Martha, Eric, and George Read online

  Loyally Edith accepted the situation. In any case, she had no other suitor; Eric had no rival. They settled down into a relationship by no means altogether unsatisfactory; only of course they were neither of them getting any younger.

  There were times when Eric felt almost as guilty about Edith as he had about Martha.

  What were they waiting for? They weren’t a couple in a mid-Victorian drama—she tied to a tyrannous husband, he to a lunatic wife; they were both free, over twenty-one, and domiciled in Paris. But in place of tyrannous husband stood Edith’s modesty and lack of experience, and in place of lunatic wife a gentle, possessive grandmother. It was an emotional deadlock beyond the powers of either party to resolve.

  The years continued to pass. Almost a decade had passed, between the day Martha abandoned her offspring, and the day she returned to Paris.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Seven

  1

  When Martha quitted Paris she was an art-student of eighteen, her formidable potentialities suspected only by her patron and her master: when she returned she was twenty-eight, with the beginnings of a European reputation. She showed regularly in London, and had gate-crashed international exhibitions in Venice, Brussels and Amsterdam. Only Paris, the great citadel, remained unchallenged—Mr. Joyce and le maître taking no chances. From Brussels, however, the latter returned with the conviction that the time was ripe; and after testing, so to speak, the Parisian waters, and casting a fly or two over the Parisian critics, dispatched a four-page letter to London. “So write to her, old friend, get hold of her!” concluded le maître. “Find out what she will have ready, how many canvases altogether, and I promise you at least a good gallery!”

  It was the moment Mr. Joyce had dreamed of for almost twenty years; from the day when he’d first seen a morose fat child drawing a chestnut-tree in a London street. Mr. Joyce didn’t write to Martha, he telegraphed.—The summons reached her ramshackle country headquarters shortly before noon, but since she had taken her lunch with her into the studio, and no one could be found to risk disturbing her, remained unopened for some five or six hours.

  2

  No one ever disturbed Martha while she was working. (Nor did the telephone; she hadn’t one.) Any intruder—bearing, for instance, once and once only a votive cup of tea—Martha didn’t swear but threw at. It was one of the reasons why she was the best woman painter of her generation; or as it might turn out simply the best, without sexual qualification.

  Martha’s life was in fact admirably organized altogether. The rent of an old farmhouse, its barn her studio, was paid by Mr. Joyce; without tying herself up to a gallery she made a large-ish, steady income, and in theory also taught. There were never, actually on the premises or lodging about the village, fewer than four or five pupils paying large-ish fees for the privilege of drawing from the model, or covering canvas with paint, under her experienced guidance.—This in theory: in practice, Martha’s students spent most of their time cooking for her, cleaning up her studio for her, washing her brushes for her. Female students also washed her smalls for her, while the males carpentered her frames and serviced her car. Martha needed and possessed a car, but never bothered to learn to drive. One of her students drove her. Martha in fact exploited them all ruthlessly, and no more felt any shortage of domestic help than a nineteenth-century peeress.

  Yet her students never complained. They were on the contrary devoted to her. The young need to devote themselves; and recognizing Martha’s own complete dedication to the difficult art of painting, not one for a moment thought of informing on her to their parents paying large-ish fees. In any case, they acquired many useful skills, such as ironing—Martha had no use for drip-dry synthetics—and brass-polishing—the car being an ancient Rolls with as much brass about it as a fire-engine.

  Martha in person, at twenty-eight, weighed about ten stone, all hard. In her Paris days one could see where her waist was; now her figure was columnar. Her style of dressing could be most kindly described as workmanlike. In summer she tramped about bareheaded in denim smocks, and in winter added a pair of corduroy slacks, a stout serge overcoat and one of Mr. Joyce’s old hats: in summer she wore sandals, in winter boots; one could tell the season, by looking at Martha, but not the year. From time to time, as her fame grew, her admirers had tried to get her into other styles—such as the peasant (hand-blocked dirndl skirts), or the tailored (with touch of white at throat.) A charming American who’d studied with her in Paris, the daughter of one millionaire married to another, actually imposed Martha’s measurements on a famous French couturier, who rose to the challenge by producing a masterpiece of outsize distinction. It was no use. Martha actually rather admired this last, but purely as an artifact, and no more thought of wearing it than she’d have thought of going to a hair-dresser. Her straw-coloured hair was cut by the local barber: short back and sides.

