Martha, Eric, and George

by Margery Sharp

  “Of course I’ve a son. If I hadn’t, I shouldn’t have a grandson!” retorted Mrs. Taylor.

  “Under French law, you would need to be without living offspring.—Don’t ask me why,” added the expert hastily, “it’s just in the Code.”

  “How extremely silly,” said Mrs. Taylor.

  She paused all the same; for all her low opinion of the man (and she now realized she’d taken an instinctive dislike to him at sight), his words carried weight with her; in his own obnoxious phrase, he patently knew his onions. Mrs. Taylor paused; she reflected; and once again came up with a solution.

  “Very well, then, let Eric.—You would, wouldn’t you, darling?”

  “Of course,” muttered Eric.

  “Unfortunately, that’s impossible too,” regretted the expert. “Apart from everything else” (here he discreetly skipped several paragraphs of the Code) “the position in France is that no one may legally adopt under the age of forty.—Which is rather interesting,” added the expert, with a touch of professional relish, “since in England the odds would be rather the other way. In England, an adopter nearer in age—parent, so to speak, rather than grandparent—would probably gain the more sympathetic hearing. But whether the child would be even admitted into England—”

  “I’d get him in,” interrupted Mrs. Taylor confidently, “even if you’re going to tell us about another silly law. I’m never asked to open anything!”

  Again, where were the anticipated looks of admiration for her courage and resource? Before Eric’s inward eye, indeed, as her meaning dawned, started the inch-high headline BANK OFFICIAL’S MOTHER IN CUSTOMS SCANDAL. Or even INFANT SUFFOCATED IN HAT-BOX: BANK OFFICIAL’S MOTHER ON SERIOUS CHARGE.

  “Of course I’d give him a little something first,” reassured Mrs. Taylor, “just to keep him quiet …”

  INFANT DOPED, read Eric. He glanced desperately towards his colleague; who under that anguished appeal (and not a little dismayed himself) at last made the point to which he should have driven up sooner, through all the fascinating ambages of international law.

  “Whether in France or in England, my dear lady, I must remind you that the mother’s claim is paramount.”

  Her hand as it were suspended in the act of boring an air-hole, Mrs. Taylor stared.

  “Remind me? You never said a word about it!” she protested indignantly.

  “It is nonetheless the fact,” explained the expert, rather hurrying on, “that without the mother’s consent no adoption order would be viable. Even has a mother abandoned her child, she still retains her legal rights, unless and until she waives them. On this very point that troubles you, of the child’s nationality, should the mother be persuaded to acknowledge it, before a Public Notary over here, it could simply be endorsed on her own British passport as British.”

  Mrs. Taylor felt she had never in her life heard anything so unfair. That Martha alone—Martha who’d deposited her offspring like a parcel—could thus easily (and she alone) bestow upon him the priceless gift of British citizenship, struck Mrs. Taylor as the unfairest thing she’d ever heard of.

  “Why can’t he be endorsed on my passport?” she demanded jealously.

  “Because you aren’t his mother, Mother,” sighed Eric.

  “The mother’s claim being ever paramount,” stressed the expert. “In fact, I do most strongly advise your making contact with whom as a preliminary to … well, anything.”

  With that he took his departure; leaving, like many another expert, his clients in a state of complete bafflement. (To be fair, he was pretty baffled himself.) But at least one point had emerged, from that distressing, abortive interview: however contrary to Mrs. Taylor’s deepest wish, Martha could no longer be considered as interred under a rose-bush. Martha had to be—found.

  3

  The expert had gone. Mother and son were alone. The whisky Eric poured was for himself.

  “Where is she now?” asked Mrs. Taylor.

  There was no need to pronounce the name. She, or her, had only one reference for both of them.

  “I don’t know,” confessed Eric miserably.

  “But, my darling, you must know!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor, controlling a touch of impatience.

  “I don’t honestly, Mother. The last time I saw her was on January the twenty-third.”

  Mrs. Taylor performed a rapid mental calculation. Like many another woman bad at arithmetic, she could always work out a certain particular sum.

