The Shell Seekers

  “Will you marry him?”

  “If he asks me.”

  Sophie thought about this. Then she said, “I know you must feel very strongly about this young man, otherwise you would not be carrying his child. I know you well enough to know that. But you mustn’t marry him just because of the baby.”

  “You married Papa when I was on the way.”

  “But I loved him. I loved him always. I couldn’t imagine an existence without him. Whether he had married me or not, I would never have left him.”

  “If I do marry Ambrose, will you come to my wedding?”

  “Nothing would keep us away.”

  “I’d want you to be there. And then, afterwards … when he finishes at Whale Island, he’ll be sent to sea. Can I come home and live with you and Papa? Have the baby at Carn Cottage?”

  “What a question to ask! What else would you do?”

  “I suppose I could become a professional fallen woman, but I’d much rather not.”

  “You’d be useless at it, anyway.”

  Penelope was filled with grateful love. “I knew you’d be like this. How awful it would be to have a mother like other people’s mothers.”

  “Perhaps if I was, I should be a better person. But I am not good. I am selfish. I think about nobody but myself. This terrible war has started and things are going to get very bad before it is all over. Sons will be killed, and daughters too, and fathers and brothers, and all I can feel is thankful because you are coming home. I’ve missed you so much. But now we can be together again. How ever bad things get, at least we’ll be together.”

  * * *

  Ambrose, with a stiff drink in his hand, telephoned his mother.

  “Coombe Hotel.” The voice was feminine and intensely genteel.

  “Is Mrs. Keeling there?”

  “If you just wait a moment, I’ll go and look for her. I believe she’s in the lounge.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who shall I say is calling?”

  “Her son. Sub Lieutenant Keeling.”

  “Thenk you.”

  He waited.

  “Hello?”

  “Mummy.”

  “Darling boy. How lovely to hear you. Where are you calling from?”

  “Whaley. Mummy. Look. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “Good news, I hope.”

  “Yes. Splendid news.” He cleared his throat. “I’m engaged to be married.”

  Total silence.

  “Mummy?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Did you say you were going to be married?”

  “Yes. The first Saturday in May. At the Chelsea Registry Office. Can you come?”

  It sounded as though he were inviting her to a little party.

  “But … when?… who?… Oh dear, you have flustered me.”

  “Don’t get flustered. She’s called Penelope Stern. You’ll like her,” he added without much hope.

  “But … when did all this happen?”

  “It’s just happened. That’s why I’m ringing. To let you know at once.”

  “But … who is she?”

  “She’s a Wren.” He tried to think of something to tell his mother that would reassure her. “Her father’s an artist. In Cornwall.” Silence again. “They’ve got a house in Oakley Street.” He thought of mentioning the 4½-litre Bentley, but his mother had never been much of a one for cars.

  “Darling. I’m sorry to sound so unenthusiastic, but you are very young … your career…”

  “There’s a war on, Mummy.…”

  “I do know. I of all people should know that.”

  “You’ll come to our wedding?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course … I’ll come up to town for the weekend. I’ll stay at The Basil Street.”

  “That’s great. You can meet her then.”

  “Oh, Ambrose…”

  She sounded quite tearful.

  “Sorry about taking you unawares. But don’t worry.” Pip-pip-pip went the phone. “You’ll love her,” he repeated, and hastily rang off before she had time to implore him to put more money in the box.

  * * *

  Left with the buzzing receiver in her hand, Dolly Keeling slowly replaced it on the hook.

  From behind her little desk under the stairs, where she had been pretending to add an account, but was in fact listening in to every word, Mrs. Musspratt looked up and smiled inquiringly, her head cocked to one side like a beady-eyed bird.

  “Good news, I hope, Mrs. Keeling.”

  Dolly pulled herself together, gave a little toss of her head, assumed an expression of cheerful enthusiasm.

  “So exciting. My son is to be married.”

  “Oh, splendid. How romantic. These brave young people. When?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When is the happy event to take place?”

  “In two weeks. The first Saturday in May. In London.”

