Unfinished Portrait

by Christie, writing as Mary Westmacott, Agatha

  He said he was sorry – that as soon as he had gone he had been miserable. He said he thought that Celia was right – that he ought to stick to her and Judy. At any rate, he would try … He said: ‘But you must get well. I can’t bear illness … or unhappiness. It was partly because you were unhappy this spring that I got to be friends with Marjorie. I wanted someone to play with …’

  ‘I know. I ought to have “stayed beautiful”, as you always told me.’

  Celia hesitated, than she said: ‘You – you do really mean to give it a chance? I mean, I can’t stand any more … If you’ll honestly try – for three months. At the end of it, if you can’t, then that’s that. But – but – I’m afraid to go queer again …’

  He said that he’d try for three months. He wouldn’t even see Marjorie. He said he was sorry.

  4

  But it didn’t stay like that.

  Miss Hood, Celia knew, was sorry that Dermot had come back.

  Later, Celia admitted that Miss Hood had been right.

  It began gradually.

  Dermot became moody.

  Celia was sorry for him, but she didn’t dare to say anything.

  Slowly things went worse and worse.

  If Celia came into a room, Dermot went out of it.

  If she spoke to him, he wouldn’t answer. He talked only to Miss Hood and Judy.

  Dermot never spoke to her or looked at her. He took Judy out in the car sometimes.

  ‘Is Mummy coming?’ Judy would ask.

  ‘Yes, if she likes.’

  When Celia was ready, Dermot would say:

  ‘Mummy had better drive you. I believe I’m busy.’

  Sometimes Celia would say No, she was busy, and then Dermot and Judy would go off.

  Incredibly, Judy noticed nothing – or so Celia thought.

  But occasionally Judy said things that surprised her.

  They had been talking about being kind to Aubrey, who was the adored dog of the house by now, and Judy said suddenly:

  ‘You’re kind – you’re very kind. Daddy’s not kind, but he’s very, very jolly …’

  And once she said reflectively:

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like you much …’ Adding with great satisfaction, ‘But he likes me.’

  One day Celia spoke to her.

  ‘Judy, your father wants to leave us. He thinks he would be happier living with somebody else. Do you think it would be kinder to let him go?’

  ‘I don’t want him to go,’ said Judy quickly. ‘Please, please, Mummy, don’t let him go. He’s very happy playing with me – and besides – besides, he’s my father.’

  ‘He’s my father!’ Such pride, such certainty in those words!

  Celia thought: ‘Judy or Dermot? I’ve got to be on one side or the other … And Judy’s only a child, I must be on her side …’

  But she thought: ‘I can’t stand Dermot’s unkindness much longer. I’m losing grip again … I’m getting frightened …’

  Dermot had disappeared again – the stranger was here in Dermot’s place. He looked at her with hard, hostile eyes …

  Horrible when the person you loved most in the world looked at you like that. Celia could have understood infidelity, she couldn’t understand the affection of eleven years turning suddenly – overnight as it were – to dislike …

  Passion might fade and die, but had there never been anything else? She had loved him and lived with him and borne his child, and gone through poverty with him – and he was quite calmly prepared never to see her again … Oh, frightening – horribly frightening …

  She was the Obstacle … If she were dead …

  He wished her dead …

  He must wish her dead; otherwise she wouldn’t be so afraid.

  5

  Celia looked in at the nursery door. Judy was sleeping soundly. Celia shut the door noiselessly and came down to the hall and went to the front door.

  Aubrey hurried out of the drawing-room.

  ‘Hallo,’ said Aubrey: ‘A walk? At this time of night? Well, I don’t mind if I do …’

  But his mistress thought otherwise. She took Aubrey’s face between her hands and kissed him on the nose.

  ‘Stay at home. Good dog. Can’t come with missus.’

  Can’t come with missus – no, indeed! No one must come where missus was going …

  She knew now that she couldn’t bear any more … She’d got to escape …

  She felt exhausted after that long scene with Dermot … But she also felt desperate … She must escape …

  Miss Hood had gone to London to see a sister come home from abroad. Dermot had seized the opportunity to ‘have things out’.

  He admitted at once he’d been seeing Marjorie. He’d promised – but he hadn’t been able to keep the promise …

  None of that mattered, Celia felt, if only he wouldn’t begin again battering at her … But he had …

  She couldn’t remember much now … Cruel, hurting words – those hostile stranger’s eyes … Dermot, whom she loved, hated her …

  And she couldn’t bear it …

  So this was the easiest way out …

  She had said when he had explained that he was going away but would come back two days later: ‘You won’t find me here.’ By the flicker in his eyelids she had felt sure that he knew what she meant …

  He had said quickly: ‘Well, of course, if you like to go away.’

  She hadn’t answered … Afterwards, when it was all over, he would be able to tell everybody (and convince himself) that he hadn’t understood her meaning … It would be easier for him like that …

  He had known … and she had seen just that momentary flicker – of hope. He hadn’t, perhaps, known that himself. He would be shocked to admit such a thing … but it had been there …

  He did not, of course, prefer that solution. What he would have liked was for her to say that, like him, she would welcome ‘a change’. He wanted her to want her freedom too. He wanted, that is, to do what he wanted, and at the same time to feel comfortable about it. He would like her to be happy and contented travelling about abroad so that he could feel, ‘Well, it’s really been an excellent solution for both of us.’

