Agahta Christie: An autobiography

by Agatha Christie

  The plan was that after a couple of days in London I should go down with him to Clifton, and spend the actual days of Christmas with him at his stepfather’s and mother’s house. That seemed a very right and proper arrangement. Before leaving for Clifton, however, we had what was to all intents and purposes a quarrel. A ridiculous quarrel, but quite a heated one.

  Archie arrived at the hotel on the morning of our departure for Clifton, with a present for me. It was a magnificent dressing-case, completely fitted inside, and a thing that any millionairess might have confidently taken to the Ritz. If he had brought a ring, or a bracelet, however expensive, I should not have demurred–I should have accepted it with eager pride and pleasure–but for some reason I revolted violently against the dressing-case. I felt it was an absurd extravagance, and not a thing I should ever use. What was the good of my going back home to continue nursing in a hospital with an exciting dressing-case suitable for a holiday in peacetime abroad? I said I didn’t want it, and he would have to take it back. He was angry; I was angry. I made him take it away. An hour later he returned and we made it up. We wondered what on earth had come over us. How could we be so foolish? He admitted that it was a silly kind of present. I admitted that I had been ungracious to say so. As a result of the quarrel and the subsequent reconciliation we somehow felt closer than before.

  My mother went back to Devon, and Archie and I travelled to Clifton. My future mother-in-law continued to be charming in a rather excessive Irish style. Her other son, Campbell, said to me once, ‘Mother is a very dangerous woman.’ I didn’t understand at the time, but I think I know now what he meant. Hers was the kind of gushing affection which could change just as rapidly into its opposite. At one moment she wished to love her future daughter-in-law, and did so; at another moment nothing would be too bad for her.

  We had a tiring journey to Bristol: the trains were in a state of chaos still, and usually hours late. Eventually, though, we arrived, and had a most affectionate welcome. I went to bed, exhausted by the emotions of the day and travelling, and also by contending with my natural shyness, so that I could say and do the right thing with my future in-laws.

  It must have been half an hour later; perhaps an hour. I had gone to bed, but was not yet asleep, when there was a tap at the door. I went and opened it. It was Archie. He came inside, shut the door behind, and said abruptly: ‘I’ve changed my mind. We’ve got to get married. At once. We will marry tomorrow.’

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘Oh, never mind what I said. You were right and I was wrong. Of course it is the only sensible thing to do. We’ll have two days together before I go back.’

  I sat down on the bed, my legs feeling rather weak. ‘But–but you were so certain.’

  ‘What does that matter? I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘Yes, but–’ there was so much that I could not bring out. I had always suffered from being tongue-tied when I most wanted to say things clearly.

  ‘It’s going to be all so difficult,’ I said weakly. I could always see what Archie could not: the hundred and one disadvantages in a prospective action. Archie only saw the essential itself. At first it had seemed to him absolute folly to get married in the middle of wartime; now, a day later, he was equally determined that it was the only right thing for us to do. Difficulties in the actual accomplishment, the upset feelings of all our nearest relations, made no impact on him at all. We argued. We argued much as we had done twenty-four hours before, this time the opposite way round. Needless to say, again he won.

  ‘But I don’t believe we can get married so suddenly,’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘It’s so difficult.’

  ‘Oh yes we can,’ said Archie cheerfully. ‘We can get a special licence or something–the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘Isn’t that very expensive?’

  ‘Yes, I believe it is, rather. But I expect we’ll manage. Anyway, we’ve got to. No time for anything else. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. So that’s all right?’

  I said weakly that it was. He left me, and I stayed awake most of the night worrying. What would mother say? What would Madge say? What would Archie’s mother say? Why couldn’t Archie have agreed to our marriage in London, where everything would have been easy and simple. Oh well, there it was. I finally fell asleep exhausted.

  A great many of the things that I had foreseen came true the next morning. First of all our plans had to be broken to Peg. She immediately burst into hysterical tears, and retired to bed.

  ‘That my own son should do this to me,’ she gasped, as she went up the stairs.

  ‘Archie,’ I said, ‘we’d better not. It’s upset your mother terribly.’ What do I care if it’s upset her or not?’ said Archie. ‘We’ve been engaged for two years, she must be used to the idea.’

  ‘She seems to feel it terribly now.’

