Summer in February (7 page)

‘So you’re interested in marine biology too?’ Florence asked.

‘Your brother’s the expert,’ Gilbert said, ‘I just double-check on the details. He’s opened up another world for me.’

‘Has he?’

Dressed in silver-grey, she looked younger, less composed, more vulnerable, more lovely, more everything.

‘Did you enjoy last night?’ Joey wanted to know of Gilbert, with a conspiratorial grin.

‘Oh, very much.’

‘Is that … typical?’ Florence asked. ‘What went on, I mean? Later.’

‘Sit down, sit down,’ Joey moved some of his things, ‘pretty wild, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, I suppose it was.’

‘And the poem,’ Florence said, widening her eyes with meaning, ‘what was your opinion of
that
?’

‘Extraordinary, wasn’t it?’ Joey said. ‘Quite extraordinary.’

‘I asked Captain Evans, Joey. I know what you think about everything.’

‘Gilbert,’ Gilbert corrected, ‘please.’

‘Gilbert, then.’

She looked at him, waiting. He felt himself being assessed. He moved his feet. What did he think of the poem? Well, it certainly
went on a long time.

‘I simply don’t know how anyone could learn all that. I know I couldn’t.’

‘Quite so,’ Joey said, ‘extraordinary, but then he is, isn’t he!’

‘Mind you, your entry was even more dramatic,’ Gilbert said to Florence.

‘Was it?’

‘And did you
see
A.J.’s face!’ Joey laughed. ‘If looks could kill.’

‘What about his face?’ Florence asked her brother.

‘Well, spoiling his moment like that, I mean one doesn’t lightly interrupt A.J., does one, Gilbert? No, one does
not
!’

‘Really?’ Florence said. ‘Is he so very important?’

‘More than one’s life is worth to interrupt A.J.,’ Joey went on. ‘Still, come on, can’t wait to show you what I’ve just got
out the back.
And
the little devil stung me for my pains.’

‘Stung you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Badly?’ Gilbert asked.

‘Very,’ Florence said. ‘Is all this worth it?’

Joey looked at his hand.

‘Bit of a jolt, just as I pulled it off the rock, but it’s a beauty, the best snakelocks I’ve seen, lovely purples and greens,
she’s going to draw it for me later, aren’t you? Do you want to see my little poisoner?’

‘Oh, do let Captain Evans sit for a moment, he’s only just arrived.’

Once again Gilbert felt her eyes on his face. He looked steadily at Joey and asked:

‘What does the sting feel like now?’

‘Oh, prickly torture, nothing more,’ Joey said. ‘Lots of little explosions, that’s all, lots of invisible barbs. Mind you,
I’ve just been reading in Gosse about the Dr Waller experiment, you won’t see me doing
that
, Gilbert, not in a month of Sundays.’

‘Doing what?’ Florence asked.

‘Well, it seems this Dr Waller deliberately allowed the anemone’s tentacles to touch the tip of his tongue, because he wanted
to know the full effect. That was a snakelocks, too.’

‘His tongue!’ Florence’s voice was a low whisper. ‘Did you say his … tongue? He allowed one of those …
things
to touch his tongue?’

‘Yes, and the anemone seized it very hard and it took him about a minute or more to claw it off. Imagine that, a snakelocks
clamped on your tongue.’

If Joey found all this quite funny, Florence did not.

‘But why did he do it?’

‘To see the effect, as I said. And it was extremely distressing. Hardly surprising as it pumps poison into you. They may be
very beautiful, but they’re also very aggressive.’

‘The man’s a fool,’ Gilbert muttered.

‘Apparently his tongue felt very swollen, though it did not
appear
any larger, so he dipped it alternately in hot and cold water. Can’t you see him doing it?’

‘Sounds an even bigger fool,’ Gilbert exclaimed.

‘And the ulceration of his tongue only disappeared when he applied some nitrate of silver, drastic though that is.’

Florence waved her hands in the air, calling for an urgent halt to all this, shaking her head in a speechlessly urgent request.

‘Yes,’ Gilbert said, ‘enough’s enough, I think.’

‘Can we go back,’ Florence asked quietly, ‘to the poetry?’

‘The poetry?’ Joey looked blank.

‘Yes, does he take it all
that
seriously?’ Florence asked.

‘What?’

‘His recitation, his Rook.’

‘Oh, the Raven you mean.’

‘Raven, then.’

‘Good question, isn’t it,’ Joey admitted. ‘I suppose he must. After all it takes a devil of a lot of learning, and I suspect
he’s got others up his sleeve.’

