The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  There was nothing for it. He would have to stay. With some venom he kicked aside a broken doll’s cot and, switching off the lights, took himself downstairs.

  * * *

  During the night, the rain ceased, the low clouds blown away and dispersed by a soft south-east wind. Sunday morning dawned clear-skied and tranquil, the stillness pierced only by a chorus of bird-song. It was this which awoke Antonia. The first rays of sunlight were slanting into her bedroom through the open window; these lay warm on the carpet, picked out the deep pink of the roses that patterned the curtains. She got out of bed and went to inspect the day, leaning bare forearms on the sill, smelling the damp and mossy-scented air. The thatch was so low that it tickled the top of her head, and she saw the dew glittering on the grass, and the two thrushes carolling away in the chestnut tree—the sweet mistiness of a perfect spring morning.

  It was half past seven. All yesterday it had rained, and they had not emerged outdoors. Antonia, still unrecovered from traumas and travels, could have asked for nothing better than a house-bound day. She was left alone, snugged by the fire, with the raindrops streaming down the window-panes and the lights on because it was so grey and dark. She had found a book, an Elizabeth Jane Howard she had never read, and after lunch curled up on the sofa to lose herself in it. From time to time Penelope would appear to put a log on the fire, or search for her spectacles, and later she joined Antonia, not to chat, but to read the papers, and later still, bring tea. Up in the attic, Noel, on his own, had spent the long day, finally appearing in what was, obviously, a very bad temper.

  This made Antonia a little uncomfortable. She and Penelope were now in the kitchen, companionably preparing dinner, and one look at Noel’s expression was enough to bring on a feeling of doom, and a certainty that his disgruntlement was about to destroy the peaceful mood of the day.

  To be honest, everything about Noel made her feel a little uncomfortable. He had all of Olivia’s dark, quick-tongued vitality, but none of his sister’s warmth. He made Antonia feel plain and gauche, and she found it difficult to think of things to say to him that were neither banal nor boring. When he came through the kitchen door, with a face black as thunder and a streak of dust down one side of his cheek, to pour himself a strong whisky and demand of his mother why the hell she’d brought all that clobber down to Gloucestershire from Oakley Street, Antonia’s legs had quaked at the prospect of a scene, or, worse, an evening of silent sulks, but Penelope took it all in her stride, was unprovoked by his attack, and was obviously not about to be browbeaten by her son.

  “Laziness, I suppose,” she told Noel airily. “It was easier to pack it all into the removal van than to start deciding what to do with it. I’d enough on my plate without going through all those old books and letters.”

  “But who collected them all in the first place?”

  “I’ve no idea:”

  Defeated, silenced by her good humour, he tossed the whisky down the back of his throat, and at once became a little more relaxed. He even managed a wry smile. “You are,” he told his mother, “the most impossible woman.”

  She accepted this, as well. “Yes, I know, but we can’t all be perfect. And just think how good I am at other things. Like cooking meals for you and always having the right sort of drink in the cupboard. Your father’s mother, if you recall, never kept anything in her sideboard except bottles of sherry that tasted like raisins.”

  He screwed up his face in remembered distaste. “What is for dinner?”

  “Baked trout with almonds, new potatoes, and raspberries and cream. No less than you deserve. And you can choose a suitable bottle of wine and then take your drink upstairs and have a bath.” She smiled at her son, but her dark eyes were sharp. “I’m certain you need one, after all that hard labour.”

  And so, after all, it had been an easy evening. Tired, they had all gone to bed early and Antonia had slept through the night. Now, with the resilience of youth, and for the first time for days and days, she felt herself again. She wanted to be out of doors, running through grass, filling her lungs with cool fresh air. The spring morning waited for her and she knew that she must be part of it.

