Martha in Paris

by Margery Sharp

There was a moment of that silence so intense it seems like a ringing in the ears. Eric whitened; then flushed; and as the blood rushed stinging back, for the second time found forthright speech.

  “You didn’t seem to mind having anything to do with me in bed!”

  “No,” admitted Martha honestly, “I didn’t. But I don’t want even that again, because it’s all very well if you haven’t to draw next morning, but I have.”

  With that she picked up her portfolio and stumped off. She cast one last glance towards the neighbouring bench; but its occupants had changed position. There was nothing to detain her.

  Chapter Eleven

  The most serious crisis of her private life thus satisfactorily overcome, Martha settled down and worked even harder than usual. She needed to: it was at this point that le maître, deciding that she’d been given enough rope, confiscated Martha’s chalks and pencils altogether with the public declaration that Mademoiselle would learn to use paint if he had to beat her over the head. This was the sort of treatment Martha understood; she learnt. Her palette continued subfusc, she still drew, with a brush, very much as she’d drawn with charcoal; but the very difficulty of defining lines in paint taught her much in the way of handling her medium; half-way through term she could have executed a spider-web with a Number Six.—“So we wish to emulate Meissonier?” enquired le maître ironically. “Or do we proceed to painting saints on cowries for the rue St. Sulpice? Why not try with the full brush?”

  But Martha wasn’t ready yet for a full brush; and if le maître didn’t know it, she herself did. Actually she rather enjoyed the discipline, also the prestige (for a second-term student) of having drawn so much of le maître’s attention to herself.

  Eric made no attempt to see her again. Wounded, frustrated, affronted, betrayed, he attempted to find consolation in being also implacable: and though Martha for a week never left the studio without reconnoitring to make sure he wasn’t outside, the precaution proved unnecessary. He was not however alone in his suffering, even though it wasn’t Martha who kept him company. When Martha, to put a stop to Angèle’s constant hints and hand-pressings, announced baldly that she’d turned her suitor down, Angèle burst into tears.

  “I don’t see what you have to cry about,” said Martha reasonably, “when I’m not.”

  “You have a heart of stone!” accused Angèle, between sobs. “It is for him I weep!”

  She was in fact weeping far more for the termination of her vicarious romance, she was like a serial-reader defrauded of the next instalment; all that was left her was to feel as strongly as possible any emotion still going. The most obvious being pity, Angèle pitied the poor desolate young man with all her heart.—The excitement, of acting as go-between to bring about a reconciliation, would of course have suited her much better; but at the bare suggestion Martha looked so positively ferocious, Angèle fell back on pity. It served not inadequately; she had always something to cry about in bed, also nightly over the dinner-table could uphold the poor discarded one’s cause by shooting Martha looks of anguished reproach. (“If your stomach troubles you, you should see a doctor,” said Madame Dubois.) Martha however greatly preferred such looks to those of fond complicity, as she greatly preferred being cold-shouldered by Angèle to having Angèle’s hair coming down each night over her pillow.

  Even Madame Dubois suffered a little with Eric—though as it were tangentially. The abrupt cessation of Martha’s Friday visits to the rue d’Antibes suggested to Madame Dubois that perhaps something had been said, at Richmond; each morning for a week (the same during which Martha reconnoitred outside the studio-door), she anxiously scanned her meagre post for an English stamp, apprehensive of finding within the envelope that bore it at least some curt rebuke, if not an actual threat of Martha’s removal. But no such missive appeared, any more than Eric appeared outside the studio, and in time Madame Dubois regained confidence. The bulk of the suffering, in the rue de Vaugirard, was borne by Angèle.

  2

  Martha herself at this time, however unfairly, was so generally content, her relations with her fellow-students took on an unaccustomed amenity.—That is, she quite often said good-morning to them. As the weeks of the new term passed, her sober, Mother Bunch-ish presence (backed by le maître’s obvious interest—and no one is quicker than the Paris student to scent which way the wind blows), from being acceptable became almost popular. She was still extremely surprised when Sally the pretty American invited her to join an Easter sketching-party at a village outside Paris.

