A dream come true

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Jan 05, 2007 

Most of my teenage summers, we'd go to my stepfather's sailing boat, which was moored in the estuary at Fowey in Cornwall. I loved and hated these holidays. I loved falling asleep at night rocked by the water and waking in the pink chill of dawn to hear the masts clinking and to smell the strange saltwater and petrol smell. I loved the cramped cabins and nylon sleeping bags and general adventurous inconvenience. I really adored rowing ashore to get provisions and feeling like Nancy in Swallows and Amazons.

But I hated it when we left the safety of the harbour and set sail. I hated the panicky flapping of the sails when we "went about ", the moment when the boat lurched and tilted right over as if it was about to capsize. I hated everything about sailing even though I adored, and still do adore, the sea.

Luckily I had something else to distract me in Fowey. I was in love. The object of my affections wasn't a boy but something far more solid and enticing and mysterious: a house. A really fascinatingly beautiful and perfect house. I spent every spare moment - when I wasn't being forced to risk life and limb on the water - curled wistfully in the hull of our boat, from where I could gaze uninterrupted at its delicious, creeper-clad face.

And it watched me, too. It stared back at me from across the water. First thing in the morning its face was in shadow but by late afternoon sun had crept all over it and turned it gold. And it stayed like that - lit-up and smiling - until the sun dropped behind the cliffs and the sky went dark.

Even without the romance of a history, this house would have been beautiful but it wasn't just any old house. This was the house that the novelist Daphne Du Maurier's family had bought in the 1920s, the place where I knew she'd once lived and written her first novel.

Du Maurier was my heroine. I'd read every word she'd written and then, when I'd finished doing that, I'd sent her a letter, care of her publishers, to inform her that I too was going to be a famous novelist. She wrote back warmly and politely. Completely forgetting that she might have other fans to reply to, I wrote straight back. She didn't disappoint me. Over two or three years we corresponded several times and I still have all the letters and postcards. One of them reads "Well done on your O-level [examination] results! " (Did I really bore the poor woman with a summary of my grades?) Another letter mentions her beloved Menabilly, the house that surfaced in her books. "I hope you find your dream house one day, " she wrote. "Menabilly was mine. "

Well this house across the water was my dream house and at 15 or 16 I was reconciled to the idea that this was as close as I would ever get to it. And then, 30 years later, all that changed. I was asked by Virago, a company re-issuing Du Maurier's novels, to write an introduction to Frenchman's Creek. I was honoured and excited, though I so wished Du Maurier had still been alive. I'd have given anything to let her know that the Nottingham schoolgirl she so generously corresponded with was, if not exactly a "famous " novelist, still a proper enough one to be allowed to introduce her work.

When the book came out, I was asked to speak at the Du Maurier Festival, which takes place in Fowey every year. Of course I said yes. What fun to go back there, show my husband all my old teenage haunts. "Oh, and by the way, " added the publicist who was organising the trip, "we've all been invited to dinner at Daphne du Maurier's son's place. It's that lovely house across the water. "

My heart flipped.

It was an early evening in May when the ferry took us over there. I smelled petrol and salt-water, heard the familiar clink of masts. When we stepped ashore on the other side, I remember that there was still sun on the face of the house - lit-up, smiling at me. I smiled back, in a trance.

What can I tell you about that night? I remember drinks in a long, low room overlooking the water and I remember glancing out and noticing the spot where my stepfather's boat would have been so many years ago. I remember faces around a long dinner table, laughter, the warmth and generosity of Kits Du Maurier and his wife, the fact that I kept on wanting to pinch myself. Maybe best of all was the moment when I went up to use the toilet and found myself alone for several delicious minutes on the dark landing with so many Du Mauriers staring at me from the photographs on the wall. I just stood there and breathed.

We caught a very late ferry back across the water, waved our goodbyes in the suddenly chilly night. And then, back at our hotel, I couldn't hold it in any longer, I burst into tears. My husband - amused and surprised - asked me what on earth the matter was. I found I couldn't really tell him. I think the person who was sobbing was the 15-year-old girl lost somewhere inside me, who would have given anything back then to know that one day she really would be a guest in the house across the water.