The Eye of Love (8 page)

“I didn't want to. It was silly,” explained Martha, surprised but patient.

“And why shouldn't you sometimes do something you don't want to? If you'd looked sweet, if you … if you'd twined yourself about his heart,” reproached Dolores passionately, “who knows?”

Martha suddenly perceived that the whole shape of the saucepan, foreshortened pan-part and straight handle, fitted into another, invisible shape: a long oval. It was a very happy moment.

“You're not even listening!” cried Miss Diver.

“Yes, I am. Who knows what?” asked Martha. “Can I—?”

Miss Diver flung down pencil and laundry-book together and retreated to the sitting-room in tears.

More and more of their conversation ended thus unfortunately; Martha sensibly went on drawing. In pencil it was easier; she started all over again and drew the invisible oval first. She put Miss Diver's incomprehensible remarks out of her head at once. Indeed, a great many of Dolores' remarks, or ejaculations, were at this time incomprehensible to her: “King Hal!” for instance, Dolores would cry—before the bronze lady: an obvious piece of nonsensicality. Or “Big Harry!” ejaculated Miss Diver, caressing a stuffed ermine. Martha took as little notice as possible.

She was thus unsurprised (and took equally little notice) when Miss Diver repeatedly described the situation of Mr Gibson's establishment.

“In Kensington High Street, over a tailor's,” explained Miss Diver. “At the corner of Kensington High Street and Almaviva Place.” (She had never been there; but could have mapped like a surveyor Mr Gibson's daily route between home and shop.) “Kensington Gardens is where you like to go and play, isn't it, dear? Well, the High Street is just the other side …”

Martha said yes, and you could also take a bus.

This was her greatest failure of all. For Miss Diver and Mr Gibson, though they had bound themselves not to communicate, hadn't bound the child Martha, and Miss Diver couldn't help dreaming dreams. Martha had only to run across the Gardens (or if she preferred it, go by bus), and then again who knew, who knew!
“Oh, Mr Gibson, can't I just take Dolores a message?”
Miss Diver imagined Martha pleading. “
I know it would make her so happy!
” Though Martha had quite egregiously failed to twine herself about his heart, a child's pleading who can resist? Dolores didn't see her King Hal resisting long; and it would be neither her doing nor his, that communication was re-established …

It was weakness on Dolores' part, not treachery. She knew their future, divergent fates inevitable. If she hoped that perhaps Mr Gibson would follow his message in person, it was with no idea of trying to seduce him from the path of duty—just to see him once again, in the sitting-room, without exchanging a caress, or even a word, would have comforted her. Miss Joyce might still have been right to take alarm, as she undoubtedly would have done, had she heard Mr Gibson's address so perpetually drummed in Martha's ears. It was an oddity of the situation that Miranda now recognised Mr Gibson's passionate nature better than Dolores did; and wouldn't have trusted him in Alcock Road a moment.

Again the point remained academic, because as far as Martha was concerned Mr Gibson's shop might have been on the moon. She had no idea why Dolores (recapitulating familiar topography) bent such pressing looks on her. And after not very long Dolores herself lost heart. Something peculiarly stolid and self-contained about Martha—as she squared her elbows on the kitchen-table to draw a saucepan, or a casserole, or a mustard-spoon soaking in an egg-cup—caused Miss Diver to lose heart.

2

“If a kiddie comes wanting to see me,” Mr Gibson instructed Miss Molyneux, “send her up. She'll be from Jaspé's.”

To his surprise, Miss Molyneux at once looked intelligent.

“We've heard that too, Mr Gibson—how Jaspé's have been buying at auction. Miss Harris thinks there'll be some very nice bargains going indeed, and I'm sure I agree—for they certainly haven't anyone like
her
, to re-model! Not that I can think it right, however hard-pressed, sending a child with a great heavy box.”

“She won't have a box,” said Mr Gibson.

“Anyway, I'll give her a choc,” said kind Miss Molyneux.

Thus a warm welcome awaited Martha in Kensington. Miss Molyneux would have bustled her up to the office and fed her chocolates when she came down. Mr Gibson would have turned no deaf ear. (His train of thought paralleled Dolores' so closely, he cast Martha's plea in almost exactly the same form—
“Oh, Mr Gibson, mayn't I just take Dolores a message
?”) But of course Martha never came. The idea never entered her head. She was too completely, happily busy trying to draw saucepan, or a casserole, or a mustard-spoon in an egg-cup, to remember Mr Gibson at all. It was a genuine annoyance to her, a tiresome distraction, that she about this time remembered a Brixton bedroom.

