Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  1

  Her mother explained to Celia that things would be rather different now. While Daddy was alive they had thought they were comparatively rich. But now that he was dead the lawyers had found out that there was very little money left.

  ‘We shall have to live very, very simply. I ought really to sell this house and take a little cottage somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mummy – no.’

  Miriam smiled at her daughter’s vehemence.

  ‘Do you love it so much?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Celia was terribly in earnest. Sell Home? Oh, she couldn’t bear it.

  ‘Cyril says the same … But I don’t know that I’m wise … It will mean being very, very economical –’

  ‘Oh, please, Mummy. Please – please – please.’

  ‘Very well, darling. After all, it’s a happy house.’

  Yes, it was a happy house. Looking back after long years Celia acknowledged the truth of that remark. It had, somehow an atmosphere. Happy home and happy years spent in it.

  There were changes, of course. Jeanne went back to France. A gardener came only twice a week just to keep the place tidy, and the hothouses fell gradually to pieces. Susan and the parlourmaid left. Rouncy remained. She was unemotional but firm.

  Celia’s mother argued with her. ‘But you know it will be much harder work. I shall only be able to afford a house-parlourmaid and no outside help for the boots and knives.’

  ‘I’m quite willing, ma’am. I don’t like change. I’m used to my kitchen here, and it suits me.’

  No hint of loyalty – of affection. The mere suggestion of such a thing would have embarrassed Rouncy very much.

  So Rouncy remained at reduced wages, and sometimes, Celia realized afterwards, her staying tried Miriam more than her going would have done. For Rouncy had been trained in the grand school. For her the recipes beginning ‘Take a pint of rich cream and a dozen fresh eggs.’ To cook plainly and economically and give small orders to the tradespeople was beyond the reach of Rouncy’s imagination. She still made sheets of rock cakes for the kitchen tea and threw whole loaves into the pig tub when they went stale. To give large and handsome orders to the tradespeople was a kind of pride with her. It reflected credit on the House. She suffered acutely when Miriam took the ordering out of her hands.

  As house-parlourmaid there came an elderly woman called Gregg. Gregg had been parlourmaid to Miriam when the latter was first married.

  ‘And as soon as I saw your advertisement in the paper, ma’am, I gave in my notice and came along. I’ve never been so happy anywhere as I was here.’

  ‘It will be very different now, Gregg.’

  But Gregg was determined to come. She was a first-class parlourmaid, but her skill in that direction was not tested. There were no more dinner parties. As a housemaid she was slapdash, indifferent to cobwebs and indulgent to dust.

  She would regale Celia with long tales of the glories in past days.

  ‘Twenty-four your Pa and Ma would sit down to dinner. Two soups, two fish courses, four entrées, a joint – a sorbée as they call it, two sweets, lobster salad, and an ice pudding!’

  ‘Those were the days,’ Gregg implied as she reluctantly brought in the macaroni au gratin that represented Miriam’s and Celia’s supper.

  Miriam got interested in the garden. She knew nothing about gardening and did not trouble to learn. She just made experiments – and the experiments were crowned with wild and quite unjustifiable success. She put flowers and bulbs in at the wrong time of year and in the wrong depth of soil, she sowed seeds wildly. Everything she touched bloomed and lived.

  ‘Your Ma’s got the live hand,’ said old Ash gloomily.

  Old Ash was the jobbing gardener who came twice a week. He really knew something about gardening, but was unfortunately gifted with a dead hand. Anything he put in always died. His pruning was unlucky, and the things that didn’t ‘damp off’ were victims of the ‘early frost’. He gave Miriam advice which she did not take.

  It was his earnest wish to cut up the slope of the lawn into ‘Some nice beds – crescent shape and diamond, and have some nice bedding-out plants.’ He was chagrined by Miriam’s indignant refusal. When she said she liked the unbroken sweep of green he would reply: ‘Well, beds look like a gentleman’s place. You can’t deny it.’

