The Shell Seekers

  She considered this. London. She thought of Oakley Street. But London was Ambrose, and Oakley Street a house haunted by the ghosts of Sophie and Peter and Elizabeth Clifford. She said, “I don’t want to go to London. Is there an alternative?”

  “Yes. An old house called Tresillick, over on the south coast, on the Roseland Peninsula. It’s neither large nor grand, but it has gardens sloping down to the water, and an enormous purple wistaria smothered all over its face.”

  “You know this house?”

  “Yes. I stayed there one summer when I was still at University.”

  “Who lives there?”

  “A friend of my mother’s. Helena Bradbury. She’s married to a man called Harry Bradbury, a Captain in the Royal Navy commanding a Cruiser with the Home Fleet. After Christmas, my mother wrote to her, and a couple of days ago I got a letter from her, inviting us to stay.”

  “Us?”

  “You and me.”

  “She knows about me?”

  “Obviously.”

  “But if we stay with her, won’t we have to sleep in different bedrooms and be dreadfully discreet?”

  Richard laughed. “I’ve never known such a woman as you for raising difficulties.”

  “I’m not raising difficulties. I’m being practical.”

  “I don’t imagine those sort of problems will arise. Helena is renowned for her broadmindedness. She was brought up in Kenya, and for some reason ladies who were brought up in Kenya are seldom bound by prissy conventions.”

  “Have you accepted her invitation?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. There are other considerations. Your father is one of them.”

  “Papa?”

  “Will he raise objections to my taking you off on my own?”

  “Richard, you surely know him better than that.”

  “Have you told him about us?”

  “No. Not in so many words.” She smiled. “But he knows.”

  “And Doris?”

  “I did tell Doris. She thinks it’s all splendid. She thinks you’re lovely, just like Gregory Peck.”

  “In that case, there’s nothing to stop us. So…” He got to his feet. “… Come on. Get your skates on and get moving. We have business to attend to.”

  There was a telephone-box on the corner by Mrs. Thomas’ shop, and they crowded into it together and closed the door, and Richard put through a call to Tresillick. Penelope, standing so close, could hear the phone ringing at the other end.

  “Hello.” The female voice, ringing loud and clear, was clearly audible to Penelope, and nearly deafened Richard. “Helena Bradbury here.”

  “Helena. It’s Richard Lomax.”

  “Richard, you devil! Why haven’t you been in touch with me before?”

  “I’m sorry, but there’s really been no opportunity—”

  “Get my letter?”

  “Yes. I—”

  “Coming to stay?”

  “If we may.”

  “Wonderful! I’m just livid to think you’ve been in this neck of the woods all this time, and I didn’t know until I heard from your mother. When are you both coming?”

  “Well, I’ve got a week’s leave coming up at the end of March. Would that be okay by you?”

  “End of March? Oh, hell. I shan’t be here. Going up to Chatham to spend a bit of time with the old man. Can’t you make it another time? No, of course you can’t. Silly bloody question. Well, no matter. Come anyway. The house is yours, you can just take it over. There’s a Mrs. Brick, she lives in the cottage. She has a key. Comes and goes. I’ll leave some food in the larder. Just make yourselves at home.…”

  “But that’s too kind—”

  “No skin off my nose. If you feel like paying your way, you can cut the grass for me. Just too sickening that I shan’t be here. Never mind, another time. Drop me a line and let me know when Mrs. Brick should expect you. Must fly now. Nice to talk. Goodbye.”

  She rang off. Richard, left with the humming receiver in his hand, slowly replaced it.

  He said, “A lady of few words but swift action,” putting his arms around Penelope and kissing her. For the first time, standing there in the smelly, stuffy telephone-box, she allowed herself to believe that it really was going to happen. They were going away together, not on leave, that horrible Service word, but on holiday.

  “Nothing can stop it, can it, Richard? Nothing can go wrong?”

  “No.”

  “How shall we get there?”

  “We shall have to work it out. A train to Truro, perhaps. A taxi.”

  “But wouldn’t it be more fun to drive?” She was struck by a brilliant idea. “We’ll take the Bentley. Papa will lend us the Bentley.”

