Unfinished Portrait

‘Non, non, mees, c’est très mal ce que j’ai fait là.’

‘Pourquoi?’

Jeanne explained.

‘I have made a mock of M. le Curé. It is a sin, that!’

‘Oh, Jeanne, couldn’t you do it once more? It was so funny.’

The soft-hearted Jeanne imperilled her immortal soul and did it again even more amusingly.

Celia knew all about Jeanne’s family. About Berthe who was très sérieuse, and Louis who was si gentil, and Edouard who was spirituel, and la petite Lise who had just made her first communion, and the cat who was so clever that he could curl himself up in the middle of the glasses in the café and never break one of them.

Celia, in her turn, told Jeanne about Goldie and Rouncy and Susan, and the garden, and all the things they would do when Jeanne came to England. Jeanne had never seen the sea. The idea of going on a boat from France to England frightened her very much.

‘Je me figure,’ said Jeanne, ‘que j’aurais horriblement peur. N’en parlons pas! Parlez-moi de votre petit oiseau.’

One day, as Celia was walking with her father, a voice hailed them from a small table outside one of the hotels.

‘John! I declare it’s old John!’

‘Bernard!’

A big jolly-looking man had jumped up and was wringing her father warmly by the hand.

This, it seemed, was a Mr Grant, who was one of her father’s oldest friends. They had not seen each other for some years, and neither of them had had the least idea that the other was in Pau. The Grants were staying in a different hotel, but the two families used to foregather after déjeuner and drink coffee.

Mrs Grant was, Celia thought, the loveliest thing she had ever seen. She had silver-grey hair, exquisitely arranged, and wonderful dark-blue eyes, clear-cut features, and a very clear incisive voice. Celia immediately invented a new character, called Queen Marise. Queen Marise had all the personal attributes of Mrs Grant and was adored by her devoted subjects. She was three times the victim of attempted assassination, but was rescued by a devoted young man called Colin, whom she at once knighted. Her coronation robes were of emerald green velvet and she had a silver crown set with diamonds.

Mr Grant was not made a king. Celia thought he was nice, but that his face was too fat and too red—not nearly so nice as her own father with his brown beard and his habit of throwing it up in the air when he laughed. Her own father, Celia thought, was just what a father should be—full of nice jokes that didn’t make you feel silly like Mr Grant’s sometimes did.

With the Grants was their son Jim, a pleasant freckle-faced schoolboy. He was always good-tempered and smiling, and had very round blue eyes that gave him rather a surprised look. He adored his mother.

He and Cyril eyed each other like strange dogs. Jim was very respectful to Cyril, because Cyril was two years older and at a public school. Neither of them took any notice of Celia because, of course, Celia was only a kid.

The Grants went home to England after about three weeks. Celia overheard Mr Grant say to her mother:

‘It gave me a shock to see old John, but he tells me he is ever so much fitter since being here.’

Celia said to her mother afterwards:

‘Mummy, is Daddy ill?’

Her mother looked a little queer as she answered:

‘No. No, of course not. He’s perfectly well now. It was just the damp and the rain in England.’

Celia was glad her father wasn’t ill. Not, she thought, that he could be—he never went to bed or sneezed or had a bilious attack. He coughed sometimes, but that was because he smoked so much. Celia knew that, because her father told her so.

But she wondered why her mother had looked—well, queer …

When May came they left Pau and went first to Argelès at the foot of the Pyrenees and after that to Cauterets up in the mountains.

At Argelès Celia fell in love. The object of her passion was the lift boy—Auguste. Not Henri, the little fair lift boy who played tricks sometimes with her and Bar and Beatrice (they also had come to Argelès), but Auguste. Auguste was eighteen, tall, dark, sallow, and very gloomy in appearance.

He took no interest in the passengers he propelled up and down. Celia never gathered courage to speak to him. No one, not even Jeanne, knew of her romantic passion. In bed at night Celia would envisage scenes in which she saved Auguste’s life by catching the bridle of his furiously galloping horse—a shipwreck in which she and Auguste alone survived, she saving his life by swimming ashore and holding his head above water. Sometimes Auguste saved her life in a fire, but this was somehow not quite so satisfactory. The climax she preferred was when Auguste, with tears in his eyes, said: ‘Mademoiselle, I owe you my life. How can I ever thank you?’

