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CHAPTER 1

1

Seen from eye-level, (as the child Martha, flat on her stomach, saw it), the patch of pebbly grass in the back-garden of 5, Alcock Road had all the charm, mysteriousness and authority of a classic Chinese landscape. Tall shot-up bents, their pale yellow stems knotted like bamboos, inclined gracefully before the wind; across a sandy plain boulders in proportion carried a low scrub of lichen to the foot of a mountain shaped like a mole-hill. There was only the right amount of everything, and only one sharp note of colour: pimpernel-red a wild azalea bloomed under the bamboos.

Suddenly the whole composition was altered, the whole landscape receded, as into the foreground leapt a tiger — drawn to a different scale, in fact lifesize. For a moment the round striped face glared with Chinese ferocity, the lips writhed back in a Chinese scowl; then the cat recognised the child, and the child a cat.

From the house, from one of the pink-curtained windows, a voice called high and urgent — Miss Diver's.

"Martha! Come and say how do you do to Mr Gibson!"

Martha remembered it was Tuesday, and reluctantly rose, and dusted herself down the front.

More precisely, it was the second Tuesday in June, 1932: a date to be of importance.

2

Ladies of ambiguous status have by convention hearts of gold, and Miss Diver was nothing if not conventional; but a child in an irregular household is often an embarrassment. It had been wonderfully kind of Miss Diver to save her brother's child from an orphanage, but not surprising; what was surprising was how well the arrangement worked out.

Martha came when she was six, and was now nine: during those three years the quiet harmony of life at 5, Alcock Road continued unjarred. In part this was due to Mr Gibson's good-nature; even more important, in the daily contacts between aunt and niece, was a safeguard never in fact recognised as such — though it had operated from the start. Little Martha was never allowed to address her benefactress as Aunt. To the latter's ear the appellation lacked romance; romance being of Miss Diver's life the essence, she instructed Martha to call her by her first name instead; the happy if un-aimed-at result was a superficial chumminess putting no strain on the emotions of either. — Also due to Miss Diver's romanticism was the fact that they no longer shared the same patronymic, which was for both, legally, Hogg. Miss Diver's brother, Martha's father, had been Richard Hogg: Martha was Martha Hogg: but even while still vending haberdashery Miss Diver had so sincerely felt herself not-Hogg, so to speak, and practically going under a false name, that in the interests of truth (or at least of verisimilitude), she changed to Diver. Besides commemorating a favourite authoress, it went euphoniously with her initial D. The D stood for Dolores, itself modulated from Dorothy because Miss Diver was a Spanish type.

"You shall call me Dolores," instructed Miss Diver — actually in the taxi going home from Richard Hogg's funeral.

She had never seen the child until an hour earlier; she had never before visited the shabby Brixton lodging-house in whose shabby parlour the thinly-attended wake was being held. A dozen or so of Richard Hogg's ex-colleagues from the Post Office stared inquisitively; this meeting between the two chief mourners provided a touch of drama, something to talk about afterwards, otherwise conspicuously lacking. (As Doctor Johnson might have said, it wasn't funeral to invite a man to: only one bottle of sherry, and fish-paste sandwiches. Richard Hogg, with his motherless daughter, had lodged two full years in Hasty Street; but a landlady never does these things so whole-heartedly as relations, even with the Burial Club paid up and next week's rent in hand.) Interest naturally focused on Miss Diver, partly because her brother had never mentioned her, and partly because of her appearance. Though the only person present in proper mourning — even Martha had no more than an arm-band — Dolores' total blackness somehow produced a brighter effect than the neutral tints of everyone else. She was jetty, they merely subfusc. Her black Spanish hair gleamed beneath her eye-veil. Her black fur was a black fox. Her black pumps were patent leather. Dolores, for her part, felt like a bird of paradise among crows ...

She felt also like an angel of mercy; and so took little Martha home with her, in obedience to a law not so much unwritten as written to excess, in every sentimental novel of that date, which was 1929.

"You shall call me Dolores," instructed Miss Diver, in the taxi that bore them away.

The child Martha, then aged six, looked placidly co-operative. She was a fat, placid-looking child altogether. Her squarish face, pale under a sandy fringe, didn't appear ravaged by any particular sorrow, as her rather small grey eyes, under rudimentary eye-brows, weren't red with weeping. The bundle of clothes at her feet — her last link with the past — she simply put her feet on, to make her short legs more comfortable. It was Miss Diver, aged thirty-seven, who wept.

3

The arrangement worked out better than anyone could have expected. In Hasty Street, indeed, for many a day to come Martha was looked for back bag and baggage. "I've seen her sort before," declared the landlady — in grim reference to Miss Diver. "Give a thing and take a thing — ! By which same token, if she don't tire, someone else will." The luscious prognostication proved false. Mr Gibson, he who subsidised the little house with the pink curtains, accepted Martha without demur. He had often feared that his Dolores might be lonely, and trusted her not to let the child become a nuisance. As was inevitable, Miss Diver went through a brief period of sentimentality — during which she bought little Martha a three-legged stool to sit on and a box of beads to thread: fortunately if there was one thing Mr Gibson detested it was treading on a bead. He didn't actually swear at Martha, but the effort not to was obvious, and Dolores was saved from prolonging what might have been a disastrous experiment. She was a trifle let down herself. All children under eight have charm, just as all young animals have, but little Martha had less than most. She didn't perch on the stool, she squatted on it. The beads stuck to her fat fingers, when she didn't drop them, and she was always losing her needle. The picture envisaged by Miss Diver had been very different. She was still thankful she hadn't started with bubble-blowing, because heaven knew what little Martha mightn't have done with a basin of soapy water ...

