Summer in February Read Online Free PDF Page A

promising lads, yes, look for new buds appearing, that’s the ticket, be sensible, forget thepast, that’s the only way, Gilbert, no point looking back, come on, Pedro, let’s both go back in, shall we, and get some sleep,
     shall we? Good dog, good dog.
    And, being sensible now, he slept.
    At seven o’clock prompt, Lilly, the maid, brought him up his cup of tea and his apple. He peeled the apple. When Lilly appeared
     again, with his mug of piping-hot shaving water, Gilbert got up, feeling very sensible and very practical as he shaved. But
     at breakfast
The Times
was full of Sir Alfred Munnings. There were columns and columns about the Retiring President uncorking his long-bottled emotions
     at the banquet. Oh, no, Munnings wasn’t going to go away that easily! Try as hard as you could to be sensible you still ended
     up drinking half the night away with A.J., listening to his dirty songs and, of course, his quite awful poems.
    ‘Where are you going, Ev?’ he’d shout as Gilbert tried to slip away at two in the morning. ‘
Sit down
next to Laura and have another drink.’
    You never could escape him, never.
    And now, with every column in the papers telling you the whole world was in a most awful, most precarious state (Berlin, the
     Yangtse, Israel, India, and Communist China), here was an incoherent speech about modern art becoming a sensation. Once again,
     A.J. took a central-stage position, insisting all eyes stayed on him.
    ’Twas always thus, Gilbert grunted to himself.
    In 1911 it used to be Munnings against Roger Fry (or Rogering Fry as Munnings preferred to put it); and now, in 1949, it was
     The President versus Picasso, Munnings versus Moore, Burlington House battling against Bloomsbury, with the pink coats on
     the left wing about to attack that conservative Chamber of Horrors, the Royal Academy, led by Sir Alfred and his blue-blooded
     hunters.
    Gilbert carefully folded
The Times
, left his kippers half eaten and went up to the boxroom at the very top of the house. He had taken the first steps up there
     last night but thought better of it, thinking he might in doing so disturb Lilly or the boys. He knew exactly where in the
     boxroom he was heading, though it was years since he last looked. The trunk, a dark brown one with Captain C.G. Evans boldly
     printed on it, he bought to go to West Africa in 1914. He knew exactly where in the trunk they were. He knew which pages he
     would open first.
    Trembling, he sat on top of the trunk.
    Do you realise what you have done, A.J.?
    Do you, you old scoundrel?

I fear love making and painting don’t go together.
    Alice Forbes, letter to Ethel, 1886
    History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes,
     and kindle with pale gleams the passions of former days.
    Winston Churchill, 1940

The Stranger in the Lane
    From the moment they met, Laura could not take her eyes off him. Married woman though she was, she freely admitted as much
     to herself. And to others. She had never before in her life felt herself in the company of so powerful and challenging a spirit,
     of so wild and unsettling a nature.
    She had been down on the rocks all day with Dolly, working on a big canvas. Since coming to Cornwall her canvases had become
     bigger and bigger, bolder and bolder, and Harold had very kindly left his own work, as he so often did, and walked down through
     the village to the cove to help her carry the six-foot canvas, poles and general clobber back up the hill. It’s a steep pull
     up from Lamorna Cove, very steep at first, as it curves round past ‘Lamorna’ Birch’s house, where the water on the other side
     comes down the valley gathering speed as it runs through a narrow runnel. Going up those first few hundred yards, before it
     eases a little, you need all the help you can find, and Laura knew she was lucky to have a kind, attentive husband. Sometimes,
     preoccupied with his own