The Shell Seekers (35 page)

"You're so beautiful." After he said this, he realized, somewhat to his own surprise, that he had spoken instinctively, from his heart. "You're beautiful too," Penelope told him, and put her strong young arms around his neck, and drew him down. Her mouth was open and ready for him, and he knew then that all of her was simply waiting for him.

The firelight flamed, warming them, lighting their love. Memories stirred, deep in his subconscious, of a night nursery, drawn curtains—long-lost images of babyhood. Nothing to harm, nothing to disturb. Security. And as well, this flying sense of elation. But, too, somewhere at the very edge of this exultation, a small voice of common sense.

"Darling."

"Yes." A whisper. "Yes."

"Are you all right?"

"All right? Oh, yes, all right."

"I love you."

"Oh." No more than a breath. "Love."

In the middle of April, somewhat to her surprise, for she was hopelessly impractical about such matters, Penelope was informed by the authorities that she was due for a week's leave. She accordingly presented herself, with a queue of other Wrens, at the office of the Regulating Petty Officer and, when her turn came, requested a rail pass to Porthkerris.

The Petty Officer was a cheerful lady from Northern Ireland. She had a freckled face and frizzy red hair, and looked quite interested when Penelope told her where she wanted to go.

"That's in Cornwall, isn't it, Stern?"

"Yes."

"Is that where you live?"

"Yes."

"Lucky girl." She handed over the pass, and Penelope thanked her and went out of the room clutching her ticket to freedom.

The train journey was endless. Portsmouth to Bath. Bath to Bristol. Bristol to Exeter. At Exeter she had to wait an hour and then get onto the slow, stopping train that would take her on to Cornwall. She did not mind. She sat, in the dirty train, in a corner seat and stared through the soot-smeared window. Dawl-ish, and her first glimpse of the sea; only the English Channel, but still, better than nothing. Plymouth, and the Saltash Bridge, and what looked like half of the British Navy at mooring in the Sound. And then Cornwall, and all the small halts with their saintly and romantic names. After Redruth, she let down the window by its leather strap and hung out, not wanting to miss the first glimpse of the Atlantic, the dunes and the distant breaking rollers. Then the train trundled over the Hayle Viaduct, and she saw the estuary, filled with the flood tide. She pulled her suitcase oflF the luggage rack and went to stand in the corridor as they rounded the last curve and drew into the junction.

It was by now half past eight in the evening. She opened the heavy door and stepped thankfully down, lugging her case behind her, and with her uniform hat stuffed into the pocket of her jacket. The air felt warm and sweet and fresh, and the low sun cast long beams down the platform and out of its dazzle walked Papa and Sophie, come to meet her.

It was unbelievably wonderful to be home. The first thing she did was to race upstairs, tear off her uniform, and put on some proper clothes—an old cotton skirt, an Aertex shirt left over from school, a darned cardigan. Nothing had changed; the room was just the way she had left it, only tidier and shiningly clean. When, bare-legged, she ran downstairs again, it was to go from room to room, a thorough inspection, just to make sure that there, as well, everything was exactly the same. Which it was.

To all intents and purposes. Charles Rainier's portrait of Sophie, which had once held pride of place over the sitting room mantelpiece, had been moved to a less important position and its place taken by The Shell Seekers, which had, after a number of inevitable delays, arrived from London. It was too large for the room, and the light was insufficient to do justice to its depth of colour, but still, it looked very handsome.

And the Potters had changed for the better. Doris had lost her pudgy curves and become quite slender, and she was letting her dyed hair grow out, so that now, half peroxide and half mousy brown, it resembled nothing so much as the coat of a piebald pony. And Ronald and Clark had grown, and were losing their spindliness and city-bred pallor. Their hair had grown as-well, and their cockney voices had a distinct overtone of pure Cornish. And the ducks and hens had doubled in number, and one old hen had gone all broody and had, when nobody was looking, hatched out a brood of chicks in a broken wheelbarrow hidden deep in a thicket of brambles.

All Penelope wanted was to catch up on everything that had happened since the day—which now seemed immeasurably dis-tant—when she had climbed on the train and set off for Ports-mouth. Lawrence and Sophie did not let her down. Colonel Trub-shot was running the ARP (Air-Raid Precautions) and being a nuisance to everybody. The Sands Hotel had been requisitioned and was full of soldiers. Old Mrs. Treganton—the town's dowager, and a terrifying lady with dangling earrings—had tied an apron around her waist and was in charge of the Services Canteen. There was barbed wire on the beach and they were building concrete pillboxes, spiked with sinister guns, all along the coast. Miss Preedy had given up her dancing class and was now teaching physical training in a girls' school that had been evacuated from Kent, and Miss Pawson, in the black-out, had tripped over her stirrup-pump arid bucket and broken her leg.

When at last they ran out of things to tell her, they hoped, naturally enough, to hear their daughter's tidings; every detail of her new—and, to them, unimaginable-^life. But she didn't want to tell them. She didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want to think about Whale Island and Portsmouth. She didn't even want to think about Ambrose. Sooner or later, of course, she would have to. But not now. Not this evening. She had a week. It could wait.

From the top of the hill, the land lay exposed, drowsing in the sunlight of a warm spring afternoon. The great bay to the north glittered blue, dazzled with sun pennies. Trevose Head was hazy, a sure sign of continuing good weather. To the south curved the other bay, with the Mount and its Castle, and in between lay farmland, winding high-hedged lanes, emerald fields where cattle grazed amongst the outcrops of granite. The wind was light, scented with thyme, and the only sounds the occasional bark of a dog, or the pleasant chuntering of a distant tractor.

