Summer in February

by Jonathan Smith

  Jonathan Smith was educated at Christ College, Brecon and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he read English. Since then he has been a full-time schoolmaster, teaching in Scotland, in Australia and at Tonbridge, where he is now Head of Humanities.

  His first novel, Wilfred and Eileen, was made into a BBC TV serial. He has written four more novels, a cricket book and a television play. Over the last fifteen years he has also established a reputation as one of the most distinguished contemporary radio dramatists.

  Also by Jonathan Smith

  Wilfred and Eileen

  The English Lover

  In Flight

  Come Back

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 978-1-4055-1999-1

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Jonathan Smith 1995

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  for David Evans

  &

  the Evans family

  Contents

  Also by Jonathan Smith

  Copyright

  Part One

  Pray Silence for the President, 1949

  Lamorna Cove, Cornwall, 1949

  Part Two

  The Stranger in the Lane

  Suddenly There Came a Knocking

  Sammy’s Birds’ Eggs

  Bastien-Lepage

  Reynard on the Rocks

  Botticelli’s Venus

  The Girl on Horseback

  Stanhope Forbes

  Bloodshot Eyes

  The Water Diviner

  At the Water’s Edge

  Mr Money

  Cézanne’s Apples

  Dolly on the Rocks

  Taking Partners

  Part Three

  Sammy’s Exercise Book

  Part Four

  As on a Damson

  In the Studio

  In the Painting Hut

  The Letts Diary, 1914

  Africa’s a Fair Old Way

  Part Five

  A Letter to Africa

  A Walk in the Park

  Putting Together the Pieces

  Sancreed

  The Future and the Past

  Author’s Note

  Part One

  That morning, sitting in his spacious study in Castle House, Dedham, Sir Alfred Munnings opened a letter. It was from his old friend, Dame Laura Knight.

  16, Langford Place,

  St John’s Wood,

  London

  27th April 1949

  Dear A.J.,

  So you’re really really going to do it tomorrow? Is it wise? Is it for the best? And why at the banquet? Won’t it open up old wounds?

  Whatever, I’ll be listening.

  With love,

  Laura.

  Pray Silence for the President, 1949

  It was time for the President’s big speech. The tapping, the call to order, was pretty close to his right ear so he had no problem hearing it, and it was clear and crisp enough for everyone sitting at the top table. But then those about to speak in public – as you’ll know if you’ve ever done it – are always on the edge of their seats, waiting for the moment to arrive, picking at their food, wanting the lavatory, as dry-mouthed as jockeys lining up for the start at Newmarket, all tensed up and ready for the off, and conscious that the eyes of the world are about to be on them.

  And, in the President’s case, thousands of ears.

  Not that he was nervous. Not a bit of it. If he had been nervous he would have written the whole speech out, wouldn’t he, instead of just jotting down a couple of phrases on the back of his menu while enjoying his dinner to the full. Food and drink, the President always maintained, were there to be enjoyed, and the truth was he was looking forward to this speech, to his swansong: he knew what needed to be said to the assembled company and, by God, he was going to say it.

  He was under starter’s orders.

  But!

  But, the table-tapping, while loud enough for him, was little match for that large gallery full of all-male banter, and no match at all for the distant, well-oiled laughter which rose to the ceiling with the cigar smoke. The younger academicians on the far tables, who had half heard the toastmaster tapping, pretended, in the time-honoured way, that they had not; and when he was sitting in their place many years ago, the President used to do the same thing, employ the same delaying tactics, only a damn sight worse. So, seeing the distant diners were not going to shut up for that genteel top table tapping, he turned round and told the toastmaster to try again, only this time to ‘put a bit of beef into it’. And the toastmaster, a man of solid muscle and bone, took the President at his word and fairly hammered the gavel. He hammered it slowly and loudly, with more than a bit of come-on-gentle-men-now-please.

  And that, the extra volume plus the emphatic pauses, did the trick. Even the rowdiest table fell silent; and once the lull was established, the toastmaster, resplendent in red, puffed out his barrel chest and projected his voice full blast over everyone’s heads, past the paintings hanging two or three deep on the walls, through the mahogany doors and out into Piccadilly itself.

  ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he intoned – and that word ‘Highness’ helped to do the trick, bringing a respectful hush – ‘Your Excellencies, Your Graces, My Lords and Gentlemen – Pray Silence for the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Alfred Munnings.’

  Yes, that’s him!

  Pray Silence for the second son of a Suffolk miller, a son of the soil, but then Constable, the great Constable, was the son of a Suffolk miller too, and who wouldn’t be as proud as Punch to follow in his footsteps?

  There was, too, something about the toastmaster’s style that the President liked. Good toastmastering, he always maintained, was like gunnery practice: you cleaned the barrels, you slammed in the shells, you got the trajectory right, and then you discharged a deafening salvo at the enemy. Take aim, fire! and the enemy were brought down. Enemy? At a banquet in Burlington House?

  What enemy?

  But the enemy were there all right, and in numbers.

