Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  ‘I remember the day when your father said suddenly, “What lovely eyes the child has got.” I was so startled. I’d always thought I was terribly plain. I climbed up on a chair and stared and stared at myself in the glass to see what he had meant. In the end I thought perhaps my eyes were rather nice …’

  ‘When did Daddy ask you to marry him?’

  ‘I was twenty-two. He’d been away for a year. I’d sent him a Christmas card and a poem that I’d written for him. He kept that poem in his pocketbook. It was there when he died …

  ‘I can’t tell you how surprised I was when he asked me. I said, No.’

  ‘But, Mummy, why?’

  ‘It’s difficult to explain … I’d been brought up to be very diffident about myself. I felt that I was “dumpy” – not a tall, handsome person. I felt, perhaps, he’d be disappointed in me once we were married. I was dreadfully modest about myself.’

  ‘And then Uncle Tom –’ prompted Celia who knew this part of the story almost as well as Miriam.

  Her mother smiled.

  ‘Yes, Uncle Tom. We were down in Sussex with Uncle Tom at the time. He was an old man then – but very wise – very kindly. I was playing the piano, I remember, and he was sitting by the fire. He said: “Miriam, John’s asked you to marry him, hasn’t he? And you’ve refused him.” I said, “Yes.” “But you love him, Miriam?” I said, “Yes,” again. “Don’t say No next time,” he said. “He’ll ask you once more, but he won’t ask you a third time. He’s a good man, Miriam. Don’t throw away your happiness.”’

  ‘And he did ask you, and you said “Yes.”’

  Miriam nodded.

  She had that kind of starry look in her eyes that Celia knew well.

  ‘Tell me how you came to live here.’

  That was another well-known tale.

  Miriam smiled.

  ‘We were staying down here in rooms. We had two young babies – your little sister Joy, who died, and Cyril. Your father had to go abroad to India on business. He couldn’t take me with him. We decided that this was a very pleasant place and that we’d take a house for a year. I went about looking for one with Grannie.

  ‘When your father came home to lunch, I said to him, “John, I bought a house.” He said, “What?” Grannie said, “It’s all right, John, it will be quite a good investment.” You see, Grannie’s husband, your father’s stepfather, had left me a little money of my own. The only house I saw that I liked was this one. It was so peaceful – so happy. But the old lady who owned it wouldn’t let – she would only sell. She was a Quaker – very sweet and gentle. I said to Grannie, “Shall I buy it with my money?”

  ‘Grannie was my trustee. She said, “House property is a good investment. Buy it.”

  ‘The old Quaker lady was so sweet. She said, “I think of thee, my dear, being very happy here. Thee and thy husband, and thy children …” It was like a blessing.’

  How like her mother – that suddenness, that quick decision.

  Celia said:

  ‘And I was born here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, Mother, don’t let’s ever sell it …’

  Miriam sighed.

  ‘I don’t know if I’ve been wise … But you love it so … And perhaps – it will be something – always – for you to come back to …’

  3

  Cousin Lottie came to stay. She was married now and had a house of her own in London. But she needed a change and country air, so Miriam said.

  Cousin Lottie was certainly not well. She stayed in bed and was terribly sick.

  She talked vaguely about some food that had upset her.

  ‘But she ought to be better now,’ urged Celia, as a week passed and Cousin Lottie was still sick.

  When you were ‘upset’ you had castor oil and stayed in bed, and the next day or the day after you were better.

  Miriam looked at Celia with a funny expression on her face. A sort of half-guilty, half-smiling look.

  ‘Darling, I think I’d better tell you. Cousin Lottie is sick because she is going to have a baby.’

  Celia had never been so astonished in her life. Since the dispute with Marguerite Priestman she had never thought of the baby question again.

  She asked eager questions.

  ‘But why does it make you sick? When will it be here? Tomorrow?’

  Her mother laughed.

  ‘Oh! No, not till next autumn.’

  She told her more – how long a baby took to come – something of the process. It all seemed most astonishing to Celia – quite the most remarkable thing she had ever heard.

  ‘Only don’t talk about it before Cousin Lottie. You see, little girls aren’t supposed to know about these things.’

