The Shell Seekers (33 page)

He thought of telling her why and then decided against it. A French mother and a father who was an artist. Bohemians. He had never known a Bohemian, but he began to realize that he had met one now.

"No reason," he assured her hastily. He could scarcely be-lieve his luck.

"But you looked so surprised."

"Perhaps I was," he admitted, and then smiled, at his most charming. "But perhaps I must stop being surprised by you. Perhaps I should just accept the fact that nothing you could do would surprise me."

"Is that a good thing?"

"It can't be bad."

He took her back to Quarters then, and they kissed good night and she left him and went in, and so bemused and incapable was she that she forgot to sign the book and had to be called back by the Wren on Regulating Duty, who was in a filthy temper because the young Leading Seaman whom she fancied had taken another girl to the cinema.

She got the pass and Ambrose laid his plans. A friend . . . a Lieutenant in the RNVR with enviable connections with the world of theatre . . . managed to get hold of two tickets for
The Dancing Years
at the Drury Lane Theatre. He wangled a bit of petrol and borrowed a fiver from another gullible chum. Midday on the following Saturday saw him driving in through the gates of the Wrennery, to draw up before the doorway in a flourish of flying gravel. A Wren happened to be passing, so he told her to be a love and find Wren Stern and tell her that Sub Lieutenant Keeling was ready and waiting. Her eyes goggled a bit at the racy little car and the handsome young officer, but Ambrose was used to being goggled at and dismissed her patent envy and admiration as no more than his due.

"Nothing you could do would surprise me," he had told Penelope glibly, but nevertheless, when she finally appeared, it was hard not to be a little astonished, for she wore uniform, carried her old fur jacket and a leather satchel slung over a shoulder, and that was all.

"Where's your luggage?" he asked, as she got into the car, bundling the fur down into the space between her feet.

"Here." She held up the handbag.

"That's your luggage? But we're going away for the week-end. We're going to the theatre. You don't intend wearing that flaming uniform the whole time, do you?"

"No, of course I don't. But I'm going home. There are clothes there. I'll find something to wear."

Ambrose thought of his mother, who liked to buy an outfit for every occasion, and then spent two hours getting herself into it.

"What about a toothbrush?"

"My toothbrush and my hairbrush are in my bag. That's all I need. Now, are we going to London, or aren't we?"

It was a fine bright day; a day for escaping, for being on holiday, for going off for the weekend with a person you were really fond of. Ambrose took the road that led over Portsdown Hill, and at the top Penelope looked back at Portsmouth and cheerfully said goodbye to it. They went through Purbrook and across the Downs to Petersfield, and at Petersfield they decided that they were hungry, so stopped and went into a pub. Ambrose ordered beer, and a kind woman made them Spam sandwiches, which she served daintily garnished with a sprig of bright yellow cauliflower out of a piccalilli jar. They went on, through Haslemere and Farnham and Guild-ford, and they came into London by way of Hammersmith and down the King's Road and turned into Oakley Street, blissfully familiar, with the Albert Bridge at the end of it, and the gulls, and the salty, muddy smell of the river, and the sound of tugs hooting.

"It's here."

He parked the M.G. and turned off the engine, and sat re-garding, with some awe, the tall face of the dignified old terrace house.

"Is this it?"

"Yes. I know the railings need painting, but we haven't had time. And of course it's miles too big, but we don't live in it all. Come on, I'll show you."

She gathered up her bag and her coat, and she helped him put up the hood in case it should rain. With this accomplished, he collected his grip, and stood there, filled with pleasant anticipation, waiting for Penelope to go up the impressive pillared steps to the great front door, take out a key and let him in, and felt slightly let down when, instead, she led the way down the pave-ment, opened the wrought-iron gate, and ran down the area steps to the basement. He followed, closing the gate behind them, and saw that it was not a depressing area, but rather a cheerful one, with whitewashed walls and a scarlet dustbin, and a number of earthenware tubs which, in summer, no doubt, would burgeon with geraniums and honeysuckle and pelargoniums.

