Martha, Eric, and George Read online

  “Well, I have tried to put things in their proper perspective,” said Edith modestly. “If only I’ve helped restore your trust in women—! Oh, Eric, have I?”

  Since Eric didn’t know his trust had ever been destroyed, his answering look was slightly baffled—but nonetheless devoted. Sensibly letting the point pass—

  “I know there’s one woman I’d trust for ever,” affirmed Eric devotedly.

  Edith turned a fine coral-pink. (Carmine cut with Chinese white.)

  “Truly? Really and truly?” cried Edith Allen. “Then I solemnly promise poor Martha George will always find a proper, loving home with us!”

  At which words she was as startled as Martha to see Eric almost jump out of his skin.

  “Edith! D’you mean you’d marry me?” cried Eric Taylor.

  “Well, of course, darling!” cried Edith.

  “Even though Martha’s still alive?”

  Since Edith didn’t know she should have felt as though she was committing bigamy, she looked as surprised as had Eric a moment earlier.

  “But I’m glad Martha’s alive!” protested Edith.

  “Striking a blow for women everywhere,” put in Martha. She was still so relieved at this unexpectedly happy issue to Eric’s underhand attack, she achieved a rare politeness. “And I must say, warmest congrats all round,” added Martha. “I think you’re wonderful too. And I think Eric’s wonderfully lucky, and so is George, and I’d like to send my regards to your Head.”

  “One day, after you’re darned, you might even come and give prizes?” suggested Edith eagerly.

  “Even that,” promised Martha; and observing le maître on the pavement, walked cheerfully out of Fat Rosa’s.

  4

  To her surprise, he met her with a black look.—Le maître had in fact been observant of Martha for some moments before Martha noticed him: he had also observed Eric. At the Relais d’Angoulême, in his hurry and annoyance, le maître had barely given Eric a glance—merely saw him from the tail of an eye as an agitated silhouette: now a moment’s scrutiny sufficed to recall the blue-period Picasso-type to whom he’d once refused Martha’s address. “At least Martha has not made a fool of herself yet!” had scrawled le maître on that occasion; and he only hoped to the good God she wasn’t making a fool of herself now …

  “Who was that man with you?” demanded le maître harshly.

  “I told you before, he works in the City of London Paris branch Bank,” said Martha. “I told you at, the Relais, the morning I came to the studio.”

  “Now I remember, that is true,” said le maître. He also remembered a certain phrase uttered in his study: “I work in a Bank myself …” All too evidently, it was the same man. “And you have been meeting him again?—after ten years?” demanded le maître.

  “Only by accident,” reassured Martha. She could see for herself what le maître was driving at, though where he’d got his information she couldn’t imagine. “That Edith you must have seen too,” added Martha, “is going to marry him.”

  “Ah!” said le maître.

  “She had a wonderful Head,” explained Martha gratefully—thus completing not so much le maître’s relief as his confusion.

  5

  Eric and Edith spent the rest of the evening wandering in the Tuileries—not arm-in-arm, but hand-in-hand. They passed the trompe l’oeil statue of Tragedy and Comedy; Eric didn’t even notice it. In the alleys of their Sunday promenades, the shadow of young George no longer lagged reproachful but as it were skipped lamb-like ahead. To such an end had Mrs. Taylor’s subtleties come: for as Edith said, isn’t to know all to forgive all?

  Chapter Seventeen

  1

  On the verge of leaving Paris, Martha was naturally in heightened demand: from Fat Rosa’s le maître convoyed her to a couple of cocktail-parties preliminary to a buffet-supper. (Fortunately Martha never drank, at cocktail-parties; she ate. This was a considerable relief to le maître, when he contemplated what Martha might have said to an art-critic with alcohol inside her.) On this particular evening, however, he could almost have allowed her a glass of champagne, so uncommonly affable did Martha display herself: with his own ears le maître heard her actually attempting to speak French to a last link with Proust—though why, in heaven’s name, on the subject of female education? The last link didn’t object: any young woman with Martha’s skin could have held his attention with the multiplication-table; but was it possible, le maître asked himself, that Martha had at last realized it?

