REBECCA - CHPT 1

and for a while I could not enter

for the way was barred to me

Nature had come in her own again and little by little, in her

stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers

The beeches with white, naked limbs leant close to one another

their branches intermingled in a strange embrace

there was Manderley, our Manderley

secretive and silent as it had always been

Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls

nor the site itself, like a jewel in the hollow of a hand

The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken and they had

entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor bastard things

A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them

yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy of grace had thrown her tendrils around the pair

Nettles were everywhere, the

Vanguard of the army

The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering

lay buried in the ruins

We could not talk of Manderley, I would not tell my dream.

For manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more