The Shell Seekers

  Even sickness brought its own compensations. Ever since that small hiccup of a month ago, which the stupid doctors insisted on calling a heart attack, she had become, for the first time in her life, aware of her own mortality. This was not frightening, for she had never been afraid of death, but it had honed her perceptions, and reminded her sharply of what the Church calls the sins of omission. She was not a religious woman, and she did not brood on her sins, which had probably, from the Church’s point of view, been legion, but she did start counting up the things that she had never done. Along with fairly impractical fantasies like trekking the mountains of Bhutan, or crossing the Syrian desert to visit the ruins of Palmyra, which she accepted now that she would never do, was the yearning desire, almost a compulsion, to go back to Porthkerris.

  Forty years was too long. That long ago, at the end of the war, she had got into the train with Nancy, said goodbye to her father, and left for London. The following year the old man had died, and she had left Nancy in the care of her mother-in-law to travel to Cornwall for his funeral. After the funeral, she and Doris had spent a couple of days clearing Carn Cottage of his possessions, and then she had had to return to London and the pressing responsibilities of being a wife and mother. Since then she had never been back. She had meant to. I’ll take the children for holidays, she had told herself. Take them to play on the beaches where I played, to climb the moors and look for wildflowers. But it had never happened. Why had she not gone? What had happened to the years, speeding away as they had, like swiftly flowing water pouring under a bridge? Opportunities had come and gone, but she had never grasped them, mostly because there was no time, or no money to pay for the train fares; she was too busy running the big house, coping with the lodgers, bringing up the children, coping with Ambrose.

  For years she had kept Carn Cottage, refusing to sell the house, refusing to admit to herself that she would never go back. For years, through an agent, it had been let to a variety of tenants, and all this time she’d told herself that one day, sometime, she would return. She would take the children and show them the square white house on the hill with its secret high-hedged garden and the view of the bay and the lighthouse.

  This went on until finally, at a time when she found herself at her lowest ebb, she heard from the agent that an elderly couple had been to see the house, and wished to buy it for their retirement. They were, as well as elderly, enormously wealthy. Penelope, struggling to keep her head above water, with three children to educate and a feckless husband to support, found herself with no alternative but to accept their massive offer, and Carn Cottage, finally, was sold.

  After that, she didn’t think any more about going back to Cornwall. When she sold Oakley Street, she made a few noises about going to live there, fancying herself in a granite cottage with a palm tree in the garden, but Nancy had overridden this suggestion, and perhaps, after all, it was just as well. Besides, to give Nancy her due, as soon as Penelope had set eyes on Podmore’s Thatch, she knew that she didn’t want to live anywhere else.

  But still … it would be nice, just once, before she finally turned up her toes and died … to go back to Porthkerris again. She could stay with Doris. Perhaps Olivia would come with her.

  * * *

  Olivia turned the Alphasud in through the open gates, drove across the scrunching gravel, past the sagging wooden shed which did duty as garage and tool-store, and drew up at the back of Podmore’s Thatch. The half-glassed front door led into a tiled porch. Here hung coats and mackintoshes; a selection of hats decorated the pointed antlers of a moth-eaten stag’s head, and a blue-and-white china umbrella-stand sprouted parasols, walking-sticks, and an old golf-club or two. From the porch, she stepped straight into the kitchen, which simmered with warmth and smelt, mouth-wateringly, of roasting beef.

  “Mumma?”

  There was no reply. Olivia crossed the kitchen and went out into the conservatory, and at once spied Penelope at the far end of the lawn, standing as though in a trance, with an empty washing basket balanced on one hip and the fresh breeze blowing her hair into disorder.

  She opened the garden door and stepped out into the chill, bright sunshine.

  “Hello!”

  Penelope started slightly, saw her daughter, and came at once across the grass to greet her.

  “Darling.”

