The Shell Seekers (50 page)

Now, if she wanted, she could do up the house from floor to ceiling. Everything she owned was worn and shabby beyond belief, but she liked things that way. The battered Volvo was eight years old, and had been second-hand when she bought it. Perhaps she should splash out on a Rolls-Royce, but there was nothing wrong with the Volvo—yet—and it would be something of a sacrilege to load up the boot of a Rolls with bags of peat and earthy pots of plants for the garden.

Clothes, then. She had, however, never been interested in clothes, an attitude of mind set for ever by the long years of war and the deprivation of the years that followed it. Many of her favourite garments had been purchased at the Temple Pudley Church Jumble Sale, and her naval officer's boat cloak had kept her warm for forty winters. She could always give herself a mink coat, but she had never relished the idea of wearing a garment made out of a lot of dear little furry dead animals, and she'd look a fool wandering down the village street on a Sunday morning to pick up the papers dressed up to the nines in mink. People would think she'd gone mad.

She could travel. But somehow, at sixty-four and not, it had to be faced, in the best of health, she knew that she was too old to start out across the world on her own. The days of leisurely car journeys, the Train Bleu and the mail-boats, were over. And the thought of foreign airports and ripping through space in supersonic jets she had never found particularly appealing.

No. None of these things. For the moment, she would do nothing, say nothing, tell nobody. Mr. Brookner had come and gone and no person knew of his visit. Until he got in touch with her again, it was better to carry on as if nothing had happened. She told herself that she would put him out of her mind, but found this impossible. Each day, she waited to hear from him. Every time the telephone rang, she dashed for it, like an eager girl awaiting a call from her lover. But, unlike that eager girl, as the days went by and nothing happened, she stayed unanxious, unperturbed. There was always tomorrow. There was no hurry. Sooner or later he would have news for her.

Meantime, life went on and spring, in more ways than one, was in the air. The orchard was bright with drifts of daffodils, their yellow trumpets dancing in the breeze. Trees were misted in the tender green of new foliage, and in the sheltered beds close to the house the wallflowers and polyanthus opened their velvety faces, filling the air with nostalgic scent. Danus Muirfield, with the vegetable garden neatly planted, had given the lawn its first cut of the season and was now engaged in hoeing, raking, and mulching all the borders. Mrs. Plackett came and went, started in on an orgy of spring-cleaning and washed all the bedroom curtains. Antonia pegged them out, like banners, on the line. Her energy was enormous, and she gladly took on any task that Penelope could not be bothered to do for herself, like driving to Pudley to do the huge weekly shopping, or clearing out the store cupboard and scrubbing all the shelves. When she was not occupied indoors, she could usually be found in the garden, erecting a trellis for the sweet-pea seedlings, or clearing the terrace tubs of their early narcissus and filling them with geraniums and fuchsia and nasturtiums. If Danus was there, she was never far from his side, and their voices floated across the garden as they laboured together. Seeing them, pausing to watch from an upstairs window, Penelope was filled with satisfaction. Antonia was a different person from that strained and exhausted girl that Noel had driven down from London; she had lost the pale sadness that she had brought from Ibiza, lost the dark rings beneath her eyes. Her hair shone, her skin bloomed, and as well there was an aura about her, undefinable, but still, to Penelope's experienced eye, unmistakable.

Antonia, she suspected, had fallen in love.

"I think the nicest thing in the world is doing something con-structive in a garden on a fine morning. It's a combination of the best of everything. In Ibiza, the sun was always so hot and you got dreadfully sweaty and sticky, and then you'd have to go and jump into the pool."

"We haven't got a pool here," Danus pointed out. "I sup-pose we could always go and jump into the Windrush."

"It would be icy. I put my feet in the other day and it was terrible. Danus, will you always be a gardener?"

"Why do you suddenly ask that?"

"I don't know. I was just thinking. You seem to have so much behind you. School and going to America and then your Horticultural degree. It seems a bit of a waste if you're never going to do anything but plant other people's cabbages and pull up other people's weeds."

"But I'm not always going to do that, am I?"

