The Hollow

by Agatha Christie

  She had learned the trick, years ago, of shutting her mind into watertight compartments. She could play a game of bridge, conduct an intelligent conversation, write a clearly constructed letter, all without giving more than a fraction of her essential mind to the task. She was now completely intent on seeing the head of Nausicaa build itself up under her fingers, and the thin, spiteful stream of chatter issuing from those very lovely childish lips penetrated not at all into the deeper recesses of her mind. She kept the conversation going without effort. She was used to models who wanted to talk. Not so much the professional ones—it was the amateurs who, uneasy at their forced inactivity of limb, made up for it by bursting into garrulous self-revelation. So an inconspicuous part of Henrietta listened and replied, and, very far and remote, the real Henrietta commented, “Common mean spiteful little piece—but what eyes…Lovely lovely lovely eyes….”

  Whilst she was busy on the eyes, let the girl talk. She would ask her to keep silent when she got to the mouth. Funny when you came to think of it, that that thin stream of spite should come out through those perfect curves.

  “Oh, damn,” thought Henrietta with sudden frenzy, “I’m ruining that eyebrow arch! What the hell’s the matter with it? I’ve overemphasized the bone—it’s sharp, not thick….”

  She stood back again frowning from the clay to the flesh and blood sitting on the platform.

  Doris Saunders went on:

  “‘Well,’ I said, ‘I really don’t see why your husband shouldn’t give me a present if he likes, and I don’t think,’ I said, ‘you ought to make insinuations of that kind.’ It was ever such a nice bracelet, Miss Savernake, reely quite lovely—and of course I daresay the poor fellow couldn’t reely afford it, but I do think it was nice of him, and I certainly wasn’t going to give it back!”

  “No, no,” murmured Henrietta.

  “And it’s not as though there was anything between us—anything nasty, I mean—there was nothing of that kind.”

  “No,” said Henrietta, “I’m sure there wouldn’t be….”

  Her brow cleared. For the next half hour she worked in a kind of fury. Clay smeared itself on her forehead, clung to her hair, as she pushed an impatient hand through it. Her eyes had a blind intense ferocity. It was coming…She was getting it….

  Now, in a few hours, she would be out of her agony—the agony that had been growing upon her for the last ten days.

  Nausicaa—she had been Nausicaa, she had got up with Nausicaa and had breakfast with Nausicaa and gone out with Nausicaa. She had tramped the streets in a nervous excitable restlessness, unable to fix her mind on anything but a beautiful blind face somewhere just beyond her mind’s eye—hovering there just not able to be clearly seen. She had interviewed models, hesitated over Greek types, felt profoundly dissatisfied….

  She wanted something—something to give her the start—something that would bring her own already partially realized vision alive. She had walked long distances, getting physically tired out and welcoming the fact. And driving her, harrying her, was that urgent incessant longing—to see—

  There was a blind look in her own eyes as she walked. She saw nothing of what was around her. She was straining—straining the whole time to make that face come nearer…She felt sick, ill, miserable….

  And then, suddenly, her vision had cleared and with normal human eyes she had seen opposite her in the bus which she had boarded absentmindedly and with no interest in its destination—she had seen—yes, Nausicaa! A foreshortened childish face, half-parted lips and eyes—lovely vacant, blind eyes.

  The girl rang the bell and got out. Henrietta followed her.

  She was now quite calm and businesslike. She had got what she wanted—the agony of baffled search was over.

  “Excuse me speaking to you. I’m a professional sculptor and to put it frankly, your head is just what I have been looking for.”

  She was friendly, charming and compelling as she knew how to be when she wanted something.

  Doris Saunders had been doubtful, alarmed, flattered.

  “Well, I don’t know, I’m sure. If it’s just the head. Of course, I’ve never done that sort of thing!”

  Suitable hesitations, delicate financial inquiry.

  “Of course I should insist on your accepting the proper professional fee.”

  And so here was Nausicaa, sitting on the platform, enjoying the idea of her attractions, being immortalized (though not liking very much the examples of Henrietta’s work which she could see in the studio!) and enjoying also the revelation of her personality to a listener whose sympathy and attention seemed to be so complete.