  Olivia had not seen her since she had been ill, and now searched intently for some sign of change, fearful of finding it. But apart from the fact that her mother seemed a little thinner, she appeared to be in her normal good health, with colour in her cheeks and the usual youthful, long-legged spring in her step. She wished that she did not have to wipe the happiness from her mother’s face by telling her that Cosmo was dead. It occurred to her then that people went on living until somebody told you they were dead. Perhaps it was a pity that anybody ever told anybody anything.

  “Olivia, how lovely to see you.”

  “What are you doing, standing there with an empty washing basket?”

  “Just that. Standing and staring. What a heavenly day. Did you have a good drive?” She glanced over Olivia’s shoulder. “Where’s your friend?”

  “He stopped off at the pub to buy you a present.”

  “He didn’t need to do that.”

  She stepped past Olivia and went inside, giving her shoes a cursory wipe on the mat. Olivia followed, and closed the door behind them. The conservatory was stone-floored, furnished with basket chairs and stools and a lot of faded cretonne cushions. It was as well very warm, leafy with greenery and pot plants, and heavy with the scent of freesias, which grew in abundance and were Penelope’s favourite flower.

  “He was being tactful.” She dropped her bag on the stripped-pine table. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  Penelope set the washing basket down beside Olivia’s bag and turned to face her daughter. Slowly, her smile faded; her beautiful dark eyes turned wary, but when she said, “Olivia, you are as white as a ghost,” her voice was firm and strong as always.

  Olivia took courage from this. She said, “I know. I only heard this morning. It’s sad news, I’m afraid. Cosmo’s dead.”

  “Cosmo. Cosmo Hamilton? Dead?”

  “Antonia called me from Ibiza.”

  “Cosmo,” she said again, her face filled with the utmost of grief and distress. “I can scarcely believe it … that dear man.” She did not weep, as Olivia had known she would not. She never cried. In all her life Olivia had never seen her mother cry. But the colour had drained from her cheeks, and instinctively, as though to still a racing heart, she laid a hand on her breast. “That dear, dear man. Oh, my darling, I am so sorry. You were so much to each other. Are you all right?”

  “Are you all right? I’ve been dreading telling you.”

  “Just shocked. So sudden.” Her hand went out to grope for a chair, found one. Slowly, she lowered herself into it. Olivia was alarmed. “Mumma?”

  “So silly. I feel a little odd.”

  “How about a brandy?”

  Penelope smiled faintly, closed her eyes. “What a brilliant idea.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “It’s in the—”

  “I know where it is.” She dropped her bag on the table, pushed forward a stool. “Put your feet up … just stay there … I won’t be a moment.”

  The brandy bottle lived in the sideboard in the dining room. She found it and carried it into the kitchen, took glasses from the cupboard, poured two large, medicinal tots. Her hand was shaking, and the bottle knocked against the glass. She spilt a little on the table-top, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except Mumma and her dicey heart. Don’t let her have another attack. Oh, dear God, don’t let her have another attack. She picked up the two glasses and carried them back to the conservatory.

  “Here.”

  She put the drink into her mother’s hand. In silence, they sipped. The neat brandy warmed and comforted. After a couple of mouthfuls, Penelope managed a faint smile.

&nb
sp; “Do you imagine it’s one of the frailties of old age when you need a drink as badly as that?”

  “Not at all. I needed one too.”

  “My poor darling.” She drank a little more. The colour was returning to her cheeks. “Now,” she said. “Tell me all over again.”

  Olivia did so. But there wasn’t very much to tell. When she fell silent, “You loved him, didn’t you,” Penelope said, and she was not asking a question, but stating a fact.

  “Yes, I did. In that year, he became part of me. He changed me, as no other person ever has.”

  “You should have married him.”

  “That’s what he wanted. But I couldn’t, Mumma. I couldn’t.”

  “I wish you had.”

  “Don’t wish that. I’m better as I am.”

  Penelope nodded. Understanding. Accepting. “But Antonia? What about her? That poor child. Was she there when it happened?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will become of her? Will she stay in Ibiza?”

