The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

He said nothing to this, but his arms tightened about her, his hand gently patting her shoulder, as though he soothed a highly strung animal. After a bit, she felt comforted. She had stopped feeling cold. She freed her hands and laid them against his chest and drew away from him, composed now, and herself again.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m not usually so emotional.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “There’s nothing anybody can do. It’s all over.”

  “What about today? Would you rather we called it all off? I’ll just disappear, get out of your way, if you’d like me to. You’d maybe like to be alone.”

  “No, I don’t want to be alone. The last thing I want is to be alone.” She marshalled her flying thoughts, set them into order, and knew that her first priority was to let her mother know that Cosmo had died. She said, “But I’m afraid Sissinghurst or Henley are out. I’ll have to go to Gloucestershire after all, and see my mother. I told you she’d been unwell, but I didn’t tell you that she had a slight heart attack. And she was so fond of Cosmo. When I was living in Ibiza, she came and stayed with us. It was such a happy time. One of the happiest times of my life. So I have to tell her that he’s died, and I want to be there when I do it.” She looked at Hank. “Would you mind coming with me? I’m afraid it’s a dreadfully long drive, but she’ll give us lunch and we can spend a peaceful afternoon with her.”

  “I’d be pleased to come. And I’ll drive you.”

  He was like a rock. She managed a smile, filled with affectionate gratitude. “I’ll ring her now.” She reached for the telephone receiver. “Tell her to expect us for lunch.”

  “Couldn’t we take her out for a meal?”

  Olivia dialled the number. “You don’t know my mother.”

  He accepted this, and got to his feet. “I smell coffee perking,” he observed. “How would it be if I cooked the breakfast?”

  They were out of the house and away by nine o’clock in the morning, Olivia in the passenger seat of her own dark green Alphasud, and Hank at the wheel. He drove, at first, with the greatest care, anxious not to forget that he was on the wrong side of the road, but after they had stopped to fill up with petrol, he became more confident, picked up speed, and they headed down the motorway towards Oxford at a steady seventy.

  They did not talk. His concentration was all for the other traffic and the great road that curved ahead of them. Olivia was content to be silent, her chin sunk deep in the fur collar of her coat, her eyes watching but not seeing the dull countryside that flew past the windows.

  But after Oxford, it got better. It was a sparkling winter day, and as the low sun rose in the late winter sky, the frost on plough and grass melted, and lacy black trees threw long shadows across road and field. Farmers had started ploughing, and hosts of gulls followed the tractors and the furrows of newly turned black earth. They passed through small towns bustling with Saturday-morning busyness. Narrow streets were lined with the cars of country families, in from outlying districts to do the weekend shopping, and pavements teemed with mothers and children and perambulators, and market stalls piled with garish garments, plastic toys and balloons, flowers, and fresh fruit and vegetables. Farther on still, outside a village pub, they came upon a Meet, the cobbled yard a-clatter with horses’ hooves, the air loud with the bay and whimper of hounds, the cry of hunting horns, and the raised voices of the huntsmen resplendent in their pink coats. Hank could scarcely believe his good fortune. “Will you look at that?” he kept saying, and he would have stopped the car to watch, but a young policeman firmly moved him on. He drove off, but reluctantly, glancing back over his shoulder for a last glimpse of the traditional English scene.

  “It was like something out of a movie, with that old inn and the cobbled yard. I wish I’d had my camera.”

  Olivia was pleased for him. “You can’t say I’m not giving you your money’s worth. We could have driven all over the country and never found anything as good as that.”

  “This is obviously my lucky day.”

  Now the Cotswolds lay ahead. The roads narrowed, winding through watery meadows and over small stone bridges. Houses and farmsteads, built of honey-coloured Cotswold stone, stood golden in the sunshine, with cottage gardens that, in summer, would be a riot of colour, and orchards of plums and apple trees.

  “I can understand why your mother chose to live here. I’ve never seen such countryside. And everything’s so green.”

