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Praise for the Writing of Margery Sharp
“A highly gifted woman … a wonderful entertainer.” —The New Yorker
“One of the most gifted writers of comedy in the civilized world today.” —Chicago Daily News
“[Sharp’s] dialogue is brilliant, uncannily true. Her taste is excellent; she is an excellent storyteller.” —Elizabeth Bowen
Britannia Mews
“As an artistic achievement … first-class, as entertainment … tops.” —The Boston Globe
The Eye of Love
“A double-plotted … masterpiece.” —John Bayley, Guardian Books of the Year
Martha, Eric, and George
“Amusing, enjoyable, Miss Sharp is a born storyteller.” —The Times (London)
The Gypsy in the Parlour
“Unforgettable … There is humor, mystery, good narrative.” —Library Journal
The Nutmeg Tree
“A sheer delight.” —New York Herald Tribune
Something Light
“Margery Sharp has done it again! Witty, clever, delightful, entertaining.” —The Denver Post
Martha, Eric, and George
A Novel
Margery Sharp
To
Geoffrey Castle
PART ONE
Chapter One
1
Eric Taylor, returning home to lunch, after the French fashion, from his morning’s work at the City of London (Paris branch) Bank, paused as usual outside the concierge’s lodge. The flat occupied by himself and his mother was on the fourth floor; tradespeople in a hurry frequently left parcels below—also Madame Leclerc the concierge seldom troubled to carry up a letter unless she suspected it to contain bad news. The pause at the lodge was part of Eric’s routine, his words ritual.
“Anything for me to take up, Madame Leclerc?”
For once, a rare smile curved the thin lips. Employing all her fine Gallic gifts of drama, irony and concision—
“Apparently yes, monsieur,” replied Madame Leclerc; and issuing burdened from her lodge planted in his arms a carry-cot containing a two-weeks-old infant.
2
Among all classic images of popular art none is more familiar, and touching, than that of the unmarried mother, babe in arms, at the door of her parents’ home. Typically the season is winter, the dwelling humble: a grandmother weeps, her husband gestures rebarbatively; a fourth character, canine or juvenile, may complete the composition—too familiar, indeed to require further detailing …
But how rarely, if ever, is the central figure depicted as male—an unmarried father!
There were in this case other, minor variations. It wasn’t winter, it wasn’t snowing, it was an uncommonly hot August day. The flat in the rue d’Antibes, though small, was extremely comfortable. No irate father threatened, Mrs. Taylor being a widow. More importantly, psychologically (and which if Eric had indeed been a young woman would have been impossible), he had until that instant no slightest suspicion of his child’s existence. The state of parenthood came upon him so suddenly, he was totally unable to assimilate it; and thus had a moment’s grace.
“I say, there’s some mistake!” protested Eric—quite lightly.
With a long, bony forefinger like the finger of Fate Madame Leclerc indicated an envelope pinned to the carry-cot’s upper blanket.
It was addressed economically but plainly, C/O MRS. TAYLOR: the letters large, rather flowing, in sanguine chalk such as is used by artists, or artstudents. Even from such limited material a graphologist might have deduced a female character unusually strong-minded, unconventional and independent—and Eric could have told that graphologist he was right.
He whitened. The leech-like eye of Madame Leclerc might have been physically sucking his blood, he so paled. The concierge’s aspect, on the other hand, was rather gay.
“Imagine one’s surprise!” agreed Madame Leclerc. “Preparing one’s mid-day meal, naturally one does not run out at every sound—for a tradesman, the postman, the laundress! But only a moment, I assure monsieur, can the little one have awaited!”
As the implication penetrated, Eric if possible went whiter still.
“You mean,” he articulated, “it was just—left?”