But Florence had turned her attention, full face and very pale, to her visitor. It was an attention her visitor could not
ignore.

‘So, what have you been doing today … Gilbert?’

‘Me?’

Gilbert could not see much of interest for this beautiful girl in the stone-hauling around the Boskenna yard or
the Colonel’s correspondence, while the incident with Mrs Paynter’s half-dead dog might well be most inappropriate in mixed
company. But he felt he really had to say something or seem insufferably dull, so he gave a fairly comic and very heavily
edited version of Flirt, Her-Almost-Final-Moments. Joey loved every minute of it, so Gilbert relaxed and elaborated a bit,
until he saw Florence’s face.

‘But,’ he added with an encouraging smile, ‘it all ended happily, that’s the main thing, as I said to Mrs Paynter, Flirt will
be fine tomorrow, probably already is.’

Her voice, when it came, was intensely considered and not to be denied.

‘What sort of poison did you say it was?’

Before Gilbert could answer the question Joey stood up and rubbed his hands.

‘Aquarium time, I think, our ocean in miniature, our very own sea floor.’

Joey led the way, followed by Florence, but Gilbert could no longer concentrate on the business of identification. His Flirt
story had spoilt the atmosphere, that was evident, and as they walked through to the cluttered back parlour all he could do
was to ask her some sensible questions, more or less anything, on more or less any topic, as long as it was sensible.

‘So, you’ve been to your first class … with Stanhope Forbes?’

‘No, we’re going tomorrow, I’m afraid I was too tired, I woke so late.’

‘I’m not surprised, it’s a long way from London.’

In the back parlour, Joey’s marble-topped table was covered with small pails and china bowls and various hoop nets and prods.

‘Gilbert’s always up with the lark, aren’t you, Gilbert?’

‘I have to be.’

‘From now on Joey will be coming with me every day I go to Newlyn, won’t you, Joey?’

Joey settled on his haunches in front of the aquarium, slipping a thermometer slowly into the water. Florence spoke to his
back.

‘Won’t you? We’ve
agreed
!’

Joey wrinkled his nose and shrugged. His eyes were lost in his small marine world of green weed and shells and tiny rocks,
with submerged sea anemones half retracting their tentacles. He lightly tapped the glass with his pencil, causing a tiny rhythmic
stirring of growths.

‘There she is, Gilbert!’

Gilbert’s face was only a few inches from Florence’s, only a few inches from the glass. He asked:

‘Does he run art classes in Newlyn every day?’

‘Yes, but we’re going three days a week. We can comfortably manage that, and Papa insists on a progress report on both of
us, you see, at the end of each month, and if Joey backslides—’

‘Look at the stem, Gilbert, and the colour … ever seen anything so
mauve
?’

Joey pointed into the gleaming stillness. Florence moved on to her knees. Joey tapped the glass again.

‘That’s the column … and the mouth … and the disc … but look at the beadlet, it’s very like the strawberry, see the difference,
and you can see it’s much smaller than the snakelocks … and that one … there … is the plumose … come on, open your … there
… now look at those reds and greens. Do you think the world of art offers any greater mystery or any greater beauty? Do you?’

Florence stared at Gilbert’s reflection and watched his mouth as he asked:

‘So you’ll be here in Lamorna some months then?’

It took her a few seconds to react, to stop staring at his reflected mouth, and then she saw the strawberry and the reds and
the mauves and the anemones opening and closing their mouths. She gulped and turned slowly to Gilbert.

‘That’s what I plan, but if Joey lets me down, if Papa thinks for one moment his son is wasting his time and his money on
these poisonous blobs of jelly which attack you, neither of us will be happy and neither of us will be allowed to keep this
cottage or stay down here, I promise you that’s true, Joey, and you know it, and all your precious anemones won’t save us.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said mechanically, ‘I know all that.’

Florence’s eyes appealed to Gilbert. Gilbert nodded and turned to his young friend.

‘You really must,’ Gilbert said. ‘We
all
want you both to stay.’

‘Yes – yes,’ Joey mumbled, ‘don’t
you
start as well, Gilbert. I’ve come here to show you the snakelocks, not be given a sermon, so if you don’t mind … I’ll just
check the salinity.’

‘You really want to be a painter, then?’ Gilbert asked Florence, straightening up, feeling a bit like the piggy in the middle.
She laughed abruptly.

