Summer in February (6 page)

‘All right, you buggers,’ Alfred said at last, ‘you win.’

Far from being troubled by this abuse, his semi-circular audience seated on the floor glowed, drinking punch and expectation,
sensing the plot was afoot, and sensing the game was going to be very good. His erratic mood was over, the storm had passed
from his eyes; once again he felt he was the main artery.

‘You’ve run me to ground,’ he went on, looking at Laura and then Joey (squeezed tight between Dolly and Prudence), ‘and I
don’t mind telling you I feel as cornered as a fox … we cornered a fox yesterday, but that’s another story, another time,
and I feel as baited as … as John Clare’s Badger, with the whole village baying for his blood. So I must turn to keep the
dogs at bay … I … I’m … I feel like Macbeth … you remember the final bit … bearlike I must stand the course … but if I fail
you won’t chop my head off, eh, you won’t be Macduffs?’

‘No’ and ‘Yes’ came in equal measure as they encouraged Alfred the Fox, Alfred the Badger and Alfred the Scottish Hero-Villain.
Sensing their readiness, he tilted back his head, his bloodshot eyes squinting open, and raised his hand. He wagged a finger
for the final depth of calculated,
concentrated silence, a conductor holding them before the opening chords were sounded, a mower before he brought down his
scythe.

On the fire Laura could hear the lemon slice hissing.

‘“The Raven”’ he said into the silence, ‘by Edgar Allan Poe.’

It was, of course, not silence. The silence merely brought out the strength of the wind, the power of the rain, and the unappeasable
storm off West Cornwall that night. Before Alfred began the poem Gilbert, with the storm pounding the door at his back, had
the prosaic thought that he was glad he was not walking alone on the cliff path back from Boskenna, let alone on a ship far
out at sea.

Alfred started the poem at a whisper, very slowly, allowing the beat of the long lines to weave its spell. Each mesmeric line
lulled you, as if you were coming out of or going in to sleep and unsure which was which. Each line was delivered with just
the right emphasis to hold the crowded room:

And at that very second, as true as Gilbert was standing there, there
was
a tapping at the door, a tapping which seemed to go right through Gilbert’s shoulder blades as they leant back against the
door.

Gilbert’s heart jumped. The room jumped. Dolly and Prudence grabbed Joey. The colour left Alfred’s face. His mouth twitched.
His mouth moved again but he did not
speak. His first clear thought, which quickly leapt to fury, was that someone, some fool, had gone outside to sabotage the
whole effect of his performance, but there was only one door out of his studio and Gilbert had been pressed hard up against
it.

Then there was another, louder, knocking. Alfred grabbed the poker and moved towards the door, but Gilbert had already lifted
the latch and opened it, and so strong was the wind he felt as if someone had shoulder-barged the panels. Flurries of rain
hit the floorboards at his feet.

A man in black, a stout figure in a tarpaulin sou’wester and oilskins, stood framed in the door, with large raindrops running
off his moustache. In the lane below stood a horse and wagonette. The horse, head down between the shafts, steamed and glistened.

‘Mr Munnings, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m led to believe a Mr Carter-Wood is here?’

Joey, looking embarrassed and younger than ever, stepped forward over Dolly’s outstretched legs, apologising for the interruption.

‘Sorry, what is it?’

‘Your sister, sir.’

‘Florence? Florence!’

Gilbert watched Joey hurry out into the storm, clatter down the outside wooden steps, and embrace the advancing girl.

‘At this time of night?’ Alfred said to the man in the oilskin.

‘The young lady paid me proper, sir, that’s all right.’

‘No, the horse, what about the
horse
!’

‘That’s all right, he don’t mind.’

But Alfred did mind and he dug into his pocket and put some coins in the man’s hand.

‘Give him a bit of something extra from me.’

While this was going on Laura was still inside encouraging everyone to carry on as normal, to enjoy themselves, an order immediately
countermanded by the returning Munnings who told them all to resume their seats and told Joey and his sister, still talking
outside in the rain, to bloody well come in if they were coming in or bloody well stay out if they were staying out. Joey
and his sister were, however, not only bloody well coming in but willy-nilly now the centre of attraction.

