Summer in February (8 page)

‘Thank you for the book. It’s most—’

Alfred bent closer to Gilbert.

‘So, what
a
-bout this Miss C. Hyphen Wood, eh, what d’you make of her?’

‘I don’t really know, I’ve hardly met her.’

‘Yes, yes, no need for all that, but you were drawn, eh,
you smelt her, you spotted her as she went past, you were not
un
-a-ware of her presence.’

‘She strikes me as very—’

‘Paintable, exactly, ex-actly, very paintable indeed.’

Alfred sat upright again, as if they were obviously in as close accord on her paintability as on everything else.

‘Yes,’ Gilbert said, ‘I can see that she would be. To an artist.’

‘Like coffee, though, always remember that.’

Gilbert said he had not quite caught what Alfred had just said. It sounded like ‘coffee’.

‘That’s right, coffee. A girl. Like coffee. Never tastes as good as it smells. Don’t know why.’

Gilbert looked at his handlebars. Did people really have to talk like that? Was it necessary to be so hopelessly inappropriate
in one’s comparisons?

‘I wouldn’t know about that, I haven’t had enough experience. I haven’t, you know … known enough to say.’

A.J. nodded and winked, as if Gilbert should nevertheless commit this shared coffee secret to memory, a secret that would
help him through his inexperienced life, until he
did
meet enough girls.

‘But it’s true, Ev, believe me … however refined or sensitive they seem. Still, she can draw a bit, she
can
draw, if nothing else. Bastien-Lepage would have been quite proud of her. Yes, Stanhope Forbes has a winner in her, all right.
Or a runner-up at least.’

‘So Joey said. It’s very exciting, isn’t it?’

‘Just seen ’em, she’s no fool … she can handle a pencil and a brush … needs to be bolder, of course, her pencil’s too polite,
needs to burst out, needs to tell the world who she is, doesn’t she, Tick?’

He stroked his horse.

‘Oh, you’ve already seen her art?’

‘Yes, just called in, not long after you, funny we should both call there today, isn’t it, something of a stalking party,
still, must get on. Right, Tick, we’d better be off.’

He turned the huge animal towards his studio.

‘
No
,’ he stopped himself, ‘
knew
there was something else! That bicycle of yours, no good at all, from what I can hear, bloody hopeless in fact, so I’ve come
up with a plan.’

Gilbert bridled.

‘What nonsense! This bicycle is top-hole, it’s a wonderful machine, it’s made the most marvellous difference to my days here.’

‘Top-hole, is it?’ A.J. laughed. ‘
I
heard all the holes were in the tyres.’

‘I’ve just bought new tyres in Penzance, the very best.’

‘Yes, yes, no doubt, but there’s not much point having a bicycle with a record like yours, is there, like a boat that leaks,
so tell you what I’m going to do, Ev, you can have my pony, borrow Merrilegs whenever you like, I mean it, no charge, my pleasure,
and it’ll make all the difference, all the difference, you’ll see, you’ll catch everyone’s eye.’

Gilbert disliked all this, both the man’s substance and the man’s tone.

‘I am interested only in going from A to B, not catching anyone’s eye!’

‘Do it quicker on a horse, then! Do it much quicker!’

‘Colonel Paynter always lends me a hunter if I need one. In fact, he’s offered me one many times.’

‘Even so, easier if you take my offer, no favours and closer to home, get my drift, then we can ride to the hounds together,
chase foxes together, after all we’re friends, aren’t we, Ev, and what are friends for?’

Gilbert pushed his bicycle a few yards, his eyes on the
front tyre. He wanted Munnings to go away, and go away now.

‘That’s very generous of you, Alfred, but I doubt I’ll have the time.’

‘You’re missing the point! God, you’re so slow!’

‘Oh, am I?’

‘Yes! Merrilegs will
save
you time on your missions of mercy, that’s the point, you idiot! You’ll see, you can go all over the Colonel’s estate in
half the time, even stop for a rest to read a few poems, don’t fancy that funny machine’s much use in a field or on a rocky
path, do you, and on Merrilegs you’ll be Lord and Master of all you survey, a
master
surveyor, she’s a real treat, you’ll love her, paintable as a girl and quiet as a lamb, she really is, you’re made for each
other, you and Merrilegs.’

