The Shell Seekers

“A lager would be delicious.” She leaned against the table, her legs endless in their faded jeans. When Nancy’s daughter, Melanie, wore jeans, she looked appalling in them, because her bottom was so big. But jeans on Antonia looked fantastic. Nancy decided that life was really very unfair. She wondered if she should put Melanie on a diet, and at once put the idea out of her head, because Melanie automatically always did the very opposite of anything that her mother suggested.

  “How about you, Danus?”

  The tall young man shook his head. “Something soft would be great. A juice. Glass of water would do.”

  Noel bucked slightly, but Danus was adamant, so he shrugged and disappeared indoors. Nancy turned to Danus.

  “Don’t you drink at all?”

  “Not alcohol.” He was very good-looking. Well-spoken. A gentleman. Extraordinary. What on earth was he doing, being her mother’s gardener?

  “Have you never?”

  “Not really.” He sounded quite untroubled about it all.

  “Perhaps,” Nancy pursued the subject, because it was so extraordinary to meet a man who would not even down a half-pint of lager, “you don’t like the taste?”

  He seemed to be considering this, then said, “Yes, perhaps that is why.” His face was very serious, but even so Nancy could not be sure whether or not he was laughing at her.

  The tender lamb, the roast potatoes, the peas and the broccoli had been gratefully consumed, the wineglasses refilled, and the puddings served. With everybody relaxed and cheerful once more, the conversation turned to how they were all to spend the rest of the day.

  “I,” Noel announced, pouring cream from a pink-and-white pitcher over his strawberry shortcake, “am calling it a day, drawing stumps, and pulling out. I’ll drive back to London, and that way, with a bit of luck, I’ll miss the worst of the weekend traffic.”

  “Yes, I think you should,” his mother agreed. “You’ve done quite enough. You must be exhausted.”

  “What else is there to be done?” Nancy wanted to know.

  “The last of the clobber to be carted and burnt and the floor of the attic swept.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Antonia promptly.

  Nancy thought of something else. “What about all those things that have been piled up outside Mother’s front door? The bedsteads and the broken perambulator. You can’t leave them there indefinitely. They make Podmore’s Thatch look like a tinker’s camp.”

  There was a pause while everybody waited for someone else to make a suggestion. Then Danus spoke. “We could take them to the dump at Pudley.”

  “How?” asked Noel.

  “If Mrs. Keeling doesn’t mind, we could put them in the back of her car.”

  “No, of course I don’t mind.”

  Noel said, “When?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Is the dump open on a Sunday?”

  “Oh, heavens yes,” Penelope assured him. “It’s always open. There’s a dear little man who lives there, in a sort of shed. The gates are never locked.”

  Nancy was horrified. “You mean he lives there all the time? In a shed by the dump? What is the local Council thinking of? It must be dreadfully unhygienic.”

  Penelope laughed. “I don’t think he’s the sort of person who’s fussy about hygiene. Frightfully dirty and unshaven, but quite charming. Once we had a dustmen’s strike and we had to hump all our own rubbish, and he couldn’t have been more helpful.”

  “But…”

  She was interrupted, however, by Danus, which was in itself surprising, because he had scarcely spoken all through the meal.

  “In Scotland, there’s a dump outside the little town where my grandmother lives, and an old tramp has lived there for thirty years.” He enlarged on this. “In a wardrobe.”

  “He lives in a wardrobe?” Nancy sounded more horrified than ever.

  “Yes. It’s quite a big one. Victorian.”

  “But how dreadfully uncomfortable.”

  “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But he seems quite happy. He’s a very well-known figure, much respected. Walks all over the countryside in rubber boots and an old raincoat. People give him cups of tea and jam sandwiches.”

  “But what does he do in the evening?”

  Danus shook his head. “I’ve no idea.”

  “Why are you so worried about his evenings?” Noel wanted to know. “I should have thought his entire existence so awful that how he spends his evenings is a small thing to bother about.”

