The Eye of Love (15 page)

“Gas-oven,” replied Mr Joyce at once.

Admittedly Mr Phillips had seen only the edges, but the unhesitating answer warmed Martha's heart. She had been a little doubtful about the gas-oven herself. She warmed.

“I opened the door because of the lines across inside.”

“Had to have 'em,” agreed Mr Joyce. “D'you know why?”

Martha thought.

“They make the rings on top look rounder.”

“By Gum, you know what you're doing,” marvelled Mr Joyce. “Where d'you go? I mean, who's teaching you?”

“No one,” said Martha.

“Mozart and holy angels!” ejaculated Mr Joyce. “You mean you found all this out for yourself?”

“Yes,” said Martha. “And I don't want to be taught.” There was here a slight confusion, Martha equating being taught with going to school; she already regretted letting out, as she thought she'd done, that she didn't. But to her relief this extraordinarily sensible adult merely nodded reflectively.

“Just now perhaps you're right,” agreed Mr Joyce. “Not later, but just now you may be right. Might be like training a voice too young. D'you always draw on this shiny stuff?”

“It's all I've got,” said Martha.

Mr Joyce rose to his feet and considered her with active benevolence. From her respectable but unprosperous aspect he divined a decent home but no spare cash; from the peculiar ferocity of her manner, that her talent was unencouraged. Filing both these larger points for future reference—and with a sensation almost of joy—he took in the details of her equipment. The bending, slippery cardboards were used on both sides. Looking at the drawing in his hand (while Martha carefully gathered up the rest), he saw the pencil-lines doubled and tripled to achieve substance.

“Ever tried charcoal?”

“No,” said Martha. “I don't know what it is.”

“Come with me,” said Mr Joyce.

4

It would be hard to say which of them had the better time, in the big artists' colourmen's shop in Kensington High Street. Martha was nearly sick.

It was indeed fortunate for her that Mr Joyce didn't let her have her head. He nearly did; in an exuberance of generosity he nearly lost his own. Easels, canvases, paints—his money almost jumped out of his pocket at the sight of them; a quarter-size lay-figure (boxwood, articulated, eleven-pounds-ten) practically hypnotised him. But he was too wise to throw such strong meat even before a lion-cub, and held himself in. Also wisely, he let Martha choose nothing for herself. He kept her away from the oils-section altogether; and finally bought her four drawing-blocks, two large and two small, four packets of charcoal-sticks, of varying thicknesses, and two boxes of sanguin chalk.

“Anything else?” asked Mr Joyce.

“Rubbers,” gasped Martha.

He bought her rubbers.

“Anything else?”

“Could I have a pencil-sharpener?”

He bought her a pencil-sharpener. Martha gazed at him reverently. It was a pity that her eyes were small and grey, rather than big and blue, even looking reverent Martha still looked uncommonly stolid; but Mr Joyce's notion of her character was now fixed to his complete satisfaction, and he felt no disappointment. The egoism of the artist was by both hearsay and experience familiar to him, gratitude he knew to need prompting.

Mr Joyce accordingly prompted it. A patron—and no one more eager than he to shoulder a patron's rôle—has still certain admitted rights.

“Now don't you want to give me one of your drawings?”

How true to type as an artist!—Martha, her arms encumbered with his bounty, hesitated.

“Which one do you want?” she asked uneasily.

“If you let me choose—this,” said Mr Joyce, flicking out the gas oven. Martha didn't actually snatch it back. “I suppose you wouldn't want to give me the lot?” prompted Mr Joyce.

Again Martha obviously wrestled with her better feelings; and this time won.

“No, because I might want to look at them. Anyway, you've got the best.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Mr Joyce. “I see I should have made a bargain first. Now then: you take this card, it's got my name on it and where I'm to be found, and when you get home tell your mother to come and see me, because I want to have a talk with her. What's her name?”

At this point, Martha lied.

It was inexplicable. She liked Mr Joyce, she felt confidence in him, she had every cause for gratitude. Yet she lied. She didn't even say “Hogg,” which would have been true, if not the truth as Mr Joyce meant it. She said, “Brown.”

For some reason, Mr Joyce grinned.