And with this assertion he leant over and stretched his hand down to Gilbert to confirm the offer and to settle the deal.
Gilbert felt he was in a stronger presence. A.J. gripped Gilbert’s right hand firmly and looked sharply into his eyes.

‘And remember, Ev, whatever I do or say, even when I lash out, I’m your friend. Do you hear? D’you hear?’

‘Yes.’

‘Even when I’m a silly bugger. And Merrilegs is yours, I mean it, whenever you want her, whenever you want the little beauty,
she’s yours. Right, I’m off.’

And off he struck, his big horse kicking up the turf, and soon boldly into his stride. Troubled, Gilbert stood by his bicycle,
motionless, watching the horse and rider until they disappeared.

When Joey also mentioned Bastien-Lepage, over their next game of billiards in Jory’s hotel, Gilbert fibbed by saying he had
‘half heard’ of him. To Gilbert’s ears Bastien-Lepage sounded like one of those obscure French generals who made a frightful
mess of things in the Franco-Prussian war. The name came up partly by way of Joey explaining how all these artists, the Carter-Woods
included, came to be down there in West Cornwall in the first place and how they came to be doing the kind of work they were
doing.

(Gilbert, by the way, was not playing at all well. The very stillness of Florence’s concentration on his shots made him unusually
nervous.)

For many of the Newlyn painters and students over the last twenty years, it seemed Bastien-Lepage was the original inspiration.
More than that, it appeared he was the cult. When his canvases, so full of uncompromising realism, so full of peasants and
drunks and truth to the Lorraine countryside, were shown in London there was a spontaneous wave of feeling for him. Bastien-Lepage
was, so Joey went on, ‘the man’, he was the creed of the day. Listening to all this, while playing a cannon, Gilbert
found it far too close to worship: sometimes, he felt, artists dangerously confused God and Art.

Stanhope Forbes, now Florence’s teacher, had also visited Brittany back in 1881. For him the Frenchman’s figures seemed to
live in paint as they had lived in life, in the countryside and in their natural surroundings; Bastien-Lepage’s men and women
breathed air not linseed oil, his skies were skies you could reach up and touch. (Gilbert liked that phrase.) His skies threatened
you, inspired you, leapt out at you, Florence said, and why on earth could not English painters do the same? Especially in
Cornwall. The Cornish air and the Cornish coastline beckoned you to leave London and leave the galleries and go outside and
see the world of nature for yourself.

‘Bastien-Lepage was so closely in sympathy with his subjects you felt you became part of the world he painted.’

That was Joey’s view.

Florence wasn’t so sure.

She said the perspective from which Bastien-Lepage viewed his subjects was often quite high, just above the figures, rather
than on the same level, as if he was highlighting them.

‘Like Rodin, you mean?’ Joey asked.

Florence’s point had reminded Joey of Rodin, a famous story about Rodin, the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo, who was
theatrical as well as realistic, because hadn’t Rodin – to get the unusual perspective he wanted – climbed a stepladder before
beginning his sculpture of the Pope? And the Pope, of course, did not particularly approve of Rodin going up a stepladder
in the presence of His Holiness.

‘No, no, no, Pope above,’ the Pope said, ‘Monsieur Rodin below.’

‘All right,’ Rodin growled, ‘you go up the ladder then.’

Florence laughed, while Gilbert (feeling all this was a bit
over his head) compiled a steady break of twenty-three. Even so, he now knew that when Laura Knight and Alfred Munnings, come
rain or come shine, strode down to the cove to attack their canvases, they carried with them the spirit of a Frenchman from
Lorraine called Jules Bastien-Lepage.

‘And he died very young,’ Florence said.

‘Your shot,’ Gilbert said to Joey, pointing at the cue ball.

While Joey studied the options and played, Gilbert sat next to Florence, so close to her hands and her face, only inches away,
which was a perspective he greatly liked.

Skies you could reach up and touch.

When Joey and Florence arrived, in high spirits, at Jory’s hotel for this game of billiards, Gilbert was lying on his bed
up in his room. Tired as a rag from a stomach upset he was feeling more than a bit sorry for himself, but the news that Florence
was waiting downstairs made him leap off his bed, clean his teeth and make the effort.

