branded a Grand Dame of romance.
—LOS ANGELES TIMES, APRIL 20, 1989
Muriel du Maurier and her three daughters, Angela, Jeanne, and, to the right, Daphne. 1912, London.
Ferryside, the house Gerald du Maurier bought in Fowey, Cornwall, in 1926. Today, Daphne’s son, Christian Browning, lives there with his family.
Daphne and her dog, Bingo, at Fowey, in 1930.
In 1940, Alfred Hitchcock adapted Rebecca to the screen, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine. Judith Anderson (on the right) played Mrs. Danvers. The film, like the book, had a worldwide success.
Daphne and her three children, Tessa, Flavia, and Kits, in front of Menabilly in 1945.
Daphne and her husband, Sir Frederick Browning, at Menabilly in 1944.
In 1944, Daphne on the beach at Pridmouth, in front of the wreck of the Romanie.
Daphne poses on the grand staircase at M
enabilly, beneath the portrait of her father, Gerald. Late 1940s.
Daphne at Menabilly with Kits, Flavia, and Tessa.
Picnic on the beach at Pridmouth, with Kits and Flavia, in 1944.
Daphne photographed outside the Federal Court Building in New York City, 1947, during the Rebecca plagiarism case.
Daphne at 70, in 1977.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would never have been written had not Gérard de Cortanze suggested it to me, more than ten years ago. I would like to thank him for his obstinacy and his patience. My thanks to my French editor, Héloïse d’Ormesson, and to Francis Esménard, at Albin Michel. My thanks to Daphne du Maurier’s three children, Tessa Montgomery, Flavia Leng, and Kits Browning. My thanks to Ned Browning, her grandson. For their feedback, I would like to thank Arnaud Guillon, Julia Harris-Voss, Sarah Hirsch, Nicolas Jolly, Didier Le Fur, Laure du Pavillon, Catherine Rambaud, Chantal Remy, and Stella de Rosnay.