Summer in February (14 page)

In the weeks while Mr Money was away with his black-haired gypsies, the foundations were being dug for a handsome new house
on the cliff. The site was not far from Jory’s Hotel and Gilbert, of course, was deputed by the Colonel to supervise the early
stages. He did so happily. Very happily, as it meant less time sloshing around the big cobbled yard at Boskenna and more planning
chance meetings with Florence. From the site it took him less than ten minutes to cycle over to her cottage, he overtook her
on walks (Joey was vital for intermediary hints), he waved to her as she sat upstairs in Harold Knight’s studio and one wonderful
evening, a pipe dream come true, he rode over to Newlyn and brought her back from her art class on Merrilegs. Every step of
the way his heart unfurled and sang.

It soon became clear, too, that Gilbert was the only one who had received a letter from Alfred. This distinction surprised
him. He asked Laura. He sounded out Florence. Laura was somewhat put out to hear all this rhapsodising over the Romanies but
Florence, at her most assured, only said, ‘Why no,’ no, she had never expected a letter or
anything of the sort, why should she? To ride Merrilegs, to receive letters, to see so much of Florence, to sense her measured
distance diminish, to look high over hedges, to see gulls following a plough, to spot a different ground swell in the ocean
and enjoy the wide panoramas of a bigger busier world, all this experience seemed to be coming Gilbert’s way with an abrupt
rush.

His confidence grew.

His world expanded.

He rode into Penzance for some shopping, and to greet Gilbert and his private thoughts the church bells chimed as he trotted
along the promenade towards the centre of town. These last few days Gilbert sensed he was noticing things he rarely noticed;
today, for example, on entering Penzance, the bird droppings on a statue’s head. He saw them so clearly. Passing Morrab Gardens
he noticed the palms and myrtles, the geraniums and camellias.

Mother’s birthday was coming up next week, with brother Lionel’s only four days later. Never very original over such matters,
Gilbert knew he would buy a new book for Mother, he always did, and a new pipe (a rather pukka Loewe with an amber stem) for
Lionel. And at the bottom of his list (or the top) was a visit to the Morrab Library. That was the item he was moving towards.

Everything went perfectly. He completed all his business calls; he bought the book and the pipe in Chapel Street; he saw the
surveyor and had a ginger beer at a small shop, and that left only the library before he put his foot back in the stirrups.
Never before had the prospect of a visit to any library excited Gilbert, but in the last week the word, the words, had been
niggling away in his mind, and the only thing for it was to go to the source of words, the dictionary. Coming back down Morrab
Road towards the Promenade, he turned left into Morrab Gardens. He sat in the sun for a
moment, a stone’s throw from the sea, and listened to the gulls cry, and the palms rustle.

Liddell and Scott, he remembered that big black tome at Rugby, and he also recalled how difficult he had found it to grasp
Greek grammar. He followed the librarian through the high, quiet rooms, not to Liddell and Scott, but to the large Oxford
English Dictionary. He took down the volume he needed. How could a dictionary cause his hands to tremble and the muscles in
his arms to tighten like a rope? He placed the weathered spine on a reading-table and turned the pages, trying to make as
little noise as possible.

black

blanch

bloom

blossom

blot

Surprisingly, there was a good deal on ‘blot’.

blotchy

Must be soon, or is there no such word, don’t say there is no such—

blote

His finger stopped. It was easily the shortest entry on the page, almost as if there were some doubt amongst the world’s lexicographers
as to its existence. He read:

This was not at all what Gilbert wanted to find. He had not followed this trail to encounter larva and flies and other insects.
He wiped Sammy away. He wiped out of his mind
the sight, and particularly the sound of fly-blown bodies and the heat of the South African sun, the sight of his friend’s
face covered in flies and the horse with a burst stomach and barrel chest and flies walking on its teeth.

Livid? No. But … pale, yes, she was pale. He looked down again at the page.

bloten

bloten … to soften or moisten … anoint. Moistening, yielding.

