Talking to Ferdy was not like talking to Tod. Ferdy was thirty to Daphne’s eighteen, and therefore the gap in age was not so great, and though not attractive, any more than Tod was physically attractive, she had an allure lacking in the down-to-earth English governess. Her charm was tremendous and her personality flamboyant – she had a giggly sense of humour and a most seductive way of talking in her heavily accented but perfect English. But what intrigued Daphne most about Ferdy was wondering how much of a poseur her sophisticated teacher was. She listened carefully, much more carefully than Ferdy realized, to all the tales told of her past life and she thought she detected hollow notes. Ferdy was extremely fond of insinuation – she would drop hints of certain exciting events in her background – but Daphne had not been reading so much fiction without picking up a thing or two. Some of Ferdy’s innuendoes were decidedly novelettish and, though she never challenged her teacher, Daphne privately had her doubts. Although from the first, as she had told Tod, she was sure Ferdy was ‘Venetian’, she noted that references to male lovers who had died or been killed dramatically were frequently made. Why, she wondered, did Ferdy do this? Was it to make her pupil feel safe? Was it just boasting? Was it a desire to pretend she was not a lesbian? Was it to make herself seem more interesting? Daphne was not sure, but all that holiday she was absorbing everything Ferdy said and filing it away to mull over afterwards. Never, at any time, was she so infatuated with Ferdy that her innate scepticism deserted her. Ferdy had secrets, she put on a great performance, but until she had fathomed both, Daphne reserved judgement. What she did not reserve judgement on was Ferdy’s attraction for her. The boy was out of the box and in love and, though she kept this hidden from all but Ferdy herself, she felt the greatest sense of relief imaginable. She loved Ferdy, and was loved by her, ‘in every conceivable way’,5 and, though she intended to conceal this from her family, it gave her a new happiness and joy.

  Once back at Cannon Hall for the rest of the holidays, she was more content than she had been for a long time. Her family were delighted to find her more appreciative both of home life and of the social opportunities it offered, which she had previously scorned. She went with her father, quite willingly, on the kind of visits she had always loathed. She and Gerald went to Trent Park, the home of Philip Sassoon, a wealthy patron of the arts, for a weekend. ‘Ha! Ha!’ she joked to Tod, ‘it’s dollars gets me! he’s terribly attractive, most oriental (you’d probably shudder!) the sort of person that ought to lay on [sic] divans and have naked black girls to dance before him – and – er! – that’s not all!! Anyway, he fascinated me.’ He also gave her more of those ‘strange thrills’ she had already felt, and in the light of her love for Ferdy she was nervous of what else this told her about herself. She played tennis – Gerald was an indefatigable tennis player – with ‘Russian princes and English earls’ and generally led, for once, the life of the socialites she despised. Half of her descriptions were clearly for Tod’s benefit – Tod was a great snob – and consequently exaggerated, but there was no mistaking her genuine enjoyment. It might sound as if, at eighteen, she was now more sophisticated, but in the same letter mention of her note to the actress Gwen Farrer – ‘Dear Gwen, I think you are quite perfect’ – gave the opposite impression. She confessed to Tod that she was worried Gwen might show it to someone and they might ‘think things’, but that was a risk she was prepared to take, because ‘life’s no fun, unless there’s a danger in it’. Considering the real ‘danger’ she was running in her affair with Ferdy, expressing ‘a pash’ for Gwen Farrer was mild in the extreme.

  The summer of 1925 was not just devoted to socializing. Tod was treated to several accounts of how Daphne had been ‘really trying’ to write and discovering she lacked the necessary application. What she was trying to write, and had been doing so intermittently since she wrote ‘The Seekers’ at fifteen, were short stories inspired by her three favourite short story writers, Maugham, Mansfield and Maupassant. She found it easy enough to select her subject matter, and even to decide how to begin and end – the plot of a story came to her complete – but the difficulty lay in executing her intention. Story after story remained unfinished in spite of Aunt Billie’s lending her a typewriter and heavy encouragement from Gerald. She wished, sometimes, she had never mentioned she was trying to write, especially when she no longer seemed to be able to complete anything. ‘I try to write,’ she told Tod, ‘but I find it boring.’ Thinking of the story was absorbing, the actual writing of it too laborious to appeal. By the time she returned to Camposena in September she had not one story finished to her satisfaction.

