In every season, there are crowds at Cannon Hall on Sundays, a parade of elegant men and women, actors and actresses, producers and directors. It is difficult to be alone so she can read, can daydream, even in such a big house. Dinner on Christmas Eve is a sumptuous affair, more festive than religious, with eighteen people seated at the table in the vast first-floor dining room, wrapped gifts left on every chair, a magician who performs after the meal, and games of chance—roulette, Ludo—to end the evening. There is a succession of dishes, each more delicious than the last, then Muriel, standing straight-backed in her pretty party dress, cuts the twenty-five-pound turkey with such speed and skill that the guests always feel obligated to applaud.
Amid the opulence of the presents, there is one for Daphne that will prove especially important. You wouldn’t guess it, though, to look at it. It is a simple notebook, long and black, containing fifty or so pages. A private journal.
To write. To dream true. To escape into her own world, her own personal Neverland. Peter Pan holds out his hand. Kicky urges her on. A pencil. Silence. The table in her bedroom, on the third floor. The view over the Heath. The closed door. Begin with the date …
January 1, 1920. Her age: twelve and a half. New Year’s Day. I oversleep myself. We go for a long walk in the morning and stay indoors in the afternoon. It’s my teddy-bear’s birthday. I give a party for her. Angela is very annoying. Jeanne and I box, and then I pretend I am a midshipman hunting slaves. Daddy says I have a stoop. I begin to read a book called With Allenby in Palestine. (very good).4
She does not reread it. What’s the point? No one will read it. It is a private journal, after all.
January 7th. We give a dance. It is from 7 to 11. We have great fun. There are lovely refreshments. I only have to dance with two girls, all the rest, I dance with boys. Marcus Stedall is very nice. I believe he is gone on me.5
From now on, Daphne wanders around the house with a pencil behind her ear, the journal under her arm. If anyone asks her why she has that suspicious look on her face, she replies unblinkingly that she is writing. And what is she writing? That is none of their business. She writes that she is going to dance, that she adores the fox-trot, that she has a best friend, Doodie, that she plays cricket, that she is crazy about the theater. She admits that Dr. Playfair (who spends his life at Cannon Hall, dedicating himself to eliminating even the slightest health concern for the du Maurier girls) has told her to stop biting her fingernails: she has hurt her thumb, and she must wear a sort of poultice. This makes it impossible for her to write. Well, almost impossible. She relates that one rainy day in November she went for a walk alone in Hampstead, and that when she got home she began to write something other than her journal, in a pretty Italian notebook edged with green ribbon.
After four years of service with the du Maurier family, Maud Waddell leaves to educate the children of a sultan in Istanbul. Her departure greatly saddens Daphne, who sends letter after letter to her one and only confidante—she announces proudly that she has finished writing a book and the name of her hero is Maurice—and Tod replies every week. Since the loss of her governess, writing has become her favorite pastime, along with reading, but despite the arrival of a new governess, she still feels lonely. Miss Vigo is a pleasant person and an excellent tutor, but she will never replace Tod in Daphne’s heart. The title of her book is The Searchers. She describes the story in detail to Tod. Maurice’s father is dead, and his mother is still in love with her first boyfriend, Tommy. Each day, Maurice walks alone, barefoot, by a lake, far from any city with its noisy traffic, he listens to the wind, observes the waves that break on the sand. The more desolate, windy, and rainy a landscape is, the more he likes it. One day, Maurice gets lost during a hike and he is taken in by a pipe-smoking man with brown, sparkling eyes, a strange, capricious character, at once a friend and an enemy, a storyteller with a fertile imagination, capable of great irony. Daphne considers him a cross between Uncle Jim and Gerald, and this makes Tod smile, because she thinks secretly that Maurice resembles Daphne. At the end of the story, we discover that this man is none other than the famous Tommy, the former lover of Maurice’s mother.
Tod’s letters are affectionate and encouraging. What would Daphne do without the support of this correspondence? Solitude grips her, gnaws at her. She mopes about, thinking how unfair it is: she has no reason to be sad; she is a young, funny girl. She likes to laugh, like her father, laugh about anything, stupid things, silly things, but it seems to her that other people know how to live better than she does: Angela takes acting and singing classes, while Jeanne is passionate about painting, piano, and tennis. What does Daphne have? Words, and that magical, enchanting world where she locks herself away, day after day.
