Summer in February

by Jonathan Smith

  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.’

  ‘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 Gilbe
rt’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.

  Bastien-Lepage

  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.