  That last term was a disaster. The autumn mists which enveloped the school made it look mysterious in the way Daphne liked, but they were not good for anyone with a tendency to chest colds. In the spring, Daphne had found the place cold enough but now, at the beginning of winter, she found it almost intolerable. Her appetite, never good, faded and she ate frighteningly little. In spite of all the ‘extras’, her special exemption from the worst rigours of the school, she became ill with influenza and had not the resistance to throw it off. The matron was alarmed, the parents informed, and they, who had always panicked over every minor illness of any of their daughters, arranged for a chest specialist to come out from Paris to examine Daphne. A spot on the lung was diagnosed, to Gerald and Muriel’s alarm. Their instinct was to have Daphne brought home at once, but they were told it would be unwise for her to make the Channel crossing. Instead, she was moved to Paris, to the luxurious Crillon Hotel, where an American friend of the du Mauriers was living at the time. She offered to supervise the care and medical treatment Daphne needed.

  There followed a period of several weeks in which Daphne languished in the grand surroundings of one of Paris’s most opulent hotels, receiving treatment more appropriate to the previous century. It was a mixture of sal volatile injections, deep heat and a bizarre diet, none of which are demonstrably beneficial to someone with a spot on the lung. Daphne cried a great deal (which was very unlike her), half from weakness and half from boredom. Visits from Ferdy, for which she pleaded, helped a little but not enough. By December, Muriel du Maurier had had enough of Daphne’s tear-stained letters and of her friend’s reports of the lack of progress in her recovery. Accompanied by the fourteen-year-old Jeanne, she travelled to Paris herself and, as well as seeing her daughter and the doctor, inevitably encountered Ferdy. This meeting worried Daphne greatly. Up to then, Ferdy had been hers entirely, but now she would be scrutinized by her mother, and Daphne knew Muriel to be shrewd: if she sized up Ferdy and suspected anything, then the friendship would be abruptly terminated. Fortunately, Muriel gave her approval, and even welcomed the suggestion that, after spending Christmas at home, Daphne should return to Paris for more treatment and this time live in a small hotel near the doctor’s clinic with Ferdy supervising her until the start of the Camposena term. Should Daphne not be fully recovered by then, Angela could come over to replace Ferdy. But whatever happened. Daphne herself would not be returning to school: she was now ‘finished’.

  No one was more aware of this than Daphne herself. She saw 1926 as a crucial year in her life and dreaded it. There could be no more pretending, if she wanted to do something with her life. She could not bear to think of resuming the old routine of before Camposena on a permanent basis – it was all very well to enjoy the social round while on holiday, but the prospect of making it her life appalled her. Her illness was real, but she knew it was providing her with an excuse to carry on in the indulgent way encouraged by her parents and she was determined to reject this. The return to Paris in the New Year was a relief, and so was the realization that, thanks more to Ferdy’s care of her than the doctor’s injections, she was getting better; but her anxiety about her own future increased. She loved Paris, but how could she justify staying there? She was doomed, at the end of January, to go back to Cannon Hall and then there would be no escape. A kind of self-disgust at the thought of the pampered existence which lay ahead of her set in. She wanted to reject it but had nothing to put in its place. Nobody needed to tell her how lucky she was – she knew it – but what nobody guessed at was how, knowing she was so privileged, she felt worse, rather than better.

  The following months were wretched. She was moody and sullen and ashamed to be so. Her parents were, as ever, tolerant, but failed to divine that amusements would solve nothing where Daphne was concerned – it was simply no good offering more outings to theatres and parties and expecting her to ‘cheer up’. Unfortunately, the du Mauriers did not move in circles where, in the mid-1920s, any form of higher education was thought suitable for a girl, so the idea of Daphne perhaps going to university was never considered. She had a good brain and a love of literature, was happiest when reading, and it was the kind of intense reading nearer to studying than mere amusement; but she herself never, at that stage, contemplated such an outlandish solution to her problems. Instead, it was suggested she should learn to drive, which she duly did. The Cannon Hall chauffeur taught her in Muriel’s little car and she was soon whizzing round London on her own, not at all deterred by the odd small collision. Her parents were pleased at the success of this scheme to give Daphne an interest but, inevitably, the novelty wore off and she was once more disconsolate. The next proposition was that she should be given a dog.

