The Shell Seekers

  “Of course. Who are they, these friends?”

  “The girl’s called Antonia. Her father’s just died, and she’s living with me just now. And the young man is called Danus. He helps me in the garden in Gloucestershire. You’ll meet them. They think it’s too much for an old lady to walk back up the hill, so they said they would come and fetch me in the car.”

  “That’ll be nice. But I wish you’d brought Nancy. I’d love to see my Nancy again. And why didn’t you come back to Porthkerris before? We can’t be expected to fill in forty years in just a couple of hours.…”

  However, they made a fairly good stab at it, scarcely drawing breath, asking questions, answering them, catching up on children and grandchildren.

  “Clark married a girl in Bristol and he’s got two kiddies … here they are on the mantelpiece; that’s Sandra and that’s Kevin. She’s ever such a bright little girl. And these are Ronald’s youngsters … he lives in Plymouth. His father-in-law runs a furniture factory and he’s taken Ron into the business … they come down for summer holidays, but they have to put up in a bed-and-breakfast up the road, because there’s not space for them here. Now tell me about Nancy. What a little love she was.”

  And then it was Penelope’s turn, but of course she’d forgotten to bring any photographs. She told Doris about Melanie and Rupert and, with some effort, managed to make them sound attractive.

  “Live near you, do they? Are you able to see them?”

  “They’re about twenty miles away.”

  “Oh, that’s too far, isn’t it? But you like living in the country? Better than London? I wasn’t half horrified when you wrote and told me about Ambrose walking out on you like that. What a thing to do. But then, he was always a useless sort of a chap. Nice-looking, of course, but I never felt he really fitted in. Even so, walking out on you! Selfish bugger. Men never think of anyone but themselves. That’s what I say to Ernie when he leaves his dirty socks on the bathroom floor.”

  And then, with husbands and families safely disposed of, they began to remember, recalling the long years of war through which they had lived together, sharing not only the sorrows and the fears and the tedious boredom but, as well, the bizarre and ludicrous happenings which, in retrospect, could be nothing but hysterically funny.

  Colonel Trubshot, stalking the town in his tinhat and his ARP armband, missing his way in the black-out and falling over the harbour wall and into the sea. Miss Preedy giving a Red Cross lecture to a lot of disinterested ladies and getting herself tangled up in her own bandages. General Watson-Grant drilling the Home Guard on the school playground, and old Willie Chirgwin spearing his big toe with a bayonet and haying to be carted off to hospital in an ambulance.

  “And going to the cinema,” Doris reminded Penelope, wiping tears of laughter from her cheeks. “Remember going to the cinema? Twice a week we used to go and never miss a single show. Remember Charles Boyer in Hold Back the Dawn? There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I went through three handkerchiefs and I was still howling when I came out.”

  “It was lovely, wasn’t it? And I suppose there wasn’t much else to do. Except listen to Worker’s Playtime on the radio and Mr. Churchill injecting us with doses of moral courage from time to time.”

  “The best was Carmen Miranda. I never missed a Carmen Miranda film.” Doris sprang to her feet and placed a hand, fingers spread, upon her hip. “Ay-ay-ay-ay-aye, I love you verry much. Ay-ay-ay-ay-aye, I think you’re grrrand…”

  The door slammed and Ernie walked in. Doris, finding this interruption even funnier than her own act, collapsed backwards onto the sofa and lay there, weeping and incapable with mirth.

  Ernie, embarrassed, looked from one face to the other. “What’s up with you two?” he asked, and Penelope, realizing that his wife was beyond answering his question, pulled herself together, got up out of her chair and went to greet him.

  “Oh, Ernie…” She wiped her eyes, subdued her hopeless giggles. “I am sorry. What a stupid pair we are. We’ve been remembering things and laughing so much. Please forgive us.” Ernie seemed even smaller than ever, and older too, and his black hair had turned frosty white. He wore an old guernsey and he had taken off working boots and put on his carpet slippers. His hand in hers felt rough and horny as it always had, and she was so pleased to see him, she wanted to embrace him but refrained from doing so, knowing that it would only cause him even more embarrassment. “How are you? How splendid it is to see you again.”

