The Shell Seekers (9 page)

Watching his hands, she said, "I hate boats."

"I know. You told me yesterday." He returned the knife to his pocket, deftly peeled the fruit, and handed it back to Olivia. "Now," he said, as she silently took it, "what are you going to say? Yes or No?"

Olivia leaned back in her chair and smiled. She broke the orange into segments and began to eat them, one by one. In silence, Cosmo watched her. Now the heat of the morning was intensifying, and, with the delicious taste of fresh citrus on her tongue, she felt warm and content as a cat in the sun. Slowly, she finished the orange. When it was done, she licked her fingers and looked across the table at the man who waited. She said, "Yes."

Olivia discovered that day that she didn't hate boats after all. Cosmo's was not nearly as big as the one on which the party had been held, but infinitely nicer. For one thing, there were just the two of them, and for another they didn't just bob pointlessly about at the mooring, but cast off and hauled up the sail and slipped away, past the harbour wall and out into the open sea and around the coast to a blue deserted inlet that the tourists had never taken the trouble to find. There they dropped anchor and swam, diving from the deck, and clambering aboard again by means of a maddeningly contrary rope ladder.

The sun was now high in the sky and it was so hot that he rigged an awning over the cockpit and they ate their picnic in the shade of this. Bread and tomatoes, slices of salami, fruit and cheese, and wine that was sweet and cool because he had tied lengths of twine to the necks of the bottles and lowered them into the sea.

And later, there was space to stretch out on the deck and peacefully sunbathe; and later still, when the wind had dropped, and the sun was sliding down out of the sky, and the reflected light from the water shimmered on the white-painted bulkhead of the cabin, room to make love.

The next day he turned up again, in his battered tough little drop-head, a Citroen 2 CV that looked more like a mobile dustbin than anything else, and drove her away from the coast, inland, to where he had his house. By now, not unnaturally, the rest of her party were becoming a little peeved by Olivia. The man who had been included for her delight had taxed her with this, and they had had words, whereupon he had relapsed into a fetid sulk. Which made him all the easier to leave.

It was another beautiful morning. The road led up into the mild hills, through sleepy golden villages and past small white churches, farms where goats grazed in the thin fields, and patient mules harnessed to grinding wheels trod in circles.

Here it was as it had been for centuries, untouched by commerce and tourism. The surface of the road deteriorated, modern tarmac was left behind, and the Citroen finally ground and bumped its way down a narrow, unmade track, dark and cool in the shade of a grove of umbrella pines, and came to rest beneath a massive olive tree.

Cosmo killed the engine and they got out of the car. Olivia felt the cool breeze on her face, and caught a glimpse of the distant sea. A path led on, downhill, through an orchard of almonds, and beyond this lay his house. Long and white, red-roofed, stained purple with bougainvillaea blossom, it commanded an uninterrupted view of the wide valley, sloping down towards the coast. Along the front of the house was a terrace, trellised with vines, and below the terrace a small tangled garden spilled down to a little swimming pool, glinting clear and turquoise in the sunshine.

"What a place" was all she could find to say.

"Come indoors and I'll show you around."

It was a confusion of a house. Random stairways led up and down, and no two rooms seemed to be on the same level. Once it had been a farmhouse, and upstairs still were living room and kitchen, while the rooms on the ground floor, which once had been byre and stable and sty, were the bedrooms.

Inside, it was austere and cool, whitewashed throughout and furnished in the simplest of styles. A few coloured rugs on the rough wooden floors, locally made furniture, cane-seated chairs, scrubbed wooden tables. Only in the sitting room were there cur-tains, elsewhere the deeply embrasured windows had to make do with shutters.

But as well there were delights. Deep-cushioned sofas and chairs, draped in colourful cotton blankets; jugs of flowers; rough baskets by the open fireplace, filled with logs. In the kitchen, copper saucepans hung from a beam, and there was the smell of spices and herbs. And everywhere were evidences of the obviously cultured man who had occupied this place for twenty-five years. Hundreds of books, not just on shelves, but spilling over onto tables, window-ledges, and the cupboard beside his bed. And there were good pictures and many photographs, and racks of long-playing records neatly stacked by the record player.

At last, the tour of inspection finished, he led the way through a low door and down yet another flight of stairs, and so out again, by way of a red-tiled lobby, and onto the terrace.

She stood, with her back to the view, and gazed up at the face of the house. She said, "It's more perfect than I could have imagined."