  “Haven’t you forgotten something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The small matter of petrol.”

  She had indeed forgotten. But, “I shall speak to Mr. Grabney,” she told him.

  “And what will he do?”

  “He will get us petrol. Somewhere. Somehow. Black Market, if necessary.”

  “Why should he do that?”

  “Because he is my friend and I have known him all my life. You wouldn’t object to driving me to Roseland in a borrowed Bentley fuelled with Black Market petrol?”

  “No. Provided that I have a written affidavit to the effect that we’re not going to end up in jail.”

  She smiled. Her imagination flew ahead. She saw them setting off, bowling down the high-hedged lanes of the south, with Richard at the wheel and their luggage piled on the back seat. She said, “You know something? By the time we go, it will be spring again. It really will be spring.”

  * * *

  It was a secret house, tricky to locate, buried deep in a remote and inaccessible corner of the country that had not changed, either its ways or its appearance, for centuries. From the road it was invisible, protected from all eyes by woods and a rutted driveway, bordered by high banks of hydrangea. Finally discovered, it revealed itself as a house that had stood, four-square, for centuries, gathering about it outbuildings, stables, and protective walls, all verdant with flowering creepers, ivy, mosses, and ferns.

  In front of the house, the garden, half-wild and half-cultivated, sloped in a series of lawns and terraces down to the shores of a winding, wooded tidal creek. Narrow paths beckoned seductively, leading the way through clumps of camellia, azalea, and Pink Pearl rhododendrum. At the water’s edge, the unkempt grass was yellow with drifts of wild daffodils, and there was a rickety wooden jetty, where a small dinghy dipped at its mooring.

  The wistaria which covered the face of the house had not yet bloomed, but there was blossom everywhere, and alongside the terrace stood a wild white cherry. When the wind touched it, the petals drifted like blown snow.

  * * *

  As promised, Mrs. Brick had been there to meet them, emerging from the front door as the old Bentley drew up at the back of the house and came to a thankful halt. Mrs. Brick had wild white hair and a wall-eye, sturdy stockings, and a pinafore which tied at the waist.

  “You Major and Mrs. Lomax, are you?”

  Penelope was silenced by this mode of address, but Richard took it coolly in his stride. “Yes, that’s right.” He climbed down from the car. “And you must be Mrs. Brick.” He approached her, holding out his hand.

  It was Mrs. Brick’s turn to be disconcerted. She wiped her reddened hand on the back of her pinafore before putting it in his.

  “That’s right.” It was difficult to decide exactly where the wall-eye was looking. “Just stayed to see you in. Mrs. Bradbury said. Shan’t be here tomorrow. Got your bags, have you?”

  They followed her indoors, into a slate-flagged hallway with a stone staircase curving to the upper floor. The treads of this staircase were worn down with the usage of years, and there was a damp, musty smell, not unpleasant and vaguely reminiscent of antique shops.

  “Just show you round. Dining room and drawing room … under dust-sheets. Mr
s. Bradbury hasn’t used them since the war. Uses the library, in here. Need to keep the fire going, keep you warm. And if the sun shines, you can open the French windows, go out on the terrace. Now come and I’ll show you the kitchen.…” They trailed obediently after her. “Have to riddle the range and fill it every evening, otherwise there won’t be no hot water.…” Demonstrating this, she took hold of a brass knob and plunged it in and out once or twice, causing a sinister disturbance in the bowels of the old stove. “There’s a cold ham in the larder and I got in milk and eggs and bread. Mrs. Bradbury said.”

  “You’ve been very kind.”

  But she had no time to waste on pleasantries. “Now. Upstairs.” They gathered up suitcases and bags and followed her. “Bathroom and lavvy here, down the passage.” The bath stood on legs and the taps were copper and the lavatory cistern had a chain and an handle with PULL written on it. “Pesky old lavvy this one is. If it doesn’t work the first time, you have to wait a bit and then try again.”

  “Thank you for telling us.”

