Summer in February (20 page)

‘Yes … yes, it is. But it always takes a long time to arrive at the truth, doesn’t it, and in Browning all the characters
have their say. Which is as it should be.’

‘Is there a hero?’

‘There’s a heroine.’ She smiled, and looked away.

‘You’ll be seeing Alfred soon,’ I said.

‘Yes, it’s exciting,’ she said to the window.

We arrived at Paddington half an hour late and there, pacing around the platform, was Alfred in his pepper and salt covert
coat. He was not in the best of form. Furious at the delay he whisked us off towards Piccadilly.

‘Is it so important to go this very minute?’ Florence asked his back.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You must see for yourself.’

‘Where are we going?’ I asked.

‘The Summer Exhibition,’ he said snappily. ‘Where else?’

I had almost forgotten how abrupt and forceful a fellow
Alfred was. Was this the same man who so recently wrote me such full and engaging letters, letters from Hampshire and Norfolk
which evinced considerable affection? Had he, not I, been in that carriage there would surely have been an almighty row even
before the train left Penzance. When he is with you there seems little room to breathe. It is as if, like some chemical force,
he expands to fill all the space available. Yet he showed no special pleasure in greeting Florence. I had prepared myself
and stood well aside on the platform to allow the great reunion. There was none. I do not quite know how to explain it except
to say that he treated us as if we were of the same sex.

We hurriedly crossed the cobbled courtyard of Burlington House, and it was on the cobbles that he fired the first shots. The
walls of the Academy were packed high with paintings, sometimes three deep, and to my amateur eye they were all splendid but
he was of a different mind, and immediately talking at the top of his voice. Whenever Florence spoke to me on the train, asking
me about my earlier life, her voice excluded all other listeners, the soul of privacy. With Alfred it was the opposite. Alfred
addressed the world.

‘Good God, Blote,’ he said, ‘what would Gainsborough want to do with all
these
? What would Reynolds
do
? And as for Hogarth! The place should be blown up, boom, I’d blow it up, Ev, painted ceiling or no painted ceiling. And to
think I have always dreaded rejection by this lot! By some ex-pert, some would-be conno-sieur with a piece of chalk, putting
his X on the back of the rejects and his D for doubtful. D for doubt-ful!’

I could see the other visitors looking at Munnings as if to say, ‘Who
is
that fellow?’

Perhaps unaware, and certainly unperturbed, he marshalled us this way and that, pitching his voice at just
the wrong level, finding an occasional word of praise here, more often a curt dismissal there. From room to irascible room
we trooped, his vapourings growing more and more excitable, as he claimed to have seen better art in wayside urinals and asserted
that the Royal Academy needed a breath of fresh air more than a French latrine.

Finally, we turned a corner and with a sharp shock stood before three of his own paintings. One was of the Western hounds
chasing a fox on Zennor hill. The second,
The Path to the Orchard
, showed a girl in a white linen hat and apron leading a pony along a path. In the foreground were clumps of white and crimson
phlox. It was a happy, breathtaking picture. The third was
Morning Ride
. Florence was sitting there on Merrilegs.

‘You see why you had to come,’ he beamed. ‘You see why you’re here.’

Florence stood, speechless and pale, before the painting.

‘Yes … yes I do,’ I said. ‘Well done, A.J. Very well done.’

He hugged me hard.

‘And
you
,’ he said to Florence, ‘adorn the Royal Academy, and let the world see you!’

We all looked at
Morning Ride
. Florence was right; the man was a genius.

In bed that night, with the sounds of London traffic in my ears, I asked myself for the first time some unthinkable questions.
Why should Munnings, genius or no genius, want to marry Florence? Having asked it once I asked myself it again. Of course
I do realise that one answer is manifestly simple: any man in his right mind would want to marry her. But as I lay there,
sleepless and unwilling to face my dreams, a second, third and fourth possibility occurred. Once I had allowed myself the
first thought others raced
in behind like waves, a rising tide of disturbing doubts, mounting waves crashing into Lamorna Cove.

