The Shell Seekers (45 page)

Self-reliance. That was the keyword, the one thing that could pull you through any crisis fate chose to hurl at you. To be yourself. Independent. Not witless. Still able to make my own decisions and plot the course of what remains of my life. I do not need my children. Knowing their faults, recognizing their short-comings, I love them all, but I do not need them.

She prayed that she never would.

She was calmer now, able, even, to smile at herself. She went through the gap in the privet hedge and saw the orchard sloping away, dappled in sunlight and shadow. At the end of it the enormous bonfire still crackled and flamed, belching forth smoke. Danus and Antonia were there, Danus raking in the red-hot ashes, Antonia sitting on the edge of the wheelbarrow watching him. They had shed sweaters and were in their shirt-sleeves and talking nineteen to the dozen, their voices clear in the still air.

So absorbed and companionable did they appear, it seemed a pity to disturb them, even to announce that it was time to come indoors and eat roast spring lamb, lemon souffle, and strawberry shortcake. So she stayed where she was, allowing herself the pleasure of simply watching the charming pastoral scene. Then Danus paused to lean on his pitchfork, and make some unheard remark, and Antonia laughed. And the sound of her laughter brought back, with a piercing clarity, ringing across the years, the memory of other laughter, and the unexpected ecstasies and physical joys that happen, perhaps, only once in any person's lifetime.

It was good. And nothing good is ever lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of one's character.

Other voices, other worlds. Recalling that ecstasy, she was filled, not with a sense of loss, but of renewal and rediscovery. Nancy and Noel and the tedious irritations they had unleashed were forgotten. They did not matter. Nothing mattered but this instant, this moment of truth.

She might have stood there, day-dreaming, at the top of the orchard for the rest of the day, but Danus all at once spied her and waved, and she made a trumpet of her hands to call and tell them that it was lunch-time. He acknowledged this with a gesture of his hand, then drove his pitchfork into the earth and stooped to collect their abandoned sweaters. Antonia got off the wheelbarrow, and he put her sweater around her shoulders and tied the sleeves in a knot beneath her chin. Then they started up the orchard path, up between the trees, walking side by side; both tall and slender and tanned and young, and, to Penelope's eyes, quite beautiful.

She found herself filled with gratitude. Not simply to them for all the hard work they had accomplished during the course of the morning, but for them as well. They had, without saying a word, restored her tranquillity of mind, her sense of values, and she sent up a swift and heartfelt thank-you to the twist of fate (or was it the hand of God?—she wished that she could be certain . . . ) that had introduced them, like a second chance, into her life.

One thing that could be fairly said in Noel's favour was that his evil moods were short-lived. By the time the little party finally assembled, he was onto his second dry martini (having refreshed, as well, his sister's glass), and Penelope was much relieved to find them actually chatting quite amicably.

"Here we all are. Now, Nancy, you haven't met Danus, and you haven't met Antonia. This is my daughter, Nancy Chamber-lain. Noel, you be in charge of the bar . . . give them both something to drink, then perhaps you'd come and carve the lamb for me. ..."

Noel set down his glass and rose with exaggerated effort to his feet.

"What would you like, Antonia?"

"A lager would be delicious." She leaned against the table, her legs endless in their faded jeans. When Nancy's daughter, Melanie, wore jeans, she looked appalling in them, because her bottom was so big. But jeans on Antonia looked fantastic. Nancy decided that life was really very unfair. She wondered if she should put Melanie on a diet, and at once put the idea out of her head, because Melanie automatically always did the very opposite of anything that her mother suggested.

"How about you, Danus?"

The tall young man shook his head. "Something soft would be great. A juice. Glass of water would do."

Noel bucked slightly, but Danus was adamant, so he shrugged and disappeared indoors. Nancy turned to Danus.

"Don't you drink at all?"

"Not alcohol." He was very good-looking. Well-spoken. A gentleman. Extraordinary. What on earth was he doing, being her mother's gardener?

"Have you never?"

"Not really." He sounded quite untroubled about it all.

"Perhaps," Nancy pursued the subject, because it was so extraordinary to meet a man who would not even down a half-pint of lager, "you don't like the taste?"

He seemed to be considering this, then said, "Yes, perhaps that is why." His face was very serious, but even so Nancy could not be sure whether or not he was laughing at her.

The tender lamb, the roast potatoes, the peas and the broccoli had been gratefully consumed, the wineglasses refilled, and the puddings served. With everybody relaxed and cheerful once more, the conversation turned to how they were all to spend the rest of the day.

"I," Noel announced, pouring cream from a pink-and-white pitcher over his strawberry shortcake, "am calling it a day, drawing stumps, and pulling out. I'll drive back to London, and that way, with a bit of luck, I'll miss the worst of the weekend traffic."

"Yes, I think you should," his mother agreed. "You've done quite enough. You must be exhausted."

"What else is there to be done?" Nancy wanted to know.

"The last of the clobber to be carted and burnt and the floor of the attic swept."

"I'll do that," said Antonia promptly.

Nancy thought of something else. "What about all those things that have been piled up outside Mother's front door? The bedsteads and the broken perambulator. You can't leave them there indefinitely. They make Podmore's Thatch look like a tinker's camp."

There was a pause while everybody waited for someone else to make a suggestion. Then Danus spoke. "We could take them to the dump at Pudley."

"How?" asked Noel.

"If Mrs. Keeling doesn't mind, we could put them in the back of her car."

"No, of course I don't mind."

Noel said, "When?"

"This afternoon."

"Is the dump open on a Sunday?"

"Oh, heavens yes," Penelope assured him. "It's always open. There's a dear little man who lives there, in a sort of shed. The gates are never locked."

