The Shell Seekers (22 page)

She was about to ask him about his work and how it was going, and had opened her mouth to do this, when he forestalled her by saying, "Ma, talking of Cornwall . . ." (had they been?) ". . . did you know that one of your father's pictures is coming under the hammer at Boothby's this week? The Water Carriers. Rumour has it that it'll go for something like two hundred thousand. Be interesting to see if it does."

"Yes, I did know. Olivia mentioned it during lunch yesterday."

"You should make a trip to London. Be in at the kill. Ought to be amusing."

"Are you going to go?"

"If I can get away from the office."

"It's extraordinary how fashionable those old works have become. And the prices people pay. Poor Papa would turn in his grave if he knew what they were going for."

"Boothby's must have made a fortune out of them. Did you see their advertisement in The Sunday Times?"

"I haven't read The Times yet."

It lay, folded, on the seat of her armchair. Noel reached for it, opened it, and finding what he looked for, turned back the pages, and handed it across. She saw, in the bottom corner, one of the regular advertisements inserted by Boothby's, the Fine Art Dealers.

"Minor Work or Major Discovery?"

Her eyes moved to the small print. Apparently two small oil paintings had come on the market, in appearance and subject matter very similar. One had fetched three hundred and forty pounds, the other over sixteen thousand.

Aware of Noel's eyes upon her, she read on.

Boothby's sales have done much to inspire the recent reappraisal of this neglected Victorian period. Our ex-perience and advice are at the disposal of potential clients. If you have a work of this period which you would like appraised, why not telephone our expert, Mr. Roy Brookner, who will be pleased to travel and offer advice, entirely free of charge.

There was the address and the telephone number and that

was all. ~~

Penelope folded the paper and laid it down. Noel waited. She raised her head and looked at him.

"Why did you want me to read this?"

"Just thought you'd be interested."

"In having my pictures appraised?"

"Not all of them. Just the Lawrence Sterns."

"For insurance purposes?" asked Penelope evenly.

"If you like. I don't know how much you've got them in-sured for now. But don't forget, the market's at its peak just now. A Millais fetched eight hundred thousand the other day."

"I don't own a Millais."

"You . . . wouldn't consider selling?"

"
Selling
? My father's pictures?"

"Not
The Shell Seekers
, of course. But maybe the panels?"

"They're unfinished. They're probably worth nothing."

"That's what you think. That's why you should have them valued. Now. When you know what they're worth, you might even change your mind. After all, hanging up there on the landing, nobody sees them, and you probably never even look at them. You'd never miss them."

"How could you possibly know whether I would miss them or not?"

He shrugged. "Just taking a guess. It's not as though they're very good, and the subject matter is nauseous."

"If that is how you feel about them, what a very good thing it is that you no longer have to live with them." She turned from him. "Amabel, my dear, I wonder if you would like another cup of tea."

Noel knew that when his mother became frosty and digni-fied, she was on the verge of losing her temper, and to continue to press his point would do more harm than good and simply reinforce her stubbornness. At least he had brought the subject up, and sown the seeds of his idea. Left alone, she might well come around to his way of thinking. And so, with his most delightful smile, and one of his disconcerting about-turns, he conceded defeat.

"All right. You win. I won't talk about it any more." He set down his cup, turned back his cuff, and looked at his watch.

"Are you pressed for time?" his mother asked him.

"We oughtn't to stay too long. We've got a long drive back to London and the traffic'll be gruesome. Ma, do you know if my squash racket's up in my room? I've got a game fixed up, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the flat."

Much relieved at the change of subject, "I don't know," Penelope said. His small room here at Podmore's Thatch was stacked with his boxes and trunks and various pieces of sporting equipment, but as she went into it as little as possible, for he rarely spent a night in the place, she had no idea what lay amongst the muddle. "Why don't you go and look?"