  He wanted to be happy, and he wanted to feel his conscience quite at ease. He wouldn’t accept facts as they were – he wanted things to be as he would like them to be.

  But death was a solution … It wasn’t as though he’d feel himself to blame for it. He would soon persuade himself that Celia had been in a bad way ever since the death of her mother. Dermot was so clever at persuading himself …

  She played for a minute with the idea that he would be sorry – that he would feel a terrible remorse … She thought for a moment, like a child: ‘When I’m dead he’ll be sorry …’

  But she knew that wasn’t so … Once admit to himself that he was in any way responsible for her death, and he would go to pieces … His very salvation would depend on his deceiving himself … And he would deceive himself …

  No, she was going away – out of it all.

  She couldn’t bear any more.

  It hurt too much …

  She no longer thought of Judy – she had got past that … Nothing mattered to her now but her own agony and her longing for escape …

  The river …

  Long ago there had been a river through a valley – and primroses … long ago before anything happened …

  She had walked rapidly. She came now to the point where the road crossed over the bridge.

  The river, running swiftly, ran beneath it …

  There was no one about …

  She wondered where Peter Maitland was. He was married – he’d married after the war. Peter would have been kind. She would have been happy with Peter … happy and safe …

  But she would never have loved him as she loved Dermot …

  Dermot – Dermot …

  So cruel …

  The whole world was cruel, really – cruel and treacherous …

&nb
sp; The river was better …

  She climbed up on the parapet and jumped …

  Book Three

  The Island

  1 Surrender

  1

  That, to Celia, was the end of the story.

  Everything that happened afterwards seemed to her not to count. There were proceedings in a police court – there was the cockney young man who pulled her out of the river – there was the magistrate’s censure – the paragraphs in the Press – Dermot’s annoyance – Miss Hood’s loyalty – all that seemed unimportant and dreamlike to Celia as she sat up in bed telling me about it.

  She didn’t think of committing suicide again.

  She admitted that it had been very wicked of her to try. She was doing exactly what she blamed Dermot for doing – abandoning Judy.

  ‘I felt,’ she said, ‘that the only thing I could do to make up was to live only for Judy and never think of myself again … I felt ashamed …’

  She and Miss Hood and Judy had gone abroad to Switzerland.

  There Dermot had written to her, enclosing the necessary evidence for divorce.

  She hadn’t done anything about it for some time.

  ‘You see,’ she said, ‘I felt too bewildered. I just wanted to do anything he asked, so that I should be left in peace … I was afraid – of more things happening to me. I’ve been afraid ever since …

  ‘So I didn’t know what to do about it … Dermot thought I didn’t do anything because I was vindictive … It wasn’t that. I’d promised Judy not to let her father go … And here I was ready to give in just through sheer disgusting cowardice … I wished – oh, how I wished – that he and Marjorie would go away together – then I could have divorced them … I could have said to Judy afterwards: “I had no choice …” Dermot wrote to me saying all his friends thought I was behaving disgracefully … all his friends … that same phrase!

  ‘I waited … I wanted just to rest – somewhere safe – where Dermot couldn’t get at me. I was terrified of his coming and storming at me again … You can’t give in to a thing because you’re terrified. It isn’t decent. I know I’m a coward – I’ve always been a coward – I hate noise or scenes – I’ll do anything – anything to be left in peace … But I didn’t give in out of fear. I stuck it out …

  ‘I got strong again in Switzerland … I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. Not to want to cry every time you walked up a hill. Not to feel sick whenever you looked at food. And that awful neuralgia in my head went away. Mental misery and physical misery is too much to have together … You can bear one or the other – not both …

  ‘In the end, when I felt really strong and well again, I went back to England. I wrote to Dermot. I said I didn’t believe in divorce … I believed (though it might be old-fashioned and wrong in his eyes) in staying together and bearing things for the sake of the children. I said that people often told you that it was better for children if parents who didn’t get on together parted. I said that I didn’t think that was true. Children needed their parents – both parents – because they were their own flesh and blood – quarrels or bickering didn’t matter half so much to children as grown-up people imagine – perhaps even it’s a good thing. It teaches them what life is like … My home was too happy. It made me grow up a fool … I said too, that he and I never had quarrelled. We had always got on well together …

  ‘I said I didn’t think love affairs with other people ought to matter very much … He could be quite free – so long as he was kind to Judy and a good father to her. And I told him again that I knew he meant more to Judy than I could ever mean. She only wanted me physically – like a little animal when she was ill, but it was he and she who belonged together in mind.

  ‘I said if he came back I wouldn’t reproach him – or ever throw things in his face. I asked if we couldn’t just be kind to each other because we’d both suffered.

  ‘I said the choice lay with him, but he must remember that I didn’t want or believe in divorce, and that if he chose that, the responsibility rested with him only.

