Unfinished Portrait

A bitter pang of disappointment swept through her. Mountains indeed!

After she had got over her disappointment about the mountains, Celia enjoyed her life in Pau very much. The meals were exciting. Called for some strange reason Tabbeldote, you had lunch at a long table of all sorts of strange and exciting dishes. There were two other children in the hotel, twin sisters a year older than Celia. She and Bar and Beatrice went about everywhere together. Celia discovered, for the first time in her eight solemn years, the joys of mischief. The three children would eat oranges on their balcony and throw over the pips on to passing soldiers gay in blue and red uniforms. When the soldiers looked up angrily, the children would have dived back and become invisible. They put little heaps of salt and pepper on all the plates laid for Tabbeldote and annoyed Victor, the old waiter, very much indeed. They concealed themselves in a niche under the stairs and tickled the legs of all the visitors descending to dinner with a long peacock’s feather. Their final feat came on a day when they had worried the fierce chambermaid of the upper floor to the point of distraction. They had followed her into a little sanctum of mops and pails and scrubbing brushes. Turning on them angrily and pouring forth a torrent of that incomprehensible language—French—she swept out, banging the door on them and locking it. The three children were prisoners.

‘She’s done us,’ said Bar bitterly.

‘I wonder how long it’ll be before she lets us out?’

They looked at each other sombrely. Bar’s eyes flashed rebelliously.

‘I can’t bear to let her crow over us. We must do something.’

Bar was always the ringleader. Her eyes went to a microscopic slit of a window which was all the room possessed.

‘I wonder if we could squeeze through that. We’re none of us very fat. What’s outside, Celia, anything at all?’

Celia reported that there was a gutter.

‘It’s big enough to walk along,’ she said:

‘Good, we’ll do Suzanne yet. Won’t she have a fit when we come jumping out on her?’

They got the window open with difficulty, and one by one they squeezed themselves through. The gutter was a ledge about a foot wide with an edge perhaps two inches high. Below it was a sheer drop of five storeys.

The Belgian lady in No. 33 sent a polite note to the English lady in No. 54. Was Madame aware of the fact that her little girl and the little girls of Madame Owen were walking round the parapet on the fifth storey?

The fuss that followed was to Celia quite extraordinary and rather unjust. She had never been told not to walk on parapets.

‘You might have fallen and been killed.’

‘Oh! No, Mummy, there was lots of room—even to put both feet together.’

The incident remained one of those inexplicable ones where grown-ups fuss about nothing at all.

Celia would, of course, have to learn French. Cyril had a young Frenchman who came every day. For Celia a young lady was engaged to take her for walks every day and talk French. The lady was actually English, the daughter of the proprietor of the English bookshop, but she had lived her whole life in Pau and spoke French as easily as English.

Miss Leadbetter was a young lady of extreme refinement. Her English was mincing and clipped. She spoke slowly, with condescending kindness.

‘See, Celia, that is a shop where they bake bread. A boulangerie.’

‘Yes, Miss Leadbetter.’

‘Look, Celia, there is a little dog crossing the road. Un chien qui traverse la rue. Qu’est-ce qu’il fait? That means, what is he doing?’

Miss Leadbetter had not been happy in this last attempt. Dogs are indelicate creatures apt to bring a blush to the cheek of ultra-refined young women. This particular dog stopping crossing the road and engaged in other activities.

‘I don’t know how to say what he is doing in French,’ said Celia.

‘Look the other way, dear,’ said Miss Leadbetter. ‘It’s not very nice. That is a church in front of us. Voilà une église.’

The walks were long, boring, and monotonous.

After a fortnight, Celia’s mother got rid of Miss Leadbetter.

‘An impossible young woman,’ she said to her husband. ‘She could make the most exciting thing in the world seem dull.’

Celia’s father agreed. He said the child would never learn French except from a Frenchwoman. Celia did not much like the idea of a Frenchwoman. She had a good insular distrust of all foreigners. Still, if it was only for walks … Her mother said that she was sure she would like Mademoiselle Mauhourat very much. It struck Celia as an extraordinarily funny name.

Mademoiselle Mauhourat was tall and big. She always wore dresses made with a number of little capes which swung about and knocked things over on tables.

Celia was of opinion that Nannie would have said she ‘flounced’.

Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very voluble and very affectionate.

‘Oh, la chère mignonne!’ cried Mademoiselle Mauhourat, ‘la chère petite mignonne.’ She knelt down in front of Celia and laughed in an engaging manner into her face. Celia remained very British and stolid and disliked this very much. It made her feel embarrassed.

‘Nous allons nous amuser. Ah, comme nous allons nous amuser!’

Again there were walks. Mademoiselle Mauhourat talked without ceasing, and Celia endured politely the flow of meaningless words. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was very kind—the kinder she was the more Celia disliked her.

After ten days Celia got a cold. She was slightly feverish.

‘I think you’d better not go out today,’ said her mother. ‘Mademoiselle can amuse you here.’

‘No,’ burst out Celia. ‘No. Send her away. Send her away.’

Her mother looked at her attentively. It was a look Celia knew well—a queer, luminous, searching look. She said quietly:

‘Very well, darling, I will.’

‘Don’t even let her come in here,’ implored Celia.

But at that moment the door of the sitting room opened and Mademoiselle, very much becaped, entered.

Celia’s mother spoke to her in French. Mademoiselle uttered exclamations of chagrin and sympathy.

‘Ah, la pauvre mignonne,’ she cried when Celia’s mother had finished. She plopped down in front of Celia. ‘La pauvre, pauvre mignonne.’

Celia glanced appealingly at her mother. She made terrible faces at her. ‘Send her away,’ the faces said, ‘send her away.’

Fortunately at that moment one of Mademoiselle Mauhourat’s many capes knocked over a vase of flowers, and her whole attention was absorbed by apologies.

When she had finally left the room, Celia’s mother said gently:

‘Darling, you shouldn’t have made those faces. Mademoiselle Mauhourat was only meaning to be kind. You would have hurt her feelings.’

Celia looked at her mother in surprise.

‘But, Mummy,’ she said, ‘they were English faces.’