Martha in Paris (7 page)

In any case, Eric felt enough for two.

2

He was waiting that evening outside the studio. Martha, who had stayed late washing brushes, and who in consequence was particularly eager to get home in time for dinner, observed him not only with surprise but with definite annoyance. If she could she would have dodged Eric—as Eric observed.

“I don't wonder,” he said humbly.

“Don't wonder what?” asked Martha.

“If you'd rather not see me.” He swallowed. “After last night …”

Martha glanced towards her 'bus-stop. There was such a mob there already, as the next 'bus churned up she had obviously no chance of boarding it.

“Of course I don't want not to see you,” she said bracingly.

“You weren't at our seat,” accused Eric.

“I haven't been for weeks,” Martha reminded him. “It's too cold.”—Still his earnest, troubled visage drooped dismally above her own. He didn't look like himself at all; he looked almost dishevelled; as though guilt instead of turning his hair white had grown it a couple of inches. He'd had such a bad shave, Martha thus closely face to face remarked four separate cuts, three still slightly fuzzed with cotton-wool, one beginning to bleed again.—The portfolio under her arm made a barrier between their bodies, but across it she spoke as kindly as her impatience allowed. “Last night wasn't your fault,” she encouraged, “or at least no more than mine. Anyway, the others do it all the time.”

The ingratitude of men!—He showed a spark of resentment.

“If you just wanted to do like
all the others
—”

“I didn't,” Martha assured him. “I was just as surprised as you were.”

He brightened a little.

“And you really don't hate me?”

“Of course I don't hate you.—There's another 'bus coming,” said Martha. “Let's just forget it.”

Eric swallowed again.

“That's part of the trouble. You're being wonderfully big, Martha, but I can't forget it. In fact—and it's partly what I came to say, besides asking your forgiveness—if Mother's not back by next Friday, I think you'd better not come round. I—I shouldn't be able to trust myself.”

Upon a moment's reflection, and rather to her surprise, Martha found that she wouldn't be able to trust herself either. Her healthy body had thoroughly enjoyed the previous night's experiment, and now that it knew exactly what was going to happen would probably enjoy a repetition even more. In fact, it seemed almost a pity—the first and irrevocable step taken—not to make the most of it …

“I couldn't trust myself either,” acknowledged Martha.

Eric groaned.

“That's terrible,” groaned Eric. “And wonderful too,” he added huskily. “I mean, it's terrible but it's wonderful as well. It means we'll be fighting it together. If only we could get married straight away!”

Martha backed so sharply, the corner of her portfolio jerked up and hit him on the chin. Fortunately no drawings fell out; she tucked it more securely under her arm.

“Of course we can't get married,” she said sharply.

“Not yet,” agreed Eric, “not until I get my step.” But he brightened still further. “Only you know I want to, and now I know you want to too, it makes everything all right. And at least we'll both be fighting it together!”

To Martha this repetition was such an obvious non sequitur she temporarily let more serious considerations slide. If everything was all right, why fight what? And indeed something of the same sort seemed to be passing through the mind of Eric.

“Mother'll probably be back by Friday anyway,” reflected Eric, after a slight pause. “Unless she has to stay for the funeral. Or if Granddad turns the corner, it might be Wednesday or Thursday.”

“It's Saturday now,” reflected Martha.

“It's going to be pretty beastly, all by myself in the flat,” meditated Eric.

A third bus churned up unheeded.

“Don't you know anyone else to have?” asked Martha.

“Even if I did, I wouldn't want them,” said Eric, “with my mother so worried and my grandfather so ill.”

If the spirit of Paris might have found this rather an odd way of asking Martha to go to bed with him again, Martha herself understood perfectly. Like her lover, she sprang from a class in which passion is always respectably masked; and indeed yielded to his amorous plea in terms no less oblique.

“Well, if you've got an alarm-clock,” said Martha. “Because I'd have to be home by ten.”

3

“Do you mind if I'm out again to-morrow?” asked Martha, back in the rue de Vaugirard. Thick-skinned as she was even Martha had realized that she couldn't cut a meal practically on table without offending Madame Dubois quite uncommonly—perhaps even to the point of active interferingness. “Just for dinner,” added Martha, “I'll be back by ten.”

