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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 in Paris
A Novel
Margery Sharp
To
Geoffrey Castle
Chapter One
“I’ve come,” announced Mr. Joyce, “to talk about Martha.”
Martha’s Aunt Dolores, still slightly fluttered at the unexpected visit, paused in the act of placing a black satin cushion behind his back to glance nervously at Harry her husband. She was always a little nervous of Mr. Joyce, because they owed so much to him: if he hadn’t put Harry in as manager at the shop in Richmond, they mightn’t even have had a roof over their heads. (The Joyce headquarters establishment, in Bond Street, purveyed sable and mutation mink; Harry Gibson still did quite nicely with lapin and flank musquash.) Moreover—a circumstance peculiarly precious to Harry’s somewhat battered ego—the two men were friends; regularly every Sunday morning they played a round of golf together on the Richmond course—Mr. Joyce nipping ahead after his ball small and spry as a cat, Harry Gibson plodding behind large and sedate as a cart-horse—after which Mr. Joyce, sated by a week’s fancy cooking at home, regularly came back for roast beef and apple pie. If it had been a Sunday Dolores could have taken him quite calmly; but this was Saturday evening after supper.
Also he wanted to talk about Martha.
Mr. Joyce’s interest in Martha was something the Gibsons had never been able to understand, though they were grateful for it. That they didn’t understand Martha either troubled them the less because they were not aware of the fact: to Dolores in particular it was incredible that she shouldn’t understand her own niece, who had lived with her since the age of six—doubly orphaned, poor mite, and with no other relative to give succour! Resolutely, tenderly, for twelve years, Dolores attributed any lack of communication to feelings (on Martha’s part) too deep for words …
But even she could never manage to think of plain fat Martha as the sort of child to twine herself about any unrelated heart; while what Mr. Joyce had seen in Martha’s youthful drawings was a deeper mystery still. To Dolores, with the best will in the world, they looked no more than a muddle of criss-cross lines, and to Harry like some sort of blue-print: the fact remained that Mr. Joyce had been so unaccountably struck by them, he was now paying not only her fees at an art-school, but also three pounds a week towards her keep. Since Martha ate like a horse, it made a quite substantial difference to the Gibsons’ narrow economy.
“Isn’t she working?” asked Harry severely.
“Darling, I’m sure she is!” cried Dolores.
With a snap of his small neat fingers Mr. Joyce flipped the notion aside. Indeed all three knew very well that whatever her other shortcomings, Martha worked. She ate like a horse, also she worked like a horse. (That is, at drawing or painting: not about the house to help her aunt. Given a bed to make, she simply covered it up; given a cup to wash, broke the handle off. Mr. Joyce called it conserving her energies; and after all it was he who paid three pounds a week.)
“Where is she now?” asked Mr. Joyce.
“I’m afraid in the bath,” said Dolores modestly.
“Saturday night,” added Harry—betraying as he too often did his plebeian background.
“Good,” said Mr. Joyce. “I am not sorry to have a word with you both first. What I’ve been thinking about Martha is, she ought to go to Paris.”
2
He pushed the cushion away and sat back impassive.—As his father or grandfather, outside booth or tent, had sat back impassive, before a deal of consequence. Neither Dolores nor Harry had ever understood, it was beyond them to understand, the sense of creative rapture with which Mr. Joyce had followed year by year Martha’s artistic progress. He was himself an artist manqué, destined merely to make a fortune in the fur-trade: in Martha finding a vicarious fruition. Equally beyond the Gibsons was it to appreciate the integrity that held him back from loosing her on the world as an infant prodigy. With his many connections—for he was a great patron of art-galleries—it would have been easy enough. Mr. Joyce held back. Counting his remaining years, and allowing himself the decade between seventy and eighty, he set Martha’s first show at somewhere about his seventy-fourth birthday. He was the best friend Martha ever had.
The short, astonished silence was broken first by Harry.
