She laughed again. Beatrice looked rather offended. I smiled at her to show my sympathy. I don't think she saw. The nurse resumed her knitting.
'I want my tea,' said the old lady querulously, 'isn't it half past four yet? Why doesn't Norah bring the tea?'
'What? Hungry again after our big lunch?' said the nurse, rising to her feet and smiling brightly at her charge.
I felt rather exhausted, and wondered, rather shocked at my callous thought, why old people were sometimes such a strain. Worse than young children or puppies because one had to be polite. I sat with my hands in my lap ready to agree with what anybody said. The nurse was thumping the pillows and arranging the shawls.
Maxim's grandmother suffered her in patience. She closed her eyes as though she too were tired. She looked more like Maxim than ever. I knew how she must have looked when she was young, tall, and handsome, going round to the stables at Manderley with sugar in her pockets, holding her trailing skirt out of the mud. I pictured the nipped-in waist, the high collar, I heard her ordering the carriage for two o'clock. That was all finished now for her, all gone. Her husband had been dead for forty years, her son for fifteen. She had to live in this bright, red gabled house with the nurse until it was time for her to die. I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten. But Maxim's grandmother, sitting there in her shawl with her poor blind eyes, what did she feel, what was she thinking? Did she know that Beatrice was yawning and glancing at her watch? Did she guess that we had come to visit her because we felt it right, it was a duty, so that when she got home afterwards Beatrice would be able to say, 'Well, that clears my conscience for three months'?
Did she ever think about Manderley? Did she remember sitting at the dining-room table, where I sat? Did she too have tea under the chestnut tree? Or was it all forgotten and laid aside, and was there nothing left behind that calm, pale face of hers but little aches and little strange discomforts, a blurred thankfulness when the sun shone, a tremor when the wind blew cold?
I wished that I could lay my hands upon her face and take the years away. I wished I could see her young, as she was once, with colour in her cheeks and chestnut hair, alert and active as Beatrice by her side, talking as she did about hunting, hounds, and horses. Not sitting there with her eyes closed while the nurse thumped the pillows behind her head.
'We've got a treat today, you know,' said the nurse, 'watercress sandwiches for tea. We love watercress, don't we?'
'Is it watercress day?' said Maxim's grandmother, raising her head from the pillows, and looking towards the door. 'You did not tell me that. Why does not Norah bring in the tea?'
'I wouldn't have your job, Sister, for a thousand a day,' said Beatrice sotto voce to the nurse.
'Oh, I'm used to it, Mrs Lacy,' smiled the nurse; 'it's very comfortable here, you know. Of course we have our bad days but they might be a great deal worse. She's very easy, not like some patients. The staff are obliging too, that's really the main thing. Here comes Norah.'
The parlour-maid brought out a little gate-legged table and a snowy cloth.
'What a time you've been, Norah,' grumbled the old lady.
'It's only just turned the half-hour, Madam,' said Norah in a special voice, bright and cheerful like the nurse. I wondered if Maxim's grandmother realised that people spoke to her in this way. I wondered when they had done so for the first time, and if she had noticed then. Perhaps she had said to herself, "They think I'm getting old, how very ridiculous', and then little by little she had become accustomed to it, and now it was as though they had always done so, it was part of her background. But the young woman with the chestnut hair and the narrow waist who gave sugar to the horses, where was she?
We drew our chairs to the gate-legged table and began to eat the watercress sandwiches. The nurse prepared special ones for the old lady.
"There, now, isn't that a treat?' she said.
I saw a slow smile pass over the calm, placid face. 'I like watercress day,' she said.
The tea was scalding, much too hot to drink. The nurse drank hers in tiny sips.
'Boiling water today,' she said, nodding at Beatrice. 'I have such trouble about it. They will let the tea stew. I've told them time and time again about it. They will not listen.'
'Oh, they're all the same,' said Beatrice. 'I've given it up as a bad job.' The old lady stirred hers with a spoon, her eyes very far and distant. I wished I knew what she was thinking about.
'Did you have fine weather in Italy?' said the nurse.
'Yes, it was very warm,' I said.
Beatrice turned to her grandmother. 'They had lovely weather in Italy for their honeymoon, she says. Maxim got quite sunburnt.'
'Why isn't Maxim here today?' said the old lady.
'We told you, darling, Maxim had to go to London,' said Beatrice impatiently. 'Some dinner, you know. Giles went too.'
'Oh, I see. Why did you say Maxim was in Italy?'
'He was in Italy, Gran. In April. They're back at Manderley now.' She glanced at the nurse, shrugging her shoulders.
'Mr and Mrs de Winter are in Manderley now,' repeated the nurse.
'It's been lovely there this month,' I said, drawing nearer to Maxim's grandmother. 'The roses are in bloom now. I wish I had brought you some.'
'Yes, I like roses,' she said vaguely, and then peering closer at me with her dim blue eyes. 'Are you staying at Manderley too?'
I swallowed. There was a slight pause. Then Beatrice broke in with her loud, impatient voice, 'Gran, darling, you know perfectly well she lives there now. She and Maxim are married.'
I noticed the nurse put down her cup of tea and glance swiftly at the old lady. She had relaxed against the pillows, plucking at her shawl, and her mouth began to tremble. 'You talk too much, all of you. I don't understand.' Then she looked across at me, a frown on her face, and began shaking her head. 'Who are you, my dear, I haven't seen you before? I don't know your face. I don't remember you at Manderley. Bee, who is this child? Why did not Maxim bring Rebecca? I'm so fond of Rebecca. Where is dear Rebecca?'
There was a long pause, a moment of agony. I felt my cheeks grow scarlet. The nurse got to her feet very quickly and went to the Bathchair.
'I want Rebecca,' repeated the old lady, 'what have you done with Rebecca?' Beatrice rose clumsily from the table, shaking the cups and saucers. She too had turned very red, and her mouth twitched.
'I think you'd better go, Mrs Lacy,' said the nurse, rather pink and flustered. 'She's looking a little tired, and when she wanders like this it sometimes lasts a few hours. She does get excited like this from time to time. It's very unfortunate it should happen today. I'm sure you will understand, Mrs de Winter?' She turned apologetically to me.
'Of course,' I said quickly, 'it's much better we should go.'
Beatrice and I groped for our bags and gloves. The nurse had turned to her patient again. 'Now, what's all this about? Do you want your nice watercress sandwich that I've cut for you?'
'Where is Rebecca? Why did not Maxim come and bring Rebecca?' replied the thin, querulous voice.
We went through the drawing-room to the hall and let ourselves out of the front door. Beatrice started up the car without a word. We drove down the smooth gravel drive and out of the white gates.
I stared straight in front of me down the road. I did not mind for myself. I should not have cared if I had been alone. I minded for Beatrice.
The whole thing had been so wretched and awkward for Beatrice.
She spoke to me when we turned out of the village. 'My dear,' she began, 'I'm so dreadfully sorry. I don't know what to say.'