It was a brief but violent passion. A month later they went to Cauterets, and Celia fell in love with Janet Patterson instead.

Janet was fifteen. She was a nice pleasant girl with brown hair and kindly blue eyes. She was not beautiful or striking in any way. She was kind to younger children and not bored by playing with them.

To Celia the only joy in life was some day to grow up to be like her idol. Some day she too would wear a striped blouse and collar and tie, and would wear her hair in a plait tied with a black bow. She would have, too, that mysterious thing—a figure. Janet had a figure—a very apparent one sticking out each side of the striped blouse. Celia—a very thin child (described indeed by her brother Cyril when he wanted to annoy as a Scrawny Chicken—a term which never failed to reduce her to tears)—was passionately enamoured of plumpness. Some day, some glorious day, she would be grown up and sticking out and going in in all the proper places.

‘Mummy,’ she said one day, ‘when shall I have a chest that sticks out?’

Her mother looked at her and said:

‘Why, do you want one so badly?’

‘Oh, yes,’ breathed Celia anxiously.

‘When you’re about fourteen or fifteen—Janet’s age.’

‘Can I have a striped blouse then?’

‘Perhaps, but I don’t think they’re very pretty.’

Celia looked at her reproachfully.

‘I think they’re lovely. Oh, Mummy, do say I can have one when I’m fifteen.’

‘You can have one—if you still want it.’

Of course she would want it.

She went off to look for her idol. To her great annoyance Janet was walking with her French friend Yvonne Barbier. Celia hated Yvonne Barbier with a jealous hatred. Yvonne was very pretty, very elegant, very sophisticated. Although only fifteen, she looked more like eighteen. Her arm linked through Janet’s, she was talking to her in a cooing voice.

‘Naturellement, je n’ai rien dit à Maman. Je lui ai répondu—’

‘Run away, darling,’ said Janet kindly. ‘Yvonne and I are busy just now.’

Celia withdrew sadly. How she hated that horrible Yvonne Barbier.

Alas, two weeks later, Janet and her parents left Cauterets. Her image faded quickly from Celia’s mind, but her ecstatic anticipation of the day when she would have ‘a figure’ remained.

Cauterets was great fun. You were right under the mountains here. Not that even now they looked at all as Celia had pictured them. To the end of her life she could never really admire mountain scenery. A sense of being cheated remained at the back of her mind. The delights of Cauterets were varied. There was the hot walk in the morning to La Raillière where her mother and father drank glasses of nasty tasting water. After the water drinking there was the purchase of sticks of sucre d’orge. They were twirly sticks of different colours and flavours. Celia usually had ananas—her mother liked a green one—aniseed. Her father, strangely enough, liked none of them. He seemed buoyant and happier since he came to Cauterets.

‘This place suits me, Miriam,’ he said. ‘I can feel myself getting a new man here.’

His wife answered:

‘We’ll stay here as long as we can.’

She too seemed gayer—she laughed more. The anxious pucker between her brows smoothed itself away. She saw very little of Celia. Satisfied with the child being in Jeanne’s keeping, she devoted herself heart and soul to her husband.

After the morning excursion Celia would come home with Jeanne through the woods, going up and down zigzag paths, occasionally tobogganing down steep slopes with disastrous results to the seats of her drawers. Agonized wails would arise from Jeanne.

‘Oh, mees—ce n’est pas gentille ce que vous faites là. Et vos pantalons. Que dirait Madame votre mère?’

‘Encore une fois, Jeanne. Une fois seulement.’

‘Non, non. Oh, mees!’

After lunch Jeanne would be busy sewing. Celia would go out into the Place and join some of the other children. A little girl called Mary Hayes had been specially designated as a suitable companion. ‘Such a nice child,’ said Celia’s mother. ‘Pretty manners and so sweet. A nice little friend for Celia.’

Celia played with Mary Hayes when she could not avoid it, but, alas, she found Mary woefully dull. She was sweet-tempered and amiable but, to Celia, extremely boring. The child whom Celia liked was a little American girl called Marguerite Priestman. She came from a Western state and had a terrific twang in her speech which fascinated the English child. She played games that were new to Celia. Accompanying her was her nurse, an amazing old woman in an enormous flopping black hat whose standard phrase was, ‘Now you stay right by Fanny, do you hear?’

