Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  In the morning now there were ‘lessons’, which made Celia feel very important. There was arithmetic, which Celia did with Daddy. She loved arithmetic, and she liked hearing Daddy say: ‘This child’s got a very good mathematical brain. She won’t count on her fingers like you do, Miriam.’ And her mother would laugh and say: ‘I never did have any head for figures.’ First Celia did addition and then subtraction, and then multiplication which was fun, and then division which seemed very grown up and difficult, and then there were pages called ‘Problems’. Celia adored problems. They were about boys and apples, and sheep in fields, and cakes, and men working, and though they were really only addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in disguise, yet the answers were in boys or apples or sheep, which made it ever so much more exciting. After arithmetic there was ‘copy’ done in an exercise book. Her mother would write a line across the top, and Celia would copy it down, down, down the page till she got to the bottom. Celia did not care for copy very much, but sometimes Mummy would write a very funny sentence such as ‘Cross-eyed cats can’t cough comfortably,’ which made Celia laugh very much. Then there was a page of spelling to be learnt – simple little words, but they cost Celia a good deal of trouble. In her anxiety to spell she always put so many unnecessary letters into words that they were quite unrecognizable.

  In the evening, after Susan had given Celia her bath, Mummy would come into the nursery to give Celia a ‘last tuck’. ‘Mummy’s tuck,’ Celia would call it, and she would try to lie very still so that ‘Mummy’s tuck’ should still be there in the morning. But somehow or other it never was.

  ‘Would you like a light, my pet? Or the door left open?’

  But Celia never wanted a light. She liked the nice warm comforting darkness that you sank down into. The darkness, she felt, was friendly.

  ‘Well, you’re not one to be frightened of the dark,’ Susan used to say. ‘My little niece now, she screams her life out if you leave her in the dark.’

  Susan’s little niece, Celia had for some time thought privately, must be a very unpleasant little girl – and also very silly. Why should one be frightened of the dark? The only thing that could frighten one was dreams. Dreams were frightening because they made real things go topsy-turvy. If she woke up with a scream after dreaming of the Gun Man, she would jump out of bed, knowing her way perfectly in the dark, and run along the passage to her mother’s room. And her mother would come back with her and sit a while, saying, ‘There’s no Gun Man, darling. You’re quite safe – you’re quite safe.’ And then Celia would fall asleep again, knowing that Mummy had indeed made everything safe, and in a few minutes she would be wandering in the valley by the river picking primroses and saying triumphantly to herself, ‘I knew it wasn’t a railway line, really. Of course, the river’s always been here.’

  2 Abroad

  1

  It was six months after Nannie had departed that Mummy told Celia a very exciting piece of news. They were going abroad – to France.

  ‘Me too?’

  ‘Yes, darling, you too.’

  ‘And Cyril?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Susan and Rouncy?’

  ‘No. Daddy and I and Cyril and you. Daddy hasn’t been well, and the doctor wants him to go abroad for the winter to somewhere warm.’

  ‘Is France warm?’

  ‘The south is.’

  ‘What is it like, Mummy?’

  ‘Well, there are mountains there. Mountains with snow on them.’

  ‘Why have they got snow on them?’

  ‘Because they are so high.’

  ‘How high?’

  And her mother would try to explain just how high mountains were – but Celia found it very hard to imagine.

  She knew Woodbury Beacon. It took you half an hour to walk to the top of that. But Woodbury Beacon hardly counted as a mountain at all.

  It was all very exciting – particularly the travelling bag. A real travelling bag of her very own in dark green leather, and inside it had bottles, and a place for a brush and comb and clothes brush, and there was a little travelling clock and even a little travelling inkpot!

  It was, Celia felt, the loveliest possession she had ever had.

  The journey was very exciting. There was crossing the Channel, to begin with. Her mother went to lie down, and Celia stayed on deck with her father, which made her feel very grown up and important.

