Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  Celia invented a new person. Her name was Hazel. Celia followed her career from childhood upwards with great interest. Hazel was an unhappy child – a poor relation. She acquired a sinister reputation with nursemaids by a habit of chanting, ‘Something’s going to happen – something’s going to happen’; and as something usually did happen – even if it was only a nurserymaid’s pricked finger – Hazel found herself established as a kind of witch’s familiar. She grew up with the knowledge of how easy it was to impose on the credulous …

  Celia followed her with great interest into a world of spiritualism, fortune-telling, séances, and so on. Hazel ended up at a fortune-telling establishment in Bond Street, where she acquired a great reputation, aided by a little coterie of impoverished society ‘spies’.

  Then she fell in love with a young Welsh naval officer and there were scenes on Welsh villages, and slowly it began to be apparent (to everyone but Hazel herself) that side by side with her fraudulent practices went a genuine gift.

  At last Hazel herself found it out and was terrified. But the more she tried to cheat the more her uncanny guesses came right … The power had got hold of her and wouldn’t let her go.

  Owen, the young man, was more nebulous, but in the end he proved himself to be a plausible rotter.

  Whenever Celia had a little leisure, or when she was wheeling Judy to the Park, the story went on in her mind.

  It occurred to her one day that she might write it down …

  She might, in fact, make a book of it …

  She bought six penny exercise books and a lot of pencils, because she was careless about pencils, and started …

  It wasn’t quite so easy when it came to writing down. Her mind had always gone on about six paragraphs farther than the one she was writing down – and then by the time she got to that, the exact wording had gone out of her head.

  But still she made progress. It wasn’t quite the story she had had in her head, but it was something that read recognizably like a book. It had chapters and all that. She bought six more exercise books.

  She didn’t tell Dermot about it for some time, not, in fact, till she had successfully wrestled with an account of a Welsh Revivalist meeting at which Hazel had ‘testified’.

  That particular chapter had gone much better than Celia hoped. She felt so flushed by victory that she wanted to tell somebody.

  ‘Dermot,’ she said, ‘do you think I could write a book?’

  Dermot said cheerfully:

  ‘I think that’s an excellent idea. I should, if I were you.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I have – that is, I’ve begun. I’m halfway through.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dermot.

  He had put down a book on economics when Celia spoke. Now he picked it up again.

  ‘It’s about a girl who’s a medium – but doesn’t know she is. And she gets tangled up in a bogus fortune-telling place, and she cheats at séances. And then she falls in love with a young man in Wales and she goes to Wales and queer things happen.’

  ‘I suppose there’s some kind of story?’

  ‘Of course there is. I’m saying it badly – that’s all.’

  ‘Do you know anything about mediums or séances or things?’

  ‘No,’ said Celia rather stricken.

  ‘Well, isn’t it a bit risky to write about them, then? And you’ve never been to Wales, have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, hadn’t you better write about something you do know about? London or your part of the country. It seems to me you’re simply making difficulties for yourself.’

  Celia felt abashed. As usual, Dermot was right. She had behaved like a simpleton. Why on earth choose subjects she knew nothing about? That revivalist meeting, too. She had never been to a revivalist meeting. Why on earth try to describe one?

  All the same, she couldn’t give up Hazel and Owen now … They were there … No, but something must be done about them.

  For the next month Celia read every conceivable work she could find on spiritualism, séances, mediumistic powers, and fraudulent practices. Then, slowly and laboriously, she rewrote all the first part of the book. She did not enjoy her task. All the sentences seemed to run haltingly, and she even got into the most amazingly complicated grammatical tangles for no apparent reason.

  That summer Dermot very obligingly agreed to go to Wales for his fortnight’s holiday. Celia could then look about for ‘local colour’. They duly carried out the project, but Celia found local colour extremely elusive. She took round a little notebook with her, so as to be able to put down anything that struck her. But she was by nature remarkably unobservant, and days passed when it seemed quite impossible to put down anything at all.

  She had an awful temptation to abandon Wales and to turn Owen into a Scotsman called Hector who lived in the Highlands.

  But then Dermot pointed out to her that the same difficulty would arise. She knew nothing about the Highlands either.

  In despair Celia abandoned the whole thing. It just wouldn’t go any more. Besides, she was already playing in her mind with a family of fishing folk on the Cornish coast …

  Amos Polridge was already quite well known to her …

  She didn’t tell Dermot, because she felt guilty, realizing perfectly well that she knew nothing about fishermen or the sea. It would be useless writing it down, but it was fun to think about. There would be an old grandmother too – very toothless and rather sinister …

  And some time or other she would finish the Hazel book. Owen could perfectly well be a rotten young stockbroker in London.

  Only, or so it seemed to her, Owen didn’t want to be that …

  He sulked and became so vague that he really didn’t exist at all.

  3

  Celia had become quite used to being poor and living carefully.

  Dermot expected to make money some day. In fact, he was quite sure of it. Celia never expected to be rich. She was quite content to remain as they were but hoped it wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment to Dermot.

  What neither of them expected was a real financial calamity. But the boom after the war was over. It was followed by the slump.