  Dogs were not new in her life.6 The du Mauriers loved dogs, but since the defection of Brutus, a mongrel fox-terrier, who had opted to live mainly with the local vet before Daphne went to Camposena, the family had not had another dog. Now Daphne was invited to choose one to be her very own. She chose a West Highland terrier, named Jock after another West Highlander the family had had at Cumberland Terrace. Jock was even more of a success than learning to drive, and she enjoyed her long daily walks on the Heath more with him; but still she saw everything through what she described to Tod as ‘a mist of hate’. What she hated was her own by now familiar sense of aimlessness. The only way to deal with it, she decided, was to try harder to write, because it was the only talent she felt she might possess. So she began on short stories again, but then suddenly veered off in the direction of poetry. She tried her hand at both long, mostly descriptive, narrative poems, which rhymed conventionally, and at shorter pieces of a satirical bent. One, entitled ‘Lunch’, revealed only too clearly what she thought of the theatrical world:

  ‘Please pass the cream – yes – that’s enough’

  (‘I knew her years before the war’)

  ‘I’d love some of that sugary stuff’

  (‘She must be at least fifty-four’)

  ‘I can’t believe your dress is true’

  (‘He said his lines in an appalling way’)

  ‘It’s almost a delphinium blue’

  (‘To me he ruined the entire play’)

  ‘The whole thing’s such a terrible disgrace’

  (‘Surely he was the Duke’s adopted son!’)

  ‘If I were in Winston Churchill’s place . . .’

  (‘My dear, you’re thinking of another one’)

  ‘I always loathed the girl, she drinks and swears’

  And everyone was thinking – ‘Christ! Who cares.’

  Sometimes, listening to this kind of chatter, empty and idle, Daphne wondered whether she would only manage to write if she could get away from London, if she could be by herself somewhere quiet and empty. In March 1926, she and Jeanne and Muriel went on holiday to Cumberland, to a farm in the Newlands Valley, the other side of Derwentwater, and more than any place she had ever been in, the Lake District attracted her strongly. The countryside was not of course something with which she was unfamiliar – all her childhood she had loved the many family holidays in different country locations – but the Lake District was remote and wild and she loved climbing Catbells, Causey Pike and roaming for miles with Jock up the streams to the valley head, never meeting a soul. The weather was poor, but this did not deter her. She knew she felt happier there than anywhere else she had ever been.

  The arrival of Ferdy was meant to put the seal on this happiness. It had been Muriel’s idea to invite Ferdy, to thank her for her kindness to the convalescent Daphne earlier in the year, but when she finally accepted and made her way north, in April, it turned out to be a mistake. The Lake District was exactly the wrong kind of place for this sophisticated Frenchwoman. She made no attempt to go on walks in the rain with Daphne, preferring instead to sit by the fire and talk to Muriel. This would not have been too upsetting, if it had not been for Ferdy’s new obsequiousness. Thinking back, Daphne remembered how she had admired her teacher because, like Tod, she was her own person; but now she saw signs of the toady in Ferdy. She was heard boasting to the farmer’s wife about her friendship with the famous du Maurier family, and Daphne began to wonder if, after all, Ferdy had liked the status and possible wealth of her family rather more than her pupil. It was always abhorrent to Daphne to think she had been exploited or fooled, and she could hardly bear her own suspicions. Nor was it easy to have the woman she ‘loved in every conceivable way’ with her and yet be unable to demonstrate this love.

  Once they were all back in London, it turned out that Ferdy had lost her job, for no reason – or no reason that could safely be communicated to the du Mauriers. Immediately, Daphne jumped to a likely conclusion: Ferdy had been sacked for her too-close relationship with her. It seemed perfectly feasible that Miss Wicksteed had not approved of any teacher favouring one particular pupil to the extent of spending holidays with her and helping to nurse her. Schools had to be careful about rumours, and this was the kind of thing which could so easily give rise to them. (In fact, there had been rumours circulating round the school and, if Daphne had not been quite so solitary, she would have heard them.) She felt she had to ask Ferdy whether her deduction was correct, but Ferdy denied it. Daphne’s relief was immediately replaced by another anxiety when Ferdy asked if Gerald might give her a job – she had, apparently, always felt she was an actress manquée.

