The Eye of Love (16 page)

What these were, she had to guess. But not only friends, or lovers, without a plain word spoken, divine the underlying trend of each other's thoughts: so also do enemies. Martha guessed, and guessed rightly, that Mr Phillips no longer aimed merely at bridling her will, but wished to be rid of her altogether; and feared that by turning her into a rude child, he might make Dolores want to be rid of her too.

It was indeed the truth. Mr Phillips' design for wedded bliss didn't include Martha. In the first place—being a man whose hatred of all qualities above the mediocre, especially in a female, almost put him off Dolores with her house-property—Mr Phillips disliked Martha even more than she did him. Confronted by any superior temper (especially in a female), his instinct was to thwart it, and Martha had successfully held her own. In the second place, her attic would be needed for a lodger—for Mr Phillips had no idea of wasting space, himself moved up to the position of husband; another lodger in his old bed-sit, and yet another in Martha's attic, were essential factors in his thrifty plan. (It was no mad dream, like poor Dolores'; a large Insurance Company, with a large intake from the provinces, offers exceptional supplies of lodger-timber.) Martha's attic could be let with ease; and with her Civil Service connections in mind, and having taken pains to inform himself on the subject, Mr Phillips knew of two orphanages already where she could hardly be refused.

At such details Martha's powers of telepathy naturally broke down. She was nonetheless apprehensive; and so took what measures she could to consolidate her position.

They were economic. Children are frequently more interested in making money than their elders think quite nice, only the little girl gathering sticks to support an aged grandmother has passed into sentimental legend. Martha, who was not sentimental, had never contemplated supporting Miss Diver; but once her egoism took alarm, she was more than ready to turn to.

“How much do I eat a week?” asked Martha.

“Good heavens, you should know that!” exclaimed Miss Diver sharply. (Her voice was sharpening like her profile.)

“I mean in money?” persisted Martha.

“I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps a pound …”

Dolores really didn't know. In her muddled housekeeping Mr Phillips' payments, with an occasional dip into her own savings account, just kept them all going. Martha however took the figure as accurate, and cogitated. If she could earn a pound a week she wouldn't be costing anything, and she carried all the trays. Earning a pound a week she would be not only a self-supporting child, but a profitable child. It undoubtedly showed a flaw in Martha's character that she so completely discounted her aunt's affection for her. Dolores was still prepared to go on being fond of Martha, as she used to be fond, in the overflow of her love for King Hal, if Martha had shown the least sign of reciprocal tenderness. But Martha, herself unaffectionate, put no reliance on affection; she relied on economics. If she could earn a pound a week, she thought, she would be in a really strong position.

Spurred by this ambition, as splendid in conception as hopeless of execution, Martha embarked on her professional career.

5

She began by making out a beautifully lettered card announcing
REPAIRS DONE WHILE YOU WAIT
, with a drawing of a boot in one corner and a shoe in the other, which she carried round to her friend Mr Punshon. “What's this, a present?” asked Mr Punshon, agreeably surprised. “No, it's a shilling,” said Martha. “If you want it, of course.” At this Mr Punshon scrutinised the card more narrowly. (It was a moment Martha found intensely exciting. Her knees actually stiffened—and not with financial anxiety alone. She was meeting her first public.) “A boot all that heavy wants a thicker sole,” pronounced Mr Punshon at last. Martha looked for herself and acknowledged him to be right. She also realised how the mistake had come about—through shaving down the original boot-sole, because the boot-corner over-balanced the shoe-corner, without altering the upper to match.

“I'm sorry,” she apologised. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Business is business,” said Mr Punshon. “Seeing you're in the business way.”

“I want to be,” said Martha. “If I make a new one, properly, will you order it?”

Mr Punshon agreed. Out of this first commission, because she had to buy a fresh bottle of ink, Martha made eightpence.

The criticism offered by her other friend Mr Johnson, off whom she took sixpence for a fresh
WOUNDED AT MONS
card, was equally professional. “Just tread it in the gutter a bit, will you?” said Mr Johnson. “It won't suit me too posh. You got to meet your market, see?” elaborated this professional hero. “What's
my
market? The charitable human 'eart. The downer-and-outer I look, the more it beats for me. I took one-and-six this very afternoon.”