“Gay Paree?” said Harry dubiously. “Why Gay Paree?”
Mr. Joyce grinned. He was truly fond of Harry—as the cat is fond of the cart-horse, as the small is attracted to the large, as the nervous to the placid.
“Dashed if I quite know myself,” he admitted, “what they’ve got there. But they’ve got something.” He cast about for an acceptable simile. “It’s like the Argentines coming here to buy bulls.”
“The roast beef of old England,” agreed Harry, brightening.
“Well, it’s the same with Paris and painters. Paris gives ’em something. Look at Sickert, look at Whistler, look at Sisley. Look at Picasso. Let alone their promotion technique,” added Mr. Joyce; “get taken up in Paris and it’s half the battle. But you’ve got to be trained there. Which is why Martha,” finished Mr. Joyce, “should have at least two years.”
He had spoken with unusual, even unnecessary, impressiveness: the Gibsons had no intention of arguing. When Mr. Joyce talked about painters and Paris, and Whistler and Sickert and Sisley and Picasso, they knew themselves thoroughly out of their depth in waters where only Martha could thrash beside him.—Harry by now would have seen Martha off on the next boat-train, such was his confidence in her patron’s wisdom and intentions; and only Dolores’ maternal, or auntly, instincts found voice.
“She’s only eighteen, Mr. Joyce! Do you really think that at eighteen—”
“Just the right age,” said Mr. Joyce briskly.
“And she doesn’t speak French!”
“She will,” promised Mr. Joyce. “I have just the billet for her—widow of a professor, daughter who’s a school-marm, not a word of English between them. Martha’ll learn French all right.”
Still Dolores hesitated. Actually it wasn’t Martha’s lack of the parlez-voo (as Harry would have put it) that chiefly troubled her; nor did she fail to appreciate the widow-and-daughter aspect. Before marriage once forced to take in lodgers herself, as an experienced landlady Dolores at once recognized, in that particular set-up, a guarantee of respectability. But Martha, in Paris, would be attending an art-school as well; and of the few French phrases Dolores knew, la vie de bohême happened to be one …
“What I re
ally mean—” persisted Dolores; and hesitated again. For what she really meant, to put it crudely—and though no nice woman would, it was something any nice woman naturally thought of—was that in Gay Paree Martha might get raped. Not sordidly and horridly, of course, not in such dreadful circumstances as one read of in the Sunday papers, but after some gay party when they’d all been drinking ted wine. “What I mean,” said Dolores delicately, “is that she might come to harm …”
She blushed as she spoke. Mr. Joyce regarded her thoughtfully.
“I shouldn’t think it likely myself,” said Mr. Joyce. “She must weigh close on ten stone.”
At which moment, Martha appeared.
3
Mr. Joyce’s guess at her weight was roughly correct. As a child Martha had been first fat, then stocky; in maturity would undoubtedly be stout; at eighteen, however, one could see where her waist was. She always looked her best immediately after a hot bath: her hard round cheeks shone like red apples, her poker-straight light hair, while still damp, lay in neat sleek bangs. Instead of smelling as she customarily did of turpentine she smelt wholesomely of coal-tar soap. Tightly corded into a boy’s dark-blue dressing-gown, Martha in fact appeared as nearly attractive as she ever could—and Dolores, who’d once dreamed of sending her off to dances in frilly net, simultaneously repressed a frustrated sigh, gratefully dismissed the notion of gay parties, and felt pleased that Martha appeared so cleanly to her patron’s eye.
“I thought it was you,” said Martha.
“It didn’t make you hurry much,” retorted Mr. Joyce.
“Well, the water was still hot,” explained Martha.