The door, like the dustbin, was scarlet. He waited while she unlocked this and then, cautiously, followed her indoors, to find himself in a light and airy kitchen unlike any he had ever seen before. Not that he had seen many. His mother never went into her kitchen except to tell Lily, the cook-general, how many people were coming to lunch the next day. Because she had to spend no time in her kitchen, and certainly never worked there, its d6cor was of no importance to her, and Ambrose remembered it as an uninviting, inconvenient place of much gloom, painted bottle-green and smelling of the sodden wooden draining board. When she wasn't carrying coal, preparing meals, dusting furniture, or waiting at table, Lily occupied a bedroom off this kitchen, which was furnished with an iron bedstead and a yellow varnished chest of drawers. She had to hang her clothes on a hook at the back of the door, and when she wanted to have a bath she had to have it in the middle of the afternoon when nobody else needed the bathroom, and before she changed into her best uniform of black dress and muslin apron. At the outbreak of war, Lily had shaken the life out of Mrs. Keeling by giving in her notice and going off to make munitions. Mrs. Keeling could find no one to take her place, and Lily's defection was one of the reasons she had chucked in the sponge and retired to sit the war out in darkest Devon.

But this kitchen. He put down his grip and gazed about him. Saw the long, scrubbed table, the motley variety of chairs, the pine dresser laden with painted pottery plates and jugs and bowls. Copper saucepans, beautifully arranged by size, hung from a beam over the stove, along with bunches of herbs and dried garden flowers. There were a basket chair, a shining white refrigerator, and a deep white china sink beneath the window, so that any person impelled to do the washing-up could amuse himself at the same time by watching people's feet go by on the pavement. The floor was flagged and scattered with rush-mats, and the smell was of garlic and herbs, like a French country
epicene.

He could hardly believe his eyes. "Is this your
kitchen
?" "It's our everything room. We live down here." He realized then that the basement took up the entire depth of the house, for at the far end, French windows gave out onto the green of a garden. It was divided, however, into two separate apartments by means of a wide curved archway, hung with heavy curtains in a design that Ambrose did not recognize as the work of William Morris. "Of course," Penelope went on, dumping her coat and her bag on the kitchen table, "when the house was built, all this space was simply a warren of pantries and store-rooms, but Papa's father opened them all up and made what he called a garden room. But we use it as a sitting room. Come and see." He set down his grip, took off his hat, and followed her.

Passing beneath the archway, he saw the open fireplace, set with bright Italian tiles, the upright piano, the old-fashioned gramophone. Large, well-worn sofas and chairs stood about, loose-covered in a variety of faded cretonnes, draped in silken shawls, scattered with handsome tapestry cushions. The walls were whitewashed, a backcloth for books, ornaments, photographs . . . the memorabilia, he guessed, of years. The space left over by these was filled by pictures, so vibrant with sundrenched colour that Ambrose could almost feel the heat beating back from those flag-stoned terraces, those simmering, black-shadowed gardens.

"Are those pictures by your father?"

"No. We've only got three of his paintings, and those are all in Cornwall. He has arthritis in his hands, you see. Hasn't worked for years. These ones were all done by his great friend, Charles Rainier. They worked together in Paris, before the last war, and they've been friends ever since. The Rainiers live in the most heavenly house, right down in the South of France. We used to go and stay with them, quite often ... we used to drive there, in the car . . . look . . ." She took a photograph from the shelf and held it out for him to see. "Here we all are, en route. ..."

He saw the usual little family group, carefully posed, Penelope with pigtails and a skimpy cot-ton dress. And her parents, he supposed, and some female relation. But what really caught his attention was the car.

"That's an old four-and-a-half-litre Bentley!" And he could not keep the awe from his voice.

"I know. Papa adores it. Just like Mr. Toad in
The Wind in the Willows
. When he drives it, he takes off his black hat and puts on a leather motoring helmet, and he refuses to put up the hood, and if it rains we all get drenched."

"Do you still have it?"

"Heavens, yes. He'd never get rid of it."

