Summer in February (16 page)

They all agreed to go to Penzance, and they all arranged to meet: Promenade Roller-Skating Rink at two, Laura, we’re all going,
Blote, you too, Dolly, no excuses, Gilbert, you’re not that busy, we’ll see you there, Alfred, and don’t be late, we want
you there.

The weather had turned nasty again, the waves thrashing, the sea a broth, its moods even more volatile than Munnings, forcing
the fishermen’s wives closer together in their black hats and aprons, huddled together against the cut of the wind. Setting
off in good time Joey and Florence took Jory’s pony and trap. On the way Joey played Scottish airs on a penny whistle, with
Florence singing the occasional verse. To be seen bowling along with his sister, to be seen with such a beauty, made Joey
feel proud. The fishermen’s wives glared.

Joey had skated a few times before; Florence had not. He helped his sister on with her skates, lacing these preliminaries
with technical hints and cautionary stories. She absorbed his do’s and don’ts, then waited while he put on his skates, still
talking away nineteen to the dozen, and then, hand in hand, they stepped out on to the rink.

As soon as they started to skate the others seemed to turn up and watch. Even worse, and much to Joey’s annoyance, he was
far less skilful in keeping his feet than his sister. He half ran, half pushed his feet across the centre of the rink, arcing
and curving, pushing his skates till the soles of his shoes burned, running as if trying to establish an early lead in the
cross-country, only to stub his toe just in front of Dolly, sway forward, then rock helplessly back on his heels and slide
feet first, backside next, into the surrounding boards. He refused Dolly’s help. He stumbled, red-faced, to his feet.

For her part, keeping initially to the outward fringes, Florence eased her way into the skating, taking tentative waltz steps,
humming Joey’s little Scottish air to herself as if dancing with an unwelcome partner at one of the more tedious balls she
had endured, as self-contained as they come, like loose silk hanging free. Soon she built up a steady, flowing, easy rhythm,
avoiding the crush of other bodies and warmed by the measured exercise.

When Joey, after a while and some adjustments to his technique, had achieved a level of competence and sorted out his bruised
pride, he skated round hoping to join his sister. But too late. She had already been asked by another man.

Then another.

Then another.

When had it been otherwise?

Alfred set out from his studio on Grey Tick at much the same time as Florence and Joey. We’re off to Penzance, he said to
his horse, and I’m in fine fettle. And shall I tell you why, Tick, shall I? Because … be-cause I was up at the sparrow’s crack
and working and I have to tell you I did some damn good stuff, not a break till noon. It’s
the girl, you know, Tick, she’s the secret, she’s the ticket, Tick. Well, the girls, plural, as a matter of fact.

At seven in the morning, however – this he did not tell his horse – he was very grumpy. He felt there was a critical man,
an unwelcome collaborator, a critic leaning over his shoulder and making scornful comments about his latest work. Well, he
saw him off, and by noon not only had his breeches dried on the line but he felt more at one with himself. By noon the hounds
in the picture were looking like living hounds not statues, and the rocks looked like rocks not pieces of black sponge. And
do you know how I did this, Tick?

Tell you a secret, shall I?

Today, whenever I felt a bit low, or a bit down, I thought about that Dolly on the rocks, that girl, and suddenly I was alive,
amazing, I was
alive
in the picture, and that’s when I know I’m doing well, when I’m living in the picture, I can feel it in my balance, in my
feet, I even feel I’ve got my binocular vision back (though there’s bugger-all chance of that), I feel it in my hands, and
they were both with me, d’you see, both of them in a thunder of plunging, the one on the rocks was in Florence’s dress and
watching, and Florence was there … her legs on the rocks, lying in the same way as Dolly, Florence undressed, and Dolly came
back with me in Florence’s dress, because she wanted to, and they both stood in front of me undressed, both lay down in the
studio, both lay on my bed and they were both paintable, Tick, they were so paintable, one clothed and one watching, then
the other wore the other’s clothes and the power poured into my painting, sometimes I may be tired, Tick, but you see they
both wanted to be painted on the floor, they wanted to be painted every colour of the rainbow, all over, they both wanted
to stay, they wouldn’t go, they begged me to go on painting them as they lay or
walked barefoot on the floor, and I painted them as they went past, I painted their backs and their fronts and we rolled in
the paint and laughed at Harold Knight who only pieces bits of a picture together like embroidery, that’s no good, no good
at all, so I painted them, they were painted, no fooling, it’s got to be dramatic and virile and direct and that’s art,

THAT IS ART.