‘This is Florence, my sister. Down from London. She’s a painter too. Much better than me. Not difficult, I know.’

‘Hullo, Florence Carter-Wood!’ came from all quarters.

Hands took off her long black coat; a gap opened up to the fire; a glass of punch was offered, and a cushion was placed for
her on the floor. Before he would let his sister sit down, however, Joey explained to Dolly that Florence would be living
in the cottage with him, that is next door to Harold and Laura Knight, and next door, of course, to Dolly, ‘or in between
you all, if you prefer’. When Dolly shook Florence’s cold hand and said, ‘Oh, oh, we’ll all be nice and cosy then,’ Florence’s
eyes widened and she looked in a puzzled way at Joey because she had never met anyone before in society who ever spoke like
that
. Evidently things were going to be very different in Cornwall.

There had, it transpired, been a misunderstanding over dates, and the train to Penzance was delayed three hours, and there
had been a nasty—

‘Oh, it’s far too long a story,’ Florence said, ‘but when I arrived in Lamorna … Mr Knight told me you were down here, so
of course I came.’

‘I’m so glad you did,’ Joey said. ‘It’s so wonderful to see you.’

She sat down, whispering:

‘So, Joey, this … is one of your famous parties?’

‘Yes.’

‘What fun!’

She wrapped her hands round the warm punch, then inclining her head slightly towards Dolly but keeping her eyes on Joey she
privately asked:

‘And who is …
she
?’

‘Dolly … You’ll like her.’

Florence, amazed at this remark, looked up instead at Munnings, standing above her with his hands on his hips. Meanwhile,
Gilbert stopped looking at Munnings and started looking at Florence.

The length of her fingers, the delicacy of her hands, was the first thing he remembered as he sat over his diary, on the edge
of his narrow bed, at three o’clock the next morning. And her dark hair, though it wasn’t dark, that was the point: as it
dried imperceptibly in front of the fire, it turned lightish or auburny brown. Her fingers, her voice, her hair, and the way
she walked across the room were the most striking first impressions, and her very upright position, and as for her face –
her face was not unlike one he had seen – not in the street, not anywhere in real life, but in a famous painting, but as he
knew very little about art he couldn’t for the life of him remember it. It was Harold Knight a few days later who provided
the answer. Botticelli’s Venus.

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s the one.’

‘I agree, I’ve never seen such a likeness,’ Harold added, with unusual warmth, ‘and to think she’s living next door to us.’

Alfred Munnings was standing in the middle of his studio, hands on hips, with little doubt in his posture that he had been
seriously interrupted and had waited
long enough. He glared. Once again the assembled revellers slowly subsided. He glared again. Dolly, giggling to Joey, was
the last to fall silent. For the second time that evening the silence deepened. For the second time Alfred tensed his face
and half closed his eyes. Once again he raised his finger … but then with consummate skill swept up Florence Carter-Wood’s
black cape from the fender, showering fine drops of rain on his listeners, before settling it high over his shoulders. Now
he was a sharply pointed, stagey raven, hovering over the packed room of artists. And now he began:

He recited the whole poem, all eighteen stanzas, without one hesitation or one loss of total control.

All Gilbert, his heart a slow hammer, wrote in his diary that evening was:

After only a few hours of restless half-sleep, punctuated by some terrible dreams, Gilbert was up at 6.30 the next morning.
He was up early every morning, except on Sundays, and even then he always tried to make the early service at St Buryan.

Already obsessed, he opened the curtains in his little bedroom and looked down the valley towards the cove. The sea was slate
grey and the sky streaky bacon. The violence of the storm had blown itself to bits, the land was swept bare, and at the side
of the hotel the sodden grass was trying to shine in the watery light, but the light was not quite strong enough to help.
Still, it wasn’t raining, which was something, so Gilbert ducked down and put his head out of the bedroom window, leaning
right out, to see if all was well underneath his sill. Good, the house-martin’s nest was still securely there. All was well.

Next he checked to see if his trousers, hanging up behind his bedroom door, had dried out. They had, more or less. Good. He
pulled them on, and as he pulled them on, he thought of Florence.

