Character guide

Narrator (First Person)

major

Also known as I, me, myself, mine

He drifts through lunches and taxis narrating his own life as though scripting a play, imagining his lover planting violets on his grave one moment and buying an azalea as 'the symbol of my love' the next. His vanity and sentimentality are inseparable from his genuine ache, and he cannot tell whether he is suffering or performing. That blur between self-pity and real feeling is what makes his stories so unnerving to follow.

Narrator (Second Person)

major

Also known as you, yourself, d'you

This narrator addresses you as a companion in the story, whether recalling a girl weeping under rain outside the Empire or pressing you to admit what you would have done. The intimacy is disarming, and it makes you complicit in the desires and failures being described. Du Maurier uses this voice to collapse the distance between reader and character, so that the ache lands as your own.

The Woman

major

Also known as The woman, hers, your

She surfaces in Wardour Street on a rainy night, a girl whose one word — 'romance' — lodges in the narrator's mind for months and refuses to leave. She is glimpsed rather than known, her hat low, her face turned away, and that elusiveness is exactly what gives her power over him. Her presence turns an ordinary man's dull life into something he must confess aloud, even at a wedding.

Nurse

supporting

Also known as Nurse, herself

She sits pretending to do sums while he rocks on his heels and says the things he knows will cut her, and she wonders, calmly, why she loves him at all. Her armour is a sheet of coldness, but a tear still falls on the blotting-paper, and she gives him one more chance in a voice deliberately stripped of feeling. Her disciplined suffering against his casual cruelty is the emotional engine of the story's central quarrel.

Bridget

supporting

Also known as Bridget, herself

Bridget wakes to a noise she cannot reason about, and the bedroom she knows by day has rearranged itself into something sinister: a cold white arm with no body, a wardrobe taller than the ceiling. She lies frozen, certain that any movement will bring the silent figures toward her bed, and the terror is rendered with a child's terrible precision. Her helpless watchfulness is the whole story's nerve, making the ordinary dark of a nursery into a place where anything might step out.

Blonde Heroine

minor

Also known as the blonde heroine

A stereotypical blonde heroine appearing in a story-within-a-story or parody.

Kate

supporting

Kate makes a life out of a bungalow facing the sea and a garden she tends, but the petty club life and her husband's restlessness wear the marriage thin until she begins to make scenes of jealousy over nothing. When she discovers his affair with a young hotel guest named Nan, she does not crumble — she gathers an energy he lacks and threatens a scandal. Her refusal to be merely the wronged wife is what forces the story's reckoning.

Nanny

minor

Also known as Nan

An older caretaker or nanny figure in one of the stories.

Darling

minor

A character referred to as Darling, possibly a nickname or term of endearment.

Monkton

minor

A named male character with five mentions, likely a minor role.

Mrs. John Pearce

minor

Also known as John

A married woman mentioned briefly, possibly a background character.

Austin Seven

minor

Also known as our, their

A personified car that plays a role in a story, treated as a character.