  Her sole beauty was her skin. Like that of many another large young woman who has never dieted or used cosmetics, Martha’s complexion, nourished by subcutaneous fat, displayed an even, pearly, satiny texture like the flesh of a lichee-fruit.—The Chinese reference not inappropriate; her rather small grey eyes easily narrowing to slits. If in her student days her nickname was Mother Bunch, now it could more suitably have been Old Buddha. Indeed Martha and that last of the Manchu empresses had a good deal in common; each equally strong-willed, equally ruthless, and equally formidable.

  Certainly she was too formidable to be interrupted, once withdrawn into her studio; it was only after she emerged exhausted, and even then only after she’d had a bath, that Mr. Joyce’s telegram was brought to her notice.

  3

  Martha opened it warily. The last time a telegram came it was to say that her aunt had died. Kind protectress of an orphaned childhood as that aunt had been, Martha didn’t go to the funeral—she was just starting on a fresh canvas; the news had nonetheless disturbed her to the point of reappearing in mid-morning to tell someone to send a wreath …

  Any summons from Mr. Joyce, however, Martha acknowledged not to be ignored. (He not only paid her rent; he was one of the only two persons alive she felt respect for. The other, for all her cavalier treatment of him, was le maître.) If Mr. Joyce required her presence in London, to London Martha was prepared to go.

  “I’ve got to be in town all to-morrow,” announced Martha, to her pupils assembled round the supper-table. “I’ll take Tommy to drive me up and back, and the rest of you can clean the studio.”

  Chapter Eight

  1

  Very spry looked Mr. Joyce for his eighty years, as Martha came stumping into the study of his luxury-penthouse overlooking Hyde Park. His fortune had been made in the fur trade; Bond Street remembered him in pin-stripe trousers and a cutaway; since his retirement he had broken out into checked tweeds, coloured waistcoats and stock-ties. In conjunction with his general nippiness they gave him a markedly horsey air, and were a great source of pain to his refined daughter Miranda. One of the reasons why Mr. Joyce so greatly preferred his protegée to his daughter was that Martha wasn’t refined at all.

  “I expected you sooner,” said Mr. Joyce. “Last night I expected you.”

  “I was working,” explained Martha, “so they didn’t show me your wire till it was too late.”

  The old man grinned.

  “That is right, never let yourself be interrupted … Are you working well?”

  “Fairly,” mumbled Martha.—It was as much as she would ever admit, if she answered such a question at all, and Mr. Joyce, though with every right to do so, did not press it. He knew that in her own good time Martha would turn up with the few current canvases that satisfied her—and then, as le maître had long ago prophesied, one saw marvels …

  “Nor would I have interrupted you,” said Mr. Joyce, “except on a matter of importance.” (It was noticeable that they never wasted time enquiring about each other’s health, or in expressions of politeness; they got straight down to business.) “Le maître has d
ecided, and I agree with him, that it is time for you to show in Paris.”

  Martha slowly flushed a deep crimson. No more than any other painter, or aesthete, or art-critic could she have defined the peculiar importance of the offer. It is in London and New York that prices sky-rocket; from Amsterdam and Basle come the definitive catalogues raisonnés. The fact remains that Paris alone sets the seal on a reputation.

  “Well?” asked Mr. Joyce, watching her. “What have you to say?”

  “When?” asked Martha.

  “In May. That is, in six months’ time. Should you have enough, to show?”

  Martha ruminated.

  “Yes, if I borrow some back.”

  (She had no doubt of being able to do so. A temporary blank on the drawing-room wall was by now an accepted hazard, to Martha’s patrons. In general these rather appreciated the circumstance, as witnessing at one and the same time to an eye for art and a nose for an investment. Upon the few who made difficulties Martha simply descended, a henchman at her heels, to unhook the frame in person.)