  ‘Rushing it on me in this way,’ Peg sobbed, as she lay in a darkened room with a handkerchief soaked in eau-de-Cologne on her forehead. Archie and I looked at each other, rather like two guilty dogs. Archie’s stepfather came to the rescue. He brought us down from Peg’s room and said to us: ‘I think you two are doing quite the right thing. Now don’t worry about Peg. She always gets upset if she’s startled. She is very fond of you, Agatha, and she will be pleased as anything about this afterwards. But don’t expect her to be pleased today. Now you two go out and get on with your plans. I daresay you haven’t got too much time. Remember, I am sure, quite sure, that you are doing the right thing.’

  Though I had started the day faintly tearful and apprehensive myself, within another two hours I was full of fighting spirit. The difficulties in the way of our marriage were intense, and the more it seemed impossible that we could be married that day the more I, as well as Archie, became determined that we would be.

  Archie first consulted a former ecclesiastical headmaster of his. A special licence was said to be obtainable from Doctor’s Commons and cost £25. Neither Archie nor I had £2,5, but that we brushed aside, as we could no doubt borrow it. What was more difficult was that it had to be obtained personally. One could not get such a thing on Christmas Day, so in the end a marriage that day appeared quite impossible. Special Licence was out. We next went to a registry office. There again we were rebuffed. Notice had to be given for a period of fourteen days before the ceremony could be performed. Time slipped away. Finally a kindly registrar, whom we had not seen before, back from his elevenses, came up with the answer. ‘My dear chap,’ he said to Archie, ‘you live here, don’t you? I mean, your mother and stepfather reside here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Archie.

  ‘Well then, you keep a bag here, you keep clothes here, you keep some of your effects here, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you don’t need a fortnight’s notice. You can buy an ordinary licence and get married at your parish Church this afternoon.’

  The licence cost £8. We could manage £8. After that it was a wild rush.

  We hunted down the Vicar at the church at the end of the road. He was not in. We found him in a friend’s house. Startled, he agreed to perform the ceremony. We rushed home to Peg, and to snatch a little sustenance. ‘Don’t speak to me,’ she cried. ‘Don’t speak to me,’ and locked her door.

  There was no time to be lost. We hurried along to the church, Emmanuel, I think it was called. Then we found we had to have a second witness. Just about to rush out and catch a complete stranger, by utter chance I came across a girl whom I knew. I had stayed with her in Clifton a couple of years before. Yvonne Bush, though startled, was ready enough to be an impromptu bridesmaid and our witness. We rushed back. The organist was doing some practising, and offered to play the Wedding March.

  Just as the ceremony was about to start, I thought for one sad moment that no bride could have taken less trouble about her appearance. No white dress, no veil, not even a smart frock. I was wearing an ordinary coat and skirt with a small purple velvet hat, and I had not even had time to was
h my hands or face. It made us both laugh.

  The ceremony was duly performed–and we tackled the next hurdle. Since Peg was still prostrated we decided we would go down to Torquay, stay at the Grand Hotel there, and spend Christmas Day with my mother. But I had first, of course, to ring her up and announce what had happened. It was extremely difficult to get through on the telephone, and the result was not particularly happy. My sister was staying there and greeted my announcement with a great deal of annoyance.

  ‘Springing it like this on mother! You know how weak her heart is! You are absolutely unfeeling!’

  We caught the train–it was very crowded–and we arrived at last at Torquay at midnight, having managed to book ourselves a room by telephone. I still had a slightly guilty feeling: we had caused such a lot of trouble and inconvenience. Everybody we were most fond of was annoyed with us. I felt this but I don’t think Archie did. I don’t think it occurred to him for one moment; and if it did, I don’t think he minded. A pity that everyone got upset and all that, he would have said, but why should they? Anyway, we had done the right thing–he was sure of that. But there was one thing that made him nervous. The moment had come. We climbed on the train, and he suddenly produced, rather like a conjuror, an extra suitcase. ‘I hope,’ he said nervously to his new young bride, ‘I hope that you are not going to be cross about this.’

  ‘Archie! It’s the dressing-case!’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t take it back. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind. It’s lovely to have it.’

  There we were, going on a journey with it–and our wedding journey too. So that was got over safely, and Archie was enormously relieved: I think he thought that I was going to be angry about it.

