Martha, Eric, and George Page 7

  With that she kissed Martha warmly and turned to leave—practically into the arms of le maître.

  “May one find you a taxi?” enquired le maître solicitously.

  “Thank you, I expect there’s a car,” said Sally vaguely. “There usually is …”

  Le maître accompanied her onto the pavement nonetheless, offering several courteous phrases about his pleasure to have had her as a student. Sally, her mind now returned to the serious business of life, again looked vague. But a chauffeur-driven car awaited indeed—opulent, American, appearing about half a block long; appearing above all opulent …

  “We will show in New York next year,” murmured le maître to Martha, returning. “What was it I used to say to you in the studio? ‘Continuez!’”

  Martha was by this time feeling a good deal happier, for the reason that the gallery was now so crowded no one could look at her pictures at all. No one even tried to: a hedge of expensive hats, below them expensive gloves, like suckers, reaching towards Mr. Joyce’s champagne, was frankly backed against the walls. After boring her way through, however, to note some dozen red stars marking sales, also some dozen half-stars more marking reservations, Martha had had enough, and walked out.

  It was inexcusable. She should have been beaten, as le maître threatened in the old days, over the head. In fact, on a curb in the rue St. Honoré Martha happened to re-encounter Sally; which faithful friend instantly bore her on to a little party at the Georges Cinq. Like flocks with like; millionaires are no exception; a couple of hours later le maître, waiting at the Relais d’Angoulême with curses on his lips, saw Martha brought home by a famous American collector in a car even larger than Sally’s.

  It seemed she had the knack, of picking up connections.

  Chapter Twelve

  1

  “How does it feel,” enquired le maître, joining Martha after breakfast next morning, and thrusting a press-cutting under her nose, “to awake and find oneself famous?”

  “Am I?” asked Martha indifferently.

  “Without doubt. You are the new hope of the European school.—It is a fool who writes it, but a fool who carries weight. Also you have sold enough already to satisfy that not-quite-such-a-fool M. Cerisier.”

  “Then he ought to put my prices up,” said Martha.

  “The point has not escaped him,” retorted le maître. Martha’s stolid demeanour in fact slightly annoyed him; certainly he didn’t wish her to lose her head, but that she apparently saw no need to keep it was disconcerting. She wasn’t even interested in hearing him translate the notice for her, explaining that she never read notices anyway. “But you might see Mr. Joyce gets them,” added Martha, as to a secretary. “Naturally Mr. Joyce will get them!” snapped le maître. “He will get two sets!” “Then you keep this one,” said Martha kindly. “I don’t want it.”

  It was an arrogance raised to the point of sublimity; the same arrogant self-confidence that had enabled her to walk out of her own private view. Le maître ground his teeth at the recollection; but as he hadn’t in conscience been able to curse Martha the night before (considering the connection she’d picked up), so he couldn’t curse her now …

  “That reminds me,” said Martha, as though following his thought. “That man who brought me back last night says he never goes, to private views.”

  “He can afford his own caviare,” retorted le maître grimly.

  “Next time I shall give ’em dry bread,” said ungrateful Martha. “What I mean is, it wasn’t just the caviare and the champagne that made my show a success. Was it?”

  Le maître, for all his impulse to slam her down, was forced to acknowledge Martha correct. The famous cynicism, “But liquor is quicker,” might had he known of it have supplied him with an argument, but essentially Martha was correct. No amount of free food and drink could have produced such a success: only an enormous, a formidable talent.

  “No,” said le maître slowly, “it was not the caviare; and you may tell Mr. Joyce I say so. That is, if you write to him; or am I expected to do that for you also?”

  Martha reflected a moment.

  “No, because he’s ill. But you can post it.”

  2

  DEAR MR. JOYCE, [wrote Martha]

  You will he glad to hear the show is a success. Even le maître says it is, also the gallery will put my prices up. Nos. 5 and 8 le maître says you have bought at rock-bottom, congrats. I may show in New York next year, as I have met some millionaires.