Gilbert could never be down in the dumps for long, and there was his young friend Joey refilling his pipe from the humidor,
there was Joey so civilised and charming even when losing, and there was his wonderful sister, Florence. ‘One day,’ Gilbert
thought, listening to the Bastien-Lepage art lesson, ‘I’ll tell them both about Sammy.’ He had never spoken about his young
brother, had never been able to, not to anyone, and oh, it would be so good to share his loss, perhaps on a Sunday walk to
Mousehole or on a picnic, with the hamper open at their side and the ocean behind her back, with Florence listening, and if
she listened that would help him so much to bear it, when who should pop up again like a jack-in-the-box?

‘Have you heard about Munnings?’ Joey asked, striking a match and sucking hard on his pipe.

‘What about Munnings?’ Florence said.

‘That he’s offended Harold Knight again?’ Gilbert offered.

‘No.’

‘That he’s burnt down his studio?’ Florence suggested.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he had,’ Gilbert laughed.

‘No,’ Joey said, aware his audience was nicely hooked, ‘no, I’m talking about the business with the fox.’

‘What fox business?’

‘Well, they’re all talking about it down in The Wink. Some farmers were in there when I called, they saw it all, from start
to finish, and quite full of it all they were. Amazing business!’

‘Amaze us,’ Florence said, sitting very still in her seat. And she listened to the fox story at much the same time as A.J.
Munnings, the man himself and dressed to kill, was walking into The Wink to an admiring bar, where he ordered drinks for all.
As usual there was a small problem (he had no money) but he mentioned that little detail somewhat later and ‘paid’ for his
drinks with a series of drawings done there and then on the spot, plus a promise to Jory that he would come back within the
week and paint a full-size picture of the premises which would sell for a fortune. (It did.) The landlord and the painter
shook hands on the bargain, while the locals gathered like a swarm of bees around the man himself.

‘Tell us about the fox,’ Mr Jory asked, putting his first pint in front of Alfred.

‘Yes, go on, Mr Munnin’s.’

‘Tom Mollard’s bin in, so we do know a bit.’

‘Tom Mollard!’ the painter barked. ‘Don’t mention Mollard to me!’

‘We’m ’eard a bit, that’s all; just enough to wet the whistle.’

Munnings raised his hands.

‘No, no … not now, not in good drinking time.’

While they all protested he drained half his drink.

‘But it’s true, what we’m ’eard? ’Tis true?’

‘Depends what you heard,’ Munnings said, smacking his lips.

‘Easier if you tell us. Get’n from the ’osse’s mouth then, don’t us?’

‘Go on, Mr Munnin’s.’

To the click of billiard balls Florence listened; to the click of dominoes and the suck of pipes, the bar listened.

A large turnout of the Western Foxhounds had been running towards Morvah. With Munnings among the front runners, they were
moving fast from parish to parish, hugging headlands, sailing over stubble, running across the granite country, all across
the undulating moor, not far from Zennor. The fox was well in their sights. The front riders, in high spirits and sure of
a kill, leapt a low wall. A.J. was riding hard just behind the huntsman, Tom Mollard, and stride for stride with Jack Stone,
the whip.

Their quarry was tiring. That was clear. Unable to reach cover, the fox suddenly turned right in desperation and ran down
to the cliff, where Munnings spotted him way below, small and brown, crouched into a ball on some jutting rocks which hung
over the sea.

The leaders dismounted. Munnings was first off his horse, then Jack the Whip, a tall man with a black beard, and the two of
them very slowly and very carefully crawled down the cliff face, holding on to deep-rooted tufts until they were just above
the curled-up fox. All Munnings could see below him was the fox, the rocks and the boiling foam.

Just as Munnings turned to tell Jack that enough was
enough and they should call it a day, Jack suddenly stretched his arm right down and flicked the fox sharply with the lash
of his whip. The fox barked and jumped right out into the sea. Munnings stumbled to his feet and swore bloody murder and nearly
fell into the boiling foam himself.

By now the whole hunt was standing above them on the clifftop: all the hounds, all the riders dismounted, all were looking
down on A.J. and Jack and the little fox swimming for dear life, the little fox lifted up and thrown back by the swell, its
brown fur now black. For five minutes or more the fox took on the elements, an unbearable tension for Munnings, who was kneeling
on a rock calling out encouragement, ‘Keep fighting,’ he roared, ‘keep fighting, Reynard, you little blighter, God bless you,’
when a large wave suddenly picked up the fox and seemed to place him with a careful hand on a wide, safe rock. Munnings rose
to his feet, arms aloft, and cheered.