  “And who is the lucky girl?”

  She was becoming a little too inquisitive. Forgetting herself, Dolly put the woman in her place. “I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting her,” she said with dignity. “Thank you for coming to find me, Mrs. Musspratt.” And with that she left the woman to her sums and returned to the resident’s lounge.

  The Coombe Hotel had years before been a private house, and the lounge had once been its drawing room. It had a high white marble mantelpiece enclosing a tiny grate, and a number of bulging sofas and armchairs upholstered in white linen smothered with pink roses. A few water-colours, hung too high, were dotted about the walls, and there was a bow-window looking out onto the garden. The garden had gone to seed since the outbreak of war. Mr. Musspratt did what he could with the grass cutter, but the gardener had gone to war and the borders were full of weeds.

  There were eight permanant residents living in the hotel, but four of them had closed ranks and set themselves up as the élite, the hard core of the little community. Dolly was one of them. The others were Colonel and Mrs. Fawcett Smythe and Lady Beamish. They played bridge together in the evenings, and had laid claim to the best chairs, around the fire, in the lounge, and the best tables, by the window, in the dining room. The others had to make do with chilly corners where the light was scarcely sufficient to read, and the tables in the way of the pantry door. But they were so sad and downtrodden anyway that nobody thought to pity them. Colonel and Mrs. Fawcett Smythe had moved to Devon from Kent. They were both in their seventies. The Colonel had spent most of his life in the Army, and so was very good at telling everybody what that feller Hitler was going to do next, and putting his own interpretation on snippets of news that appeared in the daily papers relating to secret weapons and the movement of warships. He was a small, nut-brown man with a bristling moustache, but he made up for his lack of inches by a barking, parade-ground manner and a military bearing. His wife was fluffy-haired and quite colourless. She knitted a lot, said “Yes dear,” and agreed with everything her husband said, which was just as well for everybody, because Colonel Fawcett Smythe, contradicted, went red in the face and looked as though he were about to have a seizure.

  Lady Beamish was even better. Of all of them, she was the only one unafraid of bombs or tanks or anything that the Nazis might unleash upon her. She was over eighty, tall and stout, with grey hair screwed into a knot at the back of her head and a pair of relentlessly cold grey eyes. She was as well very lame (the result, she had told an impressed audience, of a hunting accident) and had to walk with a hefty stick. When she was not actually on the move, she propped this article by the side of her chair, where it invariably got in the way of passers-by, either tripping them up or painfully clouting them across the shins. She had come reluctantly to the Coombe Hotel to sit out the war, but her home in Hampshire had been requisitioned by the Army, and her hard-pressed family had finally bullied and persuaded her to retire to Devon. “Put out to grass,” she grumbled constantly, “like
some old war-horse.”

  Lady Beamish’s husband had been a senior official in the Indian Civil Service, and she had lived much of her life in that great subcontinent, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, which she always referred to as “Inja.” She must, Dolly often thought, have been a tower of strength to her spouse, queening it at garden parties, and, in times of trouble, coming up trumps. It was not hard to imagine her, armed only with sola topi and silken sunshade, quelling a riotous mob of natives with those steely eyes, or, should the rioters decline to be quelled, rallying the ladies and making them tear up their petticoats for bandages.

  They were waiting for Dolly where she had left them, gathered around the tiny fire. Mrs. Fawcett Smythe with her knitting, Lady Beamish slapping Patience cards onto her portable table, the Colonel standing with his back to the flames, warming his bottom, and bending and stretching his rheumatic knees like a stage policeman.

  “Well.” Dolly sat down in her chair.

  “What was all that about?” Lady Beamish asked, putting a black knave on a red queen.

  “That was Ambrose. He’s going to be married.”

  This announcement caught the Colonel unawares, with his legs bent. It seemed to take some concentration to get them straight again.

  “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” he said.

  “Oh, how exciting,” quavered Mrs. Fawcett Smythe.

  “Who’s the girl?” asked Lady Beamish.

