AND ANOTHER THING
Sunshine in February reminds us that nature works beneficent miracles
PAUL JOHNSON
There is no greater blessing of God than sunshine in February. The rains come too, to be sure — my mother used to call the month 'February Fulldyke' and fuss about damp and wet shoes — and we have had our share of torrents recently. But there have been blissful mornings of radiant, pale-blue skies and golden benison from the heavens. Out- side 'it is a nipping and an eager air', as Hor- atio put it. But inside my library I sit in my old armchair by the great windows which dominate the south side of the room, and am warm and snug. I feel the sunlight on my face, a gentle, affectionate caress from an unseen loving spirit, an Attic god who has brought the breath of the Aegean to shiver- ing England. I do not envy those wealthy fol- lowers of foreign suns, who feverishly search for escape from our rigours and go to places like Phuket and Barbados at this time of Year. I prefer to take my chance at home, and enjoy the uncovenanted delight of the genial beams when they come, precious, transient, hesitant, graciously bestowed, instantly withdrawn, like a virgin's kisses.
To the north, the sunlight falls on stark, burnt-umber branches, reaching imploring- ly into the glowing sky for the first true warmth of spring, but without the minutest new growth on their naked, chilly limbs. All is quiet in our little backwater street. Fash- ionable Notting Hill may rage nearby, but here you never hear the click of a model's heels or the throb of a Lamborghini. Even the arrival of the dustcart is an event. The climax of the morning is the noon eruption of a nursery-school crocodile, who slowly meander up the street, holding minutely gloved hands, arctic-muffled and polar- woollened creatures of diminutive size and bursting energies, shepherded by anxious adults. The sunlight brings out the warm radiance of their brightly coloured coats and scarves and leggings, turning them into a frieze of courtly putti by Veronese. One breaks ranks to catch a sunbeam, whose rays light up her laughing milk-teeth. They pass, and sunny silence descends again. To the south, in the garden, all is lumi- nous. The sunlight picks out the dewy dia- monds on the lawn, makes the leaves of ever- green shrubs and bushes glitter, and turns to Purple-gold branches which were the dullest of dust-brown in the gloom of yesterday. The garden is like the window of a jeweller's shop Which has just been brought to scintillating life by switching on the lights. Peering into the warm effulgence of it all, I can detect almost infinitesimal buds beginning to emerge on the faithful pear tree, and in the almonds below my study window. Under the warming sun I can sense the soil respond and invisible roots reach out, while tense tendrils thrust their points towards the surface. The whole of nature is stirring. At the edge of the lawn, by my studio, still with a trace of dawn frost on its wooden roof tiles, stands the glory of our February garden. It is a winter-flowering prunus tree, given to us as a mere ungainly plant by a prescient friend when we first moved here 15 years ago. It found our soil congenial and is now nearly 20 ft high. It is an annual mir- acle. It began to flower in its first full sea- son, pale-pink leaves with an almost imper- ceptible touch of marine in them, and with a breathless delicacy. Each year it strengthens and excels itself, growing higher, more plen- tiful and munificent. It begins to flower early in December and does not cast its last petals until late in March. In February it is at its richest. Individually examined, its flowers appear the epitome of frail fragility. But collectively they outface and survive the harshest winds, frost, ice and snow, pitiless rain — brutal hail, even — so that for more than three months each year this precious and bountiful tree presents to our eyes, hungry for light and colour, a living, glowing image of Maytime at its most extravagant. It is the first thing I see in the morning, when I open my bedroom window and glance down into the garden. It is the last thing I see in the twilight, as I draw the library curtains — a shadowy ball of pale-pink fire, glowing amid the shadows. These little triumphs of nature against the odds, these horticultural curiosities which defy the rules of the sea- sons, small-scale, domesticated, friendly and personal, impress me more, nowadays, than all the grandeurs of Niagara, or the Yosemite or the Karakoram. They reach out to our hearts, with their soft, coolly insistent, pink-flowering fingers. Sunshine in February, I like to think, is a direct intervention of providence, a recom- pense for the cruelties of January, torturing winds, rain and mud oozing stealthily out of the pavements, Loch Ness gutter-puddles drenching you to the knees as a heedless double-decker sweeps by, the racking, coughing, clutching reek of London wintry air, the endless dim days of dirty cotton-wool skies edged with murky indigo. God created these peerless, golden mornings to show He is not an angry old man, fulminating, but an even-handed arbiter of our fortune, sending unseasonable but welcome messages, bid- ding us keep up our flagging spirits, to hope for better, warmer days to come. How one would like to gather and bottle up these February sunbeams, put them in a weather- preserve cupboard and then open them up for a comforting feast when winter returns in March and April. But it cannot be. There is a poem of Louis MacNeice reminding us that unseasonable sun is not to be trapped:
The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its net of gold.
Even as I write, a cloud is coming up, covering the sun, which is low enough on the horizon anyway, alas! February sun- shine is not to be counted on. As that 18th- century clergyman/poet John Dyer, put it, 'Transient is the smile of fate . . . a sun- beam in a winter's day'.
There are those whose distrust of this tran- sience, this false promise is so great that they would gladly forgo winter sunshine, prefer- ring the truthful rigours to the deceptive radiance. They prefer the seasons to be strictly conformist, deadly earnest, absolutely dependable. And there are those who associ- ate sun with beaches and youth, and strong pleasures, robustly enjoyed but uneasy-mak- ing as we age. John Betjeman wrote a bitter little poem, 'Sun and Fun', complaining, But I'm dying now and done for, What on earth was all the fun for?
For God's sake keep that sunlight out of sight.
But I welcome the sun when it chooses to come to me in my home. I do not lie in it. I will not soak it up. I have never chased it and never will. I recognise the sun for what it is: Janus-faced, metallic in its intensity, a fiery fiend which burns and destroys, which horrifies and terrorises, as well as nurtures and nourishes. The sun is an evil god. Who are more desolate than its worshippers, a well-tanned, leathery old couple, rich, idle, tropically sunned throughout a lifetime of saponaceous oiling of their skins? But if the sun pays an unexpected, gentlemanly visit in mid-winter, unasked, mild and gratuitous, a surprise gift from the Almighty, I welcome him with eager heart and open arms. I find myself smiling, as I snuggle into the beams and rejoice at the goodness of life.
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