Once again, she had a corner to fight and there was the same relish for battle, but with a difference. She was afraid she would end up with neither Menabilly nor Kilmarth, and this made her more cautious than the description she gave of the scene makes her sound. She also had a lever this time – the Kilmarth lease – and was determined to keep calm and use it. Since this might mean she would have to live at Kilmarth, she therefore had to consider the possibility seriously. During the earlier crisis over Menabilly in 1960–61 she had never allowed herself to think of living anywhere else – it was ‘a fight to the death’ – but now, especially in her changed circumstances as a widow, she was obliged to. There was considerable pressure on her from both family and friends to take Kilmarth. It was a much smaller house (though still large), much lighter and brighter and easier to look after than Menabilly, which at some point she would have to leave anyway. The lawyers for both sides met but the matter was still not resolved by the end of the summer – first she would think she was secure at Menabilly only to hear she was not, and this naturally played havoc with her already fragile emotional state. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Rashleigh case, prevarication was certainly very evident.

  But the summer of 1965 was surprisingly happy all the same. Tessa came with her children, now ten and nine, and Flavia with her son, aged six. The Zulueta family were going through a bad time that year, with Peter de Zulueta’s drinking now so serious that Tessa was not optimistic about how long she could make her marriage survive. Both Pooch and Paul were seriously affected by this situation and arrived needing every bit of support and love a grandmother could lavish on them. Going to Menabilly, for Christmas and in August, were visits of tremendous importance to them, but invariably never quite came up to expectations. Daphne’s intentions as a grandmother were the very best – she felt for the children and wanted to make them happy and cherish them – but what she was able to offer in the way of emotional sustenance was very little. She greeted them, not with a hug but a peck on the cheek, because that was her way, and though she was gentle and kind, taking them for walks and telling them the names of flowers, she kept her distance and was critical. Pooch, unfortunately, was at that stage fat and plain, which her grandmother did not like at all. Nor did she like ‘the Zulus’ for being what she thought of as difficult and spoiled. For all her imaginative powers, and her own experience as a moody young girl, she did not seem able to put herself in Pooch’s position. Instead, she put herself in Tessa’s and was indignant at the way she was treated by her children – which was to say in a free and easy manner, in the modern way of which Daphne did not approve. There was no nonsense about children not eating with adults until they were twelve in the Zulueta household, nor any restrictions on roaring and shouting. The Zulus were ‘savages’ and she preferred Rupert, Flavia’s son, who was a model of propriety, ‘the most delightful thing in children I have ever struck’. He behaved impeccably – ‘not one grizzle, not one whine, not one faint whimper and no loud shouts either’. But even Rupert watched too much television in her opinion, and she was driven, in spite of her own addiction to television, to comment: ‘I think modern children have no imagination. It is all distraction or “What can we do now?”’ This in particular was unforgivable – to ask, on a wet day, ‘What can I do now?’ when outside there were the Menabilly woods to play in, was beyond her comprehension. But she tried to suggest things, controlling her irritation, and some of the suggestions were rich, coming from her. ‘How about trying out the Saturday evening meal on your own?’ she once encouraged Pooch, and gave her a recipe for ‘a really nourishing soup . . . bits of onion . . . bits of cabbage . . . drop of sherry’.

  Filling her days like this was not, of course, going to be enough when the dreaded winter came, but she had no hopes of getting down to any writing. Once, her fallow periods had been intervals during which she felt quite happy, knowing they were necessary, but now they terrified her. ‘My imagination . . . is completely fallow,’ she wrote to Victor Gollancz, and though she acknowledged ‘emotional shock is bound to do this’, she wondered if perhaps it had not done more – perhaps it had dried her imagination up for good. The only way to test this was the time-honoured one of trying a holiday in the hope of stimulating it. So in September she went to Venice with her sister Jeanne. Leaving Menabilly took even more effort than it had always done and she recognized something superstitious in her reluctance. She had a feeling common to the recently bereaved, the dread of returning and finding the presence of the dead person has evaporated in their absence. But she managed to go, and enjoyed the two weeks, though she was depressed to realize afterwards that she had no burning idea for a new book to carry her through the winter.

  At this point, John Sargent at Doubleday came up with the idea that Daphne should write a book on Cornwall, part history and part travel, which would be illustrated with photographs. The moment she realized Kits could take these photographs Daphne was extremely keen on the idea. Kits, by then, had become a freelance TV director and a photographer and he and his mother had formed a company – Du Maurier Productions – to make films. Kits had already made one film, the one about Yeats, for which his mother had written the script, and she thought it very good indeed. The Doubleday suggestion was an ideal project for both of them. It could be spread over several months during which Kits would come down and drive his mother round Cornwall while she researched the book.

