Martha in Paris

by Margery Sharp

  “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 breaking 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.

  He came back and sat down again. But now, as though the movement had cleared his head, his thoughts at last found their necessary focus: upon Martha.

  They were bitter. The fact was that Martha, his first and only love, had tossed him aside like—there was no other phrase for it—like a soiled glove. No dashing hussar abandoning a village maiden could have behaved more cavalierly. Not that Martha was in any other sense dashing, far from it; her outstanding characteristic was rather a blunt stolidity which only Eric in his innocence could have seen as virginal shyness. The trumpet that called her from his side had been no bid from some international impresario—(the female equivalent, so to speak, of “Ha!” amid the battle)—but so far as Eric could make out must have sounded more like the scrannel scrape of an easel across a studio floor.—Inexplicable, disarraying circumstance! Of course Martha was fond of drawing, she was an art-student; but much more easily could Eric have comprehended the lure of thousand-dollar gowns at Las Vegas—that is, if Martha had been able to sing.

  She couldn’t sing.

  Bitterly listing, as a discarded lover will, his lost one’s every disadvantage, Eric further reminded himself that no more could Martha cook. All those Friday evenings in the preceding autumn, when she’d been coming round for a proper English meal and then a proper hot bath, such as her humble student’s lodging couldn’t afford, had Martha ever offered to lend a hand in the kitchen? Not she.—Had she ever offered even to help wash up? Not Martha. Still Mrs. Taylor’s kindness persisted, she felt it her duty to extend a hand to a shy young English girl alone in Paris—and if she had been ill enough repaid then, thought Eric confusedly, how was she being repaid now!

  He was of course partly to blame. He admitted it. During a certain week of his mother’s absence he had undoubtedly—seduced Martha. But whose fault was it they weren’t married, to the palliation of their common misdoing? Naturally Eric would have preferred to get his step, to Assistant Manager, before taking on a wife; but hadn’t he instantly, or at least as soon as Martha returned from Christmas in Birmingham, assured her of his honourable intentions if anything … happened?

  The scene was as vivid as if it had taken place that morning: on a bench in the Tuileries Gardens, opposite the trompe l’oeil statue of Tragedy and Comedy …

  “You know if anything … happens, Martha, we can be married straight away? Of course you’d give up your painting—”

  And she left him flat. What she actually said Eric preferred not to remember. All he remembered was Martha’s back as, portfolio under arm, she stumped out of the Tuileries Gardens, out of his life.

  Or not quite all.

  From that wintry interview certain other words of his own re-echoed.

  “I want to look after you, Martha. To shoulder all your burdens for you …”

  Evidently she had taken him at his word.

  5

  It wasn’t any clap of a colleague’s hand, nor the abrupt contact with a ledger, that roused Eric from these painful memories, and reflections, but the reappearance of his mother.—To Eric’s surprise her whole aspect had changed. Her step was elastic; she was still pale, but with upon each cheek a patch of scarlet; her lips still trembled, but in a joyful smile.

  “Oh, my darling,” cried Mrs. Taylor, “it’s a boy!”

  In her eye gleamed the spark that lights bonfires, sets oxen a-roasting; whole villages, whole counties, could hardly have contained her overflowing benevolence, as there stood Mrs. Taylor rejoicing in the possession of a grandson.

  Eric also observed that she had her hat on.

  “Mother, you’re not going out?” asked Eric nervously.

  “But of course I am, dear,” replied Mrs. Taylor. “He’s as good as gold on my bed, but he can’t be left alone!—so I’ll just pop round to the English chemist for his formula, before you go back to the Bank.”

  Chapter Three

  1

  “Poppity-pin!” crooned Mrs. Taylor.

