“ ‘A pocketful of rye,’ ” he sang quietly as he painted, “ ‘four and twenty blackbirds diving in a pie.’ ” The tree appeared to explode from the man’s head, as if a vigorous dream could no longer be contained and must now be permitted to enter the world. Around him, everything planted demanded to be harvested. Kenneth was remembering something that had happened to him about ten years before, in the days when he had been a student and had been travelling in the vague, unfocused manner that had interested him at the time. It all seemed so long ago and yet now he found that he was placing that younger self, alert and curious, here and there in the painting. During the months he had stayed in London he had discovered the work of J.M.W. Turner and, in particular, that artist’s smaller sketches and watercolours. He had read everything he could find about the painter and had spent time in the Tate Gallery’s archives, falling into the intimate drawings and practical lists contained in the pocket-sized travel notebooks with such concentration that years later he would be able to remember Turner’s laundry items and the price of the hotels where the artist had stayed.