He usually took his breakfast downstairs alone, well
before anyone else, because he liked to be properly organised and on site at Boskenna before the first of the workmen arrived
in the yard. That was part of his army discipline, part of what a decent officer should do, and it also suited him to eat
early because he liked to be fed, not fussed over. After a plate of bacon, egg and sausage he cleaned his teeth and prepared
to leave.

Before he did so (and it was the very last thing he did each morning before leaving) he opened the small drawer full of birds’
eggs, displayed carefully on cotton wool. Each morning he opened this drawer and each morning his heart clenched, then sank.
These eggs belonged to Sammy. He touched the eggs with his fingertips, very lightly. ‘Sammy’, as his younger brother Basil
was nicknamed, died last year. On the fateful Friday, Friday the 13th of August, he was bitten on the lip by an insect. It
all looked innocuous enough at first, just a hard little red dot, but on the Monday he suddenly developed a fever and started
to wander in his mind. Gilbert sat up all night with him, talking to him, telling him about the best tries the Welsh three-quarters
had scored, telling him everything would be all right in the morning, Sammy, very much better in the morning; but on the Tuesday
afternoon Sammy died.

Gilbert resettled the eggs and closed his eyes. How could such things happen to such a lovely boy? Who ‘allowed’ them to happen?
Who? What explanation or comfort could there be? Gilbert remembered sitting through a hopelessly inadequate sermon on this
subject at Rugby. To him it was an inexplicable grief. Each day Gilbert asked himself ‘Who?’ and ‘Why?’ and each day, unable
to answer these questions, he opened the drawer and took out the birds’ eggs as his tribute to Sammy, a private ceremony to
remind himself how fragile life was, how vulnerable not only Sammy was but all mankind, how precious a gift life
was (and here he thought of Florence) and how much he would try to be worthy of it.

Strangely enough, leaving Cardiff and coming down to Cornwall, which was partly done to overcome the pain, had only intensified
the loss. One of the reasons for this, strangely enough again, was Joey Carter-Wood, because Joey bore more than a passing
resemblance to Sammy. Sometimes, indeed, it was uncanny: there was the same shy look in his eye with girls, the same walk,
the same generous laugh, the same optimistic spirit and the same love of the countryside. Both Sammy and Joey enjoyed clambering,
rucksacks on backs, over slippery rocks and steep hills. No doubt, had he lived to be a man, Sammy would have turned into
just the sort of splendid fellow Joey was.

Thinking of Joey made Gilbert think again of Joey’s sister, now asleep up in the middle one of the low cottages, made him
think of her fingers and her face, her black cape, and her drying hair. On what pretext could he call on her? He was not sure.
But call he would. And every morning from now on, merely seeing the birds’ eggs, feeling their almost weightless bodily presence
and the oblique access they gave to Sammy’s life, would open the same happy-sad sequence of circular thoughts in Gilbert:

Sammy, Joey, Florence,

Florence, Joey, Sammy.

He decided, all being well at Boskenna, he would bicycle across after lunch to see the carpenter (for Laura) and then contact
the chimney sweep (for A.J.) and then, perhaps for tea, to the Carter-Woods, why not, and if they weren’t in, he could easily
and naturally drop in next door on Laura. Having them all so conveniently placed at the top of the lane was a bonus. And,
if they were out, no matter, it was good exercise. If you had
something gnawing away at your heart and mind exercise was the thing.

He put away the birds’ eggs.

Yes.

The world was once again a fine place as Gilbert set off from the hotel, high on the saddle, riding his bicycle up the lane,
and he cut a fine, upright figure. To everyone in the village he was very much ‘Captain Evans riding over to Boskenna’. There
was not much in the whole district he did not pass his eye over, and everyone, in return, waved to him.

Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings were up early, too. Among the artists they were always the first risers. However late their
night, however unsteady Alfred’s hand was on his razor, they pushed themselves out into the elements.

