He stood up and checked his hair and his tie. He checked his watch, then went downstairs to await their arrival. It was not a long wait. Gilbert rose to his feet as she came into the dining-room just ahead of Alfred. Dressed in a silk blouse and blue skirt she walked, very upright and poised, with her hand held out in greeting.
‘Gilbert.’
The hand he felt in his was steady too, steady and warm. Her skin was as clear and pale as it had ever been, but healthily so. There was nothing he could see in her bearing or her manner to suggest she had so recently been so close to death. Her hair shone, her eyes were clear, there was no sign of … what was the word … no pettachia in sight.
In those split seconds, seconds in which he seemed to live more than in many whole months, with his hand in hers, his mind jammed. Are you feeling better? You look so well. Forgive me for asking, but what did you say to each other when you recovered consciousness, what did you say to each other the next hour, and the next morning, and the next night? How long are you planning to stay here? Sitting next to Alfred, did you read Browning on the train down from London? Are you keeping the studio near the mill? Will you come and see the painting hut I have found for you? Did you come here to the hotel to be next to me? Because you could both appeal to me as a friend, but give me your own side of the story?
Gilbert need not have worried. Alfred, the picture of rosy good living, gripped his hand and elbow.
‘So, what’s been going on, Ev, and what’s for dinner?’
They could have been old friends or officers meeting up for a weekly dinner in a familiar club, which in one sense they were.
‘Oh the usual, you know. This and that, this and that.’
Gilbert helped Florence with her seat, bending forward slightly to slide it under her, with his face close to her shoulder. He breathed in, and again, to be sure he wasn’t imagining the scent. Yes, it was the same.
‘Paynter pushing you too hard, asking too much as usual?’
‘No, it’s been rather slack at Boskenna, to tell you the truth.’
‘Anyway,’ Florence said, ‘it’s wonderful to see you.’
‘Slack? Don’t believe you!’
‘Do tell me about this new house,’ Florence went on, ‘we saw it this afternoon.’
‘Coming on fast, isn’t it?’ Munnings said. ‘Marvellous for seascapes, if it’s seascapes you’re after.’
‘Is it for you?’ Florence asked. ‘The house?’
‘Me? No, no … It hasn’t been sold yet.’
‘I told you, Alfred.’
‘Are you interested in it?’ Gilbert asked.
‘Might be, might be. Doubt it, don’t see me settling here, so read us the menu, Blote, there’s the girl.’
Florence picked up the menu. A touch of colour came up her throat.
‘And since you’re in charge of everything, Ev, on the walk we were on just now, never seen so many pieces of paper and orange peel and matchboxes just strewn all over the place … see it’s cleared up, will you?’
Alfred laughed his only-joking laugh and smacked Gilbert’s shoulder.
‘Good to see you, really is, good to have a bit of civilised company.’
‘Are you keeping on the studio?’ Gilbert asked.
‘Yes, and the horses. All as before. I’ll work down there.’
‘Soup,’ Florence began, ‘cold lamb, mint sauce, rhubarb and cream.’
‘What sort of soup?’
‘It doesn’t say.’
‘I’ll ask Mrs Jory,’ Gilbert said.
‘Felt like some roast pork,’ Alfred said, drumming the tablecloth with his fingers.
‘Do tell her, she’ll happily provide that tomorrow. She’s only too keen to please.’
Florence turned to Gilbert and spoke in a voice only for him.
‘You’ve heard Joey is to leave?’
‘No, no, I had not …’
‘There’s no appeal, I’m afraid, Papa is adamant.’
‘That’s very sad,’ Gilbert said. ‘I’ll miss him dreadfully, I really will.’
‘Never very interested, though, was he?’ Alfred said briskly, leaning forward. ‘Not really, bit of a dabbler, wasn’t he, preferred the seabed.’
‘Not originally,’ Florence said.
‘And his other beds,’ Alfred grinned, flicking out his table napkin.