After this preliminary fumble, however, Miss Diver managed very well. She realised at once that if the child was unacceptable as a fixture, she would be even less acceptable — how to put it? — dodging about. From dodging about, therefore, Martha was above all things discouraged; but the situation wasn't dodged either. Whenever Mr Gibson arrived, Miss Diver summoned her to say how do you do and shake hands; thus not only avoiding any tedious pretence that she wasn't there, but also giving the signal for her to lie low.

Martha soon learnt. She didn't mind. Solitude suited her temperament. If it was fine enough, she lay low in the garden. It wasn't at all a pretty garden, the tiny lawn was rank and all the flowers nasturtiums; but Martha discovered landscapes in the wild grass, also after rain, or heavy dew, one could collect from the round nasturtium-leaves, employing a teaspoon, whole egg-cupfuls of liquid quite possibly medicinal. If it was necessary to stay indoors, an attic bedroom afforded delights of its own: a fresco of rabbits (legacy of Miss Diver's first enthusiasm), a window overlooking the road, a whole year's back numbers of the Tatler ... For the epicurean enjoyment of these last Martha often put herself to bed, especially in winter, immediately after giving herself tea; a supper of milk and doughnuts to hand on the historic three-legged stool.

In Brixton she'd slept on a box-ottoman at the foot of the landlady's bed. Ma Battleaxe, (Martha at least knew no other name for her), was a noisy sleeper. Snores half-articulate and vaguely threatening equally disgusted and alarmed — as did the set of false teeth in the beer-mug on the night-table. Any bedroom of her own would have made Martha happy, even without the Tatlers.

Solitude suited her. She had no other children to play with, and didn't want any. She didn't go to school. The point occasionally worried Dolores, but it didn't worry Martha. No education-officer spied her, and Dolores kept putting the matter off — reluctant to ask Mr Gibson for fees, reluctant also to encounter local officialdom. Martha slipped through the net of education as an under-sized salmon slips through the seine. She learnt to read and write — Dolores could manage that much; otherwise her mind was beautifully unburdened, and she had plenty of time to look at things.

For three years, in fact, the child Martha was perfectly happy. Whatever her temperament portended, it was being given full play. She had no regrets for the past. She couldn't remember her mother, and her father had never attached her. Dolores didn't interfere. Mr Gibson, as a sort of deity to be placated, fitted neatly into a child's pantheon: that one could placate him so easily, by one's mere absence, was a stroke of pure luck. Martha was lucky all round. Not a half of her solitary pleasures has as yet been described; seeing a tiger turn into a cat was a mere trifle.

She dusted herself down the front and stumped towards the house.

4

"How do you do, Mr Gibson?" asked Martha politely.

She couldn't shake hands because Mr Gibson, who was helping himself to a whisky-and-soda, had his back to her; he replied merely by a chuck of the head. Martha looked enquiringly towards Miss Diver. The latter was obviously feeling specially Spanish, specially Dolores; there was a high tortoiseshell comb in her hair, a shawl embroidered with peonies about her shoulders; that she reclined upon a settee covered in Rexine didn't, at least to Martha, spoil the effect at all. The Rexine was a good solid brown, against which the brilliant colours of the shawl glowed like the best sort of Christmas-cracker; the obtuse shape of the cushions threw into relief the attenuated shapes of Miss Diver's neck and forearms. It wasn't like the picture the thin grass made, but it was equally satisfying ...

Miss Diver moved. Martha, once more alert to the moment's social necessities, re-focused an eye of enquiry. She was more than ready to return to the garden. But Dolores' nod wasn't, as usual, dismissive; it enjoined remaining. And Mr Gibson, though he had by now proportioned whisky-and-soda to some ideal of his own, didn't say what he always said.

("Hey, Martha! Where's Mary?"

"In the Bible," Martha always said.

"Best place for her," Mr Gibson always said back.)

But he didn't say it now. Something was different, and therefore wrong.

Instinctively Martha glanced about the room for reassurance. It was mostly Art Nouveau, except for the settee and big arm-chairs. These were there because Mr Gibson needed to be comfortable after working so hard all day in the fur-trade, but Miss Diver had done her best to sophisticate them with black cushions, so that even they were fairly Nouveau. Martha admired the cushions extremely — as she also admired the splendid stained-glass galleon sailing across the upper panes of the bay-window, and the bowl of glass fruit that lit up from inside. Indeed, the whole room was a perfect treasure-house of beauties. Within a blackand-gold cabinet, for instance, frisked a family of stuffed ermines. The little table where Dolores kept cigarettes was inlaid with mother-o'-pearl. Upon it knelt a porcelain pierrot, holding the ash-tray, flanked by his companion-pierrette with the matches. Could the eye be offered more? It could. Best of all was the lady in bronze armour, a figure some eighteen inches high, her face and arms ivory, the bronze here and there gilded, a very ikon of luxury and refinement, from the Burlington Arcade.