  As the toastmaster intoned his phrases, the President savoured each and every word. He enjoyed each e-nun-ci-ated syllable. Now that, he said to himself, is how to introduce a chap, straight from the shoulder, no mumbling, no beating about the bush.

  ‘Your Royal Highness’ – and there indeed was the Duke of Gloucester on his right, more or less upright if rather the worse for wear—

  ‘Your Excellencies’ – and there were ambassadors from God knows which country at every table, including some Turk or other, Mr Aki-Cacky, on Top Table—

  ‘Your Graces’ – yes, including the Archbishop of Canterbury himself who’d just been up on his feet wittering away – mixed up with the odd Admiral and Field Marshal, he could see old Monty at the end of the table. Not to mention loads of lords and plenty of gents, plenty of boiled shirts and stuffed shirts, plus a sprinkling of pansies who couldn’t tell a decent painting from a pool of horse piss.

  No, steady on now, Alfred, he said to himself, careful, old boy, you’re not in The Coach and Horses now, you’re in civilised company, surrounded by The Great and The Good, and they’re here for a slap-up do and they’re also here, Alfred, to hear your Retiring President’s speech and, by God, they’
re going to get it!

  On the toastmaster’s final words ‘Sir Alfred Munnings’ there was some kind of welcoming applause, mostly from Winston and those close by on top table, but enough in all conscience to suggest some kind of recognition of all he had done as President. As the applause died down, Sir Alfred took one more gulp of wine, a bloody good claret he’d selected himself, and checked his flies. All secure there, he stood up.

  The banquet was in Gallery Three, Burlington House, Piccadilly, and the place was jam-packed with one hundred and eighty diners. The President ran his eye around the candle-lit tables, then placed both his fists, knuckles down, on the white tablecloth. It was a position he liked to adopt when speaking. Not only did it take some weight off his dicky leg, but the stance also (he felt) suited his attacking style.

  So, here he was.

  And there they were.

  The President faced the Academy; he would not be presumptuous enough to say ‘his’ Academy. And he faced them with the nation listening on the wireless, thousands of good people from John O’Groats to Land’s End had turned on their sets, ordinary folk who liked to hear the simple truth spoken in simple plain English.

  So, the truth it was to be.

  ‘Your Royal Highness,’ he began slowly, ‘My Lords and Gentlemen.’ As was his wont, he took his time over each syllable. After a good evening he always maintained it was only sensible to take your time; it was always best to walk your horse home nice and slowly through the lanes. Hurry along, as he’d found to his cost, and you could go arse over tip. The trouble was, though, not only was he slow, he was too slow, and without meaning to, his voice caught some of the toastmaster’s tone.

  ‘I am,’ he began, ‘gett-ing some-what dis-tressed. Through some extra-ordin-ary arrange-ment these toasts have all been put upon the Pres-i-dent.’

  In amongst that lot there were too many rs and too many ps. Rs andps could, the President knew, be a ruddy problem and if he didn’t watch it he’d soon be reciting Poe’s ‘Raven’ or running round the ragged rock with the rugged rascals or whichever way round it was.

  Pause, he said to himself. Pause, Alfred!

  He paused. There was time now to take a quick look down at the notes he’d been jotting down on the menu card, so he lifted it up close to his eye and saw

  Casserole of Sole Chablis

  Rose Duckling with Olives

  Garden Peas

  New Potatoes

  Asparagus

  Gateau St Honoré

  Ices

  Petits Fois

  Dessert

  & Coffee

  and there was not a lot of help there if you were already stuck on your feet, but there also was a rather good pencil drawing of Winston smoking his cigar, done not ten minutes ago. Damned good likeness it was too. It looked like Winston, his heavily hunched shoulders, his wrinkled forehead, his big cigar, the old boy to a T., and that’s what a drawing should do, shouldn’t it, look like the subject?

  Pleased with this thought, emboldened by this conviction, the President launched himself again, only this time at a canter, so to speak, pushing the horse on a bit.

  ‘I know what it is, and have known what it is, to sit at the tables when there has been a much more company’ – what? a much more company, what does that mean? Never mind, no time, keep going – ‘ca-rousing and drinking, little thinking of the poor President there at his table, regardless of all he had to go through, and to get away with, to put it in a common turn of speech.’

  He breathed out. That sentence, while something of a mish-mash, went a lot better, though there was a nasty moment after ‘ca-rousing and drinking, little thinking’, when he felt a touch of panic in his palms that he might be slipping into that familiar, bouncy metre and that familiar rhyme, slipping in fact into one of his impromptu ballads.

  But, dammit, he wasn’t in some snug pub or artists’ party reciting Edgar Allan Poe, he was the President of the Royal Academy and all dressed up like a toff. He was the most famous figure in British Art, and the main thing was, he had to make sense! He had to speak simple English!

  ‘Now here I am, responding for The Academy. Now the Archbishop of Canter-bury has talked’ … a load of complete … ‘in a very accomplished way about this body … but what of the body?’