Her hobnails ringing on the road, her overcoat buttoned up to her neck, Laura strode down from Oakhill Cottages to the cove,
turning sharp right at the bottom. Today was another challenge for Laura. Today she would try to capture the grandeur of that
overhanging rock, the sort of rock she imagined frightened the young Wordsworth as he rowed across the dark lake. As she strode
down she sometimes smiled to herself, a bit shocked, reliving some of the fun of the night before. And how magnificent Alfred’s
recitation of ‘The Raven’ had been.

What a man Munnings was!

Meanwhile, having climbed the uncarpeted stairs to his studio, her husband Harold, clear-headed, austere and immaculate, was
drinking his first cup of tea. He sat in front of the easel. And sipped his tea. He eyed one corner of his painting. That
corner was not right. It required more careful work. He moved his heavy-lidded eyes closer to the
small particles of paint. He would, once he had finished his tea, give it that work. As far as Harold was concerned it was
perfectly possible to paint a good picture without having to go out in all weathers and catch your death of cold in doing
so. He could not, somehow, see Vermeer or Pieter de Hooch clambering over wet rocks or keeping going in a gale.

Second out of the stalls, banging the door behind him, came Alfred Munnings. He was incompetently shaven and unable to face
any kind of food. He also had a stabbing pain, a volcano of blood vessels, in his left eye. If his left eye hurt that much,
Alfred worried. He did not look up at the sky or breathe in deeply or do anything to suggest how good and bracing it was to
be alive that morning. Instead, head down, he berated himself for his excesses, thrust his hands and sketch pad into his pocket
and set off down to the cove. Knowing his master’s moods in the early morning only too well, Taffy, his terrier, trotted along
just out of kicking distance.

At the bottom Alfred turned left, in the opposite direction from Laura, across a small patch of worm-riddled sand to climb
past the quarry and meet the footpath to Mousehole. Riding with the Western Hounds the other day had given him an idea for
a painting, a setting near the coastguard lookout, which would combine various aspects – part real, part imaginary, part Cornwall,
part Norfolk – into which he would later fit the many figures of dogs and horses and huntsmen. Well, that was the idea, anyway.
But having ideas was one thing: doing the bloody thing was quite another.

If his head cleared by lunchtime he might have a sleep on the rocks, or he might ride Grey Tick in the afternoon, depending
on how he got on this morning – he might even go over to see Evans at Boskenna, good bloke, Evans – then
again he might not. The wind stabbed him in the eyes. He almost stumbled on a stone. This was not the moment to ask Munnings
what his plans for the later part of the day were. At the moment he had the energy of a slackened drum.

He crossed the small stream which, after the prolonged storm, was now a milky spate, and his feet hit the bottom of the wet
dirt path. As they did so there was a great explosive roar and rumble from the quarry. Alfred coughed up more of last night’s
smoky mucus from his lungs and spat into the bracken.

Over at Boskenna Gilbert worked hard all morning. From eight until ten he supervised the men hauling the stones, some large,
some small, which would improve the surface around the yard and so allow easier access for the flow of carts on their way
in and out. When the daffodil packing began in earnest it was like Piccadilly Circus. He took off his jacket and joined in
with the men, lifting, carrying, glistening with sweat, his veins bulged and the harder he worked the better he felt.

From ten until noon he attended to the Colonel’s correspondence. There was a heavy batch. While he was sorting through all
this with the shorthand clerk, Mrs Paynter popped in to ask him for lunch (cold lamb, followed by baked Bramleys) and over
lunch with the Colonel the conversation soon took the turn which was now fast becoming the norm in Lamorna.

‘What’s all this I hear about the Munnings chappie?’ the Colonel asked. Gilbert took the opportunity of a full mouth to consider
his reply. What exactly had the Colonel heard about A.J.? Given the wide range of possibilities it was probably best to play
a straight, defensive bat. Gilbert wiped his mouth on his napkin.

‘I’m afraid I don’t follow, Colonel.’

‘Got into trouble over in Newlyn, I understand. Quite considerable trouble.’

‘Really?’ Mrs P. was now interested. ‘What sort of trouble?’

‘That, my dear, is what I’m asking Gilbert.’

‘Well, there are always rumours, aren’t there?’ Gilbert said. ‘You know what the village is like.’

