Chapter Text
Ashes were swept along by the wind, colouring Beatrice’s shoes in a layer of chalky shadow.
She stared down at the ashes, and the few appliances and beams that still had form to them, which laid crumbled and cracked in unsightly piles on the ground. Her throat felt thick and constricting, but she didn’t cry, and her hands remained lax in the pockets of her skirt. Her face did not change, it was stiff, emotionless. Her lips were pursed, her eyebrows rested in their usual place, and her eyes were fixed.
She thought about her house. It was gone, annihilated so wholly it looked almost as if it never existed. All her memories of her house, too, every little joy and little heartbreak…all as if they had never existed. They were all reduced to memories and to white dust that was rapidly disappearing, rolling into the streets and into the seas. Manderley was being dispersed everywhere, spread thin, becoming the collective property of the whole town.
To think the house had been so tall, now reduced to a small heap. And it wasn’t only the house that had been razed, but all of the beautiful flowers that used to surround it. It was apparent by the layer of sharp black burn on the ground, exactly where the fire had touched before it was put out. It had nearly reached the trees. It would have caught the woods on fire, and that could have spread far, and it could have burned a good part of town. That would have been terrible. But luckily, if such a word could be used…only Manderley had burned. Yet what is a town without its gem? Manderley had been more than a building to the townsfolk just as it had been to Beatrice.
“It’s awful,” Giles’ heavy accent piped up from behind her. She let out a breath— Giles had the same bad habit as her, of talking whenever the silence became too sad. He meant well, of course, but she hardly wanted to talk right now.
“Yes,” Beatrice said, her voice unfaltering.
Giles came up behind her and put a hand gently on her shoulder, “Do you want to leave, Bee?”
She turned to glare at him, “Don’t treat me like a child, Giles. It’s not even my house, it’s Maxim’s house.” She didn’t believe that, but it made the wound sting less, “What pain can it bring me? You ought to ask Maxim how he feels,” she said. And then she realised at once what she had said. Her expression softened, “Where do you think he is?” She quietly dared to ask.
“I don’t know,” Giles responded, “But he’ll turn up. I even say, Bee, maybe he’s turned up at our house since we left!”
Beatrice shook her head, but didn’t have it in her to vocalise her doubt. ‘I know my brother’ was all she could think. If Maxim intended upon showing up at the Lacy doorstep, he’d have come immediately. But he didn’t. Why didn’t he? That question haunted Beatrice much more. It was never something discussed —why would it be, when Manderley was so wonderful?— but Maxim certainly knew his big sister and her husband always had their door open for him and the new Mrs de Winter. And yet, he hadn’t come to them, even in his darkest hour.
She figured his disappearing must have been related to that awful business with the trial. He didn’t deserve that mess…she remembered when she was 13 and Max was 10. It felt like just yesterday they were kids, running through the halls of Manderley. And now Manderley was gone, and Maxim too, accused of murder of all things.
Giles began to rub Beatrice’s back and shoulders. A part of her wanted to pull away, but a greater part of her untensed at his touch. It was nice, and she knew he cared for her, and she had nothing snarky to say.
She wondered if Maxim had seen the house when it was on fire. Everyone had always said Manderley was “powerful”. It had been titanic, grizzled, and old. People said it was intimidating. It had connections to great kings and queens of England. But having lived there since she was born, Beatrice had never found Manderley particularly “powerful”. To see flames pouring out of its huge windows and up past its peak would truly have been a sight to behold, however sickening.
“We could walk down the garden path to the boathouse, if you like,” Giles said.
Beatrice turned around in Giles’ arms so that she was facing him, “I want to go home.” Though her eyes weren’t wet, her lip didn’t tremble, and her voice didn’t falter, Beatrice knew Giles would be able to tell just how desperate she felt inside. He always knew.
She had driven out here, to Manderley, speeding the whole time, not responding to Giles as he commented that she ought to slow down around corners. But she wanted him to drive her back, in the slow and safe way that he always did, with the car radio on. She wanted to be driven back to their house, and once she got there, she wanted to cry.