  Daphne found it difficult, and embarrassing, to credit that the woman she loved could ask this of her. What did Ferdy think acting was? It seemed not just a form of conceit for her to suppose she could jump on a stage and act without either training or experience, but also an insult to Gerald himself. She responded coldly. Her father, she said firmly, was not in a position to help and she refused to ask him. What she cared about was not so much that Ferdy would be humiliated – she knew her father would let her down lightly – but that in watching Ferdy be rejected she would feel humiliated herself. Her beloved teacher, about whom she had boasted, would be exposed as the worst kind of hanger-on and she herself as someone who had not the wit to see she was being used.

  Ferdy took this refusal to intercede on her behalf very well. She did not attempt to plead or, worse still, become upset, but simply accepted the verdict. The subject was never mentioned again. But what was more significant was that the incident did not lead to the termination of the friendship or even to any serious cooling. When Ferdy returned to Paris, with the intention of investigating the feasibility of starting her own small school (in which she subsequently succeeded), she and Daphne were devoted to each other, if secretly, even if the teacher had had a warning and the pupil was now on her guard and still trying to rationalize what had happened.

  Reliable old Tod was treated to a particularly long letter in which Ferdy was not mentioned. Instead, Daphne waxed lyrical about the Lake District – ‘one looked at sheep and thatched cottages and wondered about Wordsworth and daffodils and talked to old bearded shepherds about the rain, and I was sorry to come back and experience the boredom of the General Strike’. Whereas other girls with Daphne’s affluent background were experiencing doubts, for perhaps the first time, about the justice of their own privileged lives and finding out, often to their astonishment, what the strike was about, she not only found it boring but had the temerity to tell Tod that ‘nothing much happened beyond the fact that buses and tubes were driven by good-looking undergraduates in plus-fours . . . what is really happening and what it is about nobody has the slightest idea’. There was more naïvety than arrogance in this kind of foolishly flippant remark, but it did indicate how shallow was Daphne’s concern for those who led the ‘dreary lives’ she worried about in other letters. Her affinity with servants, and her preference for ordinary people rather than grand ones, had not led her to learn anything about the social conditions of her time, of which she was totally ignorant. But then, at the du Maurier table, politics, and the situation in the country in general, were not popular topics for discussion. There was no tradition of concern about such matters in the du Maurier household, and if Daphne was going to develop it she would have to do so on her own. She was familiar with charity work – Gerald was very active on behalf of several theatrical charities – but not with campaigning for a different kind of world. As the streets of London filled with marchers, the du Mauriers talked not of what had caused these men to march so far, but of how the box-office returns of the latest play would be affected.

  The play they were so concerned about was Edgar Wallace’s The Ringer, which opened on 1 May at Wyndham’s Theatre. Gerald was producing it and had partly rewritten the play itself. There was a strong possibility that the ‘beastly General Strike’ might ruin everything – but it did not. In spite of hot weather as well as the tense political situation, The Ringer was rapturously received and settled down to a long and immensely popular and profitable run. Daphne might have little interest in the strike, but she was passionately interested in her father’s new friend. What fascinated her – she, who found it so hard to complete any short story – was Edgar’s productivity. How had he turned out so many successful books, how had he made himself stick at it? That summer of 1926 Daphne and Gerald spent a great deal of time with Edgar and his daughter Pat, who was the same age as Daphne. They were all in the habit of lunching together at the Embassy, the men sticking to Gerald’s favourite cold beef and cos lettuce and the girls indulging themselves with chocolate profiteroles, and the four of them vying with one another in the telling of anecdotes and jokes. But in the middle of all this banter Daphne was studying Edgar closely, as well as reading his books carefully, and trying to divine in him the force which kept him working, which actually got him to sit down and transfer his imagination to paper. She did not doubt the strength of her own imagination, or even that she possessed just as much ingenuity, but what she wanted was to discover the secret of Edgar’s amazingly prolific output.