You are sitting at a sunny French café, but there are shadows in your heart.
You have escaped disaster, and things have for the most part ended well, and yet you cannot shake a sense of dread and foreboding.
Someone is crushing your spirit. You try as hard as you can not to inconvenience them while they do it.
A fever has led you to believe you are married to your cousin, who may or may not be trying to poison you.
You are unsure whether or not cancer is contagious.
She’s dead now, of course. Isn’t she? Isn’t she?
There are two things of which you are certain: the door across the room from you will never open, and you will never see Isolda again.
If only you could forget.
There is not a soul who loves you in all of Cornwall.
You loved the house more than you ever loved him. You know that now, at the last.
Things never were the same since that ship sailed out of the harbor and we lost sight of her sails, mum.
You will never forget.
You have always hated her laugh, high and reedy and boisterous and throbbing with panic. You have never hated it more than you do now, trapped in this hot, close parlor together. You choke down a cucumber sandwich to keep from screaming.
You would sob with dread if you were not so busy answering the shrill, hateful ring of the damned telephone.
You dismissed her claims. At first.
You are a talented acrobat who may or may not be about to fall to her death on the last page. You are still mid-air.
If only there were some way – some hope – if only someday you might forget!
His letters have grown colder.
It is as old as the hills! Old, older, oldest! It is as old as the hills, and it has turned its eyes upon you! You cannot escape what is older than the hills!
You are collapsing. You are collapsing. You are collapsing. You are going to collapse!
You will never, ever forget it.
Why, this is worn by all the Ashley brides on their wedding day. You mustn’t mind it.
Your uncle falls like a dark shadow across the pages of your life. He will never tell you the full truth, and he will never let you go. Your only relief is that your father and mother never lived long enough to see you fall so short of your early promise.
Your wedding day takes place in full sunlight, yet you still feel a chill.
Someone is almost certainly poisoning your tea, and yet the estate is so beautiful, you never once think of leaving. Where would you go? An apartment? Ugh.
There’s only one thing you hate more than men – brutish, clasping, grasping, sneering, filthy, foul, begrimed and smear-eyed men – and that’s women. Clammy, nervous, shifting, white-necked, bitch-eyed, soft-footed women.
The further south you go, the more firmly the North becomes fixed in your heart.
How could you possibly forget?
According to this, I’m a Daphne du Maurier character, in which case I demand better ankles and more Sea.
I was on Jeopardy ten years ago and during one of the breaks in filming Alex Trebek looked at my name on the podium quite intensely, then intoned “My Cousin Rachel.” (My name is Rachael.)
I blinked.
“Daphne du Maurier,” he clarified, not clarifying anything at all.
I smiled and nodded. He moved on.
Later he looked again at my podium and chanted “Rah-chi-el. Rah-chi-el.”
Poor Daphne is now forever tied to Alex Trebek in my mind. Curiously, a lot of the items on this list also characterize my Jeopardy experience, so maybe it was more appropriate than I even knew.
That it’s taken us this long to realize that interacting with Trebek on Jeopardy is pretty much like interacting with a powerful man in a Du Maurier is a failing of us all.
Maybe he was in love with you? Or simply giving book recommendations. It is a pretty good book.
Apartment hunting sucks. I will take the poison and say thanks.
You have the gift of foresight, but it didn’t help you at all. You are dead now.
“You have escaped disaster, and things have for the most part ended well, and yet you cannot shake a sense of dread and foreboding.” – I always just thought this was part of my charm 🙁
Your housekeeper doesn’t respect you.
You finally get up the nerve to tell the housekeeper to serve cold salmon for dinner, and she is shocked, shocked!
I really prefer the work of Daphne Dolores Moorehead.
Rosie M. Banks FTW! (esp. Mervyn Keene, Clubman as read by Madeleine as read by the great Jonathan Cecil! Pure gold!)
You have a lovely and unusual name, which no one can spell, and no one actually knows.
OT, but if I cut my hair again, that’s the hair style I want.
I feel like Daphne du Maurier was one of those wankers who finds the gender they’re attracted to useless and somewhat distasteful except for sex purposes but because she was bisexual that just becomes EVERYONE.
…
Bisexual wankers unite.
Nothing to add, just wanted to acknowledge the perfection of this, no one can ever add anything because it’s perfect
This is someone’s dissertation topic, right? right?
You don’t know me, you don’t know my life.
A French pirate has been sleeping in your bed.
Now see, I have definitely read a book that can be described that way, but I’m certain it involved time-travel and heaving bosoms.
Sounds like a good time to me.
AND, “He wore his own hair, as men used to do, instead of the ridiculous curled wigs that had become the fashion, and she saw at once how suited it was to him, how impossible it would be for him to wear it in any other way.”
All pirates should be this way.
Okay he’s English, but this is How To Pirate.
You meet a rich stranger who looks exactly like you and decide to switch lives. Only when it is too late do you realize.
“There is not a soul who loves you in all of Cornwall”
Sigh. Not long til Poldark is back on the telly.
I like that photo so much I misread most of this is If DDM Were Your Girlfriend, and it checks out quite nicely.
I would die for an If DDM Were.
“There’s only one thing you hate more than men – brutish, clasping, grasping, sneering, filthy, foul, begrimed and smear-eyed men – and that’s women. Clammy, nervous, shifting, white-necked, bitch-eyed, soft-footed women.”
So, misanthrogyny, anyone?
“Someone is crushing your spirit. You try as hard as you can not to inconvenience them while they do it.”
Oh, man. My (now ended) marriage.
Literally my life with my toxic evil housemate right now.
1000% accurate.
Yes! I enjoyed the parasites! Not like, stays on my mind for months afterwards enjoyed but more kick back with popcorn and watch a bbc miniseries enjoyed. The characters were insufferable.
“Someone is almost certainly poisoning your tea, and yet the estate is so beautiful, you never once think of leaving. Where would you go? An apartment? Ugh.”
Besides, it’s not like he’s getting listless hand shandies on the regs from his batshit sister, or anything.
Ah, glad to see that someone else’s brain went there too.
AND, "He wore his own hair, as men used to do, instead of the ridiculous curled wigs that had become the fashion, and she saw at once how suited it was to him, how impossible it would be for him to wear it in any other way."
Please write one of these on F. Scott Fitzgerald!
I have oft choked down a cucumber sandwich to keep from screaming. I should think we all have.
All pirates should be this way.
Okay he's English, but this is How To Pirate.
What book is the acrobat comment about?
I actually love it too, and have read it too many times to count. The part where they ride around trying to find someone to take care of the baby that she hates….But I really love Du Maurier, in all her weirdness.