We had come back to Manderley, shortly after the episode in Monte Carlo, a young happy couple full of expectations.
She had promised me to make our marriage a tremendous success, to make it talked about as the greatest success of the age. As for what we had been arguing about, nobody needed to know. I had decided that she was right after all. Why should she be blamed for what she had done in the past when I would never have to face questions as to how many women I had known before her?
And she at least kept her promise in the beginning. Manderley was a tomb of a mansion hidden amidst the wilderness of its surrounding woods. Within a couple of months she had it turned to an exquisite place of beauty, brought colours and warmth where they had never been, dug out treasures that had been kept locked in dark, unused rooms. Portraits found their place in the minstrels gallery, Raeburn's paint of Caroline de Winter being the central piece of the collection. Every corner of the estate was landscaped with impeccable state, flowers in full bloom nearly the whole year round: those massive rhododendrons by the end of the drive, roses of all sorts by the East wing, azaleas in the Happy Valley, the scent of which was enough to intoxicate the mind.
And the rooms of the West wing who looked upon the sea. Those abandoned rooms, the walls of which were bare stone when she first saw them. She fell in love with them at once. She had them decorated in that same blasted faultless taste of hers.
And I must admit that I was tremendously happy. She made me happy. There was not one day that she did not make magical, not one night when we would not make love.
In September that year we had our first reception. She had sent out dozens of invitations. All of them received an RSVP yes. All the little world from this remote corner of England was to attend. And that's when I started feeling nervous about it. I could not think of these people as living according to those standards of freedom Rebecca had talked about on that cliff.
The day finally came. All our guests immediately worshiped her. She knew exactly how to present herself in front of them, and it striked me how deceiving the image she gave of her to them was. I could not help wondering what these people would have thought, had they known what our relationship was truly like, what our agreement really was. And I felt ashamed because I was tolerating a compromission other husbands at this party had certainly never faced. I felt inferior to them because unlike them my wife did not belong to me. I was still, I would always be on trial with her. And I was sure other men would not compose with that. That was wrong.
When we went to bed that night, I did not touch her. I could not. Neither could I the following night. Nor the night after that.
At first she did not seem to mind that, but when this abstinence had lasted for one week, she started noticing it. When she asked what was wrong, I tried to elude the subject. I thought my doubts would go as they had come. But she was not the type to be contented with evasive answers. When she found out I felt ashamed, she just smiled sadly. She said nothing.
A fortnight after this reception, we were back to spending our nights together as we had done in the past, but my doubts would never leave me completely. In fact they had got firmly rooted inside of me, and I knew she knew.
She had her boat brought from Brittany and got the old boathouse that we had in the bay turned into a cottage. One night she came to me, grabbed my hand and took me down there. She had had everything arranged for us to spend a romantic night together. But it did not work. It was too late. Shame was rooted too deeply. Whenever I would close the eyes, I got racked by doubt. There was nothing I could do. I broke down and said to her I did not think our marriage to be a normal one. When she asked how I thought a normal marriage should be defined, I was incapable of answering.
That was the night I think she gave up on me.
The next morning she behaved unusually coldly to me. I felt hurt. That same day in the evening, when I wanted to join her, she simply rejected me. Each one's turn, her gaze meant. We did not sleep together that night. I thought she would leave yearning for a couple of days so that I would learn my lesson. But this lasted seven, then ten, soon it had been lasting for over twenty days. And I knew then what a fool I had been to let myself overwhelm with doubt for something had broken because of it.
One night I heard her leaving her bedroom. It must have been eleven. When she reached the door leading to the staircase leading down the hall, I risked an eye through my open door and saw that she was wearing her sailing kit. She was off to her cottage. I wondered hat would she be doing there with a feel of anguish clunching my stomach. She spent the night there. I could not set an eye for the whole night.
At about three o'clock that night I went down to the library and helped me with whisky and soda. As I came back upstairs I came face to face with one of our youngest scullery maids. Whisky and frustration operated their master power upon me. I boldy grabbed her by the hand and took her to my room where I spent the night with her.
When I came downstairs for breakfast in the morning, Rebecca was sitting in her usual place. She fixed me for one instant and ordered the servants out. She then said calmly that her personal maid, Mrs Danvers - Danny, as she called her, had seen me last night. I had reset the game, she said, rules were altered. She had done everything in her power to make our marriage work but I persisted in making it fail miserably because of my rigid morals. I was jealous through and through to the extent that I had not stood the idea of her away from her bedroom for a lmere peaceful night at the cottage - her favourite place on the that day on, I would have to tolerate her doing what she pleased as she pleased. I said Manderley was my home. Why, she replied, wasn't it as hers as it was mine? She had made Manderley what it was now, hadn't she?
She took a flat in London and grew more and more independant. She did no longer care what my feelings would be about what she did. I knew she started having lovers again - and that ended driving us from each other.
And on this went for years.
I spent most of my days with Frank, my manager estate. Only could help me forget my misery because he did not know anything of my situation and I was away from Rebecca when I was with him. We grew closer and closer - as close as friends can be. And then one day, he said he wanted to leave. We argued for two hours and he finally told me that Rebecca was constantly trying to seduce him. I immediately went to Rebecca. She roared with laughter before denying the whole of Frank's story. I was a moronic puffed up bastard, always ready to believe any one who would suck up to him. In any case, she said, hadn't she a god-damn right to entertain herself? I had no one but myself to blame for this situation, hadn't I?
She went off to London straight after that scene, only to come back to Manderley about one month afterwards.
When she came back she started inviting her friends. I did not quite mind until I bumped into her favourite cousin. Jack Favell. Not only was his record filthy. She probably cared more for him than she did for me by then. That thought sickened me. How could we ever ended there? I told her Favell was not to set a foot on the estate again.
She soon avenged herself. In her view, I had attacked her family and it backfired when she took my sister Beatrice's husband, Giles, on her boat where she most obviously started on him as she had done with Frank. It was also a lesson she taught Beatrice for never having approved of her.
And then it came. That fateful night, when I found her waiting for Favell in the cottage.
When I announced to her I intended to make a divorce case against her, she simply laughed at me. There was no way she would let me do that. And she wouldn't need fight hard. The whole of the county adored her and would side her, even if I was a de Winter. And there was more
She was expecting her first child. Only it was not, it could not be from me. That was the conclusion brought to years of marriage. A supreme betrayal. We had both had it coming.