  On the table beside the model were her spectacles…the spectacles that she put on as seldom as possible owing to vanity, preferring to feel her way almost blindly sometimes, since she admitted to Henrietta that without them she was so shortsighted that she could hardly see a yard in front of her.

  Henrietta had nodded comprehendingly. She understood now the physical reason for that blank and lovely stare.

  Time went on. Henrietta suddenly laid down her modelling tools and stretched her arms widely.

  “All right,” she said, “I’ve finished. I hope you’re not too tired?”

  “Oh, no, thank you, Miss Savernake. It’s been very interesting, I’m sure. Do you mean, it’s really done—so soon?”

  Henrietta laughed.

  “Oh, no, it’s not actually finished. I shall have to work on it quite a bit. But it’s finished as far as you’re concerned. I’ve got what I wanted—built up the planes.”

  The girl came down slowly from the platform. She put on her spectacles and at once the blind innocence and vague confiding charm of the face vanished. There remained now an easy, cheap prettiness.

  She came to stand by Henrietta and looked at the clay model.

  “Oh,” she said doubtfully, disappointment in her voice. “It’s not very like me, is it?”

  Henrietta smiled.

  “Oh, no, it’s not a portrait.”

  There was, indeed, hardly a likeness at all. It was the setting of the eyes—the line of the cheekbones—that Henrietta had seen as the essential keynote of her conception of Nausicaa. This was not Doris Saunders, it was a blind girl about whom a poem could be made. The lips were parted as Doris’s were parted, but they were not Doris’s lips. They were lips that would speak another language and would utter thoughts that were not Doris’s thoughts—

  None of the features were clearly defined. It was Nausicaa remembered, not seen….

  “Well,” said Miss Saunders doubtfully, “I suppose it’ll look better when you’ve got on with it a bit…And you really don’t want me anymore?”

  “No, thank you,” said Henrietta (“And thank God I don’t!” said her inner mind). “You’ve been simply splendid. I’m very grateful.”

  She got rid of Doris expertly and returned to make herself some black coffee. She was tired—she was horribly tired. But happy—happy and at peace.

  “Thank goodness,” she thought, “now I can be a human being again.”

  And at once her thoughts went to John.

  “John,” she thought. Warmth crept into her cheeks, a sudden quick lifting of the heart made her spirits soar.

  “Tomorrow,” she thought, “I’m going to The Hollow…I shall see John….”

  She sat quite still, sprawled back on the divan, drinking down the hot, strong liquid. She drank three cups of it. She felt vitality surging back.

  It was nice, she thought, to be a human being again…and not that other thing. Nice to have stopped feeling restless and miserable and driven. Nice to be able to stop walking about the streets unhappily, looking for something, and feeling irritable and impatient because, really, you didn’t know what you were looking for! Now, thank goodness, there would be only hard work—and who minded hard work?

  She put down the empty cup and got up and strolled back to Nausicaa. She looked at it for some time, and slowly a little frown crept between her bro
ws.

  It wasn’t—it wasn’t quite—

  What was it that was wrong?…

  Blind eyes.

  Blind eyes that were more beautiful than any eyes that could see…Blind eyes that tore at your heart because they were blind…Had she got that or hadn’t she?

  She’d got it, yes—but she’d got something else as well. Something that she hadn’t meant or thought about…The structure was all right—yes, surely. But where did it come from—that faint, insidious suggestion?….

  The suggestion, somewhere, of a common spiteful mind.

  She hadn’t been listening, not really listening. Yet somehow, in through her ears and out at her fingers, it had worked its way into the clay.

  And she wouldn’t, she knew she wouldn’t, be able to get it out again….

  Henrietta turned away sharply. Perhaps it was fancy. Yes, surely it was fancy. She would feel quite differently about it in the morning. She thought with dismay:

  “How vulnerable one is….”

  She walked, frowning, up to the end of the studio. She stopped in front of her figure of The Worshipper.

