I hesitated a moment, like a diver on the brink, then lost my nerve and my tutored self-possession, saying,
'Yes, I believe so — he comes into the restaurant for his meals.'
Someone has told her, I thought, someone has seen us together, the tennis professional has complained, the manager has sent a note, and I waited for her attack.
But she went on putting the cards back into the box, yawning a little, while I straightened the tumbled bed.
I gave her the bowl of powder, the rouge compact, and the lipstick, and she put away the cards and took up the hand glass from the table by her side.
'Attractive creature,' she said, 'but queer-tempered I should think, difficult to know.
I thought he might have made some gesture of asking one to Manderley that day in the lounge, but he was very close.'
I said nothing.
I watched her pick up the lipstick and outline a bow upon her hard mouth.
'I never saw her,' she said, holding the glass away to see the effect, 'but I believe she was very lovely.
Exquisitely turned out, and brilliant in every way.
They used to give tremendous parties at Manderley.
It was all very sudden and tragic, and I believe he adored her.
I need the darker shade of powder with this brilliant red, my dear: fetch it, will you, and put this box back in the drawer?'
And we were busy then with powder, scent, and rouge, until the bell rang and her visitors came in.
I handed them their drinks, dully, saying little; I changed the records on the gramophone, I threw away the stubs of cigarettes.
'Been doing any sketching lately, little lady?'
The forced heartiness of an old banker, his monocle dangling on a string, and my bright smile of insincerity:
'No, not very lately; will you have another cigarette?'
It was not I that answered, I was not there at all.
I was following a phantom in my mind, whose shadowy form had taken shape at last.
Her features were blurred, her colouring indistinct, the setting of her eyes and the texture of her hair was still uncertain, still to be revealed.
She had beauty that endured, and a smile that was not forgotten.
Somewhere her voice still lingered, and the memory of her words.
There were places she had visited, and things that she had touched.
Perhaps in cupboards there were clothes that she had worn, with the scent about them still.
In my bedroom, under my pillow, I had a book that she had taken in her hands, and I could see her turning to that first white page, smiling as she wrote, and shaking the bent nib.
Max from Rebecca.
It must have been his birthday, and she had put it amongst her other presents on the breakfast table.
And they had laughed together as he tore off the paper and string.
She leant, perhaps, over his shoulder, while he read.
Max. She called him Max.
It was familiar, gay, and easy on the tongue.
The family could call him Maxim if they liked.
Grandmothers and aunts.
And people like myself, quiet and dull and youthful, who did not matter.
Max was her choice, the word was her possession; she had written it with so great a confidence on the fly-leaf of that book.
That bold, slanting hand, stabbing the white paper, the symbol of herself, so certain, so assured.
How many times she must have written to him thus, in how many varied moods.
Little notes, scrawled on half-sheets of paper, and letters, when he was away, page after page, intimate, their news.
Her voice, echoing through the house, and down the garden, careless and familiar like the writing in the book.
And I had to call him Maxim.
Chapter six
Packing up.
The nagging worry of departure.
Lost keys, unwritten labels, tissue paper lying on the floor.
I hate it all.
Even now, when I have done so much of it, when I live, as the saying goes, in my boxes.
Even today, when shutting drawers and flinging wide an hotel wardrobe, or the impersonal shelves of a furnished villa, is a methodical matter of routine, I am aware of sadness, of a sense of loss.
Here, I say, we have lived, we have been happy.