  France, when they actually saw it, was a little disappointing. It looked like any other place. But the blue-uniformed porters talking French were rather thrilling, and so was the funny high train they got into. They were to sleep in it, which seemed to Celia another thrilling thing.

  She and her mother were to have one compartment, and her father and Cyril the one next door.

  Cyril was, of course, very lordly about it all. Cyril was sixteen, and he made it a point of honour not to be excited about anything. He asked questions in a would-be indolent fashion, but even he could hardly conceal his passion and curiosity for the great French engine.

  Celia said to her mother:

  ‘Will there really be mountains, Mummy?’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘Very, very, very high?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Higher than Woodbury Beacon?’

  ‘Much, much higher. So high that there’s snow on top of them.’

  Celia shut her eyes and tried to imagine. Mountains. Great hills going up, up, up – so high that perhaps you couldn’t see the tops of them. Celia’s neck went back, back – in imagination she was looking up the steep sides of the mountains.

  ‘What is it, darling? Have you got a crick in your neck?’ Celia shook her head emphatically.

  ‘I’m thinking of big mountains,’ she said.

  ‘Silly little kid,’ said Cyril with good-humoured scorn.

  Presently there was the excitement of going to bed. In the morning, when they woke up, they would be in the South of France.

  It was ten o’clock on the following morning when they arrived at Pau. There was a great fuss about collecting the luggage, of which there was a lot – no less than thirteen great round-topped trunks and innumerable leather valises.

  At last, however, they were out of the station and driving to the hotel. Celia peered out in every direction.

  ‘Where are the mountains, Mummy?’

  ‘Over there, darling. Do you see that line of snow peaks?’

  Those! Against the skyline was a zigzag of white, looking as though it were cut out of paper. A low line. Where were those great towering monuments rising up into the sky – far, far up above Celia’s head?

  ‘Oh!’ said Celia.

  A bitter pang of disappointment swept through her. Mountains indeed!

  2

  After she had got over her disappointment about the mountains, Celia enjoyed her life in Pau very much. The meals were exciting. Called for some strange reason Tabbeldote, you had lunch at a long table of all sorts of strange and exciting dishes. There were two other children in the hotel, twin sisters a year older than Celia. She and Bar and Beatrice went about everywhere together. Celia discovered, for the first time in her eight solemn years, the joys of mischief. The three children would eat oranges on their balcony and throw over the pips on to passing soldiers gay in blue and red uniforms. When the soldiers looked up angrily, the children would have dived back and become invisible. They put little heaps of salt and pepper on all the plates laid for Tabbeldote and annoyed Victor, the old waiter, very much indeed. They concealed themselves in a niche under the stairs and tickled the legs of all the visitors descending to dinner with a long peacock’s feather. Their final feat came on a day when they had worried the fierce chambermaid of the upper floor to the point of distraction. They had followed her into a little sanctum of mops and pails and scrubbing brushes. Turning on them angrily and pouring forth a torrent of that incomprehensible language – French – she swept out, banging the door on them and locking it. The three children
were prisoners.

  ‘She’s done us,’ said Bar bitterly.

  ‘I wonder how long it’ll be before she lets us out?’

  They looked at each other sombrely. Bar’s eyes flashed rebelliously.

  ‘I can’t bear to let her crow over us. We must do something.’

  Bar was always the ringleader. Her eyes went to a microscopic slit of a window which was all the room possessed.

  ‘I wonder if we could squeeze through that. We’re none of us very fat. What’s outside, Celia, anything at all?’

  Celia reported that there was a gutter.

  ‘It’s big enough to walk along,’ she said:

  ‘Good, we’ll do Suzanne yet. Won’t she have a fit when we come jumping out on her?’

  They got the window open with difficulty, and one by one they squeezed themselves through. The gutter was a ledge about a foot wide with an edge perhaps two inches high. Below it was a sheer drop of five storeys.

  The Belgian lady in No. 33 sent a polite note to the English lady in No. 54. Was Madame aware of the fact that her little girl and the little girls of Madame Owen were walking round the parapet on the fifth storey?

