Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie [65]
I said: “Perhaps not. But they are marvellous, all the same.”
He grinned at me and said: “Don’t be a gushing little fool.”
I said: “I’m not. I want you to paint me.”
Crale said: “If you’ve any sense at all, you’ll realize that I don’t paint portraits of pretty women.”
I said: “It needn’t be a portrait and I’m not a pretty woman.”
He looked at me then as though he’d begun to see me. He said: “No, perhaps you’re not.”
I said: “Will you paint me then?”
He studied me for some time with his head on one side. Then he said: “You’re a strange child, aren’t you?”
I said: “I’m quite rich, you know. I can afford to pay well for it.”
He said: “Why are you so anxious for me to paint you?”
I said: “Because I want it!”
He said: “Is that a reason?”
And I said: “Yes, I always get what I want.”
He said then: “Oh, my poor child, how young you are!”
I said: “Will you paint me?”
He took me by the shoulders and turned me towards the light and looked me over. Then he stood away from me a little. I stood quite still, waiting.
He said: “I’ve sometimes wanted to paint a flight of impossibly-coloured Australian Maccaws alighting on St. Paul’s Cathedral. If I painted you against a nice traditional bit of outdoor landscape, I believe I’d get exactly the same result.”
I said: “Then you will paint me?”
He said: “You’re one of the loveliest, crudest, most flamboyant bits of exotic colouring I’ve ever seen. I’ll paint you!”
I said: “Then that’s settled.”
He went on: “But I’ll warn you, Elsa Greer. If I do paint you, I shall probably make love to you.”
I said: “I hope you will….”
I said it quite steadily and quietly. I heard him catch his breath, and I saw the look that came into his eyes.
You see, it was as sudden as all that.
A day or two later we met again. He told me that he wanted me to come down to Devonshire—he’d got the very place there that he wanted for a background. He said:
“I’m married, you know. And I’m very fond of my wife.”
I said if he was fond of her she must be very nice.
He said she was extremely nice. “In fact,” he said, “she’s quite adorable—and I adore her. So put that in your pipe, young Elsa, and smoke it.”
I told him that I quite understood.
He began the picture a week later. Caroline Crale welcomed me very pleasantly. She didn’t like me much—but, after all, why should she? Amyas was very circumspect. He never said a word to me that his wife couldn’t have overheard, and I was quite polite and formal to him. Underneath, though, we both knew.
After ten days he told me I was to go back to London.
I said: “The picture isn’t finished.”
He said: “It’s barely begun. The truth is, I can’t paint you, Elsa.”
I said: “Why?”
He said: “You know well enough why, Elsa. And that’s why you’ve got to clear out. I can’t think about the painting—I can’t think about anything but you.”
We were in the Battery garden. It was a hot sunny day. There were birds and humming bees. It ought to have been very happy and peaceful. But it didn’t feel like that. It felt—somehow—tragic. As though—as though what was going to happen was already mirrored there.
I knew it would be no good my going back to London, but I said: “Very well, I’ll go if you say so.”
Amyas said: “Good girl.”
So I went. I didn’t write to him.
He held out for ten days and then he came. He was so thin and haggard and miserable that it shocked me.
He said: “I warned you, Elsa. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I said: “I’ve been waiting for you. I knew you’d come.”
He gave a sort of groan and said: “There are things that are too strong for any man. I can’t eat or sleep or rest for wanting you.”
I said I knew that and that it was the same with me, and had been from the first moment I’d seen him. It was Fate and it was no use struggling against it.
He said: “You haven’t struggled much, have you, Elsa?” And I said I hadn’t struggled at all.
He said he wished I wasn’t so young, and I said that didn’t matter. I suppose I might say that for the next few weeks we were very happy. But happiness isn’t quite the word. It was something deeper and more frightening