  It was the kind of book Daphne had never attempted before, but it appealed to her instantly. She loved Cornwall and, though she had absorbed a great deal of its history and had explored the county extensively, she welcomed the opportunity to learn more. The student in her responded to the background reading that would be necessary, and her imagination leapt at the chance to describe Cornwall in such a way that others would share her devotion. But best of all was the thought of spending so much time with her son, just the two of them working together. There could be no better antidote to the sadness following Tommy’s death and in addition no better way to relive some of the happiest memories she had of him which ‘might rid the system of sadness perhaps’. It was no good ‘turning into a hump-backed dowager like Queen Victoria’, but in spite of starting to read for the new book there were many bad moments that winter. The worst time was Christmas. Always a big festival in both the du Maurier and Browning calendars, especially with Tommy’s birthday on 20 December, when she had always decorated a small tree just for him, she could hardly face the prospect. The children insisted she must come to one of them, which she did not want to do, but finally agreed she would. She shared her time between Flavia and Kits and quite enjoyed it, though she was never entirely comfortable in anyone else’s home, not even her children’s. ‘Routes’ were so hard to follow when not at Menabilly and other people’s got in the way. But the house Kits had just bought amused her tremendously – she described to Foy how Tithe Barn (near Taplow) was the sort of house which ‘if passing in a car on a journey one would tap the glass to the chauffeur and say “Would you draw in here and we will stop for lunch?”’ It was, she swore, like ‘a road-side timbered steak house’ and it made her laugh just to see it. Coming back to Menabilly was bleak, especially since in spite of travelling first-class she had to stand in the corridor of the train – ‘What happens to old people who travel? It’s like prisoners of war going to concentration camps, and the corridors freezing.’

  The rain that January got her down more than it had ever done and she felt in danger of succumbing to real depression. She had to walk her dog – Moray, another West Highland terrier – and so went out and walked, but the evenings were long. She did not like to watch television until after seven and, once it was dark at around five, was left with two hours ‘to fill in . . . passage-wandering’. Everything seemed to irritate her and she feared she was becoming old and grumpy. Even Esther going to a hunt ball somehow exasperated her and she commented to Foy that times had certainly changed if anyone could now go. She could find nothing to read – ‘I find myself so choosy about what I read and books get more and more lurid . . .’ – and even The Times was letting her down – ‘It is not so good as it once was, I think in a tiresome endeavour to be what is called “with it” – a phrase I detest.’

  In this mood, the negotiations with Doubleday, which had preceded any mention of the book on Cornwall to Gollancz, led her into further trouble. She had failed to consult her agent, and Spencer Curtis Brown, discovering a contract had been made between Du Maurier Productions and Doubleday for world rights, was livid: ‘It is not at all a favourable contract . . . next time you feel an urge to sign a contract you should pause for thirty seconds and put it into an envelope to me first.’ He realized that ‘this letter sounds like an uncle writing to an inexperienced niece’, but felt she deserved it. Daphne accepted this rebuke as she accepted all rebukes – humbly, apologizing for her foolishness, and saying she hadn’t thought it mattered, because the Cornwall book wouldn’t have a big sale.

  While all this was sorted out, and while she waited for the weather to improve so that she and Kits could start researching, Daphne began to seek the company she needed. ‘I get very sad when left to my own thoughts,’ she wrote, ‘and ordinary chatter does not help, but intelligent conversation does . . .’ But where was she to get this ‘intelligent conversation’ from, when she so resolutely cut herself off from all likely sources? She still limited herself to the occasional company of those local friends she had always had – Clara Vyvyan, Foy Quiller-Couch,4 Mary Fox, A. L. Rowse – and of her sisters and Noël Welch, but this by no means prevented life sometimes becoming tedious. So she turned to friendships conducted in letters, to talking on paper, as many a writer does, rather than take on the burden of new face-to-face relationships. She had always been good about replying to fans (so long as there was a stamped addressed envelope enclosed), but now she began to develop some of these correspondences into real friendships. If a fan caught her fancy, and especially if that fan were young, she was capable of writing with real warmth and interest. Perhaps the fan who best succeeded in capturing her attention and then affection was a young man called Michael Thornton, who first wrote to her as a schoolboy of seventeen, because he loved The King’s General. After the exchange of a few letters, Daphne let him visit Menabilly, and by the time she faced her first winter as a widow she had started treating him as a real friend. Nor did she simply want to use him as the recipient of her thoughts and comments but, on the contrary, showed avid interest in his career and problems and was tremendously sympathetic. She enjoyed getting his letters and replying to them: a small gap in her day was plugged – she had her ‘intelligent conversation’ through the post.

  There were others with whom, from this point onwards, she established real contact even though she never met them. Many an aspiring writer who had timidly sent a story for her comment was amazed to receive proper criticism and advice. But, though devoting a couple of hours most days to this kind of communication helped her to feel busy – ‘I hate to be idle’ – it could not provide enough stimulation. It was hard for her to admit she was not as self-sufficient as she had always thought, and harder still to do something about it.