  If our wedding day had been one long struggle against odds, and a series of crises, Christmas Day was benign and peaceful. Everyone had had time to get over their shock. Madge was affectionate, had forgotten all censure; my mother had recovered from her heart condition and was thoroughly happy in our happiness. Peg, I hoped, had recovered. (Archie assured me that she would have.) And so we enjoyed Christmas Day very much.

  The next day I travelled with Archie to London, and said goodbye to him as he went off to France again. I was not to see him for another six months of war.

  I resumed work at the hospital, where news of my present status had preceded me.

  ‘Nurrrse!’ This was Scottie, rolling his is r’s a great deal and tapping on the foot of his bed with his little cane. ‘Nurrrse, come here at once!’ I came. ‘What’s this I hear? You’ve been getting yourself married?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have.’

  ‘D’ye hear that?’ Scottie appealed to the whole row of beds. ‘Nurse Miller’s got married. What’s your name now, Nurse?’

  ‘Christie.’

  ‘Ah, a good Scottish name, Christie. Nurse Christie–d’ye hear that, Sister? This is Nurse Christie now.’

  ‘I heard,’ said Sister Anderson. ‘And I wish you every happiness,’ she added formally. ‘It’s made plenty of talk in the ward.’

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself, Nurse,’ said another patient. ‘You’ve married an officer, I hear?’ I admitted that I had risen to that giddy height. ‘Aye, you’ve done very well for yourself. Not that I’m surprised–you’re a nice-looking girl.’

  The months went on. The war settled down to a grisly stalemate. Half our patients seemed to be trench feet cases. It was intensely cold that winter, and I had terrible chilblains on both hands and feet. The eternal scrubbing of mackintoshes is not helpful to chilblains on the hands. I was given more responsibility as time went on, and I liked my work. One settled into a routine of doctors and nurses. One knew the surgeons one respected; one knew the doctors who were secretly despised by the Sisters. There were no more heads to delouse and no more field dressings; base hospitals were now established in France. But still we were nearly always crowded. Our little Scotsman who had been there with a fractured leg left at last, convalescent. Actually he had a fall on the station platform during the journey, but so anxious was he to get to his native town in Scotland that he never mentioned it and concealed the fact that his leg had been re-fractured. He suffered agonies of pain, but finally managed to arrive at his destination, and his leg had to be reset all over again.

  It is all somewhat of a haze now, yet one recalls odd instances standing out in one’s memory. I remember a young probationer who had been assisting in the theatre and had been left behind to clear up, and I had helped her take an amputated leg down to throw into the furnace. It was almost too much for the child. Then we cleared up all the mess and the blood together. She was, I think, too young and too new to it to have been given that task to do alone so soon.

  I remember a serious-faced sergeant whose love letters I had to write for him. He could not read or write. He told me roughly what he wanted me to say. ‘That will do very nicely, Nurse,’ he would nod, when I read it over to him. ‘Write it in triplicate, will you.’

  ‘In triplicate?’ I said.

  ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘One for Nellie, and one for Jessie and one for Margaret.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better to vary them a little?’ I asked. He considered. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve told them all the essentials.’ So each letter began the same: ‘Hope this finds you as it leaves me, but more in the pink’–and ended: ‘Yours till Hell freezes.’

  ‘Won’t they find out about each other?’ I asked with some curiosity. ‘Och, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘They’re in different towns, you see, and they don’t know each other.’

  I asked if he was thinking of marrying any of them.

  ‘I might,’ he said, ‘and I might not. Nellie, she is a fine one to look at, a lovely girl. But Jessie, she’s more serious, and she worships me–she thinks the world of me, Jessie does.’

  ‘And Margaret?’

  ‘Margaret? Well, Margaret,’ he said, ‘she makes you laugh, Margaret does–she’s a gay girl. However, we’ll see.’

  I have often wondered whether he did marry any of those three, or whether he found a fourth who combined good looks, being a good listener and being gay as well.

  At home things went on much the same. Lucy had come as a replacement to Jane, and always spoke of her in awe as ‘Mrs Rowe’: ‘I do hope I shall be able to fill Mrs Rowe’s place–it’s such a big responsibility taking on after her.’ She was dedicated to the future of coming to be cook to me and Archie after the war.