  That was all right—a lovely bit of pearwood, graining just right. She’d saved it up for ages, hoarding it.

  She looked at it critically. Yes, it was good. No doubt about that. The best thing she had done for a long time—it was for the International Group. Yes, quite a worthy exhibit.

  She’d got it all right: the humility, the strength in the neck muscles, the bowed shoulders, the slightly upraised face—a featureless face, since worship drives out personality.

  Yes, submission, adoration—and that final devotion that is beyond, not this side, idolatry….

  Henrietta sighed. If only, she thought, John had not been so angry.

  It had startled her, that anger. It had told her something about him that he did not, she thought, know himself.

  He had said flatly: “You can’t exhibit that!”

  And she had said, as flatly: “I shall.”

  She went slowly back to Nausicaa. There was nothing there, she thought, that she couldn’t put right. She sprayed it and wrapped it up in the damp cloths. It would have to stand over until Monday or Tuesday. There was no hurry now. The urgency had gone—all the essential planes were there. It only needed patience.

  Ahead of her were three happy days with Lucy and Henry and Midge—and John!

  She yawned, stretched herself like a cat stretches itself with relish and abandon, pulling out each muscle to its fullest extent. She knew suddenly how very tired she was.

  She had a hot bath and went to bed. She lay on her back staring at a star or two through the skylight. Then from there her eyes went to the one light always left on, the small bulb that illuminated the glass mask that had been one of her earliest bits of work. Rather an obvious piece, she thought now. Conventional in its suggestion.

  Lucky, thought Henrietta, that one outgrew oneself….

  And now, sleep! The strong black coffee that she had drunk did not bring wakefulness in its train unless she wished it to do so. Long ago she had taught herself the essential rhythm that could bring oblivion at call.

  You took thoughts, choosing them out of your store, and then, not dwelling on them, you let them slip through the fingers of your mind, never clutching at them, never dwelling on them, no concentration…just letting them drift gently past.

  Outside in the Mews a car was being revved up—somewhere there was hoarse shouting and laughing. She took the sounds into the stream of her semiconsciousness.

  The car, she thought, was a tiger roaring…yellow and black…striped like the striped leaves—leaves and shadows—a hot jungle…and then down the river—a wide tropical river…to the sea and the liner starting…and hoarse voices calling good-bye—and John beside her on the deck…she and John starting—blue sea and down into the dining saloon—smiling at him across the table—like dinner at the Maison Dorée—poor John, so angry!…out into the night air—and the car, the feeling of sliding in the gears—effortless, smooth, racing out of London…up over Shovel Down…the trees…tree worship…The Hollow…Lucy…John…John…Ridgeway’s Disease…dear John….

  Passing into unconsciousness now, into a happy beatitude.

  And then some sharp discomfort, some haunting sense of guilt pulling her back. Something she ought to have done. Something that she had shirked.

  Nausicaa?

  Slowly, unwillingly, Henrietta got out of bed. She switched on the lights, went across to the stand and unwrapped the cloths.

  She took a deep breath.

  Not Nausicaa—Doris Saunders!

  A pang went through Henrietta. She was pleading with herself: “I can get it right—I can get it right….”

  “Stupid,” she said to herself. “You know quite well what you’ve got to do.”

  Because if she didn’t do it now, at once—tomorrow she wouldn’t have the courage. It was like destroying your flesh and blood. It hurt—yes, it hurt.

  Perhaps, thought Henrietta, cats feel like this when one of their kittens has something wrong with it and they kill it.

  She took a quick, sharp breath, then she seized the clay, twisting it off the armature, carrying it, a large heavy lump, to dump it in the clay bin.

  She stood there breathing deeply, looking down at her clay-smeared hands, still feeling the wrench to her physical and mental self. She cleaned the clay off her hands slowly.

  She went back to bed feeling a curious emptiness, yet a sense of peace.

  Nausicaa, she thought sadly, would not come again. She had been born, had been contaminated and had died.

  “Queer,” thought Henrietta, “how things can seep into you without your knowing it.”