Alfred pressed on, thrusting his horse on, towards Penzance, he and Grey Tick at one together, sensing each other’s bodies,
like a painter and his model, until they came to The Star Inn. Here, on the outskirts of Newlyn, Alfred pronounced himself
‘parched’. He said so to Grey Tick. His mouth was as dry as it had been face down above Dolly.

‘Parched,’ he said to the landlord, plonking himself down, legs apart, on the low wooden settle with a window view of Mounts
Bay and a big ship passing. In three steady pulls he drained the first pint. He smacked his lips and belched. He was, he proclaimed
to himself, still parched.

‘Still parched,’ he said with a challenging smile, as if to suggest that the landlord with the pock-marked face could surely
draw off a bigger and better pint than the last.

‘And you’ll have one yourself to join me, I hope?’

Surprised to find such a good mixer at lunchtime, the landlord fumbled with his match, left his pipe unlit and returned to
the barrel.

‘Thank you, sir, I will.’

And with that, while Florence was a mile away, and skating along like loose silk hanging free, they fell to talking, man to
man, the landlord and Mr Munnings, elbows and shoulders together, and found they had mutual friends in the hunt, and found
the fox story was still running, and Alfred arranged to have a ton of hay sent
to his stables, before they moved on to the vagaries of the weather and the sea, which led naturally enough to horses and
women and life, and how some women looked good without trying while others, however hard they tried, always looked like lumps,
and how men who knew about horses and women and life knew the pleasure of riding home with a frost beginning and a young moon
in the sky and puddles crisping over.

For a moment A.J. was distracted in full flow by the fly bottle, because the flies in the bar were being attracted to the
beer in a bottle and they fell through the hole and got tight and were drowned. Alfred jabbed his finger at the bottle.

‘And
that
is life, too.’

‘And death,’ the landlord said. At which both philosophers laughed.

After four pints Alfred, feeling increasingly at one, paid up, did a quick drawing on a piece of card and presented it to
the landlord, bade him a fond farewell, wrapped his lemon-yellow muffler round his neck, went out into the wind and smacked
his wide, shiny old stuffed saddle, asking Grey Tick a few questions as they went on the last leg to the rink, asking for
example, why:

Why is it I feel at one with a pub,
in
a pub, eh, as with a painting, as with a good chat with a stranger over a drink and sausages and mash, as with a horse, the
sweet, curious smell of a horse in a lane, the smell of pastures coming through the pores of their skin, and as he asked Grey
Tick these questions he scratched his neck and stroked his long curly mane.

Augereau, Anarchist, Rufus, Cherry Bounce, Winter Rose, Red Prince, Fanny, Merrilegs and Grey Tick.

Merely to memorise the names of the horses he’d had was to see the sheen of a clipped coat, a warrior of a pony,
a mare with long black legs and dappled quarters, a white mare with an Arab-looking countenance …

What horses!

What friends!

And
another
thing, how articulate he was today! Today he could explain everything. Quite often Alfred found, when put on the spot by
Laura Knight or some critic in a gallery, that he could not say much in the presence of a painting. Words frequently failed
him. He became tongue-tied. The whole assessing and comparing business made him bang his feet around on the floor, it made
him so churned up inside that he couldn’t trust his arse with a fart, but as he strode out of the pub he knew exactly what
he thought about horses and women and art and narrow-minded Methodists and bloody Sabbatarians and he could spell out what
he thought to all and sundry. At length.