  —Doubly surprised: in the first place Martha’d seen nothing about any sketching-party on the studio notice-board, and in the second Sally rarely sought female companionship. In that hard-working school she was something of a phenomenon: possessed undeniable ability, but was so little serious she regularly cut Friday-morning class to have her hair set; and though le maître, like other great men, was not above a weakness for a pretty face, would probably have been turned out—but that the enormous, special fees paid by her father subsidized at least two indigent talents.

  Sometimes she wore an engagement-ring and sometimes she didn’t. There was a darling boy back home, but she hadn’t made up her mind.

  “I haven’t seen anything about a sketching-party,” said Martha.

  Sally drooped her long eye-lashes.

  “This is just a private one, honey. Consisting of just me and Nils …”

  Martha’s surprise increased. Darling boy back home or no, Sally’s flirtation with Nils was to common studio-knowledge rapidly approaching a crisis.

  “Then you won’t want anyone,” said Martha reasonably. “I can’t think why you asked me.”

  One of Sally’s many charms was frankness.

  “To play gooseberry,” explained Sally. “I’m terribly fascinated by Nils, but you know what Swedes are, and I am more or less engaged. Sharing a room with another girl would sort of ease the situation.”

  “I dare say,” agreed Martha, “but why me?”

  “Honey, because one’s only got to look at you,” explained Sally, “to know that any hopping into bed is strictly out.—Of course I’ll gladly stake you,” added Sally, with genuine kindness, “and Nils will drive us in his car he’s borrowed, and we’ll all have a fine time!”

  Martha hesitated.—Not because she had any delicacy about accepting Sally’s bounty, any more than she’d had delicacy about accepting Mr. Joyce’s. Martha wouldn’t have robbed a blind man, but that was about her limit, of financial delicacy. What gave her pause was the setting of a village outside Paris.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t like landscape,” said Martha.

  Sally giggled.

  “Nor do Nils and I, particularly!—But you’ll have the kitchen-stove to draw, and you’ll just love it! I’ve been before,” pressed Sally, “we stay with a funny old duck, she’s got this cute little kitchen with a great big stove, and there you can sit all day long drawing your darling stove-pipes. Be a friend, Mother Bunch!”

  Martha turned the matter over in her mind. As Sally so rightly observed, it wasn’t an official sketching-party. One wouldn’t be hauled out daily and set before acres of amorphous vegetation, a dedicated paysagiste at each elbow babbling about light-values; because even though Nils, for all Sally might say, was a paysagiste—to Martha a term of contempt, le maître’s praise of several of the Swede’s sketches notwithstanding—he obviously wouldn’t have leisure to become a nuisance by proselytizing.

  Also (and that the consideration came as a secondary one was revealing), Martha was by now fairly sure that she was in what her Aunt Dolores would have called an interesting condition. The last thing Martha wanted was her aunt’s notice called to the point. She felt, and rightly, that her Aunt Dolores’ reaction would be identical with Eric Taylor’s; even that Harry Gibson might reach Gay Paree at last—with a shot-gun under his arm …

  She decided to be a friend.

  3

  DEAR AUNT DOLORES [wrote Martha]:

  I ho
pe you won’t mind my not being home for Easter, but I have the opportunity to join a very good sketching-party at a village outside Paris. It won’t cost anything because an American girl whose father we think must be a millionaire has offered to pay for me to keep her company because she does not want to go without another girl.

  Yours affec.,

  MARTHA

  This letter, the most informative she’d ever written, was received at Richmond just as passively as she hoped. To Dolores it seemed to promise that Martha was making nice friends at last: Mr. Joyce (to whom its contents were naturally passed on) imagined with pleasure that she was beginning to perceive colour; he was only surprised that it had come about so soon. The notion of Martha set down before acres of amorphous vegetation, a dedicated paysagiste at each elbow, still tickled him. “But no doubt she will reduce all to order!” thought Mr. Joyce. “Put Martha down in a jungle, lions and tigers, also banana-trees and paysagistes, she would reduce to order!”

