Summer in February by Jonathan Smith Read Free Book Online

of mill and plash, was in his family’s veins. The steady flow of water and the familiar sound of the cogs convinced Munnings
     that here was the hub of the village. Here he could paint! He must have it! And within a week, with Gilbert Evans’s practical
     help, it was more or less habitable. Then the parties began. By day Munnings worked outdoors till he dropped, and by nighthe roistered. His horses, Grey Tick and Merrilegs, were stabled beneath his studio. When he slept (if he slept) it was upstairs,
     on a mattress in his studio, or below in the hay with the horses, while Taffy, his terrier, travelled hopefully (sometimes
     fearfully) between his two beds.
    During the long hours of roistering his studio was blue with smoke, blue with everything, some of it belching back down the
     chimney, which badly needed a good sweeping, but mostly from a variety of pipes and cigarettes. It was crammed tight with
     young people (including some of the faces seen by Laura in the lane) and anyone else A.J. had just bumped into. And they all
     brought candles, musical instruments, cakes, bottles and bits and pieces to make his cramped place more comfortable – cushions,
     for example, went down well.
    ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he shouted at all and sundry, ‘in you come, whoever you are!’
    His weekly parties started when the sun went down and only ended, according to the watching sabbatarians, when the sin ended.
     Everyone talked. Everyone drank. Most sang. Most talked art. They laughed, danced, swallowed punch, ate sausages and saw who
     could wear the most colourful clothes and use the most colourful language – seeing who could, in Laura’s phrase, ‘Be the wildest
     of the wild’ and ‘Something tells me,’ Munnings added, ‘it won’t be your husband Harold.’ Usually who-was-the-wildest-of-the-wild
     boiled down to a straight contest between A.J. Munnings and Laura Knight, although they were amongst the oldest.
    The second Munnings party Gilbert attended, and the one which changed their lives, came at the end of an awful day. From dawn
     to dusk it had rained non-stop, as only Cornwall can, and to make matters worse Gilbert’s bicycle had a bad puncture at St
     Buryan, so he had to push thething two miles in a steady downpour, encouraged only by the occasional lulls and respites. With the sky a regatta of fast
     storm clouds, only for those respites to be followed by sustained horizontal sheets of grey rain coming in from the Atlantic
     – well, such days left Gilbert looking forward more than ever to a party and the smack of drink.
    By the time he turned down past the mill, just before nine, his socks wet, and the mill race a torrent, it was gusting a gale.
     So loud, however, was the din within the smoky blue studio that no one noticed the windows rattling, the downpipe gurgling,
     the roof groaning and Colonel Paynter’s responsible land agent standing there dripping on the edge of the circle of light.
    Gilbert watched.
    He had never seen a party like it.
    He watched A.J. Munnings, this much talked-about life-force, rapidly moving around the room, loving it all, the world of laughter
     he had created, the bustle and the storm within so great the storm without passed by.
    Gilbert watched.
    Had he ever, at school or in the army, in Wales or in the Boer War, ever met a man like this? Had he ever heard a man who
     spoke such sentences?
    No.
    Suddenly seeing Gilbert Evans dripping at the door, Munnings threw his arms triumphantly in the air in celebration, pushed
     his way over, shouting his helpful friend’s name at the top of his voice:
    ‘Ev!’
    ‘Hullo, A.J., quite a night.’
    ‘Come here, man, come here, you look drowned.’
    ‘I’m all right, really, I’ll dry out in a—’
    ‘Come and meet Everyone. Every-one,’ he bawled,‘meet Captain Evans, soldier and gentleman. Ev, meet Every-one.’
    ‘Yes, thank you, A.J., but I do—’
    ‘The chimney needs sweeping! It needs sweeping badly.’
    ‘I know, I