  Next day Celia came to her mother in great excitement.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, I’ve had a most exciting dream. I dreamt Grannie was going to have a baby. Do you think it will come true? Shall we write and ask her?’

  She was astonished when her mother laughed.

  ‘Dreams do come true,’ she said reproachfully. ‘It says so in the Bible.’

  4

  Her excitement over Cousin Lottie’s baby lasted for a week. She still had a sneaking hope that the baby might arrive now and not next autumn. After all, Mummy might be wrong.

  Then Cousin Lottie returned to town, and Celia forgot about it. It was quite a surprise to her the following autumn when she was staying with Grannie when old Sarah came suddenly out into the garden, saying: ‘Your Cousin Lottie’s got a little baby boy. Isn’t that nice now?’

  Celia had rushed into the house where Grannie was sitting with a telegram in her hand talking to Mrs Mackintosh, a crony of hers.

  ‘Grannie, Grannie,’ cried Celia, ‘has Cousin Lottie really got a baby? How big is it?’

  With great decision Grannie measured off the baby’s size on her knitting pin – the big knitting pin – since she was making night socks.

  ‘Only as long as that?’ It seemed incredible.

  ‘My sister Jane was so small she was put in a soap box,’ said Grannie.

  ‘A soap box, Grannie?’

  ‘They never thought she’d live,’ said Grannie with relish, adding to Mrs Mackintosh in a lowered voice, ‘Five months.’

  Celia sat quietly trying to visualize a baby of the required smallness.

  ‘What kind of soap?’ she asked presently, but Grannie did not answer. She was busy talking to Mrs Mackintosh in a low, hushed voice.

  ‘You see, the doctors disagreed about Charlotte. Let the labour come on – that’s what the specialist said. Forty-eight hours – the cord – actually round the neck …’

  Her voice dropped lower and lower. She shot a glance at Celia and stopped.

  What a funny way Grannie had of saying things. It made them sound, somehow, exciting … She had a funny way, too, of looking at you. As though there were all sorts of things she could tell you, if she liked.

  5

  When she was fifteen Celia became religious again. It was a different religion this time, very high church. She was confirmed, and she also heard the Bishop of London preach. She was seized immediately by a romantic devotion for him. A picture postcard of him was placed on her mantelpiece, and she scanned the newspapers eagerly for any mention of him. She wove long stories in which she worked in East End parishes, visiting the sick, and one day he noticed her, and finally they were married and went to live at Fulham Palace. In the alternative story she became a nun – there were nuns who weren’t Roman Catholics, she had discovered – and she lived a life of great holiness and had visions.

  After she was confirmed, she read a good deal in various little books and went to early church every Sunday. She was pained because her mother would not come with her. Miriam only went to church on Whitsunday. Whitsunday was to her the great festival of the Christian Church.

  ‘The holy spirit of God,’ she said. ‘Think of it, Celia. That is the great wonder and mystery and beauty of God. The prayer books shy at it,
and clergymen hardly ever speak about it. They’re afraid to, because they are not sure what it is. The Holy Ghost.’

  Miriam worshipped the Holy Ghost. It made Celia feel rather uncomfortable. Miriam didn’t like churches much. Some of them, she said, had more of the Holy Spirit than others. It depended on the people who went there to worship, she said.

  Celia, who was firmly and strictly orthodox, was distressed. She didn’t like her mother being unorthodox. There was something of the mystic about Miriam. She had a vision, a perception of unseen things. It was on a par with her disconcerting habit of knowing what you were thinking.

  Celia’s vision of becoming the wife of the Bishop of London faded. She thought more and more about being a nun.

  She thought at last that perhaps she had better break it to her mother. She was afraid her mother would, perhaps, be unhappy. But Miriam took the news very calmly.

  ‘I see, darling.’

  ‘You don’t mind, Mummy?’

  ‘No, darling. If, when you are twenty-one, you want to be a nun, of course you shall be one …’

  Perhaps, Celia thought, she would become a Roman Catholic. Roman Catholic nuns were, somehow, more real.

  Miriam said she thought the Roman Catholic religion a very fine one.