  “No. She can’t. The house never belonged to Cosmo. She has nowhere to live. And her mother has remarried and lives in the North. And I don’t suppose there’s much money.”

  “But what will she do?”

  “She’s coming back to England. Next week. To London. She’s going to stay with me for a day or two. She says she’ll have to get a job.”

  “But she’s so young. What age is she now?”

  “Eighteen. Not a child any longer.”

  “She was such a dear child.”

  “Would you like to see her again?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Would you …” Olivia took another mouthful of the brandy. It burned in her throat, warmed her stomach, filled her with strength and courage. “Would you have her here to stay with you? To live with you for a couple of months?”

  “Why do you ask that?”

  “For a number of reasons. Because I think Antonia will need time to get herself pulled together and decide what she’s going to do with her life. And because I have Nancy on the back of my neck telling me that the doctors say you shouldn’t live alone after your heart attack.”

  It was said with no prevarication, the way she had always said things to her mother, honestly, with no devious beatings about the bush. It was one of the characteristics that had rendered their relationship so satisfactory, and one of the reasons why, even in the most strained of circumstances, they never quarrelled.

  “The doctors are talking rubbish,” Penelope told her robustly. The brandy had warmed her, too.

  “I think they are, but Nancy doesn’t, and until you do have someone here with you, then she’s never going to be off the telephone. So you see, if you agreed to having Antonia to stay, you’d be doing me a good turn too. And you’d like it. Wouldn’t you? That month in Ibiza, you never stopped giggling together. She’d be company for you, and you’d be able to help her through a bad time.”

  But still Penelope was doubtful.

  “Won’t it be dreadfully dull for her? I don’t lead a very exciting life, and at eighteen she may have turned into a sophisticated young lady.”

  “She didn’t sound sophisticated. She sounded just the way she used to. And if she craves bright lights and discos and chaps, we can always introduce her to Noel.”

  Heaven forbid. But Penelope did not say this.

  “When would she come?”

  “She plans to arrive in London on Tuesday. I could bring her down next weekend.”

  Anxiously she watched her mother, willing her to agree to the plan. Penelope, however, had fallen silent and appeared to be thinking of something quite different, for an expression of amusement came over her face, and her eyes were suddenly filled with laughter.

  “What’s the joke?”

  “I suddenly remembered that beach where Antonia learned to windsurf. And all those bodies lying around, brown as kippered herrings, and elderly ladies with their sagging, leathery breasts. What a sight! Do you remember how we laughed?”

  “I’ll never forget.”

  “What a happy time that was.”

  “Yes. The best. Can she come?”

  “Come? If she wants to, of course she can come. For as long as she likes. It will be good for me. It will make me young again.”

  So, by the time Hank arrived, the crisis was over, Olivia’s suggestion agreed upon, and grief and shock and sadness—for the moment—put aside. Life went on, and stimulated and comforted both by the brandy and her mother’s company, Olivia felt once more able to cope. When the doorbell rang, she sprang to her feet and went through the kitchen to let Hank in. He brought with him a brown paper carrier bag, which, on being introduced to Penelope, he duly handed over. She set it on the table, and being one of those people to whom it is really worthwhile giving presents, instantly opened it. The two bottles were unwrapped from their tissue paper, and her delight was gratifying.

  “Château Latour, Gran Cru! You kind man. Don’t tell me you persuaded Mr. Hodgkins at the Sudeley Arms to part with these?”

  “Like Olivia told me, as soon as he knew who they were for, he couldn’t wait to produce them.”

  “I never knew he kept such a thing in his cellar. Wonders will never cease. Thank you very much indeed. We’d drink them for lunch; only I’ve already opened some wine.…”

  “You keep them for a celebration,” he told her.

  “I’ll do that.” She put them on the dresser, and Hank took off his coat. Olivia hung it with the other ratty ones in the porch, and then they all trooped through to the living room.