“I wish I had,” said Martha.

Mr Johnson looked at her thoughtfully. He wasn't wondering why. Martha was fortunate in having such sensible friends, neither Mr Punshon nor Mr Johnson saw anything odd, or not very nice, in her wishing to make money; they'd each of them been earning themselves, at Martha's age. Mr Johnson wasn't now unco-operative: on the contrary.

“In the good old days gone by,” he mused, “I'd ha' taken you on. Dressed up proper in rags, you could ha' bin my pore little child. I've no doubt we could ha' made a very nice thing of it, 'specially if I acted 'arsh towards you. But what'ud happen to-day?” asked Mr Johnson regretfully. “They'd whip you off for care-an'-protection before you could say knife. But I'm good for a tanner now and then, if it's any help.”

It was Martha's turn to look at Mr Johnson. As Mr Punshon had said, business was business. To go into the ragged-child line was something she wouldn't have objected to at all, but she wasn't in it yet; and her professional conscience stirred.

“Did you give me that sixpence just to
give
it me?”

“Why not?” said Mr Johnson. “I get 'em give
me
.”

The card was still in Martha's hand. She hadn't yet dirtied it. She hadn't wanted to, even to meet a market. (The bayonets decorating each side had red-ink blood on them.) She said slowly,

“If you like to give it me because I'm a friend, thank you very much. But I'd rather you didn't take the card, because I don't think you really want it.”

“You go on being so sharp, one day you'll cut yourself,” agreed Mr Johnson amiably.

This second episode was important chiefly because it taught Martha where she stood. She had stumbled, in fact, on a cardinal point of professional ethics, and obscurely recognised it. The taking of Mr Johnson's sixpence as a pseudo-payment, instead of as a gift, would have stamped her an amateur; and the gulf between amateur and professional opening at her feet, she instinctively chose the professional side.

She never approached a friend again. (Mr Punshon was different; Mr Punshon had criticised with genuine authority. When in due course Martha made him a couple of cards more, at a shilling apiece, she in each case had to do the work twice—once on a point of boot-laces, once on a point of tongues. She was glad to.) Fortunately for her financial prospects, however, she lived in a district uncommonly rich in the sort of newsagent and sweet-shop that add to their income by displaying local advertisements—one actually adorned already by her handiwork. Martha went back to look at her Apartments card, and found it still markedly superior to the rest. Some were almost illegible. (“Ain't that gent found 'is congenial model yet?” derided Mr Johnson, who happened to be by. “No wonder, the way they're writ!”) Martha stood and stared for half an hour, and so perfect was her visual memory that a day later she returned with the whole display neatly and accurately duplicated in Indian ink.

The newsagent gave her two bob for the lot, any more that came in to rate twopence apiece.

At two other newsagents, and three sweet-shops, Martha made the same terms. After a first capital gain of nine shillings, her takings naturally fell off; but she usually made about one-and-eight a week.

6

One-and-eight is a far cry from twenty shillings.

Martha was sometimes uneasily aware of this; yet it couldn't dim the pleasure of entering each consecutive twopence in the shiny black note-book she bought specially for the purpose. (Buying the note-book a pleasure in itself; having money in her pocket.) She added the total once or twice a day, making it sometimes more, sometimes less; and since her subtraction was equally uncertain, commonly ignored the occasional pennies she spent on sweets. (It was too much to expect of a regular visitor to three sweet-shops never to buy cocoanut-ice; which indeed a more sophisticated accountant might have laid off as good-will.) Martha's long-term project was in fact rather lost sight of; however threatening the future she had immediately money in her pocket, the constant interest of seeing if any fresh cards had come in for her, cocoanut-ice, and appreciation for her skill. She also enjoyed, as most children do, getting to grips with life.

Mr Johnson pointed out that if she used ordinary ink, instead of Indian, the new cards would fade as fast as the originals had done, thus reviving the demand. Mr Johnson knew of an ink made with powder that faded even faster. But Martha wouldn't.

7

Miss Diver had no note-book for such daily consultation; but she had a calendar. Through the two mid-weeks of December was drawn a thick black line, covering the date, as yet precisely unknown to her, upon which Mr Gibson would make Miss Joyce his bride. Dolores turned to it almost as often as Martha—but with how different emotions!—turned to her note-book. Whether the twelfth or the eleventh, the fourteenth or fifteenth, the day was drawing very near.