  He desired every sort of success for her, even to the last unlikely one of femininity.

  “Listen,” said le maître, in their third taxi, “do me a favour. I possess a very beautiful mandarin-robe. At this party we are going to, do me the favour of wearing it.”

  Martha looked suspicious.

  “Is it a fancy-dress party?”

  “No. That does not matter. You are now sufficiently famous to wear anything you please.”

  “I still don’t want to look like Madam Butterfly,” objected Martha.

  “You will not. This is not a kimono, it is as I say a mandarin-robe: of indigo tribute-silk.—For almost two weeks,” reminded le maître, “have I not given up my every moment outside classes to you? Neglected all my private affairs to run after you with a handkerchief? Am I an impresario, am I a nursemaid? Give me at least for once the pleasure of showing you as you are able to appear!”

  Martha recognized a certain justice on le maître’s side. Moreover after going on to two cocktail-parties straight from Fat Rosa’s she felt herself she could do with a wash: the idea of making in addition some change of dress, however revolutionary, caught her at a propitious moment.

  “Oh, all right,” said Martha.

  2

  They had to go to the studio for it. It was kept there, le maître’s mandarin-robe, along with several other picturesque costumes—only more preciously; not stuffed higgledy-piggle into the chest known to students as the Coffin, but singularly wrapped in tissue-paper. Tribute-silk does not fade; the paper was a tribute to the silk—as Martha at once appreciated.

  “It’s the best indigo, in stuff, I’ve ever seen,” allowed Martha judiciously. “It’s like the middle bit of a poppy. It’s like mussel-shells. It’s like—”

  “Stop arranging your palette and put it on,” said le maître.

  While Martha uninhibitedly removed her smock, and buttoned herself in, he turned on all the top lights. He also pulled forth the tall wide mirror usually employed to reflect a model’s back, but which was now to reflect something more extraordinary. Before it Martha stared stolidly, dispassionately; but there was no deceiving her accurate eye. Contrasted with indigo, her short-cropped hair appeared not straw-coloured, but pale golden; above the dark silk collar her throat rose pearly and luscious as the flesh of a lichee, the dark stiff folds descendant at once concealed and promised the full-bodied, big-breasted shape beneath …

  “I knew it,” said le maître. “Well?”

  “I look all right,” admitted Martha.

  “Since when have you been afraid of the plain word?” asked le maître. “Why not say, beautiful?”

  “Very well: beautiful,” said Martha.

  She stood silent again. So might any young woman have stood silent, perceiving herself for the first time in her life as beautiful. In the generality of such cases, moreover, the mirror is the eye of a lover; Martha saw herself beautiful under the harsh top lights of an empty studio. Hers was also the rare opportunity to display her beauty immediately and in public: at a buffet-supper where she was waited for by tout Paris …

  “Go back, wash your face, put it on,” instructed le maître, “and in half an hour I will fetch you.”

  Martha looked back in the mirror: it reflected also, behind her, the silhouette of an easel and a corner of the model’s throne. The studio might be empty, but it wasn’t dead; only dormant; and even dormant capable of speaking through wooden tongues to remind that life is short and art
is long.

  “No,” said Martha.

  Le maître stared.

  “What do you mean, no? Have you not said yourself, you are beautiful?”

  “That’s just it,” said Martha. “I haven’t the time, to be beautiful. Not if I’m going to paint properly. I wasted enough time here even when they still called me Mother Bunch.”

  “If you mean that a blue-period Picasso-type once made advances to you—” began le maître.

  “Actually it went a bit further,” said Martha moderately. “Anyway, weren’t you as pleased as I was when I told you he was going to marry Edith?”