Mr. Joyce rose from his chair in order to stamp his foot. Martha squatted on the floor. She knew, without ever giving him a conscious thought, much more about Mr. Joyce than did either her Uncle Harry or her Aunt Dolores. His stamping didn’t alarm her. She instinctively recognized that he was merely translating a mental concept into a physical act—just as she did herself whenever she picked up a brush or chalk: as it were stamping his way into their joint future. Thus Martha squatted receptive but by no means over-awed. She even, after a moment’s reflection, hauled herself up again to reach for the biscuit-box—
(“Have a ginger-biscuit?” suggested Martha.
“Oh, Mr. Joyce, didn’t I offer you one?” cried Dolores.
“I am not here for ginger-biscuits!” snapped Mr. Joyce.)
—before tucking her feet more snugly under her dressing-gown. She was always careful not to catch cold, because if she caught cold she wouldn’t be able to draw, because to draw she needed to be in full health. As a rule, Martha enjoyed wonderful health.
Mr. Joyce, on the other hand, continued standing. He was seventy, and the richest man in his line of business in Europe. When he entered an art-gallery, they fetched the boss. In dealing with Martha, who owed everything in the world to him, he still seized on the least advantage—such as forcing her physically at least to look up to him while he spoke.
“I have news for you,” announced Mr. Joyce.
“I’ll say he has!” exclaimed Harry jovially. His idea was to give his friend a build-up; but Mr. Joyce shot him a repressive glance.
“You are going to Paris,” announced Mr. Joyce.
Now it was Dolores who looked at Harry, to stop him saying “Gay Paree” again; then they all looked at Martha eating ginger-biscuits.
“Why?” asked Martha.
“To learn to draw and to paint,” said Mr. Joyce sharply.
“I can now,” said Martha.
“Just so well as to be best in a class of twenty who cannot paint or draw at all,” snapped Mr. Joyce. “There are other reasons as well which you would not understand, being too stupid, but principally you must learn to draw. First the Antique, then the Figure,” said Mr. Joyce relishingly. “Right through the mill!”
Martha scowled.
“I’ve been through the Antique.”
“You have not,” contradicted Mr. Joyce. “I remember your drawing of the ‘Discobolus.’ It was a very good drawing of three easels. As your last figure-drawing was a very good drawing of stove-pipes. You want to paint as well as Picasso, you must learn to draw like Picasso—who could draw like Ingres. Or do you imagine you can draw like Ingres already,” enquired Mr. Joyce, “such a little marvel as you are?”
Martha’s cheeks flushed from red to beetroot. All her life she was to be rather an Other Ranks type; like them, if there was anything she hated it was sarc. Never very ready of tongue, sarcasm struck her altogether dumb. She squatted crimson and silent, her broad, blunt-fingered hands pressed tightly together in her lap, doing her best to counter, by an unwinking stare, with the Other Ranks’ customary weapon of Dumb Insolence. Harry Gibson, who had worn uniform himself, recognized the technique at once; but not so Martha’s tender-hearted aunt.
“Oh, Mr. Joyce!” cried Dolores reproachfully. “Can’t you see she doesn’t want to leave home?”
Martha blinked. Actually it wasn’t an aspect of the matter that had occurred to her. Actually her main objection to going to Paris was that it meant a break in routine, and she needed routine, because routine left her energies undistracted from such essentials as coordinating a tangle of stove-pipes into a coherent pattern. (Martha’s eye, as Mr. Joyce had perceived, omitting the model altogether, as a distraction.) But even though finding in her aunt an unexpected ally she didn’t jump up with any demonstrative affection—to fling her arms, for instance, about her aunt’s neck, or to bury her face in her aunt’s lap. She just continued to sit where she was—as Mr. Joyce also perceived.
“So she doesn’t want to leave home?” repeated Mr. Joyce thoughtfully.
“Of course not!” cried Dolores. “How could she? Hasn’t she lived with us ever since she was a little tot? Ever since—” here Dolores dropped a ready tear for Martha’s defunct parents, which was more than Martha ever did—“she was left all alone? Please don’t think her ungrateful, Mr. Joyce, but this is Martha’s home! And we don’t want to lose her either—do we, Harry?”