  “But she must at least have … suspected, in January!”

  “She didn’t say so,” rejoined Eric glumly, “even when I suggested it …” The implication of this was so painful—that Martha’d rather bear a bastard than have him for husband—he hurried on. “I expect she’s gone back to England, if Leclerc heard her tell the taxi the Gare St. Lazare. It’s the way she usually went Home.”

  Mrs. Taylor was momentarily touched. Shocking and heartless as it was of Martha to abandon her babe, the instinct subsequently to flee home (like a wounded bird) aroused Mrs. Taylor’s sympathy. That she wouldn’t have felt nearly so sympathetic had Martha been a wounded Belgian bird fleeing home to Belgium, or a Swiss to Switzerland, or a Polish to Poland, was beside the point.

  “Poor child!” exclaimed Mrs. Taylor. “Then you must write to her, at Home.”

  “Only I don’t know the address,” confessed Eric.

  “Somewhere in Birmingham,” prompted Mrs. Taylor. “I remember her telling us she was going home for Christmas in Birmingham.”

  “Only I don’t know where, in Birmingham.”

  Again Mrs. Taylor needed to summon her patience.

  “Then you must send a letter, dear, to be forwarded, to her address in Paris. I can’t believe you don’t know that!”

  However extraordinarily, Eric didn’t. Martha had lodged in the rue de Vaugirard; but at what number, in that interminable thoroughfare? The cab in which Eric bore her back after their illicit pleasures had ever been halted, by Martha’s sensible insistence, at some anonymous corner. Martha knew better than Eric the nature of a Paris concierge, and preferred to walk—how many yards? Ten, twenty, hundreds?—rather than have his escort of her reported to a Professor’s widow specializing in, and guaranteeing the virtue of, young English girl-students …

  Or had she even then been presciently covering her tracks?

  “You mayn’t believe it, Mother, but I don’t even know what was her exact address here,” said Eric. “I always met her outside the studio.”

  “The studio! Of course!” cried Mrs. Taylor. “Of course they’ll have her address there! You must go round to-morrow.”

  Chapter Five

  1

  Thus it was that at shortly after six on the following day Eric presented himself at the door of the most famous studio in Paris. The narrow entry was familiar, so often had he waited for Martha outside it; now, however, in August (the school closed), it wore an unwelcoming aspect: tight-mouthed and rebarbative. An old rat of a caretaker would actually have denied Eric admittance; only after an astronomical tip so much as acknowledged le maître to be on the premises. A second premium changed hands before Eric was convoyed down a dingy passage towards a door at which the old rat but fearfully tapped, and but half-opened, ere scuffling off again—presumably to bury his gains under a floor-board, along with a morsel of cheese.

  The room into which Eric thus introduced himself was small, book-lined, portfolio-strewn; no furniture in it except a desk and a chair. The desk also was strewn, chiefly with papers; the chair—a large one, but le maître’s bulk overflowed it—so placed that Eric was presented squarely with le maître’s back.

  He coughed politely.

  “I’m most terribly sorry to bother you, sir—” began Eric.

  The huge shoulders slightly, irritably stirred, as though shrugging off a fly. Still without looking round le maître reached a hand towards a pile of printed sheets, flicked off the topmost and waved it impatiently behind his back. Eric took it—there seem
ed nothing else to do—and found himself in possession of an enrollment-form for the next term.

  “I’m terribly sorry—” repeated Eric.

  “Take it, take it!” growled le maître. “Also kindly inform Jules, on your way out, that the next tip he accepts had better be large enough to retire upon …”

  It was a measure of Eric’s thoroughly moral nature that even at that moment his conscience smote him on behalf of a venal old rat.

  “If I’ve got her into trouble—” began Eric.

  He broke off, appalled at the Freudian slip. It was Martha—she, her—whom he’d got into trouble. But apparently le maître hadn’t noticed; Eric pulled himself together. The interview having opened as badly as possible—a major misunderstanding followed by a charge of corrupting staff—his only course was to start again.