  “Well, it must be dreadfully dull. I mean, he obviously hasn’t got a television, or a telephone…” Nancy’s voice trailed away as she struggled to imagine such deprivations.

  Noel shook his head, wearing the exasperated expression that Nancy remembered from the past, when he was a clever little boy trying to make Nancy understand the rules of some simple card game.

  “You’re hopeless,” he told her, and she relapsed into a hurt silence. Noel turned to Danus.

  “Do you come from Scotland?”

  “My parents live in Edinburgh.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “He’s a lawyer.”

  Nancy, filled with curiosity, forgot her little umbrage. “Did you never want to be a lawyer too?”

  “When I was at school, I thought I might have followed in his footsteps. But then I changed my mind.”

  Noel leaned back in his chair. “I always visualize Scotsmen as being tremendously sporty. Stalking stags and killing grouse and fishing. Does your father do those things?”

  “He fishes and plays golf.”

  “Is he, as well, an Elder of the Kirk?” Noel came out with this in a fake Scottish accent that set his mother’s teeth on edge. “Isn’t that what you call it in the frozen North?”

  Danus, impassive, did not rise.

  “Yes, he is an Elder. He’s also an Archer.”

  “I’m not with you. Enlighten me.”

  “A member of the Honourable Company of Archers. The Queen’s Bodyguard when she comes to Holyroodhouse. On such occasions, he puts on an archaic uniform and looks resplendent.”

  “What does he guard the Queen’s body with? Bows and arrows?”

  “Right.”

  For a moment, the two men eyed each other. Then, “Fascinating,” said Noel, and took another helping of strawberry shortcake.

  The gargantuan meal, at last, was finished, rounded off by freshly made coffee and dark dessert chocolate. Noel pushed back his chair, yawned with enormous satisfaction, and said that he was going up to pack his bag and depart before he fell into a coma. Nancy began, in a desultory way, to stack the empty cups and saucers.

  “What are you going to do?” Penelope asked Danus. “Go back to your bonfire?”

  “It’s burning all right. Why don’t we get rid of the stuff that’s got to go to the dump first. I’ll load it into your car.”

  There was a momentary pause. Then Penelope said, “If you can wait till I’ve cleared up the dishes, I’ll drive you.”

  Noel stopped, mid-yawn, his arms above his head. “Oh, come off it, Ma, he doesn’t need a chauffeur.”

  “Actually,” said Danus, “I do. I don’t drive.”

  There was another, longer pause, during which time both Noel and Nancy gazed at him in open-mouthed disbelief.

  “You don’t drive? You mean, you can’t? How the hell do you get about?”

  “I bicycle.”

  “What an extraordinary chap you are.… Have you got high principles about air pollution, or something?”

  “No.”

  “But…”

  Antonia broke into the conversation. She said very quickly, “I can drive. If you’ll let me, Penelope. I’ll drive, and Danus can show me the way.”

  She looked at Penelope across the table, and simultaneously they smiled, like two women sharing a secret. Penelope said, “How kind that would be. Why don’t you go now, while Nancy and I see to all this, and then when you get back, we can all go down to the orchard and f
inish the bonfire together.”

  “Actually,” said Nancy, “I have to get home. I can’t stay all afternoon.”

  “Oh, stay, just for a little. I’ve hardly talked to you. You can’t have anything important to do.…”

  She got to her feet, reached for a tray. Antonia and Danus, as well, stood up, said goodbye to Noel, and took themselves off, out through the kitchen. As their mother began to pile the coffee-cups onto the tray, Noel and Nancy sat in silence, but as soon as they heard the front door safely slam, and knew that the others were out of earshot, they both began to speak at once.

  “What an extraordinary chap he is.”

  “So solemn. He never smiles.…”

  “How did you get hold of him, Ma?”

  “Do you know anything about his background? He’s obviously well-bred. It seems very fishy that he should be a gardener.…”

  “And all this carry-on about not drinking and not driving. Why the hell doesn’t he drive?”

