Martha in Paris (6 page)

Martha no more wanted Angèle as a confidante than she wanted Mrs. Taylor as a luncheon-guest. But there was probably something in what Angèle said, and Martha paid, reluctantly, the price of her complicity by meeting her eye across the table whenever Madame Dubois animadverted on Mrs. Taylor's
morgue Britannique
, also by allowing their evening promenade in the Luxembourg to take on the character of a Latin
passeggiata
.—“Do you see him? He isn't here? Perhaps to-morrow!” consoled Angèle. “Oh, what fun if he should suddenly come up and address us!” Martha, who knew that Eric always went straight home as soon as the Bank shut, was sufficiently unperturbed; occasionally even pretended to start, as at a hoped-for figure, just to see Angèle jib too like a horse at a wind-trundled dustbin-lid. A better-educated heart might have been touched to pity by Angèle's silly vicarious excitement; but only Martha's eye had been educated, and she baited Angèle without remorse.

Martha had the situation in hand. As the temperature dropped, she wasn't even compelled to put up with Eric's daily company in the Tuileries, because she now lunched at home in the rue de Vaugirard. She just turned up at the Taylor flat on Fridays.—The approaching end of Martha's first term in Paris in fact found her very comfortably circumstanced: at the studio occupying a certain definite position, in the rue de Vaugirard with Madame Dubois and Angèle more or less under her thumb, and with a proper hot bath laid on once a week.

2

In the studio, the talk began to be of the Christmas vacation. Sally was flying back to Park Avenue regardless of expense, Nils formed the project of hitch-hiking home to a Stockholm suburb, and didn't much mind whether he got there or not. Martha's destination was of course Richmond. She was to make the journey alone, after Angèle put her on the boat-train—this last safeguard a concession to Dolores. “Martha has learnt to take a 'bus, she can learn to take a train,” argued Mr. Joyce. “But suppose she takes the wrong one?” pleaded Dolores—with some uneasy vision of Martha white-slave-trafficked to Istamboul. Her fears, however idiotic, were so obviously genuine, Mr. Joyce settled for Angèle and wrote Madame Dubois instructions on the point. “But wait and see!” grumbled, or promised, Mr. Joyce. “Soon Martha will be taking whatever trains necessary, alone!”

Harry Gibson's loyal but not entirely disinterested offer to nip over and fetch Martha himself was hardly considered. Both his wife and his friend unhesitatingly turned it down.

3

As Dolores would have been the first to acknowledge, Paris wasn't Istamboul. Not even to please Mr. Joyce would she have allowed Martha to be consigned to spend two years in Istamboul. Paris was still Paris. On the second Friday in December, as Martha arrived at the Taylor flat, Eric stood waiting for her on the threshold wearing a harassed but nonetheless important air.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he said at once, “but Mother isn't here. She had a wire from London, her father's terribly ill, and she left straight away. I'm terribly sorry, Martha—”

“I am too,” said Martha. “Isn't there anything to eat?”

“Well, of course she left my breakfast,” said Eric, looking slightly hurt. He had expected Martha to be more sympathetic; at least more interested. In Taylor circles a serious illness rated as a highly interesting event. “She said—and I do think it was pretty wonderful, in the circumstances—that if you came, I'd better take you out somewhere.”

Martha reflected. She had never in fact had a meal in a French restaurant; but the prospect, instead of pleasing and exciting, rather upset her. She was tired, also there was the question of her bath. Eric's breakfast meant bacon and eggs; after a long day's work she was perfectly willing to settle for eggs and bacon—or even if Eric wanted all the bacon for himself (a point of view with which Martha did sympathize), she could have an omelette …

“Thank you very much, but can't I just have an omelette?” suggested Martha. “You can get it ready while I'm in the bath.”

To her surprise, Eric hesitated.—Martha knew he could make omelettes, Mrs. Taylor had often told her what a light hand he had with them; why then should he look so dubious? But it seemed as though there was something other than omelettes on Eric's mind.

“As Mother isn't here, perhaps you'd better not have a bath at all,” offered Eric uncertainly, and keeping his position in the doorway. “I mean, as Mother isn't here …”

Martha was surprised again.

“Did she
say
I couldn't have a bath?”