Occasionally Fanny came to the rescue when a dispute was in progress. One day she found both children almost in tears, arguing hotly.

‘Now, just you tell Fanny what it’s all about,’ she commanded.

‘I was just telling Celia a story, and she says what I say isn’t so—and it is so.’

‘You tell Fanny what the story was.’

‘It was going to be just a lovely story. It was about a little girl who grew up in a wood kinder lonesome because the doctor had never fetched her in his black bag—’

Celia interrupted.

‘That isn’t true. Marguerite says babies are found by doctors in woods and brought to the mothers. That’s not true. The angels bring them in the night and put them into the cradle.’

‘It’s doctors.’

‘It’s angels.’

‘It isn’t.’

Fanny raised a large hand.

‘You listen to me.’

They listened. Fanny’s little black eyes snapped intelligently as she considered and then dealt with the problem.

‘You’ve neither of you call to get excited. Marguerite’s right and so’s Celia. One’s the way they do with English babies and the other’s the way they do with American babies.’

How simple after all! Celia and Marguerite beamed on each other and were friends again.

Fanny murmured, ‘You stay right by Fanny,’ and resumed her knitting.

‘I’ll go right on with the story, shall I?’ asked Marguerite.

‘Yes, do,’ said Celia. ‘And afterwards I’ll tell you a story about an opal fairy who came out of a peach stone.’

Marguerite embarked on her narrative, later to be interrupted once more.

‘What’s a scarrapin?’

‘A scarrapin? Why, Celia, don’t you know what a scarrapin is?’

‘No, what is it?’

That was more difficult. From the welter of Marguerite’s explanation Celia only grasped the fact that a scarrapin was in point of fact a scarrapin! A scarrapin remained for her a fabulous beast connected with the continent of America.

Only one day when she was grown up did it suddenly flash into Celia’s mind.

‘Of course. Marguerite Priestman’s scarrapin was a scorpion.’

And she felt quite a pang of loss.

Dinner was very early at Cauterets. It took place at half-past six. Celia was allowed to sit up. Afterwards they would all sit outside round little tables, and once or twice a week the conjurer would conjure.

Celia adored the conjurer. She liked his name. He was, so her father told her, a prestidigitateur.

Celia would repeat the syllables very slowly over to herself.

The conjurer was a tall man with a long black beard. He did the most entrancing things with coloured ribbons—yards and yards of them he would suddenly pull out of his mouth. At the end of his entertainment he would announce ‘a little lottery’. First he would hand round a large wooden plate into which every one would put a contribution. Then the winning numbers would be announced and the prizes given—a paper fan—a little lantern—a pot of paper flowers. There seemed to be something very lucky for children in the lottery. It was nearly always children who won the prizes. Celia had a tremendous longing to win the paper fan. She never did, however, although she twice won a lantern.

One day Celia’s father said to her, ‘How would you like to go to the top of that fellow there?’ He indicated one of the mountains behind the hotel.

‘Me, Daddy? Right up to the top?’

‘Yes. You shall ride there on a mule.’

‘What’s a mule, Daddy?’

He told her that a mule was rather like a donkey and rather like a horse. Celia was thrilled at the thought of the adventure. Her mother seemed a little doubtful. ‘Are you sure it’s quite safe, John?’ she said.

Celia’s father pooh-poohed her fears. Of course the child would be all right.

She, her father, and Cyril were to go. Cyril said in a lofty tone, ‘Oh! is the kid coming? She’ll be a rotten nuisance.’ Yet he was quite fond of Celia, but her coming offended his manly pride. This was to have been a man’s expedition—women and children left at home.

Early on the morning of the great expedition Celia was ready and standing on the balcony to see the mules arrive. They came at a trot round the corner—great big animals—more like horses than donkeys. Celia ran downstairs full of joyful expectation. A little man with a brown face in a beret was talking to her father. He was saying that the petite demoiselle would be quite all right. He would charge himself with looking after her. Her father and Cyril mounted; then the guide picked her up and swung her up to the saddle. How very high up it felt! But very, very exciting.

They moved off. From the balcony above, Celia’s mother waved to them. Celia was thrilling with pride. She felt practically grown up. The guide ran beside her. He chatted to her, but she understood very little of what he said, owing to his strong Spanish accent.

