The Shell Seekers (51 page)

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 Cam 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 feebly, 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, per-haps, 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 dicappointment. 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 Cam 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 Cam 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 Cam 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.

Papa said she looked like a Mexican gypsy in it, but he smiled as he said it, delighted by her enterprise. He did not smile, these days, very often. He had grown, since Sophie's death, im-mensely old and frail. His old leg wound from the First World War had started, for some reason, to play up. The cold, damp wintry weather caused him considerable pain, and he had taken to walking with a stick. He was bowed, he had grown very thin, his crippled hands curiously waxy and lifeless, like the hands of a man already dead. Incapable now of doing very much around the house and garden, he spent most of his time, mittened and shawled in rugs, by the sitting room fire, reading the newspapers or well-loved books, listening to the wireless, or writing letters in his painful, uncertain hand, to old friends who lived in other parts of the country. Sometimes, when the sun shone and the sea was blue and dancing with white-caps, he would announce that he felt like a little fresh air, whereupon Penelope would fetch his caped overcoat and his big hat and his stick, and they would set out together, arm in arm, to make their way down the steep streets and alley-ways and into the heart of the little town, strolling along the harbour wall, watching the fishing boats and the gulls, perhaps calling in at The Sliding Tackle for a drink of anything that the landlord could produce from beneath his counter; and if he had nothing to produce, then downing tumblers of watery, lukewarm beer. Other times, if he was feeling strong enough, they went on as far as the North Beach and the old studio, locked now and seldom entered; or took the sloping lane that led to the Art Gallery, where he was happy to sit, contemplating the collection of paintings that he and his colleagues had somehow gathered together, and lost in an old man's silent and lonely memories.