Agatha Christie - The Hollow

He had wanted a plain secretary with no nonsense about her, and he had got a plain secretary with no nonsense about her, but sometimes, illogically, John Christow felt aggrieved!

By all the rules of stage and fiction, Beryl should have been hopelessly devoted to her employer. But he had always known that he cut no ice with Beryl. There was no devotion, no self-abnegation-Beryl regarded him as a definitely fallible human being. She remained unimpressed by his personality, uninfluenced by his charm. He doubted sometimes whether she even liked him.

He had heard her once speaking to a friend on the telephone.

"No," she had been saying, "I don't really think he is much more selfish than he was. Perhaps rather more thoughtless and inconsiderate."

He had known that she was speaking of him, and for quite twenty-four hours he had been annoyed about it!

Although Gerda's indiscriminate enthusiasm irritated him. Beryl's cool appraisal irritated him too. In fact, he thought, nearly everything irritates me.

Something wrong there. Overwork? Perhaps-No, that was the excuse. This growing impatience, this irritable tiredness, it had some deeper significance. He thought. This won't do. I can't go on this way. What's the matter with me? If I could get away…

There it was again-the blind idea rushing up to meet the formulated idea of escape.

I want to go home…

Damn it all, 404 Harley Street was his home!

And Mrs. Forrester was sitting in the waiting room. A tiresome woman, a woman with too much money and too much spare time to think about her ailments.

Someone had once said to him: "You must get very tired of these rich patients always fancying themselves ill. It must be so satisfactory to get to the Poor who come only when there is something really the matter with them!" He had grinned! Funny the things people believed about the Poor with a capital P. They should have seen old Mrs. Pearstock, on five different clinics, up every week, taking away bottles of medicine, liniment for her back, linctus for her cough, aperients, digestive mixtures! "Fourteen years I've 'ad the brown medicine, doctor, and it's the only thing does me any good.

That young doctor last week writes me down a white medicine. No good at all! It stands to reason, doesn't it, doctor? I mean, I've 'ad me brown medicine for fourteen years and if I don't 'ave me liquid paraffin and them brown pills…"

He could hear the whining voice now-excellent physique, sound as a bell-even all the physic she took couldn't really do her any harm!

They were the same, sisters under the skin, Mrs. Pearstock from Tottenham and Mrs. Forrester of Park Lane Court. You listened and you wrote scratches with your pen on a piece of stiff expensive notepaper, or on a hospital card as the case might be…

God, he was tired of the whole business…

Blue sea, the faint, sweet smell of mimosa, hot dust…

Fifteen years ago. All that was over and done with-yes, done with, thank Heaven! He'd had the courage to break off the whole business-"Courage?" said a little imp somewhere. "Is that what you call it?"

Well, he'd done the sensible thing, hadn't he? It had been a wrench. Damn it all, it had hurt like hell! But he'd gone through with it, cut loose, come home, and married Gerda.

He'd got a plain secretary and he'd married a plain wife. That was what he wanted, wasn't it? He'd had enough of beauty, hadn't he? He'd seen what someone like Veronica could do with her beauty-seen the effect it had had on every male within range. After Veronica, he'd wanted safety. Safety and peace and devotion and the quiet enduring things of life. He'd wanted, in fact, Gerda!

He'd wanted someone who'd take her ideas of life from him, who would accept his decisions and who wouldn't have, for one moment, any ideas of her own.

Who was it who had said that the real tragedy of life was that you got what you wanted?

Angrily he pressed the buzzer on his desk.

He'd deal with Mrs. Forrester.

It took him a quarter of an hour to deal with Mrs. Forrester. Once again it was easy money. Once again he listened, asked questions, reassured, sympathized, infused something of his own healing energy. Once more he wrote out a prescription for an expensive proprietary.

The sickly neurotic woman who had trailed into the room left it with a firmer step, with colour in her cheeks, with a feeling that life might possibly, after all, be worth while…

John Christow leant back in his chair. He was free now-free to go upstairs to join Gerda and the children-free from the preoccupations of illness and suffering for a whole weekend.

But he still felt that strange disinclination to move, that new queer lassitude of the will.

He was tired-tired-tired…

In the dining room of the flat above the consulting room, Gerda Christow was staring at a joint of mutton.

Should she or should she not send it back to the kitchen to be kept warm?

If John was going to be much longer it would be cold-congealed, and that would be dreadful…

But, on the other hand, the last patient had gone, John would be up in a moment, if she sent it back there would be delay-John was so impatient. "But surely you knew I was just coming…" There would be that tone of suppressed exasperation in his voice that she knew and dreaded. Besides, it would get overcooked, dried up-John hated overcooked meat.

But on the other hand he disliked cold food very much indeed.

At any rate the dish was nice and hot…

Her mind oscillated to and fro and her sense of misery and anxiety deepened.

The whole world had shrunk to a leg of mutton getting cold on a dish.

On the other side of the table her son Terence, aged twelve, said:

"Boracic salts burn with a green flame, sodium salts are yellow."

Gerda looked distractedly across the table at his square freckled face. She had no idea what he was talking about.

"Did you know that, Mother?"

"Know what, dear?"

"About salts."

Gerda's eyes flew distractedly to the salt cellar. Yes, salt and pepper were on the table.

That was all right. Last week Lewis had forgotten them and that had annoyed John.

There was always something…

"It's one of the chemical tests," said Terence in a dreamy voice. "Jolly interesting, I think."

Zena, aged nine, with a pretty, vacuous face, whimpered:

"I want my dinner. Can't we start, Mother?"

"In a minute, dear; we must wait for Father."

"We could start," said Terence. "Father wouldn't mind. You know how fast he eats."

Gerda shook her head.

Carve the mutton? But she never could remember which was the right side to plunge the knife in. Of course, perhaps Lewis had put it the right way on the dish-but sometimes she didn't-and John was always annoyed if it was done the wrong way. And, Gerda reflected desperately, it always was the wrong way when she did it. Oh, dear, how cold the gravy was getting-a skin was forming on the top of it-she must send it back-but then if John were just coming-and surely he would be coming now-Her mind went round and round unhappily … like a trapped animal.

Sitting back in his consulting room chair, tapping with one hand on the table in front of him, conscious that upstairs lunch must be ready, John Christow was nevertheless unable to force himself to get up…

San Miguel… blue sea… smell of mimosa… a scarlet tritoma upright against green leaves… the hot sun… the dust… that desperation of love and suffering…

He thought. Oh, God, not that. Never that again! That's over… He wished suddenly that he had never known Veronica, never married Gerda, never met Henrietta…

Mrs. Crabtree, he thought, was worth the lot of them… That had been a bad afternoon last week. He'd been so pleased with the reactions. She could stand by now.