  Celia and Miriam ‘did’ flowers for the house – vying with each other. They would make great tall bouquets of white flowers, trailing jasmine, sweet-scented syringas, white phlox, and stocks. Then Miriam had a passion for little exotic posies, cherry pie and sweet flat-faced pink roses.

  The smell of old-fashioned pink roses reminded Celia of her mother all through her life.

  It annoyed Celia that her own arrangements could never equal her mother’s, however much time and trouble she took over them. Miriam could fling flowers together with a wild grace. Her arrangements were original – they were not at all in accord with the flower arrangements of the period.

  Lessons were a haphazard arrangement. Miriam said Celia must go on with her arithmetic by herself. She was no good at it herself. Celia did so conscientiously, working through the little brown book that she had started with her father.

  Every now and then she stuck in a bog of uncertainty – uncertain in a problem as to whether the answer would be in sheep or men. The papering of rooms so bewildered her that she skipped it altogether.

  Miriam had theories of her own as to education. She was a good teacher, clear in explanation, and able to arouse enthusiasm over any subject she selected.

  She had a passion for history, and under her guidance Celia was swept from one event to another in the world’s life story. The steady progression of English history bored Miriam, but Elizabeth, the Emperor Charles the Fifth, Francis the First of France, Peter the Great – all these became living personages to Celia. The splendour of Rome lived again. Carthage perished. Peter the Great strove to raise Russia from barbarism.

  Celia loved being read aloud to, and Miriam would select books dealing with the various historical periods they were studying. She skipped shamelessly when reading aloud – she had a complete impatience for anything tedious. Geography was rather bound up with history. Other lessons they had none, except that Miriam did her best to improve Celia’s spelling, which was, for a girl of her age, nothing short of disgraceful.

  A German woman was engaged to teach Celia the piano, and she showed an immediate aptitude and love for the study, practising long beyond the time Fräulein had indicated.

  Margaret McCrae had left the neighbourhood, but once a week the Maitlands came to tea – Ellie and Janet. Ellie was older than Celia, Janet younger. They played Colours and Grandmother’s Steps, and they founded a Secret Society called the Ivy. After inventing passwords, a peculiar handclasp, and writing messages in invisible ink, the Ivy Society rather languished.

  There were also the little Pines.

  They were thick children, with adenoidy voices, younger than Celia. Dorothy and Mabel. Their only idea in life was eating. They always ate too much and were usually sick before they left. Sometimes Celia would go to lunch with them. Mr Pine was a great fat red-faced man; his wife was tall and angular with a terrific black fringe. They were very affectionate, and they too were devoted to food.

  ‘Percival, this mutton is delicious – really delicious.’

  ‘A little more, my love. Dorothy, a little more?’

  ‘Thank you, Papa.’

  ‘Mabel?’

  ‘No, thank you, Papa.’

  ‘Come, come, what’s this? This mutton is delicious.’

  ‘We must congratulate Giles, my love.’ (Giles was the butcher.)

  Neither the Pines nor the Maitlands made much impression on Celia’s life. The games she played by herself were still the most real games to her.

  As her piano playing improved she would spend long hours in the big schoolroom, turning out old dusty piles of music and reading them. Old songs –‘Down the Vale’, �
��A Song of Sleep’, ‘Fiddle and I’. She would sing them, her voice rising clear and pure.

  She was rather vain about her voice.

  When small she had declared her intention of marrying a duke. Nannie had concurred on the condition that Celia learned to eat her dinner faster.

  ‘Because, my dear, in the grand houses the butler would take away your plate long before you’d finished.’

  ‘Would he?’

  ‘Yes, in the grand houses, the butler comes round, and he takes everyone’s plate away whether they’ve finished or not!’

  After this Celia fairly bolted her food to get into training for the ducal life.

  Now, for the first time, her intention wavered. Perhaps she wouldn’t marry a duke after all. No, she would be a prima donna – somebody like Melba.

  Celia still spent much of her time alone. Although she had the Maitlands and the Pines to tea – they were not nearly so real to her as ‘the girls’.

  ‘The girls’ were creations of Celia’s imagination. She knew all about them – what they looked like, what they wore, what they felt and thought.