  “Good to see you too.” They shook hands solemnly. His eyes went back to his wife, by now sitting up, blowing her nose and more or less in charge of herself again. “Heard that noise going on, I thought some person was killing the cat. Had tea, have you?”

  “No, we haven’t had tea. We haven’t had time to have tea. We’ve been talking too much.”

  “The kettle just about boiled itself dry. I filled it up when I came in.”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I forgot.” Doris got to her feet. “I’ll go and make a pot of tea now. Penelope’s brought you a bottle of whisky, Ernie.”

  “Lovely. Thank you very much.” He pushed back the cuff of his guernsey and looked at his large workmanlike watch. “Half past five.” He glanced up, a rare twinkle in his eye. “Why don’t we skip tea and go straight onto the whisky?”

  “Ernie Penberth! You old toper! What a suggestion.”

  “I think,” said Penelope firmly, “that it’s an extremely good one. After all, we haven’t been together for forty years. If we don’t celebrate now, then when are we going to?”

  Thus the reunion turned into something of a party. The whisky loosened even Ernie’s tongue, and the three of them might have continued to carouse into the evening had it not been for the eventual arrival of Danus and Antonia. Penelope had lost all sense of time, and the ring at the doorbell surprised her just as much as it did Ernie and Doris.

  “Now who can that be?” asked Doris, resenting the interruption.

  Penelope looked at her watch. “Good heavens, it’s six o’clock. I’d no idea it was so late. It’ll be Danus and Antonia, come to fetch me.…”

  “Time goes fast when you’re enjoying yourself,” Doris remarked and pulled herself out of her chair to go and answer the door. They heard her say, “Come along in, she’s all ready for you. A bit tipsy, like we all are, but none the worse for wear.” And Penelope hastily finished her drink and put the empty glass down on the table, so that they would not think that they had interrupted anything. Then they all streamed into the little room, and Ernie hauled himself to his feet, and everybody was introduced. Ernie took himself off to the kitchen and came back with another couple of glasses.

  Danus scratched the back of his head and glanced about him, his eyes filled with amusement. “I thought you were meant to be having a tea-party.”

  “Oh, tea.” Doris’ voice dismissed the idea of anything so tame. “We forgot about tea. We’ve been talking and laughing so much, we forgot all about having tea.”

  Antonia said, “What a lovely room. This is just the sort of house I most love. And all your flowers in the little courtyard.”

  “That’s what I call my garden. Be nice to have a proper garden, but then, like I always say, you can’t have everything.”

  Antonia’s eyes fell upon Sophie’s portrait. “Who’s the girl in the painting?”

  “That? Why, that’s Penelope’s mum. Can’t you see the likeness?”

  “She’s beautiful!”

  “Oh, she was lovely. There was never anyone like her. French she was … wasn’t she, Penelope? Sounded ever so sexy the way she talked, just like Maurice Chevalier. And when she was vexed, ooh, you should have heard her. Like a little fishwife, she was.”

  “She looks so young.”

  “Oh, yes, she was. Years younger than Penelope’s dad. Like sisters you were, weren’t you, Penelope?”

  Ernie, to draw attention, noisily cleared his throat. “Like a drink, would you?” he asked Danus.

  Danus gri
nned and shook his head. “It’s more than kind of you, and I hope you don’t think I’m being unfriendly, but I don’t drink.”

  Ernie, for once in his life, looked totally nonplussed.

  “Ill, are you?”

  “No. Not ill. It just doesn’t agree with me.”

  Ernie was obviously much shaken. He turned, without much hope, to Antonia. “Suppose you don’t want one neither?”

  She smiled. “No. Thank you. And I’m not being unfriendly either, but I have to drive the car back up the hill and navigate all those steep corners. I’d better not.”

  Ernie shook his head sadly and screwed the cap back on the bottle. The party was over. It was time to go. Penelope stood up, shook the creases out of her skirt, checked on her hairpins.

  “Not off, are you?” Doris was reluctant to finish it all.

  “We must go, Doris, though I don’t want to in the very least. I’ve been here long enough.”