  ‘He wrote back and sent me fresh evidence …

  ‘I divorced him …

  ‘It was all rather beastly … divorce is …

  ‘Standing up before a lot of people … answering questions … intimate questions … chambermaids …

  ‘I hated it all. It made me sick.

  ‘It must be easier to be divorced. You don’t have to be there …

  ‘So, you see, I gave in, after all. Dermot got his way. I might as well have given way at the beginning and saved myself a lot of pain and horror …

  ‘I don’t know whether I’m glad I didn’t give in earlier or not …

  ‘I don’t even know why I did give in – because I was tired and wanted peace – or because I became convinced it was the only thing to be done, or because, after all, I wanted to give in to Dermot …

  ‘I think, sometimes, it was the last …

  ‘That’s why, ever since, I’ve felt guilty when Judy looked at me …

  ‘In the end, you see, I betrayed Judy for Dermot.’

  2 Reflection

  1

  Dermot had married Marjorie Connell a few days after the decree was made absolute.

  I was curious about Celia’s attitude to the other woman. She had touched on it so little in her story – almost as though the other woman hadn’t existed. She never once took up the attitude that a weak Dermot had been led astray, although that is the most common attitude for a betrayed wife.

  Celia answered my question at once and honestly.

  ‘I don’t think he was – led astray, I mean. Marjorie? What did I think about her? I can’t remember … It didn’t seem to matter. It was Dermot and me that mattered – not Marjorie. It was his being cruel to me that I couldn’t get over …’

  And there, I think, I see what Celia will never be able to see. Celia was essentially tender in her attitude towards suffering. A butterfly pinned in his hat would never have upset Dermot as a child. He would have assumed firmly that the butterfly liked it!

  That is the line he took with Celia. He was fond of Celia, but he wanted Marjorie. He was an essentially moral young man. To enable Dermot to marry Marjorie, Celia had to be got rid of. Since he was fond of Celia, he wanted her to like the idea too. When she didn’t, he was angry with her. Because he felt badly about hurting her, he hurt her all the more and was unnecessarily brutal about it … I can understand – I can almost sympathize …

  If he had let himself believe he was being cruel to Celia he couldn’t have done it … He was, like many brutally honest men, dishonest about himself. He thought himself a finer fellow than he really was …

  He wanted Marjorie, and he had to get her. He’d always got everything that he wanted – and life with Celia hadn’t improved him.

  He loved Celia, I think, for her beauty and her beauty only …

  She loved him enduringly and for life. He was, as she once put it, in her blood …

  And, also, she clung. And Dermot was the type of man who cannot endure being clung to. Celia had very little devil in her, and a woman with very little devil in her has a poor chance with men.

  Miriam had devil. For all her love for her John, I don’t believe he always had an easy life with her. She adored him, but she tried him too. There’s a brute in man that likes being stood up to …

  Miriam had something that Celia lacked. What is vulgarly called guts, perhaps.

  When Celia stood up to Dermot it was too late …

  She admitted that she had come to think differently about Dermot now that she was no longer bewildered by his sudden apparent inhumanity.

  ‘At first,’ she said, ‘it seemed as though I had always loved him and done anything he wanted, and then – the first time that I really needed him and was in trouble, he turned round and stabbed me in the back. That’s rather journalese, but it expresses what I felt.

  ‘There are words in the Bible that say it exactly.’ She paused, then
quoted:

  ‘For it is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour: for then I could have borne it; … But it was even thou, my companion: my guide, and mine own familiar friend.

  ‘It was that, you see, that hurt. “Mine own familiar friend.”

  ‘If Dermot could be treacherous, then anyone could be treacherous. The world itself became unsure. I couldn’t trust anyone or anything any more …

  ‘That’s horribly frightening. You don’t know how frightening that is. Nothing anywhere is safe.

  ‘You see – well, you see the Gun Man everywhere …

  ‘But, of course, it was my fault really, for trusting Dermot too much. You shouldn’t trust anyone as much as that. It’s unfair.

  ‘All these years, while Judy has been growing up, I’ve had time to think … I’ve thought a great deal … And I’ve seen that the real trouble was that I was stupid … Stupid and arrogant!

  ‘I loved Dermot – and I didn’t keep him. I ought to have seen what he liked and wanted, and been that … I ought to have realized (as he himself said) that he would “want a change” … Mother told me not to go away and leave him alone … I did leave him alone. I was so arrogant I never thought of such a possibility as happened. I was so sure that I was the person he loved and always would love. As I said, it’s unfair to trust people too much, to try them too high, to put them on pedestals just because you like them there. I never saw Dermot clearly … I could have … if I hadn’t been so arrogant – thinking that nothing that happened to other women could ever happen to me … I was stupid.

  ‘So I don’t blame Dermot now – he was just made that way. I ought to have known and been on my guard and not been so cocksure and pleased with myself. If a thing matters to you more than anything in life, you’ve got to be clever about it … I wasn’t clever about it …

  ‘It’s a very common story. I know that now. You’ve only got to read the papers – especially the Sunday ones that go in for that sort of thing. Women who put their heads in gas ovens – or take overdoses of sleeping draughts. The world is like that – full of cruelty and pain – because people are stupid.