* * *
May 13, 1921. Today is Daphne’s birthday. She is fourteen. Not yet a woman, but no longer a little girl. She is given a nice party, a celebratory meal in an upmarket London restaurant, lots of presents. And then, seven days later, seven days after the sweetness of these shared moments, while the sun shines down on Cannon Hall, tragedy strikes. Daphne has gone to greet her parents in their bedroom, as she does every morning. Her father looks appalled, her mother weeps softly. It’s Michael, the fourth of the five Llewelyn Davies cousins. He is dead. He was only twenty. Daphne doesn’t understand. Dead? How did he die? Uncle Jim came to see Gerald in his dressing room at Wyndham’s Theatre late last night, to bring him this terrible news. Michael drowned. Drowned in a reservoir, in Sandford, near Oxford University, where he was a student. Twenty years old. To die at twenty. There’s no war anymore. His older brother George was already killed in combat. How is it possible that a second Llewelyn Davies should die so young?
Of her adored, cherished, divinely handsome cousins, Michael was the most handsome of all, the one she had dreamed of kissing, Uncle Jim’s favorite, a beautiful boy, with his oval face, his smooth black hair, his dark eyes. But how did he die? What happened? He was swimming with a friend, Rupert, who also drowned. One tried to save the other. Daphne does not understand. In a state of shock, she imagines the scene: she sees the wide expanse of water, the two young men in bathing suits, their lifeless bodies. Later, when she is going up to her room, she hears the discreet whispering of the servants and pricks up her ears. Apparently, they died in each other’s arms, clasped together. She doesn’t know what to make of this. Who can she talk to about it? The only thing she knows is that Michael has gone forever, he has gone to join Peter Pan in a magical lagoon peopled with mermaids, Indians, and pirates, he is flying with Peter and Tinker Bell, for eternity.
A few days after the funeral, during a walk in town with her sisters and Miss Vigo, Daphne gives them the slip and runs down Heath Street until she reaches the little green cemetery on Church Row where her cousin lies, alongside his brother George, his parents, Sylvia and Andrew, close to Uncle Guy, to Kicky, to Big Granny. With her pocket money, she buys violets at the florist’s nearby. She is alone, standing in front of the gravestones of her family. The sun is shining; the air is warm. Gently, she places a few flowers on her cousin’s grave. Her voice rings out in the empty cemetery. They’re for you, Michael.
It is difficult to get over such a tragedy. Apparently, Barrie, in despair, locks himself in his apartment on Adelphi Terrace and suffers nightmare after nightmare. When summer comes, Gerald takes his family to the seaside in Devon, southwest of London. It does them good to get away from the city, the world, their sadness, to recharge their batteries. They rent a large house with a sea view in Thurlestone for the month of August: From its bay windows, they can see the two huge rocks standing in the middle of the water, each leaning toward the other, as if they are embracing. Gerald invites his nephew Geoffrey (his sister Trixie’s youngest son) and his wife, Meg. The three du Maurier sisters spend their days on the fine sand beach, paddling in a canoe, fishing for shrimp, building sand castles. Daphne can stay for hours in the sun, and her skin turns a lovely golden color—to the dismay of her mother, who exhorts her t
o take shade under an umbrella. The combination of sunlight and iodine turns her hair blond, and her eyes seem even bluer. She is gorgeous, and she knows it, tall and slender in that cumbersome one-piece bathing suit, which she dreams of stripping off so she can go swimming, naked, behind the rocks, savoring the caress of the water on her skin. She is so pretty that one day, coming out of the sea, she feels the eyes of her cousin Geoffrey upon her, a man’s gaze that checks her out from head to toe, and a slow smile, only for her, a smile that says everything: she’s a beautiful girl; she’s not a child anymore.
Geoffrey is thirty-six. Old enough to be her father. Twice divorced, tall, sturdily built, dark haired, with harmonious features, a sensual mouth. An actor, like his uncle Gerald. A real “menace.”* Daphne does not look away. Her heart pounds, but she is not afraid, she does not feel intimidated, she smiles back at him, a pact between them; no one else has seen, no one else knows, just her, just him, that day, on the beach, a shared moment of exclusive complicity. She has always liked Geoffrey, despite the twenty-two-year age difference, but that day, on the sand, there is something more than sympathy between them, a sensation she has never felt before, that heat running through her, a feeling of risk, of entering a danger zone.