  “Actually I haven’t come to enroll at all, sir. Though of course,” added Eric hastily, “if I’d the least talent, and if you’d accept me—”

  Again he broke off. The attempt at placation was only taking him off the rails. With a strong effort he got his nerves under control and at last managed to complete a sentence.

  “What I’ve really come for, sir, is the address of one of your students.”

  Le maître turned and looked him deliberately over. Eric had the impression of being unflatteringly photographed by an eye accurate and retentive as the film of a camera.

  “And suppose I decline, monsieur, to give you the address of one of my students?”

  “Well, I’m in a Bank myself,” said Eric—to le maître quite inexplicably. “But if you’d just forward a letter—”

  “This is an art-school, not a poste restante, monsieur.”

  “It really is of the utmost importance to me, sir,” pleaded Eric. “Her name’s Martha—”

  Down on the desk came a large, big-knuckled, freckled hand making not only the papers but Eric jump.

  “Martha!” roared le maître. “Martha! Of Martha, monsieur, let me assure you I know nothing whatever!—Get out!”

  Eric was surprised. It seemed to him a very rum thing that the only person of whom Martha had ever spoken with respect should regard her with such an apparent ferocity of dislike. He got out all the same—leaving le maître to complete the curiously relevant letter in the writing of which he had been interrupted.

  2

  “This very moment I am interrupted,” scrawled le maître, “by a young compatriot demanding her address! (Picasso blue-period; boneless, pathetic. You were still right to buy!) I repeat: let Martha go her own way; if she develops as we hope, we may one day see marvels. Then at least she will return to Paris—to show! Just now, old friend, we possess our souls in patience—I teaching fools perspective, and you selling greater fools mink …”

  The letter was addressed to a certain Mr. Joyce, an extremely wealthy London furrier, also a considerable patron of the arts; in which latter quality he’d staked Martha to two years in Paris. It was in fact her sudden refusal of a second year that had so roused le maître’s fury; in a lifetime of teaching she was the single pupil in whom he’d ever perceived a capacity to learn equal to his own capacity to instruct. To outstanding natural talent, in Martha, were added equally outstanding powers of concentration and endurance; she had the eye of an angel and worked like a dog. So was le maître prepared to work like a dog, laying the foundations of a brilliant future that should be his future also; as much as Eric he felt himself cavalierly used—especially since Martha, at the end of the preceding summer term, offered no slightest reason for her defection; simply stood dumb and sullen as the ox he’d called her.—Martha’s figure being so portly that in the studio she was nicknamed Mother Bunch, the circumstance that she was also eight months pregnant had escaped le maître’s notice …

  It was a point on which Eric could have enlightened him; so could le maître have enlightened Eric. But the opportunity passed, and was recorded only in a briefly-scrawled postscript to le maître’s letter.

  “Naturally I did not give it, her address, especially as she seems to have had the sense not to give it herself—to a blue-period Picasso! At least Martha has not made a fool of herself yet!”

  3

  “Le maître doesn’t know it,” reported Eric, back in the rue d’Antibes.

  “But he must!” protested Mrs. Taylor. “Of course he must have all his students’ addresses!”

  “He says not Martha’s.—I rather got the impression,” added Eric moderately, “that she’d somehow annoyed him.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Mrs. Taylor. “Was he nice to you, dear?”

  “Oh, very,” said Eric. “Of course he was up to his eyes in papers—”

  “Then perhaps you caught him at a bad moment,” reflected Mrs. Taylor, “when he didn’t want to be bothered looking up his records. If you asked him to lunch—”

  Eric blenched. However brief their interview, le maître’s personality had made a deep impression on him; he was so thoroughly aware of having been in the presence of a thoroughly big shot, he’d as soon have contemplated asking the Governor of the Bank of England. That Martha had stood up to daily contact with such a man—had even succeeded in annoying him—was to Eric almost incredible. He was still far from suspecting that Martha might be a big shot herself.

  He shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t be any use, Mother. I assure you it wouldn’t.”

  Mrs. Taylor sighed.