  One day she came to my mother, looking very nervous, and said: ‘I hope you won’t mind, Ma’am, but I really feel I must go and join the WAAFs. I hope you won’t think it wrong of me.’

  ‘Well, Lucy,’ said my mother, ‘I think you are quite right. You are a young, strong girl: just what they want.’

  So Lucy departed, in tears at the last, hoping we would get on all right without her and saying she didn’t know what Mrs Rowe would think. With her, also, went the house-parlourmaid, the beautiful Emma. She went to get married. They were replaced by two elderly maid-servants to whom the hardships of wartime were unbelievable and deeply resented.

  ‘I’m sorry, Madam,’ said the elderly Mary, trembling with rage, after a couple of days, ‘but it’s not right, the food we’re given. We’ve had fish two days this week, and we’ve had insides of animals. I’ve always had a good meat meal at least once a day.’ My mother tried to explain that food was now rationed and that one had to eat fish and what was prettily called ‘edible offal’ on at least two or three days of the week. Mary merely shook her head, and said, ‘It isn’t right, it isn’t treating one right.’ She also said that she had never been asked to eat margarine before. My mother then tried the trick which many people tried during the war, of wrapping the margarine in the butter paper and the butter in the margarine paper.

  ‘Now if you taste these two,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe you’ll be able to tell margarine from butter.’

  The two old pussies looked scornful,
then tried and tested. They had no doubts: ‘It’s absolutely plain which is which, Ma’am, no doubt about it.’

  ‘You really think there is so much difference?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I can’t bear the taste of margarine–neither of us can. It makes us feel quite sick.’ They handed it back to my mother with disgust. ‘You do like the other?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am, very good butter. No fault to find with that.’

  ‘Well, I might as well tell you,’ said my mother, ‘that that is the margarine; this is the butter.’

  At first they wouldn’t believe it. Then when they were convinced they were not pleased.

  My grandmother was now living with us. She used to fret a great deal at my returning alone to the hospital at night.

  ‘So dangerous, dear, walking home by yourself. Anything might happen. You must make some other arrangement.’

  ‘I don’t see what other arrangement I could make, Grannie. And anyway, nothing has happened to me. I’ve been doing it for several months.’

  ‘It’s not right. Somebody might speak to you.’

  I reassured her as best I could. My hours of duty were two o’clock till ten, and it was usually about half-past ten before I left the hospital after the night shift had come on. It took about three-quarters of an hour to walk home, along, it must be admitted, fairly lonely roads. However, I never had any trouble. I once met a very drunken sergeant, but he was only too anxious to be gallant. ‘Fine work you’re doing,’ he said, staggering slightly as he walked. ‘Fine work you’re doing at the hospital. I’ll see you home, Nurse. I’ll see you home because I wouldn’t like anything to happen to you.’ I told him that there was no need but that it was kind of him. Still home with me he duly tramped, saying goodbye in a most respectful manner at our gate.

  I forget exactly when it was that my grandmother came to live with us.

  Shortly after the outbreak of the war, I imagine. She had become very blind indeed with cataract, and she was, of course, too old to be operated on. She was a sensible woman, so though it was a terrible wrench for her to give up her house in Ealing and her friends and all the rest of it, she saw plainly that she would be helpless living there alone and that servants were unlikely to stay. So the great move had been made. My sister came down to help my mother, I came up from Devon, and we all became busy. I don’t think I realised in the least at the time what poor Grannie suffered, but now I have a clear picture of her sitting helpless and half blind in the middle of her possessions and everything that she prized, while all round her were three vandals, rummaging in things, turning things out, deciding what to do away with. Little sad cries rose from her: ‘Oh, you’re not going to throw away that dress; Madame Poncereau’s, my beautiful velvet.’ Difficult to explain to her that the velvet was moth-eaten, and that the silk had disintegrated. There were trunkfuls and drawers full of things eaten by moth, their usefulness ended. Because of her worry, many things were kept which ought to have been destroyed. Trunk after trunk, filled with papers, needle-books, lengths of print for servants’ dresses, lengths of silk and velvet bought at sales, remnants: so many many things that at one time could have been useful if they had been used, but which had simply piled up. Poor Grannie sat in her large chair and wept.