  She dressed, went downstairs, took an apple from the bowl on the kitchen dresser, and let herself out through the conservatory and into the garden. Eating the apple, she crossed the lawn. The dew soaked through her canvas sneakers and they left a trail of footsteps on the damp grass. Under the chestnut tree and through the gap in the privet hedge, she found herself in the orchard. A rough path wound down through the unkept grass, already spiked by the daffodil shoots, past the remains of a bonfire, and around a newly trimmed hawthorn hedge. Beyond, she came upon the river, flowing deep and narrow between high banks. She followed this downstream, beneath an arch of willows, and then the willows thinned out and the river wound onwards through wide water meadows filled with grazing cattle; beyond these the gentle hills climbed to the sky. There were sheep on the upland pastures, and in the distance a man, with a dog at his heels, climbed the slope towards them.

  Now, she was close upon the village. The old church with its square tower, the golden-stone-slated cottages, lay in the curve of the road. Smoke rose straight into the motionless air, from chimneys, from newly kindled fires. The sun was climbing in the crystal sky, and its thin warmth made the bridge smell of creosote. It was a good smell. She sat on the bridge, with her damp legs dangling, and finished the apple. She flung the core into the clear, streaming water, and watched it go, swept away forever.

  Gloucestershire, she decided, was all quite poetically beautiful, and exceeded anything that she might have imagined. And Podmore’s Thatch was perfect, and most particularly of all, so was Penelope. Just being with Penelope made you feel calm and safe and secure, and as though life—lately so unbearably dreadful and sad—was still something exciting and filled with future joys. “You can stay,” she had told Antonia, “as long as you like,” and this was a temptation in itself, but she knew that she couldn’t. On the other hand, what was she going to do?

  She was eighteen. She had no family, no home, no money, and was qualified to do nothing. During those few days she had spent in London, she had confided in Olivia.

  “I don’t even know what I want to do. I mean I’ve never had a great sense of vocation about anything. It would be much easier if I had. And even if I did suddenly decide to be a secretary or a doctor or a chartered accountant, to learn how to do anything costs so much money.”

  “I could help you,” Olivia had said.

  Antonia at once became agitated. “No, you mustn’t even think of it. I’m not your responsibility.”

  “In a way, you are. You’re Cosmo’s child. And I wasn’t thinking so much of writing enormous cheques. I was thinking that I could help you in other ways. Introduce you to people. Have you ever thought of modelling?”

  Modelling. Antonia’s mouth dropped in astonishment. “Me? I couldn’t be a model. I’m not a bit beautiful.”

  “You don’t have to be beautiful. You just have to have the right shape and you’ve got it.”

  “I couldn’t be a model. I get self-conscious if someone points a camera in my direction.”

  Olivia laughed. “You’d get over that. All you’d need is a good photographer, someone who’d give you confidence. I’ve seen it happen before. Ugly ducklings blossom into swans.”

  “Not me.”

  “Don’t be so timid. There’s nothing wrong with your face unless it’s those white eyelashes. And yet they’re wondrously long and thick. I can’t think why you don’t wear mascara.”

  Her eyelashes were the greatest source of shame to Antonia, and mention of them made her blush with embarrassment.

  “I’ve tried, Olivia, but I can’t. I’m allergic to it, or something. My eyelids swell up, and then my cheeks, and I look like a turnip lantern, and my eyes start streaming and all the black runs down my face. A disaster, but I can’t do anything about it.”

  “Why don’t you have them d
yed?”

  “Dyed?”

  “Yes. Dyed black. In a beauty parlour. And then all your troubles would be over.”

  “But wouldn’t I be allergic to dye?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. You’d have to find out. Anyway, this is all beside the point. We’re talking about you getting a job as a photographic model. Just for a year or two. You’d earn good money and you could save a bit, and then when you’ve decided what you do want to do, you’d have a little capital behind you; be independent. Think about it, anyway, while you’re down at Podmore’s Thatch. Let me know what you’ve decided and I’ll arrange a sitting.”

  “You are kind.”

  “Not at all. Just practical.”

  Considered objectively, it wasn’t a bad idea. The thought of actually doing such a job filled Antonia with alarm, but if she could earn some money that way, surely it was worth a bit of agonizing and embarrassment and having one’s face caked in make-up. And anyway, how ever hard she thought, she couldn’t come up with anything else that she really did want to do. She quite liked cooking and gardening and planting things and picking fruit—during the two years she had spent with Cosmo in Ibiza, she had done little else—but it wasn’t possible to make much of a career out of picking fruit. And she didn’t want to work in an office, and she didn’t want to work in a shop, nor a bank, nor a hospital, so what was the alternative?