  What she did, once the spring of 1966 had arrived, was to plan her first adventurous holiday since Tommy’s death. It was not really so very adventurous. She had been tempted for a long time by the idea of going on a Hellenic cruise and sent for the Swan brochure. She yearned so much for the sun and, having loved her short trip to Greece with Clara Vyvyan, she now booked berths for herself and Tessa on the SS Ankhara. The minute she had done so, panic set in. She would have to meet new people and it would be embarrassing – she dreaded it, and asked Tessa to write to the Swan people emphasizing that her mother was very shy and did not want to be known. She was also fussed about tipping – ‘Do ask . . . if one tips, and who . . . so embarrassing if one does the wrong thing. I would think one’s cabin steward or stewardess would qualify if no one else.’ By March, when Kits had begun to drive her round Cornwall, she was regretting the whole thing and told an old friend, also going on the cruise, to ‘look out for an apprehensive grey-haired woman in a black and white coat, tottering along the platform at Victoria’.5 She wrote to Foy that she couldn’t think why she had taken tickets, when she looked at the rhododendrons just coming into bloom. It even seemed dangerous to leave when nothing had yet been resolved about her wretched lease – she had absurd visions of returning to find she had been turned out – and she left for London feeling ‘low and depressed’.

  Never in her life did a depression lift as quickly. Her letter to Foy after she returned home from the cruise could not have been more different – in her enthusiasm for the holiday she hardly knew where to start. ‘Tessa was wonderful,’ she wrote, ‘so friendly with everyone, and had I been alone I know I should have hidden in our cabin, but she dragged me from my shell and it was really the right thing to do.’ Even so, the dragging had taken some doing. The whole ship knew Daphne du Maurier was on board and curiosity ran high, but it was two days before she appeared from her cabin and, even then, she was shepherded and protected by the attentive Tessa. Only when she realized her privacy was being respected did she begin to relax and gradually become interested in the others on board.

  It was unusual for her to take to new people immediately, but she took to Sir John and Lady Wolfenden at once and was quite excited at the thought of having made friends with them. Sir John was one of the lecturers on the SS Ankhara and Daphne responded eagerly to what she liked to think of as the ‘university atmosphere’ of the ship. It was exhilarating to sit and listen to such a clever man and afterwards to discuss what had been said, and to find her own tentative ideas well received. And there was another side to life on board ship which she relished. Dancing the evenings away with Sir John, she felt younger than she had done for years. He was not an especially skilled dancer, but not since she danced with Frank Price, more than a decade ago, had she felt such a sense of release. Then, of course, there were the visits on shore to places in Greece she had always wanted to see – ‘Delos was the highlight’ – and the pleasure of feeling the sun at last (though, in fact, the weather was not as warm as she had hoped, and she had to buy ‘a shepherd’s short white cloak to cope with it’). She returned to Menabilly feeling rejuvenated, and in her first letter to the Wolfendens told them that they had rescued her from apathy. When Ellen Doubleday came to stay in May, she was pleased to find her so buoyant: with Kits coming regularly to take his mother off to research their Cornish book, her morale was still high.

  Her spirits were maintained throughout the summer which followed – a wonderfully hot summer in Cornwall, so that she could swim every day right up to the end of September. She was determined to change her ways and make sure she kept up her new friendship without depending, as she usually did, on the friends themselves making the running. She invited the Wolfendens to Menabilly, and when she went up to London – ‘the hermit is coming for five days’ – was anxious to take them out to dinner. In one letter she enclosed a clever, satirical ode to Sir John, who responded in kind, and there was a touching eagerness in her efforts to show how much she appreciated the warmth both Wolfendens had extended towards her. Not even the still unresolved question of the lease spoiled the summer, though she was beginning to see that she might have to move into Kilmarth. Even more surprisingly, she was getting out and about much more, because she had learned to drive again and was triumphant about it. Once Tommy had died, she could see that unless she wanted to be entirely dependent on taxis, or wanted to be quite cut off, she would have to drive again: with Kits’ help she began taking lessons. He had found for her a small automatic car to which she became greatly attached and in February that year she had taken her test in a state of intense nervousness. She thought the examiner ‘an old buffer in a squashed hat and mac’ who did not respond to any of her polite conversation. ‘This little car is called a DAF,’ she told him, but he answered crossly, ‘I know, I’ve seen heaps of them,’ but he had passed her none the less. She could now zoom off to Par to do bits of shopping, or go to visit Angela, or even, very occasionally, drive bravely to Dartmoor to see Jeanne and Noël. Her independence excited her – an independence she could have had at any time in the previous twenty-five years.