Summer in February

by Jonathan Smith

  She wears strings of red beads, wonderful earrings (do they compete with the men on earrings?) under the most wonderful blue-black hair, oh, the Romany hair, a large black hat complete with ostrich feather, and when she walks SHE WALKS. You can feel the life BEATING in her. How about that for a woman? Can you see her? Can you smell her? Is she not paintable?

  ‘D’ye want me ter-morrer, Mr Money?’ she asks.

  MR MONEY!

  Yes, she thinks that is my name, or perhaps it is her joke (never never underestimate a Romany woman) and if it is, the joke will not be lost on you. Mr Munnings pays a gypsy woman a shilling an hour, ten shillings a day, to make enough money to dazzle the world (and other women?). In this way the lower and the higher orders are conjoined!

  What a model she is! She is alive and happy in her skin. With bodies like hers, every day here is a gala day.

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ I say, ‘I would like you tomorrow, please.’

  ‘Or would ye be wantin’ to do a ’orse instead?’

  ‘No, my lady,’ I say, ‘only you. I do not want any horse. I want only my lady on a horse.’

  She loves me saying ‘My lady’ and gives me such a look, glancing back at her caravan (does anyone in Lamorna give such a look?) but watching us there is a fellow sharpening sticks with a knife, and it’s not my canvas that concerns him. His knife looks extremely keen. My marvellous model, her body touching mine, washes my brushes for me and keeps popping round the easel to see how she is coming on.

  ‘Cor!’ she says, and ‘Cor!’ is her greatest praise. ‘That me? Is it, Mr Money? You’s the Champ and no doubt!’

  And she brushes my arm again with her fingers as she moves off.

  And tomorrow I shall paint her, as she leans out of the half-door, holding the reins. Children – hers? who knows? – with cheeky faces will be poking their noses over the door. Others will be sitting on the shafts, dangling their legs. Poultry will be slung in crates or cages from the wheels. A blackbird will go by like running ink. And all this, my friend, you will see for yourself, captured for ever by the magnificent Munnings – or maybe not, BECAUSE (dammit) I’ve got to sell them, haven’t I, and does one paint with one eye on the guinea? Does one write with one eye on the guinea? I suspect people do, you know.

  Anyway, if all goes well, I shall paint a picture every three or four days and leave you to control things your end. Mind you, it could go wrong. My hands are blue, my left thumb has gone dead under the weight of the palette, my right foot feels the size of a horse’s thigh with gout (didn’t ever tell you about the gout I’ve got which I don’t deserve, but do I deserve your friendship? I would say YES to both).

  So there you are in Jory’s, there you are in Lamorna. And what did you eat last night? I know, I know, soup, cold mutton with mint sauce (very little of), cold rhubarb and cream, with Florence and Joey as guests, with Joey for billiards and Florence for admiration? If I am right, smile!

  Perhaps I should stay here? Perhaps this is the MILIEU for a man with my restlessness? Am I a gypsy at heart?

  And how’s old Laura? Still bumping along like a balloon?

  And how’s Joey? Still looking for blennies in the rock pools?

  And how’s you? Don’t simmer too much inside, will you? You must let off steam, and not make a masterpiece of self-effacement. Don’t be ashamed to be different, or it’s a rather chained fate you choose.

  By the way, how is the Dolly gel? Dolly is, I suspect, rather more than meets the eye, and plenty enough meets the eye, take my meaning?

  And I wish you all health, Ev, and I send this letter along earth tracks and deep culverts and open ditches and rain-polished roads and green fields to you (but, God, what else are fields BUT green?).

  Yours,

  A.J.

  Underneath his signature, and all over the envelope, were quick witty drawings, a whiff of A.J.’s world.