  This was not large, and it was a constant wonder to Olivia how many of Penelope’s most precious and personal possessions she had managed to cram into it. Favourite old sofas and chairs, loose-covered in mattress ticking, draped in bright Indian bedcovers, and scattered with tapestry cushions. Her bureau, open as always, was stuffed with old bills and letters. Her sewing table, her lamps, her priceless rugs, laid on top of the hair-cord carpet. Books and pictures were everywhere, patterned china ewers filled with dried flowers. Photographs, ornaments, small items of silver covered every horizontal surface, and as well, strewn about were magazines, newspapers, seed catalogues, and a bundle of unfinished knitting. All the enthusiasms of her busy life were encompassed within its four walls, but, as always happened when a person first saw it, Hank’s attention was immediately caught by the picture that hung over the immense open fireplace.

  It measured perhaps five feet by three and dominated the room. The Shell Seekers. Olivia knew that she would never tire of the painting, even if she lived with it for most of her life. Its impact hit you like a gust of cold, salty air. The windy sky, racing with clouds; the sea, scudding with white-caps, breaking waves hissing up onto the shore. The subtle pinks and greys of the sand; shallow pools left by the ebbing tide and shimmering with translucent reflected sunlight. And the figures of the three children, grouped to the side of the picture; two girls with straw hats and dresses bundled up, and a boy. All brown-limbed, barefoot, and intent on the contents of a small scarlet bucket.

  “Hey.” He seemed, for once, lost for words. “What a great picture.”

  “Isn’t it.” Penelope beamed at him, with her usual proud delight. “My most precious possession.”

  “For God’s sake…” He searched for the signature. “Who’s it by?”

  “My father. Lawrence Stern.”

  “Your father was Lawrence Stern? Olivia, you never told me that.”

  “I left it for my mother to tell you. She’s far more knowledgeable than I am.”

  “I thought he was … you know … a pre-Raphaelite.”

  Penelope nodded. “Yes, he was.”

  “This is more like the work of an Impressionist.”

  “I know. It’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  “When was it done?”

  “About nineteen twenty-seven. He had a studio on the North Beach at Porthkerris, and he painted that from his studio window. It’s called The
Shell Seekers, and I am the little girl on the left.”

  “But why is his style so different?”

  Penelope shrugged. “A number of reasons. Any painter has to move, to change. Otherwise he wouldn’t be worth his salt. Also, by then, he had started to get arthritis in his hands, and he wasn’t physically able to do that very fine, detailed, meticulous work any longer.”

  “What age was he then?”

  “In nineteen twenty-seven? I suppose about sixty-two. He was a very old father. He didn’t marry until he was fifty-five.”

  “Have you any other of his paintings?” He glanced around him, at walls crammed with pictures as though for an exhibition.

  But, “Not in here,” Penelope told him. “Most of these were done by his colleagues. There is a pair of unfinished panels, but they’re up on the landing. They were the very last work he did, and by then his arthritis was so bad he could scarcely hold the brush. Which was why he never finished them.”

  “Arthritis? How cruel.”

  “Yes. It was very sad. But he was enormously good about it, very philosophical. He used to say, “I’ve had a good run for my money,” and left it at that. But it must have been dreadfully frustrating for him. Long after he had stopped painting, he still kept his studio, and when he was depressed or had what he called a Black Dog on his shoulder, he used to take himself off and go back to the studio and just sit there in the window, looking at the beach and the sea.”

  “Do you remember him?” Hank asked Olivia.

  She shook her head. “No. I was born after he died. But my sister Nancy was born in his house in Porthkerris.”

  “Do you still have the house down there?”

  “No,” Penelope told him sadly. “Finally, it had to be sold.”

  “Do you ever go back?”

  “I haven’t been for forty years. But, oddly enough, just this morning, I was thinking that I really must go and see it all again.” She looked at Olivia. “Why don’t you come with me? Just for a week. We could stay with Doris.”

  “Oh…” Taken unawares, Olivia hesitated. “I … I don’t know…”