  It was about four that afternoon. Eric had long returned to the City of London (Paris branch) Bank—so punctually, in fact, there had been no time, during the few minutes that elapsed between his mother’s reappearance and his own departure, for any further colloquy. (Eric actually preserved an almost total silence; his whole bearing struck Mrs. Taylor as odd. She’d expected to find him hanging over Baby—not impatiently watching the clock. It had even crossed her mind that he might take the afternoon off.) His absence promoted nonetheless a singular, nursery peace; indeed the infant, after taking its bottle quite bea
utifully—just a little wind, easily patted up—should theoretically have been back in its carry-cot; but what grandmother could resist the pleasure of cradling a first grandson in her arms?

  “Poppity-pin, Gran’s little treasure!” crooned Mrs. Taylor.

  The moment was far too delightful to spoil by thinking about Martha, so Mrs. Taylor didn’t. This involved no particular feat of will-power, merely a complete if unconscious surrender to wishful thinking. To possess a grandchild without the encumbrance of a daughter-in-law is many a grandmother’s unadmitted dream. “Dear Anne, dear Lucy, dear Susan!” cry the grandmothers—happy to welcome with small bottles of Chanel No. 5 at Christmas each necessary transmitter of a family face; but even happier to water with easy tears a rose-bush on an early grave …

  Certainly Mrs. Taylor didn’t hope Martha was dead, even though she’d never really liked the girl. (In any case, as she’d learned from Madame Leclerc, Martha was obviously alive that morning. It would have had to be a very sudden accident.) Mrs. Taylor simply forgot Martha: indeed, so all-absorbing was the sheer physical pleasure of holding a baby again, her thoughts had scarcely room for even such future delights as the transition from formula to sieved spinach, from sieved spinach to the first rusk. The minutes passed in a blissful, shared stupor; thirty at least, before there drifted across Mrs. Taylor’s inward eye any image to distract; and then only of a matinée-jacket.

  “I must begin knitting!” Mrs. Taylor told herself.

  The carry-cot actually contained a fairly complete layette—of no superfine quality, unembroidered, uninitialled, but at least, also, new, and like the feeding-formula a point in Martha’s favour. Mrs. Taylor sketchily admitted it—but preferred to visualize garments suited to the riper age of three or four months. A certain matinée-jacket knitted for Eric had been the admiration of every Streatham neighbour; as for bootees, she could toss off a pair a day. Happy, new-old, new-found employment! “I’ll run round to the English Wool Shop to-morrow,” meditated Mrs. Taylor; and still hadn’t settled the point of cap versus bonnet when the telephone rang.

  Fortunately it stood close by her elbow; she hadn’t to move. She lifted the receiver with precaution; it was Eric.

  “Mother.”

  “Yes, dear?” whispered Mrs. Taylor.

  “I can’t hear you, Mother. Can you hear me?”

  “Of course, dear, but I don’t want to wake him. He’s taken his bottle so beautifully!”

  “What did you say?”

  “He’s taken his bottle beautifully!” repeated Mrs. Taylor, slightly raising her voice.

  So, quite unnecessarily, did Eric.

  “Listen, Mother: how old would you say he was? More than three days?”

  “Good gracious, what a question!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor indignantly—but pleased nonetheless that Eric was at last showing a proper interest. His tone was quite laughably urgent! “Three days? More like three weeks!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor.

  “Then it’s probably prison,” said Eric—urgently.

  2

  As though quicker in the uptake than its grandmother, the infant roused. A hand pushed forth, vaguely signalled …

  “He’s trying to get at the telephone!” reported Mrs. Taylor delightedly.—“Now I can’t seem to hear you, dear. What did you say?”

  “Article 55—”

  “I’m sure you didn’t!” objected Mrs. Taylor. “I’m not as deaf as all that!”

  At the other end of the line there was a slight pause before Eric, in all senses of the phrase, began again.

  “Mother.”

  “Well, dear, what is it?”

  “I’ve been talking to a man at the Bank, Mother, actually our legal expert. Of course I put it as a hypothetical case, and it’s not exactly his field, but he looked up the Civil Code. Article 55, failure to register a birth within three days, says not less than ten days imprisonment and fine of not less than four hundred francs. Or either.”

