Martha in Paris

by Margery Sharp

  “And what is Mademoiselle’s objection, to English models?”

  “Well, they go off the paper,” said Martha.

  There was a general guffaw.—All the students had stopped work to listen, for it was a tradition of the studio that any words of wisdom addressed to one were free to be garnered by all. But after this single exchange they were to be disappointed. All le maître ever subsequently said, beside Martha’s easel, was “Continuez!”

  2

  Fortunately for Dolores’ peace of mind in London, the exact composition of Martha’s class was unknown to her. Of the twenty regular students no less than fourteen were male, and eight actually French. (The tale made up by three Americans, two Dutch and a Swede.) Thus the proportion of males to females was more than two to one—or arithmetically; emotionally, a pretty American named Sally so far upset the tables, by chaining all her fellow-countrymen, four Frenchmen and Nils the Swede to her chariot-wheels, that Martha, one Dane and three other (plain) Americans were left in a proportion of scarcely more than fifty-fifty. Even this would have been enough to make Dolores take alarm; but in one way she had protected Martha better than she knew. Besides warning Martha against red wine, Dolores had also made her three very nice smocks.

  They were of blue denim, for hard wear, and at Martha’s insistence all did up down the front, but otherwise, in cut and ornamentation (red feather-stitching), completely traditional. On a more slender figure they might have suggested, quite attractively, traditional milkmaid or shepherdess. (Sally the pretty American was actually to borrow one, and slay her compatriots in it, at Hallowe’en.) On Martha they looked partly like pup-tents and partly like maternity-garments: and successfully quenched in four Frenchmen and two Dutch any notion of making a pass at her.—There were even a few ribald jokes on the point. However, Martha’s unexpectedly matronly appearance contained also a certain matronly consequence, and if she wasn’t made a pass at, no more was she made a butt.

  It was Sally who found a nickname for her: Mother Bunch. As Mother Bunch—and though a chuckle might have echoed from Paddington, to see a Young Pachyderm so translated—Martha occupied a position in the studio that suited her very well.

  Each Sunday she wrote two letters home: one for Dolores, one for Mr. Joyce.

  DEAR AUNT DOLORES,

  I hope you and Uncle Harry are both well. I am too, also working very hard, and the food is not bad.

  Yours affec.,

  MARTHA

  Mr. Joyce received practically a carbon-copy.

  Dear Mr. Joyce,

  I hope you are very well. I am too, also working very hard, and the food is all right.

  Yours affec.,

  MARTHA

  If they were not epistles to be exchanged, and exclaimed over, with any extravagant enthusiasm, at least their punctuality reassured. Actually Martha’s best effort, directed to Mr. Joyce, was a laboriously-transcribed quatrain in French.

  La peinture à l’huile

  Est bien difficile,

  Mais c’est beaucoup meilleure

  Que la peinture au beurre.

  Mr. Joyce, reading it, chuckled with pleasure. It was old-hat to him. It was one of the oldest rhymes current in Paris studios. He couldn’t know it was Sally who wrote it out for Martha to copy.

  “What did I tell you?” demanded Mr. Joyce in triumph—it was the one letter he did take round to the Gibsons.

  “Oh, Mr. Joyce!” cried Dolores, greatly struck. “Do you suppose she made it up herself?”

  “No, she didn’t make it up herself,” said Mr. Joyce. (Though it occurred to him that in the unlikely event of Martha’s taking to verse, it was just the sort of thing to expect from her.) “She didn’t make it up herself; but it shows she can understand a joke in French.”

  So far by this time had Dolores’ early fears subsided, even the notion of a French joke didn’t dismay her. Liberally, after the rhyme had been explained, she admitted the French to have some quite nice, clever jokes. The really outrageous joke Paris was to play upon Martha was of course yet to come.

  Chapter Four

  To not a single gay party was Martha invited. Nor did she learn to frequent such cafes as Le Dôme or La Rotonde. All the red wine she ever consumed was consumed at table in the rue de Vaugirard.—Madame Dubois, unaware of an ally in Paddington, was as surprised as relieved that Martha didn’t demand Vichy-water; but Vichy or tap was all one to Martha. But though she always dined at home she didn’t always lunch at home. If the day promised fairly Madame provided half a long French loaf well stuffed with charcuterie for her to munch en plein air in the Tuileries Gardens.