The summer days pass, sun filled and languorous, and the secret understanding between Daphne and her cousin intensifies, without a word being spoken, purely through their eyes, which meet, draw each other, magnetized. On the golf course, he waves at her behind Gerald’s back. After lunch, it is time for coffee on the terrace. Daphne and her sisters lie on the grass in bathing suits, half-covered by their beach towels, faces turned toward the sun like sunflowers eager for light. Geoffrey sits down on the grass between Daphne and Jeanne, while Meg, Muriel, and Gerald have a conversation higher up on the terrace. Daphne smells Geoffrey’s aftershave—a moment of panic—she keeps her eyes closed: above all, don’t say a word, don’t move a muscle; her sisters are just there, next to her; her entire body tenses, she knows that something is going to happen, she waits for it, shivers, doing her best not to betray her feelings, then suddenly her cousin’s hand is under the towel, that man’s hand furtively searching for hers, the touch of warm skin seizing her, she almost cries out, moans, but she controls herself: above all, she must not let it show; she must act as if nothing is happening.
Her cousin’s touch awakens hundreds of sensors inside her, tiny particles of emotion and desire with the power of an electric shock, but she manages to stay silent. Geoffrey’s wife is sitting there, only a few feet away, drinking coffee with Daphne’s oblivious parents. Now she knows that, every afternoon, for the rest of the vacation, Geoffrey will grab her hand beneath the towel, without a word, and she will stay silent, too, intoxicated, dazed, she will wait for this moment with a nameless delight. She knows instinctively that she must say nothing, must never breathe a word, and it is this that most excites her: the power of the secret, the forbidden.
I think Daphne is old enough now to come dancing this evening at the Links Hotel. It is cousin Geoffrey who says this, and everyone seems to agree. She chooses a pretty dress, blue, to match her eyes, and finds herself in his arms, against him—how tall and muscular he is—and all this under the eyes of Meg, his wife, who doesn’t notice a thing. Geoffrey embraces Daphne as they dance to Paul Whiteman’s lively fox-trot “Whispering,” which seems almost to have been written for them: “When I’d like to lean in close … Gorgeous and dressed in blue…”
The final day of the vacation arrives. The summer hours have lost their golden aura; it is nearly September. On the morning of his departure, Geoffrey asks Daphne to come with him to the sea one last time. They stand facing the waves, the two rocks leaning in together, and they remain silent, untouching. I’m going to miss you terribly, Daph. She agrees, in a quiet voice. Suddenly he turns around. Oh, look up there, on the cliff. Uncle Gerald is spying on us. It really is her father standing there, hands on hips, seemingly watching them, with a scowl on his face. In her journal, Daphne notes: It is a lovely day. Geoffrey goes. I feel terribly depressed. We bathe and play tennis. I read also.6
Return to London. Something has changed inside her. That sensual—possibly even amorous—awakening? The sudden death of Michael? She doesn’t know. As if to forget all this, she throws herself into a whirlwind of outings to the theater, books to be read (Thackeray, Stevenson, Galsworthy, Swinburne), long bicycle rides or horse rides on the Heath with her sisters; she gorges herself on dances and travels. Gerald is knighted at Buckingham Palace, a moment of glory he takes very seriously. Muriel thus becomes Lady du Maurier, which she doesn’t mind one bit. Gerald affectionately calls her Lady Mo. The award of this knighthood is fully deserved, Daphne knows. Gerald has altered the way actors perform on the stage; he is the first to break with the stiff, affected style of his predecessors, the first to dare light a cigarette while performing, to wear his own clothes. Now nothing can slow down Sir Gerald du Maurier’s lavish lifestyle: he hands out gold coins as tips, obtains the best seats for the Ascot horse races, for the Wimbledon tennis tournament, for operas in Covent Garden. The life of the outside world does not pass over the high wall surrounding Cannon Hall; little mention is made of the massive upheaval left by the war, the uncertain times ahead, the financial difficulties that other, less privileged people must endure.