  She hadn’t been listening—not really listening—and yet knowledge of Doris’s cheap, spiteful little mind had seeped into her mind and had, unconsciously, influenced her hands.

  And now the thing that had been Nausicaa—Doris—was only clay—just the raw material that would, soon, be fashioned into something else.

  Henrietta thought dreamily: “Is that, then, what death is? Is what we call personality just the shaping of it—the impress of somebody’s thought? Whose thought? God’s?”

  That was the idea, wasn’t it, of Peer Gynt? Back into the Button Moulder’s ladle.

  “Where am I myself, the whole man, the true man? Where am I with God’s mark upon my brow?”

  Did John feel like that? He had been so tired the other night—so disheartened. Ridgeway’s Disease…Not one of those books told you who Ridgeway was! Stupid, she thought, she would like to know…Ridgeway’s Disease.

  Three

  John Christow sat in his consulting room, seeing his last patient but one for that morning. His eyes, sympathetic and encouraging, watched her as she described—explained—went into details. Now and then he nodded his head, understandingly. He asked questions, gave directions. A gentle glow pervaded the sufferer. Dr. Christow was really wonderful! He was so interested—so truly concerned. Even talking to him made one feel stronger.

  John Christow drew a sheet of paper towards him and began to write. Better give her a laxative, he supposed. That new American proprietary—nicely put up in cellophane and attractively coated in an unusual shade of salmon pink. Very expensive, too, and difficult to get—not every chemist stocked it. She’d probably have to go to that little place in Wardour Street. That would be all to the good—probably buck her up no end for a month or two, then he’d have to think of something else. There was nothing he could do for her. Poor physique and nothing to be done about it! Nothing to get your teeth into. Not like old mother Crabtree….

  A boring morning. Profitable financially—but nothing else. God, he was tired! Tired of sickly women and their ailments. Palliation, alleviation—nothing to it but that. Sometimes he wondered if it was worth it. But always then he remembered St. Christopher’s, and the long row of beds in the Margaret Russell Ward, and Mrs. Crabtree grinning up at him with her toothless smi
le.

  He and she understood each other! She was a fighter, not like that limp slug of a woman in the next bed. She was on his side, she wanted to live—though God knew why, considering the slum she lived in, with a husband who drank and a brood of unruly children, and she herself obliged to work day in day out, scrubbing endless floors of endless offices. Hard unremitting drudgery and few pleasures! But she wanted to live—she enjoyed life—just as he, John Christow, enjoyed life! It wasn’t the circumstances of life they enjoyed, it was life itself—the zest of existence. Curious—a thing one couldn’t explain. He thought to himself that he must talk to Henrietta about that.

  He got up to accompany his patient to the door. His hand took hers in a warm clasp, friendly, encouraging. His voice was encouraging too, full of interest and sympathy. She went away revived, almost happy. Dr. Christow took such an interest!

  As the door closed behind her, John Christow forgot her, he had really been hardly aware of her existence even when she had been there. He had just done his stuff. It was all automatic. Yet, though it had hardly ruffled the surface of his mind, he had given out strength. His had been the automatic response of the healer and he felt the sag of depleted energy.

  “God,” he thought again, “I’m tired.”

  Only one more patient to see and then the clear space of the weekend. His mind dwelt on it gratefully. Golden leaves tinged with red and brown, the soft moist smell of autumn—the road down through the woods—the wood fires, Lucy, most unique and delightful of creatures—with her curious, elusive will-o’-the-wisp mind. He’d rather have Henry and Lucy than any host and hostess in England. And The Hollow was the most delightful house he knew. On Sunday he’d walk through the woods with Henrietta—up on to the crest of the hill and along the ridge. Walking with Henrietta he’d forget that there were any sick people in the world. Thank goodness, he thought, there’s never anything the matter with Henrietta.

  And then with a sudden, quick twist of humour:

  “She’d never let on to me if there were!”

  One more patient to see. He must press the bell on his desk. Yet, unaccountably, he delayed. Already he was late. Lunch would be ready upstairs in the dining room. Gerda and the children would be waiting. He must get on.