  Hoping this finds you on your pins again,

  Yours affec.,

  MARTHA

  P.S. I wore your hat.

  3

  Possessed as she was of an enormous, formidable talent, Martha’s artistic triumph was more or less a foregone conclusion; her personal success was less easily explicable.

  Tout Paris had encountered formidable talents before, and in a personality demanded above all wit. Martha never uttered a home-truth turned paradox, for the reason that she rarely uttered at all. Her appearance on television should have been a disaster. In the studio at nine P.M. sharp (under le maître’s anxious convoy), for an interview at nine-thirty, by a quarter to eleven (all programmes somehow running late), Martha was snoring where she sat. “Wake up, mademoiselle!” implored the interviewer desperately—and Martha’s televised yawn made history.

  She was probably the only person who had ever yawned while being televised. Unexpectedly, the viewers seemed to appreciate it; Martha received a considerable fan-mail, and during the next days became almost a popular figure as she tramped about Paris in her sandals and her overcoat and her hat that had belonged to Mr. Joyce. At the Louvre, she was positively followed by a train of admiring art-students—Martha’s scowl at the Mona Lisa rejoicing every young iconoclastic heart. Hardily introduced by le maître into several salons, this new reputation excused the taciturnity with which she accepted each fresh introduction to each last link with Proust. Martha had actually never heard of Proust, but soon came to recognize a last link at sight: in general characterized by such fragility, elegance, and extreme old age, as to remind her of nothing so much as skeleton-leaves. Her next big series of paintings was to strike more than one critic as curiously anthropomorphic.

  Martha never wasted time.

  What with being interviewed, and lunched, and doing the round of the salons, and at M. Cerisier’s insistence putting in an appearance at the gallery at least once a day, Martha’s time was pretty well filled. Whenever she could, however, in any spare moment, she sat down outside the nearest café and ordered a chocolat Liégeois. These luscious confections of chocolate ice and whipped cream, in a long glass, consumed first with spoon, then by straw, were something Martha could never have enough of—never had had enough of; in her student days they were too expensive. Now she was in the position of that rare, happy child who having declared that when grown-up it will have plum-pudding every day, finds adult appetite unimpaired and adult income adequate. Martha habitually expended so much energy, she needed sugar more than most people; a physician might have actually prescribed chocolats Liégeois; the taste saved the trouble of taking medical advice; and if her next appointment with le maître found her wearing a creamy moustache, the latter had always a handkerchief with which to wipe it off. So far as le maître, who held the purse-strings, could make out, the only other things Martha needed money for were a couple of brands of crayon she couldn’t get in England, and of which she purchased several years’ supply.

  All the same—successful as she was, and flattered as she was, and sugar-sated as she was—after some three or four days Martha would willingly have gone home. She didn’t enjoy being lionized, and liked to work regular hours. But le maître had still up his sleeve a few more useful personalities (critics, and last links with Proust) for her to meet, and his reminder of how much good money Mr. Joyce had put into her carried weight. Martha, always financially conscientious, saw it as only fair that she should become as celebrated as possible, especially in P
aris, to pay her patron back.

  Le maître didn’t appeal to her affection for Mr. Joyce. He knew Martha too well. Actually she was fonder of the old man than of anyone in the world, but it still wasn’t saying much. The obligation she recognized was financial.

  “Oh, all right,” said Martha grumpily. “How long’s going to see me through?”

  “You are here for a fortnight, for a fortnight you will remain,” said le maître. “May I also remind you that you have not yet visited the studio?”

  “I haven’t had time,” pointed out Martha. “Shall I come to-morrow?”

  “If mademoiselle would so condescend!”

  The irony was unnecessary, and due only to a certain raggedness of le maître’s nerves. Martha was only too eager to stand before an easel again. She nonetheless, next morning, took her time over bath and breakfast, in the awareness that she had no need now to arrive early to get a good place. Martha, who was without false modesty, knew she could take whatever place she chose, and any student who had to shift would be flattered.—As things turned out, however, she almost failed to arrive at the studio at all.