  “That is beside the point,” retorted le maître. “To refuse for ever to appear beautiful simply because you might again attract a fool is ridiculous! Consider that you might attract a man of sensibility, of position, who would be of assistance in your career!”

  “Like M. Cerisier?”

  “Sometimes I think you have the devil in you,” said le maître. “Naturally not old Cerisier, he with his six children, the most domestic man alive!”

  “They’re all domestic,” stated Martha, “or anyway expect their wives to be. Even their mistresses men expect to want children running round the place.”

  “You have evidently had more experience than one imagined,” said le maître, with an intention of irony. Even as he spoke, however, he saw that he was not to have his way; he recognized Martha’s expression.

  “I have,” said Martha. “And it’s something I’m never going to go through again, now I’m shot of it all at last.”

  Slowly, stolidly, she unbuttoned the dark silk collar. For a last moment she looked at herself, as the indigo folds opened; saw her shoulders emerge even pearlier and more luscious than her throat. Then she reached for her smock.

  “I’ll have a wash all the same,” said Martha. “Get me a cab, then come and pick me up.”

  3

  Bracing herself against the taxi’s Gallic boundings, she reviewed her situation and found it completely satisfactory. She was better able than most women to put aside the gift of beauty: she desired neither husband nor lover, nor to be admired, nor to make other women envious. All she wanted was to be—unencumbered.

  As now she was. Martha hauled herself from the taxi and stumped into the lobby of the Relais as contented as she’d ever been in her life.

  On the petit-point sofa under the Modigliani sat young George.

  Chapter Eighteen

  1

  At the sight of her the child rose. He carried a small cheap nosegay such as is bought at street stalls; such as Martha herself had been used to carry round to the rue d’Antibes on Friday evenings ten years before.—Behind her, the manageress clucked fondly.

  “So eager was the little one to present his small tribute, I knew mademoiselle would not wish him sent away!” smiled the manageress. “Two hours has he been waiting!”

  Martha advanced. With repugnance and indignation she recognized, for all Edith’s and Eric’s fine words, their hands on a last tug at her heart-strings. As brusquely as possible, she snapped it.

  “If your father sent you to say good-bye, say it and go home,” instructed Martha curtly.

  “He didn’t,” said young George.

  Strangely, this was the first time Martha had heard him speak. His voice struck her as unpleasantly shrill; also he was probably lying.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you,” said Martha. “If you mean to tell me he didn’t give you those flowers—”

  “He didn’t. I bought them myself,” said George. “I think they’re dead. I got them because I thought if you weren’t here, if I had flowers they’d let me wait.”

  Martha appreciated the practicality. Her heartstrings didn’t any the more vibrate.

  “Then you can just take ’em away again,” said Martha. “Oughtn’t you to be at the English Library?”

  “Not after two hours,” pointed out young George reasonably.

  “Then you ought to be at home.”

  “I know,” said George.

  Though Martha didn’t realize it, this was just the sort of stone-walling she herself had been used to employ upon a sweet-tempered aunt. But being very far from sweet-tempered, she did what her aunt should have done—that is, brought the argument to an end.

  “Then cut along back now,” ordered Martha, turning to the stairs.

  Young George sat down again.—Only because she was so unused to being disobeyed, because it so astonished her, did Martha spare him another moment.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” demanded Martha angrily.

  The child made no immediate answer—or not in words. His expression however was energetic; for that moment, mother and son glared at each other with matching ferocity.—Martha’s was a glare to daunt the brashest of news-hounds, the most opinionated of critics, the most injured of ex-lovers; but her son’s matched it. His big head on the too-thin neck reared defiantly: as though he was at last, and deliberately, revealing who he was.

  “I’m not going back ever,” announced young George. “I’m coming to England with you on Monday.”

  2

  Standing as she did before an easel most of the day, it was always Martha’s instinct to take the weight off her feet whenever possible. This was probably why she too sat down, in the petit-point chair.—Also the manageress had sent a waiter with a plate of cakes. “Compliments of the Relais!” explained the waiter happily. It was a compliment Martha could scarcely refuse, without detriment to her public image; as young George accepted a cherry-tartlet—he seemed to have the same passion for them as had Martha for chocolats Liégeois—so indeed did she.