  Across the valley, from the church tower, a single bell began to toll, bringing a sort of melancholy tranquillity to the peaceful scene. Antonia thought of other bells: goat bells in Ibiza, discordant, clanging away in the early mornings across the rocky arid fields that surrounded Cosmo’s house. That and the crowing of cocks, and the crickets of the darkness … all sounds of Ibiza, gone forever, swept away into the past. She thought about Cosmo, and for the first time was able to do this without having her eyes fill with tears. Grief was like a terrible burden, but at least you could lay it down by the side of the road and walk away from it. Antonia had come only a few paces, but already she could turn and look back and not weep. It wasn’t anything to do with forgetting. It was just accepting. Nothing was ever so bad once you had accepted it.

  The church bell clanged on for ten minutes or so, and then abruptly ceased. The silence that followed it slowly filled with the small sounds of the morning. The flowing water, the lowing of cattle, the distant baa-ing of sheep. A dog barked. A car started up. Antonia realized that she was ravenously hungry. She got to her feet and walked back off the bridge and began to retrace her steps, heading for Podmore’s Thatch and breakfast. Boiled eggs, perhaps, and brown bread and butter and strong tea. The very idea of such delicious food filled her with satisfaction. Mindlessly happy for the first time in weeks, she began to run, ducking her head beneath the trailing branches of the willows, lighthearted and free as a girl to whom something wonderful was just about to happen.

  By the time she came to the hawthorn hedge and the gate that led into Penelope’s orchard, she was out of breath and warm with exertion. Panting, she leaned on the gate for a moment, and then opened it and went through. As she did this, a movement caught her eye, and she looked up and saw a man wheeling a barrow down the twisting path that led from the garden, making his way beneath Penelope’s washing line and between the gnarled apple and pear trees. A young man, tall and long-legged. Not Noel. Somebody new.

  She closed the gate. Its click caught his attention and he glanced up and saw her.

  “Good morning,” he called, and came on, the barrow trundling over the tussocky grass, its wheel squeaking, in need of oil. Antonia stayed where she was, watching his progress. By the burnt-out bonfire he stopped, set down the barrow, and straightened his back to stand, observing her. He wore patched and faded jeans, tucked into rubber boots, and a frayed and baggy sweater over a bright blue shirt. The collar of this was turned up around his neck, and his eyes were the same bright blue; deep-set and unblinking in his weather-tanned face.

  He said, “Lovely day.”

  “Yes.”

  “Been for a walk?”

  “Just down to the bridge.”

  “You must be Antonia.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Mrs. Keeling told me you’d be coming.”

  “I don’t know who you are.”

  “The gardener. Danus Muirfield. I’ve come to help for the day. Help clear the attic. Burn all the rubbish.”

  The wheelbarrow contained a few cardboard boxes, old newspapers, a long pitchfork. He took hold of the pitchfork and with it began stirring up the sodden ashes of the previous fire, scraping them aside to clear a dry patch of ground.

  “There’s a mountain of stuff that’ll have to be burnt,” Antonia told him. “I went up to the attic yesterday and saw it all.”

  “That’s all right; we’ve got the whole day to do it.”

  She liked his saying “we.” It seemed to include her, unlike Noel’s cool rejection of her tentative offer to help him. It made her feel not only part of the whole project, but welcome as well.

  “I haven’t had my breakfast yet, but as soon as I have I’ll come and give you a hand.”

  “Mrs. Keeling’s in the kitchen, boiling eggs.”

  Antonia smiled. “I hoped it would be boiled eggs.”

  But he did not smile back. “You go and eat them,” he told her. He drove the prongs of the pitchfork into the black earth and turned to collect a wad of newspaper. “You can’t do a hard day’s work on an empty stomach.”

