The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “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 Carn Cottage, but it wasn’t Carn 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.”

  She finished her drink. Laid down the empty mug, reached for the rug that lay folded over the back of the sofa, settled down on the soft pillows with the blanket for warmth, spread over the length of her body. The Shell Seekers would keep company, keep watch, smile down upon her sleeping form. She thought of the dream, and Papa saying, They will come, to paint the warmth of the sun and the colour of the sky. She closed her eyes. I would like to be young again.

  11

  RICHARD

  By the summer of 1943, Penelope Keeling, along with most other people, felt as though the war had been going on for ever, and moreover, would continue for ever. It was a treadmill of boredom—shortages and black-out, relieved by occasional flashes of horror, terror, or resolution, as British battleships were blown out of the sea, disaster befell Allied troops, or Mr. Churchill came on the wireless to tell everybody how splendidly they were doing.

  It was like the last two weeks before you had a baby, when you knew for certain that the baby was never going to come, and you were going to look like the Albert Hall for the rest of your life. Or being in the middle of a very long, curving railway tunnel, the brightness of day long left behind, and the tiny spark of light at the end of the tunnel not yet in evidence. It would be there one day. Of that no person had the slightest doubt. But meantime all was darkness. You just trod on, one foot at a time, dealing with the day-to-day problems of feeding people, keeping them warm, seeing the children had shoes, and trying to stop the fabric of Carn Cottage from falling into neglect and disrepair.

  She was twenty-three, and sometimes thought that except for next week’s film at the little cinema down in the town, there didn’t seem to be anything to look forward to. Going to the cinema had become quite a cult with her and Doris. Doris called it going to the pictures, and they never missed a single show. Totally unselective, they sat through anything that came their way, simply to escape, if only for an hour or two, from the tedium of their existence. At the end of the show, having dutifully stood to attention for the cracked record of “God Save The King,” they would stumble out into the pitch-dark street, either incapable with excitement, or awash with sentiment, and make their way home, walking arm in arm, giggling fee
bly, tripping over kerbstones, and climbing, by the light of the stars, the steep streets that led to home.

  As Doris invariably remarked, it made a nice change.

  Which it did. One day, Penelope supposed, this grey limbo of war would end, but it was hard to believe and difficult to imagine. Being able to buy steaks and marmalade oranges; not being frightened to listen to the news bulletins; letting the lights from the windows stream out into the darkness without danger of a random bomber or a stream of abuse from Colonel Trubshot. She thought about returning to France, driving down to the south, to the mimosa and the hot sun. And bells, ringing from silenced church towers, not to warn of invasion but to celebrate Victory.

  Victory. The Nazis defeated, Europe freed. Prisoners of war, herded into camps all over Germany, would come home. Servicemen would be demobilized, families reunited. This last was Penelope’s own private stumbling-block. Other wives prayed for and lived for their husbands’ safe return, but Penelope knew that she did not very much mind if she never saw Ambrose again. This was not heartless, it was just that as the months passed, her memories of him had faded and become, somehow, less and less likely. She wanted the war to finish—only a lunatic would wish for anything else—but she did not relish the prospect of starting all over again with Ambrose—her scarcely known and almost forgotten husband—and trying to come to terms with her thoughtless marriage.

  At times, when she was feeling low, a shameful hope would seep up out of her subconscious and skulk around at the back of her mind. A hope that something would happen to Ambrose. Not that he should be killed, of course. That was unthinkable. She wished no person dead, and certainly not a man as young, handsome, and life-loving as he. But if only, between Mediterranean battles and night patrols and U-boat hunts, he could sail into harbour and there come upon some young lady—a nurse, perhaps, or a Wren Officer—infinitely more attractive than his wife, with whom he would fall violently in love, and who, in the fulness of time, would take Penelope’s place by his side and fulfil all Ambrose’s wildest dreams of happiness.

  He would, of course, write to tell her of this amorous entanglement.

  Dear Penelope.

  I hate to do this, but there is only one way to tell you. I have met Another. What has happened between us is too big for either of us to fight. Our love for each other … et cetera, et cetera …

  Every time she received one of his infrequent missives—usually impersonal aerogrammes, one page reduced to the size and shape of a snapshot—her heart lifted in the faint hope that here at last was just such a letter, but she was invariably doomed to disappointment. Reading the few scrawled lines giving her news of wardroom friends whom she had never met, or describing a party in some other nameless ship, she knew that nothing had changed. She was still married to him. He was still her husband. And she would slip the aerogramme back into its envelope, and later—perhaps days later—sit down to try to answer it, writing an even duller letter to Ambrose than he had written to her. “We had tea with Mrs. Penberth. Ronald has joined the Sea Scouts. Nancy can draw a house.”

  Nancy. Nancy was no longer a baby, and as she grew and developed, Penelope became fascinated by the child, and unexpectedly maternal. Seeing her turn from infant to toddler was like watching a bud open into a flower—a slow process, but delightful. She was, as Papa had promised, a Renoir, rose and gold, with sweeping dark lashes and small pearly teeth, and she remained the precious pet of Doris and most of Doris’ friends. Sometimes Doris would wheel the perambulator home from some gathering, bearing in triumph an outgrown smock or party dress bequeathed by another young mother. This would be washed and immaculately ironed and Nancy tricked out in her new finery. Nancy loved being tricked out. “Isn’t she a beauty,” Doris would coo, as much to Nancy as anyone else, and Nancy would smile, much satisfied, and smooth the skirts of her new dress with fat and appreciative fingers.

  At such moments, she was Dolly Keeling all over again, but even this did not spoil Penelope’s pleasure and amusement. “You’re a little madam,” she told Nancy and hoisted the child up into her arms to hug her. “A real little hoot.”

