Unfinished Portrait. Агата Кристи

home. Sometimes you got to them through the pantry—sometimes, in the most unexpected way, they led out of Daddy’s study. But there they were all the time—although you had forgotten them for so long. Each time you had a delighted thrill of recognition. And yet, really, each time they were quite different. But there was always that curious secret joy about finding them …

      Then there was the one terrible dream—the Gun Man with his powdered hair and his blue and red uniform and his gun. And, most horrible of all, where his hands came out of his sleeves—there were no hands—only stumps. Whenever he came into a dream, you woke up screaming. It was the safest thing to do. And there you were, safe in your bed, and Nannie in her bed next to you and everything All Right.

      There was no special reason why the Gun Man should be so frightening. It wasn’t that he might shoot you. His gun was a symbol, not a direct menace. No, it was something about his face, his hard, intensely blue eyes, the sheer malignity of the look he gave you. It turned you sick with fright.

      Then there were the things you thought about in the daytime. Nobody knew that as Celia walked sedately along the road she was in reality mounted upon a white palfrey. (Her ideas of a palfrey were rather dim. She imagined a super horse of the dimensions of an elephant.) When she walked along the narrow brick wall of the cucumber frames she was going along a precipice with a bottomless chasm at one side. She was on different occasions a duchess, a princess, a goose girl, and a beggar maid. All this made life very interesting to Celia, and so she was what is called ‘a good child’, meaning she kept very quiet, was happy playing by herself, and did not importune her elders to amuse her.

      The dolls she was given were never real to her. She played with them dutifully when Nannie suggested it, but without any real enthusiasm.

      ‘She’s a good little girl,’ said Nannie. ‘No imagination, but you can’t have everything. Master Tommy—Captain Stretton’s eldest, he never stopped teasing me with his questions.’

      Celia seldom asked questions. Most of her world was inside her head. The outside world did not excite her curiosity.

      Something that happened one April was to make her afraid of the outside world.

      She and Nannie went primrosing. It was an April day, clear and sunny with little clouds scudding across the blue sky. They went down by the railway line (where the river was in Celia’s dreams) and up the hill beyond it into a copse where the primroses grew like a yellow carpet. They picked and they picked. It was a lovely day, and the primroses had a delicious, faint lemony smell that Celia loved.

      And then (it was rather like the Gun Man dream) a great harsh voice roared at them suddenly.

      ‘Here,’ it said. ‘What are you a-doing of here?’

      It was a man, a big man with a red face, dressed in corduroys. He scowled.

      ‘This is private here. Trespassers will be prosecuted.’

      Nurse said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m sure. I didn’t know.’

      ‘Well, you get on out of it. Quick, now.’ As they turned to go his voice called after them: ‘I’ll boil you alive. Yes. I will. Boil you alive if you’re not out of the wood in three minutes.’

      Celia stumbled forward tugging desperately at Nannie. Why wouldn’t Nannie go faster? The man would come after them. He’d catch them. They’d be boiled alive in a great pot. She felt sick with fright … She stumbled desperately on, her whole quivering little body alive with terror. He was coming—coming up behind them—they’d be boiled … She felt horribly sick. Quick—oh, quick!

      They were out on the road again. A great gasping sigh burst from Celia.

      ‘He—he can’t get us now,’ she murmured.

      Nurse looked at her, startled by the dead white of her face.

      ‘Why, what’s the matter, dear?’ A thought struck her. ‘Surely you weren’t frightened by what he said about boiling—that was only a joke—you knew that.’

      And obedient to the spirit of acquiescent falsehood that every child possesses, Celia murmured:

      ‘Oh, of course, Nannie. I knew it was a joke.’

      But it was a long time before she got over the terror of that moment. All her life she never quite forgot it.

      The terror had been so horribly real.

      On her fourth birthday Celia was given a canary. He was given the unoriginal name of Goldie. He soon became very tame and would perch on Celia’s finger. She loved him. He was her bird whom she fed with hemp seeds, but he was also her companion in adventure. There was Dick’s Mistress who was a queen, and the Prince Dicky, her son, and the two of them roamed the world and had adventures. Prince Dicky was very handsome and wore garments of golden velvet with black velvet sleeves.

      Later in the year Goldie was given a wife called Daphne. Daphne was a big bird with a lot of brown about her. She was awkward and ungainly. She spilled her water and upset things that she perched on. She never became as tame as Goldie. Celia’s father called her Susan because she ‘flounced’.

      Susan used to poke at the birds with a match ‘to see what they would do,’ as she said. The birds were afraid of her and would flutter against the bars when they saw her coming. Susan thought all sorts of curious things funny. She laughed a great deal when a mouse’s tail was found in the mousetrap.

      Susan was very fond of Celia. She played games with her such as hiding behind curtains and jumping out to say Bo! Celia was not really very fond of Susan—she was so big and so bouncy. She was much fonder of Mrs Rouncewell, the cook. Rouncy, as Celia called her, was an enormous, monumental woman, and she was the embodiment of calm. She never hurried. She moved about her kitchen in dignified slow motion, going through the ritual of her cooking. She was never harried, never flustered. She served meals always on the exact stroke of the hour. Rouncy had no imagination. When Celia’s mother would ask her: ‘Well, what do you suggest for lunch today?’ she always made the same reply. ‘Well, ma’am, we could have a nice chicken and a ginger pudding.’ Mrs Rouncewell could cook soufflés, vol-au-vents, creams, salmis, every kind of pastry, and the most elaborate French dishes, but she never suggested anything but a chicken and a ginger pudding.

      Celia loved going into the kitchen—it was rather like Rouncy herself, very big, very vast, very clean, and very peaceful. In the midst of the cleanliness and space was Rouncy, her jaws moving suggestively. She was always eating. Little bits of this, that, and the other.

      She would say:

      ‘Now, Miss Celia, what do you want?’

      And then with a slow smile that stretched right across her wide face she would go across to a cupboard, open a tin, and pour a handful of raisins or currants into Celia’s cupped hands. Sometimes it would be a slice of bread and treacle that she was given, or a corner of jam tart, but there was always something.

      And Celia would carry off her prize into the garden and up into the secret place by the garden wall, and there, nestled tightly into the bushes, she would be the Princess in hiding from her enemies to whom her devoted followers had brought provisions in the dead of night …

      Upstairs in the nursery Nannie sat sewing. It was nice for Miss Celia to have such a good safe garden to play in—no nasty ponds or dangerous places. Nannie herself was getting old, she liked to sit and sew—and think over things—the little Strettons—all grown-up men and women now—and little Miss Lilian—getting married she was—and Master Roderick and Master Phil—both at Winchester … Her mind ran gently backwards over the years …

      Something terrible happened. Goldie was lost. He had become so tame that his cage door was left open. He used to flutter about the nursery. He would sit on the top of Nannie’s head and tweak with his beak at her cap and Nannie would say mildly: ‘Now, now, Master Goldie, I can’t have that.’ He would sit on Celia’s shoulder and take a hemp seed from between her lips. He was like a spoilt child. If you did not pay attention to him, he got cross and squawked at