Mrs De Winter by Susan Hill

marriage. But whatever loose ends there are can all be tied up together once and for all and then we can be off.’ He stood up, and came over to me, he was standing, very tall and steady, just behind me. I felt him close to my back. ‘Give me those things, let me see if I can lick this fire into shape.’
    I handed him the bellows, and stood up. ‘But — we can go to Scotland?’
    He smiled, and I saw that he looked tired, exhausted, the skin was fine and like a faint bruise beneath his eyes, and he was vulnerable again to me, and I wondered why I had been in some odd way afraid. ‘Of course,’ he said wearily. ‘You shall have your holiday,’ and bent to kiss my forehead, before turning to tackle the withered fire.
     
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CHAPTER
    Seven
     
    For the whole of that night and the next day, whatever I saw or heard or thought, however I answered Maxim, lightly, comfortably, he was at one remove from me, I pressed a switch and life continued, but it was not real life, it did not signify.
    The only reality was the white wreath, lying on the grass beside the grave, and the black letter, elegant, graceful, deadly, on the stiff card. They accompanied me, they danced before my eyes, they breathed and watched and whispered, they hovered at my shoulder, and would not cease or let me be.
    Who? I kept asking myself every time I could be alone, who had done this? How? Why? Why? Who wanted to frighten us? Who hated us? When had they come? Had they been there when I had found the wreath? No, I knew, was strangely, calmly sure that that could not have been. When I had crossed the churchyard and stood beside Beatrice’s grave, when I had bent to examine the flowers, and seen the white wreath first, I had been quite alone, if I had not been I would
     
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    have known it. There had been no one else, no watcher in the shadows, nothing but the wreath itself to disturb me.
    I was afraid, but most of all, I was puzzled. I wanted to know, I did not understand, and the worst of it was bearing it entirely alone, keeping all hint from my face and voice, hiding the faintest sign of distraction or anxiety from Maxim.
    It preoccupied me completely, even while I went through the motions of passing that night and the following day, it ran alongside me, like a tune that was playing, so that at last, I simply grew used to and accepted it and that calmed me a little.
    ‘You will have to amuse yourself for half a day but you want to do that, don’t you?’
    I heard his voice again as I brushed my hair at the dressing table. I had not known that being home would do this to him, and that the Maxim I had grown used to, patient, quiet, subdued, the Maxim with whom I had lived for our years abroad, would slip away so easily, to reveal so many traces of the old Maxim, the one I had first known. But with every hour that passed in England, he changed a little, it was like watching curtains blow in the wind, to reveal more and more of what stood behind and had only been concealed, not obliterated.
    ‘You will have to amuse yourself for half a day.’
    If it had happened a year ago, a month ago even, if for some reason there had been business to attend to, he would have tried to avoid it completely, to hide, it would have distressed him unbearably to have had to face it, and without any doubt he would have insisted that I be with
     
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    him, listen, read the papers, see it through with him, he could not have done it without me. I had never imagined that he might change, that his old, easy, proud independence would reassert itself, that he would show any sign of being able, and willing, to deal with things alone, or for one moment wish me to be away from him. It was a shock, like watching a helpless, dependent invalid begin to recover, regain strength, show spirit and a flicker of the old fire, stand, and then walk alone again, brushing off impatiently the loving, restraining, anxious hands.
    I did not know what I felt, or how much I minded, but I was not