Manderley Forever by Tatiana de Rosnay

Author:Tatiana de Rosnay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

PART FIVE

CORNWALL, 1969

KILMARTH

I have exhausted Menabilly, I have squeezed it dry.

—DAPHNE DU MAURIER1

Kilmarth, Par

November 2013

Daphne du Maurier’s last house is easier to reach than “Mena.” It is not hidden in the heart of a forest, but to the west of Menabilly, atop the cliff that overlooks the little port of Polkerris and the bay of Par, by the side of the road leading to the village of Twyardreath (pronounced tower-dreth). Its name is Kilmarth, Cornish for “horses’ ridge” or “Mark’s retreat.” It is a manor house in gray slate, handsome and austere, protected by a high gate.

Ned, one of Daphne’s grandchildren, explained to me how much the house had been altered and extended. It bears little resemblance to the place he knew when he was a little boy, when his grandmother, Track, lived there. Twenty years ago, the current owners, who are passionate gardeners, had a swimming pool and a tennis court built there, as well as some water pavilions that are now internationally renowned.

The new mistress of Kilmarth told me that living here is source of daily happiness. Her friends even call the house the Kilmarth sanctuary. She has not sensed Daphne’s presence within these walls, but since she moved there, twenty years before, one of her dachshunds never wanted to enter Lady Browning’s old bedroom. It was only when the floorboards were covered with a carpet that the dog felt able to go into the room. Asked about this, Kits, Daphne’s son, replied with his usual wit that it must be a dispute between the dachshund and the ghosts of his mother’s Westies.

Kilmarth is the house on the water, turned toward the light and the open sea. The waves, omnipresent, seem to lap at the door, a constant reminder of the sea that Daphne loved so much and where she would swim every day, weather permitting. It was here, outside this manor house, that she took her daily walks, along cliffs thick with grass, gorse, and heather, followed by a trotting Westie. At Kilmarth, the house on the strand, Daphne communed with nature and the sea. The view over St. Austell Bay cannot have changed very much in the last twenty-five years. The brisk, salty wind blows the clouds through the sky, revealing the pale November sun. It is as if Daphne stood beside me, one of Tommy’s old caps covering her white-haired head. I know she never missed a chance of bird-watching, that she could identify curlews, goldfinches, and yellowhammers, that she used to watch out for cormorants and kingfishers. Climbing the steep slope that she nicknamed Thrombosis Hill, she would admire the trees, the Moorlands twisted by the power of the wind into the shapes of strange, disheveled witches, and the curious conifers with thorny branches, monkey puzzle trees, standing out proudly against the stormy sky.

My pilgrimage ends here.

* * *

July 1969. Leaving Menabilly. It has been four years since Tommy died, on March 14, 1965, four years during which she held on, four years of the Rashleighs’ prevaricating.

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