Free The Eye of Love by Margery Sharp Page B

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.
    â€œ 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.
    â€œIf 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.
    â€œI suppose your fine Auntie’s turning you out?” suggested Ma Battleaxe hopefully.
    â€œNo, 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.
    â€œThank you, I’ve had so much dinner I’m quite stuffed.”
    â€œJust the half,” pressed Ma Battleaxe. “You can have bloater-paste on it.”
    â€œMy 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.”
    â€œNot 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.