The Shell Seekers (72 page)

"What kind of a car was it?" Danus lay on the sloping turf, propped up on an elbow. He had pulled off his sweater and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. His muscular forearms were sun-browned, his face, turned towards her, filled with amusement and interest.

"A four-and-a-half litre Bentley," she told him. "It was rather old, but he couldn't afford a new car, and it became the pride of his heart."

"How splendid. Did it have leather straps to hold down the bonnet, like a cabin trunk?"

"Exactly. And a running board, and a hood we could never get the hang of, so we never put it up even if it poured with rain."

"A car like that would be worth a fortune nowadays. What became of it?"

"When Papa died, I gave it to Mr. Grabney. I couldn't think what else to do with it. And he'd always been so kind, keeping it for us in his garage all through the war and never charging us a penny of rent. And another time ... a really important time ... he laid his hands on some Black Market petrol for me. I could never thank him enough for that."

"Why didn't you keep it?"

"I couldn't afford to keep a car in London, and I didn't really need one. I just used to walk everywhere, pushing perambulators filled with babies and shopping. Ambrose was furious when he heard I'd given the Bentley away. It was the first thing he asked about after I got back from Papa's funeral. When I told him what I'd done, he sulked for a week."

Danus was sympathetic. "I'm not sure I blame him."

"No. Poor man. He must have been dreadfully disap-pointed."

Penelope sat up, to gaze out over the edge of the cliff and inspect the state of the tide. It was on the ebb, but still not fully out. When this happened, the great rock pool, which she had promised Danus and Antonia, would at last be revealed, like a huge blue jewel, glinting in the sunlight and perfect for diving and swimming. "Another half hour," she judged, "and you should be able to bathe."

She leaned back once more, propped against the bank, and rearranged her legs. She wore her old denim skirt, a cotton shirt, her new sneakers, and a battered straw gardening hat. The sun was so brilliant that she felt grateful for its speckled shade. Beside her, Antonia, who had been lying with eyes closed, apparently asleep, now shifted, rolling over onto her stomach and resting her cheek on her crossed arms. "Tell us more, Penelope. Did you come here often?"

"Not often. It was a long way to drive, and then such a long walk from the farmhouse where we left the car. And in those days there was no cliff path. So we used to have to fight our way through gorse and brambles and bracken before we finally reached this spot. And then we always had to be certain that it was low tide so that Sophie and I could swim."

"Didn't your father swim?"

"No. He said he was too old. He used to sit up here with his broad-brimmed 1iat, and his easel, and his little folding stool, and paint or draw. Having, of course, opened a bottle of wine, poured himself a glass, lighted up a cigar, and generally made himself comfortable."

"What about winter? Did you ever come in winter-time?"

"Never. We were in London. Or Paris, or Florence. Porthkerris and Cam Cottage belonged to the summer."

"How perfect."

"No less perfect than your father's divine house in Ibiza."

"I suppose so. Everything's relative, isn't it?" Antonia rolled sideways, propping her chin in her hand. "How about you, Danus? Where did you go for your summers?"

"I hoped nobody would ask that."

"Oh, come on. Tell us."

"North Berwick. My parents took a house every summer there; they played golf while my brother and sister and I sat on the frigid beach with our nannie and built sand-castles in the howling wind."

Penelope frowned. "Your brother? I didn't know you had a brother. I thought it was just your sister and yourself."

"Yes, I had a brother, lan. He was the eldest of the three of us. He died of meningitis when he was fourteen."

"Oh, my dear, what a tragedy."

"Yes. Yes, it was. My mother and father never really got over it. He was the golden boy, bright and good-looking, and a natural games player—the son that every parent dreams of having. To me, he was a sort of god, because he knew how to do everything. When he was old enough, he played golf, too, and so, eventually, did my sister, but I was always hopeless and not even particularly interested. I used to go off on my own, on my bike, and look for birds. I found that infinitely more entertaining than struggling with the complexities of golf."

"North Berwick doesn't sound a very nice place to go," An-tonia remarked. "Didn't you ever go anywhere else?"

Danus laughed. "Yes, of course. My great friend at school was called Roddy McCrae. His parents owned a croft, right up in the north of Sutherland, near Tongue. As well, they had fishing rights on the Naver, and Roddy's father taught me how to cast. When I outgrew North Berwick, I spent most of my holidays with them."

"What's a croft?" Antonia asked.

"A but and ben. A two-roomed stone farmhouse. Dead basic. No plumbing, no electricity, no telephone. The end of the line, the back of beyond, out of touch with the world. It was great."

A silence fell. It occurred to Penelope that this was perhaps only the second time she had heard Danus talk about himself. She felt sad for him. To lose a much-loved older brother at such a tender age must have been a traumatic experience. To feel, perhaps, that he could never quite match up to that brother was worse. She waited, thinking that maybe, having broken the ice of his reserve and actually confided, he might wish to continue. But he did not. Instead, he stirred himself, stretched, and then pulled himself to his feet. "The tide is out," he told Antonia. "The rock pool is waiting for us. Do you feel brave enough to swim?"

They had gone, scrambling over the cliffs rim to take the precipitous path that led down to the rocks. The pool waited still as glass, glittering and brilliantly blue. Penelope, waiting to watch them reappear, thought of her father. Remembered him with his wide-brimmed hat and his easel and his wine and his contented, concentrated solitude. One of the frustrations of her life had been the fact that she had not inherited his talent. She was not a painter, she could not even draw, but his influence had been enormously strong, and she had lived with this so long that, quite naturally, she was able to observe any prospect with his acute, all-seeing artist's eye. All was exactly as it had always been, except for the winding green ribbon of the cliff path, trodden by walkers, which dipped and climbed through the green young bracken, following the convolutions of the coast.

