Listening to the Royal Academy speeches on his new Regentone Radiogram, Major Gilbert Evans thought he was alone. Once Winston
Churchill had finished his reply, Gilbert sat for a moment in quiet thought, lost in the past, the distant past, then eased
himself up out of his fireside chair and turned off the wireless.
Munnings.
Gilbert stood there, cigarette in hand, shaking his head.
Life was a funny business.
Munnings and Churchill.
And still that same Suffolk accent. Or was it Norfolk?
Gilbert stood there, smoking, looking out across the sea to the Lizard. Listening to the speeches, he had become so bound
up with the broadcast that he did not notice his younger son, David, slipping into the room. Once
Twenty Questions
was finished Joan had gone off towards the cliffs for her evening walk with Pedro, their dog, leaving Gilbert still settled
in his chair. As for Gilbert, he assumed Timothy and David were down at the cove. And what better last night of the Easter
holidays could they wish to have? That last night of freedom was very special to a boy before he
returned to boarding-school – Gilbert remembered them so well, a boy’s precious hours of freedom, though for him they were
fifty years ago, or more.
But in fact David was sitting cross-legged on the drawing-room carpet not five feet away, and sitting very still. What on
earth had captivated the child? Was it Churchill’s style and delivery that transfixed him, that measured resonance, that witty
balance? Gilbert hoped so. ‘It is a good thing,’ Winston said at one point in his speech, ‘that art should be above parties,
though parties are not above art.’ How many people these days could turn a sentence like that? Perhaps if more of them studied
Tacitus they could do so; perhaps if more of them studied Churchill’s speeches they could.
As for A.J.’s speech … Well, Gilbert hadn’t seen Munnings for years, they had lost touch long long ago, but his forceful,
angry, sincere and vehement style was unchanged. Quite frankly, A.J. was not an educated man, never had been. At the best
of times he was inarticulate, and listening to him tonight on the wireless it showed. In a way it was rather embarrassing;
one was somehow embarrassed
for
him. Yet to hear his country voice was to be grabbed again by the lapels, to be button-holed again, to see his rosy face
again one inch from your nose, with drink on his breath, ‘Listen, Ev,
lis-ten
to me, will you,’ he would say and, of course, Gilbert would listen. With Munnings there wasn’t much choice, was there?
Oh, yes, the man on the wireless, President or no President, was the same old controversial A.J. they all knew and loved –
well, not
all
loved, but the same old A.J., only older. Although white-haired and famous, if not infamous, Sir Alfred Munnings still sounded
like a river about to burst its banks, or – what did Harold Knight say, how did Harold put it? – rather like an agitated bookie.
If you had been mad enough to ask Gilbert before the First World War what odds he would give on Alfred Munnings ever becoming
President of the Royal Academy he would have said it was too absurd to contemplate – but then, in 1945, just after we had
won the Second World War, it was equally impossible to contemplate the suggestion that Winston Churchill would lose the General
Election, which he duly did.
It was a good thing for the banquet, though, that Winston
had
spoken next. As usual he struck just the right note. Gilbert could tell A.J. had comfortably overstepped the mark, but Winston
nicely defused it all. ‘No one can doubt that the President, whom I rise to support, has some strong views.’ Gilbert admired
that kind of understated, mature wit. It smoothed ruffled feathers. It put everything back into perspective.
‘Who was that, Daddy?’ David suddenly piped.
‘Winston Churchill,’ Gilbert said, ‘you must have recognised his voice.’
‘No, the man before.’
‘That was Sir Alfred Munnings.’
Though he never could, to be honest, quite see him as ‘Sir Alfred’.
‘Haven’t I heard you talk about him before?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Didn’t he live in Lamorna?’
‘Yes, he lived in the hotel. He had rooms there.’
‘When, before the war?’
‘Before
both
the wars. This is thirty, no, forty years ago we are talking about. Lots of artists lived here then. Lots. Quite the place,
it was.’
Gilbert glanced up at the portrait.
‘Did she?’
He was so taken aback by the boy’s question he was
not sure he had heard David correctly. Rising to his feet, he said:
‘Sorry, old chap?’
‘Did she?’
‘Who?’
‘You
know
, Daddy. Did the woman in the painting live in the hotel?’
Gilbert flicked through the pages of the
Radio Times
, trying to collect himself. His young son was staring, eyes concentrated, at the painting.
‘Yes, she did. A number … of us did.’
‘
You
lived in the hotel as well?’
‘Oh yes, for quite a while. I’m sure I’ve told you all that.’
‘Did you know her well, Daddy?’
Half armed though he was, that question hit Gilbert like a bullet, and for one who had been hit by a bullet this was no mere
figure of speech. He almost staggered. David was such a percipient boy. Perhaps those months when he was so ill last year,
those worrying months, had given him – as illnesses often do – special insights into adult devices.
Gilbert took a pace or two towards the painting, glad the light was now fading so quickly that David could not see his face.