‘What … other beds?’ She looked sharply at her husband.
‘No, Ev, never very interested once he’d met Dolly next door. And … what’s her name, Prudence. Hammer and tongs, I heard.’
Gilbert looked at his fork.
‘Hammer?’ Florence asked. ‘And tongs?’
Alfred stared at Gilbert. Gilbert stared at the table.
‘Don’t have to spell it out for you, Ev, do I, point being, my biologist brother-in-law has been rogering Dolly for months, and those who don’t believe it only have to ask Laura, she should know, and I can’t say I blame him, either, can you?’
‘We will not involve Gilbert in this!’
Gilbert fervently hoped she would not now ask Alfred what rogering or hammer and tongs meant. Florence’s fingers twisted the wedding ring on her finger.
‘And no,’ Florence continued in a firm, even voice, ‘I won’t be asking Laura or anyone else because I don’t believe you.’
‘Suit yourself, my love,’ he said standing up. ‘Anyway, I know what I think and I know what Ev thinks, and we think it’s long past time for the men to have a drink.’
‘But isn’t this a temperance hotel?’
‘That’s what you were hoping, my dear, but it isn’t … not since we arrived!’
He strode out to find Mrs Jory. Florence waited for his feet to die away then swiftly closed the door.
‘Will he succeed?’ she asked.
‘I expect so. Have you settled in?’
‘It’s a great comfort for me to have you there.’
‘There?’
‘Next door along.’
‘Oh … oh yes. Good.’
He smiled nervously at her. They nodded to each other.
‘Florence … You look well. Very well.’
‘Better than you expected?’
Gilbert swallowed.
‘Yes … much. But you must … you must—’
‘Gilbert,’ she cut in with slow emphasis, placing her hand on his, ‘do not ask what happened.’
‘I won’t. I wasn’t going to … not for one moment.’
‘Ever!’
‘But Laura and I, we can’t understand … when so many people love you, how—when you have so much ahead of—’
‘Promise me.’
He looked at her, searching her face.
‘I promise. If you promise never to do it again.’
‘I promise.’
She smiled as if to close the chapter, but left her hand on his.
‘And I am sorry,’ she said, ‘about the walk in London. Very sorry.’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘I should have been stronger. I knew it at the time.’
‘You had no choice.’
‘I had a choice … and I made the wrong one.’
‘Did you?’
‘And you had a choice. But you didn’t feel strongly enough.’
‘How can you say that?’
She shook her head.
‘You didn’t … not strongly enough.’
They both listened for his returning footsteps. They did not come. Gilbert spoke next.
‘But you had made your decision.’
‘And I will keep my side of the bargain. That is what I must do. And now we must talk of something else.’
She withdrew her hand. There was a silence.
‘Will you return to Newlyn for your classes?’
‘No … I shall paint wherever I can.’
‘I have found a place for you …’
‘A place! For me!’
‘I’ll take you there whenever you wish.’
‘Ho
w far? Oh do tell me.’
‘It’s not far, but you could easily miss it, it’s sheltered from the wind … I think you’ll like it. I’ve had the men working on it.’
‘What a fool I am!’
She closed her eyes, then opened them as if she had, in that few seconds, taken stock.
‘Thank you. Thank you. I’ll keep going.’
‘I hope it’s a spot you can work in, the hut.’
‘And we’ll see a good deal of each other, Gilbert, won’t we?’
‘It will be difficult not to.’
His words came out stiffly. She did not deny their force. Instead she started to reach her hand across the table, then stopped. He saw her wedding ring.
‘And … another favour. What Alfred said about Joey … it’s not true, it can’t be … I want you to know that.’
‘Does it matter … does it matter so much?’
‘Matter?’ She withdrew her hand to her lap just before the door opened.
‘Told you,’ Alfred said in his spry way, ‘not a problem, bottles coming, bottles plural, Mrs J. said it was the least she could do in the circumstances. “This calls for a celebration,” she said, how about that, Ev?’