His tone was no longer light. It was appalled. Like all concierges, Madame Leclerc knew far more about her tenants than those tenants could have wished. It was she who from her lodge, some nine or ten months earlier, had seen Eric slip out into the dawn—not unaccompanied. Hitherto she’d held her tongue—she wasn’t one to make trouble!—especially if handsomely tipped; now her glance reminded him of the occasion so explicitly, Eric heard again the betraying click of the lift gates behind himself and his partner in guilt …
Guilt.
The carry-cot in his arms suddenly weighted not only his muscles but his conscience. He hadn’t yet looked inside it; a complex of bundles and blankets still mercifully hid the worst. But that he didn’t drop the whole thing was simply because his clutch had stiffened into a sort of rigor mortis.
Madame Leclerc nodded happily.
“As I tell monsieur—not a summons, not a word! Dropped from the skies, one would think, like a little angel!—Save that my husband,” added Madame Leclerc, “returning for his meal, observed the taxi.”
In actor’s parlance, she rather threw the line away; thus lending it (by the method all actors know) peculiar meaning. Eric moistened his stiff lips.
“You mean he … saw?”
“Mademoiselle.—Who else?” enquired Madame Leclerc, allowing herself a moment’s playfulness. “He even heard the direction given, to the Gare St. Lazare. ‘Bon voyage!’ cried my innocent husband—and entering discovered the little treasure! Forgive me, monsieur; I confess that my forces failed me; I was unable to perform my duty. Also knowing monsieur’s extreme punctuality—”
Also, of course, she hadn’t meant to be defrauded of the most exciting incident in all her thirty years as concierge. There had once been a suicide on the Fifth, a burglary on the Third; in each case Madame Leclerc gave evidence, for so respectable a house it wasn’t bad, but neither episode could touch, for drama and human interest, the act of placing within the arms of a serious young man his illegitimate offspring. Madame Leclerc’s sensibilities were so fine, she wouldn’t have exchanged the occurrence for even a crime passionel. All she wanted was to prolong the precious moment—but that she perceived Eric to be slightly swaying on his feet. It was the gentle yet ominous movement of a branch over-weighted with snow; one more flake, so to speak, and down would come cradle and baby and all …
Once again displaying those traditional Gallic gifts of drama, irony and concision—
“One should not keep one’s dear mother waiting?” suggested Madame Leclerc; and with rare amenity moved to open the lift gates.
3
Eric stumbled in under his burden. He had’t yet begun to think, or not coherently. In any case, what else could he do? He couldn’t, even if his muscles had cooperated, simply drop the carry-cot and flee. He had his job in the City of London (Paris branch) Bank. He had his mother. He had his lunch waiting for him. It wasn’t he who could take a taxi to the Gare St. Lazare … Actually this would have been by far his most sensible course—instant pursuit—but he didn’t realize it until too late.
Madame Leclerc went up with him, to open the gates at the Fourth. (All this time the infant made no sound. “Drugged, perhaps?” suggested Madame Leclerc chattily.) Willingly too would she have waited, to help Mrs. Taylor bear the shock; unluckily old M. Jacob from the apartment oppo
site, a tenant as valuable as ill-tempered, at that instant emerged brandishing two soiled shirts and a pair of pyjamas. “Aha! You spare me the trouble of descending!” roared M. Jacob. “Is it you or is it not, Madame Leclerc, who pretends to oversee my laundry? Kindly enter and observe for yourself the condition of my linen-basket!” However reluctantly, Madame Leclerc was forced to obey—leaving Eric outside his mother’s door unsupported.
In fact this brief domestic interlude rather steadied him. He had listened to his mother’s complaints so often, of Madame Leclerc’s slackness about collecting laundry, the theme was as cosily familiar as a hymn-tune. He had himself, owing to a slight summer cold, contributed some two dozen handkerchieves to the current Taylor bag; and now in a moment’s lucidity quite rationally hoped they had gone, would come back, and weren’t his best …
He still hadn’t fully grasped his situation. It was natural. He hadn’t had nine months in which to contemplate it, also young men are not accustomed to being loved and left, abandoned to bear alone the consequences of their folly, just as if they were young women. Under the blankets of the carry-cot some small sentient creature undoubtedly drew breath, but to Eric, at this stage, as anonymously as a kitten. Even the immediate problem of what he was going to say to his mother—of what his mother was going to say to him—couldn’t focus his mind. It was difficult enough to get his key out.