At various times of day the painting looked so different, depending on the light, and now it took on its most sombre tones.
‘Oh yes,’ he replied, ‘she was a very great friend.’
He could feel David’s eyes now on him. Then the boy quickly got to his feet, pulled his long socks up to his knees, turned
the tops down, and said:
‘Did you know there are adders in the vegetable garden?’
‘Yes – yes, I did.’
‘I’m meeting the gang at the cove.’
‘All right, old chap.’
‘I’ll be back soon.’
‘You won’t be late, will you, there’s a good fellow. Remember, you’re off to school tomorrow.’
And David shot out of the room.
A bit restless, Gilbert pottered around the house and then pottered around the garden. When Joan got back from her walk he
told her a bit, in a roundabout way, about the Academy speeches, but of course the whole business with A.J. was years and
years before they met, many years before Joan came to Lamorna, and given all that had happened he felt he couldn’t very well
go into the details with his wife. Nor did he mention to her the conversation with David. That was a private affair, too,
and Gilbert rather doubted either of them would ever allude to it again.
As was usual, Joan went to bed before Gilbert. He sat up for a while and read
The Field
, a bit dreamy in his chair, slowly turning the pages, before he was distracted by a bumblebee which had worked itself into
something of a state, and once he’d released him out into the night air and he was up on his pins Gilbert thought he might
as well go upstairs himself.
But he knew, even before he started to climb the staircase, that he wouldn’t sleep. He knew it long before he lowered his
head on to the pillow.
What are the best games to play, Gilbert wondered, while trying to switch off an over-active mind, when thoughts speed up
and down like restless swallows over a stream? He ran through the little jobs that needed doing in the greenhouse, the seeds
that needed sowing in the little meadow, the miles per gallon the Armstrong Siddeley managed, and if these mundane reflections
failed he recalled the home matches Wales played in their great
days, The Golden Age, before the Great War: he saw some wonderful games, once travelling back on the overnight train from
Penzance, changing at Bristol. That was 1911. Or was it 1972? Whichever, Wales beat Ireland 16-0. The Arms Park! The gates
were closed over an hour before the kick off. But the crowds burst through and then scaled the walls. There were deaths and
terrible injuries, and Gilbert saw all the bodies laid out, so
that
didn’t work, that didn’t help his mind settle.
Nothing worked. He couldn’t sleep. So he tried trying to remember the earliest they had ever picked daffodils at Boskenna,
picturing daffodils with double centres, trying to remember the names of all the boys in his house at Rugby, the names of
the men in his regiment, but that jumped sideways to those friends he lost in the Boer War – and
that
didn’t help.
Damn you, Munnings!
Damn you, A.J.! A.J., as was his wont, had stirred him up again. A.J., Alfred, Sir Alfred Munnings, damned Munnings, everywhere
he went he stirred people up. Could nothing ever be left alone? Couldn’t even the oldest wounds be allowed to heal?
Gilbert leant up on his elbow and slipped out of bed as quietly as he could, careful not to disturb Joan. He went into his
dressing-room. There’s nothing worse than unnecessarily waking up others, dreadfully selfish, such a precious thing, sleep,
especially as we get older, and, feeling older, he pulled on his big cardigan. It was late April and still a touch chilly
at nights. Mind you, late April often saw Lamorna at its very best – it’s when Gilbert pulls his first potatoes, the summer
birds return, the dry heath on the cliffs begins to show a little pink and
‘Are you all right, Gilbert?’
‘Yes, I’m so sorry, Joan, I’m afraid I’ve woken you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Just a bit of indigestion.’
‘The milk of magnesia’s on the shelf in the kitchen. On the left.’
‘You go back to sleep, I’ll be all right.’
His problems, that moonlit night, were far beyond milk of magnesia’s reach, but all his life he’d had something of a dicky
tummy and he was quite happy for Joan to think it was no more than that. A nurse herself, she’d been wonderful to him, quite
wonderful; twenty-two years younger and to some that may seem quite an age gap, but they had two splendid boys, and much though
he’d miss them when they were back at school, he was a lucky chap to be so on in years and blessed with such young sons.
He went downstairs as quietly as he could.
Unused to his master’s midnight wanderings, Pedro leapt up from his basket, and out they went together for a breath of air,
Pedro shaking himself, Gilbert pulling his cardigan a little tighter. Round to the right, and past the garages, which reminded
him to check the gearbox oil in the spare Armstrong, and across the sloping meadow, until he could see the hotel, or at least
its outline.
The hotel.
In the moonlight it was completely black, like one of those huge cardboard cut-outs David enjoyed making with scissors on
the kitchen table. If you then cut out a white circle for the moon and hung it above the black card you would catch the reality
and unreality of that moment. So quiet was the sea in the cove he could hear almost nothing, and that was rare.
He shivered. He told himself to be sensible. To be practical. It was much better to look to the future, to the boys’ future,
they’re such promising lads, yes, look for new buds appearing, that’s the ticket, be sensible, forget the
past, 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