Angela leaves for Paris, where she will attend Miss Ozanne’s finishing school near the Eiffel Tower. She is not happy there. Gerald, Muriel, Daphne, and Jeanne go to visit her in the spring; it is the first time Daphne has been to the French capital. She is there only a few days, and the time goes by too quickly. How she would have loved to walk alone in the streets, not to be accompanied by her parents, to shake them off and explore those avenues, those boulevards where part of her already belongs, a legacy of her grandfather.
* * *
On Sunday evenings in the first-floor dining room, Gerald likes to have conversations alone with his older daughters. Angela is back from Paris after several sad terms, thrilled to recapture her social life of balls, galas, and dates. Gerald likes to confide in his daughters, while smoking and savoring his Cointreau, and the later it gets, the more animated, audacious, and irreverent the conversations become. In all seriousness, what did they think of the outfit worn by the Countess of T., who came to eat lunch earlier; that material makes her look fat, don’t you think? Hysterical laughter. And that moron Charles P. with his idiotic smile (mimicked). Good God, did they know that Viscount B. has had a baby with Miss H.? Yes, truly! Unbelievable. What is it that makes James R. so attractive, do they think? Ah, you’re very like me (a remark most often addressed to Daphne). Sometimes they argue, have tiffs, but they always kiss and make up afterward.
The conversations go on long into the night, until Muriel, infuriated, bangs her foot on the floor of the living room above. So Gerald lowers his voice and asks Angela to pour him another glass of Cointreau. The subject matter becomes mischievous, risqué; it is a sort of farce between father and daughters. They joke about Gerald’s imaginary “stable,” a very special stable in which the young actresses who share billing with him are cataloged like “fillies,” judged according to their physique, the length of their legs, their complexion, their teeth. It is comical to think of these young debut actresses, blissfully unaware of what the du Maurier sisters, in collusion with their devilish father, are capable of saying about them.
Aided by the alcohol, Gerald lets slip confidences that are very far from paternal, and which fascinate the girls, eager to know about the latest “filly” to have joined the stable and how Daddy will go about “breaking her in,” but of course they must keep their voices down because if Mo, upstairs, hears any of this, there will be a drama. Little by little, Daphne understands that her father is in the habit of wooing his young partners, that something more goes on between them than mere hugging and kissing. “Cairo,”* “waxing”* … these things do not happen only in the conjugal bed with a spouse, but elsewhere, with others. This disgusts her,
revolts her; she thinks it ugly.
In that case, why get married? Daphne vents in her letters to Tod. How can Mo close her eyes to all this, how can she display that same calm face day after day, when everyone knows that Gerald is cheating on her? One day, however, Mo does fly off the handle, outraged to see that Gerald’s Sunbeam is parked for an entire afternoon outside the home of a pretty young supporting actress. All hell breaks loose. The thunder rumbles. Doors are slammed in Cannon Hall. As he is about to escape to the theater that evening, a sheepish Gerald whispers into his daughter’s ear, Mummy’s so angry with me, I don’t know what to do.7 Daphne feels simultaneously embarrassed and touched by these manly confidences, which should not be entrusted to his own daughter.
And yet this is the same man who waits up for Angela when she comes home late from a dance, who traps her in the entrance hall and aggressively interrogates her. Has she seen what time it is? Who brought her home? Did he try to kiss her? She had better tell him the truth! Daddy the enchanter, the imp, the charmer, the clown, is transformed into an intransigent father figure who cannot bear the idea that his darling daughters are growing up, that they have a social life, that they are attractive, that they seduce, and Angela is the first of the three to suffer from this.
Why can’t his beloved daughters remain children, like Peter Pan, the family hero? Angela sobs as she confides in Daphne: How can he change in a flash into this unpleasant stranger, this cutting, nervous authoritarian, when that very morning he was all smiles? Gerald has always done whatever he likes, with no regard for others: you only had to see him at the casino in Monte Carlo, during the previous Christmas vacation, when he feigned to forget that he’d won the pot, leaving the table with supreme nonchalance, cigarette dangling from his lips, jacket slung over his shoulder, purely to enrage the men who had lost to him.