  “She’s … she’s an artist’s daughter.”

  Lady Beamish turned down the corners of her mouth.

  “An artist’s daughter?” Her voice was deep with disapproval.

  “I’m sure he’s very famous,” said Mrs. Fawcett Smythe consolingly.

  “What’s she called?”

  “Er … Penelope Stern.”

  “Penelope Stein?” The Colonel’s hearing was not always very reliable.

  “Oh, heavens, no.” They were all very sorry for the poor Jews, of course, but it was unimaginable that one’s son should marry one. “Stern.”

  “I’ve never heard of an artist called Stern,” said the Colonel, as though Dolly were pulling a fast one on him.

  “And they have a house in Oakley Street. And Ambrose says I will love her.”

  “When are they getting married?”

  “The beginning of May.”

  “Are you going?”

  “Of course I must be there. I shall have to ring The Basil Street, book a room. Perhaps I should go a little earlier, go round the shops, find something to wear.”

  “Is it going to be a very large affair?” asked Mrs. Fawcett Smythe.

  “No. The Chelsea Registry Office.”

  “Oh dear.”

  Dolly felt moved to assert herself, take up cudgels on behalf of her son. She could not abide the thought of any of them becoming sorry for her. “Well, wartime, you know, and with Ambrose going to sea at any moment … perhaps it’s the most practical … though, I must say, I had always had dreams of a really pretty wedding in a church with an arch of swords. But there it is.” She shrugged bravely. “C’est la guerre.”

  Lady Beamish went on with her Patience. “Where’d he meet her?”

  “He didn’t say. But she’s a Wren.”

  “Well, that’s something anyway,” Lady Beamish remarked. She sent Dolly a sharp, meaningful glance as she said this, which Dolly was careful not to intercept. Lady Beamish knew that Dolly was only forty-four. Dolly had told her at some length of her own frailties; the horrid headaches (she called them migraines) that were apt to strike her low at the most opportune moments; and there was her back trouble, which could be brought on by any simple domestic task such as bed-making or a session at the ironing board. Working stirrup-pumps or driving ambulances was simply out of the question. But still Lady Beamish remained unsympathetic, and from time to time made unkind remarks about Bomb-Dodgers and people who Didn’t Pull Their Weight. Now, “If Ambrose has chosen her, she’ll be a darling,” she told them all firmly. “And,” she added, “I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

  It wasn’t true. Upstairs in her bedroom, alone and unobserved, she could be herself, let all pretences drop. Awash with self-pity and loneliness, pierced by the jealousy of spurned love, she turned for comfort to her treasure box, her wardrobe, stuffed with feminine, expensive clothes. Inspected this little outfit, and then that. The soft chiffons and fine wools slid past beneath her hands. She took down a filmy dress and went to the long mirror, holding it up in front of her. One of her favourites. She had always felt so pretty in it. So pretty. In the looking-glass, she met her own eyes. They filled with tears. Ambrose. Loving a woman other than herself. Marrying her. She dropped the dress on the padded stool, and threw herself upon the bed and wept.

  * * *

  Summer had come. London was sweet with blossom and lilac. Sunlight lay, a warm benediction, on pavement and roof-top, reflected from the silvery curves of high-floating barrage balloons. It was May; a Friday; noon. Dolly Keeling, ensconsed in The Basil Street Hotel, sat on the sofa by the open window of the upstairs lounge and waited for the arrival of her son and his fiancée.

  When he came, running up the stairs two at a time, carrying his hat, looking marvellously handsome in his uniform, she was filled with delight, not simply at the sight of him, but, as well, because he appeared to be on his own. Perhaps he had come to tell her that he had decided to call the whole thing off, and that he wasn’t going to be married after all. Eagerly, she got to her feet and went to greet him.

  “Hello, Mummy…” He stooped to kiss her. His height was one of her pleasures, because it made her feel vulnerable and helpless.

  “My darling … where’s Penelope? I thought you were coming together.”

  “We did. Drove up from Pompey this morning. But she wanted to get out of uniform, so I dropped her at Oakley Street and came on here. She won’t be long.”