  Cézanne’s Apples

  In the weeks while Mr Money was away with his black-haired gypsies, the foundations were being dug for a handsome new house on the cliff. The site was not far from Jory’s Hotel and Gilbert, of course, was deputed by the Colonel to supervise the early stages. He did so happily. Very happily, as it meant less time sloshing around the big cobbled yard at Boskenna and more planning chance meetings with Florence. From the site it took him less than ten minutes to cycle over to her cottage, he overtook her on walks (Joey was vital for intermediary hints), he waved to her as she sat upstairs in Harold Knight’s studio and one wonderful evening, a pipe dream come true, he rode over to Newlyn and brought her back from her art class on Merrilegs. Every step of the way his heart unfurled and sang.

  It soon became clear, too, that Gilbert was the only one who had received a letter from Alfred. This distinction surprised him. He asked Laura. He sounded out Florence. Laura was somewhat put out to hear all this rhapsodising over the Romanies but Florence, at her most assured, only said, ‘Why no,’ no, she had never expected a letter or anything of the sort, why should she? To ride Merrilegs, to receive letters, to see so much of Florence, to sense her measured distance diminish, to look high over hedges, to see gulls following a plough, to spot a different ground swell in the ocean and enjoy the wide panoramas of a bigger busier world, all this experience seemed to be coming Gilbert’s way with an abrupt rush.

  His confidence grew.

  His world expanded.

  He rode into Penzance for some shopping, and to greet Gilbert and his private thoughts the church bells chimed as he trotted along the promenade towards the centre of town. These last few days Gilbert sensed he was noticing things he rarely noticed; today, for example, on entering Penzance, the bird droppings on a statue’s head. He saw them so clearly. Passing Morrab Gardens he noticed the palms and myrtles, the geraniums and camellias.

  Mother’s birthday was coming up next week, with brother Lionel’s only four days later. Never very original over such matters, Gilbert knew he would buy a new book for Mother, he always did, and a new pipe (a rather pukka Loewe with an amber stem) for Lionel. And at the bottom of his list (or the top) was a visit to the Morrab Library. That was the item he was moving towards.

  Everything went perfectly. He completed all his business calls; he bought the book and the pipe in Chapel Street; he saw the surveyor and had a ginger beer at a small shop, and that left only the library before he put his foot back in the stirrups. Never before had the prospect of a visit to any library excited Gilbert, but in the last week the word, the words, had been niggling away in his mind, and the only thing for it was to go to the source of words, the dictionary. Coming back down Morrab Road towards the Promenade, he turned left into Morrab Gardens. He sat in the sun for a moment, a stone’s throw from the sea, and listened to the gulls cry, and the palms rustle.

  Liddell and Scott, he remembered that big black tome at Rugby, and he also recalled how difficult he had found it to grasp Greek grammar. He followed the librarian through the high, quiet rooms, not to Liddell and Scott, but to the large Oxford English Dictionary. He took down the volume he needed. How could a dictionary cause his hands to tremble and the muscles in his arms to tighten like a rope? He placed the weathered spine on a reading-table and turned the pages, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  black

  blanch

  bloom

  blossom

  blot

  Surprisingly, there was a good deal on ‘blot’.

  blotchy

  Must be soon, or is there no such word, don’t say there is no such—

  blote

  His finger stopped. It was easily the shortest entry on the page, almost as if there were some doubt amongst the world’s lexicographers as to its existence. He read:

  blote

  obs. [? connected with blow in blow-fly, fly-blown. (The sense can hardly be explained from OE. blat, ‘livid, pale’ to which the form answers)]

  The egg or larva of flies and other insects.

  This was not at all what Gilbert wanted to
find. He had not followed this trail to encounter larva and flies and other insects. He wiped Sammy away. He wiped out of his mind the sight, and particularly the sound of fly-blown bodies and the heat of the South African sun, the sight of his friend’s face covered in flies and the horse with a burst stomach and barrel chest and flies walking on its teeth.

  Livid? No. But … pale, yes, she was pale. He looked down again at the page.

  bloten

  bloten … to soften or moisten … anoint. Moistening, yielding.

  He looked up and across the room. Soften, moisten, anoint, yield. He saw nothing, then he saw Florence standing at her easel in Newlyn, and with that softening sight and with those yielding words he was comfortable, with those words he could face and handle the future.