Possibly as a delayed result of Dolores' early over-optimism, when she'd envisaged herself and Martha sharing a room in Alcock Road, Martha suddenly remembered the room in Brixton she'd for three years shared with Ma Battleaxe.

She began by simply remembering it; presently recalled in some detail a satisfactory arrangement of shapes; and was then bothered to the point of obsession because the shapes weren't right. She could visualise the window, and Ma Battleaxe's bed (her own box-ottoman at the foot); but there should have been a linking-shape in between, high and narrow, of which the exact proportions eluded her. A wardrobe was too wide; but what else than a wardrobe could have stood there? After mulling over this problem for a week, one Monday towards the end of July Martha went to check up on site.

She had at this time less than her usual liberty, but half-a-crown. (Ungrateful Martha! It derived from the generosity of Mr Gibson.) Mr Punshon told her where she could pick up a bus—quite conveniently, at the other end of Church Street; and by setting out in mid-afternoon she not only avoided explanations with Dolores, who was lying down, but also secured a good place up front.

In point of fact, Miss Diver saw her leave. Too restless to sleep, as she now usually was, Miss Diver heard the click of the front gate and in an instant was at the window. No portly beloved figure, however, not the top of Mr Gibson's bowler hat, rewarded her hopeful eyes; but sad it is to relate that the sight of Martha stumping down the road fanned those hopes afresh. Martha had undeniably the air of being bound on some errand of importance. She wore her sailor-straw and napper gloves. A useful instinct always led Martha to look as respectable as possible; it was probably why no education-officer on the prowl ever spotted her. Dolores, used to seeing her grubby about the garden, was on this point at fault; Martha's important and business-like air deceived her equally. For what possible errand of importance could the child have (thought Miss Diver, her heart lifting), unless to Mr Gibson? As Martha stumped down Church Street to board a Brixton bus, Dolores visualised her stumping across Kensington Gardens towards Kensington High Street. As Martha waited stolidly at the bus-stop, Dolores visualised her scampering (the modulation inevitable) on towards Almaviva Place …

It is the classic pathetic fallacy that man, observing Nature's storms or calms, engages either with his own current predicament. Dolores made a similar mistake about Martha.

CHAPTER EIGHT

1

Martha remembered the address perfectly: 11, Hasty Street. Three full years had passed since she quitted Brixton in Miss Diver's taxi, and she had never been back; but she remembered 11, Hasty Street perfectly. Nor was it surprising; she'd carried the legend tied to her buttonhole as soon as she could walk, and been able to pronounce it before she could read. (Ma Battleaxe disliked children underfoot.) Upon descending from the bus Martha needed only to take direction from the first passer-by, and from the corner of the road homed like a pigeon.

She found she remembered quite a lot—up to about four feet from ground-level. The pattern of the iron railings was familiar, though not the yellow-brick housefronts behind; so was a scar in the base of a lamp-post familiar—it looked like a dog's head—though not the fluted column above. And though there were no front-gardens in Hasty Street, Martha found herself instinctively looking out for a patch of colour, something bright and full like nasturtiums … and found it in a red-tiled gate-step still immaculately ruddled by the Yorkshirewoman at Number 6.

At Number 11, however, neither memories nor nostalgia halted her. Martha walked straight in (the door as always on the latch), crossed a narrow hall smelling of cabbage and wet mackintoshes (here memory did slightly stir), and down a flight of stone steps into Ma Battleaxe's kitchen and private stronghold.

It looked just like a witches' kitchen. There they all were—Ma Battleaxe and Mrs Hopkinson from next door, and Miss Fish and Miss Jones from further up—average age sixty, personal habits deplorable, whiskery of chin and malevolent of eye. Martha regarded them with pleasure. Grouped about the inevitable tea-pot, the solid bulk of Ma Battleaxe balanced the almost equally important bulk of Miss Jones: between them skinny Mrs Hopkinson and meagre Miss Fish sketched a contrasting arabesque. Then they saw Martha in the doorway, and broke the pattern to stare back.

“
Well
!” cried Miss Jones and Miss Fish in unison. “
Well
!” cried Mrs Hopkinson. “Well!” grunted Ma Battleaxe. “If it isn't little Miss Martha, come back to visit us at last.”