It was a marvellous ride. They went up zigzag paths that grew gradually steeper and steeper. Now they were well out on the mountain side, a wall of rock on one side of them and a sheer drop on the other. At the most dangerous-looking places Celia’s mule would stop reflectively on the precipice edge and kick out idly with one foot. It also liked walking on the extreme edge. It was, Celia thought, a very nice horse. Its name seemed to be Aniseed, which Celia thought a very queer name for a horse to have.

It was midday when they reached the summit. There was a tiny little hut there with a table in front of it, and they sat down, and presently the woman there brought them out lunch—a very good lunch too. Omelette, some fried trout, and cream cheese and bread. There was a big woolly dog with whom Celia played.

‘C’est presque un Anglais,’ said the woman. ‘Il s’appelle Milor.’

Milor was very amiable and allowed Celia to do anything she pleased with him.

Presently Celia’s father looked at his watch and said it was time to start down again. He called to the guide.

The latter came smiling. He had something in his hands.

‘See what I have just caught,’ he said.

It was a beautiful big butterfly.

‘C’est pour Mademoiselle,’ he said.

And quickly, deftly, before she knew what he was going to do, he had produced a pin and skewered the butterfly to the crown of Celia’s straw hat.

‘Voilà que Mademoiselle est chic,’ he said, falling back to admire his handiwork.

Then the mules were brought round, the party was mounted, and the descent was begun.

Celia was miserable. She could feel the wings of the butterfly fluttering against her hat. It was alive—alive. Skewered on a pin! She felt sick and miserable. Large tears gathered in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

At last her father noticed.

‘What’s the matter, poppet?’

Celia shook her head. Her sobs increased.

‘Have you got a pain? Are you very tired? Does your head ache?’

Celia merely shook her head more and more violently at each suggestion.

‘She’s frightened of the horse,’ said Cyril.

‘I’m not,’ said Celia.

‘Then what are you blubbing for?’

‘La petite demoiselle est fatiguée,’ suggested the guide.

Celia’s tears flowed faster and faster. They were all looking at her, questioning her—and how could she say what was the matter? It would hurt the guide’s feelings terribly. He had meant to be kind. He had caught the butterfly specially for her. He had been so proud of his idea in pinning it to her hat. How could she say out loud that she didn’t like it? And now nobody would ever, ever understand! The wind made the butterfly’s wings flap more than ever. Celia wept unrestrainedly. Never, she felt, had there been misery such as hers.

‘We’d better push on as fast as we can,’ said her father. He looked vexed. ‘Get her back to her mother. She was right. It’s been too much for the child.’

Celia longed to cry out: ‘It hasn’t, hasn’t. It’s not that at all.’ But she didn’t because she realized that then they would ask her again, ‘But then what is it?’ She only shook her head dumbly.

She wept all the way down. Her misery grew blacker and blacker. Still weeping she was lifted from her mule, and her father carried her up to the sitting-room where her mother was sitting waiting for them. ‘You were right, Miriam,’ said her father. ‘It’s been too much for the child. I don’t know whether she’s got a pain or whether she’s overtired.’

‘I’m not,’ said Celia.

‘She was frightened of coming down those steep places,’ said Cyril.

‘I wasn’t,’ said Celia.

‘Then what is it?’ demanded her father.

Celia stared dumbly at her mother. She knew now that she could never tell. The cause of her misery would remain locked in her own breast forever and ever. She wanted to tell—oh, how badly she wanted to tell—but somehow she couldn’t. Some mysterious inhibition had been laid on her, sealing her lips. If only Mummy knew. Mummy would understand. But she couldn’t tell Mummy. They were all looking at her—waiting for her to speak. A terrible agony welled up in her breast. She gazed dumbly, agonizingly, at her mother. ‘Help me,’ that gaze said. ‘Oh, do help me.’

Miriam gazed back at her.

‘I believe she doesn’t like that butterfly in her hat,’ she said, ‘Who pinned it there?’

Oh, the relief—the wonderful, aching, agonizing relief.

‘Nonsense,’ her father was beginning, but Celia interrupted him. Words burst from her released like water at the bursting of a dam.

‘I ’ate it. I ’ate it,’ she cried. ‘It flaps. It’s alive. It’s being hurt.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you say so, you silly kid?’ said Cyril.

