Unfinished Portrait. Агата Кристи
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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