Unfinished Portrait. Агата Кристи

I’m dealing only with the essentials. I knew that I’d got to stick to her till something happened—till in some way she broke down and surrendered.

      As I say, I stayed with her, close by her side. When she went to her room I said:

      ‘I’ll give you ten minutes—then I’m coming in.’

      I didn’t dare give her longer. You see, her room was on the fourth floor, and she might override that ‘consideration for others’ that was part of her upbringing and embarrass the hotel manager by jumping from one of his windows instead of jumping from the cliff.

      Well, I went back. She was in bed, sitting up, her pale gold hair combed back from her face. I don’t think she saw anything odd in what we were doing. I’m sure I didn’t. What the hotel thought, I don’t know. If they knew that I entered her room at ten o’clock that night and left it at seven the next morning, they would have jumped, I suppose, to the one and only conclusion. But I couldn’t bother about that.

      I was out to save a life, and I couldn’t bother about a mere reputation.

      Well, I sat there, on her bed, and we talked.

      We talked all night.

      A strange night—I’ve never known a night like it.

      I didn’t talk to her about her trouble, whatever it was. Instead we started at the beginning—the mauve irises on the wallpaper, and the lambs in the field, and the valley down by the station where the primroses were …

      After a while, it was she who talked, not I. I had ceased to exist for her save as a kind of human recording machine that was there to be talked to.

      She talked as you might talk to yourself—or to God. Not, you understand, with any heat or passion. Just sheer remembrance, passing from one unrelated incident to another. The building up of a life—a kind of bridge of significant incidents.

      It’s an odd question, when you come to think of it, the things we choose to remember. For choice there must be, make it as unconscious as you like. Think back yourself—take any year of your childhood. You will remember perhaps five—six incidents. They weren’t important, probably; why have you remembered them out of those three hundred and sixty-five days? Some of them didn’t even mean much to you at the time. And yet, somehow, they’ve persisted. They’ve gone with you into these later years …

      It is from that night that I say I got my inside vision of Celia. I can write about her from the standpoint, as I said, of God … I’m going to endeavour to do so.

      She told me, you see, all the things that mattered and that didn’t matter. She wasn’t trying to make a story of it.

      No—but I wanted to! I seemed to catch glimpses of a pattern that she couldn’t see.

      It was seven o’clock when I left her. She had turned over on her side at last and gone to sleep like a child … The danger was over.

      It was as though the burden had been taken from her shoulders and laid on mine. She was safe …

      Later in the morning I took her down to the boat and saw her off.

      And that’s when it happened. The thing, I mean, that seems to me to embody the whole thing …

      Perhaps I’m wrong … Perhaps it was only an ordinary trivial incident …

      Anyway I won’t write it down now …

      Not until I’ve had my shot at being God and either failed or succeeded.

      Tried getting her on canvas in this new unfamiliar medium … Words …

      Strung together words …

      No brushes, no tubes of colour—none of the dear old familiar stuff.

      Portrait in four dimensions, because, in your craft, Mary, there’s time as well as space …

       BOOK II

       Canvas

      ‘Set up the canvas. Here’s a subject to hand.’

       CHAPTER 1

       Home

      Celia lay in her cot and looked at the mauve irises on the nursery wall. She felt happy and sleepy.

      There was a screen round the foot of her cot. This was to shut off the light of Nannie’s lamp. Invisible to Celia, behind that screen, sat Nannie reading the Bible. Nannie’s lamp was a special lamp—a portly brass lamp with a pink china shade. It never smelt because Susan, the housemaid, was very particular. Susan was a good girl, Celia knew, although sometimes guilty of the sin of ‘flouncing about’. When she flounced about she nearly always knocked off some small ornament in the immediate neighbourhood. She was a great big girl with elbows the colour of raw beef. Celia associated them vaguely with the mysterious words ‘elbow grease’.

      There was a faint whispering sound: Nannie murmuring over the words to herself as she read. It was soothing to Celia. Her eyelids drooped …

      The door opened, and Susan entered with a tray. She endeavoured to move noiselessly, but her loud and squeaking shoes prevented her.

      She said in a low voice:

      ‘Sorry I’m so late with your supper, Nurse.’

      Nurse merely said, ‘Hush. She’s asleep.’

      ‘Oh, I wouldn’t wake her for the world, I’m sure.’ Susan peeped round the corner of the screen, breathing heavily.

      ‘Little duck, ain’t she? My little niece isn’t half so knowing.’

      Turning back from the screen, Susan ran into the table. A spoon fell to the floor.

      Nurse said mildly:

      ‘You must try and not flounce about so, Susan, my girl.’

      Susan said dolefully:

      ‘I’m sure I don’t mean to.’

      She left the room tiptoeing, which made her shoes squeak more than ever.

      ‘Nannie,’ called Celia cautiously.

      ‘Yes, my dear, what is it?’

      ‘I’m not asleep, Nannie.’

      Nannie refused to take the hint. She just said:

      ‘No, dear.’

      There was a pause.

      ‘Nannie?’

      ‘Yes, dear.’

      ‘Is your supper nice, Nannie?’

      ‘Very nice, dear.’

      ‘What is it?’

      ‘Boiled fish and treacle tart.’

      ‘Oh!’ sighed Celia ecstatically.

      There was a pause. Then Nannie appeared round the screen. A little old grey-haired woman with a lawn cap tied under her chin. In her hand she carried a fork. On the tip of the fork was a minute piece of treacle tart.

      ‘Now you’re to be a good girl and go to sleep at once,’ said Nannie warningly.

      ‘Oh! Yes,’ said Celia fervently.

      Elysium! Heaven! The morsel of treacle tart was between her lips. Unbelievable deliciousness.

      Nannie disappeared round the screen again. Celia cuddled down on her side. The mauve irises danced in the firelight. Agreeable