Summer in February (28 page)

Gilbert hired a bicycle.

The tiny village of Sancreed is more or less due west of Penzance and north-west of Lamorna. The ride there from the hospital
took him the best part of an hour, with a chilly breeze on his face but with his body warming up as he went. Once, forced
to stop by a butcher’s cart going too fast, he took the opportunity to pick some wild flowers from the hedgerows, and mixed
them in with some thrift from his pocket, the pink so common on the clifftops where they walked.

Cycling, he was hit by the sweet smell of dung as he passed a farm, and the sharp sting of sea air as he made the top of a
hill. He noticed the cawing crows and a flock of gulls … and the occasional raven. He noticed how, a little inland, the slopes
were scarred by smaller rocks, so tiny after the huge granite slabs at Lamorna.

This forward motion for the best part of an hour was long enough for his mind to go back to their best days. Crows and gulls
and ravens were common enough in Cornwall, as were the guillemots and razor-bills returning in March, but what about the day
they climbed to a dangerous spot
to see the storm petrel, a rarity hurled on to the coast by an October gale? He remembered the tiny abrasions that climb had
left on Florence’s ankles, and the contrast her voice made with the drowsy sound of the mill; he could see her brother’s face
bending over rock pools, pools glowing with urchin and sea anemones. He remembered her love of chicory and lettuce salad and
her body swirling in the shed, around and around and around in his head.

Buoyed up by these memories he heard himself whistling and then he was angry that he was, and then he was even angrier because
A.J. started singing at the top of his voice:

‘No!’ Gilbert shouted at the hedges. ‘No,
not now
!’

The Sancreed sign.

His stomach in a squeeze, the strength swiftly ebbing from his legs, but with his straight mouth firmly set, he placed the
bicycle against the churchyard gate. He turned right past two heavy Cornish cross heads, paced along a row of eighteenth-century
stones, some as high as his shoulder, searching slowly, walking with great care until he saw the newish mound. That was it.
It was right on the far edge of the consecrated ground. Perhaps the vicar felt it was a case of this far but not an inch further.

This is where she is.

He paused and took out the flowers.

He took off his hat.

He had not been to her marriage, though he had often enough painfully imagined the scene in Westminster, the
guests filling up the pews, Joey smiling openly on everyone, Florence walking down the aisle on her father’s arm, some flowers
in her hand, as Alfred Munnings turned, eyebrows raised, his face tanned and triumphant, to claim her.

He had not been to her funeral, though he had often enough painfully imagined the wagonettes and the horse-drawn hearse, the
mourners walking in pairs with black crêpe on their skirts and arms. Who were the bearers? He did not know. Did her mother
and father attend? Did Joey? He did not know. He could see the flowers. There must have been flowers, boxes full of flowers
from Boskenna, flowers for Florence.

He moved forward with his own. He saw:

It was a small stone, so low and so small, Gilbert had to stoop down to read it, as if the stone knew its plain, apologetic
position. He placed his bunch of wild flowers at his feet, which was where he imagined her feet would be. The mound looked
as small as Sammy’s. Then he knelt, and closed his eyes. He knew memory-pain.

Sammy.

How fragile birds’ eggs were.

Florence.

Blote.

Edith Florence.

Wife of A.J. Munnings.

He could feel the pressure of her hand.

Yes, he could feel it.

He could see her walking, so upright, along the Penzance Promenade.

Yes, he could see her. In the Morrab Library.

He could feel her waist as she skated along.

He could hear her little murmurings as she kissed him.

Yes, if he listened, if he really listened, he could hear her … little murmurings.

He could see the wild look in her eyes as all her horses won, all all won.

Yes, so wild, her purple-lined eyes.

Yet so still and calm, floating, Botticelli’s Venus.

Would all this go away? Would it all fade into a dull ache? Would it heal, as the bullet wound in his head was already healing?
Would it? She said:

I hope you’re safe, Gilbert, that’s all.

I’m safe. I’ve survived, so far.

Was it a very long journey to Nigeria?

Yes, and back.

There and back?

But he didn’t want to tell her about the terrible marches and the sickness. He would, fairly soon, go back to all that, the
canoes and the mud huts and the bursts of fire from river banks; yes, he had to go back, but that was not what he came to
Sancreed for. He wanted to hear her voice, though he could hear no sound now beyond the birds in the square church tower.
When he opened his eyes he read the simple facts on the small stone again. Then he stood up and took two upright paces back,
as an officer, before he bent his head. Below, the grass showed the patches where his feet and his knees had pressed.

Promise you’ll come back.

I’ll come back.

And stay alive?

I’ll do my best.

Even though I broke my promise?

I’ll come back.

Even though I’m useless?

I’ll come back, Florence. Trust me.

Without turning for a final look, because he knew he would be back, Gilbert walked through the shadow of the tower and from
the churchyard and cycled slowly back down the lanes towards the sea and Lamorna, and by the time he arrived at Laura’s, with
dusk falling and his face cold, he had composed himself.

All rag tag and bobtail, Laura was waiting for him with a big hug and a warm hearth, with rabbit soup and a flavouring of
onion, and some home-cured ham.

In Harold’s studio that night, just before he went to bed, Gilbert placed his lamp on the table. The room was full of the
familiar smell of oil paint. There was an old cot, full of unused canvases, and the parcel left for him had a familiar shape
too. It was large and flat. An envelope was glued to the brown wrapping and the writing on the envelope was in a familiar
hand.

Captain C.G. Evans

Gilbert sat on Harold’s wooden chair, next to his easel, and opened the envelope.

Gilbert took off the brown paper, making sure his fingers kept well clear of the surface. In his hands he held, close to the
lamp,
Morning Ride
, the portrait of Florence on Merrilegs.

Dame Laura Knight (1877-1972) was only the second woman to be elected a full Royal Academician (1936). When the President
addressed the Academy he began not with ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ but with ‘Gentlemen … Laura, you’re one of us’.

Given all that had happened, Harold Knight (1874-1961) was not disappointed to leave Cornwall in 1920. He recovered his health
and was elected to the Royal Academy one year after Laura.

Joey Carter-Wood was killed in France in 1916.

Major Gilbert Evans, Deputy Surveyor General in Nigeria, retired in 1933 to Lamorna to live in the clifftop house he started
to build in 1912. He died in Penzance in 1966.

Sir Alfred Munnings (1878-1959) was elected President of the Royal Academy in 1944. In 1949, the year in which he retired
from that position, he made a controversial speech.

Anyone who has read the autobiographies of Sir Alfred Munnings and Dame Laura Knight will know how indebted I am to them.
Anyone who has read them will also know that Munnings does not say one word about the central events in Cornwall described
here, while Laura Knight alludes to them only in the most tantalising way.

The two excellent biographies of Munnings,
The Englishman
(1962) by Reginald Pound and
What a
Go! (1988) by Jean Goodman, do address the years he spent in Lamorna and were of course invaluable.

When travelling and ‘reading around’ the period I became absorbed in, and influenced by, the work of A.C. Benson and Adrian
Bell.

Winston Churchill plays a very small, non-speaking part in
Summer in February
, but the fellow commonership given to me by Churchill College, Cambridge, helped me, in a large way, to complete it.

I am very grateful to Brian Manning for encouraging me to start on this story; and above all to David Evans, the younger son
of Major Gilbert Evans, without whose detailed and sympathetic co-operation this book would have been impossible.