  Le flegme britannique is no myth. If Mrs. Taylor, in the rue d’Antibes, momentarily dropped the receiver, the reaction was physical rather than mental: thus abruptly haled, so to speak, from a wool-shop into the dock, she took but a moment more to reorientate, also defend herself.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Taylor. “We couldn’t register him. We didn’t know in time—did we, Poppitypin?”

  “Mother.”

  “Well, dear?—How I wish you could see him!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor. “He wants the telephone!”

  “Article 173, failure to notify the appropriate Mairie, gives up to eight days imprisonment or fine of up to three hundred and sixty francs. Or both.”

  “Well, of course I’ll notify the Mairie,” agreed Mrs. Taylor. “I’ll pop round first thing in the morning. You must just find out where it is for me.”

  “Mother.”

  “Dear, I’m sure he ought to go to sleep again!” protested Mrs. Taylor. “His little eyes—”

  “Mother, you still haven’t realized,” interrupted Eric desperately. “The fact is, so far as I can make out, and in the circumstances, he’s French.”

  3

  Le flegme britannique is no myth; but there are limits. Now indeed was all Mrs. Taylor’s composure—all her happiness, all her peace of mind—shattered; as the fearful sentence slowly penetrated only hysteria could have expressed her emotion. French? Against all the laws of nature, her grandson French? Subject not of proper Royalty but of a mere faceless Republic?—His anthem, instead of “God Save,” the wild revolutionary “Marseillaise”? “Never!” cried Mrs. Taylor aloud—clutching her grandson to her bosom. “Never!” cried Mrs. Taylor into the telephone …

  But Eric, presumably already too long absent from his desk, had rung off. She was a grandmother alone, unsupported; alone save for the hapless infant in her arms, alone to fend, from that innocent head, the wing-beat of Napoleonic eagles.—Mrs. Taylor wasn’t a normally imaginative woman, but as she now suddenly remembered Military Service, the image was as precise as in a Tenniel cartoon: both birds (there were two of them) wore small Imperial crowns. With equal precision (now in a sort of cinema-montage) she visualized death from frost-bite outside Moscow, and from thirst in some Saharan outpost of the Foreign Legion …

  She snatched at the receiver again.—It was a measure of her disarray: trained originally by her husband, then re-trained by Eric, never to telephone a man at his office, Mrs. Taylor availed herself of the instrument without a second thought.

  “Mr. Taylor? Who wishes to speak to him, please?” fluted a feminine voice from the Bank’s switchboard.

  “His mother!” cried Mrs. Taylor recklessly.

  —Did she or didn’t she hear a giggle, from the switchboard? In any case, there ensued a considerable pause before the voice fluted back.

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Taylor, we don’t seem able to find him. Will you leave a message?”

  Mrs. Taylor took a grip on herself. She was belatedly aware of its being a moment for discretion. But how to frame, in any unsuspicious terms, what was practically a shout in the dark? It was like trying to shriek in a low voice, to fend a blow in slow motion … However, by drawing on a long experience as secretary to the Judges’ Committee of the Streatham Flower Show, she succeeded.

  “Please,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Please say I’d like him to bring his friend back this evening for a little game of bridge—and to tell him it isn’t hypothetical.”

  Buy Martha, Eric, and George Now!

  About the Author

  Margery Sharp (1905–1991) is renowned for her sparkling wit and insight into human nature, which are liberally displayed in her critically acclaimed social comedies of class and manners. Born in Yorkshire, England, she wrote pieces for Punch magazine after attending college and art school. In 1930, she published her first novel, Rhododendron Pie, and in 1938, she married Maj. Geoffrey Castle. Sharp wrote twenty-six novels, three of which, Britannia Mews, Cluny Brown, and The Nutmeg Tree, were made into feature films, and fourteen children’s books, inc
luding The Rescuers, which was adapted into two Disney animated films.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1962 by Margery Sharp

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3427-2

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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  New York, NY 10038

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