That he, a wild drinker and spender, wanted and needed the financial security of her family, a family who could afford to
live only in certain rooms.

That a man of his humble beginnings, a miller’s son from Suffolk who felt himself at odds with the established order, wished
to align himself with a rich and accomplished woman who was not only sympathetic to art but an artist herself.

That he was exacting a kind of revenge on a world that he suspected did not want him, much as he felt and expressed about
the Royal Academy.

That he planned to have not so much a wife as a beautiful possession, a self-effacing subject who would not rebel, one to
whom he would seem a God or hero; a cheerful welcoming face who would become the mother of jolly children. Did part of his
befuddled mind envisage a wife playing bridge and eating ginger biscuits, a life of lacy parasols and sculling boats and flower-trimmed
hats? But no! He could not, because Florence was no such woman. And if she was not, what exactly did Florence see in him?

My head was spinning with these analytical reflections. In the months ahead I could see Munnings behaving increasingly irrationally
and Florence becoming increasingly crestfallen. I got out of my bed and paced the hot, stuffy room. I wondered what kind of
night she was having at her home. I wondered where A.J. was staying.

Surely I was not thinking that all this with A.J. and Florence was only for appearances? Was it not a love match, the simple
attraction of opposites? Yes. Things would work out in the long run … I lay once again on my bed. After all it was not my
affair, it was time for sleep, and I closed my eyes.

Only for another, bigger wave to come crashing in.

Why, no sooner than his proposal of marriage had been accepted, did he go away and go about a great deal? Stay away, in fact?
And, when away, why did he write at such length only to me? Again, when we left the Royal Academy that very afternoon, why
did he assume the pose of the showman, a glass too much and one glass more, and launch into his pungent stories, when there
were the clearest signs of distress etched on Florence’s face?

Of course such night thoughts as those might never darken Alfred’s door. Maybe he was simply too happy at feeling the fresh
wind of success on his back, too preoccupied with the path that opened up before him to notice what he was doing? But if he
continued not to attend to Florence’s needs, how long would a woman so beautiful and so gifted remain untempted? To put it
another way, had she trapped herself for ever by an afternoon of pique on Penzance skating-rink? Or could she, even now, retrace
her steps, and if she could, would her steps be directed towards me?

Dangerous thoughts.

I tried to sleep but saw her sitting beside me in the train. I felt the warmth of her shoulder. Did the look she gave me in
the carriage, and the same glance again in the Academy, did those pressures and glances encourage me to abandon self-denial
and become more than a friend and observer? To become Alfred’s rival? After all, it was not unknown for engagements to be
broken, even at the very last hour.

No.

I knew I had to silence those threatening thoughts.

I awoke with a headache, unsure where I was, but sure that I had dreamt dreadfully. Usually I have variations of two dreams.
By writing them down, who knows, perhaps I may
encourage the wretched things to go away, to leave me alone. Laura Knight told me that writing them down often helps to exorcise
their power. We shall see. At the moment, however hard I work to ensure an exhausted sleep, I find they come round regularly,
swinging like grotesque faces on a roundabout.

Now there is a third.

The first dream: it is a hot day. I have killed someone. I have no recollection of doing the deed, and no reason for committing
the act, but the person is dead at my feet. I feel sick but cannot be sick. There is no blood and no evidence. No one saw
me do it. I bury him very carefully, taking precise bearings and marking the exact spot. I am, after all, a surveyor. I survey
the land and make coded notes in my small pocket diary, in amongst the number of trout I have caught, the number of miles
I have bicycled and the size of my breaks in billiards. I can remember no distinguishing feature of the landscape, no trees
or undergrowth or footpaths. But I know exactly where I have put it … put
him
. When I return to check, to see if it is undisturbed, I can find no trace. It is as if I did not do it. But I did. I know
I did.

From this dream I always awake very distressed.

The second dream: there is a blazing sun. I have sunburnt legs. I am in South Africa as an official war artist. I have been
commissioned to record, in as much detail and in as authentic a way as possible, what I see in action. This bothers me since
I am an officer and no artist at all. I am being asked to sing the leading part in an opera when I have no voice.