“So one would hope!” snapped Madame Dubois.—“Your friend Mrs. Taylor again in need of a masseuse?” she enquired ironically. “She should be in a hospital!”

Martha with complete lack of conscience directed a suborning glance across the table at Angèle.—The latter responded loyally.

“Have you not said yourself, Maman, Martha is deep in Mrs. Taylor's debt? Now is her chance to repay.”

“And for how long is she to repay?” retorted Madame Dubois. “Until the Ides of March?”

“No; just for a day or two until she does go into hospital,” said Martha resourcefully. “She's so bad she has to have a thorough examination. She's just waiting for a bed.”

There was always something very convincing about Martha's lies. Her general aspect of respectability promoted belief. If Madame Dubois hesitated, it was not from any doubt as to the facts. She simply felt that Mr. Joyce would hardly approve what must evidently be a distraction from his protégée's rightful studies. On the other hand, how Martha ate! To so economical a housekeeper, the absence of that splendid appetite from the dinner-table appealed strongly. “After all,” thought Madame Dubois, “Monsieur Joyce left no particular instruction; and if the child (who knows him better than we do) fears his displeasure, she will not tell him.” Thus reasoning, and with the good motive furnished by Angèle, Madame Dubois gave way.

“Very well, I permit you!” said Madame Dubois crossly. “But if your Mrs. Taylor is too suffering to prepare a meal, do not come to
me
for tartines, in the middle of the night!”

Chapter Eight

Actually Eric fed Martha—on the Sunday, and then the Monday, and then the Tuesday—rather well. In the absence of his mother he explored the Parisian
charcuteries;
even took such expert advice, this was when Martha acquired her taste for pâté de foie gras. But they always ate rather fast, to get all the sooner into bed.

As Martha had suspected, it got better and better.—Apart from all else, no illicit amour was ever more comfortably quartered. Martha and Eric had the apartment to themselves, secure in privacy; while the fact that it didn't in the least resemble a love-nest was a positive advantage. A pink satin bedhead and white bearskin rugs would have put Eric off; whereas in such thoroughly domesticated surroundings he could feel, as he needed to, domestic. “We might be married already!” Eric sometimes paused to exclaim. “Oh Martha, if only you hadn't to go home!”

This was the only fly in their ointment, that when the alarm-clock went off they had to get up and dress again, and turn out again into the December night.—Both of them; for Eric was by this time already as it were too husbandly to let Martha return to the rue de Vaugirard alone. He took her back in a taxi, which Martha, with a prudent eye to the Dubois concierge, made stop at the corner. Yet even this taxi-ride became a snug little coda to what had gone before—Martha held tight to Eric's chest against its Gallic boundings, Eric's chin jammed down on her knitted tea-cosy hat. Mrs. Taylor had been right to take alarm, that night she walked back with her son from the English chemist's bridge-party: how strangely was her vision fulfilled! Though Martha was no languorous blonde glinting like a topaz, though she was swathed not in silver fox but in stout navy serge, well was Mrs. Taylor's fearful vision justified!

In fact, the brief taxi-ride was a small price to pay, if any price at all, for what had preceded it: a complete and happy intimacy in Eric's bed.

2

It still wasn't the last intimacy. Once Martha emerged from the bathroom to find him handling her portfolio; and snatched it furiously away.

“That's not very friendly,” complained Eric.

“I don't like my drawings looked at,” scowled Martha.

“Don't they look at 'em in the studio?” retorted Eric reasonably.

“I let
le maître
,” admitted Martha, “but that's different.”

For once he was stung into a rare plainness of speech.

“Well, I must say it's a pretty rum do if you won't let me look at your drawings when you'll let me look at you with no clothes on.”

“That's different,” repeated Martha, tying the strings of the portfolio in a double knot.

Actually Eric was not displeased to have a little lovers' tiff. He had read about such. But he thought he had perhaps shocked Martha by his plainness, and was already sorry for it; and ended the matter with a tender jest.