  Florence was not standing at her easel in the third studio in Newlyn, though she should have been. She was sitting, with her hands in her lap, on the creaky chair which Alfred Munnings had once again placed twenty yards from his studio. The chair was placed against a perfect background of foliage. Her oval face was pale. Her bracelet shone in the sun. She had a headache which worsened by the minute as she sat full face in the glare.

  Alfred had returned at breakfast time, his trap full of gypsy paintings, and called on her unannounced; and before she knew what was going on, before she could say ‘No’ she was on the way down the slope with him. Unusually, he was sitting down to work. Usually he was too restless, moving around like a dancer or an angry fly, but here he was, tired from travelling all night, the taste of beer still on his tongue, sitting on a low milking stool, his long holland painting coat plastered yellow, his sleeves rolled up to the elbow and his Panama hat tilted over one eye. She could not see his eyes, nor had she dared look directly at him since his terrible explosion.

  He drew her, also making pencil notes on the side of his pad, his thoughts over possible colours.

  ‘Been seeing a fair bit of Ev?’

  ‘We’ve met a few times.’

  ‘Good … good. Thought so. Thought you would.’

  ‘They’re building a new house, didn’t you know?’

  She looked at his hands. They were tanned brown. She looked at the little hairs on his forearms. She hadn’t noticed those before.

  ‘Don’t move!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me!’ she shouted back. ‘I already have a headache.’

  ‘I can’t work if you keep on moving.’

  ‘I haven’t been shouted at while you’ve been away, not once. It has been a most pleasant fortnight.’

  The sun glared. She blinked. He was glad she shouted back.

  ‘You’re my apples, you see. Cézanne. Heard of Cézanne?’

  ‘Of course I’ve heard of Cézanne. I suspect I may know as much about him as you do.’

  ‘Point being,’ he stood up to resettle himself and sat down again, ‘point being, Cézanne painted the same bowl of apples countless times – there’s always something new, you see, to say about a bowl of apples, the same bowl, so he kept painting them until they were perfect, that’s dedication, Blote, that’s art, and remember you’re my apples. Same with horses. Most people can’t paint horses, can’t make ’em shine.’

  ‘But you can?’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘You’ve returned at your most modest, Mr Munnings.’

  ‘Most modest people haven’t a clue,’ he yawned, and stroked his unshaven chin, ‘sorry, bit tired, and … horses, yes, horses shine, you see, you look at them when I take you to the races, you really look at them and you’ll see I’m right, and making them shine is the challenge.’

  ‘I’ll remember that. At the moment I find the human form enough of a challenge.’

  ‘I prefer cows though.’

  ‘Cows?’

  ‘Cows, I said.’

  She started to tremble.

  ‘So ridiculous, you really are, I don’t know why I’m here. I should be at my class.’

  ‘Best one I ever had was a cross between a Friesian and a Jersey bull, with white markings. Marvellous! What a model! I’ve just bought a cow, by the way.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You will say anything, anything.’

  She had to stand up to stop laughing but that only made it worse.

  ‘No doubt about it, give me a cow. They stand still, they have no ambition, they don’t want to be petted or patted, you don’t have to say “poor thing” or “thank you”, they don’t require any knowledge of their character, they’re not disdainful like some people I know, they don’t want intimacy, you don’t pay homage to a cow, they never complain of headaches, yes, they’re my models, oh bloody hell, the sodding sun’s gone in so you might as well have a proper rest. Is my bow tie straight?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘Straighten it, please.’

  She did so, her shoulders still shaking, her hands trembling on his tie. His face was red-brown. She stepped back.

  ‘Is that right?’

  He felt his collar.

  ‘Yes. But you heard what I was saying about apples?’

  ‘Yes, I heard you, Alfred. I expect people in Penzance heard you.’