‘Why else do you think I’m here? And we have every opportunity to improve, we’ve got the Knights as neighbours, imagine that,
imagine what I can learn from Laura and Harold Knight. Imagine what
he
could learn from them, if he
wanted
to.’

‘She’s awfully good,’ Joey said, nodding at his sister, ‘do show Gilbert your latest—’

She shook her head at her brother’s praise and stood up.

‘Some other time, I think. We’ve only just met.’

‘I’d love to,’ Gilbert said. ‘Whenever. I really would.’

All three of them turned away from the aquarium.

‘The best thing you can do for me, Gilbert, if you really want to help, is to encourage
him
’ – she poked Joey’s arm with her long fingers – ‘to take his lessons seriously.
Don’t
smile at me, Joey! I hate it when you do that, it is so superior, and so infuriating. You see, let’s be honest, dear brother,
Papa already considers art little more than daubing, and if you let me down I shall be dreadfully annoyed.’

Having spoken so sharply, with a sudden softening she kissed her recalcitrant brother and kept her arms wrapped around him.
Gilbert could now see the outline of her backbone through her dress, and the way her long hair fell. Joey looked over his
sister’s shoulder, winking slowly at Gilbert.

‘You can rely on Gilbert to keep me up to the mark, can’t you, Gilbert?’

‘Yes you can, you can indeed.’

Back in the sitting-room Gilbert slumped in his chair, suddenly hit by the afternoon wave of tiredness that comes after too
little sleep. His eyes itched and he rubbed them.

‘You must have had enough of us squabbling,’ Florence said, disengaging her arm from Joey’s, ‘so we will now have some tea.’

‘I’d love some tea.’

‘And then you must tell me about South Africa. All about it.’

‘Not
now
, Blote! Honestly.’

Joey looked a little shy and a little crestfallen.

‘But have I got it wrong? Joey did tell me you fought in the war?’

‘Yes, yes I did.’

‘But he doesn’t like talking about it? All right? Sorry, Gilbert.’

‘That’s nothing, nothing at all.’

‘Now, look, we must arrange our next time for billiards. We play at Jory’s,’ he explained to his sister. ‘When we can.’

‘Can I watch?’ Florence asked. ‘Or is it terribly private? You never know with men’s games. No. No, I can see it
is
private.’

‘Of course you can watch,’ Gilbert said.

‘If you like,’ Joey mumbled.

‘Are you an expert at billiards, Gilbert, as well as rock pools?’

‘I’ve told you, I really know very little about the seashore, I’m a beginner.’

‘Well,’ Joey answered for both men, ‘there is still some dispute as to who is the outright billiards champion of Lamorna and
the surrounding parishes, Captain Gilbert Evans of the Monmouthshire Militia or me, but I intend to establish my mastery.’

Gilbert smiled and stared at his feet. Her eyes, he could feel her eyes clamped on him.

Going slowly back to the hotel on his bicycle, at barely more than walking pace, Gilbert relived everything from the moment
he arrived at the Carter-Woods’ cottage. From tea with Florence and Joey he had returned to Boskenna to do three more hours’
work and now looked forward to his evening meal. Whatever his reservations beforehand he had surely been right to call on
them. Apart from that one sticky patch it had all gone so well. Then he heard a horse’s hooves approaching on the other side
of the wall, coming up quickly in the field behind him. He turned to see a rider silhouetted against the grey sky. He stopped
his bicycle to watch as the rider leant back in the saddle to make a perfect leap over some tangle bushes. It was Munnings.

‘Evans!’ he shouted going past, wheeling and coming back to join him.

‘Hullo, A.J.’

‘Easy, Tick, easy.’ He pulled up his horse, stroked and patted him. ‘Glad I caught you. Heard you were out and about on your
funny machine.’

He smiled in a way Gilbert could not follow, and the purplish tint in his cheeks creased as he smiled.

‘Most enjoyable party last night,’ Gilbert said, ‘it really was.’

Munnings waved a dismissal, as if all that thank-you-guff was taken for granted.

‘But you like “The Raven”, that’s the point, you liked Poe’s stuff?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘D’you know it?’

‘I’d read some at school, of course, but not—’

‘Thought you would, thought you’d like it, so I’ve brought this. For you.’

From his pocket he took out a small, red leather book of Poe’s poetry, but immediately pointed at the gatepost by Gilbert’s
elbow.

‘Look at the rust stain on that post … same colour as the book, almost, but that rust was dark brown yesterday, sorrel red
today, bit of rain, different day and it’s a different colour, different world depending on the sky, you’ve got to use your
eyes if you’re an artist.’