She went to replace the photograph, and Ambrose's eyes, instinctively, were drawn back to Charles Rainier's seductive pictures. He could not think of anything more glamorous than driving, in carefree, pre-war, days, to the south of France in a 41/2-litre Bentley, headed for a world of nailing sunshine, resin-scented pines, al fresco meals, and swimming in the Mediterranean. He thought of wine, drunk beneath a trellis of vines. Of long, lazy siestas, with shutters closed for coolness, and love in the afternoon and grape-sweet kisses.

"Ambrose."

Jarred from his day-dream, he looked at her. In innocence, she smiled, pulled off her uniform hat, threw it down on a chair, and, still lost in and bemused by his own fantasy, he imagined her taking everything else off as well—then he could make love to her, right here and now, on one of those large and inviting sofas.

He took a step towards her, but it was already too late, for she had turned from him and gone to struggle with the latch of the French windows. The spell was broken. Cold air flooded into the room, and he sighed, dutifully following her on into the frosty London day, in order to be shown the garden.

"You must come and look . . . it's huge, because ages ago, the people who lived next door sold Papa's father their bit of garden. I'm sorry for the people who live there now, they've only got a horrid little yard. And the wall at the bottom of the garden is very old, Tudor, I think; I suppose this must once have been a Royal orchard or a pleasure garden or something."

It was indeed an extremely large garden, with grass and borders and flower-beds and a sagging pergola.

"What's the shed?" he asked.

"It's not a shed. It's my father's London studio. But I can't show it to you because I haven't got the key. Anyway, it's just full of canvases and paint, garden furniture and camp-beds. He's a terrible hoarder. We all are. We none of us throw anything away. Every time we come to London, Papa says he's going to clear out the studio, but he never does. It's a sort of nostalgia, I suppose. Or sheer laziness." She shivered. "Cold, isn't it? Let's go back in, and I'll show you the rest."

Wordlessly, he followed her, his expression of polite interest giving no hint of his racing mind, which was working busily as an adding machine, calculating assets. For, despite the well-worn shabbiness and unconventional arrangement of this old London house, he found himself deeply impressed by its size and grandeur, and decided that it was infinitely preferable to his mother's perfectly appointed flat.

As well, he was mulling over the other scraps of information which Penelope had dropped, so lightly, as though they were of no importance, about her family and their marvellously romantic and Bohemian lifestyle. His own, by comparison, seemed inordinately dull and stereotyped. Brought up in London, yearly holidays at Torquay or Frinton, school, and then the Navy. Which, up to now, had simply been an extension of school, with a bit of drill thrown in. He hadn't even been to sea yet, and wouldn't be sent until he'd finished his courses.

But Penelope was cosmopolitan. She had lived in Paris; her family owned not only this London house, but one in Cornwall. He considered the place in Cornwall. He had lately read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, and imagined just such a house as Manderley; something vaguely Elizabethan, perhaps, with a driveway a mile long, lined with hydrangeas. And her father was a famous artist, and her mother was French, and she appeared to think nothing of driving to the south of France, to stay with friends, in a 4i/2-litre Bentley. The 4i/2-litre Bentley filled him with envy as nothing else could do. He had always longed for just such a' car, a status symbol that would turn heads proclaiming wealth and masculinity, with just a touch of eccentricity thrown in for added flavour.

Now, reflecting on all this, and anxious to find out more, he went behind her, indoors, across the basement, and up a dark and narrow stairway. Through another door, and they were in the main hall of the house, spacious and elegant, with a beautiful fanlight over the front door, and a wide, shallow-stepped stair-way curving to the next floor. Stunned by such unexpected grandeur, he gazed about him.

"I'm afraid it's very shabby," she admitted, sounding apologetic. Ambrose did not think it was shabby in the least. "And that horrible great faded patch on the wallpaper is where
The Shell Seekers
used to hang. It's Papa's favourite picture, and he didn't want it bombed, so Sophie and I had it crated and carted away to Cornwall. The house doesn't seem quite the same without it."