  “There must also be a sufficient number to sell,” pointed out Mr. Joyce. “The proprietor of a gallery is not in business for his health.”

  “What’s the commission, in Paris?” asked Martha suspiciously.

  “No doubt what you would consider robbery. That is not the point. The point is that Paris is Paris. Of course you will go over yourself, for the publicity, for the private view; maybe stay a couple of weeks—”

  Martha growled. She detested being present at one of her own shows, to hear her work commented on in public, even favourably. Face to face with an art-critic, Martha’s immediate reaction was to be as rude as possible, to shut him up.

  “I’m no good at private views. Anyway, why should I waste a whole fortnight?”

  “I would come too,” persuaded Mr. Joyce. “The old man would come too, to pick up the bills!—We might even enjoy ourselves a little,” he added wistfully. “We might have a fine time!”

  Martha shot him one of her rare glances of affection. She had no intention of refusing the opportunity. To do so would have been insane. But she was also supremely confident—as the war-horse that cries “Ha!” amid the trumpets—and had privately no doubt that any show of hers would knock Paris for six whether she was there to be interviewed or not. It was for Mr. Joyce’s sake, because she saw he had set his heart on a jolly, that she gave way.

  —Or was about to. If she paused, however, it wasn’t from reluctance, reluctant though she still was. She had simply remembered that somewhere in Paris she probably had a ten-year-old son.

  2

  The memory of his abandonment never troubled her. Whenever Martha (rarely and briefly) recalled the circumstance, she was rather inclined to plume herself on her conscientiousness. She could actually have disposed of the infant in the train that bore her back to Paris from her country lying-in, to an eager grosse bourgeoise. (“One would never deposit such a little one in an orphanage?” suggested the woman—eyeing Martha’s ringless finger.) On a sweltering August day, and at the expense of several francs in taxi-fare, Martha had on the contrary broken her further journey, back to England, to call at the rue d’Antibes and deposit her offspring under the aegis of a British grandmother. She had run the risk of encountering Mrs. Taylor, or Eric. What tedious explanations must have ensued!—That at the best; when she entertained the nightmare-thought that between them they might somehow have succeeded in railroading her into matrimony, and so stopped her working eight hours a day, Martha felt her conscientiousness beyond all praise.

  The Taylors’ conscientiousness she took for granted—as has been seen, rightly.

  “I expect by now they’re quite fond of him,” thought Martha comfortably. “I expect they’ve brought him up splendidly.” She felt no curiosity, however, no impulse to seek the child out; but in fact made a mental note to avoid the vicinity of the rue d’Antibes.

  “What are you thinking of now?” asked Mr. Joyce.

  “Nothing that matters,” said Martha. “All right: I’ll go.—Now Tommy’s waiting for me with the car, because I want to get back to-night because I want to work to-morrow.”

  She didn’t kiss Mr. Joyce before she left. They had been on terms of such familiarity, for so long, a kiss would have been natural, and to the old man welcome. Martha simply never thought of it, any more than she’d thought to express gratitude. She just got back to work.

  3

  It was fortunate for Mr. Joyce that he wasn’t a man easily discouraged. Martha’s reception of his darling project has been described; from his refined daughter Miranda, at least so far as concerned his own part in it, he encountered downright opposition. (She was so extremely refined, the source of her father’s wealth prevented her ever wearing furs—except of course for a mink lining to a winter coat.)

  “Dadda, I beg of you,” opened Miranda, that night after dinner, “to think again.”

  “Of what?” asked Mr. Joyce disingenuously. “Of my joining a golf club? Naturally I would never play more than nine holes—”

  “Dadda!”

  Mr. Joyce poured himself a glass of brandy. It was his second. He also reached for and cut a second cigar. His daughter’s eye, however, noted these displays of independence more in sorrow than in anger—though of course she was totting up. She was in league with his doctor, Mr. Joyce sometimes thought, to keep him on his pins brandyless and cigarless until his hundredth birthday brought a telegram from Royalty …

  “You know perfectly well, Dadda, what I’m talking about,” said Miranda patiently. “I am talking about your going to Paris.”