  Following her instinct for routine, Martha regularly sought the same seat. (Adjacent to the trompe l’oeil statue of Tragedy and Comedy: the contemplation of which bizarre artifact relaxed her eye much as the reading of detective-stories relaxes the academic brain.) Naturally she was sometimes forced to share it; in fact amorous couples so appreciated her stolid incuriosity, they made bee-lines for its other end. But neither the bee-like murmur of their endearments, nor even the shriller note of a quarrel, disturbed Martha. She roused and glared only if anyone sat down on her portfolio—and not even the most besotted of lovers ever did so twice.

  But the Tuileries Gardens are in Paris; in the heart of Paris. On one of these fine autumn days Martha was neighboured by a solitary young man.

  2

  Even Dolores (even in Paris) could hardly have felt apprehension. Nothing more decorous was imaginable than his general aspect and behaviour. A neat suit and close hair-cut placed him securely within the resident Anglo-Saxon pale; he wasn’t even eating, like Martha, French food, but reading Galsworthy in Tauchnitz. Only as he turned the pages (and with no one sitting between them), it was inevitable that he should at last catch Martha’s eye.

  “Nice day,” said the young man.

  Martha growled noncomittally.

  “I thought you were English,” said the young man. “I am too.”

  The addendum was so superfluous, Martha ignored it. As if taking her silence for virginal alarm, the young man instantly informed her that his name was Eric Taylor and that he worked in the Paris branch of the City of London Bank.

  “Haven’t I seen you here before?” he added hopefully.

  The classic approach was ill-judged. In Martha’s view either one had seen something (things including persons), or one hadn’t; any doubt on the point mere ocular flabbiness. Again, however, her silence was misunderstood: whether she wanted to or not she learned that her interlocutor lived with a widowed mother who had come over from England to make a home for him.—Martha munched at her long half-loaf rather faster and ceased to listen. (It was an exceptionally toothsome half-loaf: crisply browned, with poppy-seeds on top, also the poppy-seeds made quite interesting patterns.) But obviously Eric Taylor told her a good deal more about himself, since when he at last rose to go he said what a jolly talk they’d had.

  “Perhaps we’ll see each other again?” he suggested.

  “If you keep on coming here,” said Martha gloomily.

  3

  Nothing on the face of it could have been less promising. But Eric Taylor had already projected upon Martha an ideal image: that of a sweet young English girl all by herself in Paris.

  He needed to meet one badly. It was understandable. His mother, in addition to making a home for him, had made him a very nice circle of friends. Regularly each Saturday evening they played bridge with the English chemist and his wife, and on Wednesday evenings with two very nice women who ran the English library, and on Sundays, after the Anglican service, often stood chatting with quite a party of nice English friends. Only they were all rather long in the tooth. In fact, there wasn’t a girl among them.—Eric’s position as cashier at the City of London Bank indeed offered opportunities a brasher young man might have profited by, among the pretty debs at finishing-schools who scampered in to cash Daddy’s cheques; unfortunately their chic put him out of countenance, the flutter of their lo
ng eyelashes fluttered his heart but tied his tongue; the shyness he projected upon Martha was his own. As for the multitude of pretty French girls about his path, they frightened him even more: Mrs. Taylor’s secret but perennial fear of her son’s taking up with a midinette was as nothing to Eric’s personal secret fear of being laughed at for his accent …

  Thus Martha, plain and stocky as she was, filled a space too long vacant. Eric’s very conventionality demanded that it should be filled. To be young, and in Paris, and not in love—(“Gay Paree!” as Harry Gibson would have said. “Amour, amour!”)—bothered him as much as if he’d been at Lord’s cricket-ground without a club-tie. For several days before he spoke to her the sight of Martha solitary on a bench in the Tuileries had set every necessary emotion in ferment. It was indeed a remarkable feat of will-power on his part, but he was growing desperate.

  The emotion that led Martha to permit his attentions—or at least to refrain from biting his head off—was more practical. Eric bagged the seat for her. A spell of fine weather immediately succeeding made the service peculiarly welcome. Though the Gardens were thronged, even if Martha stayed to wash her brushes there was her place kept. Common politeness forbade a snub—or if not politeness, self-interest.