They ate for a while in silence. Then the Colonel asked:

‘D’you know him well?’

‘Not well, not yet.’

‘But you like him?’

‘Yes, I like him.’

‘So there’s nothing in the rumours? Nothing a bit “off” with the fella?’

The Colonel looked at his wife and let the sentence hang. With his spoon and fork Gilbert split open his white, puffy Bramley;
it oozed sultanas and cream, as the Colonel continued:

‘Don’t want a cad on my land, d’you see? Not if I can help it. Not a cad, is he?’

‘He’s … unusual, I’d say. But not a cad, Colonel, no.’

‘Fancies himself as a comic, I’ve heard, but impresses as a buffoon.’

‘I think that’s rather harsh, sir.’

‘Bit of a painter too, isn’t he?’

‘They say he’s a genius.’

‘Oh, a genius, is he?’

And Colonel Paynter’s sniff suggested some considerable reservations over geniuses. Gilbert kept eating, but all that splendid
lunch, the cold lamb and the Bramleys, nearly came up again five minutes later because a servant girl half ran in to the dining-room,
apologised and said Flirt, Mrs Paynter’s favourite terrier, had eaten some rat poison and was dying.

Gilbert hurried over to the stables, while Mrs Paynter and the servants gathered to watch from a distance. Gilbert held the
dog as it retched all over his shoes.

The smell!

He felt his stomach churn and he only just choked back in time. The dog writhed and gasped, its shanks sucking themselves
in. After a few failed attempts Gilbert managed to spoon some warm milk into Flirt’s mouth, not the easiest of operations
with the dog grinding her teeth and biting the spoon, but Gilbert kept at it. Butter and mustard followed. Fraction by fraction
Gilbert somehow slipped some morsels of that down. The dog writhed on, her eyes rolling, her breathing uncertain.

After an airless and emetic hour, with chubby maids whispering just out of sight, with Flirt’s heart bumping fast in Gilbert’s
hand, her breathing gradually settled into a more steady beat. It seemed the storm had passed. Gilbert stayed on, then laid
her, hot and exhausted, in her basket. Exhausted but alive. She looked up at Gilbert with droopy eyes.

He mopped up.

‘So kind of you,’ Mrs Paynter said, ‘so kind.’

‘She’ll live, I think,’ Gilbert said. ‘That’s the main thing, isn’t it?’

White-faced and needing some fresh air, Gilbert bicycled as fast as his legs would take him all the way back to Lamorna swallowing
and gulping harsh wonderful gulps of air, but the smell of the poison and the sickness seemed to have seeped deep into his
own skin and clothes; and even though he had thoroughly washed his hands and his shoes he wished he had some eau-de-Cologne.
The taste was on his tongue, too. He tried to spit it out into the thorny furze and the bramble sprays, but only smeared his
mouth with
saliva, and when he propped his bicycle against the low wall outside the Carter-Woods’ cottage he felt his nerve nearly fail.
Next cottage along, he could see Harold Knight’s back bent, still working upstairs in his studio, and he considered going
instead down the Knights’ front path for a harmless social hour, but Joey was sitting in his front room and waved excitedly
to Gilbert, motioning him to come in. The door was thrown open. The brother and sister stood side by side, arms open wide
in welcome: Florence and Joey, smiling at him.

‘How good of you to visit us!’ Joey said.

‘I hope I’m not intruding?’

‘No, couldn’t be better, we’ve just this minute come in from the rocks, haven’t we, Blote?’

‘Captain Evans,’ Florence said, her eyes steadily on Gilbert.

‘Gilbert,’ Joey corrected.

‘We’ve been collecting anemones,’ Florence added, shaking Gilbert’s hand, ‘and Joey is very excited with his findings.’

‘In a minute you can help us classify them,’ Joey said, taking Gilbert’s arm and leading him into the small sitting-room,
‘you’re just the man we need.’ There was, as usual, a sharp, salty smell permeating the house. Joey had one tank set up down
near the shore line, and an aquarium round at the back of the cottage to which he carried his specimens. On most days he could
be seen staggering back up the hill, with buckets yoked over his shoulders.