The fox rested a moment. Then, head down, shanks sucked in, sodden and reduced to a small greyhound, he shook himself and
started very slowly to climb or clamber up, ledge by ledge, until, too weary to be wary, he once again was trapped in a narrowing
crevice. This time his eyes went blank and his nose went slowly down. The fight had gone out of him.

The whip saw his chance.

‘Come on, Mr Munnin’s, let’s get him.’

‘No!’

‘But he’s trapped, he’s done in.’

‘No,’ Munnings roared at Jack and the waves and the assembled hunt above. ‘No,
leave
him, for God’s sake
leave him
.’

‘We must get him, or what’ll Tom say?’

The whip pointed up at the scarlet coat and the black cap of Tom Mollard silhouetted against the sky.

Munnings teetered, lost his balance, and fell but just held on to the edge of the rock face. Bruised and still stretched out
on the rock, he shouted he didn’t give a bugger what Tom said, the fox had run for his life, saved himself, swum for it, climbed
for it, damn near died for it, and that was good enough for anyone – let alone Tom Mollard.

Munnings rose to his feet and stood defiantly between the fox and Jack.

‘And,’ he roared, ‘
you’re
not going to get him out!’

The whip climbed back to the top and, panting for breath, told Tom Mollard the full story. Tom heard him out, stony-faced,
then said that was the last time, the very last time, Mr Munnings of Suffolk would ride with the Western hounds. And off they
trooped home without him.

‘That’s quite a story,’ Gilbert said, ‘it really is.’

‘Isn’t it!’ Joey added. ‘And so typical of A.J. from start to finish.’

‘You mean it isn’t quite true?’ Florence asked evenly. When she said this, Gilbert felt a slight shock in his hands, and Joey
coloured, blurting out, ‘Of course it’s true, Blote, ask the huntsmen who were there, it’s as true as we’re playing billiards.’

‘I’m sure it’s true,’ Gilbert said, ‘why would anyone make it all up?’

Florence smiled an unruffled smile.

‘So Captain Evans and Mr Munnings both save animals?’

Gilbert was not sure if he himself was now being mocked, yet he could see no mockery at all on her face.

‘Oh, mine was small beer by comparison. And I must apologise again for ever mentioning it.’

‘No, I’m glad you mentioned it, death by drowning and death by poison are both terribly dramatic, don’t you agree?’

Unable to frame a response, the men played inconsequentially in constrained silence. When Joey broke the long silence it was
with an exaggerated, overcompensating heartiness:

‘Look, Gilbert, we’d like you to join us for supper soon, wouldn’t we?’

‘Very much,’ Florence said. ‘As soon as possible.’

‘The sooner the better!’ Joey exclaimed.

‘And I’d very much like to come, thank you.’

‘And let’s ask A.J. as well, shall we?’ Joey went on. ‘Then it’ll be even more fun, and Florence can question him further
over the fox.’

‘Why on earth should I do that? I merely wanted to know if you both believed the story.’

What no one knew was what happened in the hours after the hunt had deserted Munnings on the rocks near Morvah.

He sat alone in the same place, with the wind bending the bracken and his shirt drying on his back. He sat there, fighting
his anger, until the rioting behind his eyes abated. Above all, foxes should be respected. Who on earth did these ignorant
sods think they were? And did these ignorant sods never think, in the vain glory of their chase, why there were so many legends
and stories and fables about foxes? What about Reynard the Fox, and what about other foxes’ encounters with Chauntecleer the
Cock, Tibert the Cat, Bruin the Bear and Tsengrin the Wolf? Why did they think there were figures of foxes carved in churches
all over East Anglia, not that these ignorant sods even knew where East Anglia was? The fox was a hunter and he was hunted;
he was a beast and a king, real and fabulous, and
that was why he, Alfred Munnings, second son of a Suffolk miller, had kept this particular Reynard alive – Reynard the Triumphant
– because that little fellow stuck out there on the rock a moment ago was a triumph of the spirit. An inspiration.

