Unfinished Portrait. Агата Кристи
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.
‘What did he die of?’
‘Galloping consumption,’ replied Grannie.
‘And your mother?’
‘She went into a decline, my dear. Just went into decline. Always wrap your throat up well when you go out in an east wind. Remember that, Celia. It’s the east wind that kills. Poor Miss Sankey—why, she had tea with me only a month ago. Went to those nasty swimming baths—came out afterwards with an east wind blowing and no boa round her neck—and she was dead in a week.’
Nearly all Grannie’s stories and reminiscences ended like this. A most cheerful person herself, she delighted in tales of incurable illness, of sudden death, or of mysterious disease. Celia was so well accustomed to this that she would demand with eager and rapturous interest in the middle of one of Grannie’s stories, ‘And then did he die, Grannie?’ And Grannie would reply, ‘Ah, yes, he died, poor fellow.’ Or girl or boy, or woman—as the case might be. None of Grannie’s stories ever ended happily. It was perhaps her natural reaction from her own healthy and vigorous personality.
Grannie was also full of mysterious warnings.
‘If anybody you don’t know offers you sweets, dearie, never take them. And when you’re an older girl, remember never to get into a train with a single man.’
This last injunction rather distressed Celia. She was a shy child. If one was not to get into a train with a single man, one would have to ask him whether or not he was married. You couldn’t tell if a man was married or not to look at him. The mere thought of having to do such a thing made her squirm uneasily.
She did not connect with herself a murmur from a lady visitor.
‘Surely unwise—put things into her head.’
Grannie’s answer rose robustly.
‘Those that are warned in time won’t come to grief. Young people ought to know these things. And there’s a thing that perhaps you never heard of, my dear. My husband told me about it—my first husband.’ (Grannie had had three husbands—so attractive had been her figure—and so well had she ministered to the male sex. She had buried them in turn—one with tears—one with resignation—and one with decorum.) ‘He said women ought to know about such things.’
Her voice dropped. It hissed in sibilant whispers.
What she could hear seemed to Celia dull. She strayed away into the garden …
Jeanne was unhappy. She became increasingly homesick for France and her own people. The English servants, she told Celia, were not kind.
‘The cuisinière, Sarah, she is gentille, though she calls me a papist. But the others, Mary and Kate—they laugh because I do not spend my wages on my clothes, and send it all home to Maman.’
Grannie attempted to cheer Jeanne.
‘You go on behaving like a sensible girl,’ she told Jeanne. ‘Putting a lot of useless finery on your back never caught a decent man yet. You go on sending your wages home to your mother, and you’ll have a nice little nest egg laid by for when you get married. That neat plain style of dressing is far more suitable to a domestic servant than a lot of fal-lals. You go on being a sensible girl.’
But Jeanne would occasionally give way to tears when Mary or Kate had been unusually spiteful or unkind. The English girls did not like foreigners, and Jeanne was a papist too, and everyone knew that Roman Catholics worshipped the Scarlet Woman.
Grannie’s rough encouragements did not always heal the wound.
‘Quite right to stick to your religion, my girl. Not that I hold with the Roman Catholic religion myself, because I don’t. Most Romans I’ve known have been liars. I’d think more of them if their priests married. And these convents! All those beautiful young girls shut up in convents and never being heard of again. What happens to them, I should like to know? The priests could answer that question, I dare say.’
Fortunately Jeanne’s English was not quite equal to this flow of remarks.
Madame was very kind, she said, she would try not to mind what the other girls said.
Grannie then had up Mary and Kate and denounced them in no measured terms for their unkindness to a poor girl in a strange country. Mary and Kate were very soft spoken, very polite, very surprised. Indeed, they had said nothing—nothing at all. Jeanne was such a one as never was for imagining things.
Grannie got a little satisfaction by refusing with horror Mary’s plea to be allowed to keep a bicycle.
‘I am surprised at you, Mary, for making such a suggestion. No servant of mine shall ever do such an unsuitable thing.’
Mary, looking sulky, muttered that her cousin at Richmond was allowed to have one.
‘Let me hear nothing more about it,’ said Grannie. ‘Anyway, they’re dangerous things for women. Many a woman has been prevented from having children for life by riding those nasty things. They’re not good for a woman’s inside.’
Mary and Kate retired sulkily. They would have given notice, but they knew that the place was a good one. The food was first class—no inferior tainted stuff bought for the kitchen as in some places—and the work was not heavy. The old lady was rather a tartar, but she was kind in her way. If there was any trouble at home, she’d often come to the rescue, and nobody could be more generous at Christmas. There was old Sarah’s tongue, of course, but you had to put up with that. Her cooking was prime.
Like all children, Celia haunted the kitchen a good deal. Old Sarah was much fiercer than Rouncy, but then, of course, she was terribly old. If anyone had told Celia that Sarah was a hundred and fifty she would not have been in the least surprised. Nobody, Celia felt, had ever been quite so old as Sarah.
Sarah was most unaccountably touchy about the most extraordinary things. One day, for instance, Celia had gone into the kitchen and had asked Sarah what she was cooking.
‘Giblet soup, Miss Celia.’
‘What are giblets, Sarah?’
Sarah pursed her mouth.
‘Things that it’s not nice for a little lady to make inquiries about.’
‘But what are they?’ Celia’s curiosity was pleasantly aroused.
‘Now, that’s enough, Miss Celia. It’s not for a little lady like you to ask questions about such things.’
‘Sarah.’ Celia danced about the kitchen. Her flaxen hair bobbed. ‘What are giblets? Sarah, what are giblets? Giblets—giblets—giblets?’
The infuriated Sarah made a rush at her with a frying pan, and Celia retreated, to poke her head in a few minutes later with the query, ‘Sarah, what are giblets?’
She next repeated the question from the kitchen window.
Sarah, her face dark with annoyance, made no answer, merely mumbled to herself.
Finally, tiring suddenly of this sport, Celia sought out her grandmother.
Grannie always sat in the dining-room, which was situated looking out over the short drive in front of the house. It was a room that Celia could have described minutely twenty years later. The heavy Nottingham lace curtains, the dark red and gold wallpaper, the general air of gloom, and the faint smell of apples and a trace still