  Stumping downstairs shortly after ten Martha crossed the manageress coming up. “Monsieur awaits in the foyer!” smiled the manageress. Martha assumed that le maître had come to fetch her; again without false modesty recognized that her presence in class would do the studio a bit of good. But it wasn’t le maître who waited; there at the foot of the stairs, bang in her path, stood Eric Taylor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1

  There was no avoiding him; nor any possibility (Martha so taken by surprise) of feigning non-recognition. Ten years had in fact altered him very little; his narrow frame hadn’t filled out much, his features were no heavier, nor any more decided. It is a decade, from twenty- to thirty-four, that commonly brings a man to maturity, but perhaps not if he lives with his mother; in all, Eric still looked as boyish as when Martha last set eyes on him.

  She had hoped never to set eyes on him again. Now he stood before her inescapable: her first, her only lover, and the father of her child.

  “Hello,” said Martha gloomily.

  Eric Taylor whitened. He also, very slightly, swayed on his feet. (Had Madame Leclerc been there to witness, what happy memories would have roused! Just so had Eric paled and swayed under the literally staggering burden of a carry-cot.) Martha merely recalled with irritation that he’d always felt more emotion than a situation warranted. However, he made an attempt to match her stolidity with a man-of-the world air.

  “So we meet again,” said Eric Taylor.

  “It looks like it,” agreed Martha. “I’m just off to the studio.”—It didn’t occur to her to ask how he knew she was in Paris, and where she was staying. By this time Martha calmly accepted the fact that all her activities and whereabouts were pretty well public knowledge. For a moment, indeed, the relieving notion crossed her mind that Eric might be there simply by accident—just dropping in to take a look at the Modiglianis; but his next words showed this the wishful-thinking she knew it in her heart to be.

  “Not until we’ve had a talk,” said Eric.

  He stood full in her path. Martha glanced past him at a clock, and saw the hands at ten-twenty.

  “Oughtn’t you to be at the Bank?” she suggested hopefully.

  “After thirteen years,” returned Eric, with a slightly bitter smile, “I believe I’m sufficiently valuable to be allowed the odd morning off.”

  “Congrats,” said Martha.

  Purposefully she descended the last few stairs, prepared to make a bolt. But Eric’s hand now on her wrist was purposeful also, and with the manageress redescending, also several people in the foyer, she hesitated to start a possible scene by employing her superior weight to shake him off. (It would have been publicity in a way, but Martha was always very careful about publicity, in case it turned out the wrong sort: as any bowling-over of an ex-lover in a Paris hotel probably would.) Thus she almost passively allowed herself to be led to a petit-point sofa under a Modigliani.

  She still didn’t mean to waste any more of that valuable commodity time than was strictly necessary; and remembering Eric’s capacity for beating about a bush, opened the inevitable topic of their conversation herself.

  “Did you keep it?” asked Martha.

  2

  Eric swallowed. He had in fact come prepared with a rather poignant little exordium: the forthright approach put him off. In the petit-point chair opposite the petit-point sofa he sat momentarily wordless; and but nodded.

  “I thought you would,” said Martha complacently. “Wasn’t your mother surprised?”

  Eric moistened his lips.

  “Mother was wonderful. At first she could hardly believe it of me; but then she behaved wonderfully.”

  “I thought she would,” said Martha. “How is she?”

  It was probably the first time Eric ever let an enquiry after his mother’s health go unanswered; but he was naturally not himself.

  “I notice you don’t ask how he is,” retorted Eric grimly.

  “Well, I always knew I’d left him in good hands,” Martha congratulated herself. “All right: tell me.”

  Again Eric had to swallow.

  “Mother thinks his chest may be weak, but for his age he’s remarkably intelligent …”

  “Whatever else he’s got from me, it isn’t a weak chest,” remarked Martha.