  Dermot’s firm went into liquidation, and he was out of a job.

  They had fifty pounds a year of Dermot’s and a hundred pounds a year of Celia’s, they had two hundred pounds saved in War Loan and there was the shelter of Miriam’s house for Celia and Judy.

  It was a bad time. It affected Celia principally through Dermot. Dermot took misfortune – especially undeserved misfortune (for he had worked well) such as this, hard. It made him bitter and bad tempered. Celia dismissed Kate and Denman and proposed to run the flat by herself until such times as Dermot got another job. Denman, however, refused to be dismissed.

  Fiercely and angrily she said: ‘I’m stopping. It’s no good arguing. I’ll wait for my wages. I’m not going to leave my little love now.’

  So Denman remained. She and Celia did turn and turn about with housework, cooking, and Judy. One morning Celia took Judy to the Park and Denman cooked and cleaned. The next morning Denman went and Celia remained.

  Celia found a queer enjoyment in this. She liked to be busy. In the evenings she found time to go on with Hazel. She finished the book painstakingly, consulting her Welsh notes, and sent it to a publisher. It might bring in something.

  It was, however, promptly returned, and Celia tossed it into a drawer and did not try again.

  Celia’s chief difficulty in life was Dermot. Dermot was utterly unreasonable. He was so sensitive to failure that he was quite unbearable to live with. If Celia was cheerful, he told her she might show a little more appreciation of his difficulties. If she was silent, he said she might try to brighten him up.

  Celia felt desperately that if only Dermot would help they might make a kind of picnic of it all. Surely to laugh at trouble was the best way of meeting it.

  But Dermot couldn’t laugh. His pride was involved.


  However unkind and unreasonable he was, Celia did not feel hurt as she had done over the party episode. She understood that he was suffering, and suffering on her account more than his own.

  Sometimes he came near to expressing himself.

  ‘Why don’t you go away – you and Judy? Take her to your mother’s. I’m no good just now. I know I’m not fit to live with. I told you once before – I’m no good in trouble. I can’t stand trouble.’

  But Celia would not leave him. She wished she could make it easier for him, but there seemed nothing she could do.

  And as day followed day and Dermot was unsuccessful in finding a job, his mood grew blacker and blacker.

  Then, at last, when Celia felt her courage failing her entirely, and she had almost decided to go to Miriam as Dermot so constantly suggested she should, the tide turned.

  Dermot came into the flat one afternoon a changed man. He looked his young boyish self again. His dark blue eyes danced and sparkled.

  ‘Celia – it’s splendid. You remember Tommy Forbes? I looked him up – just on chance – and he jumped at me. Was just looking for a man like me. Eight hundred a year to start with, and in a year or two I may be making anything up to fifteen hundred or two thousand. Let’s go out somewhere and celebrate.’

  What a happy evening! Dermot so different – so childlike in his zest and excitement. He insisted on buying Celia a new frock.

  ‘You look lovely in that hyacinth blue. I – I still love you frightfully, Celia.’

  Lovers – yes, they were still lovers.

  That night, lying awake, Celia thought: ‘I hope – I hope things will always go well for Dermot. He minds so much when they don’t.’

  ‘Mummy,’ said Judy suddenly the next morning, ‘what’s a fair-weather friend? Nurse says her friend in Peckham is one.’

  ‘It means somebody who is nice to you when everything is all right but doesn’t stand by you in trouble.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Judy. ‘I see. Like Daddy.’

  ‘No, Judy, of course not. Daddy is unhappy and not very gay when he is worried, but if you or I were ill or unhappy, Daddy would do anything for us. He’s the most loyal person in the world.’

  Judy looked thoughtfully at her mother and said:

  ‘I don’t like people who are ill. They go to bed and can’t play. Margaret got something in her eye yesterday in the Park. She had to stop running and sit down. She wanted me to sit with her, but I wouldn’t.’

  ‘Judy, that was very unkind.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. I don’t like sitting down. I like running about.’

  ‘But if you had something in your eye you would like someone to sit and talk to you – not go off and leave you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind … And, anyway, I hadn’t got something in my eye. It was Margaret.’

  15 Prosperity

  1

  Dermot was prosperous. He was making nearly two thousand a year. Celia and he had a lovely time. They both agreed that they ought to save, but they also agreed that they wouldn’t start just yet.

  The first thing they bought was a second-hand car.

  Then Celia longed to live in the country. It would be so much nicer for Judy, and she herself hated London. Always before, Dermot had negatived the idea on the score of expense – railway fares for him, food being cheaper in town, etc.

  But now he admitted that he liked the idea. They would find a cottage not too far from Dalton Heath.

  They eventually settled in the lodge of a big estate that was being cut up for building. Dalton Heath golf course was ten miles away. They also bought a dog – an adorable Sealyham called Aubrey.

  Denman refused to accompany them to the country. Having been angelic all through the bad times, she became a positive fiend with the advent of prosperity. She was rude to Celia, went about tossing her head in the air, and finally gave notice saying that as some she knew were getting stuck up it was time she made a change.