He looked up and across the room. Soften, moisten, anoint, yield. He saw nothing, then he saw Florence standing at her easel
in Newlyn, and with that softening sight and with those yielding words he was comfortable, with those words he could face
and handle the future.

Florence was not standing at her easel in the third studio in Newlyn, though she should have been. She was sitting, with her
hands in her lap, on the creaky chair which Alfred Munnings had once again placed twenty yards from his studio. The chair
was placed against a perfect background of foliage. Her oval face was pale. Her bracelet shone in the sun. She had a headache
which worsened by the minute as she sat full face in the glare.

Alfred had returned at breakfast time, his trap full of gypsy paintings, and called on her unannounced; and before she knew
what was going on, before she could say ‘No’ she was on the way down the slope with him. Unusually, he was sitting down to
work. Usually he was too restless, moving around like a dancer or an angry fly, but here he was, tired from travelling all
night, the taste of beer still on his tongue, sitting on a low milking stool, his long holland painting coat plastered yellow,
his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and his Panama hat tilted over one eye. She could not see his eyes, nor
had she dared look directly at him since his terrible explosion.

He drew her, also making pencil notes on the side of his pad, his thoughts over possible colours.

‘Been seeing a fair bit of Ev?’

‘We’ve met a few times.’

‘Good … good. Thought so. Thought you would.’

‘They’re building a new house, didn’t you know?’

She looked at his hands. They were tanned brown. She looked at the little hairs on his forearms. She hadn’t noticed those
before.

‘Don’t move!’

‘Don’t shout at me!’ she shouted back. ‘I already have a headache.’

‘I can’t work if you keep on moving.’

‘I haven’t been shouted at while you’ve been away, not once. It has been a most pleasant fortnight.’

The sun glared. She blinked. He was glad she shouted back.

‘You’re my apples, you see. Cézanne. Heard of Cézanne?’

‘Of course I’ve heard of Cézanne. I suspect I may know as much about him as you do.’

‘Point being,’ he stood up to resettle himself and sat down again, ‘point being, Cézanne painted the same bowl of apples countless
times – there’s always something new, you see, to say about a bowl of apples, the same bowl, so he kept painting them until
they were perfect, that’s dedication, Blote, that’s art, and remember you’re my apples. Same with horses. Most people can’t
paint horses, can’t make ’em shine.’

‘But you can?’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘You’ve returned at your most modest, Mr Munnings.’

‘Most modest people haven’t a clue,’ he yawned, and
stroked his unshaven chin, ‘sorry, bit tired, and … horses, yes, horses shine, you see, you look at them when I take you to
the races, you really look at them and you’ll see I’m right, and making them shine is the challenge.’

‘I’ll remember that. At the moment I find the human form enough of a challenge.’

‘I prefer cows though.’

‘Cows?’

‘Cows, I said.’

She started to tremble.

‘So ridiculous, you really are, I don’t know why I’m here. I should be at my class.’

‘Best one I ever had was a cross between a Friesian and a Jersey bull, with white markings. Marvellous! What a model! I’ve
just bought a cow, by the way.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! You will say anything, anything.’

She had to stand up to stop laughing but that only made it worse.

‘No doubt about it, give me a cow. They stand still, they have no ambition, they don’t want to be petted or patted, you don’t
have to say “poor thing” or “thank you”, they don’t require any knowledge of their character, they’re not disdainful like
some people I know, they don’t want intimacy, you don’t pay homage to a cow, they never complain of headaches, yes, they’re
my models, oh bloody hell, the sodding sun’s gone in so you might as well have a proper rest. Is my bow tie straight?’

‘Not quite.’

‘Straighten it, please.’

She did so, her shoulders still shaking, her hands trembling on his tie. His face was red-brown. She stepped back.

‘Is that right?’

He felt his collar.

‘Yes. But you heard what I was saying about apples?’

‘Yes, I heard you, Alfred. I expect people in Penzance heard you.’