  The fuss that followed was to Celia quite extraordinary and rather unjust. She had never been told not to walk on parapets.

  ‘You might have fallen and been killed.’

  ‘Oh! No, Mummy, there was lots of room – even to put both feet together.’

  The incident remained one of those inexplicable ones where grown-ups fuss about nothing at all.

  3

  Celia would, of course, have to learn French. Cyril had a young Frenchman who came every day. For Celia a young lady was engaged to take her for walks every day and talk French. The lady was actually English, the daughter of the proprietor of the English bookshop, but she had lived her whole life in Pau and spoke French as easily as English.

  Miss Leadbetter was a young lady of extreme refinement. Her English was mincing and clipped. She spoke slowly, with condescending kindness.

  ‘See, Celia, that is a shop where they bake bread. A boulangerie.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Leadbetter.’

  ‘Look, Celia, there is a little dog crossing the road. Un chien qui traverse la rue. Qu’est-ce qu’il fait? That means, what is he doing?’

  Miss Leadbetter had not been happy in this last attempt. Dogs are indelicate creatures apt to bring a blush to the cheek of ultra-refined young women. This particular dog stopping crossing the road and engaged in other activities.

  ‘I don’t know how to say what he is doing in French,’ said Celia.

  ‘Look the other way, dear,’ said Miss Leadbetter. ‘It’s not very nice. That is a church in front of us. Voilà une église.’

  The walks were long, boring, and monotonous.

  After a fortnight, Celia’s mother got rid of Miss Leadbetter.

  ‘An impossible young woman,’ she said to her husband. ‘She could make the most exciting thing in the world seem dull.’

  Celia’s father agreed. He said the child would never learn French except from a Frenchwoman. Celia did not much like the idea of a Frenchwoman. She had a good insular distrust of all foreigners. Still, if it was only for walks … Her mother said that she was sure she would like Mademoiselle Mauhourat very much. It struck Celia as an extraordinarily funny name.

  Mademoiselle Mauhourat was tall and big. She always wore dresses made with a number of little capes which swung about and knocked things over on tables.

  Celia was of opinion that Nannie would have said she ‘flounced’.

  Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very voluble and very affectionate.

  ‘Oh, la chère mignonne!’ cried Mademoiselle Mauhourat, ‘la chère petite mignonne.’ She knelt down in front of Celia and laughed in an engaging manner into her face. Celia remained very British and stolid and disliked this very much. It made her feel embarrassed.

  ‘Nous allons nous amuser. Ah, comme nous allons nous amuser!’

  Again there were walks. Mademoiselle Mauhourat talked without ceasing, and Celia endured politely the flow of meaningless words. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very kind – the kinder she was the more Celia disliked her.

  After ten days Celia got a cold. She was slightly feverish.

  ‘I think you’d better not go out today,’ said her mother. ‘Mademoiselle can amuse you here.’

  ‘No,’ burst out Celia. ‘No. Send her away. Send her away.’

  Her mother looked at her attentively. It was a look Celia knew well – a queer, luminous, searching look. She said quietly:

  ‘Very well, darling, I will.’

  ‘Don’t even let her come in here,’ implored Celia.

  But at that moment the door of the sitting room opened and Mademoiselle, very much becaped, entered.

  Celia’s mother spoke to her in French. Mademoiselle uttered exclamations of chagrin and sympathy.

  ‘Ah, la pauvre mignonne,’ she cried when Celia’s mother had finished. She plopped down in front of Celia. ‘La pauvre, pauvre mignonne.’

  Celia glanced appealingly at her mother. She made terrible faces at her. ‘Send her away,’ the faces said, ‘send her away.’

  Fortunately at that moment one of Mademoiselle Mauhourat’s many capes knocked over a vase of flowers, and her whole attention was absorbed by apologies.

  When she had finally left the room, Celia’s mother said gently:

  ‘Darling, you shouldn’t have made those faces. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was only meaning to be kind. You would have hurt her feelings.’

  Celia looked at her mother in surprise.