“Sometimes I don't believe you care for me at all!” chided Eric humorously.

It was the truth. Every artist being in some degree bisexual, Martha possessed the faculty commonly supposed reserved to males of disassociating pleasure from sentiment. She'd liked originally having the run of the Taylor bathroom; her healthy young body subsequently enjoyed very much intimacy with another healthy young body—particularly between such nice clean sheets as Eric devotedly prepared each night; but for Eric himself Martha's regard first and last remained unchanged; and it was slight. In physique he was neither handsome enough, nor emaciated enough, to interest her draughtsman's eye, and his conversation bored her. Only in bed could she accept him as an equal; and after three nights running her body was so satisfied, also she was beginning to feel so sluggish in the mornings, Martha accepted Mrs. Taylor's return on the Wednesday philosophically enough.

3

Once again it was Eric who suffered for them both. His aspect, as he met Martha outside the studio at lunch-time to break the ill news, was almost as wretched as five days earlier. He'd had a better shave and his hair was tidy, but his eyes gazed into hers with such mournful intensity, it seemed as though he felt sexual disappointment as keenly as he did guilt. (Mrs. Taylor had been right again; he couldn't
stand
it …)

“Mother's back,” he announced mournfully.

“Well, that was pretty quick,” said Martha.

“She took the night boat,” said Eric. “So I'm terribly afraid, Martha—”

“Well, of course not,” said Martha. “How's your grandfather?”—She meant it as a kindly piece of tact, but his look was ungrateful.

“Passed on,” said Eric, rather shortly. “Mother came straight from the funeral. You don't seem to feel it much.”

“Well, I never knew him,” pointed out Martha.

“I didn't mean that,” said Eric. “Martha, don't you
know
what I meant?”

“Of course I do,” said Martha hastily. “But as your mother
is
back,” she added, with soothing illogic, “I can still come on Friday.”

4

And on Friday there was Martha as usual, with her nosegay, also her packet of clean underwear, just as though nothing had happened. “Did you have a nice time?” enquired Martha politely, if thoughtlessly. Mrs. Taylor, fresh from burying a parent, forgave the gaffe in true Christian spirit, and said how sorry she was she hadn't been able to see Martha's people, to give them first-hand news of Martha. “Though even if I'd had time to get their address,
Birmingham
,” admitted Mrs. Taylor, “is a
little
far, from Harrogate!” The implied superiority of domicile was lost on Martha, who was in fact reflecting that it was just as well the alarm had gone off. “But in any case you'll be seeing them quite soon, at Christmas,” added Mrs. Taylor. “You must give your aunt my regards.”

“Thank you very much,” said Martha, making towards the bathroom …

She passed the door into Eric's room without so much as a blush. It was Eric who blushed. Fortunately his mother wasn't looking.

“I'm so glad you two young people saw something of each other, while I was away!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, a little later. “My poor boy tells me you quite cheered him up.”

“Well, of course he was very worried,” said Martha, “but we had some lovely pâté.”

For once, and at Martha's suggestion, when Eric put her on the 'bus his mother came too. The frustrated glances Eric had been shooting her all evening (so irritatingly like those shot at her by Angèle) promised such a scene of emotion on the pavement as Martha was determined to avoid.

“After you've been so worried too,” invited Martha, “wouldn't you like a breath of fresh air?”

It was clumsily put, but without any effort at all Mrs. Taylor thought it very sweet of her.

Chapter Nine

This was in fact the last time Martha saw the Taylors before the Christmas holiday. Term ended at the studio with almost the gay party of Dolores' imaginings; but Martha didn't attend it. (Not after red wine; after a nice hot bath.) “Mother Bunch, d'you mean you aren't coming?” cried Sally. “It's only half-a-dollar!” “I don't like parties,” said Martha truthfully. “Then I'll have to give you my present now,” said pretty, generous Sally. It was a charming French powder-compact, which Martha in fact economically transferred, as a Christmas gift from Paris, to her appreciative aunt. Angèle's wilder offering of a pen-painted match-box cover for Mr. Joyce, Martha instinctively mislaid at once.