  The body of men, he meant, the collective body of English Art, the packed tables laid out in front of him in Burlington House. And he glared from table to table; he glared left, and he glared right, and he glared ahead; and he had to say he did not like much of what he saw. He did not like it one little bit. It was high time a question was put to the collective body of English Art, and put bluntly in front of the nation on the wireless. Then they couldn’t say they hadn’t heard it, could they?

  Are they worthy? Yes, that’s it—

  ‘Are they worthy of this building in which they are housed? Are we all doing the great work which we should do? Well, it is not for me to stand here on my head’ – head? You’re standing on your feet, Alfred – ‘here tonight and find fault with the Academy.’

  At this there were some murmurs of approval, murmurs from posh people trying to warn him off, stuffed shirts trying to divert the President into their polite, diplomatic channels. He could sense them saying under their breaths, ‘No, Munnings, you are right, it is not for you, the second son of a Suffolk miller, to criticise us.’

  This only incensed him further. Oh, wasn’t it! If they thought for one moment they could stop him going on with his plan they couldn’t be more wrong. In for a penny, in for a pound, the President said to himself.

  ‘But, BUT I find myself a President of a body of men who are what I’d call shilly-shallying.’

  He stressed ‘shilly’ and he stressed ‘shally’, and on ‘shilly-shallying’ a sizeable number of wobbly chins hit the table. There was a sideways flickering of half-pickled eyes, a communal rolling of eyeballs. There was a fearful sense running around the room that he was going to do it, and what was more he was going to do it with millions listening on the wireless. Damn right he was. I told you I would, Laura.

  He watched a white, manicured hand reach out in silence for the port.

  Shilly-shallying. Monty, for one, liked that. Far too many soldiers, Monty always said, shilly-shallied. Winston, for another, liked it. Far too many politicians, Winston said, and ‘so-called statesmen’ shilly-shallied. In the expanding silence the President once more glared round the room, not focusing his eye on any particular place, merely allowing the accusation to sink in and hurt. The shilly-shalliers knew who they were, and he knew who they were, and he was going to blow them to pieces.

  ‘They!’

  His voice rose.

  ‘They feel that there is something in this so-called MODERN ART.’

  When he said the fatal words ‘Modern Art’ there was a gasp, an audible gulp. Yes, Reynard the Fox was now out into the open and running. Now it was clear the hunt was on. Suddenly – it also happened sometimes when he was painting – suddenly he felt an extraordinary power, a quick pump of adrenalin, as if he was going full tilt along the Cornish coast or full split across the flat Norfolk fields, whip in hand and cap askew, full tilt and fearless at a wide-open ditch. There wasn’t any point shying away, you had to go for the jump.

  His voice rose to a sharper, more competitive level.

  ‘Well, I myself would rather have – ah’ – if he was going to blaspheme he realised he had better be civilised, he really should do the decent thing and turn and bow slightly to the Archbishop of Canterbury – ‘ah, excuse me, my Lord Archbishop – I would rather have a damned bad failure, a bad dusty old picture where somebody had tried to do something, to set down something what they have seen and felt, than all this affected juggling, this following of … well, shall we call it the School of Paris?’

  That Paris crack, the way he put such contempt into ‘Paris’, just came out, he was enjoying himself so much. He was loving it. So he put his hands on his hips, exactly as Charlie Chaplin did in Th
e Great Dictator, and pretended to scour the tables for any offending French diplomats.

  ‘I hope the French ambassador is not here tonight.’

  It has to be said he timed that aside rather well. In response, there was warm laughter, with-him laughter, and the aside went down best of all with Winston, whose shoulders were going up and down. Good old Winnie, the President smiled, never a great one for effete frogs and their new-fangled fashions. He looked at them all, and went strongly on.

  ‘Not so long ago, I spoke in this very room to the students, the boys and girls, and they were receiving all sorts of gratuities from the Government. For what? For what?’

  No one answered. No one dared.

  ‘To learn art. And to become what? Not artists. Well now, I said to those students, “If you paint a tree, for God’s sake try and paint it to look like a tree, and if you paint a sky, try and make it look like a sky.”’ Winston, as sure as eggs were eggs, was enjoying every word of all this: the President could feel his warm approval, there was absolutely no need to check. Had they not discussed the textures of trees and the skyishness of skies often enough in recent months?

  On he went:

  ‘Only this last two days I have been motoring from my home in Dedham to Newmarket and back. On Sunday I motored through Suffolk, and I was looking at skies all the time … on Monday what skies they were! And still, in spite of all these men who have painted skies, we should be painting skies still better!’

  Skies! Not kittens with as many legs as a centipede. Skies! Not Picasso portraits, not females with two noses and three tits and a set of shark’s teeth coming out of their earholes!

  Yes, he was into his stride now.

  ‘But there has been this foolish inter-ruption to all effort in Art, helped by foolish men writing in the press encouraging all this damned nonsense’ – and this time there was no apology to the Archbishop for ‘damned’ – ‘putting all the younger men out of their stride. I am right … I have the Lord Mayor on my side … I am sure he is behind me … and on my left I have our newly elected extra-ordinary member of the Academy, Mr Winston Churchill—’