  Keeping Nancy and the boys clothed and the household fed took up almost every moment of her and Doris’ time. Rations had shrunk to laughable proportions. Every week, she walked down the steep streets to the town and Mr. Ridley’s grocer’s shop. She was “registered” with Mr. Ridley. There, she handed over the family ration books and was sold, in return, minute quantities of sugar, butter, margarine, lard, cheese, and bacon. The meat ration was even worse, because you had to queue down the pavement for hours, without any idea of what you were queueing for, and when you bought vegetables or fruit at the greengrocer’s, they were all tipped into your string bag, just the way they were, earth and all, because there was no paper for paper bags and it was considered unpatriotic to ask for one.

  Strange recipes, dreamed up by the Ministry of Food, appeared in the papers, purporting to be not only economical but nourishing and delicious as well. Mr. Woolton’s sausage pie, made with nigh-fatless pastry and a chunk of corned beef. A certain cake, rendered moist with the help of grated carrot, and a casserole dish that consisted almost entirely of potato. GO EASY ON BREAD, EAT POTATOES INSTEAD, they were exhorted by poster, just as they were exhorted to DIG FOR VICTORY, and warned that CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES. Bread was wheat, which had to be imported, at immense peril to ships and lives, from the other side of the Atlantic. White bread had long since disappeared from the shelves of the bakers’ shops, and its place taken by something called a National Loaf, which was greyish-brown and had husky shreds in it. Tweed bread, Penelope called it, and pretended to like it, but Papa pointed out that it was exactly the same colour and texture as the new utility lavatory paper, and decided that the Minister of Food and the Minister of Supply—the two gentlemen presumably responsible for such necessities of life—had somehow got their lines crossed.

  It was all very difficult, and yet, at Carn Cottage, they were better off than most. They still had Sophie’s ducks and hens, and made full use of the copious eggs that these obliging creatures produced, and they had Ernie Penberth.

  Ernie was a Porthkerris man, had lived Downalong all his life. His father was the town greengrocer, making his collections and deliveries in a horse-drawn cart; his mother, Mrs. Penberth, a redoubtable character, was a pillar of the Women’s Guild and regular chapel-goer. As a boy, Ernie had contracted tuberculosis and spent two years in the sanatorium at Tehidy, but once recovered, had been employed by Sophie on the most casual of terms, turning up when needed to do odd jobs about the place or to help with the heavy digging in the garden. His appearance was not impressive, for he was short of stature and sallow-skinned, and because of his illness had failed his medical for the Army. So, instead of going to the war as a soldier, Ernie worked on the land, helping a local hard-pressed farmer whose own sons had been called up. Any spare time, however, that could be gleaned from this arduous labour, was dedicated to helping out the little household at Carn Cottage, and, over the years, Ernie made himself increasingly indispensable, for he proved to be a man who could turn his hand to anything; not only growing magnificent vegetables, but mending fences and lawn-mowers, unfreezing pipes and fixing fuses. He could even wring a chicken’s neck, when none of the rest of them could contemplate putting to death some faithful old bird, who’d kept them in eggs for years, but was now fit only for the pot.

  When food grew really short, and the meat ration shrank to a joint of oxtail for six people, Ernie, by some magic, always came to the rescue, turning up at the back door bearing a rabbit, or a couple of mackerel, or a brace of wood pigeon he had shot himself.

  Meantime, Penelope and Doris did what they could to help inject a little variety into mealtimes. It was at this period that Penelope instigated the habit of a lifetime, which was to carry, whenever she went out for a walk, a haversack, bucket, or basket. Nothing was too humble to be spied, collected, and carted home. A turnip or cabbage, fallen from a cart,
was borne back to Carn Cottage in triumph to form the basis of some nourishing vegetarian dish or broth. Hedgerows were gleaned for blackberries, rose hips, elderberries; and early dew-spangled meadows searched for mushrooms. They lugged home twigs and fir cones for kindling fires, fallen branches, driftwood from the beach to be sawn into logs—anything burnable that would keep the hot-water boiler going and the sitting room fire alight. Hot water was specially precious. Baths were not allowed to be more than three inches deep—Papa painted a sort of Plimsoll line, and above this no person was allowed to go—and they had fallen into the economical habit of queueing up for the same bath-water; children first and then the grown-ups, the final occupant soaping furiously before the water turned chill.

  Clothes were another vexing problem. Most of everybody’s clothes ration went on keeping the children shod and replacing old and worn sheets and blankets, and there was nothing left over for personal needs. Doris, who was dressy, found this a great frustration, and was forever fashioning herself some new garment out of an old one, letting down a hem, or cutting up a cotton dress to make a blouse. Once she turned a blue laundry bag into a dirndl skirt.

  “It’s got LINEN embroidered on the front,” Penelope pointed out when Doris modelled it for her approval.

  “Perhaps people will think that’s what I’m called.”

  Penelope was unbothered by the way she looked. She wore her old clothes, and when they fell to bits, raided Sophie’s cupboards and purloined anything that still hung there. “How can you bear to?” Doris asked her, feeling that Sophie’s clothes were sacred, and perhaps she was right. But Penelope was cold. She buttoned herself into a Shetland cardigan that had belonged to her mother, and would not allow herself a twinge of sentiment.

  Most of the time she went bare-legged, but when the cold east winds of January blew, she reverted to the thick black stockings left over from her days in the WRNS, and when her threadbare overcoat finally disintegrated, she cut a hole in the middle of an old car rug (Black Watch tartan with a woollen fringe) and wore it as a poncho.