She was, I saw in that moment, a child. Her real world was the world that surrounded herself. She had gone back deliberately to a childish world, finding there refuge from the world’s cruelty.
And that attitude of hers was tremendously stimulating to me. It was what for the last ten years I had been needing. It was, you see, a call to action.
Well, I acted. My one fear was leaving her to herself. I didn’t leave her to herself. I stuck to her like the proverbial leech. She walked down with me to the town amiably enough. She had plenty of common sense. She realized that her purpose was, for the moment, frustrated. She didn’t abandon it – she merely postponed it. I knew that without her saying a word.
I’m not going into details – this isn’t a chronicle of such things. There’s no need to describe the quaint little Spanish town, or the meal we had together at her hotel, or the way I had my luggage secretly conveyed from my hotel to the one she was staying at.
No, 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 Two
Canvas
‘Set up the canvas. Here’s a subject to hand.’
1 Home
1
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 sensation of treacle tart within. Soothing rustling noises of Somebody in the Room. Utter contentment.
Celia slept …
2
It was Celia’s third birthday. They were having tea in the garden. There were éclairs. She had been allowed only one éclair. Cyril had had three. Cyril was her brother. He was a big boy – eleven years old. He wanted another, but her mother said, ‘That’s enough, Cyril.’
The usual kind of
conversation then happened. Cyril saying ‘Why?’ interminably.
A little red spider, a microscopic thing, ran across the white tablecloth.
‘Look,’ said his mother, ‘that’s a lucky spider. He’s going to Celia because it’s her birthday. That means great good luck.’
Celia felt excited and important. Cyril brought his questioning mind to another point.
‘Why are spiders lucky, Mum?’
Then at last Cyril went away, and Celia was left with her mother. She had her mother all to herself. Her mother was smiling at her across the table – a nice smile – not the smile that thought you were a funny little girl.
‘Mummy,’ said Celia, ‘tell me a story.’
She adored her mother’s stories – they weren’t like other people’s stories. Other people, when asked, told you about Cinderella, and Jack and the Beanstalk, and Red Riding Hood. Nannie told you about Joseph and his brothers, and Moses in the bulrushes. (Bulrushes were always visualized by Celia as wooden sheds containing massed bulls.) Occasionally she told you about Captain Stretton’s little children in India. But Mummy!
To begin with, you never knew, not in the least, what the story was going to be about. It might be about mice – or about children – or about princesses. It might be anything … The only drawbacks about Mummy’s stories were that she never told them a second time. She said (most incomprehensible to Celia) that she couldn’t remember.
‘Very well,’ said Mummy. ‘What shall it be?’
Celia held her breath.
‘About Bright Eyes,’ she suggested. ‘And Long Tail and the cheese.’
‘Oh! I’ve forgotten all about them. No – we’ll have a new story.’ She gazed across the table, unseeing for the moment, her bright hazel eyes dancing, the long delicate oval of her face very serious, her small arched nose held high. All of her tense in the effort of concentration.
‘I know –’ She came back from afar suddenly. ‘The story is called the Curious Candle …’
‘Oh!’ Celia drew an enraptured breath. Already she was intrigued – spellbound … The Curious Candle!
3
Celia was a serious little girl. She thought a great deal about God and being good and holy. When she pulled a wishbone, she always wished to be good. She was, alas! undoubtedly a prig, but at least she kept her priggishness to herself.
At times she had a horrible fear that she was ‘worldly’ (perturbing mysterious word!). This especially when she was all dressed in her starched muslin and big golden-yellow sash to go down to dessert. But on the whole she was complacently satisfied with herself. She was of the elect. She was saved.
But her family caused her horrible qualms. It was terrible – but she was not quite sure about her mother. Supposing Mummy should not go to Heaven? Agonizing, tormenting thought.
The laws were so very clearly laid down. To play croquet on Sunday was wicked. So was playing the piano (unless it was hymns). Celia would have died, a willing martyr, sooner than have touched a croquet mallet on the ‘Lord’s Day’, though to be allowed to hit balls at random about the lawn on other days was her chief delight.
But her mother played croquet on Sunday and so did her father. And her father played the piano and sang songs about ‘He called on Mrs C and took a cup of tea when Mr C had gone to town.’ Clearly not a holy song!
It worried Celia terribly. She questioned Nannie anxiously. Nannie, good earnest woman, was in something of a quandary.
‘Your father and mother are your father and mother,’ said Nannie. ‘And everything they do is right and proper, and you mustn’t think otherwise.’
‘But playing croquet on Sunday is wrong,’ said Celia.
‘Yes, dear. It’s not keeping the Sabbath holy.’
‘But then – but then –’
‘It’s not for you to worry about these things, my dear. You just go on doing your duty.’
So Celia went on shaking her head when offered a mallet ‘as a treat’.
‘Why on earth – ?’ said her father.
And her mother murmured:
‘It’s Nurse. She’s told her it’s wrong.’
And then to Celia:
‘It’s all right, darling, don’t play if you don’t want to.’
But sometimes she would say gently:
‘You know, darling. God has made us a lovely world, and He wants us to be happy. His own day is a very special day – a day we can have special treats on – only we mustn’t make work for other people – the servants, for instance. But it’s quite all right to enjoy yourself.’
But, strangely enough, deeply as she loved her mother, Celia’s opinions were not swayed by her. A thing was so because Nannie knew it was.
Still, she ceased to worry about her mother. Her mother had a picture of St Francis on her wall, and a little book called The Imitation of Christ by her bedside. God, Celia felt, might conceivably overlook croquet playing on a Sunday.
But her father caused her grave misgivings. He frequently joked about sacred matters. At lunch one day he told a funny story about a curate and a bishop. It was not funny to Celia – it was merely terrible.
At last, one day, she burst out crying and sobbed her horrible fears into her mother’s ear.
‘But, darling, your father is a very good man. And a very religious man. He kneels down and says his prayers every night just like a child. He’s one of the best men in the world.’
‘He laughs at clergymen,’ said Celia. ‘And he plays games on Sundays, and he sings songs – worldly songs. And I’m so afraid he’ll go to Hell Fire.’
‘What do you know about a thing like Hell Fire?’ said her mother, and her voice sounded angry.
‘It’s where you go if you’re wicked,’ said Celia.
‘Who has been frightening you with things like that?’
‘I’m not frightened,’ said Celia, surprised. ‘I’m not going there. I’m going to be always good and go to Heaven. But’ – her lips trembled – ‘I want Daddy to be in Heaven too.’
And then her mother talked a great deal – about God’s love and goodness, and how He would never be so unkind as to burn people eternally.
But Celia was not in the least convinced. There was Hell and there was Heaven, and there were sheep and goats. If only – if only she were quite sure Daddy was not a goat!
Of course there was Hell as well as Heaven. It was one of the immovable facts of life, as real as rice pudding or washing behind the ears or saying, Yes, please, and No, thank you.
4
Celia dreamt a good deal. Some of her dreams were just funny and queer – things that had happened all mixed up. But some dreams were specially nice. Those dreams were about places she knew which were, in the dreams, different.
Strange to explain why this should be so thrilling, but somehow (in the dream) it was.
There was the valley down by the station. In real life the railway line ran along it, but in the good dreams there was a river there, and primroses all up the banks and into the wood. And each time she would say in delighted surprise: ‘Why, I never knew – I always thought it was a railway here.’ And instead there was the lovely green valley and the shining stream.
Then there were the dream fields at the bottom of the garden where in real life there was the ugly red-brick house. And, almost most thrilling of all, the secret rooms inside her own 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.
5
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.
Unfinished Portrait Page 2