They had walked, she and Sophie, the five miles from Cam Cottage. They took the narrow lanes that led up onto the moor, where the grassy hedges were studded with wild primroses, and ragged robin and celandine burst from the ditches in a profusion of pink and yellow. Finally they had climbed the stile and made their way up the turfy path, winding through thickets of bramble and bracken, which led to the summit of the hill; to the earns of lichened rock, piled tall as cliffs, where once, thousands of years, ago, the small men who inhabited this ancient land had stood to watch the square-sailed ships of the Phoenicians sail into the bay, to drop anchor and trade their eastern treasures for the precious tin.

Now, weary from the long hike, they rested, Sophie supine on a patch of turf, with an arm across her eyes against the glare of the sun. Penelope sat beside her, elbows resting on her knees, her chin in her hand.

Far up in the sky a plane, a tiny silver toy, flew over. They both looked up and watched it go. Sophie said, "I don't like planes. They remind me of the war."

"Do you ever forget it?"

"Sometimes, I let myself. I pretend it hasn't happened. It's easy to pretend on a day like this."

Penelope put out her hand and tugged at a tuft of grass.

"Nothing much has happened yet, has it?"

"No."

"Do you suppose it will?"

"Of course."

"Do you worry about it?"

"I worry for your father. He worries. He has been through it all before."

"So have you. . . ."

"Not as he did. Never as he did."

Penelope threw away the grass and reached out to pull at another tuft.

"Sophie."

"Yes."

"I'm going to have a baby."

The sound of the aircraft engine died, absorbed into the summery immensity of the sky. Sophie stirred, slowly sat up. Penelope turned her head and met her mother's eyes, and saw on that youthful, sunburned face an expression that could only be described as one of the deepest relief.

"Is. this what you have not been telling us?"

"You knew?"

"Of course we knew. So reticent, so silent. Something had to be wrong. Why did you not tell us before?"

"Nothing to do with being ashamed or apprehensive. I just wanted it to be the right time. I wanted to have time to talk about it."

"I have been so worried. I felt you were unhappy and regretted what you had done, or that you were in some sort of trouble."

Penelope wanted to laugh. "Aren't I?"

"But of course you aren't in trouble!"

"You know, you never fail to amaze me."

Sophie ignored this. She became practical. "You are certain you are having a child?"

"Certain."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"I don't need to. Anyway, the only doctor I could go to in Portsmouth was the Naval Surgeon, and I didn't want to go to him."

"When is the baby due?"

"In November."

"And who is the father?"

"He's a Sub Lieutenant. At Whale Island. Doing his Gunnery Course. He's called Ambrose Keeling."

"Where is he now?"

"Still there. He failed his exams, and he had to stay on and do the whole course again. It's called a re-scrub."

"What age is he?"

"Twenty-one."

"Does he know you're pregnant?"

"No. I wanted to tell you and Papa before anyone else."

"Are you going to tell him?"

"Of course. When I get back."

"What will he say?"

"I've no idea."

"It doesn't sound as though you know him very well."

"I know him well enough." Far below, in the valley a man with a dog at his heels came through a farmyard, opened a gate and began to climb the hill to where his milk cows grazed. Penelope lay back on her elbows and watched him go. He wore a red shirt and the dog ran circles around him. "You see, you were right about my being unhappy. At the beginning, when I was sent to Whale Island, I don't suppose I've ever been so miserable in my life. I was such a fish out of water. And I was homesick and I was lonely. That day I joined up, I thought I was picking up a sword and going out to fight, along with everybody else, and I found myself doing nothing but handing round vegetables, drawing black-out curtains, and living with a lot of females with whom I had nothing in common. And there was nothing I could do about it. No escape. Then I met Ambrose, and after that everything started to get better."

"I didn't realize that it was as bad as that."

"I didn't tell you. What good would it have done?"

"If you have a baby, you will have to leave the Wrens?"

"Yes, I'll be discharged. Probably dishonourably."

"Will you mind?"

"Mind? I can't wait to get out."

"Penelope . . . you didn't get pregnant on purpose."

"Heavens no. Even I couldn't be as desperate as that. No. It just happened. One of those things."

"You know . . . you surely know . . . that you can take precautions."

"Of course, but I thought the man always did that."

"Oh, my darling, I had no idea you were so naive. What a rotten mother I have been."

"I've never thought of you as a mother. I've always thought of you as a sister."

"Well, I've been a rotten sister." She sighed. "What are we going to do now?"

"Go back and tell Papa, I suppose. And then go back to Portsmouth and tell Ambrose."

"Will you marry him?"

"If he asks me."

Sophie thought about this. Then she said, "I know you must feel very strongly about this young man, otherwise you would not be carrying his child. I know you well enough to know that. But you mustn't marry him just because of the baby."

"You married Papa when I was on the way."

"But I loved him. I loved him always. I couldn't imagine an existence without him. Whether he had married me or not, I would never have left him."

"If I do marry Ambrose, will you come to my wedding?"

"Nothing would keep us away."

"I'd want you to be there. And then, afterwards . . . when he finishes at Whale Island, he'll be sent to sea. Can I come home and live with you and Papa? Have the baby at Cam Cottage?"

"What a question to ask! What else would you do?"

"I suppose I could become a professional fallen woman, but I'd much rather not."

"You'd be useless at it, anyway."

Penelope was filled with grateful love. "I knew you'd be like this. How awful it would be to have a mother like other people's mothers."

"Perhaps if I was, I should be a better person. But I am not good. I am selfish. I think about nobody but myself. This terrible war has started and things are going to get very bad before it is all over. Sons will be killed, and daughters too, and fathers and brothers, and all I can feel is thankful because you are coming home. I've missed you so much. But now we can be together again. How ever bad things get, at least we'll be together."