April 1931

Such a cold, fierce, glittering day – a magnificent sea, green as glass bottles, surf grinding shells to powder on the beach, a high blue bare sky. Such exhilaration. I thought of you today, I thought of you all day, my darling.
Max was away – the cat was away – so I was free, and early this morning I escaped from them all. Breakfast in the mausoleum first, mirrored eggs, and kidneys seeping blood in silver dishes, Frith creaking his way in and out – I can’t keep food down in the mornings. Just a little coffee and dry toast, then I went to the usual room, sat at my usual desk and arranged my life: lists, letters, menus, appointments. I’m efficient, dearest – my future’s an alphabet; I file it in pigeon-holes. By ten Jasper and I were walking in the woods; the first azaleas were coming out; we had only the gulls for company.
We came down to the shore; I threw sticks for Jasper; he chased them into the waves, then came back and shook himself, and out from his fur flew richness – a spray of diamonds as big as hailstones, bright as the ones on my wedding finger. I’ll bring you here one day, my love: I’ll show you the secrets of this bay, the rock with the blue-mauve mussels, like mermaids’ fingernails; the place where I gather my driftwood; the ledge where the white fulmar lays its one white egg every April, and the pools which are deep enough to drown in.
I looked in the pools today, and saw your reflection. The seaweed was your hair, your tight-shut eyes were cockle-shells; your hand, opening, closing, was a starfish. The tide rocked you, the sea sang to you, your bones grew as strong as coral; you were as quick as a fish, as perfect as the ripples in the sand. Move, my dearest. Hurry up and be born. I want to hold you in my arms, and show you Manderley. All this will be yours, one day.

I’ve never known such a place for ghosts as this. Could you sense them today? I could. I think ghosts have an affinity for the sea – maybe it’s the sound it makes, the sighings and washings and whisperings, the tides of departures and returnings. Today my mother was here, dancing in bare feet at the edge of the water, tossing back her hair which truly was gold, a deep dark gold, rippling down to her waist when she unpinned it. And my father was here too: he was out there by the rocks, watching and brooding, so tall and dark in his black clothes, with his eyes shadowed. They’re both in my blood, the fair and the dark – and they’re in yours too, my dear one.
We can be our own ghosts too, we can haunt ourselves – did you know that? So some of the other Rebeccas were here too. The imperious one never comes down to the shore – she stays up there, wrapped in her silks and her furs. She was born one day at a house called St Agnes, and I’ve nourished her ever since – I can call her up when I need her. But sometimes she springs up of her own free will – and then she alarms me: you have to be careful with her, and you wouldn’t want to cross her, for all her charms. She’s got knives in her eyes, and fire at her fingertips: serpentine ways and an unquenchable thirst for blood – Madame Medea, I call her.
She was up there today, dreaming revenge I expect, revenge being meat and drink to her. And that girl was with her, the girl who used to be me, the girl who looked at Manderley and knew she’d come home at last.
I looked at that drab girl, and I remembered how it was that time I first came here: I ran out of the house in search of the sea. It was a glaring bright day; the sea was lucid and implacable. I thought – This place is mine by right. Whatever it takes – I shall have it. I was so small then – it was before I taught myself to grow; I was small and thin, and I bit my nails; I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, but I looked about ten – not attractive! My mother was somewhere else, and she was dying – getting ready to die – though no one had told me. My father was just a name then – he hadn’t sailed into my life yet – so I was all alone, neither pretty nor clever or powerful; just a drab child with a headful of plays, standing up there by the path on a hot hot autumn day, wanting something so hard it hurt my heart and took my breath away.
Then Max came up the path from this cove. I’d heard of him, but it was the first time I’d seen him. He was off to the trenches, off to fight in the war; he was leaving that day and he was wearing his uniform. His father was dying in the tower room back there; the house was at sixes and sevens, the maids scurrying about, Max’s grandmother firing orders and questions in all directions. ‘There’ll be a shortage of men,’ she said. ‘How am I supposed to run a house without manservants?’ The sun glinted on Max’s buttons and buckles; his boots shone like chestnuts. A revolver in a holster. Brown eyes and a handsome face: the son and heir. The sun and air. I looked at him, and I thought – Aha!
My love, I have so much to tell you.

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