  There was no time, however, to dwell upon the complexities of the plumbing, for already she was bustling away and ahead of them, to open another door at the head of the stairs, thus releasing onto the landing a gust of airy sunshine from the room beyond. “Here we are. Put you in the best guest, got a view from here, you have. Hope the bed’s all right. Put a hot-water bottle in dry out the damp. And mind how you step out onto the balcony. The wood’s rotten. Might fall through. That’s it, then.” She had done her duty. “I’ll be off.”

  Penelope, for the first time, managed to get a word in. “Shall we see you again, Mrs. Brick?”

  “Oh, I’ll be in and out. Odd hours. Keep an eye on you. Mrs. Bradbury said.”

  And with that, she was gone.

  Penelope could not look at Richard. She stood, with her hand clenched over her mouth, somehow managing to control her mirth, until she heard the slam of a door and knew that Mrs. Brick was out of earshot. After that it didn’t matter. She lay on her back on the huge downy bed, and finally wiped the tears of laughter from her cheeks. Richard came to sit beside her.

  He said, “We’ll have to make up our minds which one is her good eye, otherwise it might lead to unsurmountable complications.”

  “‘Pesky old lavvy this one is.’ She was just like the White Rabbit, saying ‘Faster, faster.’”

  “How does it feel to be Mrs. Lomax?”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “I expect Mrs. Bradbury said.”

  “I see now what you meant about ladies who were brought up in Kenya.”

  “Will you be happy here?”

  “I think I might manage it.”

  “How can I help to make you happy?”

  She began to laugh again. He stretched out beside her and took her, thoughtfully and without haste, into his arms. Beyond the open window, small sounds made themselves evident. The cry of distant gulls. Closer to hand, the soft murmur of a wood-pigeon. A breeze moved, rustling the branches of the white cherry tree. Slowly, the waters of a flood tide crept up, to fill the empty mudbanks of the creek.

  * * *

  Later, they unpacked and settled in. Richard put on old corduroys, a white polo-necked sweater, worn suede brogues. Penelope hung his uniform at the very back of the wardrobe, and they kicked the suitcases out of sight, beneath the bed. “It feels,” said Richard, “like the beginning of the school holidays. Let’s go and explore.”

  They inspected the house first, opening doors, discovering unexpected stairways and passages, getting their bearings. Downstairs, in the library, they opened the French windows, glanced at the titles of some of the books, found an old wind-up gramophone and a pile of delectable records. Delius, Brahms, Charles Trenet, Ella Fitzgerald.

  “We can have musical evenings.”

  A fire smouldered in the huge fireplace. Richard stooped to pile on more logs from the basket by the hearth and, straightening, came face to face with an envelope addressed to himself, and propped against the clock that stood in the middle of the mantelpiece. He took it down and slit it open, and inside found a message from their absent hostess.

  Richard. The lawn-mower is in the garage, tin of petrol alongside. Key of the wine cellar hanging over the cellar door. Help yourself to contents. Have a good time. Helena.

  They took themselves out of doors, by way of the kitchen and the warren of stone-flagged larders, sculleries, store-rooms, and laundries that lay beyond, opening a final door and emerging onto a cobbled stable-yard strung with washing lines. The old stables were now put to use as garages, tool-sheds, and wood-stores. They found the mower and, as well, a pair of oars and a furled sail.

  “These will be for the dinghy,” Richard observed in a satisfied way. “When the tide comes up, we can go for a sail.”

  Farther on, they came to an ancient wooden door set in a lichened granite wall. Richard put his shoulder to it and shoved it open, and they found themselves in what had once been the vegetable garden. They saw the sagging glasshouses and a broken cucumber frame, but the weeds of years had taken over, and all that could be discerned of the garden’s former glory was a clump of overgrown rhubarb, a carpet of mint, and one or two very old apple trees, gnarled as ancient men but, yet, misted with pale-pink blossom. The warm air was filled with the scent of this.

  It was sad to see such a wilderness. Penelope sighed. “A shame. It must have been lovely once. All box hedges and neat beds.”

  “It was like that when I stayed before the war. But then there were two gardeners. Impossible, on your own, to keep a place like this going.”