  ‘Ah, see what I mean? Now no cow I know would say a thing like that. Or horse. Now look at Tick. Come on … let’s look at Grey Tick. Now you probably think Grey Tick is a world away from us, but look at it this way … his hocks are your ankles, his knees are your wrists, he walks on his fingers and his toes, the stifle joint is your—’

  blotless came next. Blotter. His school blotter. Gilbert remembered how its perfect, pristine texture was slowly spoiled with spreading pen marks, filled with wonderfully interesting spiders’ webs or outlines of Africa or the shape of a leaf or the central nervous system. His finger moved on. No, he must go back, as blote was an obsolete form of bloat. He moved a few pages back.

  black

  blithe, that was a word he’d always liked, blithe, a pleasurable word

  blizzard

  bloat, brought him up sharp

  But puffy, swollen and puffed were not words he liked. Nor was that the spelling, Joey was quite clear on that point. At least they were all agreed on the spelling.

  He replaced the dictionary, just as the sun hit the top of the bookcase.

  Now for Sandro Botticelli. From another shelf, in the darkest corner of the library, he gathered three histories of art, each with a helpful entry on Botticelli of Florence. (And what a happy accident it was that Botticelli came from Florence; it was as if the gods had conspired to make the parallels between the two women perfect in every respect.) In the third book he found exactly what he wanted, a coloured engraving of The Birth of Venus. Here before him was Botticelli’s Venus.

  Venus stood there on the page before him naked. Almost naked. Florence stood there. Gilbert studied her.

  He looked at her as closely as he could.

  In the clear morning air beauty came into the world with Venus, and it was the mystery of her arrival, the moment of her arrival, which Botticelli caught. She came naked from the sea (a sea such as there never was in Cornwall), perfectly balanced yet somehow tilting forward on the daintily lipped cockle shell. The air slipped around her. Calm though the sea was, an unreal flat calm of grey water, Venus seemed to sway gracefully on the shell. It should have been precarious – there were such risks! – but she was balanced and confident and self-assured she would not fall. This Venus made a nonsense of gravity.

  Gilbert borrowed a magnifying glass from the librarian, and then turned his back so that it could not be seen over which picture he was poring. He moved the glass slowly across the page. Two winged zephyrs, flying past, blew her on to the shore with jets of lustful air, their breath warm and the air full of floating petals, petals which hung and hovered. On closer inspection Gilbert saw they were a shower of roses, cut short at the stalk. Cutting flowers was something Gilbert often did. ‘Another sign,’ he said to himself. ‘It all fits together. Everything.’

  On the shore stood Time, a nymph in a white dress
, with a wreath of myrtle around her neck, waiting with a beautifully embroidered purple cloak, patterned with daisies. Was this a cloak to veil her, a cloak to cover her nakedness? There was surely no need for a cloak and certainly no request in Venus’s eyes for one. This woman, this goddess, did not seem embarrassed by her state. Indeed she challenged you to look her in the eye. Gilbert bent over and studied her again. No, perhaps her eyes were sad and accepting. Oh, it was so difficult to read people’s eyes, wasn’t it?

  With a steady hand he looked, through the glass, slowly down her body. Her right hand screened her bosom, covering her round high right breast. In her left hand she held some of the very long tresses of honeyed, auburn hair in front of her lower nakedness. To cover it, Gilbert felt, was also to draw one’s attention to it, to imagine more fully what could not be seen. Was it Botticelli’s purpose to excite such thoughts?

  No.

  Botticelli’s Venus was as delicate and as tender as Florence. Her skin was cool, and cool in the same way. She was a gift from Paradise, a gift from the gods, and she walked towards him out of the sea in Cornwall, tapping the door against which he stood. She came out of the sea towards him, and the orange trees and the grassy dunes ran down to the sea in welcome.

  She came towards him as he waited. He held out his hands.

  Botticelli’s Venus.

  Botticelli, Painter of Florence.

  He closed the book. He must go back on Merrilegs to Boskenna.

  There was so much to do. He left the Morrab Library.

  ‘You’re not listening!’