  ‘Your father and I nearly became Catholics once. Very nearly.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘I nearly dragged him into it. Your father was a good man – as simple as a child – quite happy in his own religion. It was I who was always discovering religions and urging him to take them up. I thought it mattered very much what religion you were.’

  Celia thought that of course it mattered. But she did not say so, because if she did her mother would begin about the Holy Ghost, and Celia rather fought shy of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost did not come much into any of the little books. She thought of the time when she would be a nun praying in her cell …

  6

  It was soon after that that Miriam told Celia it was time for her to go to Paris. It had always been understood that Celia was to be ‘finished’ in Paris. She was rather excited at the prospect.

  She was well educated as to history and literature. She had been allowed and encouraged to read anything she chose. She was also thoroughly conversant with the topics of the day. Miriam insisted on her reading such newspaper articles as she thought essential to what she called ‘general knowledge’. Arithmetic had been solved by her going twice a week to the local school for instruction in that subject for which she had always had a natural liking.

  Of geometry, Latin, algebra, and grammar she knew nothing at all. Her geography was sketchy, being confined to the knowledge acquired through books of travel.

  In Paris she would study singing, piano playing, drawing and painting, and French.

  Miriam selected a place near the Avenue du Bois which took twelve girls and which was run by an Englishwoman and a Frenchwoman in partnership.

  Miriam went to Paris with her and stayed until she was sure her child was going to be happy. After four days Celia had a violent attack of homesickness for her mother. At first she didn’t know what was the matter with her – this queer lump in the throat – these tears that came into her eyes whenever she thought of her mother. If she put on a blouse her mother had made for her, the tears would come into her eyes as she thought of her mother stitching at it. On the fifth day she was to be taken out by her mother.

  She went down outwardly calm but inwardly in a turmoil. No sooner were they outside and in the cab going to the hotel than Celia burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, Mummy – Mummy.’

  ‘What is it, darling? Aren’t you happy? If you’re not, I’ll take you away.’

  ‘I don’t want to be taken away. I like it. It was just I wanted to see you.’

  Half an hour later her recent misery seemed dreamlike and unreal. It was rather like seasickness. Once you recovered from it, you couldn’t remember what you had felt like.

  The feeling did not return. Celia waited for it, nervously studying her own feelings. But, no – she loved her mother – adored her, but the mere thought of her no longer made a lump come in her throat.

  One of the girls, an American, Maisie Payne, came up to her and said in her soft drawling voice:

  ‘I hear you’ve been feeling lonesome. My mother’s staying at the same hotel as yours. Are you feeling better now?’

  ‘Yes, I’m all right now. It was silly.’

  ‘Well, I reckon it was kind of natural.’

  Her soft drawling voice reminded Celia of her friend in the Pyrenees, Marguerite Priestman. She felt a little tremor of gratitude towards this big black-haired creature. It was increased when Maisie said:

  ‘I saw your mother at the hotel. She’s very pretty. And more than pretty – she’s kind of distanguay.’

  Celia thought about her mother, seeing her objectively for the first time – her small eager face, her tiny hands and feet, her small delicate ears, her thin high-bridged nose.

  Her mother – oh, there was no one like her mother in the whole world!

  6 Paris

  1

  Celia stayed for a year in Paris. She enjoyed the time there very much. She liked the other girls, though none of them seemed very real to her. Maisie Payne might have done so, but she left the Easter after Celia arrived. Her best friend was a big fat girl called Bessie West who had the next room to hers. Bessie was a great talker, and Celia was a good listener, and they both indulged in a passion for eating apples. Bessie told long tales of her escapades and adventures between bites of apple – the stories always ending ‘and then my hair came down’.

  ‘I like you, Celia,’ she said one day. ‘You’re sensible.’

  ‘Sensible?’

  ‘You’re not always going on about boys and things. People like Mabel and Pamela get on my nerves. Every time I have a violin lesson they giggle and snigger and pretend I’m sweet on old Franz or he’s sweet on me. I call that sort of thing common. I like a rag with the boys as well as anyone, but not all this idiotic sniggering business about the music masters.’