“With a father practically dying, I don't suppose she thought about it,” said Eric reproachfully.

“Then she might have said I could,” argued Martha.

Eric, rightly trusting to his own instinct, was pretty certain his mother would have said nothing of the sort. He was indeed mentally at one with her on the point.—Yet how to present, to Martha's lovable innocence, the idea that young girls simply didn't, shouldn't, take baths alone in flats with young men? Eric couldn't think. The situation was beyond him.

“I don't see anything wrong about it,” argued Martha.

“Well, of course not
wrong
—” admitted Eric.

“Then I'll have it straight away,” said Martha—pushing past him with her nosegay in its paper frill and her customary packet of one clean vest and a pair of clean knickers.

4

Few sounds combine more reassuringly than those of running bathwater and eggs being beaten. Ten minutes later, Eric, in the kitchen, had begun thoroughly to enjoy the prospect of a domestic picnic. (Martha, in the bath, enjoying at last a proper lie-down-and-soak, was practically comatose.) Indeed, such was Eric's enthusiasm he had everything ready far too soon; and such his impatience that when ten minutes more had elapsed he went and knocked at the bathroom door. “I'm out!” called back Martha automatically—just as she'd been used to call to her Aunt Dolores; but as soon as his footsteps retreated turned on the hot again. A hotter tide lapped her chin even as Eric heated the pan; curled absolutely around her ears as he tipped in the eggs.—Only a second, a more urgent, an almost desperate knocking got Martha truly out at last.

5

As her Aunt Dolores knew, Martha never looked so well as immediately after a hot bath. The French had a word for it: appetizing. Fresh from a hot bath Martha looked as rosy and solid and wholesome—and as appetizing—as a ripe apple. This was all the more apparent, as she cannoned off Eric in the corridor, since she'd just jumped out and rough-dried and thrust her head through a clean vest and for the rest merely toga'd herself in bath-towels. Above their strict British candour Martha's cheeks glowed rosier than ever, and her throat apple-blossom pink …

It cost Eric quite an effort to mutter that if she didn't finish dressing she'd catch cold.

“It doesn't take long to eat an omelette,” said Martha, “and they go leathery.”—A brief shiver transmitted through her bare feet from bare parquet surprised her nonetheless; transmitted in turn a slight body-shiver apparent even through the towels.

“There you are!” accused Eric. “I knew you were staying in too long.”

“Perhaps I did,” admitted Martha uneasily. She was always nervous of catching cold because a really heavy cold was almost the only thing that stopped her working properly.

“You've got to be warmed up somehow,” said Eric worriedly.—By hazard, the door to his bedroom stood ajar. Mrs. Taylor's careful hands had made his bed before she left; had even turned it down …

“I'll be all right as soon as I've had something to eat,” said Martha.

“I tell you what,” said Eric daringly, “get in my bed and I'll bring it to you. I'm sure Mother wouldn't want you to catch cold.”

6

The omelette was only slightly burnt; and how neat the tray! Eric knew just how to set it; good son that he was, he brought his mother breakfast in bed every Sunday. Such refinements as the matching salt- and pepper-pots (shaped respectively like an owl and a pussy-cat), and the sprig of parsley on the butter, were rather wasted on Martha, but she was no ungrateful beneficiary. It was wonderfully comfortable to eat sitting propped against pillows, and she voluntarily pulled up her feet to make room for Eric, with his own tray, on the bed's end. She had never liked him so well: never indeed had so closely approximated his ideal image of her, as now sitting passive and grateful receiving his ministrations. Nor had Eric ever felt so fond of Martha; receptiveness and gratitude, in his by no means ungenerous view, being the cardinal womanly virtues.

Also Martha's cheeks like rosy apples, and her full throat the tint of apple-blossom, glowed ever more and more richly as she ate.

The French had a word for it: appetizing.

“You look awfully nice in there,” said Eric, setting her empty tray on the floor beside his own.—Actually upon it, in a glass of water between the owl and pussycat, the stiff little paper-frilled nosegay Martha'd brought for his mother. Eric's hand must have shaken slightly; nosegay and glass tipped over together in a small unheeded puddle.

Martha, burrowing luxuriously under the blankets, said it
was
nice.