Feeling much better after his reflection on ignorant sods and fearless foxes, A.J. started to ride home, talking to Grey Tick
about fools and foxes, and stopping as and when on the way for hot gin hollands. In one pub named, as luck would have it,
The Fox and Grapes he hunched by the fire lost in thought about a paintable girl until he overheard some youngsters, mere
boys, well, undergraduates by the sound of them, talking about Omar Khayyam.

Omar Khayyam?

There were three undergraduates in the pub: a ginger-haired one, a bearded one with a pipe, and, lastly, a pale exhumation.
They all talked with heated warmth about Omar Khayyam’s merits. A.J. listened to this for a while then uncoiled his legs,
stretched back on the settle and called over to them.

‘Who’s this Omar you keep talking about, then, an Arab horse thief?’

The undergraduates looked at each other, then looked at the rough mud-bespattered rider, and decided they had not quite heard
the question. So Alfred glared at the three of them in turn and repeated the question more loudly. Unable to ignore him now,
the ginger-haired one coughed and said politely, ‘Um, no, he’s not, no.’ He glanced at his colleagues. ‘He’s … not an Arab
horse thief.’

This was followed by some laughter. Munnings decided he would enjoy himself as well.

‘So who is he? I couldn’t help hearing, and I don’t know who he is.’

‘
It’s
… it’s the title of a work, a translation in point of fact, a version by Edward Fitzgerald. From the Persian.’

‘Sorry, never heard of him either,’ Alfred said. ‘Who’s he? The Persian?’

Dear-God smiles escaped from the undergraduates; small smiles of complete complicity flitted from face to face.

‘Fitzgerald,’ the bearded one spoke even more carefully, as if a dangerous animal was out on the loose, ‘Fitzgerald is a poet
… a great poet. The Rubaiyat is an allegory.’

‘Oh, poet, is he?’ Munnings was pleased. ‘Landlord, fill the young gentlemen’s pots, there’s a good chap, thank you, and do
draw yourself another, and then the young gentlemen can recite for us some of Omar by Edward Whoever and I must say I’m looking
forward to hearing a bit of great poetry by a great poet, even if he is a Persian.’

Munnings settled himself down as an overattentive audience would, and his overattentive pause and the panic it created all
around him was quite delightful.

‘I’m … we’ve …’ began the pale one. ‘I’m afraid we haven’t brought a copy of his work.’

A.J. forgivingly spread his hands, as if he would be the very last person in the world to criticise anyone for that.

‘Doesn’t matter, does it, just recite me some, give me what you might call a taster of old Omar. In English. Or Persian, if
you prefer.’

At this, they looked cornered and went into a whispering huddle. For his part, A.J. patiently waited a while and then said:

‘But if it’s great stuff you can, surely? No? You can’t? Ah well. Does it rhyme? Can’t stand stuff that doesn’t!’

The remark about rhyme somewhat released the pressure
on them and they reverted to their lighter tones; they may well have been unable to remember a line of poetry in English or
Persian but at the very least they could all be critics.

‘Well, that’s rather bad luck on
Paradise Lost
,’ said the ginger-haired one.

‘And a bit of a pity about Shakespeare’s plays,’ said the pale one.

And these supposed put-downs led to some Oxford chortling.

‘Good stuff, rhyme,’ A.J. reasserted, ‘rhyme is the thing.’

While the landlord placed out another round of drinks there was something of a lull in which A.J. wiped off their ironic smiles
by reciting the first fifty-two lines of Gray’s
Elegy
, and before the pale one could say Gosh that is actually quite something of a feat I must say, A.J. followed it up by giving
them his favourite passages of prose, verbatim, from Surtees, and standing (ale in hand) with his back to the fire and with
the landlord’s mouth agape, he finished ‘By way of a finale’ with a handsome swathe of
Hiawatha
,

‘By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,’ he added, with a patronising smile, ‘and he’s a fucking good poet too. From Portland, Maine,
not Persia.’

They all ended the evening in tremendous fettle, all singing together, arms around each other’s shoulders, before A.J. (by
way of payment) covered the black blinds in the bar with some chalk drawings of horses and young people drinking and the three
young people in the drawings all had muzzy faces very like their own and were depicted toppling backwards in their chairs
towards the floor, laughing as they fell, and they all loved that, and they all thought him one helluva fellow.