Share it Sunday - Rebecca AU
I'm planning to start publishing this in about a month, and since I made great progress on it yesterday, here's a taste of the opening soliloquy. If you're familiar with du Maurier's Rebecca, I am changing a few major points of the plot, but still drawing heavily on some of the key points of the novel, including the first person perspective from an unidentified female narrator...
Last night I dreamt (more under the cut)
Last night I dreamt I went to Sanderley again. It has been many years since I left that place – I shall not call it home – and yet at times my mind does drift back there upon a sleeping tide and wash me ashore where I used to dwell. In my dream I come, as it seems, from nowhere, upon the night-time gatehouse and that long, disorienting drive, with not a thought but the pull to move onwards, inwards, through. I part the gates, their white paint flaking, though they are caught up in vines and drag across undergrowth, and the gravel beyond is narrowed from a driveway to a meandering path through the woods, the route obscured here and there by a sprawl of shrubbery or the sudden upstart of a sapling, sprouting where once the car would run. The woods go on and on, and I go with them, first walking, then running, then flying, as one does in dreams, along what remains of the path, dark ahead and enclosed above, until finally the trees give way to the opalescence of the rhododendrons, blooming at the height of their powers, despite all else having gone to ruin. They rise steep to either side of me, the sweet domesticated perennials grown monstrous, twenty feet, thirty feet, forty feet high, and covered every inch in flowers, ghostly white in the moonlight of my imagining. I remember the scent even now, something spicy-sweet and indefinable; indefatigable. The inescapable scent of Sanderley in springtime.
It lingers even as I break free, finally, of the plants which choke the driveway and I spill out onto the lawns above the house. That view, it always challenged me, should I admire first the gardens, or the sea or Sanderley itself? Even in my dream, I cannot focus, cannot choose; after the homogeneity of dark trees then pale flowers, there is suddenly too much variety to see. But of course it is Sanderley, always, that demands my attention, though the moonlight skitters beautifully across the wavecrests beyond. The broad north-east face of the house stares back towards me, two unbroken rows of perfect matched windows that reminded me always of a set of teeth, locked in a gritted grin. And bordering each window-frame that ostentatious golden finish which caught the light so prettily in the dawn, but stands out brassy now in my moonlit dream, the only point of colour in my sight. There is something awful – in the sense of awe-filled – in its great mass of stone, and glass, and glorious history. Sanderley is undeniable. Sanderley simply is.
And as I come upon the house itself, I feel again that hope, that same, strange hope that dogged my footsteps always in those days; boundless, groundless hope that a wisdom greater than my own would guide me to a purpose. When first I saw Sanderley with my waking eyes, I had thought I’d found it, that purpose; when last I saw Sanderley, I knew myself better, and I had no longer any need for hope. I had certainty.
My dreaming eyes, however, they look across the years and miles and see Sanderley as it must be by now. The ivy beginning to clog the stonework, the windows cracked and broken here and there, the soot stains where the fire broke free. I move, without any sense of effort, around the building, to the terrace which faces the sloping gardens and the distant cliffs, where the driveway ends in a white portico and wide steps, now grubby and forgotten, and the perfect formal gardens overflow their box hedges. Such a shame. Someone ought to care for this place, I think in my dream. Although it shall not be me.
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I would love to hear thoughts and speculations, since many of you voted for me to spend time on this. I'm planning to post the story through October and November.