"Aren't you? Then what are you going to do?"

"Save up until I've got enough to buy a bit of land, have my own place, grow vegetables, sell plants, bulbs, roses, gnomes, any-thing anybody wants to buy."

"A garden centre?"

"I'd specialize in something . . . roses or fuchsias, just to be a bit different from all the others."

"Would it cost an awful lot? To start up, I mean?"

"Yes. The cost of land's high, and it would need to be large enough to make it a viable proposition."

"Couldn't your father help you? Just to get started."

"Yes, he could if I asked him. But I'd prefer to do it on my own. I'm twenty-four now. Perhaps by the time I'm thirty I'll be able to establish myself."

"Six years to wait seems for ever. I'd want it now."

"I've learned to be patient."

"Whereabouts? I mean, where would you have this garden centre?"

"I'm not bothered. Wherever it was needed. I'd prefer to stay this end of the country, though. Gloucestershire, Somerset."

"I think Gloucestershire's the best. It's so beautiful. And think of the market. All those rich commuters from London, buying gorgeous golden stone houses and wanting their gardens filled with goodies. You'd make a fortune. If I were you, I'd stay right here. Find yourself a little house and a couple of acres. That's what I'd do."

"But you're not going to open a garden centre. You're going to be a model."

"Only if I can't think of anything else to do."

"You're a funny creature. Most girls would give their eyes for a chance like that."

"Wouldn't that rather defeat the purpose?"

"Besides, you wouldn't want to spend your life hoeing tur-nips."

"I wouldn't grow turnips. I'd grow delicious things like corn on the cob and asparagus and peas. And don't look so sceptical. I'm very proficient. In Ibiza we never bought a single vegetable.  

We grew them all, and fruit as well. We had orange trees and lemons, too. Daddy used to say there was nothing more splendid than a gin and tonic with a slice of freshly picked lemon. They taste quite different to horrid, bought, shop ones."

"I suppose you could grow lemons in a glasshouse."

"The nice thing about lemon trees is that they fruit and flower at the same time. That way they always look pretty. Danus, did you never want to be a lawyer like your father?"

"Yes, I did at one time. Thought I'd follow in the old man's footsteps. But then I went to America, and after that, things sort of changed. And I decided to spend my life using my hands rather than my head."

"But you do use your head. Gardening takes a lot of thought, a lot of knowledge and planning. And if you get your garden centre, you'll have to do all the accounts and the ordering and the taxes. ... I don't call that not using your head. Was your father disappointed that you stopped wanting to be a lawyer?"

"To begin with. But we talked it over and he came around to seeing my point of view."

"Wouldn't it be utterly awful to have a father you couldn't talk to? Mine was perfect. You could tell him anything. I wish you could have met him. And I can't even show you my darling Ca'n D'alt, because some other family are living in it now. Danus, was it anything special that made you switch careers? Was it something that happened in America?"

"Perhaps."

"Was what happened something to do with why you don't drive a car and never take a drink?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"I just think about it sometimes. I just wondered."

"Does it bother you? Would you like me to be like Noel Keeling, racing up and down the motorway in an E-type, and reaching for a drink every time things get rough?"

"No, I wouldn't want you to be like Noel. If you were like Noel, I shouldn't be here, helping you. I'd be lying in a deck-chair, leafing over the pages of a magazine."

"Then why don't you just leave well alone? Here, you're planting a seedling, not hammering in a nail. Do it gently, like you were putting a baby to bed. Tuck it in, no more. It has to have room to grow. It has to have space to breathe."