His single pertinent thought was still classic.
“Oh, God,” thought Eric Taylor, “why did this happen to me?”
4
On the other side of the door Mrs. Taylor had just finished laying lunch. It was her pride, as it was her achievement, that even after three years in Paris her kitchen remained incorruptibly British; on this particularly hot August day there awaited Eric liver and bacon, fried potatoes, and a steamed treacle sponge. Only the bottle of Vichy-water struck a jarring, exotic note; but wine Mrs. Taylor considered heating—and everyone knew what happened to people who drank out of foreign taps.
“Dear Eric!” thought Mrs. Taylor fondly.
It was the refrain of her entire existence, of a long widowhood resolutely devoted to her only son, her only child. For Eric’s sake, when his night-classes in French fruited in promotion to Paris, she had dismantled an English home, uprooted herself from a whole circle of English friends, without a murmur. It was hard, but it was her duty; not for worlds would she have allowed him to face the perils of Abroad alone. The freehold house at Streatham was sold, all the furniture transported to make a little corner of England in the rue d’Antibes; really only the lawn-mower was left behind, because people in Paris didn’t have gardens, and this was probably what Mrs. Taylor felt most—Eric so enjoyed mowing a lawn, and it was so good for him. But when in due course he rose to Manager, as undoubtedly he would, perhaps a little nook in Passy might afford the same healthful exercise …
“And how proud I shall be of him!” thought Mrs. Taylor.
She was proud already. No mother could have wished for a better son: dutiful, affectionate, rising steadily in his blameless career. Whatever sacrifices she made for him had been so amply repaid, few women could look forward to a more tranquil and happy future—just the two of them together in a little nook in Passy!
“Dear Eric!” repeated Mrs. Taylor aloud; and hearing his step on the landing whipped a dish onto the table and hurried to open the door before he got his key out.
Chapter Two
1
Eric achieved one stiff step over the threshold, and stood. He was so pale, for a moment his mother imagined his cold turned to influenza. The slightest shadow upon his health ever throwing her into alarm, her thoughts at once flew to aspirins, hot toddies, hot-water bottles.—For a moment only, however, no longer; for even had Eric been actually out in a rash, she couldn’t have failed to notice, and be astonished by, the enormous burden clutched in his rigid arms.
“My darling,” cried Mrs. Taylor (and indeed as it were telescoping the two questions into one), “what have you got?”
2
He made no reply. He couldn’t think of any words.
He just stood.
“Why, it’s a carry-cot!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, approaching.
He nodded.
“But whatever for, my darling? You didn’t—you didn’t win it in a raffle?”
So innocent was her experience, it really seemed to Mrs. Taylor the likeliest explanation. She herself, at a church-bazaar, had once won the equally unsuitable prize of a safety-razor …
But Eric shook his head.
“Well, at least answer me, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, quite impatiently.
Still he couldn’t. It was another who answered for him. For the first time, from under the blankets, a sound percolated: a small, individual, peremptory cry. Abruptly as though loosed from a spell—as though stung by a hornet—Eric released his frozen clutch, he would have let the carry-cot fall, had not his mother sprung to guide its descent upon the settee.
Out from the covers pushed a tiny, grasping fist like a very small octopus. The nearest object at hand being Mrs. Taylor’s ring-finger, about it the small octopus twined.
Now it was her turn to be struck dumb. For what seemed an age, while the clock on the mantelshelf ticked, while on the table the liver and bacon congealed, mother and son gazed at each other in equal silence, equal consternation, indeed equal incredulity. (Disbelief: the instinctive, protective human reaction before disaster.) But the small octopus-hand insisted. Mrs. Taylor stooped; pulled a lap of blanket aside; and raised a face white as her son’s.