  “Funnily enough, she didn’t come here for the lovely countryside. When she sold up the London house, she had every intention of going to live in Cornwall. She’d lived there as a girl, you see, and I think she yearned to go back. But my sister Nancy thought it was too far away, too far from all her children. So she found this house for her. As things have turned out, perhaps it’s all been for the best, but at the time I was angry with Nancy for interfering.”

  “Does your mother live alone?”

  “Yes. But that’s another aggravation. The doctors now say she ought to have a companion, a housekeeper, but I know she’ll resent this most dreadfully. She’s enormously independent and not even very old. Only sixty-four. I feel it’s an insult to her intelligence to start treating her as though she’s already senile. As it is, she never stops. Cooks and gardens and entertains and reads everything she can lay her hands on, and listens to music, and rings people up and has long, satisfying conversations. Sometimes she takes herself off abroad to stay with old friends. France, usually. Her father was a painter, and she spent much of her girlhood in Paris.” She turned her head to smile at Hank. “But why am I telling you about my mother? Before very long, you’ll be able to see it all for yourself.”

  “Did she like Ibiza?”

  “Adored it. Cosmo’s place was an old Ibecenco farmhouse, inland, up in the hills. Very rural. Just my mother’s cup of tea. Whenever she found herself with a spare moment, she disappeared into the garden with a pair of secateurs, just as though she were at home.”

  “Does she know Antonia?”

  “Yes. She and Antonia were out with us at the same time. They made great friends. No age barrier. My mother’s marvellous with young people. Much better than I could ever be.” She was silent for a moment, and then added, in an impulsive rush of honesty, “I’m not very sure of myself even now. I mean, I want to help Cosmo’s child, but I don’t relish the thought of having anyone to live with me, for how ever short a time. Isn’t that a shameful thing to have to admit?”

  “Not shameful. Quite natural. How long will she stay?”

  “I suppose until she finds herself a job and somewhere to live.”

  “Has she got any qualifications for a job?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Probably not. Olivia sighed deeply. The morning’s events had left her drained with emotion and physically exhausted. It was not just that she had yet to come to terms with the shock and grief of Cosmo’s death, but she felt as well surrounded, besieged by other people’s problems. Antonia would arrive, would come and stay, would have to be comforted, encouraged, supported, and, in all likelihood, at the end of the day, be helped to find some sort of a job. Nancy would continue to telephone Olivia and badger her with the question of a housekeeper for their mother, while Mother was going to fight, tooth and nail, any suggestion that she should have anyone to live with her. And on top of all this …

  Her thoughts abruptly stopped dead. And then carefully backtracked. Nancy. Mother. Antonia. But of course. The solution was there. The problems, arranged together, could be made to cancel each other out, like those fraction sums one used to be given at school, with the answer one of beautiful simplicity.

  She said, “I’ve just had the most wonderful idea.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Antonia can come and live with my mother.”

  If she expected instant enthusiasm from him, she did not get it. Hank considered this at some length before asking cautiously, “Will she want to?”

  “Of cou
rse. I told you, she loved Mumma. When she left Ibiza, Antonia didn’t want her to go. And how much better, when she’s only just lost her father, to have a few weeks of quiet and recovery with somebody like my mother before she starts hiking the streets of London trying to find herself a job.”

  “You’ve got a point there.”

  “And on Mumma’s side, it wouldn’t be like having a housekeeper, it would be like having a friend to stay. I’ll suggest it today. See what she thinks. But I’m certain she won’t say no. I’m almost certain she won’t say no.”

  Solving problems and making decisions invariably revitalized Olivia, and all at once she felt better. She sat up, pulled down the sun-screen, and inspected herself in the mirror set in its back. She saw her face, still deathly pale, and there were smudges, like bruises, beneath her eyes. The dark fur of her coat collar emphasized this pallor, and she hoped that her mother would not remark upon it. She put on a bit of lipstick and combed her hair, then folded back the sun-screen and turned her attention to the road ahead.