She was bicycling. Freewheeling downhill between fuchsia hedges hung with pink and purple ballerinas. The road ahead curved white and dusty, and in the distance was a sea blue as sapphire. There was a Saturday-morning feeling. She wore sand-shoes. She came to a house, and it was Cam Cottage, but it wasn't Cam Cottage because it had a flat roof. Papa was there, wearing his wide-brimmed hat, sitting on a camp-stool, with his easel set up before him. He didn't have arthritis, and he was painting long strokes of colour on the canvas, and when she stood by him to watch, he did not look up, but said, "One day they will come, to paint the warmth of the sun and the colour of the wind." She looked over the edge of the roof, and it was a garden like Ibiza, with a pool. Sophie was swimming in the pool, to and fro. She was naked; her hair wet and sleek as a seal's fur. There was a view from the roof, but it wasn't the bay, it was the North Beach, with the tide out, and she was herself, searching, with a scarlet bucket filled with huge shells. Scallops and mussels and shining cowries. But she wasn't searching for shells, she was searching for something, somebody else; he was somewhere around. The sky became dark. She made her way across the deep sand, struggling against the wind. The bucket grew impossibly heavy, so she set it down and left it. The wind brought a sea mist with it, curling in over the beach like smoke, and she saw him walking out of the smoke towards her. He was in uniform but his head was bare. He said, "I've been looking for you," and took her hand, and together, they came to a house. They went in through the door, but it wasn't a house, it was the Art Gallery in the back streets of Porthkerris. And Papa was there again, sitting on a battered couch in the middle of the empty floor. He turned his head. "I would like to be young again," he told them. "To be able to watch it all happening."

She was filled with happiness. She opened her eyes and the happiness stayed, the dream more real than reality. She could feel the smile on her face, as though some person had set it there. The dream faded, but the sense of tranquil content remained. Her eyes took in, contentedly, the shadowy details of her own bedroom. The gleam of the brass bedrail, the looming shape of the huge wardrobe, the open windows with curtains moving lightly in the flow of sweet night air.

I would like to be young again. To be able to watch it all happening.

She was all at once very wide awake and knew that she would not sleep again. She pushed back the blankets and got out of bed, felt for her slippers, reached for her dressing-gown. In the darkness, she opened her door and went downstairs to the kitchen. She switched on the light. All was warm and orderly. She filled a saucepan with milk and put it on to heat. Then she took a mug down from the dresser, put in a spoonful of honey, filled it to the brim with hot milk, stirred. Carrying the mug, she went across the dining room, into the sitting room. She switched on the light that illuminated
The Shell Seekers
, and in its gentle glow, stirred the fire to life. As it blazed, she carried the mug to the sofa, arranged cushions, curled up in a corner with her feet tucked beneath her. Above her the picture shone out into the half-light, brilliant as a stained-glass window with the sun behind it. It was her own personal mantra, pervasive as a hypnotist's charm. She gazed, concentration intent, unblinking, waiting for the spell to work, the magic to happen. She filled her eyes with the blue of sea and sky, then felt the salty wind; smelt seaweed and damp sand; heard the scream of gulls, the drumming of the breeze in her ears.

Safely there, she could allow herself to recall the various and many occasions in her life when she had done just this thing— shut herself away, alone, closeted with
The Shell Seekers
. Thus she had sat, from time to time, during those bleak London years just after the war, bedevilled, sometimes near defeated, by shortages, by lack of money and a paucity of affection; by Ambrose's hopelessness and a frightening loneliness that, for some reason, could not be filled by the company of her children. Thus she had sat the night Ambrose packed his bags, abandoned his family, and headed for Yorkshire, prosperity, and the warm young body of Delphine Hardacre; and, again, when Olivia, most precious of Penelope's offspring, left Oakley Street for good, to set up her own establishment and embark upon her brilliant career.

You must never go back
, they all told her.
Everything will be changed
. But she knew that they were wrong because those things that she most craved were elemental, and blessedly, unless the world blew itself up, remained unchanging.

The Shell Seekers
. Like an old and trusted friend, the picture's constancy filled her with gratitude. And, as one becomes possessive of friends, she had clung to it, lived with it, refused even to speak of letting it go. But now, all at once, things were different. There was not simply a past, but a future as well. Plans to be made, delights in store, a whole new prospect ahead. Besides, she was sixty-four. There weren't that number of years left to be wasted, gazing nostalgically back over her shoulder. She said aloud, "Perhaps I don't need you any more." The picture made no comment. "Perhaps it is time to let you go."