“I've a good mind to come in beside you!” said Eric daringly.

—Ten seconds later, he was. It took him just the ten seconds to strip. The result was inevitable: Martha lost her virginity not after any gay party, but after a nice hot bath.

7

How deep the slumber of satisfied flesh! They were both satisfied. By a rare conjunction, for such a first encounter, masculine potency met and was charged by female ripeness. Martha and Eric both enjoyed themselves quite uncommonly. Then they both slept like logs.

Chapter Seven

Martha arrived home with the milk.—It was not to be expected that her absence had gone unremarked; yet by a fortunate chance not until shortly before she reappeared. Madame Dubois and Angèle, overnight, had engaged in one of their most vigorous rows: neither, abandoned to tears of self-pity behind a slammed door, remembered to listen for Martha's return; and only when no answer came to Angèle's morning knock was the alarm raised.—The period of anxiety, though thus brief, was nonetheless severe.

“Where have you been? One has worried to death!” cried Madame Dubois, as Martha came stumping in. “If one had not known you at Mrs. Taylor's, one would have sought the aid of the police!” (This was a sort of back-play, so to speak, or natural dramatization; Madame Dubois already imagining herself to have worried
all night
.) “You
were
at Mrs. Taylor's?” demanded Madame Dubois.

“Of course,” said Martha reasonably. “It was Friday.”

Madame Dubois scrutinized her. Young girls had been known to lie! But Martha's appearance, as always, reassured. No light of romance hung about her stout, respectable figure; no extra brightness of eye, softness of lip, or flush of cheek, betrayed her. She looked just as usual. Indeed, she felt just as usual; or possibly a trifle more relaxed. But she did recognize some further explanation necessary; and unhesitatingly made the absent Mrs. Taylor an accomplice.

“Mrs. Taylor asked me to stay the night,” said Martha, “because her back was particularly bad.”

It worked.

“That famous back! Are you a masseuse?” cried Madame Dubois—satisfactorily diverted. “Does Mr. Joyce pay his good money for you to attend a
malade imaginaire?
—As I have long suspected her to be, your Mrs. Taylor?—And without even the grace to telephone one!” scolded Madame Dubois. “See Angèle white as a sheet,” she added accusingly, “through anxiety for her little friend!”

Though this last was a sheer piece of opportunism, the drama of Martha's absence and return undoubtedly smoothed the way for a reconciliation between mother and daughter. The morning-after, after one of their emotional bouts—the transition to normality before Angèle could set out for school with the appropriate face of a tranquil and dedicated schoolmistress—was always a little difficult to achieve. Now, over the breakfast-table, they exchanged sympathetic glances without effort. “Take a little more coffee, Maman,” begged Angèle, “after such a night, you must need it!” “You too, my darling!” returned Madame Dubois. “What a night for you also!” Despite this show of unity, however, Angèle did not fail to dart Martha one or two of her most excited, conspiratorial glances. Angèle was still Martha's confidante—and even at the risk of being late for class still rushed into Martha's bedroom bursting with devotion and curiosity while Martha re-laced her boots.

“Did
he
sit up with his mother too?” whispered Angèle eagerly.

“Just for a bit,” said Martha. “Your hair's coming down.”

“Each of you on either side her pillow? How charming!” breathed Angèle, attempting in her enthusiasm to clasp Martha's hand—only Martha was engaged in tying a stout knot. (Martha always wore boots in winter; on the same principle that led her to get in Eric's bed—in case she caught cold.) “What a bond!” sighed Angèle, clasping her own hands instead and letting her side-combs fall unheeded. “A memory for all your lives! And how
she
will remember and love you for it, when her son at last reveals his desire! If only
I
had such an opportunity,” mourned Angèle, “to show my affection for a second mother!”

At least her affection for Martha wasn't to be baulked. The moment Martha raised her head Angèle planted a kiss of loyalty on her brow. “But not a word, I promise, until the
fiançailles!
” swore Angèle. She kissed Martha again, more wetly. Martha was feeling so uncommonly relaxed, she let her.

Otherwise, just the same.

It would be wrong to say that Martha felt the loss of her virginity no more than she'd have felt the loss of a favourite chalk. Immediately, she felt it less. What she certainly didn't feel was any sense of guilt.