  The tiny hope died, almost at birth, but still, she could have Ambrose to herself for a little time more. And it was easier to talk, just the two of them.

  “Well, we’ll just have to wait for her. Come along and sit down and you can tell me everything that’s going to happen.” She caught the eye of the waiter, ordered a sherry for herself and a pink gin for Ambrose. “Oakley Street. Are her parents there?”

  “No. That’s the bad news. Her father’s got bronchitis. She only heard last night. They’re not going to be able to make the wedding.”

  “But surely her mother could come?”

  “She says she has to stay in Cornwall and look after the old boy. And he is really old. Seventy-five. I suppose they don’t want to take any risks.”

  “But it does seem a shame … only little me at the wedding.”

  “Penelope’s got an aunt who lives in Putney. And some friends called Clifford. They’re going to come. That’s enough.”

  Their drinks arrived, and were put down on Dolly’s account. They raised their glasses. Ambrose said, “I looks towards you,” and Dolly smiled complacently, certain that the other occupants of the hotel lounge were watching them, their eyes caught by the handsome young Naval Officer and the pretty woman who looked far too young to be his mother.

  “And your own plans?”

  He told her. He had finally passed his Gunnery exams, had a week coming up at Divisional School, and would then be sent to sea.

  “But your honeymoon?”

  “No honeymoon. Married tomorrow, a night at Oakley Street, and then back on Sunday to Portsmouth.

  “And Penelope?”

  “I’m putting her on the train for Porthkerris on Sunday morning.”

  “Porthkerris? Is she not coming back to Portsmouth with you?”

  “No. Actually.” Biting his thumb-nail, he gazed from the window as though something riveting were about to happen in the street below. Which it wasn’t. “She’s got a bit of leave.”

  “Oh dear. What a little time you’ll have together.”

  “Can’t be helped.”

&nbsp
; “No, I suppose not.”

  She turned to set down her sherry glass and saw the girl reach the top of the stairs, standing there, hesitating, looking around her, looking for somebody. A very tall girl, with long dark hair caught back from her forehead—a schoolgirl’s hair, plain and undressed. Her face, with its creamy complexion and deep-set dark eyes, was remarkable for its sheer unadornment; the gleam of unpowdered skin, the pale mouth, the dark brows, natural and unplucked and strongly shaped. She wore, on that hot day, clothes more suitable for a country holiday than a formal luncheon in a London hotel. A dark-red cotton dress with white spots and a white belt around its slender waist. White sandals on her feet, and … Dolly had to take a second look, just to be sure … yes, bare legs. Who on earth could she be? And why was she looking this way? And coming towards them? And smiling…?

  Oh, dear God.

  Ambrose was getting to his feet. “Mummy,” he was saying, “this is Penelope.”

  “Hello,” said Penelope.

  Dolly just managed not to gape. She could feel her jaw dropping, but jerked it back into place and transformed the grimace into a brilliant smile. Bare legs. No gloves. No handbag. No hat Bare legs. She hoped that the head waiter would allow them into the restaurant.

  “My dear.”

  They shook hands. Ambrose busied himself drawing up another chair, and signalling the waiter. Penelope sat in the full light of the window and faced Dolly with a gaze disconcerting in its unblinking directness. She is eyeing me, Dolly told herself, and knew the stirrings of resentment. She had no right to eye her future mother-in-law, and start up this tiresome fluttering of her heart. Dolly had expected youth, shyness, diffidence, even. Certainly not this.

  “So nice to meet you … and you had a good drive up from Portsmouth. Yes, Ambrose has been telling me.…”

  “Penelope, what do you want to drink?”

  “An orange or something. With ice, if there is any.”

  “Not a sherry? Nor a glass of wine?” Dolly tried tempting her, smiling still to cover her discomfiture.

  “No. I’m hot and thirsty. Just orange.”

  “Well, I’ve ordered a bottle of wine for luncheon. We can have our little toast then.”

  “Thank you.”