Martha sensed a certain umbrage. It didn't trouble her. She was strictly on business.

“If you mean why haven't I come to see you before,” said Martha straightforwardly, “it's because I never thought of it. Now I have. Can I go up and look at where I used to sleep?”

Ma Battleaxe needed a moment or two to take this in. Ponderous of mind as of body, she was still in the state (to use her own subsequent phrase) of knock-me-down-with-a-feather. Then her eye at once brightened, and moistened. So did the eyes of her cronies—ready each bleary orb to drop a crocodile tear.

“I suppose your fine Auntie's turning you out?” suggested Ma Battleaxe hopefully.

“No, she isn't,” said Martha, with dignity. “I'm her greatest comfort. For instance, if that was her toast she'd give me a piece straight away.”

It was a shot that told. The eyes of Mrs Hopkinson and Miss Jones and Miss Fish now turned on their hostess with censure. Certain laws of hospitality are recognised even, or particularly, by savages, and Ma Battleaxe, in not offering Martha a bite, had committed a sad breach of etiquette. She hastily pushed across the plate. But Martha managed to swallow her saliva.

“Thank you, I've had so much dinner I'm quite stuffed.”

“Just the half,” pressed Ma Battleaxe. “You can have bloater-paste on it.”

“My Aunt gives me bloater-paste every day,” said Martha. “I'll just go upstairs, thank you, and then let myself out. I won't touch any of your things.”

“Not having a barge-pole, we presume,” said Miss Fish nastily.

Martha took no notice and stumped out—leaving, as a playwright said, her character behind her.

She knew her way. A flight of linoleum-covered stairs, a linoleum-covered landing, then the second door on the left. The landing was familiarly cluttered with suit-cases—there had always been a tenant either coming or going; Martha noted the signs indifferently. With equal indifference she passed the door of what was once her father's room; Richard Hogg, excellent though humble Civil Servant, had left extraordinarily little impression on his daughter; his second wife so to speak, had been the Post Office, with all its allied social activities. (He started the local Sketching Club single-handed.) Martha went straight on to the back bedroom she used to share with Ma Battleaxe.

It was just the same. The box-ottoman was still there, only dirtier. The slovenly bed mightn't have been made since she last saw it. From the hook behind the door still depended the old winter coat used by Ma Battleaxe as a dressing-gown, its colour a dingy puce Martha had particularly disliked. But all these offences her eye accurately omitted, and she saw simply what she'd come to see. The jutting-up piece that bothered her wasn't a wardrobe, it was a grandfather-clock. (How it came to be there, upstairs, in a bedroom, wasn't Martha's concern. The long tale of compounded debts and subsequent furniture-shiftings wouldn't have interested her in the least.) She noted carefully, however, the narrow shape of the clock in relation to the broader shape of the window, and to the low squat oblong of the bed, and found all three in conjunction as satisfactory as she hoped. Only then did she look at the box-ottoman, to remember how she'd slept on it for two years—and even as she did so remembered something else: the hippopotamus-hump of Ma Battleaxe a-bed. What a silhouette it has presented, as in lamplight or at dawn Martha opened her infant eyes! A prize, a plum too good to lose, not even the sudden racket on the landing without could divert her from its recapture …

In any case she knew what was going on, just suit-cases being hurled downstairs. Ma Battleaxe regularly so sped a parting guest, especially the high-and-mighty sort who gave notice of their own accord. Martha in frivolous youth (that is, before the age of six) had found these dramas pleasantly exciting, and in fact was once herself, hovering too near, bowled over by a Gladstone bag. Now she simply closed her ears like a hunting-dog's.

It was thus by no design that some fifteen minutes later she made contact with Mr Phillips.

2

Martha let herself out as she'd intended, without going back to the kitchen; if she was heard, Ma Battleaxe and Mrs Hopkinson and Miss Fish were all too busy holding ghoulish wake to bother with her. (The pot re-brewed black and strong, all the old corpses disinterred—of Mr Pyke who robbed the gas-meter, of Mr Comfrey who cooked in his room, of Mr Byers who brought in women. High-and-mighty Mr Phillips, now added to the grisly roll, had asked for a sheet changed every week …) Any listener who didn't know the ropes must have supposed lodgers a desperate race indeed, must have marvelled that defenceless females ever dared to harbour them: to Martha, however, the chorus of commination was simply the natural coda or amen to the suit-case-chucking, too familiar to interest, and she went straight out.