She gazed at the sea, trying to decide how, if she were Papa, she would endeavour to paint it. For, although it was blue, it was a blue made up of a thousand different hues. Over sand, shallow and translucent, it was jade-green, streaked with aquamarine. Over rocks and seaweed, it darkened to indigo. Far out, where a small fishing boat bucketed its way across the waves, it became a deep Prussian blue. There was little wind, but the ocean lived and breathed; swelled in from distant depths, formed waves. The sun-light, shining through these as they curved to break, transformed them to moving sculptures of green glass. And, finally, all was drowned in light, that unique suffused brilliance that had first brought the painters to Cornwall, and had driven the French Impressionists into a passion of creativity.

A perfect composition. All that was needed were human figures to provide proportion and vitality. They appeared. Far below and minimized by distance, Antonia and Danus made their slow way across the rocks towards the pool. She watched their progress. Danus carried the bathing towels. When at last they reached the flat rock that overhung the pool, he dropped them and walked to the edge of the rock. He flexed and dived, making scarcely a splash as he cleaved the water. Antonia followed. Swimming, they broke the surface of the pool into sunlit splinters. She heard their raised voices, their laughter. Other voices, other worlds.
It was good
and nothing good is ever lost.
Richard's voice.
He looks like Richard.

She had never swum with Richard, for theirs had been a wartime, winter love affair, but now, watching Danus and Antonia, she felt again, with a physical intensity that was beyond mere recall, that numbing shock of cold water. Remembered the exhilaration, the sense of well-being, as clearly as if her own body were still young, untouched by sickness or the passing years. And there were other pleasures, other delights. The sweet contact of hands, arms, lips, bodies. The peace of passion spent, the joy of waking to sleepy kisses and reasonless laughter. . . .

Long ago, when she was very small, Papa had introduced her to the fascinating delights of a geometrical compass and a sharp pencil. She had taught herself to draw patterns, flower heads, petals and curves, but nothing had given her so much pleasure as simply describing, on a sheet of clean white paper, a circle. So fine, so precise. The pencil moving, drawing the line behind it, and finishing up, with marvellous finality, exactly where it had begun. 

A ring was the accepted sign of infinity, eternity. If her own life was that carefully described pencil line, she knew all at once that the two ends were drawing close together. I have come full circle, she told herself, and wondered what had happened to all the years. It was a question which, from time to time, caused her some anxiety and left her fretting with a dreadful sense of waste. But now, it seemed, the question had become irrelevant, and so the answer, whatever it was, was no longer of any importance.

"Olivia."

"Mumma! What a lovely surprise."

"I realized I'd never wished you a happy Easter. I am sorry, but perhaps it's not too late. And I wasn't sure if I would catch you; I thought you might still be away."

"No. I just got back this evening. I've been in the Isle of Wight."

"Who were you staying with?"

"The Blakisons. Do you remember Charlotte? She used to be Food Editor on
Venus
, and then she left to start a family."

"Was it fun?"

"Divine. It always is staying with them. A huge house-party. And all done with no visible effort whatsoever."

"Was that nice American there with you?"

"Nice American? Oh, you mean Hank. No, he's back in the States."

"I thought he was such a specially dear person."

"Yes he was. He is. He's going to get in touch again the next time he comes over to London. But, Mumma, tell me all about you. How are things going?"

"We're having a wonderful time. Living in the lap of lux-ury."

"About time too, after all these years. I had a long letter from Antonia. She sounded ecstatically happy."

"She and Danus have been out all day. They took the car over to the south coast to see some young man with a nursery garden. They're probably back by now."

"How's Danus behaving himself?"

"He's been an enormous success."

"Do you still like him as much?"

"Just as much. If anything, more. But I've never known a man so reserved. Perhaps its something to do with being Scottish."

"Has he told you why he doesn't drink or drive?"

"No."

"He's probably a reformed alcoholic."

"If he is, it's his own business."

"Tell me what you've been doing. Have you seen Doris?"

"Of course. And she's blooming. Lively as ever. And on Saturday, we spent the day out on the cliffs at Penjizal. And yesterday morning, we were all very dutiful and went to church."

"Nice service?"

"Lovely. The Porthkerris church is particularly beautiful, and of course it was stuffed with flowers, and the pews filled with people in astonishing hats, and the music and the singing quite exceptional. We had a rather boring visiting Bishop preaching to us, but the music made up for even the tedium of his sermon. And then at the end, a full procession, and we all surged to our feet and sang 'For All The Saints Who From Their Labours Rest.' Coming home, Antonia and I decided it was quite one of our favourite hymns."

Olivia laughed. "Oh, Mumma. That, coming from you! I didn't even know you had a favourite hymn."

"Darling, I'm not quite an atheist. I just can't help being slightly sceptical. And Easter is always particularly disturbing, with the Resurrection and the promise of afterlife. I can never quite bring myself to believe it. And although I would adore to see Sophie and Papa, there are dozens of other people I can very well do without ever seeing again. And just imagine the crush! Just like being invited to the most enormous, boring cocktail party, where you spend your whole time looking for the amusing people you really want to see." £"

"How about
The Shell Seekers
? Have you seen it?"

"It looks wonderful. Utterly at home. As though it had been there all its life."

"You don't regret giving it away?"

"Not for a moment."

"And what are you doing right now?"

"I've had a bath, and I'm lying on my bed, reading The Sun Also Rises, and ringing you up. After that I shall call Noel and Nancy, and then I shall dress for dinner. It's always so dreadfully grand, and there's a man in the restaurant tinkling away at a grand piano. Just like the Savoy."