  4

  Certainly Martha’s conscience was reduced to order. She left Paris with Nils and Sally without a single backward-glancing thought, still less a pitying one, for Eric Taylor. Yet he deserved pity; deplorable as it is to relate, he had gone straight to the dogs. He found that being implacable wasn’t enough; his new-found potency demanded an outlet; and found one—Mrs. Taylor previsionary again!—in the arms of a midinette from the rue St. Honoré. He rewarded the pretty charmer with not merely a fox-fur muff but a fox-fur stole; and if he didn’t run into debt with moneylenders, ran seriously into debt with his mother for his keep.—When Mrs. Taylor asked where was his nice little English friend Martha, Eric returned no answer; but looked as cynically indifferent as his honest countenance allowed, and recommended that he shouldn’t be sat up for.

  Unlike Martha, Célèste had a taste for late hours; also for night-clubs. It was often one in the morning before she and Eric regained her pretty little love-nest with its pink satin bedhead and white bearskin rugs.—To make matters worse, Eric for all his endeavours remained so temperamentally ill-adjusted to love-nests, the exercise was frequently productive of more anxiety than pleasure to him. His expense of spirit equalled his expense of cash; the two pounds he’d put on while in love with Martha he lost almost within a week; and during the weeks that succeeded he lost at least two pounds more.

  Yet essentially it was stout Mother Bunch Martha, not slender topaz-blonde Célèste, who’d struck down upon and disintegrated him like lightning.

  But even had she known (as she did not) what havoc she had wrought, Martha would still have gone off with Nils and Sally. She wouldn’t have stayed behind to seek out, console, and redeem. So far as Martha was concerned, Eric Taylor had ceased to exist.

  Chapter Twelve

  As promised, Nils drove them in his borrowed car. Besides painting-gear Sally took three suitcases; there wasn’t room in the boot for even Martha’s one bag. She sat on it in the back seat, jammed between Nils’ one bag and painting-gear and her own painting-gear. However, it wasn’t far, and Martha climbed out at last merely stiff.

  The small village of Fontenay-aux-Chênes, for all its proximity to Paris, was both agricultural and highly picturesque. To a paysagiste, which Martha definitely wasn’t, its environs offered attractions innumerable. In all directions springing fields and hanging woods effortlessly composed themselves—as it were already framed. “La peinture au beurre!” thought Martha contemptuously; and observed with relief that the cottage they were to inhabit at least wasn’t thatched.

  She walked straight in and looked for the kitchen-stove.

  Sally’s recollection was justified. Majestic beneath a cavernous chimney—simple, iron-stalwart, yet wreathed about by frivolous, Watteau-esque hot-water-pipes—the Platonic ideal of a kitchen-stove stared Martha back in the face. Upon its broad rectangular bosom an enormous iron saucepan roundly challenged all supporting parallels. Martha could hardly wait to join battle; and in fact never paid the slightest attention to anything else, in the highly picturesque village of Fontenay-aux-Chênes.

  Their lodgement in the cottage of Madame Paule was simple but adequate: a large attic, for Martha and Sally, with a double bed, and alongside a sort of cubby-hole for Nils.—Martha, being staked, as she calmly recognized, to guard Sally’s virginity, stumped experimentally from door to door: no more than a metre separated them, and neither had a lock. Obviously there was nothing she could do about Nils’ door, but a chair-back propped under the attic latch—Sally instructed to push from without—appeared a sufficient barricade.

  “Honey, you certainly take your duties seriously!” giggled Sally.

  “It’s you who know what Swedes are,” pointed out Martha.

  If she wasn’t financially delicate, she was financially conscientious. (Sometimes she’d drawn Mr. Punshon’s trade-cards three times over, to get the boot-laces right.)—She made Sally change places and pushed herself. But even under Martha’s weight the door held firm.