  Thus they entered day by day into something like acquaintance. Eric having told her his name, Martha was too socially inexperienced not to return her own.—He found it infinitely preferable to the Jennifers and Lettices (some with an Hon. in front) on his Bank’s books: Martha was a name to reassure the most timid heart that beat. As for her status as art-student, which might have alarmed him by its Bohemian implications, Eric knew too much of Paris to take it seriously. Half the debs he cashed cheques for called themselves art-students …

  “I’m only surprised your people let you come,” said Eric, “all on your little own!”

  (He actually managed to think of Martha as little. He was at any rate some inches the taller: the advantage in weight was all on Martha’s side, but Eric managed to cope with that too by thinking of her with affectionate amusement as puppy-fat. In the same way he saw her stolid countenance as serene, and her taciturnity as shyness. Martha, by saying as little as possible, was indeed a party to his self-delusion; the less she said, the sweeter and shyer she appeared to the poor fish.)

  “You’re so defenceless,” added Eric fondly.

  He did everything he could think of to reassure her. A week after their first encounter he invited her to meet his mother.

  “I know she’ll like you,” encouraged Eric, “and I’m sure you’ll like her …”

  Only one so besotted could have taken Martha’s answering growl for an expression of timidity. Socially inexperienced or not, Martha could smell boredom. The additional bait of a nice family evening (such as Eric felt sure she must be missing) was again ill-judged. Martha had no more taste for nice family evenings than a Cossack. If it hadn’t been so particularly fine next morning, she’d have consumed her charcuterie in the studio. But the weather was in league with Eric Taylor, and force of habit took her back to the familiar bench.

  “Mother says next Friday,” reported Eric gladly, “to supper.”

  Thus driven to active self-defence Martha sought, and happily found, what appeared to her an unanswerable objection.

  “I get supper. It’s paid for.”

  “What a careful little thing you are!” exclaimed Eric, affectionately amused. (Also touched: in default of any solid information he pictured Martha’s parents as cultured but indigent—in the Church, perhaps?—so that her time in Paris entailed quite severe financial sacrifice on their part—the mater giving up her subscription to the Lady, the Rev. foregoing a new cassock.)

  “Anyway your people won’t be out of pocket,” encouraged Eric, “and I’m sure they wouldn’t object if you asked them.”

  “There isn’t time,” pointed out Martha.

  “I didn’t mean you should write—though I really believe you would!” said Eric, touched afresh by such simplicity. “I just meant I’m sure they’d approve.”

  This was naturally a point Martha couldn’t argue, since she had no parents; or if she wasn’t disingenuous enough not to give Dolores and Harry Gibson their place, Eric was probably right. She thought again.

  “I’m not supposed to speak English.”

  “You’ve been speaking it to me.”

  “And I’m sorry for it,” said Martha gloomily.

  What a tender conscience she had!—and how flattering to Eric’s starveling ego that she’d wounded it for him!

  “If you like, we’ll all talk French,” he promised.

  “I might pick up a bad accent,” countered Martha.—Why didn’t she say outright that she wasn’t coming simply because she didn’t want to? Her mistake lay in having entered into argument at all. Martha, perceiving this, was in fact about to rectify the situation, and as forthrightly as possible—the phrase “not if you paid me” actually forming on her tongue—when Eric pressed on.

  “Anyway, I’m sure you’d like to see our flat,” he urged. “Mother’s done wonders with it. The bathroom’s just like at home.”

  He spoke more appositely than he knew. As has been said, the one thing that discontented Martha in the rue de Vaugirard was the bath. What with the flakes of enamel adhering to her behind and the water never running quite hot, she hadn’t had a proper lie-down-and-soak in weeks.

  “Is it constant hot water?” she asked enviously.

  “Constant,” Eric assured her. “Mother had a whole new system put in.”—He wasn’t disconcerted by this new turn to their conversation. Amongst all the other virtues he’d projected on Martha was that of domesticity.

  “Is the bath vitreous?” asked Martha.

  “If you mean is it a sort of china, yes,” said Eric. “Pale green.”