  ‘But, Mummy,’ she said, ‘they were English faces.’

  She didn’t understand why her mother laughed so much.

  That evening Miriam said to her husband:

  ‘This woman’s no good, either. Celia doesn’t like her. I wonder –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Miriam. ‘I was thinking of a girl in the dressmaker’s today.’

  The next time she went to be fitted she spoke to the girl. She was only one of the apprentices; her job was to stand by holding pins. She was about nineteen, with dark hair neatly piled up in a chignon, a snub nose, and a rosy, good-humoured face.

  Jeanne was very astonished when the English lady spoke to her and asked her whether she would like to come to England. It depended, she said, on what Maman thought. Miriam asked for her mother’s address. Jeanne’s father and mother kept a small café – very neat and clean. Madame Beaugé listened in great surprise to the English lady’s proposal. To act as lady’s-maid and look after a little girl? Jeanne had very little experience – she was rather awkward and clumsy. Berthe now, her elder daughter – but it was Jeanne the English lady wanted. M. Beaugé was called in for consultation. He said they must not stand in Jeanne’s way. The wages were good, much better than Jeanne got in the dressmaking establishment.

  Three days later Jeanne, very nervous and elated, came to take up her duties. She was rather frightened of the little English girl she was to look after. She did not know any English. She learnt a phrase and said it hopefully. ‘Good morning – mees.’

  Alas, so peculiar was Jeanne’s accent that Celia did not understand. The toilet proceeded in silence. Celia and Jeanne eyed each other like strange dogs. Jeanne brushed Celia’s curls round her fingers. Celia never stopped staring at her.

  ‘Mummy,’ said Celia at breakfast, ‘doesn’t Jeanne talk any English at all?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How funny.’

  ‘Do you like Jeanne?’

  ‘She’s got a very funny face,’ said Celia. She thought a minute. ‘Tell her to brush my hair harder.’

  At the end of three weeks Celia and Jeanne could understand each other. At the end of the fourth week they met a herd of cows when out on their walk.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ cried Jeanne. ‘Des vaches – des vaches! Maman, maman.’

  And catching Celia frenziedly by the hand, she rushed up a bank.

>   ‘What’s the matter?’ said Celia.

  ‘J’ai peur des vaches.’

  Celia looked at her kindly.

  ‘If we meet any more cows,’ she said, ‘you get behind me.’

  After that they were perfect friends. Celia found Jeanne a most entertaining companion. Jeanne dressed some small dolls that had been given to Celia and sustained dialogues would ensue. Jeanne was, in turn, the femme de chambre (a very impertinent one), the maman, the papa (who was very military and twirled his moustache), and the three naughty children. Once she enacted the part of M. le Curé and heard their confessions and imposed dreadful penances on them. This enchanted Celia, who was always begging for a repetition.

  ‘Non, non, mees, c’est très mal ce que j’ai fait là.’

  ‘Pourquoi?’

  Jeanne explained.

  ‘I have made a mock of M. le Curé. It is a sin, that!’

  ‘Oh, Jeanne, couldn’t you do it once more? It was so funny.’

  The soft-hearted Jeanne imperilled her immortal soul and did it again even more amusingly.

  Celia knew all about Jeanne’s family. About Berthe who was très sérieuse, and Louis who was si gentil, and Edouard who was spirituel, and la petite Lise who had just made her first communion, and the cat who was so clever that he could curl himself up in the middle of the glasses in the café and never break one of them.

  Celia, in her turn, told Jeanne about Goldie and Rouncy and Susan, and the garden, and all the things they would do when Jeanne came to England. Jeanne had never seen the sea. The idea of going on a boat from France to England frightened her very much.

  ‘Je me figure,’ said Jeanne, ‘que j’aurais horriblement peur. N’en parlons pas! Parlez-moi de votre petit oiseau.’

  4

  One day, as Celia was walking with her father, a voice hailed them from a small table outside one of the hotels.

  ‘John! I declare it’s old John!’