Harry Gibson hesitated. Now the matter was actually put to him, he found he wouldn’t absolutely mind losing Martha. He was fond of Martha in a way, but chiefly because she’d always been there and he had a large bump of philoprogenitiveness. When she was the little tot of Dolores’ recollection they’d had quite a regular joke together—
(“Hi, Martha! Where’s Mary?”
“In the Bible,” replied Martha.
“Best place for her!” chuckled Harry.)
—but he hadn’t made that joke for some time now, and no other had taken its place … However, before his wife’s appealing gaze he gave the loyal answer; or at least an affirmative grunt.
“Martha can stay with us for ever and ever,” continued Dolores earnestly. “We aren’t ambitious for her—and in Christmas-cards I’m sure she’ll always find a little niche. She can stay with us for ever and ever, painting nice things like Christmas-cards!”
Turn-coat Martha rose slowly to her feet.
“I’ll go,” said Martha.
4
Any young person of eighteen Paris-bound naturally bids her friends adieu with some feeling of consequence. Since this was the end of summer, Martha’s art-school was shut; but in any case she regarded all her fellow-students with equal contempt, and in fact the only two friends she bade adieu to were an ex-war-hero who sold matches outside Paddington Station, and an elderly cobbler in the same neighbourhood.
“Take a box on the house,” invited Mr. Johnson cordially. “How’s life among the bourgeoisie?”
—In the old days, while Martha was still intimidating her aunt’s lodgers round the corner in Alcock Road, they’d seen quite a lot of each other. Since then, owing to her improved circumstances, their encounters were rarer, but they always remained on very easy terms.
“All right,” said Martha. “I see you’ve still got your pitch.”
“Being a war-’ero, they’d have a job to turn me off,�
�� said Mr. Johnson complacently.
Formal courtesies thus exchanged—
“When you were in France, did you ever go to Paris?” asked Martha.
“Not me,” said Mr. Johnson regretfully. “You ’ad to drive top brass, to get to Paris.”
“Well, it’s where I’m going,” said Martha.
Undoubtedly it created an impression. Mr. Johnson naturally didn’t (as a girl-friend might have done) hug Martha with congratulatory ejaculations; but he whistled through his broken teeth in a very gratifying manner.—He might even have expressed himself more fully, had not a customer just then come up for matches; but he was in his way as much of an artist as Martha, and scorned to accept merely the economic price when a touch of histrionic pathos could whack it up to sixpence, or even a bob. In the same instant, both he and Martha weighed an elderly ex-officer type with the same professional eye; then Martha pocketed her box and tactfully strolled on, to leave her friend looking suitably friendless.
But he was truly a friend. Urgent as he was to launch into his spiel, Mr. Johnson achieved a swift, sidelong, out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth counsel.
“Don’t ever drink their tap-water,” muttered Mr. Johnson, out of the side of his deplorable mouth. “Stick to the good old vin rouge …”
5
Martha tramped on to Mr. Punshon’s. Pushing open the door of his narrow shop, how many memories assailed her! The smell of leather and wax, the sight of all the bunches of bootlaces hanging up—(that used to tickle the back of her neck as she sat drawing Mr. Punshon’s tobacco-jar)—aroused in Martha all the nostalgia she was capable of. It was Mr. Punshon who’d given her her first professional commission: a show-card at which she’d had to labour, to get soles proportionate to uppers, eyelets equivalent; he paid her sixpence for it.
“Hello,” said Martha.
Mr. Punshon pushed his spectacles up on his forehead. He was getting so old, and so short-sighted, it took him a little time to recognize her. Then he stretched forth the old tortoise-neck Martha remembered as clearly as she did his tobacco-jar or his show-cards. Seen close to, it offered such a criss-cross of intersecting lines, rubbed in with dirt like the lines of a church brass, it resembled one of Martha’s own drawings.
Martha in Paris Page 1