  “Do you always get things free?” asked George interestedly.

  “No,” said Martha, “and we’re going to clear this up once for all. Are you listening to me?”

  “Yes,” said George. “What’s a trauma?”

  “And don’t change the subject. You are not coming to England with me. Hell’s bells, I’ve got rid of you once—”

  “Grandma says it was a crime,” offered young George.

  “Your grandmother is about the stupidest woman I’ve ever known,” snapped Martha.

  “That’s what I think too,” agreed George. “You can’t think how stupid she is. She goes on and on about cricket—”

  “You should speak more respectfully of her,” interrupted Martha—perceiving a mistake. “After all she’s done for you you’re an ungrateful little brute. You wouldn’t find me worrying about your weak chest.”

  “I don’t want it worried about,” said young George. “Anyway, you aren’t ashamed of me.”

  “And don’t talk with your mouth full,” ordered Martha. “—What did you say?”

  George masticated and swallowed. As Eric had said, he was an obedient child—at least in inessentials.

  “You told my father, I heard you, in that place where I had those other cherry-tarts free. That you weren’t ashamed of me,” repeated George, with pathos.

  “Hell’s bells, your father and grandmother aren’t ashamed of you!” expostulated Martha.

  “I have to call him Big Eric,” stated George.

  “I can see it’s a bit of a pill,” acknowledged Martha. “Never mind, I dare say Edith’ll let you call her Mummy.”

  “Only after a bit she might be ashamed of me too,” persisted young George, “if I took to shop-lifting.”

  Across the emptying plate Martha scrutinized him suspiciously. They were after all mother and son; the implicit, touching plea to be made an honest child of suddenly and forcibly recalled her own similarly touching plea, at about the same age, for a box of chalks with which to colour a birthday-card for her aunt. Martha had no illusions as to youthful simplicity. She herself had needed those chalks to experiment with a thicker-than-pencil line, and unscrupulously introduced the birthday-card angle to shake down the necessary shilling. It was a kind aunt who had been simple, not a ten-year-old niece; and as Martha recalled this but one incident am
ong many, her suspicions of her son increased.

  “You know as well as I do,” said Martha deliberately, “that all that’s nonsense. No one’s ashamed of you—or if they were, I don’t believe you’d mind. You’re too conceited. And I don’t believe you’re any fonder of me than I am of you. You can’t be, after the way I’ve treated you. What the hell d’you want to come to England for?”

  The child hesitated a moment—mentally weighing, Martha could have sworn, his chances of still being able to bamboozle her. As she had scrutinized him, so he now scrutinized her. Obviously he came to the right conclusion; his expression changed from the pathetic to the business-like.

  “To make motor-cars,” said young George.

  3

  In her satisfaction at having got the truth out of him, and only too thankful that he hadn’t said he wanted to paint, Martha reached for the last of the cherry-tartlets.—So at the same moment did George. Their two square-palmed, strong-fingered hands—George’s but the smaller—collided; or met. (“Go on, you have it,” said Martha. “If you always get them free,” accepted George.) It was still but a moment’s truce.

  “That’s nonsense again,” said Martha. “You can make motor-cars here. You can make Renaults.”

  “I don’t want to make Renaults,” said young George. “I want to make Rollses.”

  “Don’t be such a snob,” snapped Martha.

  “I’m not. It’s because they’re the best.”

  If for a moment Martha felt a touch of sympathy, she swiftly repressed it.

  “That’s simply chi-chi. Actually I’ve a Rolls myself—”

  It was a second error. Young George instantly turned scarlet with enthusiasm.

  “You’ve got a Rolls?”

  “Only a very old one,” said Martha hastily.

  “How old?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Are the RR’s on the radiator red or black?”