thereâs any call for that kind of remark,â he said absently.
Julian had little experience of women in early middle age, let alone artistic ones. Mrs Arkwright, the schoolâs art department, specialised in Norfolk landscapes populated by vast, Stubbsian horses. A spinster friend of his motherâs routinely dispensed faded, self-painted watercolours as Christmas presents. Miss Hoare, etching in the corners of her tumultuous seascapes, seemed infinitely removed from these pale exemplars. She painted putting courses filled with giant golfers waving their irons like weapons, a vortex of wind, debris and flailing black birds descending on the spire of St Peterâs church. âYou can be honest with me,â she told Julian. âDo you like them?â âI donât dis like them,â Julian replied truthfully. âBut in the sea picture youâve put the gulls in the wrong place. You see, they always alight on the highest point.â Miss Hoare was delighted. âA very good answer,â she said. âIf youâd said you liked them, I wouldnât have believed you.â
Conscious of their roles as native and interloper, they strolled around the town in search of vantage points: the gallery of the church, the high ground to the north, the tiny station with its dozing porter. âWhy Sheringham?â Julian asked at one point. âI mean â¦â He stopped for a second, crimson-faced. âI thought artists went to the South of France, places like that.â âSo they do,â Miss Hoare said judiciously. âBut my dear, Iâve had enough of Menton and Nice to last me a lifetime. Full of hopeless Englishmen thinking theyâre Pierre Loti.â Reaching the front again, they turned into the high street. Here the characteristic high summer smells hung in the air: fried fish, candyfloss, oil, each mixed with the pervasive tang of salt. âDo you suppose,â Miss Hoare wondered, âthere is anywhere we could get a drink? A proper drink, that is.â âNot a chance,â Julian told her cheerfully. âEveryone knows Iâve only just turned sixteen. If I went into a pub and ordered a half of cider theyâd probably telephone my father.â âOh well, if thatâs the difficulty,â said Miss Hoare. At the bar of the Saracenâs Head she loomed brazenly above a knot of Summer People in khaki shorts and sunhats and announced: âTwo glasses of white wine. And this young man is my nephew.â Later, as they sat in an alcove looking out over the humped keels of upended crab boats, she said: âWill it matter? Saying youâre my nephew, I mean.â âI shouldnât think my father will be very pleased.â âWill he find out?â âOh, I expect someone will tell him,â Julian told her, elated by the wine and not caring very much. âThey usually do.â
August came, with flaring skies. An old man had a heart attack on the beach, and an air-sea rescue helicopter came to ferry him away. The O-level results were due in a week. âExams,â Miss Hoare pronounced, âare the curse of the educated classes.â They were in the Saracenâs Head again, whose staff, curiously, had yet to complain to Mr Holroyd. âAre you still set on Art?â She enunciated it as one would the name of a favourite relative or a honeymoon destination. âI donât know,â Julian wondered, realising that for all his disparagement of mathematics, physics, chemistry and the dreary people who taught them, he really did not know. âThereâs an art school at Norwich,â he explained. âOr even at Lowestoft. And then â¦â Miss Hoare beamed back at him. Reckoning up the number of glasses of white wine she had consumed, Julian calculated it at six or perhaps seven. âYou must lend me those sketchbooks of yours,â she said. âLet me look at them and see what can be