‘Indeed it does.’
‘And the soup’s tomato.’
When Mr and Mrs Munnings retired to their rooms Gilbert bade them goodnight but he did not follow them up the staircase. Instead he walked slowly up the steep lane, hands on hips, breathing in the night air and the scent of dog roses. He passed the low walls of the unfinished house on the cliff, then cut across through the bracken and fern to the clifftop.
It was a clear night, with a half-moon above the Lizard. He sat for a while on a rock, breathing deeply in and out, hoping the air would refresh his fuddled mind. For a second a white band of surf below suddenly assumed the silhouette of a rearing horse.
‘I am not sure,’ he said to the moon and the sea and his cigarette, ‘I am not at all sure how much I can take of this.’
In the Studio
Some days later, days in which Gilbert had found few chances to speak to Florence beyond the normal courtesies, days in which he had glimpsed little more than her back going along the landing, Mrs Jory beckoned him on the stairs. Asking Gilbert if he wouldn’t mind stepping into her room for a minute, she half closed the door and gave him the look of a woman who knew more than she cared at the moment to communicate.
‘Wonderful to see, Captain Evans, isn’t it?’
‘What is, Mrs Jory?’
‘Mrs Munnings.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘I’ve never seen a happier woman, not in all my days.’
‘Haven’t you?’
‘I have not, no, have you? It quite restores one’s faith, it does.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Gilbert said, at the beginning of a sidle towards the door.
Mrs Jory smiled and moved an ample upper arm into the opening he had spotted. In moments such as these Gilbert could see why her husband called her ‘that there woman’.
‘When you see it, Captain Evans, you know it, believe me, sir, I’ve known the other side of the coin and this woman is close to the man she loves. Close.’
Gilbert found nothing to say either way, which Mrs Jory took as middlingly normal for a man when such weighty issues were under discussion. It could be taken as read from her eyes that this morning she herself had more than a few moments free and she was more than happy and willing to elaborate, and elaborate she would.
‘And she’s eating so well, that’s always a good sign.’
‘Is it?’
‘Oh yes, that is a good sign, and it’s a privilege to spoil her, and why not, it’s not often one is in a position to look after a lady of her … quality. You weren’t in last night but she enjoyed the roast pork, she did that, every mouthful, and the crackling.’
‘And the crackling? Oh, that is jolly good.’
Mrs Jory raised an eyebrow to see if Gilbert’s last remark was in the appropriate spirit, decided it was, and went strongly ahead.
‘It’s the second time Mr Munnings has asked for his pork and he fair wolfs it down, does it proper justice, and last night she’s glowing next to him, it’s the Cornish air of course, because when they first arrived she looked a bit … London round the cheeks, didn’t you think?’
For ‘London’ Mrs Jory always reserved an emphasis of special distaste.
‘I suppose she did a bit, yes.’
Though Mrs Jory preferred the curtains in the hotel pulled to protect the carpets from the strong Cornish light, she always claimed, in her proprietorial way, that the Lamorna sun and the Lamorna air were bracingly good for one.
‘Mind you, when I did see what he’s got in their bedroom, well it wouldn’t be my—’
At this point, stopping as short as a runaway train could, Mrs Jory inwardly censored further detail, unaware that for the first time in the conversation Gilbert’s attention was fully engaged, though he just managed to mask this.
‘What … what has he then, in … the bedroom?’
Mrs Jory closed her eyes and shook both her head and her forefinger.
‘No, it’s not for me to say, sir, I shouldn’t have spoken, to you it might seem quite … but there we are, there’s no accounting for … we’re all quite different, but I know I’d be happier without it, and if you’ll excuse me, sir … oh, and will you be in for supper tonight?’
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh. Oh. Very well.’
‘Nor tomorrow night. It’s one of those spells at Boskenna, we have them sometimes, working every hour that God gives us.’
‘There’s no cause for dissatisfaction I hope, sir.’