  First there was Ethelred Smith – who was tall and very dark and very, very clever. She was good at games, too. In fact, Ethel was good at everything. She had a decided ‘figure’ and wore striped shirts. Ethel was everything that Celia was not. She represented what Celia would like to be. Then there was Annie Brown. Ethel’s great friend. She was fair and weak and ‘delicate’. Ethel helped her with her lessons, and Annie looked up to and admired Ethel. Next came Isabella Sullivan, who had red hair and brown eyes and was beautiful. She was rich and proud and unpleasant. She always thought that she was going to beat Ethel at croquet, but Celia saw to it that she didn’t, though she felt rather mean sometimes when she deliberately made Isabella miss balls. Elsie Green was her cousin – her poor cousin. She had dark curls and blue eyes and was very merry.

  Ella Graves and Sue de Vete were much younger – only seven. Ella was very serious and industrious, with bushy brown hair and a plain face. She often won the arithmetic prize, because she worked so hard. She was very fair, and Celia was never quite sure what she looked like, and her character was variable. Vera de Vete, Sue’s half sister, was the romantic personality of ‘the school’. She was fourteen. She had straw-coloured hair and deep forget-me-not blue eyes. There was mystery about her past – and in the end Celia knew that she would turn out to have been changed at birth and that she was really the Lady Vera, the daughter of one of the proudest noblemen in the land. There was a new girl – Lena, and one of Celia’s favourite plays was to be Lena arriving at the school.

  Miriam knew vaguely about ‘the girls’ but she never asked questions about them – for which Celia was passionately grateful. On wet days ‘the girls’ gave a concert in the schoolroom, different pieces being allotted to them. It annoyed Celia very much that her fingers stumbled over Ethel’s piece, which she was anxious to play well, and that though she always allotted Isabella the most difficult, it went perfectly. ‘The girls’ played cribbage against each other also, and here again Isabella always seemed to have an annoying run of luck.

  Sometimes, when Celia went to stay with Grannie, she was taken by her to a musical comedy. They would have a four-wheeler to the station then train to Victoria, four-wheeler to lunch at the Army and Navy Stores, where Grannie would do immense lists of shopping in the grocery with the special old man who always attended to her. Then they would go up to the restaurant and have lunch, finishing with ‘a small cup of coffee in a large cup’, so that plenty of milk could be added. Then they would go to the confectionery department and buy half a pound of chocolate coffee creams, and then into another four-wheeler and off to the theatre, which Grannie enjoyed every bit as much as Celia did.

  Very often, afterwards, Grannie would buy Celia the score of the music. That opened up a new field of activity to ‘the girls’. They now blossomed into musical comedy stars. Isabella and Vera had soprano voices – Isabella’s was bigger, but Vera’s was sweeter. Ethel had a magnificent contralto – Elsie had a pretty little voice. Annie, Ella, and Sue had unimportant parts, but Sue gradually developed into taking the soubrette roles. The Country Girl was Celia’s favourite. ‘Under the Deodars’ seemed to her the loveliest song that had ever been written. She sang it until she was hoarse. Vera was given the part of the Princess, so that she could sing it and the heroine’s role given to Isabella. The Cingalee was another favourite, because it had a good part for Ethel.

  Miriam, who suffered from headaches and whose bedroom was below the piano, at last forbade Celia to play for more than three hours on end.

  2

  At last Celia’s early ambition was realized. She had an accordion-pleated dancing dress, and she stayed behind for the skirt-dancing class.

  She was now one of the elect. She would no longer dance with Dorothy Pine who only wore a plain white party frock. The accordion-pleated girls only danced with each other – unless they were being self-consciously ‘kind’. Celia and Janet Maitland paired off. Janet danced beautifully. They were engaged for the waltz in perpetuity. And they also partnered each other for the march, but there they were sometimes torn apart, since Celia was a head and a half taller than Janet, and Miss Mackintosh liked her marching pairs to look symmetrical. The polka it was the fashion to dance with the little ones. Each elder girl took a tot. Six girls stayed behind for skirt dancing. It was a source of bitter disappointment to Celia that she always remained in the second row. Janet, Celia did not mind, because Janet danced better than anyone else, but Daphne danced badly and made lots of mistakes. Celia always felt it was very unfair, and the true solution of the mystery, that Miss Mackintosh put the shorter girls in front and the taller ones behind, never once occurred to her.