  “I think,” Nancy pronounced importantly, “that he probably killed somebody while he was drunk, and he’s had his licence taken away.”

  This was so uncomfortably close to Penelope’s own anxious speculations that all at once she knew that she could not listen to another word, and sprang to Danus’ defence.

  “For goodness’ sake, at least give the poor man time to get out through the front gate before you start tearing his character to shreds.”

  “Oh, come off it, Ma, he’s an odd fellow and you know it as well as we do. If he’s telling the truth, he comes from an eminently respectable and probably well-to-do family. What’s he doing slaving away for an agricultural worker’s wage?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “I most certainly haven’t. His private life is his own concern.”

  “But, Mother, did he arrive with any sort of credentials?”

  “Of course he did. I engaged him through a garden contractor.”

  “Do they know if he’s honest?”

  “Honest? Why shouldn’t he be honest?”

  “You’re so naïve, Mother, you’d trust any person who looked vaguely presentable. After all, he is working around the house and the garden, and you’re on your own.”

  “I am not on my own. I have Antonia.”

  “Antonia, by the looks of it, is as besotted by him as you are.…”

  “Nancy, what gives you the right to say such things?”

  “If I wasn’t concerned about you, I wouldn’t have the need to say them.”

  “And what do you imagine that Danus might do? Rape Antonia and Mrs. Plackett, I suppose. Murder me, strip my house of its possessions, and head for Europe. That wouldn’t do him much good. There’s nothing of value here anyway.”

  She spoke in thoughtless heat, and as soon as the words were out instantly regretted them, for Noel pounced with the speed of a cat upon a mouse.

  “Nothing of value! What about your father’s pictures? Will nothing I say persuade you to understand that you are vulnerable here; you have no sort of an alarm system, you never lock a door, and without a doubt you are underinsured. Nancy’s right We know nothing about this oddball you’ve employed as a gardener, and even if we did, it’s crazy—under any circumstances—not to take some sort of positive action. Sell, or reinsure, or do bloody something.”

  “I have a funny feeling that you would like me to sell.”

  “Now, don’t start getting het up. Think rationally. Not The Shell Seekers, of course, but certainly the panels. Now, while the market’s high. Find out what the wretched things are worth, and then put them up for sale.”

  Penelope, who all this time had been standing, now sat down again. She put an elbow on the table and rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. With her other hand, she reached for the butter knife, and with it began to score a deep pattern of marks on the coarse weave of the dark-blue table-cloth.

  After a bit, “What do you think, Nancy?” she asked.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. What do you have to say about my pictures and my insurance and my private life in general?”

  Nancy bit her lip, took a deep breath, and then spoke, her voice coming out clear and high-pitched, making her sound as though she were making a speech at the Women’s Institute. “I think … I think Noel is right. George believes that you should reinsure. He told me so, after he read about the sale of The Water Carriers. But the premiums would, naturally, be very high. And the insurance company may insist on tighter security. After all, they have to consider their client’s investment.”

  “You sound to me,” said her mother, “as though you are quoting George word for word, or else reading from some incomprehensible manual. Have you no ideas of your own?”

  “Yes,” said Nancy, sounding normal again. “I do. I think you should sell the panels.”

  “And raise, maybe, a quarter of a million?”

  She spoke the words casually. The discussion was going better than Nancy had dared to hope, and she felt herself grow warm with excitement.

  “Why not?”

  “And once I’ve done that, what am I expected to do with the money?”

  She looked at Noel. He shrugged elaborately. He said, “The money you give away when you’re alive is worth twice the money you give away when you’re dead.”

  “In other words, you want it now.”

  “Ma, I didn’t say that. I’m simply generalizing. But face it; to go to bed with a nest-egg like that would be tantamount to simply handing it over to the Government.”

  “So you think I should hand it over to you.”