  They moved in spring, and the most exciting thing to Celia was the lilacs. There were hundreds of lilacs, all shades of mauve and purple. Wandering out into the garden in the early morning with Aubrey at her heels, Celia felt that life had become almost perfect. No more dirt and dust and fog. This was Home …

  Celia adored the country life and the long rambling walks with Aubrey. There was a small school near by where Judy went in the mornings. Judy took to school as a duck takes to water. She was very shy with individuals, but completely unabashed by large numbers.

  ‘Can I go to a really big school one day, Mummy? Where there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of girls? What’s the biggest school in England?’

  Celia had one passage of arms with Dermot over their little home. One of the front top rooms was to be their bedroom. Dermot wanted the other for his dressing-room. Celia insisted that it should be Judy’s nursery.

  Dermot was annoyed.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have it your own way. I shall be the only person in the house who is never to have a bit of sun in his room.’

  ‘Judy ought to have a sunny room.’

  ‘Nonsense, she’s out all day. That room at the back is quite large – plenty of room for her to run about in.’

  ‘There’s no sun in it.’

  ‘I don’t see why sun for Judy is more important than sun for me.’

  But Celia, for once, stood firm. She wanted badly to give Dermot his sunny room, but she didn’t.

  In the end Dermot was perfectly good-natured about his defeat. He adopted it as a grievance – but quite good-temperedly – and pretended to be a downtrodden husband and father.

  2

  They had a good many neighbours near them – most of them with children. Everyone was friendly. The only thing that made a difficulty was Dermot’s refusal to go out to dinner.

  ‘Look here, Celia, I come down from London tired out, and you want me to dress up and go out and not get home and to bed till past midnight. I simply can’t do it.’

  ‘Not every night, of course. But I don’t see that one night a week would matter.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to. You go, if you like.’

  ‘I can’t go alone. People don’t ask you to dinner except in pairs. And it sounds so odd for me to say that you never go out at night – because, after all, you’re quite young.’

  ‘I’m sure you could manage to go without me.’

  But that wasn’t so easy. In the country, as Celia said, people were asked in couples or not at all. Still, she saw the justice of what Dermot said. He was earning the money he ought to have the say in their joint life. So she refused the invitations, and they sat at home, Dermot reading books on financial subjects, and Celia sometimes sewing, sometimes sitting with her hands clasped, thinking about her family of Cornish fishermen.

  3

  Celia wanted to have another child.

  Dermot didn’t.

  ‘You always said there was no room in London,’ said Celia. ‘And of course we were very poor. But we’ve got enough now, and there’s heaps of room and two wouldn’t be any more trouble than one.’

  ‘Well, we don’t want one just now. All the fuss and bother and crying and bottles all over again.’

  ‘I believe you’ll always say that.’

  ‘No, I shan’t. I’d like to have two more children. But not now. There’s heaps of time. We’re quite young still. It will be a sort of adventure for when we’re getting bored with things. Let’s just enjoy ourselves now. You don’t want to begin being sick again.’ He paused. ‘I tell you what I did look at today.’

  ‘Oh, Dermot!’

  ‘A car. This second-hand little beast is pretty rotten. Davis put me on to this. It’s a sports model – only done eight thousand miles.’

  Celia thought:

  ‘How I love him! He’s such a boy. So eager … And he’s worked so hard. Why shouldn’t he have the things he likes? … We’ll have another baby some day. In the meantime let him have his car … After all, I care more for him than for any ba
by in the world …’

  4

  It puzzled Celia that Dermot never wanted any of his old friends to stay.

  ‘But you used to be so fond of Andrews.’

  ‘Yes – but we’ve grown out of touch with each other. We never meet nowadays. One changes …’

  ‘And Jim Lucas – you and he used to be inseparable when we were engaged.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with any of the old army crowd.’

  One day Celia had a letter from Ellie Maitland – Ellie Peterson, as she now was.

  ‘Dermot, my old friend Ellie Peterson is home from India. I was her bridesmaid. Shall I ask her and her husband down for the week-end?’

  ‘Yes, of course, if you like. Does he play golf?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Rather a bore if he doesn’t. However, it won’t really matter, you won’t want me to stay at home and entertain them will you?’

  ‘Couldn’t we play tennis?’

  There were a number of courts for the use of residents on the estate.

  ‘Ellie used to be awfully keen on tennis, and Tom plays, I know. He used to be good.’

  ‘Look here, Celia, I simply can’t play tennis. It absolutely ruins my game. And there’s the Dalton Heath Cup in three weeks’ time.’

  ‘Does nothing matter but golf? It makes it so difficult.’

  ‘Don’t you think, Celia, that it’s ever so much better if everyone does as they like? I like golf you like tennis. You have your friends down and do as you like with them. You know I never interfere with anything you want to do.’

  That was true. It all sounded perfectly all right. But somehow it made things difficult in practice. When you were married, Celia reflected, you were somehow so tied up with your husband. Nobody considered you as a separate unity. It would be all right if it were only Ellie coming down, but surely Dermot ought to do something about Ellie’s husband.