The place in South Africa is not specific but that it is South Africa I am clear. I know I am facing the Boers. They are bearded.
They carry their rifles across their backs as they ride their Basuto ponies. It is very difficult to draw or paint
horses in full flight but I know there is a famous English artist who can do so. I cannot remember his name. The Boers have
leather bandoliers slung over their chests. There is a skirmish. Because I am less confident about the horses I concentrate
on very detailed drawings of the Mauser Mod 60 rifles and Eighth Field Battery fifteen-pounders. There are burnt-out wagons
and putrefying dead horses, but (sitting on my hillock) I am absurdly safe from the fire all around me. The mail has just
come in and I read my haul of letters from a beautiful girl whose face mingles with the words. Big guns are coughing and smacking.
I finish my bread, sardines and bully and drink my coffee. I sit on my little hillock, a mound the size of an appropriate
seat. Then, with increasing discomfort and a sudden realisation of leaping terror, I find I am sitting on an ant hill.

I awake from this one scratching myself.

But the dream I had that night in Fuller’s Hotel was in some ways the worst, and it continues to plague me.

One of my oil paintings is brought back from South Africa and much admired. It is hung in the Royal Academy, in a shadowy
corner not unlike the place where the elegant Florence sits on Merrilegs. Entitled
Fight to the Last Man
it depicts heroic death on a battlefield. A young officer is lying on the ground, his head cushioned on the hands and knees
of a comrade, and he is being given a drink, probably his last drink. He is very young. He looks a little like Joey Carter-Wood.
There is no blood visible and no wound. Around him are poor devils cowering in filth. The mountains in the background are
not unlike the Drakensburg Mountains, and not unlike the Black Mountains on the Welsh border, yet this cannot be for those
two ranges could scarcely be more dissimilar.

At the foot of the mountain range I see another figure. Looking closely I see I have drawn with perfect skill, a skill
I do not possess, the face of my young brother, Sammy. There is a black insect on his lips. The bite mark swells into a mound.

From this dream it takes me some time to recover and compose myself.

It was not easy for me to write those out.

Alfred, Florence and I were not due to meet again until lunch so I had the morning in London to myself. Alfred insisted upon
an Italian restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue because ‘For l/6d. we can eat like kings.’

I shaved, cut breakfast and tubed to Hope Bros where I got measured for a suit. By then my headache was clearing and I was
in need of coffee and a newspaper, the pages of which were full of the strikes and of miners marching down the Rhondda Valley,
while there were fears, too, of general unrest in Liverpool. To sit in the centre of London and read the newspaper is to feel
at the centre of the world, and I realised how remote from the main events of the day I had become in Lamorna. It even took
me a while to spot the difference in the noise on the streets: the horse carriages had largely given way to motor buses, but
on the day before Florence so filled my eyes I had not noticed this on the journey from Paddington station to Burlington House.

One minute I was scanning the paper; the next I was walking. In a trance I found myself pushing past pedestrians and going
in quite the opposite direction from the restaurant where we were to meet. I turned left and right automatically and was through
the doors and up the wide stairs, as if guided and drawn.

There were far fewer people. Less oppressed by the crowd I could now enjoy the still privacy of the moment.
Without anyone else nearby I could now look at her as hard and for as long as I wished. It held and moved me greatly. In my
mind I was in that clearing with her, and mercifully free of Munnings, but would she ever be, that was the point, could she
ever be free of the man who had so perfectly captured her in paint? Could I free her?

I heard footsteps, but I did not turn. They came steadily on. I knew whose footsteps they were, I would know them anywhere.
They stopped just behind me. Usually I give little credence to outlandish events in everyday life. Indeed I tend to be rather
short with people who tell me how abnormal or unearthly some of their experiences are. I spoke first.

‘I wanted to come back … on my own.’

‘I knew you would,’ she said.

‘But I had no intention of doing so. How could you have known?’