‘Ah, see what I mean? Now no cow I know would say a thing like that. Or horse. Now look at Tick. Come on … let’s look at Grey
Tick. Now you probably think Grey Tick is a world away from us, but look at it this way … his hocks are your ankles, his knees
are your wrists, he walks on his fingers and his toes, the stifle joint is your—’

blotless came next. Blotter. His school blotter. Gilbert remembered how its perfect, pristine texture was slowly spoiled with
spreading pen marks, filled with wonderfully interesting spiders’ webs or outlines of Africa or the shape of a leaf or the
central nervous system. His finger moved on. No, he must go back, as blote was an obsolete form of bloat. He moved a few pages
back.

black

blithe, that was a word he’d always liked, blithe, a pleasurable word

blizzard

bloat, brought him up sharp

But puffy, swollen and puffed were not words he liked. Nor was that the spelling, Joey was quite clear on that point. At least
they were all agreed on the spelling.

He replaced the dictionary, just as the sun hit the top of the bookcase.

Now for Sandro Botticelli. From another shelf, in the darkest corner of the library, he gathered three histories of art, each
with a helpful entry on Botticelli of Florence. (And what a happy accident it was that Botticelli came from Florence; it was
as if the gods had conspired to make the parallels between the two women perfect in every respect.) In the third book he found
exactly what he wanted, a
coloured engraving of
The Birth of Venus
. Here before him was Botticelli’s Venus.

Venus stood there on the page before him naked. Almost naked. Florence stood there. Gilbert studied her.

He looked at her as closely as he could.

In the clear morning air beauty came into the world with Venus, and it was the mystery of her arrival, the moment of her arrival,
which Botticelli caught. She came naked from the sea (a sea such as there never was in Cornwall), perfectly balanced yet somehow
tilting forward on the daintily lipped cockle shell. The air slipped around her. Calm though the sea was, an unreal flat calm
of grey water, Venus seemed to sway gracefully on the shell. It should have been precarious – there were such risks! – but
she was balanced and confident and self-assured she would not fall. This Venus made a nonsense of gravity.

Gilbert borrowed a magnifying glass from the librarian, and then turned his back so that it could not be seen over which picture
he was poring. He moved the glass slowly across the page. Two winged zephyrs, flying past, blew her on to the shore with jets
of lustful air, their breath warm and the air full of floating petals, petals which hung and hovered. On closer inspection
Gilbert saw they were a shower of roses, cut short at the stalk. Cutting flowers was something Gilbert often did. ‘Another
sign,’ he said to himself. ‘It all fits together. Everything.’

On the shore stood Time, a nymph in a white dress, with a wreath of myrtle around her neck, waiting with a beautifully embroidered
purple cloak, patterned with daisies. Was this a cloak to veil her, a cloak to cover her nakedness? There was surely no need
for a cloak and certainly no request in Venus’s eyes for one. This woman, this goddess, did not seem embarrassed by her state.
Indeed she challenged you to look her in the eye.
Gilbert bent over and studied her again. No, perhaps her eyes were sad and accepting. Oh, it was
so
difficult to read people’s eyes, wasn’t it?

With a steady hand he looked, through the glass, slowly down her body. Her right hand screened her bosom, covering her round
high right breast. In her left hand she held some of the very long tresses of honeyed, auburn hair in front of her lower nakedness.
To cover it, Gilbert felt, was also to draw one’s attention to it, to imagine more fully what could not be seen. Was it Botticelli’s
purpose to excite such thoughts?

No.

Botticelli’s Venus was as delicate and as tender as Florence. Her skin was cool, and cool in the same way. She was a gift
from Paradise, a gift from the gods, and she walked towards him out of the sea in Cornwall, tapping the door against which
he stood. She came out of the sea towards him, and the orange trees and the grassy dunes ran down to the sea in welcome.

She came towards him as he waited. He held out his hands.

Botticelli’s Venus.

Botticelli, Painter of Florence.

He closed the book. He must go back on Merrilegs to Boskenna.

There was so much to do. He left the Morrab Library.

‘You’re not listening!’

‘I am.’

‘You’re not, you’re just nodding.’

‘I
am
listening, and I can see exactly what you mean about the horse. Put like that, it
is
almost human.’