‘No, good heavens, no. You don’t happen to know if Mrs Munnings is in at the moment, do you?’
‘I really wouldn’t know, she has been going up to Mr Knight’s most mornings, he’s been doing her a fair bit, so she said.’
‘Has he?’
‘But I do know Mr Munnings is away.’
‘Away?’
This time his tone betrayed him.
‘Yes. Went off very early this morning. And without his breakfast.’
‘For the … day, d’you mean?’
‘Oh, no, sir … Didn’t know exactly when he’d be back, he said. But,’ she smiled and closed her eyes and nodded, ‘I’d be surprised if it was long, wouldn’t you?’
Aware that she offered a gentler, more predictable life, Taffy quickly transferred his affections to his new mistress, and the little dog accompanied Florence and Gilbert on their walks. While Alfred was away (and he was away much longer than Mrs Jory expected) the three of them were often to be seen, with Taffy in the lead, going through the wood to the waterfall, then crossing the road and up Rocky Lane, and weaving around the Merry Maidens, the prehistoric circle of stones; they were spotted together sitting at a discreet distance with their backs against a stone arch, then at the Neolithic burial chamber, then sitting on a stunted, gnarled oak, split with age; some evenings they roamed through the heather or waist-deep in ferns throwing sticks for Taffy to bring back.
The walk Florence most wanted to do with Gilbert was all the way to Mousehole, but crossing the rutted farmyard at Kemyel Gilbert suddenly stopped her. Oblivious of their presence, a man with two buckets of pigs’ food swinging from a yoke across his shoulders splashed the rough path close to Florence’s shoes.
‘I’m sorry,’ Gilbert said.
‘It’s not your fault … he didn’t see us.’
‘Do you want to go on?’
‘To Mousehole? Of course I do.’
‘We have to go very close to the cliff face, it’s quite dangerous.’
‘Good!’
‘You like danger, don’t you?’
‘I always feel very safe with you.’
It took them an hour along the coastal path, an hour spent watching their feet and watching the sun and watching the clouds slide across the headland, an hour watching small
boats below and the birds skate and strut. They rested for a while at the coastguard lookout, with rabbits hopping in the heather below, and steamers spouting black smoke on the horizon. In the midday heat they heard the tiny snaps of gorse beans, and for long periods they did not speak. They enjoyed this silent companionship, as if there was an underground river they were both instinctively following. Gilbert, though, preferred to keep moving. Simply moving took some of the churning from his body. Because Alfred was away she spent most afternoons painting in his studio by the mill, after mornings sitting for Harold Knight.
‘Your but will be ready tomorrow, you’ll have a place all of your own.’
‘Tomorrow? Tomorrow! Why didn’t you tell me!’
‘I wanted it to be right for you first.’
‘You secretive thing!’
‘I’ll tell you where it is, exactly, and we can meet there if you like. Around four?’
‘Tomorrow at four, I’ll be there.’
He made her repeat his instructions and she walked on, as close to skipping as he’d seen her. Because she was Mrs Munnings and everyone in the district knew she was Mrs Munnings, Gilbert made sure he kept his proper distance from her as they went along, except when she crossed stiles or stepped over stones in a stream. If she needed his help then, or to open a broken gate or gingerly to negotiate a sloshy path (or to avoid splashing pigswill) he took her hand, her long fingers firmly pressing his. On one occasion she kept hold of his hand, long after it was needed, and sat on a fallen tree with her shoulder hard against his. The tree sloped down in his direction. She did not adjust her position. The sinews in his neck were taut. He wanted to tell her he loved her, but he could not. He must be content with discontent. He told himself the best apples were always out of reach. He had never known such painful pleasure, such deep-reaching feeling, as he felt on those afternoons. That may sound as if Gilbert’s spectrum of pleasure had been narrow but to have known a large number of women was, he suspected, no guarantee of finding what he found on that fallen tree, perched on the edge of a remote, poor farm.
Summer in February Page 22