  Her defences pierced at last—

  “What time on Friday?” asked Martha.

  Chapter Five

  “Do you mind if I’m not in for dinner?” enquired Martha of Madame Dubois on the Friday morning. “I’ve been asked out.”

  “But my dear child, how agreeable!” exclaimed Madame Dubois, from the heart.—“By whom?” she added conscientiously. “One of your comrades?”

  “No, Mrs. Taylor,” said Martha. “She’s a widow in the City of London Bank.”

  Madame Dubois beamed. What could sound safer or more respectable? Also she immediately visualized a whole dish of tripes à la mode de Cäen served between Angèle and herself before Martha ravaged it. Madame Dubois had already succeeded in screwing Martha’s pension up by half—(Delighted as one is to be of service, wrote Madame to Mr. Joyce, and to so kind a friend of my poor husband’s, the little one’s appetite is truly formidable!) —but the more food she provided the more Martha ate of it.

  An additional source of complaisance was that she and Angèle were spoiling for a row. Customarily Madame and her daughter had a row about once a fortnight. It was their only means of injecting drama into a joint existence otherwise too suffocatingly placid; the presence of Martha had inhibited them already too long. Madame Dubois looked forward to those tripes à la mode with an enthusiasm as much emotional as esurient—one word of criticism from Angèle, and the knives would be out indeed …

  “Certainly, my dear child,” permitted Madame Dubois, “the more nice friends one makes the better! Do not fail to present my compliments to your kind hostess.”

  Thus licenced, Martha made her preparations, and with the aid of a street-plan carefully drawn by Eric arrived at the rue d’Antibes on the dot.

  2

  As Eric’s mother was fond of remarking—indeed as though laying claim to some virtue—she wasn’t clever; thus it must have been purely by some almost animal instinct that she succeeded in transforming a little bit of Paris into a little bit of Home.—A beaver, it is related, faced by the water from a spilled vase, will immediately set about chewing up the nearest chair-leg in order to build a dam; Mrs. Taylor, less destructive, merely re-modelle
d a bathroom (in particular ousting the bidet): but every stick of the Taylor furniture had crossed the Channel, and not a dish appeared on their table unblessed by the severe gods of British cooking. Eric’s mother was probably the only housewife in Paris to serve regularly, at whatever expense of spirit, brussels-sprouts.

  Like the fabled beaver, she built a dam: protective of her only child against the dangerous waters of Gallic immorality.

  It was true that these scarcely swirled, down the quiet rue d’Antibes, and barely lapped the sills of the City of London Bank; but Paris was Paris. The Taylor circle of acquaintances has been described: no person of even remotely immoral, or even frivolous, character was comprehended in it; Paris was still Paris. Mrs. Taylor never forgot this for a moment—or if she did, Paris reminded her. Just the way a taxi hooted—so differently from a London taxi—sufficed to put her on guard again. Walking home from Saturday bridge at the English chemist’s—twopence a hundred and then a nice long gossip about the Royal family—Mrs. Taylor was once positively halted by the warning note. “If you’re tired, Mother, we’ll take one?” suggested Eric kindly. “Tired? What nonsense!” cried Mrs. Taylor briskly, and briskly stepping out again. Not for worlds would she have shared with him the mental image of a blonde in fox-fur being borne to (or from) some illicit rendez-vous. Yet it was strange how clearly she visualized the creature—hair bright as a topaz against the taxi’s interior dark, bosom aheave under silver fox in anticipation (or languor). She wasn’t a normally imaginative woman; it was just, again, Paris.

  For the last three years, in fact, Eric’s mother, for all her surface calm, had lived in a state of mind comparable to that in which she would have watched him sheltering under a tree in a thunderstorm.—At what moment might not the blonde lightning strike, to destroy and pass on? Eric couldn’t stand it, Mrs. Taylor told herself: his heart was too pure, also she knew his salary to a shilling, even a silver-fox muff would run him into debt—and what would the Bank say then? Sometimes if the English chemist and his wife had served Welsh rabbits Mrs. Taylor lay awake for several hours picturing her son at once heartbroken and unemployed; or even lying beside the Seine under a gendarme’s cape.