Nancy was horrified. "You mean he lives there all the time? In a shed by the dump? What is the local Council thinking of? It must be dreadfully unhygienic."

Penelope laughed. "I don't think he's the sort of person who's fussy about hygiene. Frightfully dirty and unshaven, but quite charming. Once we had a dustmen's strike and we had to hump all our own rubbish, and he couldn't have been more helpful."

"But . . ."

She was interrupted, however, by Danus, which was in itself surprising, because he had scarcely spoken all through the meal.

"In Scotland, there's a dump outside the little town where my grandmother lives, and an old tramp has lived there for thirty years." He enlarged on this. "In a wardrobe."

"He lives in a
wardrobe
?" Nancy sounded more horrified than ever.

"Yes. It's quite a big one. Victorian."

"But how dreadfully uncomfortable."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you? But he seems quite happy. He's a very well-known figure, much respected. Walks all over the countryside in rubber boots and an old raincoat. People give him cups of tea and jam sandwiches."

"But what does he do in the evening?"

Danus shook his head. "I've no idea."

"Why are you so worried about his evenings?" Noel wanted to know. "I should have thought his entire existence so awful that how he spends his evenings is a small thing to bother about."

"Well, it must be dreadfully dull. I mean, he obviously hasn't got a television, or a telephone . . ." Nancy's voice trailed away as she struggled to imagine such deprivations.

Noel shook his head, wearing the exasperated expression that Nancy remembered from the past, when he was a clever little boy trying to make Nancy understand the rules of some simple card game.

"You're hopeless," he told her, and she relapsed into a hurt silence. Noel turned to Danus.

"Do you come from Scotland?"

"My parents live in Edinburgh."

"What does your father do?"

"He's a lawyer."

Nancy, filled with curiosity, forgot her little umbrage. "Did you never want to be a lawyer too?"

"When I was at school, I thought I might have followed in his footsteps. But then I changed my mind."

Noel leaned back in his chair. "I always visualize Scotsmen as being tremendously sporty. Stalking stags and killing grouse and fishing. Does your father do those things?"

"He fishes and plays golf."

"Is he, as well, an Elder of the Kirk?" Noel came out with this in a fake Scottish accent that set his mother's teeth on edge. "Isn't that what you call it in the frozen North?"

Danus, impassive, did not rise.

"Yes, he is an Elder. He's also an Archer."

"I'm not with you. Enlighten me."

"A member of the Honourable Company of Archers. The Queen's Bodyguard when she comes to Holyroodhouse. On such occasions, he puts on an archaic uniform and looks resplendent."

"What does he guard the Queen's body with? Bows and arrows?"

"Right."

For a moment, the two men eyed each other. Then, "Fascinating," said Noel, and took another helping of strawberry short-cake.

The gargantuan meal, at last, was finished, rounded off by freshly made coffee and dark dessert chocolate. Noel pushed back his chair, yawned with enormous satisfaction, and said that he was going up to pack his bag and depart before he fell into a coma. Nancy began, in a desultory way, to stack the empty cups and saucers.

"What are you going to do?" Penelope asked Danus. "Go back to your bonfire?"

"It's burning all right. Why don't we get rid of the stuff that's got to go to the dump first. I'll load it into your car."

There was a momentary pause. Then Penelope said, "If you can wait till I've cleared up the dishes, I'll drive you."

Noel stopped, mid-yawn, his arms above his head. "Oh, come off it, Ma, he doesn't need a chauffeur."

"Actually," said Danus, "I do. I don't drive."

There was another, longer pause, during which time both Noel and Nancy gazed at him in open-mouthed disbelief.

"You don't drive? You mean, you can't? How the hell do you get about?"

"I bicycle."

"What an extraordinary chap you are. . . . Have you got high principles about air pollution, or something?"

"No."

"But . . ."

Antonia broke into the conversation. She said very quickly, "I can drive. If you'll let me, Penelope. I'll drive, and Danus can show me the way."

She looked at Penelope across the table, and simultaneously they smiled, like two women sharing a secret. Penelope said, "How kind that would be. Why don't you go now, while Nancy and I see to all this, and then when you get back, we can all go down to the orchard and finish the bonfire together."

"Actually," said Nancy, "I have to get home. I can't stay all afternoon."

"Oh, stay, just for a little. I've hardly talked to you. You can't have anything important to do. ..."

She got to her feet, reached for a tray. Antonia and Danus, as well, stood up, said goodbye to Noel, and took themselves off, out through the kitchen. As their mother began to pile the coffee-cups onto the tray, Noel and Nancy sat in silence, but as soon as they heard the front door safely slam, and knew that the others were out of earshot, they both began to speak at once.

"What an extraordinary chap he is."

"So solemn. He never smiles. . . ."

"How did you get hold of him, Ma?"

"Do you know anything about his background? He's obviously well-bred. It seems very fishy that he should be a gardener. ..."

"And all this carry-on about not drinking and not driving. Why the hell doesn't he drive?"

"I think," Nancy pronounced importantly, "that he proba-bly killed somebody while he was drunk, and he's had his licence taken away."

This was so uncomfortably close to Penelope's own anxious speculations that all at once she knew that she could not listen to another word, and sprang to Danus' defence.

"For goodness' sake, at least give the poor man time to get out through the front gate before you start tearing his character to shreds."

"Oh, come off it, Ma, he's an odd fellow and you know it as well as we do. If he's telling the truth, he comes from an emi-nently respectable and probably well-to-do family. What's he doing slaving away for an agricultural worker's wage?"

"I've no idea."

"Have you asked him?"

"I most certainly haven't. His private life is his own con-cern."