  “Where did you leave the car?” Ernie asked Danus.

  “Up at the top of the hill,” Danus told him. “We couldn’t find anyplace nearer without a double yellow line.”

  “Right bugger, isn’t it? Rules and regulations everywhere. I’d better walk up with you and help you get it turned. Not much room there, and you don’t want to start no argument with a granite wall.”

  Danus, gratefully, accepted his offer. Ernie put on his cap and changed back into his boots. Danus and Antonia said goodbye to Doris, and she said “Pleased to have met you,” and the three of them departed together to go and collect the Volvo. Doris and Penelope were, once more, left together. But now, for some reason, the laughter had gone. A silence fell between them, as though having talked so much, they had all at once run out of things to say. Penelope felt Doris’ eyes upon her, and turned her head to meet that steady regard.

  Doris said, “Where did you find him, then?”

  “Danus?” She made her voice light. “I told you. He works for me. He’s my gardener.”

  “Upper-class sort of gardener.”

  “Yes.”

  “He looks like Richard.”

  “Yes.” His name was out. Spoken. She said, “You realize he’s the only person neither of us has mentioned all afternoon. We remembered everybody else, but never him.”

  “Didn’t seem much point. I only said his name then, because that young man’s got such a look of him.”

  “I know. It struck me, too, the first time I ever set eyes on him. It … took a little getting used to.”

  “Is he anything to do with Richard?”

  “No. I don’t think so. He comes from Scotland. The likeness is just an extraordinary coincidence.”

  “Is that why you’ve taken such a fancy to him?”

  “Oh, Doris. You make me sound like a sad old lady with a gigolo in tow.”

  “Charmed you, has he?”

  “I like him very much. I like him for the way he looks and I like him for the way he is. He’s gentle. Good company. He makes me laugh.”

  “Bringing him here … to Porthkerris…” Doris looked anxious for her friend. “… not trying to revive old memories, are you?”

  “No. I asked my children to come with me. I asked each one in turn, but none of them was able or willing. Not even Nancy. I wasn’t going to tell you that, but now I have. So Danus and Antonia came in their place.”

  Doris did not comment on this. For a little they were silent, each occupied with her own thoughts. Then Doris said, “I dunno. Richard being killed like that … it was cruel. I always found it hard to forgive God for letting that man be killed. If ever there was a man who should have lived … it stays with me, that day we heard. It was one of the worst things that happened during the war. And I could never get it out of my head that, when he died, he took part of you with him, and left no part of himself behind.”

  “He did leave part of himself.”

  “But nothing you could touch, or feel, or hold. It would have been better if you’d had a baby by him. That way, you’d have had a good excuse never to go back to Ambrose. You and Nancy and the baby could have made a good life for yourselves.”

  “I often thought about that. I never did anything to stop having a baby by Richard; I just never conceived one. And Olivia was my consolation. She was the first child I had after the war, and she was Ambrose’s child, but for some reason she was always special. Not different, just special.” She went on carefully, choosing her words, admitting to Doris something that she had scarcely admitted to herself, and certainly to no other living person. “It was as though some physical part of Richard had stayed within me. Preserved, like delicious food in an icebox. And when Olivia was born, some atom, some corpuscle, some cell of Richard’s became, through me, part of her.”

  “But she wasn’t his.”

  Penelope smiled, shook her head. “No.”

  “But she felt like his.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can understand.”

  “I knew you would. That’s why I told you. And you’ll understand when I tell you that I’m glad Papa’s studio was demolished to make way for a block of flats, and has gone forever. I know, now, that I’m strong enough to cope with almost anything, but I don’t think I would ever have been strong enough to go back there.”

  “No. I can understand that, too.”

  “There’s another thing. When I went back to live in London, I got in touch with his mother.”

  “I wondered about that.”

  “It took me a long time to pluck up the courage, but finally I did, and telephoned her. We had lunch together. It was an ordeal for both of us. She was charming, and friendly, but we had nothing to talk about except Richard, and in the end I realized it was too much for her. After that, I left her alone; never saw her again. If I had been married to Richard, I could have comforted and consoled her. As it was, I think I simply added to her personal sense of tragedy.”