  By now they had come through Burford, there were only three miles or so to go, and the way was familiar. “We turn right, here,” she told Hank, and he swung the car into the narrow lane, signposted “Temple Pudley,” and slowed down to a cautious crawl. The road climbed, twisting up the side of a hill, and at its summit the village came into view, nestled like a child’s toy in the dip of the valley, with the silver waters of the Windrush, like a ribbon, winding by. The first houses came to meet them; golden stone cottages of great antiquity and beauty. They saw the old wood church, sheltered by yews. A man was driving a flock of sheep, and outside the pub, which was called the Sudeley Arms, cars were parked. Here, Hank drew up and turned off the engine.

  Slightly surprised by this, Olivia turned to look at him. “Are you by any chance feeling in need of a drink?” she asked him politely.

  He smiled and shook his head. “No. But I think you would prefer to have a little time with your Mother alone. I’ll get out here and join you later, if you’ll tell me how to find her house.”

  “It’s the third one down the road. On the right, with a pair of white gates. But you don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” He patted her hand. “But I think it would make things easier for both of you.”

  “You’re very sweet,” she told him, and meant it.

  “I’d like to bring something for your mother. If I suggested to the landlord that he sell me a couple of bottles of wine, would he oblige?”

  “I’m sure, particularly if you tell him they’re for Mrs. Keeling. He’ll probably flog you his most expensive claret.”

  He grinned, opened the door, and got out of the car. She watched him cross the cobbled yard and disappear through the entrance of the pub, cautiously ducking his tall head beneath the lintel. When he had gone, she undid her safety belt, slid behind the driving wheel, and started up the engine. It was nearly twelve o’clock.

  * * *

  Penelope Keeling stood in the middle of her warm and cluttered kitchen and tried to think what she had to do next, and then decided there was nothing, because all that could be was already accomplished. She had even found time to go upstairs and change out of her working clothes and into others suitable for an unexpected luncheon party. Olivia was always so elegant, and the least one could do was to tidy oneself up a bit. With this in mind, she had put on a thick cotton brocade skirt (much loved and very old; the material had started its life as a curtain), a man’s striped woollen shirt, and a sleeveless cardigan the colour of crimson peonies. Her stockings were dark and thick, her shoes heavy laceups. Gold chains were slung about her neck, and with her hair newly dressed and a bit of scent sprayed about her person, she felt quite festive and filled with pleasant anticipation. Olivia’s visits were few and far between, which only made them all the more precious, and ever since the early-morning telephone call from London, she had been in a flurry of preparation.

  But now all was ready. Fires lighted in the sitting room and the dining room, drinks set out, wine opened to chambré. Here, in the kitchen, the air was filled with the scent of slowly roasting sirloin, baking onions, and crisping potatoes. She had made pastry, peeled apples, sliced beans (from the deep-freeze), scraped carrots. Later, she would arrange cheeses on a board, grind the coffee, decant the thick cream she had fetched from the village dairy. Tying on an apron to protect her skirt, she washed up the few pieces of kitchen equipment that stood about, and set them in the rack on the draining board. She stowed away a saucepan or two, wiped down the table with a damp cloth, filled a jug and watered her geraniums. Then she took off her apron and hung it on its peg.

  Her washing machine had stopped churning. She never did a wash unless the day was good for drying, because she had no spin dryer. She liked laundry to be hung in the open air, giving it a delicious fresh smell, and making it infinitely easier to iron. Olivia and her friend would be arriving at any moment, but she collected the big wicker basket and emptied the tangle of damp linen into this, and, with it hitched up onto her hip, she went out of the kitchen, through the conservatory, and into the garden. She crossed the lawn, went between the gap in the privet hedge and so on to the orchard. Half of this was no longer an orchard. She had created a marvellously prolific vegetable garden, but the other half stayed as it had always been, with gnarled old apple trees, and the Windrush flowing silently beyond the hawthorn hedge.