She was still there. Everything was there, just as usual. But Mr Gibson hadn't said, "Where's Mary?" Martha looked back at Miss Diver in search of the reassurance the room hadn't given her.

"Mr Gibson has come to say good-bye to us," said Miss Diver in a low voice.

5

Martha's first thought was that now if ever was a time to shake hands. She admitted it freely: Dolores was right not to let her go before the ceremony had been performed. What annoyed her was Mr Gibson's unco-operativeness. He still stood with his back to her, swallowing noisily — and if he was still swallowing whisky-and-soda he was deliberately, in Martha's opinion, making it last.

"Good-bye," said Martha pointedly.

Mr Gibson started; and at last turned. (The glass in his hand, as Martha had suspected, empty.) He always affected a certain bluff jocularity with her, and it was now more marked than ever — even lamentably so, in the circumstances, and in a man of fifty, large and going slightly bald.

"Toodle-oo, parlez-vous, good-byee," declaimed Mr Gibson.

"Harry!" cried Miss Diver.

"As we used to say in the Great War," added Mr Gibson uncontrollably. "Good-bye, old thing, cheerio, chin-chin —"

"Harry!"

He managed to stop himself. It was like seeing an old car, or an old steam-engine, at last respond to the brakes. He shoved a hand out towards Martha — or he might merely have been gesticulating. In any case, Martha got hold of it.

"Aren't you going to say you're sorry?" prompted Miss Diver reproachfully.

Actually Martha did feel quite sorry. Nor was it from any apprehension as to the future, though this would have been justified. She felt sorry, saying good-bye to Mr Gibson, simply because she was used to him. But what she chiefly felt was embarrassment. For the first time she sensed, between these two elders, an emotion as strong as her own for the bronze lady (or for the ermines, or the pierrot). Dolores' head drooped against the Rexine like a nasturtium with its neck snapped. The ponderous frame of Mr Gibson was held erect only as a tomatoplant tied to a stick is held erect.

Looking from one to the other of them, Martha recognised, however obscurely, a distress she didn't want to be drawn into. She felt a more than usually urgent impulse to disappear — and further than the garden.

"I'm sorry. Can I go and look at the shops?" asked Martha.

"Go anywhere you like," sniffed Dolores, beginning to cry.

Martha was out of the house before you could say knife.

As soon as they were alone again Mr Gibson sat heavily down beside Miss Diver and took her in his arms. Through the Spanish shawl he felt her sharp collarbones; she, through his tweed jacket, A.S.C. tie and solid chest, the beating of his heart. Her tortoiseshell comb scraped him uncomfortably under the chin, but he would not ask her to remove it. He knew why it was worn — like the shawl.

"Remember the chappie who fell into the drum?" asked Mr Gibson tenderly.

They had met for the first time at a Chelsea Arts Ball — Dolores dressed as a Spanish Dancer, Mr Gibson as a brown paper parcel. He could thus hardly, even if he'd thought of it, have matched her gesture, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

"Of course I remember," whispered Dolores.

"Remember those young devils who started to unwrap me?"

"It didn't matter. You'd pyjamas underneath ..."

"I shall never forget how wonderful you looked, pulling me out of the cardboard ..."

"I couldn't bear to see you laughed at," murmured Dolores. "You were too big ..."

They had revived the moment many times before, but never so tenderly.

"Then we danced together all the rest of the evening."

"Of the night," corrected Dolores.

"And then I lost you."

"I got held up in the Cloaks."

"And then I found you again. What a chance that was! — Just popping in to buy a tie, and there you were!"

"I'm sorry, Harry, but I can't bear it," said Dolores.

She huddled closer against his solid chest. It was his solidness she'd always loved, as he her exotic frailty. For ten years they'd given each other what each most wanted from life: romance. Now both were middle-aged, and if they looked and sounded ridiculous, it was the fault less of themselves than of time.

To be fair to Time, each had been pretty ridiculous even at the Chelsea Ball. Miss Diver, in her second or third year as a Spanish Dancer, was already known to aficionados as Old Madrid. Mr Gibson, who had never attended before, found the advertised bohemianism more bohemian than he'd bargained for. To the young devils from the Slade, unwrapping him, his humiliated cries promised bare buff rather than pyjamas. Naked, indeed, he might have made headlines by being arrested; in neat Vyella, he was merely absurd ...

Dolores, Old Madrid, not only pitied his condition but also lacked a partner. She'd have been glad to dance with anyone, all the rest of the night. But though rooted in such unlikely soil their love had proved a true plant of Eden, flourishing and flowering, and shading from the heat of the day — not Old Madrid and Harry Gibson, but King Hal and his Spanish rose.

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Excerpted from "The Margery Sharp Collection Volume Two"
by .
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Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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