The Hollow. Agatha Christie
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I was right to make a stand, don’t you, Miss Savernake?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ said Henrietta with a fervour in her voice which might have led someone who knew her well to suspect that she had not been listening very closely.
‘“And if your wife says things of that kind,” I said, “well, I’m sure I can’t help it!” I don’t know how it is, Miss Savernake, but it seems to be trouble wherever I go, and I’m sure it’s not my fault. I mean, men are so susceptible, aren’t they?’ The model gave a coquettish little giggle.
‘Frightfully,’ said Henrietta, her eyes half-closed.
‘Lovely,’ she was thinking. ‘Lovely that plane just below the eyelid—and the other plane coming up to meet it. That angle by the jaw’s wrong… I must scrape off there and build up again. It’s tricky.’
Aloud she said in her warm, sympathetic voice:
‘It must have been most difficult for you.’
‘I do think jealousy’s so unfair, Miss Savernake, and so narrow, if you know what I mean. It’s just envy, if I may say so, because someone’s better-looking and younger than they are.’
Henrietta, working on the jaw, said absently, ‘Yes, of course.’
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 over-emphasized 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 dare say 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 absent-mindedly 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 short-sighted 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