  “Very well, dear, if you’re certain …”

  “I am truly, Mother.”

  “Then the only thing left,” said Mrs. Taylor bravely, “is to advertise.”

  So it was that daily during the succeeding weeks every Birmingham paper carried a personal advertisement concocted, edited, then re-edited by Mrs. Taylor and her son Eric; in its final form so combining human appeal with social discretion, no Aunt Sally of a woman’s page could have done better.

  “MARTHA: all forgiven—”

  (“I’m not sure how she’ll take that,” objected Eric uneasily.

  “Nonsense,” retorted Mrs. Taylor. “Of course she must want to be forgiven. Sometimes I don’t think you’ve handled her very sensitively, dear.”)

  “—return to Paris—”

  (“For certainly you can’t go running after her,” glossed Mrs. Taylor, changing sides.)

  “—to wed E.”

  4

  The conclusion, obviously crucial, was contributed by Eric, and from motives that did his conscience, if belatedly, every credit. Hitherto—his mind first reeling under the shock of paternity, then preoccupied by the painful twin emotions of self-pity and wounded pride—hitherto, Eric’s conscience hadn’t had a look in. Conscience was nonetheless the strongest basis of his character; it was only a matter of time (in this case under a week) before that uncomfortable virtue re-awoke in full blast. Now a moral obligation like a Gorgon’s head stared him in the face. Having seduced Martha and got her with child, wasn’t it his duty to make an honest woman of her?—even in her own teeth?

  “You do, you really do want to?” asked Mrs. Taylor anxiously.

  (Of course she had brought Eric up to be conscientious, and she was a highly moral woman herself; but for once could have pardoned a trifle of backsliding. Mrs. Taylor’s own first suggestion had been that Martha should be induced back to Paris simply to provide her infant with British nationality—and then hand him over to his grandmother.)

  “It’s my duty,” said Eric.

  He was genuinely good. Le maître might see him as a blue-period Picasso; there was truth in the vision. Even his mother, for all her devotion, secretly admitted Eric’s character—not particularly forceful. He was nonetheless good. He was no longer in love with Martha. The prospect of their union filled him less with joy than with alarm. His paternal instinct would have been satisfied with any decent provision to his son of food, shelter and education; after three years with the City of London Bank’s Paris branch, he could even envisage French nationality as no utter disas
ter. But the seduction of Martha, the getting of her with child, weighed as heavily on his conscience as would have a cooked account; and at whatever cost to his future comfort, he was prepared to do his duty by her.

  So the advertisement took its final shape: “MARTHA: all forgiven, return to Paris to wed E.”

  Martha never saw it, for the simple reason that she didn’t live in Birmingham and never had. Birmingham was merely the first place-name that suggested itself, under Mrs. Taylor’s questioning. (Martha always disliked being questioned.) The message never reached her; nor would she have taken any notice of it if it had. Eric might in fact as well have attempted to magnetize a needle in a haystack, as by the above-described rubric to trace and attract back to his side the mother of his son.

  Much more surprisingly, no better success awaited the French authorities attempting to trace the mother of a new little national.

  5

  In a small agricultural village north of Paris Madame P., the local midwife, welcomed back her sister-in-law Madame D. from a prolonged family visit (culminating in a funeral) in Alsace.—The linen at least had been fairly divided; also two silver sauce-spoons commanded Madame P.’s admiration.

  “And you, my poor Bettine?” enquired the sister-in-law. “How have things gone with you?”

  “As usual!” sighed Madame P.

  The sister-in-law directed a casual glance at a new ironing-board.

  “One would say that you had received a legacy also!”

  “One makes one’s economies,” said Madame P. modestly.

  The sister-in-law directed a glance at a new chiming-clock.

  “Is it true, as I hear, you have had a young English woman with you?”

  Madame P. shrugged.

  “During the summer, when have I not? An art-student, naturally!”

  The sister-in-law glanced down at new linoleum.

  “Who has since returned bag and baggage to England … If there is anything to be avoided,” added Madame P., “it is complications with foreigners!”