  “And why should I not go to Paris?”

  “The excitement will be too much for you.”

  “Excitement I thrive on!” countered Mr. Joyce. “Excitement is what the old man needs!”

  “You will have a stroke,” prophesied Miranda.

  “I shall not, I shall have a fine time!” retorted Mr. Joyce. “I shall come back young again—to play not nine holes but eighteen!”

  He couldn’t take a third cigar, his second being only just alight; but he did, after a hasty gulp, pour himself a third brandy; and later dreamed such sweet and satisfying dreams, he for once slept the whole night through without waking (as the old so often do) in the small, depressing hours.

  Chapter Nine

  1

  Martha was at this time approaching the height of what was to be subsequently known as her skeleton-leaf period. Her first, or kitchen-stove, had been almost purely geometrical; her second, or mirabelle-plum, exploded into colour. Now she was in a sense integrating the two: that is, if Martha’s paintings looked like anything besides superb artifacts they looked like skeleton leaves enormously magnified under a tropic sun. So absorbed was she in these fresh explorations, the prospect of wasting a fortnight in Paris appealed to her less and less; but even the most dedicated artist works better under certain spurs, and during the next six months Martha painted, and knew it, brilliantly. (Of course she was waited on hand and foot. Her pupils, with a Paris show in view, were themselves more than ever dedicated.) By the middle of April she had eleven new canvases to be dispatched in advance; on receipt of which le maître didn’t write or telegraph to Mr. Joyce, but telephoned him.—Miranda was entertaining a few refined friends to a piano-recital, but even against the music the boom of triumph in le maître’s voice was distinct.

  “It will be even better than one hoped!” shouted le maître. “I who am no fool say it will be even better than we hoped!”

  Mr. Joyce pulled a door to behind him and shouted back.

  “Did I not tell you?” shouted Mr. Joyce. “Did you not tell me, that one day we should see marvels? Remember I reserve numbers eight and ten!”

  “What an old rogue, what an old ruffian!” roared le maître affectionately. “Have you not the pick of the mirabelles already?”

  “Also number five I buy in Paris!” shouted Mr. Joyce. “Numbers five, eight—”

  “Dad
da!” implored Miranda, opening the door again. “Dadda, I beg of you! Chopin!”

  “—and ten!—Go away, I am speaking to Paris,” exclaimed Mr. Joyce.

  “If you excite yourself so, you will never get to Paris,” retorted Miranda angrily. “You will have a stroke!”

  2

  The damnable thing was that she was right.

  It was the tragedy of Mr. Joyce’s life. He was eighty; for the last few months had lived in a state of intense mental excitement; had also smoked more cigars, drunk more brandy; for whatever reason, just as his daughter had prophesied, on the very eve of his and Martha’s departure, Mr. Joyce had a stroke. It left him with one side of his face drawn up higher than the other, one side of his body completely paralyzed. He could still speak, he could still think; but he couldn’t go to Paris. It wasn’t his daughter’s histrionic anxiety that stopped him, nor his doctor’s grave face; it was the unarguable physical veto.

  At his bedside in the most expensive nursing-home in London (so swiftly had Miranda whipped him into chancery) Martha sat stolidly all through the night. She had been working up to the last moment; as usual, no pupil dared interrupt her for a telegram. Less usually, when she at supper-time at last opened it, she cursed them all round. Tommy having driven her up to London, Martha didn’t exactly curse the sister on duty; but it was a very permissive nursing-home, and the matron that night absent; Martha simply steam-rollered her way in—and sat. Thus when at about three in the morning Mr. Joyce opened his eyes, she was there ready to handle the situation to her best advantage.

  “What day is it?” whispered Mr. Joyce.

  “Monday,” said Martha. “Just.”

  Mr. Joyce thought. He could think faster than he could speak.