The Moving Finger - Agatha Christie [18]
“How nice of you.”
“Won’t you have one?”
“No, I don’t think I will, but it was very nice of you to offer it to me—just as though I was a real person.”
“Aren’t you a real person?” I said amused.
Megan shook her head, then, changing the subject, she stretched out a long dusty leg for my inspection.
“I’ve darned my stockings,” she announced proudly.
I am not an authority on darning, but it did occur to me that the strange puckered blot of violently contrasting wool was perhaps not quite a success.
“It’s much more uncomfortable than the hole,” said Megan.
“It looks as though it might be,” I agreed.
“Does your sister darn well?”
I tried to think if I had ever observed any of Joanna’s handiwork in this direction.
“I don’t know,” I had to confess.
“Well, what does she do when she gets a hole in her stocking?”
“I rather think,” I said reluctantly, “that she throws them away and buys another pair.”
“Very sensible,” said Megan. “But I can’t do that. I get an allowance now—forty pounds a year. You can’t do much on that.”
I agreed.
“If only I wore black stockings, I could ink my legs,” said Megan sadly. “That’s what I always did at school. Miss Batworthy, the mistress who looked after our mending was like her name—blind as a bat. It was awfully useful.”
“It must have been,” I said.
We were silent while I smoked my pipe. It was quite a companionable silence.
Megan broke it by saying suddenly and violently:
“I suppose you think I’m awful, like everyone else?”
I was so startled that my pipe fell out of my mouth. It was a meerschaum, just colouring nicely, and it broke. I said angrily to Megan:
“Now, see what you’ve done.”
That most unaccountable of children, instead of being upset, merely grinned broadly.
“I do like you,” she said.
It was a most warming remark. It is the remark that one fancies perhaps erroneously that one’s dog would say if he could talk. It occurred to me that Megan, for all she looked like a horse, had the disposition of a dog. She was certainly not quite human.
“What did you say before the catastrophe?” I asked, carefully picking up the fragments of my cherished pipe.
“I said I supposed you thought me awful,” said Megan, but not at all in the same tone she had said it before.
“Why should I?”
Megan said gravely:
“Because I am.”
I said sharply:
“Don’t be stupid.”
Megan shook her head.
“That’s just it. I’m not really stupid. People think I am. They don’t know that inside I know just what they’re like, and that all the time I’m hating them.”
“Hating them?”
“Yes,” said Megan.
Her eyes, those melancholy, unchildlike eyes, stared straight into mine, without blinking. It was a long mournful gaze.
“You would hate people if you were like me,” she said. “If you weren’t wanted.”
“Don’t you think you’re being rather morbid?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Megan. “That’s what people always say when you’re saying the truth. And it is true. I’m not wanted and I can quite see why. Mummie doesn’t like me a bit. I remind her, I think, of my father, who was cruel to her and pretty dreadful from all I can hear. Only mothers can’t say they don’t want their children and just go away. Or eat them. Cats eat the kittens they don’t like. Awfully sensible, I think. No waste or mess. But human mothers have to keep their children, and look after them. It hasn’t been so bad while I could be sent away to school—but you see, what Mummie would really like is to be just herself and my stepfather and the boys.”
I said slowly:
“I still think you’re morbid, Megan, but accepting some of what you say as true, why don’t you go away and have a life of your own?”
She gave me an unchildlike smile.
“You mean take up a career. Earn my living?”
“Yes.”
“What at?”
“You could train for something, I suppose. Shorthand typing—bookkeeping.”
“I don’t believe I could. I am stupid about doing things. And besides—”
“Well?”
She had turned her face away, now she turned it slowly back again. It was crimson and there were tears in her eyes. She spoke now with all the childishness back in her voice.
“Why should