"I'll do that." He unfolded his long legs and stood up, said, "Shan't be a moment," and took himself off. They heard his footsteps go up the stairs. Amabel sat there, stifling another yawn, and looking like a disconsolate mermaid.

"Have you known Noel for long?" Penelope asked, despising herself for sounding both stilted and formal.

"About three months."

"Do you live in London?"

"My parents live in Leicestershire, but I've got a flat in London."

"Do you have a job?"

"Only when I have to."

"Would you like another cup of tea?"

"No, but I'd love another slice of cake."

Penelope gave her one. Amabel ate it. Penelope wondered if she would notice if Penelope picked up a newspaper and read it. She thought how charming the young could be, and how grossly uncharming, for Amabel, it seemed, had never been taught to eat with her mouth shut.

In the end, defeated, she stopped trying, picked up the tea-things, and carried them out to the kitchen, leaving Amabel looking as though she were about to fall asleep. By the time she had washed up the cups and saucers, Noel had not reappeared. Presumably he was still hunting for the elusive squash racket. Thinking that she would help him, she went up the kitchen stairs and along, through the bedrooms, to his end of the house. The door to his room stood open, but he was not inside. Puzzled, she hesitated, and then heard cautious footsteps creaking above her. The loft? What was he doing in the loft?

She looked up. The old wooden ladder led to the square aperture in the. ceiling.

"Noel?"

A moment later he appeared, first long legs and then the rest of him, easing himself out of the loft and down the ladder.

"What on earth are you doing up there?"

He reached her side. There was fluff on his jacket and a bit of cobweb in his hair.

"Couldn't find the squash racket," he told her. "Thought it might be in the loft."

"Of course it's not in the loft. There's nothing in the loft but a lot of old rubbish from Oakley Street."

He laughed, dusting himself down. "You can say that again."

"You can't have looked properly." She went into the cramped little bedroom, shifted some coats and a pair of cricket pads, and instantly found the squash racket hidden beneath them. "It's here, you idiot. You were always hopeless at finding things."

"Oh, hell. Sorry. Thanks anyway." He took it from her. She watched him, but there was nothing devious in his expression.

She said, "Amabel is wearing my father's coat. When did you lay your hands on that?"

Even this did not throw him. "I nicked it during the big move. You never wore it, and it's so splendidly grand."

"You should have asked me."

"I know. Do you want it back?"

"Of course I don't. You keep it." She thought of Amabel, draped in its shabby luxury. Amabel and, doubtless, countless other girls. "I am sure you will put it to better use than I ever could."

They found Amabel fast asleep. Noel woke her, and she struggled to her feet, yawning and bug-eyed, and he helped her into the coat, and kissed his mother goodbye, and drove Amabel away. When they had gone, she went back indoors. She closed the door and stood in the kitchen, filled with unease. What had he hoped to find in the loft? He had known perfectly well that the squash racket was not there, so what had he been looking for?

She went back to the sitting room, put a log on the fire. The Sunday Times lay where she had dropped it on the floor. She stooped and picked it up and read once more the Boothby's advertisement. Then she went to her desk, found scissors, carefully clipped it out, and stowed it away in one of the small drawers of her bureau.

In the middle of the night, she awoke with a dreadful start. A wind had risen; it was very dark, and it was raining again. Her windows rattled and raindrops dashed against the glass. "I went to Cornwall, but it rained all the time," Amabel had said. Porthkerns. She remembered the rain, driven in from the Atlan-tic on clouts of wind. She remembered her bedroom at Cam Cottage, lying in the darkness as she lay now, with the sound of waves breaking on the beach far below and the curtains stirring at the open windows and the beams of the lighthouse swinging their way across the white-painted walls. She remembered the garden, scented with escallonia, and the lane that led up onto the moor, and the view from the top, the spread of the bay, the brilliant blue of the sea. The sea was one of the reasons she wanted so much to go back. Gloucestershire was beautiful, but it had no sea, and she had a hunger for the sea. The past is another country, but the journey could be made. There was nothing to stop her going. Alone r in company, it didn't matter. Before it was too late, she would take the road west to that rugged claw of England where, once, she had lived, and loved and been young.