It was actually to be the sixteenth. Harry Gibson too in his diary had drawn a thick black line, only with more precision.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

1

Whether Miranda would still have insisted on six bridesmaids, if Mr Joyce hadn't turned down her plea for a separate establishment, must remain in doubt. She did insist. Strong in Harry's moral support—intoxicated with the new-found pleasures of friendship—Mr Joyce had been obdurate. So was Miranda now obdurate. She got her way. The result was to bring the wedding as it were much closer, and consequently again to reanimate Harry Gibson in his original, proper character of Miranda's fiancé, not her father's sidekick.

No longer, after dinner, were the two allowed to sit peacefully swapping their papers while Miranda played the piano. Reinforcements of femininity invaded the Knightsbridge flat. Bridesmaids dropped in almost every evening, often bringing their mothers, to finger patterns and discuss styles, debate coronals against Dutch bonnets, nosegays against flower-baskets. (All flowers, for a December wedding, Miranda reminded her Dadda pointedly, would have to be
grown
. Specially, under glass. Or perhaps flown in from somewhere. What an expense!—but he and Harry would have December …) Marion and Rachel and Denise turned up, whom Mr Gibson could never tell part, also three other maidens less identifiable still—but not the plump brunette with the big diamond, she being already united to her Bobby. (Harry Gibson vaguely regretted her. He remembered her sympathetic glance as a drop of dew in the furnace of the engagement-party.) They were all, moreover, the daughters, and their mothers the wives, of Mr Joyce's business associates, which made it difficult for him to turn his back on them; only rarely could he and Harry shut themselves up in the study, with the port …

“Chin-chin,” said Mr Joyce gloomily.

“Have they even settled on a colour yet?” groaned Harry Gibson.

“Six young ladies, and six mammas, choosing one dress to suit all six, how should they settle on anything?—Fill your glass, Harry boy,” said Mr Joyce.

It was perhaps fortunate they were never long uninterrupted: the study had begun to take on rather the character of a speakeasy—one drank up while one could. But sooner rather than later Miranda always ferreted them out, to look at a new pattern of lace brought in by Denise or Marion, or because Mrs Conrad was there, or Madame Grandjean. (They spread over the week with diabolical punctuality, as though on a roster.) And how they chattered! All at once, like a cage of starlings. Even old Mrs Gibson complained at last, asking were they never to have a quiet evening again; and openly encouraged Harry to rebel.

“What a thing to say, but Miranda will make us all sick of her wedding!” cried Mrs Gibson. “If you do not go so often no one will blame you at all! I have a good mind not to go so often myself!”

A month or two earlier Harry would have jumped at the absolution; it astonished his mother that he didn't now. Indeed he longed to. Only loyalty took him back, night after night, into the millinery inferno. But there was a silent appeal in his friend's eye, a touching gratitude in Mr Joyce's nightly welcome, which he couldn't find it in his heart to disappoint.

“It has to be,” said Mr Joyce, trying for philosophy. “All women are like this before a wedding. Fill your glass, Harry boy.”

2

“Would you mind,” asked Martha of Mr Punshon, “if I kept these here?”

She had her arms full—of drawing-blocks, of boxes of charcoal and boxes of sanguin chalks. Martha had begun to be anxious lest this hoard should be discovered: Dolores rarely entered the attic, which Martha was supposed to keep tidy herself, and when she did wasn't likely to look under the bed (not being that sort of house-keeper); but someone else, Martha fancied, someone more inquisitive, had been in behind her back. Returning after a Sunday morning in the Gardens, she found her three-legged stool a little displaced: the row of jam-pots on her window-sill, from which last summer's brew of nasturtium-tonic had long evaporated, just out of alignment—the largest perhaps no more than picked up and set down again; but Martha had a very accurate eye. Mr Phillips, taking a look round the accommodation, believed himself to have left no trace; Martha's only uncertainty was how to safeguard her supplies in case he came noseying again. After some deliberation, she tore off a sheet or two from each block for current use, hid them under the lining-paper of a drawer, and smuggled the rest round to Mr Punshon's.