“Eric!” breathed Mrs. Taylor. “Whose is it?”
Actually the question was superfluous. It is an accepted if inexplicable fact that an infant during the very first weeks of its existence may show a marked resemblance to one or other parent. In this case, the tiny countenance now revealed was an uncanny, crumpled miniature of Eric’s own. It simply looked much older: an image of Eric in toothless senility.—Not that the latter more than glanced: by this time he was … sure.
“It’s mine all right,” agreed Eric Taylor.
They were the first words he had spoken, and at least explicit. He still realized something more to be required.
“It was left,” Eric added.
In his very accents of ten minutes earlier—
“Left?” repeated Mrs. Taylor.
“At the lodge.—There’s an envelope,” offered Eric.
With trembling hands his mother found and unpinned and opened it. It was a positive relief, faced by Eric’s unnatural vagueness, to get something in writing. She put on her spectacles, prepared for two pages at least (probably tear-stained) of contrition, remorse, humility, but above all of information …
In fact the envelope contained nothing whatever but a feeding-formula.
Mrs. Taylor looked on the back; not a line, not a word. It was as though not only all explanation, but all proper emotion as well had been—handed over.
“Eric,” said Mrs. Taylor, through trembling lips.
“Yes, Mother?”
“You’ll really have to tell me, dear. All.”
“Yes, but I’ve got to be back at the Bank,” objected Eric.
For once Mrs. Taylor brushed that very mainstay of their joint existence aside. She was a woman—and as her next words showed, an uncommonly nice-minded one.
“Don’t be afraid of upsetting me, dear, just tell me. Are you—are you secretly married?”
Again Eric shook his head.
“She wouldn’t.”
“My darling, but who?” cried Mrs. Taylor desperately.
At last the name he had striven to avoid, even in thought, had to be pronounced.
“Martha.”
3
The extraordinary thing was that at that critical juncture, Mrs. Taylor’s attention was diverted. As a mother deep in sleep will rouse at her infant’s wail and nothing else, so it was with Mrs. Taylor, waking. No clamour of bailiffs hammering the door down—of a bombardment breaki
ng out overhead—could have penetrated her absorbed and anxious ear: only a second and even more peremptory cry from the carrycot.
To Eric the sound was as meaningless, as unintentional, as a kitten’s mew. Mrs. Taylor however at once stooped again, thrust an experienced hand beneath the blankets, then unhesitatingly gathered up carrycot and all and made for the door.
“Eat your lunch, dear,” she directed, over her shoulder. “We shan’t be long!”
Once again Eric was alone.
4
Habit took over. He was so used to doing what his mother told him, he automatically pulled up a chair, sat, helped himself to congealing liver and bacon. He even managed to eat a little. But it was like eating in a dream—or in childhood, with a lump of guilt on the chest; chewing interminably round and round. Indeed, now that the physical evidence was removed, he almost asked himself (as many a young woman in like situation) whether it wasn’t a dream. Could he have nodded off, at the Bank, in the midday heat, mightn’t he abruptly awake, his head hitting a ledger, or a colleague’s hand thumping him on the back? Even a second’s unconsciousness, Eric was aware, could afford dreams of quite substantial duration—certainly long enough to include his coming home for lunch, and his encounter with Madame Leclerc, and his conversation with his mother. The very taste of the food rotating in his mouth was dreamlike; flavourless, unswallowable …
Deliberately Eric closed his eyes: waited for the blunt contact of a ledger against his chin, the clap of a hand on his shoulder.
It was no use. He might shut his eyes, and no sound percolated from beyond the dining-room door; he could still smell. After no more than ten minutes’ occupation, the room smelled, very slightly, of baby.
He got up to open the window. It was open already.
Martha, Eric, and George Page 1