  Below, next to the kitchen where the stove was, a tiny parlour was made over altogether to Madame Paule’s guests, for them to eat their meals in, also sit in when they wanted to be indoors. It contained an upright piano, a round rosewood table, six black-horsehair-seated chairs, but no sofa. About the walls hung, as upon the piano stood, various enlarged photographs of Madame Paule’s relations, with in pride of place Madame Paule’s diploma certifying her a registered sage-femme, or midwife. In all, as Sally and Nils agreed, it was hardly a rumpus-room; but they both seemed to find something very amusing indeed about the diploma.—So did Martha find something amusing, when Sally translated it for her. Martha’s sense of humour was extremely crude, she thought nothing funnier than to make Angèle jib like a startled horse, in the Luxembourg—unless it was to lure an undraped model to sit on a cane chair; but in this case her amusement was subtler—Madame Paule the certified midwife being obviously no more observant of her own, Martha’s, interesting condition than was Sally. (“My, but you’re getting stout!” observed Sally, the first night they undressed together. “I’ve always been stout,” said Martha. “I don’t mind.” “Aren’t you lucky!” said Sally idly. “I have to diet …”) Of the two young females beneath her roof it was slender Sally, not portly Martha, upon whom Madame Paule directed a watchful eye, suspicious of scandal. Madame. Paule was outspokenly glad that Sally had brought with her such a serious friend, and let Martha have the run of the kitchen.

  Another reason why Madame Paule approved of Martha was the latter’s taciturnity. Madame Paule had housed so many Anglo-Saxon students before, she was herself almost bilingual, and greatly objected to their practising French on her—as something they hadn’t paid for. In this respect she found Martha a striking example of honesty.

  As the days passed, however, it wasn’t Madame Paule Sally scandalized, but Martha.

  2

  Each morning forth set Sally and Nils (Sally each morning in a fresh dirndl-type blouse and fresh dirndl skirt), with their easels and their canvasses and their paint-boxes, into the sunny, springing fields; and each evening returned with no more to show than such casual blockings-in, such casual smears of colour, as would have disgraced a couple of amateurs. Martha, herself having toiled all day to coordinate essential saucepan with essential stove, sat down to supper opposite the delinquents emanating disapproval—not because of what they might have been doing, but because of what they obviously hadn’t.

  “Nils is just wasting his time,” pointed out Martha censoriously—she and Sally undressing for bed.

  “He doesn’t think so!” smiled Sally. “Nils thinks he’s on the make—poor lamb!”

  Martha enveloped herself in a large white cotton nightgown; Sally wriggled out of peach-coloured silk into black.

  “Then you’re just playing him up,” said Martha.

  “And why not?” countered Sally. “Isn’t he here at his own risks and perils? Haven’t you ever heard of the sex-game, Mother Bunch?”

  “No,” said Martha.


  “Well, I dare say not,” agreed Sally, “but it’s quite enjoyable, if you know the rules!”

  The bed-springs creaked under Martha’s weight. (There was already a noticeable depression, on her side of the mattress.)

  “I don’t think Nils is enjoying it,” persisted Martha. “And anyway he ought to be working.”

  “Goodness, can’t a person take a vacation?” cried Sally—to a slighter, an almost musical twang.

  “Not if they’re serious,” said Martha stubbornly. It was always difficult for her to express herself in words; only a sort of evangelism, such as might feel a Salvation Army officer before a brand to be plucked from the burning (in this case Nils), led her to make the unusual effort. “If you’re serious you’ve got to work all the time,” said Martha, “and Nils is serious, so you shouldn’t mix him up. With sex.”

  “Tell that to Nils!” exclaimed Sally indignantly. “It’s he who’s mixing me up—with sex!”

  “Only you aren’t serious,” said Martha. “So you don’t matter.”

  It was the last effort she made. She wasn’t foolishly altruistic; also Sally was staking her. After this single attempt to rouse the latter’s artistic conscience, Martha gave up.

  It never occurred to her that the sex-game was precisely what she herself had been playing with Eric Taylor. In any case, he didn’t matter either.

  3

  Daily Sally and Nils set out with their easels and their canvasses and their paint-boxes. Martha scarcely quitted the house. However brightly shone the spring sun, however soft blew the spring breezes, Martha camped in the kitchen drawing the kitchen-stove. She didn’t attempt to paint it. She was taking a sort of vacation herself.

  Nils gave up too—though not without a struggle. There was no light on the upper landing: nightly, after how many half-promises, on Sally’s part, in the springing fields (her dirndl-type blouses slipping ever lower and lower down her pretty shoulders), Nils’ door stood ajar ready for her to mistake it for her own and innocently, with face-saving innocence, blunder in. But Sally could see in the dark, and ever homed accurately to the double-bed she shared with Martha.—Once in desperation he tried the attic door; but the chair-back under its latch held firm …