  Doris said nothing. From outside, from beyond the open door, they heard the sound of the Volvo, trundling cautiously down the steep and narrow street. Penelope stooped and picked up her handbag. “That’s the car. It’s time for me to go.”

  They went together, through the kitchen and into the sunshine of the little courtyard. They put their arms about each other, and kissed, with much affection. There were tears in Doris’ eyes. “Goodbye, Doris darling. And thank you for everything.”

  Doris dashed the stupid tears away. “Come again soon,” she told her. “Don’t wait another forty years, or we’ll all be pushing up the daisies.”

  “Next year. I’ll come next year, on my own, and stay with you and Ernie.”

  “What a time we’ll have.”

  The car appeared, stopped at the side of the road. Ernie clambered out of it and stood, like a footman, holding the door open, waiting for Penelope to step inside.

  “Goodbye, Doris.” She turned to go, but Doris was not finished with her.

  “Penelope.”

  She turned back. “Yes?”

  “If he’s Richard, then who’s Antonia supposed to be?”

  Doris was no fool. Penelope smiled. “Myself?”

  * * *

  “The first time I ever came here was when I was seven years old. It was a great occasion, because Papa had bought a car. We’d never had one before, and this was our first expedition. It was the first of many, but I always remember that one, because I simply couldn’t get over the astonishing fact that Papa actually knew how to get the engine started, and then drive it.”

  They sat, the three of them, on the Penjizal cliffs, high above the blue Atlantic, in a grassy hollow sheltered from the breeze by a towering boulder of lichened granite. All about, studding the turfy grass, were clumps and cushions of wild primroses and the pale-blue, feathery heads of scabious. The sky was cloudless, the air filled with the thunder of rollers and the screams of the wheeling sea-birds. Midday, and in April, warm as midsummer—so warm that they had spread the new tartan rug to loll upon, and found cool shade for the
luncheon basket.

  “What kind of a car was it?” Danus lay on the sloping turf, propped up on an elbow. He had pulled off his sweater and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. His muscular forearms were sun-browned, his face, turned towards her, filled with amusement and interest.

  “A four-and-a-half litre Bentley,” she told him. “It was rather old, but he couldn’t afford a new car, and it became the pride of his heart.”

  “How splendid. Did it have leather straps to hold down the bonnet, like a cabin trunk?”

  “Exactly. And a running board, and a hood we could never get the hang of, so we never put it up even if it poured with rain.”

  “A car like that would be worth a fortune nowadays. What became of it?”

  “When Papa died, I gave it to Mr. Grabney. I couldn’t think what else to do with it. And he’d always been so kind, keeping it for us in his garage all through the war and never charging us a penny of rent. And another time … a really important time … he laid his hands on some Black Market petrol for me. I could never thank him enough for that.”

  “Why didn’t you keep it?”

  “I couldn’t afford to keep a car in London, and I didn’t really need one. I just used to walk everywhere, pushing perambulators filled with babies and shopping. Ambrose was furious when he heard I’d given the Bentley away. It was the first thing he asked about after I got back from Papa’s funeral. When I told him what I’d done, he sulked for a week.”

  Danus was sympathetic. “I’m not sure I blame him.”

  “No. Poor man. He must have been dreadfully disappointed.”

  Penelope sat up, to gaze out over the edge of the cliff and inspect the state of the tide. It was on the ebb, but still not fully out. When this happened, the great rock pool, which she had promised Danus and Antonia, would at last be revealed, like a huge blue jewel, glinting in the sunlight and perfect for diving and swimming. “Another half hour,” she judged, “and you should be able to bathe.”

  She leaned back once more, propped against the bank, and rearranged her legs. She wore her old denim skirt, a cotton shirt, her new sneakers, and a battered straw gardening hat. The sun was so brilliant that she felt grateful for its speckled shade. Beside her, Antonia, who had been lying with eyes closed, apparently asleep, now shifted, rolling over onto her stomach and resting her cheek on her crossed arms. “Tell us more, Penelope. Did you come here often?”