  * * *

  Nancy Chamberlain, with pigskin-gloved hands firmly clenched on the wheel of her car, drove through the smiling sunlit Cotswolds towards Podmore’s Thatch, and Sunday lunch with her mother. She was in a good mood, her high spirits attributable to a number of factors. The unexpectedly bright day was one of them, the blue skies affecting not only herself but her household as well, so that the children had not quarrelled at breakfast, George had come out with a dry joke or two over his Sunday-morning sausages, and Mrs. Croftway had actually offered to take the dogs for their afternoon walk.

  Without the chore of a huge Sunday lunch to be prepared, there had, for once, been time for everything. Time for Nancy to take trouble with her appearance (she was wearing her best coat and skirt, and the crêpe de Chine blouse with the bow at the neck); time to deliver Melanie and Rupert to the Wainwrights; time to wave George off to his Diocesan meeting; time, even, to go to church. Going to church always made Nancy feel pious and good, just as attending committee meetings made her feel important. So, for once, her own image of herself matched up to her ambitions. She was a well-organized country lady, with children invited to spend the day with suitable friends, a husband involved in worthwhile duties, and servants devoted.

  All this filled her with a sleek and unaccustomed confidence, and as she drove, she planned exactly what she was going to do and say during the course of the afternoon. At a suitable moment, alone with her mother, perhaps over coffee, she would bring up the subject of Lawrence Stern’s pictures. Mention the enormous price that The Water Carriers had fetched, and point out the short-sightedness of not taking advantage of the market while it was at its peak. She saw herself doing this, reasoning quietly, making it clear that she was thinking only of her mother’s good.

  Sell. Just the panels, of course, which hung, unobserved and unappreciated, on the landing outside Penelope’s bedroom. Not The Shell Seekers. There could be no question of disposing of that painting, so loved and so much part of her mother’s life, but still, Nancy would quote George and become very businesslike. Suggest reassessment and possibly reinsurance. Surely Penelope, touchy as she was about her possessions, could raise no objection to such sensible and daughterly concern?

  The winding road crested the hill and below, in the valley, the village of Temple Pudley was revealed, glittering like a flint in the sunlight. There was little sign of activity save the plume of dark bonfire smoke that poured from her mother’s garden. So absorbed had Nancy been in her plans for selling the panels an
d releasing hundreds of thousands of lovely pounds that she had forgotten the real purpose of the weekend, which was to clear out the loft at Podmore’s Thatch and dispose of all the rubbish. She hoped that she would not be roped in for any of the dirty work. She was not dressed for bonfires.

  Moments later, as the church clock struck the half hour, she turned in through the gate of her mother’s house and drew up by the open door. She saw Noel’s old Jaguar parked by the garage, an unfamiliar bicycle leaning against the wall of the house, and a forlorn group of unburnable objects that had obviously been dumped, pending disposal. Some scales designed for weighing infants, a doll’s perambulator missing a wheel, an iron bedstead or two, and a couple of chipped chamberpots. She picked her way past these and went indoors.

  “Mother.”

  The kitchen, as always, was redolent with delicious smells, roasting lamb, chopped mint, a newly sliced lemon. Nancy was reminded of childhood and the massive meals that had been concocted then, in the huge basement kitchen at Oakley Street. Breakfast seemed a long time away, and her mouth began to water.

  “Mother!”

  “I’m here.”

  Nancy found her in the conservatory, not doing anything, just standing deep in thought. She saw that her mother was dressed, not for an occasion, as Nancy was, but in her oldest clothes. A worn and faded denim skirt, a cotton shirt with a frayed collar, and a darned cardigan with sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Nancy put down her lizard handbag, drew off her gloves, and went to give her parent a kiss.

  “What are you doing?” she asked her.

  “I’m trying to decide where we should eat lunch. I was just going to lay the table in the dining room, and then I thought, it’s such a beautiful day, why not have it here. And it’s marvellously warm, even with the door open to the garden. Do admire my freesias! Aren’t they precious? How nice to see you and how smart you look. Now, what do you think? Shall we eat out here? Noel can carve in the kitchen and we can all carry our plates through. I think it would be fun. The first picnic of the year, and everybody’s so dirty anyway, it might be easier.”