6

LAWRENCE

She was nineteen. Between news bulletins, anxiously listened to, the radio played tunes like "Deep Purple" and "These Foolish Things," and music from the last Fred Astaire and Ginger Rog-ers film. All summer the town had been packed with holiday-makers. Shops sprouted buckets and spades and beachballs, smelling rubbery in the hot sun, and smart ladies on holiday staying at the Castle Hotel shocked the locals by walking the streets in beach pyjamas, and sunbathing in daring two-piece bathing costumes. Most of the holiday-makers had gone now, but on the sands there were still a few about, and the tents and bathing boxes had not yet been dismantled and put away. Penelope, walking at the edge of the sea, saw the children, cared for by uniformed nannies who sat in deck-chairs and knitted, the while keeping an eye on small charges who dug sand-castles, or ran shrieking into the shallow waves.

It was a warm and sunny Sunday morning, too good to be indoors. She had asked Sophie to come with her, but Sophie had chosen to stay in the kitchen to cook the lunch, and Penelope left her slicing vegetables for a chicken cassoulet. And Papa, after breakfast, had put on his old wide-brimmed hat and taken himself off to his studio. From there, Penelope would collect him. Together they would walk back up the hill, to Cam Cottage and the traditional midday meal that awaited them.

"Don't let him go into the pub, my darling. Not today. Bring him straight home."

She had promised. By the time they sat down to Sophie's cassoulet, it would all be over. By then they would know.

She had come to the end of the beach—to the rocks, and the diving board. She climbed the flight of concrete steps and came out in a narrow cobbled lane, winding downhill between the irregular, whitewashed houses. There were a lot of cats about, scavenging for fish scraps in the gutters, and sea-gulls soared overhead, or settled on roof-tops and chimneys to survey the world with cold yellow eyes and scream defiance at nothing in particular.

At-the bottom of the hill stood the church. The bells were ringing for Morning Service, and a great many more people than usual were congregating to tread heavily up the gravel pathway and disappear into the darkness beyond the great oaken doors. Dark-suited, piously hatted, with serious faces and a solemn gait, they came from all over the town. There weren't many smiles, and nobody said good morning.

It was five to eleven. In the harbour the tide was at half ebb, and fishing boats, tied up to the wall, leaned, propped on wooden stanchions. It was all strangely deserted. Only a group of children playing with an old pilchard box, and, on the other side of the harbour, a man working on his boat. The sound of hammer-blows rang across the deserted sands.

The church clock began to strike the hour, and the gulls, perched on the tower-top, rose in a cloud of white wings, their voices raised in a clamour of fury at being disturbed by the reverberant bell. She went on, walking slowly, her hands in the pockets of her cardigan; sudden small gusts of breeze blowing her long dark hair in strands across her cheeks. All at once, she became aware of her solitude. No other person was about, and as she turned from the harbour and began to climb a steep street, she heard, through open windows, the final chimes of Big Ben. She heard the voice begin to speak. Imagined families indoors, gathered around their radios, staying close, getting comfort from one another.

Now, she was truly in Downalong, in the old part of the town, making her way through the baffling maze of cobbled lanes and unexpected squares towards the open shores of the North Beach. She could hear the sound of breakers crashing on the shore, and felt the wind. It plucked at the skirt of her cotton dress and blew her hair into disorder. She turned the corner and saw the beach. She saw Mrs. Thomas's little shop, open for an hour for the sale of newspapers. The racks outside its door were stacked with these, headlines tall and grave as tombstones. She had a few coppers in her pocket, and her stomach, knocking with apprehension, felt empty, so she went inside and bought herself, for twopence, a bar of Cadbury's peppermint chocolate.