  “Well, you’ve got three children. You could unload a certain amount of it onto them, split into three. Keep a bit for yourself, to enjoy life. You’ve never been able to do that. Always had your nose to the grindstone. You used to travel all over the place with your parents. You could travel again. Go to Florence. Back to the south of France.”

  “And what would you two do with all that lovely money?”

  “I suppose Nancy would spend it on her children. As for me, I’d move on.”

  “Into what?”

  “New fields, pastures green. Set up on my own … commodity broking, perhaps…”

  He was his father all over again. Perpetually dissatisfied with his lot, envious of others, materialistic and ambitious, and unshakeable in his belief that the world owed him a living. It could have been Ambrose who spoke to her, and this, as nothing else could have done, finally caused Penelope to lose her patience.

  “Commodity broking.” She made no effort to keep the scorn from her voice. “You must be out of your mind. You’d be as well to put your entire capital on a single horse, or a turn of the roulette wheel. As well you are quite shameless and sometimes you fill me with despair and disgust.” Noel opened his mouth to defend himself, but she talked him down, raising her voice. “Do you know what I think? I don’t think you give a hoot what happens to me, or to my house or my father’s pictures. You care only what happens to yourself, and how swiftly and easily you can get your hands on yet more money.” Noel closed his mouth, his face tightening in anger and the colour draining from his thin cheeks. “I haven’t sold the panels and I may never sell them, but if I do I shall keep everything for myself, because it is mine, and mine to do as I like with, and the greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent’s own independence. As for you, Nancy, and your children, it was you and George who made the decision to send them to those ridiculously expensive schools. Perhaps if you’d been a little less ambitious for them, and had spent more time on teaching them manners, they’d have turned out a great deal more appealing than they are at the moment.”

  Nancy, with an immediacy that surprised even herself, sprang to the defence of her offspring. “I’ll thank you not to criticize my children.”

  “It’s about time somebody did.”

  “And what right have you to say a word against them? You take no interest in them. You s
how more interest in your endless eccentric friends and your wretched garden. You never even come and see them. Never come to see us, how ever often we invite you…”

  It was Noel who lost his patience. “Oh, for God’s sake, Nancy, shut up. Your bloody children are neither here nor there. We’re not talking about your children. We’re trying to have an intelligent discussion.…”

  “They have everything to do with it. They’re the future generation…”

  “God help us.…”

  “… and a great deal more worthy of financial support than some hare-brained scheme of yours for making yet more money. Mother’s right. You’d squander the lot of it, gamble it away…”

  “Coming from you, that’s laughable. You haven’t a single opinion of your own, and you know bloody nothing about bloody anything.…”

  Nancy sprang to her feet. “I’ve had enough. I’m not staying here to be insulted. I’m going home.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “I think it’s time you both went. And I think, as well, that it’s a very good thing Olivia isn’t here. Listening to this appalling conversation, she would destroy you both. For that reason alone, if she were with us, I am perfectly certain that neither of you would have had the courage to even start such a disgraceful discussion. And now…” She, too, got to her feet, and picked up the tray. “You are both, as you never cease to tell me, busy people. There can be no point in wasting the rest of the afternoon in fruitless argument. I, meantime, shall go and start the washing-up.”

  As she headed towards the kitchen, Noel fired his final malicious shot. “I’m sure Nancy would love to help you. Nothing she likes better than getting down to a sinkful of dishes.”

  “I’ve already said, I’ve had enough. I’m going home. And as for the washing-up, there’s no need for Mother to martyr herself. Antonia can do it when she gets back. After all, isn’t she meant to be the housekeeper?”

  Penelope, at the open door, stopped dead. She turned her head and looked at Nancy, and there was an expression of disgust in her dark eyes that caused Nancy to suspect that she had actually gone too far.

  But her mother did not throw the tray of coffee-cups at her. She simply said very quietly, “No, Nancy. She is not meant to be a housekeeper. She is my friend. My guest.”