  A long rope was strung between three of these trees, and here Penelope pegged out her washing. Doing this, on a bright fresh morning, was one of her deepest delights. A thrush was singing, and at her feet, thrusting through the tufty damp grass, bulbs were already beginning to shoot. She had planted these herself, thousands of them; daffodils and crocus and scylla and snowdrops. When these faded and the summer grass grew deep and green, other wildflowers raised their heads. Cowslips and cornflowers and scarlet poppies, all grown from seed that she had scattered herself.

  Sheets, shirts, pillowcases, stockings, and night-dresses flapped and danced in the thin breeze. When the basket was empty, she picked it up and made her way back to the house, but slowly, in no hurry, visiting first her vegetable garden to check that the rabbits had not been feasting on the young spring cabbage, and then back to pause by her little tree of Viburnum Fragrans, its twiggy stems smothered in deep pink blossom that smelled, miraculously, of summer. She would fetch her secateurs and clip a spring or two, to scent the sitting room. She moved on, with every intention of going back indoors, but was diverted once more. This time by the delightful prospect of her house, set back beyond the wide, green lawn. There it stood, washed in sunshine, against a backdrop of bare-branched oak trees and a sky of the most pristine blue. Long and low it lay, whitewashed and half-timbered, with its netted thatch jutting out over the upstairs windows like thick, beetling eyebrows.

  Podmore’s Thatch. Olivia thought it a ridiculous name, and she felt embarrassed every time she had to say it; she had even suggested that Penelope think up some other name for the old place. But Penelope knew that you couldn’t change the name of a house any more than you could change the name of a person. Besides, she had found out from the vicar that William Podmore had been the village thatcher more than two hundred years ago, and the cottage was named for him. Which settled the matter then and there.

  Once, it had been two cottages, but it had been converted into one by some previous owner by the simple expedient of knocking doorways in the dividing wall. This meant that the house had two entrances, two rickety stairways, and two bathrooms. It also meant that all the rooms led into each other, which was inconvenient if you happened to crave a bit of privacy. So, downstairs were kitchen, dining room, sitting room, and then the old kitchen of the second house, which Penelope used as a garden room, and where she kept her straw hats, her rubber boots, her canvas apron, flowerpots, trugs, and trowels. Over this was a cramped apartment filled with all Noel’s belongings, and then, in a row, three larger bedrooms. The one over the kitchen was her own.
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  As well, dark and fusty beneath the thatch, a loft ran the length of the roof, and this was filled with everything that Penelope could not bear to throw away when she finally departed from Oakley Street, and for which there was no space anywhere else. For five years she had promised herself that this winter, she would clear and sort it all out, but each time she climbed the wobbly steps and had a look around, she became disheartened by the enormity of the task and feebly put it off for a little longer.

  The garden, when she came here, was a wilderness, but that had been part of the fun. She was a manic gardener and spent every spare moment of her days out of doors, clearing weeds, digging beds, harrowing great loads of manure, cutting out dead wood, planting, taking cuttings, raising seeds. Now, after five years, she was able to stand there and gloat over the fruits of her labour. And did so, forgetting Olivia, forgetting the time. She often did this. Time had lost its importance. That was one of the good things about getting old: you weren’t perpetually in a hurry. All her life, Penelope had looked after other people, but now she had no one to think about but herself. There was time to stop and look, and, looking, to remember. Visions widened, like views seen from the slopes of a painfully climbed mountain, and having come so far, it seemed ridiculous not to pause and enjoy them.

  Of course, age brought its other horrors. Loneliness and sickness. People were always talking about the loneliness of old age, but Penelope relished her solitude. She had never lived alone before, and at first had found it strange, but gradually had learned to accept it as a blessing and to indulge herself in all sorts of reprehensible ways, like getting up when she felt like it, scratching herself if she itched, sitting up until two in the morning to listen to a concert. And food was another thing. All her life she had cooked for her family and friends and she was an excellent cook, but she discovered, as time went by, an underlying penchant for the most disgusting snacks. Baked beans eaten cold, with a teaspoon, out of the tin. Bottled salad cream spread over her lettuce, and a certain sort of pickle which she would have been ashamed to set on her table in the old days of Oakley Street.