  Miriam was quite as excited as Celia over what colour her accordion pleat should be. They had a long earnest discussion, taking into account what the other girls wore, and in the end they decided on a flame-coloured one. Nobody else had ever had a dress of that colour. Celia was enchanted.

  Since her husband’s death Miriam went out and entertained very little. She ‘kept up’ only with such people as had children of Celia’s age, and a few old friends. All the same, the ease with which she dropped out of things made her a little bitter. The difference that money made. All those people who hadn’t been able to make fuss enough of her and John! Nowadays they hardly remembered her existence. She didn’t care for herself – she had always been a shy woman. It was for John’s sake that she had been sociable. He loved people coming to the house; he loved going out. He had never guessed that Miriam hated it, so well had she played her part. She was relieved now, but all the same, she felt resentful on Celia’s account. When the child grew up she would want social things.

  The evenings were some of the happiest times mother and daughter spent together. They had supper early, at seven, and afterwards would go up to the schoolroom, and Celia would do fancy work, and her mother would read to her. Reading aloud would make Miriam sleepy. Her voice would go queer and blurry, her head would tilt forward …

  ‘Mummy,’ Celia would say accusingly, ‘you’re going to sleep.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Miriam would declare indignantly. She would sit very upright and read very clearly and distinctly for a couple of pages. Then she would say suddenly:

  ‘I believe you’re right,’ and, shutting the book, she would drop fast asleep.

  She only slept for about three minutes. Then she would wake up and start off again with renewed vigour.

  Sometimes Miriam would tell stories of her early life instead of reading. Of how she had come, a distant cousin, to live with Grannie.

  ‘My mother had died, and there was no money afterwards, so Grannie very kindly offered to adopt me.’

  She was a little cool about the kindness, perhaps – a coolness that showed in tone, not in words. It masked a memory of childish loneliness, of a longing for her own mother. She had been ill at last, and the doctor called in. H
e had said: ‘This child is fretting about something.’ ‘Oh, no,’ Grannie had answered positively. ‘She’s quite a happy, merry little thing.’ The doctor had said nothing, but when Grannie had gone out of the room he had sat on the bed talking to her in a kindly, confidential manner, and she had suddenly broken down and admitted to long bouts of weeping in bed at night.

  Grannie had been very astonished when he had told her.

  ‘Why, she never said anything to me about it.’

  And after that, it had been better. Just the telling seemed to have taken the ache away.

  ‘And then there was your father.’ How her voice softened. ‘He was always kind to me.’

  ‘Tell me about Daddy.’

  ‘He was grown up – eighteen. He didn’t come home very often. He didn’t like his stepfather very much.’

  ‘And did you love him at once?’

  ‘Yes, from the very first moment I saw him. I grew up loving him … I never dreamt he’d ever think of me.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘No. You see, he was always going about with smart grown-up girls. He was a great flirt – and then he was supposed to be a very good match. I was always expecting him to get married to someone else. He was very kind to me when he came – used to bring me flowers and sweets and brooches. I was just “little Miriam” to him. I think he was pleased by my being so devoted to him. He told me once that an old lady, the mother of one of his friends, said to him, “I think, John, you will marry the little cousin.” And he had said, laughing, “Miriam? Why, she’s only a child.” He was rather in love with a very handsome girl then. But somehow or other, it came to nothing … I was the only woman he ever asked to marry him … I remember – I used to think that if he married I should perhaps lie on a sofa pining away, and nobody would know what was the matter with me! I should just gradually fade away! That was the regular romantic idea in my young days – hopeless love – and lying on a sofa. I would die, and no one would ever know until they found a packet of his letters with pressed forget-me-nots in them all bound up in blue ribbon. All very silly – but I don’t know, somehow – it helped – all that imagining …