“Why not?” said Mr Joyce, grinning. “No fancy names, for the real thing! Now you cut along home; I'm an hour late already.”

5

With so much to carry, Martha would have been glad to take a bus; but she couldn't, because she had no money. The tramp back across the Gardens was arduous; twice she had to stop and sit down; and the second time tore Mr Joyce's card into very small pieces and dropped them under the bench.

She didn't know why, any more than she knew why she'd lied. It just seemed wisest.

It also seemed wisest, when she got home, to go round by the back and conceal her burden behind the coal-shed, until she could smuggle it up to her attic.

6

Mr Joyce was equally secretive. He knew better than to display Martha's drawing to his womenfolk, whose taste was strictly Royal Academy, and he didn't think Harry would appreciate it either. (From the latter, indeed, Mr Joyce concealed his artistic leanings altogether, in case Harry should find them un-British.) He stowed Martha's drawing in excellent company, in the special portfolio that housed his two Modiglianis, now and again took it out to admire, and waited for the arrival of Mrs Brown in Bond Street.

Mr Joyce intended to treat this parent very tactfully, in a manner unalarming to any possessive maternal jealousy. All he wanted to ensure was that the child shouldn't now be forced from her natural bent, or, later, be taken too early from school and set to earn. (It was a grief to Mr Joyce to reflect how many years must elapse before Martha's first one-woman show, before he could even send her for proper teaching; but he was prepared to wait.) What he intended to offer was to supply all the child's drawing-materials for the present, in the future make himself responsible for her artistic education, and if necessary subsidise her as a non-earner from the age of twelve, in return for the pick of her output year by year.

In return, also, of course, for a share of fame. He didn't mean to say anything of this to Mrs Brown, however; he foresaw that he would seem eccentric enough to her in the first place. But he had great faith in his powers of persuasion, and looked forward to the interview with confidence.

“A Mrs Brown coming to see me,” Mr Joyce instructed the commissionaire, “get one of the girls to bring her to my office straight away. Maybe she won't look like regular clientèle, but I'm expecting her.”

It occurring to him that a woman of the type he anticipated would be reassured by a cup of tea, he also instructed one of the girls to get him some tea-things and a tray with a doily on it. “Attention to detail!” thought Mr Joyce, grinning. “The homey touch! I am eccentric, but homey!”

No intending patron could have been more acute, or better-intentioned. It was a pity Mrs Brown never came.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1

At ease in Miss Diver's sitting-room, drinking his now ritual cup of tea—

“Didn't you tell me,” asked Mr Phillips, “you'd never taken lodgers before?”

“No, never,” said Miss Diver readily.

“Then who,” enquired Mr Phillips, “is Mr Gibson?”

2

Dolores had been lighting a cigarette: her hand trembled so violently that the match-flame shuddered out. Mr Phillips noticed, and waited.

“Just a friend,” said Dolores. “Has—has Martha been talking to you about him?”

“No,” said Mr Phillips. “But a day or two back, when she brought me my breakfast, she said, ‘Good morning, Mr Gibson.'”

There was too long a silence. Dolores' riposte, when it came, wasn't a bad one; but there had been too long a silence …

“I can assure you,” said Dolores, with a smile, “she has never said anything to Mr Gibson except good afternoon.”

There had been too long a silence.

“She must have said it pretty often,” observed Mr Phillips, “the way it slipped off her tongue.”

“As I say, he was a friend.”

“A close friend?”

Dolores nodded. The great sob checked by her first surprise was rising in her throat.

“Who doesn't visit here any more?” suggested Mr Phillips.

There are times when every woman has the right to lie.

“His business took him abroad …”

“For good?”

At all times one has the right to refuse answers, that the questioner has no right to ask. Dolores summoned unexpected resources of dignity.

“My dear Mr Phillips,” she said coolly, “my private affairs can hardly concern you. If you weren't such an excellent tenant—which is the
only
reason, I assure you, why I occasionally invite you into my private sitting-room—I should tell you to mind your own business.”

It was bravely spoken. Mr Phillips was silenced. But he had learnt what he wanted to learn. He withdrew silenced—but leaving Miss Diver for the first time in months to sob all night on the Rexine settee; he himself now knowing what was what.