Everything that day, by contrast, seemed to conspire against Gilbert. By lunchtime he despaired of ever arriving at the skating
rink at all. Not only had he woken feverish with cold but Colonel Paynter called at Jory’s to ask him over to Boskenna at
around ten to discuss possible improvements and developments to Gilbert’s new office in Lamorna. As he was spending an increasing
amount of time in and around the village supervising the new building, Gilbert could see the merits of the plan. It would
save him time, it was sensible, it would make the estate more efficient, it was all very well for the Colonel to consider
it, but they were standing in a chill wind and the minutes and the hours of the long-awaited Saturday were steadily being
gnawed away. If he looked at the ground long enough, however, he felt the Colonel would eventually grasp the point.

Eventually he did.

‘Anyway, Gilbert, I mustn’t keep you, it is Saturday after all, and you young chaps need to relax.’

‘That’s quite all right, Colonel.’

‘But you’re optimistic about the water source? In the pipeline, so to speak?’

‘I am, yes, very optimistic. Lamorna is quite a spot on the map now.’

‘And the foundations on the new property, all going to plan?’

‘Very much to plan. It’ll be a handsome place when it’s finished.’

‘Sort of place you might consider yourself one day, no doubt? All being well?’

‘If I ever get married, sir, and my pocket reaches that far.’

‘And before you go, Mrs Paynter’s most keen you come over to dinner soon, you quite won her heart with the dog business, went
straight to the mark.’

‘I’m glad it all ended so well. I saw Flirt just now and she looked full of beans.’

‘Thought we might ask along Miss Carter-Wood. Quite a looker, eh?’

‘I’m sure she’d be delighted to come.’

‘
Very
taken with her, we are!’

‘So are we all.’

‘Good, good. We’ll set all that in train then. And, by the way, Gilbert, you’re doing a first-rate job, first-rate, don’t
know how we ever got along without you.’

‘Thank you, Colonel.’

‘And the men know you’re fair. That’s how it should be. Good man!’

Hot with this praise, Gilbert bicycled back as fast as his legs would carry him, he tore around the lanes to the hotel
and bolted the lunch Mrs Jory had ensured was kept warm for him. While on his way back from Boskenna he was aiming to cut
lunch altogether but the look in Mrs Jory’s eye as he rushed in immediately reversed that strategy. He sat. He ate the soup
and pie. A gentleman, Mrs Jory held, had to eat properly. He looked at the clock on the sideboard, sure he would now miss
everything that was good about a Saturday afternoon in Penzance. Thanking Mrs Jory he ran up to his room where he spent an
unnecessary ten minutes trying on three different ties, a blue one, a red one and his green regimental tie, until his hands
were damp with the bother of it all and his collar stud began to chafe. He had never in his life been so put out over something
so unimportant as a tie. This was not like him at all. Nor was his mood improved by his involuntary memory replaying one of
A.J.’s silly songs.

Damn A.J., always butting in.

Even then, delayed as he was, he had a quick look at the tray of birds’ eggs, and another visit to the lavatory, before toiling
up the long hill, pumping his legs as hard as he could to make up some of the lost minutes. But he was delayed by a herd of
cows, and by the time it was downhill into Penzance he was back angrily on foot. Yes, another puncture, and another puncture
meant yet another opportunity for the jaunty A.J. to laugh.

By three o’clock, when he placed his damaged machine next to the long iron railing, the skating rink was packed, so packed
he was at first sure all his friends must have
left. She must have left. There was no Florence. Never mind.

What do you mean,
never mind
?

Mind you, he did not quite know what he was expecting to find. In his mind’s eye, while pushing his bicycle, he had seen her
and perhaps twenty others on the rink. In fact there must have been over a hundred. There was a roar of noise, and the roar
of the skates; there were excited cries and anguished warnings, near misses and exuberant twists and turns. He could recognise
no one.

Then he saw A.J., lemon-yellow muffler flying behind him, A.J. with his boyishly high parting and port-wine complexion, whoosh,
he went past like an ostler being chased by the furies, only he was taking someone to hell with him. Dolly! He was holding
her round the waist with one hand, and holding her waist as if he did not give a damn who saw him holding her waist. He whooshed
past again, showing the cut of his jacket, his dark grey Melton jacket, and wasn’t
he
the thing, and wasn’t he holding her so tight and wasn’t she enjoying it!

Spotting Gilbert he raised both arms in a salute and nearly lost his balance.