  Celia, who had outgrown her passion for the Bishop of London, was now in the throes of one for Mr Gerald du Maurier ever since she had seen him in Alias Jimmy Valentine. But it was a secret passion of which she never spoke.

  The other girl she liked was one whom Bessie usually referred to as ‘the Moron’.

  Sybil Swinton was nineteen, a big girl with beautiful brown eyes and a mass of chestnut hair. She was extremely amiable and extremely stupid. She had to have everything explained to her twice. The piano was her great cross. She was bad at reading music, and she had no ear to hear when she played wrong notes. Celia would sit patiently beside her for an hour saying, ‘No, Sybil, a sharp – your left hand’s wrong now – D natural now. Oh, Sybil, can’t you hear?’ But Sybil couldn’t. Her people were anxious for her to ‘play the piano’ like other girls, and Sybil did her best, but music lessons were a nightmare – incidentally they were a nightmare for the teacher also. Madame LeBrun, who was one of the two teachers who visited, was a little old woman with white hair and claw-like hands. She sat very close to you when you played so that your right arm was slightly impeded. She was very keen on sight-reading and used to produce big books of duets à quatre mains. Alternately you played the treble or the bass, and Madame LeBrun played the other. Things went most happily when Madame LeBrun was at the treble end of the piano. So immersed was she in her own performance that it would be some time before she discovered that her pupil was playing the accompanying bass some bars in front or behind herself. Then there would be an outcry ‘Mais qu’est-ce que vous jouez là, ma petite? C’est affreux – c’est tout ce qu’il y a de plus affreux!’

  Nevertheless, Celia enjoyed her lessons. She enjoyed them still more when she was transferred to M. Kochter. M. Kochter took only those girls who showed talent. He was delighted with Celia. Seizing her hands and pulling the fingers mercilessly apart he would cry, ‘You see the stretch here? This is the hand of a
pianist. Nature is in your favour, Mademoiselle Celia. Now let us see what you can do to assist her.’ M. Kochter himself played beautifully. He gave a concert twice a year in London, so he told Celia. Chopin, Beethoven, and Brahms were his favourite masters. He would usually give Celia a choice as to what she learnt. He inspired her with such enthusiasm that she willingly practised the six hours a day he required. Practising was no real fatigue to her. She loved the piano. It had been her friend always.

  For singing lessons Celia went to M. Barré – an ex-operatic singer. She had a very high, clear soprano voice.

  ‘Your high notes are excellent,’ said M. Barré. ‘They could not be better produced. That is the voix de tête. The low notes, the chest notes, they are too weak but not bad. It is the médium that we must improve. The médium, mademoiselle, comes from the roof of the mouth.’

  He produced a tape measure.

  ‘Let us now test the diaphragm. Breathe in – hold it – hold it now let the breath expire suddenly. Capital – capital. You have the breath of a singer.’

  He handed her a pencil.

  ‘Place that between the teeth – so – in the corner of the mouth. And do not let it fall out when you sing. You can pronounce every word and retain the pencil. Do not say that it is impossible.’

  On the whole M. Barré was satisfied with her.

  ‘But your French, it puzzles me. It is not the usual French with the English accent – ah, how I have suffered from that – Mon Dieu! nobody knows! No, it is, one would swear, an accent méridional that you have. Where did you learn French?’

  Celia told him.

  ‘Oh, and your maid she came from the South of France? That explains it. Well, well, we will soon get out of that.’

  Celia worked hard at her singing. On the whole she pleased him, but occasionally he would rail at her English face.

  ‘You are like all the rest of the English, you think that to sing is to open the mouth as wide as possible and let the voice come out! Not at all – there is the skin – the skin of the face – all round the mouth. You are not a little choir boy – you are singing the Habanera of Carmen which, by the way, you have brought me in the wrong key. This is transposed for soprano – an operatic song should always be sung in its original key – anything else is an abomination and an insult to the composer – remember that. I particularly want you to learn a mezzo song. Now then, you are Carmen, you have a rose in your mouth, not a pencil, you are singing a song that is meant to allure this young man. Your face – your face – do not let your face be of wood.’