3

Carefully, slowly, as he did all things, Mr Phillips made up his mind. He was a very careful, prudent man. His decision to make Miss Diver Mrs Phillips was nonetheless based on a misconception.

He thought the house was hers. He put two and two together and made not four but a dozen. He thought the vanished Mr Gibson had either given her, or been blackmailed into giving her, the house.

The point was a cardinal one; since she didn't attract him personally. Indeed, there were several things about his landlady Mr Phillips positively disliked. He didn't care for her appearance; her hair with its coronet of braids struck him as too outlandishly arranged, he thought it made her look foreign, and that it would look better in a bun. This of course was something that could be seen to after marriage; but her scarecrow thinness was probably for keeps, and she was a proper Skinny Lizzie. What Mr Phillips chiefly disliked, however, was that she evidently had some sort of opinion of herself.

He wasn't unjust. A woman owning a house he allowed entitled to think something of herself—not so much as a woman who owned a whole row, of course, but still something; and had Miss Diver's uppishness derived from a sense of property he could have pardoned it. But he had an irritated feeling that it did not. She never mentioned the house, with any reference to ownership. In fact, it seemed as though it was actually herself, her own feminine person, she had an opinion of: which in a woman of that age and appearance struck Mr Phillips as downright silly.

It will be seen that he was far from sharing Dolores' own conception of herself as a Spanish rose, even while perceiving in her its effects. They would have put him off altogether, he would have found her altogether too lah-di-dah, if it hadn't been for the house. As it was, he resolved to wait until after they were married, and then take her down a peg.

It will be seen also that Mr Phillips had no idea of a refusal—for all that he'd been sent off with a flea in his ear. And naturally: what Miss Diver stood to gain was nothing less than being made an honest woman of. (“Just a friend, eh?” thought Mr Phillips sardonically. “I'm none so green as that, my lass!”) Her house-property notwithstanding, Mr Phillips was confident that his landlady would jump at him. He still wasn't in any particular hurry. He had plenty of time, he feared no rival; moreover the knowledge that with four words he could transform the whole set-up in Alcock Road, gave him a sense of secret power too enjoyable not to savour while he might …

“Should I have placed a word amiss,” offered Mr Phillips, at their next encounter, “I tend my sincere apologies.”

Dolores, who certainly didn't want him to leave, and whose mind in the interval had been apprehensive on this account, inclined her head forgivingly.

“I suppose we all speak thoughtlessly at times, Mr Phillips.”

“When carried away by our own interest,” said Mr Phillips gravely.

They were soon on their old terms again. Mr Phillips continued to empty the garbage; after a week Miss Diver resumed her habit of inviting him into the sitting-room for an evening cup of tea. On the surface their relation remained that of lodger and landlady: a very considerate lodger, a landlady wonderfully fortunate. The person to whose life this new undercurrent first gave a fresh direction was, unexpectedly, Martha.

4

“What's that stuff on your hand?” asked Mr Phillips kindly. “All that red stuff?”

“Blood,” said Martha.

It was in fact a smear of sanguin chalk. Naturally she said, Blood.

“Dear me! We must tie it up for you,” said Mr Phillips—with all-too-ready credulousness.

Martha put her hands behind her back.

“I don't want it tied up …”

“If it's not clean it may turn nasty,” warned Mr Phillips. “You'd better let me see you wash it.”

“I don't want it washed,” said Martha.

“I'm afraid you're a dirty little girl,” said Mr Phillips.

“No, I'm not,” said Martha.

“I say you are.”

“Then it's not true,” said rude Martha.

Rude, and resentful. Martha didn't want to be rude: acceptable manners, like a respectable appearance, she had long found one of her best defences in a world of interfering adults. But it now happened continually—and even when she had less excuse, for in this particular instance Martha was pretty sure Mr Phillips didn't believe in her cut hand a moment, he was just being nosy—it happened continually that his each kindly attempt at conversation ended in Martha's being rude. Without appreciating his dialectic skill, Martha felt she was being made to be rude, that the character of a rude child was somehow being imposed upon her, by Mr Phillips for his own ends.