  They emerged by a second door, found a path leading down to the creek. Penelope picked a bunch of daffodils, and they sat on the jetty and watched the tide seeping in. When they felt hungry, they went back to the house and ate bread and ham and some wrinkled apples that they found in the larder. Late in the afternoon, when the tide was high, they borrowed oilskins from the Bradbury’s cloakroom, collected the oars and the sail, and took out the little dinghy. In the shelter of the creek, they made slow progress, but once out into open water, the breeze caught them. Richard slammed down the centre-board and hauled in the main sheet. The little dinghy listed alarmingly, but held its own, and they sped, close-hauled and spray-drenched, across the deep and choppy waters of the Passage.

  * * *

  It was a secret house and, as well, a house that seemed to slumber in the past. Life here, it was clear, had never been anything but quiet and leisurely, lived at a snail’s pace; and like a very old and erratic clock, or perhaps a very old and erratic person, it had lost all sense of time. This gentle influence was very strong. By the end of the first day, sleepy and stunned by the soft air of the south coast, Richard and Penelope, unresisting, were seduced by Tresillick’s drowsy spell, and after that, time ceased to have importance or even to exist. They saw no newspapers, never turned on the wireless and, if the telephone rang, they left it to ring, knowing that the call was not for them.

  The days and nights flowed slowly into each other, unbroken by the necessity for regular meals, or urgent appointments, or the tyranny of clocks. Their only contact with the outside world was Mrs. Brick who, true to her word, came and went. Her visits were irregular, to say the least of it, and they never had any idea when she would turn up. Sometimes they would come upon her at three o’clock in the afternoon, polishing, scrubbing, or wielding an old-fashioned sweeper over the worn carpets. One morning, very early, when they were still in bed, she burst in upon them, bearing a tray of tea, but before they had collected their wits and found words to thank her, she had drawn back the curtains, commented on the weather, and gone.

  As Richard remarked, it could have been very embarrassing.

  As well, like some benevolent hobgoblin, she kept them provided with food. Going into the kitchen to forage for a meal, they would find, on the slate shelf in the larder, a dish of ducks’ eggs, a trussed fowl, a pat of farm butter, or a freshly baked loaf of bread. Potatoes were peel
ed and carrots scraped, and once she had left them a couple of Cornish pastries so enormous that even Richard was unable to finish his.

  “We haven’t even given her our ration cards,” Penelope pointed out in some wonder. She had lived with ration cards for so long that this abundance seemed to her nothing short of a miracle. “Where on earth does it all come from?”

  They were never to find out.

  * * *

  The weather, that early spring, was fitful. When it rained, which it did with drowning intensity, they either put on waterproofs and went for long wet walks, or stayed by the fireside, with books to be read, or a game of piquet to be played. Some days were blue and warm as summer. They spent them out of doors, picnicking on the grass, or supine on battered old garden chairs. One morning, feeling energetic, they took the Bentley and drove the short distance to St. Mawes, to wander around the village, inspect the sailing boats, and end up having a drink on the terrace of the Idle Rocks Hotel.

  It was a day of cloud and sunshine, the sun blinking in and out, the soft, sweet air spiced by the freshness of the salt breeze. Penelope leaned back in her chair, her eyes on a brown-sailed fishing boat chugging its way out to the open sea.

  “Richard, do you ever think about luxury?” she asked him.

  “I don’t crave it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Luxury, I think, is the total fulfilment of all five senses at once. Luxury is now. I feel warm; and, if I wish, I can reach out and touch your hand. I smell the sea and, as well, somebody inside the hotel is frying onions. Delicious. I am tasting cold beer, and I can hear gulls, and water lapping, and the fishing boat’s engine going chug-chug-chug in the most satisfactory sort of way.”

  “And what do you see?”

  She turned her head to look at him, sitting there with his hair ruffled, and wearing his old sweater, and the leather-patched Harris tweed jacket that smelt of peat. “I see you.” He smiled. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me your luxury.”

  He fell silent, entering the spirit of the game, considering. At last, “I think, perhaps, contrast,” he told her. “Mountains, and the bitter cold of snow, all glittering beneath a blue sky and a savage sun. Or lying, baking, on a hot rock, and knowing that, when you can’t bear the heat another moment, the cold, deep sea is only a yard away, waiting for you to dive.”