Celia’s mother answered: ‘I expect she didn’t want to hurt the guide’s feelings.’

‘Oh, Mummy!’ said Celia.

It was all there—in those two words. Her relief, her gratitude—and a great welling up of love.

Her mother had understood.

CHAPTER 3

Grannie

The following winter Celia’s father and mother went to Egypt. They did not think it practicable to take Celia with them, so she and Jeanne went to stay with Grannie.

Grannie lived at Wimbledon, and Celia liked staying with her very much. The features of Grannie’s house were, first, the garden—a square pocket handkerchief of green, bordered with rose trees, every tree of which Celia knew intimately, remembering even in winter: ‘That’s the pink la France—Jeanne, you’d like that one,’ but the crown and glory of the garden was a big ash tree trained over wire supports to make an arbour. There was nothing like the ash tree at home, and Celia regarded it as one of the most exciting wonders of the world. Then there was the WC seat of old-fashioned mahogany set very high. Retiring to this spot after breakfast, Celia would fancy herself a queen enthroned, and securely secluded behind a locked door she would bow regally, extend a hand to be kissed by imaginary courtiers and prolong the court scene as long as she dared. There was also Grannie’s store cupboard situated by the door into the garden. Every morning, her large bunch of keys clanking, Grannie would visit her store cupboard, and with the punctuality of a child, a dog, or a lion at feeding time, Celia would be there too. Grannie would hand out packets of sugar, butter, eggs, or a pot of jam. She would hold long acrimonious discussions with old Sarah, the cook. Very different from Rouncy, old Sarah. As thin as Rouncy was fat. A little old woman with a nut-cracker wrinkled face. For fifty years of her life she had been in service with Grannie, and during all those fifty years the discussions had been the same. Too much sugar was being used: what happened to the last half pound of tea? It was, by now, a kind of ritual—it was Grannie going through her daily performance of the careful housewife. Servants were so wasteful! You had to look after them sharply. The ritual finished, Grannie would pretend to notice Celia for the first time.

‘Dear, dear, what’s a little girl doing here?’

And Grannie would pretend great surprise.

‘Well, well,’ she would say, ‘you can’t want anything?’

‘I do, Grannie, I do.’

‘Well, let me see now.’ Grannie would burrow leisurely in the depths of the cupboard. Something would be extracted—a jar of French plums, a stick of angelica, a pot of quince preserve. There was always something for a little girl.

Grannie was a very handsome old lady. She had pink and white skin, two waves of white crimped hair each side of her forehead, and a big good-humoured mouth. In figure she was majestically stout with a pronounced bosom and stately hips. She wore dresses of velvet or brocade, ample as to skirts, and well pulled in round the waist.

‘I always had a beautiful figure, my dear,’ she used to tell Celia. ‘Fanny—that was my sister—had the prettiest face of the family, but she’d no figure—no figure at all! As thin as two boards nailed together. No man looked at her for long when I was about. It’s figure the men care for, not face.’

‘The men’ bulked largely in Grannie’s conversation. She had been brought up in the days when men were considered to be the hub of the universe. Women merely existed to minister to those magnificent beings.

‘You wouldn’t have found a handsomer man anywhere than my father. Six foot tall, he was. All we children were afraid of him. He was very severe.’

‘What was your mother like, Grannie?’

‘Ah, poor soul. Only thirty-nine when she died. Ten of us children, there were. A lot of hungry mouths. After a baby was born, when she was staying in bed—’

‘Why did she stay in bed, Grannie?’

‘It’s the custom, dearie.’

Celia accepted the mandate incuriously.

‘She always took her month,’ went on Grannie. ‘It was the only rest she got, poor soul. She enjoyed her month. She used to have breakfast in bed and a boiled egg. Not that she got much of that. We children used to come and bother her. “Can I have a taste of your egg, Mother? Can I have the top of it?” There wouldn’t be much left for her after each child had had a taste. She was too kind—too gentle. She died when I was fourteen. I was the eldest of the family. Poor father was heart-broken. They were a devoted couple. He followed her to the grave six months later.’

Celia nodded. That seemed right and fitting in her eyes. In most of the child’s books in the nursery there was a deathbed scene—usually that of a child—a peculiarly holy and angelic child.