  “There are several other things he didn’t get from you,” observed Eric pointedly. “George, I’m happy to say, has a very sweet, obedient nature.”

  —From Martha’s expression, he felt he had at last pierced her defences. She looked genuinely, if not abashed, at least struck. So indeed she was.

  “George? You didn’t call him after you?”

  To her surprise, at this reasonable enquiry Eric appeared to lose all self-control. From white he turned scarlet; his voice hitherto decently subdued rose furiously.

  “No, we didn’t!” almost shouted Eric Taylor. “Good heavens, Martha, if you think I wanted to lay it on—! Wasn’t it bad enough everyone knowing? I tell you I’ve stood it for ten years,” exploded Eric, “and I’m jolly well not going to stand it any more! You’ve evaded your responsibilities once, but you’re not going to evade them again. You’ve got to take him back.”

  The passage of ten years had finally quietened his conscience. He no longer wanted to marry Martha, he wanted to get rid of George.

  3

  Behind them the foyer had emptied. They were to all intents alone; not only Eric but Martha could speak freely. Immediately, however, indignation and astonishment combined to tie her tongue; though he winced under her powerful glare the word was temporarily with Eric; and he calmed down a bit.

  “It’s not that I can’t support George, or that Mother won’t be sorry to lose him. Mother’s devoted to him. I’m very fond of George myself,” added Eric.—He was already slightly ashamed of his outburst; and hurried to blot it out by introducing a more high-minded note. “But we’ve got to think of his future,” continued Eric high-mindedly, “and for one thing it seems to be only you who can get him British nationality. Neither Mother nor I can, so the poor little chap’s still officially French; but all you have to do is acknowledge him before a Notary, then he can be endorsed on your passport and you can take him Home.”

  Martha found utterance at last.

  “All? You call that all?”

  To his extreme annoyance, Eric found himself swallowing again.

  “As I say, it’s perfectly simple—”

  “All!” repeated Martha. She’d never been so shocked in her life—or not since Eric’s equally outrageous proposal that she should marry him and stop painting. “Anyway, why shouldn’t he be French? I only wish I was; I’d have a built-in edge. Hell’s bells, unless you get a maintenance order against me—”

  “Martha! Don’t you know I’d never think of such a thing?” cried Eric—genuinely wounded.

  “Probably you cou
ldn’t anyway,” agreed Martha. “But if you see any difference I’m damned if I do. Who’d have to maintain him, at Home? I should.”

  “Of course I’d contribute—” began Eric.

  “What, and get me mixed up with you again? Not on your life,” snarled Martha. “Actually I’m probably making more money than you are,” she added cruelly. “Have you got your step yet?”

  It was the last straw. At the memory of that deepest injury of all, the blighting of his happy, innocent, hopeful career in the City of London (Paris branch) Bank, all Eric’s newly regained self-control vanished.

  “And that’s another thing you’ve to answer for!” he accused furiously. Professional pride apart—the wound to which still unhealed, as he thought of the snug managerial room never to be occupied by E. Taylor—he thought of all those holidays in Haute Savoie. He remembered a silver christening-mug not only as the symbol of his missed step, but also as something he’d hocked simply to put a few francs in his pocket.—Plunging into wider waters of self-pity, he remembered all the spinach he’d had to eat, and all the evenings he’d spent baby-sitting; leapt the years to visualize young George lagging in the Tuileries behind himself and Edith Allen; and let moral indignation rip. “Let alone the sheer heartlessness of it,” cried Eric passionately (and as though Martha had been following his every thought), “can’t you see what it must have done to me? A man—a boy—of my age, to be saddled with a child?”

  “I don’t see why it should be any worse than for a young woman,” said Martha reasonably. “Why should it always be the mother who’s landed with a bastard?”

  Eric flinched.—He’d always flinched, recalled Martha irritably, before the plain term; never said “dead,” for example, but always “passed on.” He appeared so extremely upset, however, she for once, and with an eye on the clock, humoured his sensibilities.