"Go and sit down and look at the view and I'll bring you a glass of wine."

There were a table and some basket chairs set about on the flags, but Olivia did not want to sit. Instead, she went to lean against the whitewashed wall, where earthenware tubs spilled lemon-scented ivy-leaved geraniums, and an army of ants, endlessly occupied, marched to and fro in well-regulated troops. The quiet was immeasurable. Listening, she caught the tiny muted sounds that were part of this quiet. A distant cowbell. The soft cackling murmur of contented hens, hidden away somewhere in the garden but clearly audible. The stirring of the breeze.

A whole new world. They had driven only a few kilometers, but she could have been a thousand miles from the hotel, her friends, the cocktails, the crowded swimming pool, the bustling streets and shops of the town, the bright lights and the blaring discos. Farther away still were London,
Venus
, her flat, her job— fading into unreality; forgotten dreams of a life that had never been real. Like a vessel that has been empty for too long, she felt herself filled with peace. I could stay here. A small voice, a hand tugging at her sleeve. This is a place where I could stay.

She heard him behind her, descending the stone stairway, the heels of his loose sandals slapping against the treads. She turned and watched him emerge through the dark aperture of the door (he was so tall that he automatically ducked his head). He was Carrying a bottle of wine and two tumblers, and the sun was high and his shadow was very black. He set down the glasses and the frosty, beaded bottle and reached into the pocket of his jeans and produced a cigar, which he lit with a match.

When this was going, she said, "I didn't know you smoked."

"Only these. Every now and again. I used to be a fifty-a-day man, but I finally kicked the habit. Today, however, seems to be a suitable occasion for self-indulgence." He had already uncorked the bottle and now poured the wine into the tumblers; he picked one up and handed it to Olivia. It was icily cold.

"What shall we drink to?" he asked her.

"Your house, whatever it's called."

"Ca'n D'alt."

"To Ca'n D'alt, then. And its owner."

They drank. He said, "I watched you from the kitchen window. You were so very still. I wondered what you were thinking."

"Just that ... up here . . . reality fades."

"Is that a good thing?"

"I think so. I'm . . ." She hesitated, searching for the right words, because all at once it became enormously important to use exactly the right words. "I'm not a domesticated creature. I'm thirty-three, the Features Editor of a magazine called
Venus
. It's taken me a long time to get there. I've worked for my living and my independence ever since I left Oxford, but I'm not telling you this because I want you to be sorry for me. I've never wanted anything else. Never wanted to be married or have children. Not that sort of permanence."

"So?"

"It's just that . . . this is the sort of place where I think I could stay. I wouldn't feel trapped or rooted here. I don't know why." She smiled at him. "I don't know why."

"Then stay," he said.

"For today? For tonight?"

"No. Just stay."

"My mother always told me never to accept an open-ended invitation. There must always be a date of arrival, she said, and a date of departure."

"She was quite right. Let's say the date of arrival is today and the date of departure you can decide for yourself."

She gazed at him, assessing motives, implications. Finally, "You're asking me to move in with you?"

"Yes."

"What about my job? It's a good job, Cosmo. Well paid and responsible. It's taken me all my life to get as far as I have."

"In that case, it's time you took a sabbatical. No man, or woman, for that matter, can work forever."

A sabbatical. A year. Twelve months could be called a sabbatical. Longer was running away.

"I have a house as well. And a car."

"Lend them to your best friend."

"And my family?"

"You can invite them out here to stay with you."

Her family, here. She imagined Nancy broiling by the swimming pool while George sat indoors, wearing a hat for fear of getting sunburnt. She imagined Noel taking himself off to prowl the topless beaches and returning for dinner with the spoils of the day, probably some blonde and nubile girl speaking no known language. She imagined her mother . . . but that was different, not ridiculous at all. This was exactly her mother's environment; this enchanting, meandering house, this tangled garden. The almond groves, the sun-baked terrace, even the bantams—especially the bantams—would fill her with delight. It occurred to Olivia that perhaps, in some obscure way, this was why she, instantly, had taken such a liking to Ca'n D'alt and felt so at ease and totally at home.

She said, "I am not the only one with a family. You too have commitments to be considered."

"Only Antonia."

"Isn't that enough? You wouldn't want to upset her."

He scratched the back of his neck and looked, for an instant, slightly embarrassed. He said, "Perhaps this isn't exactly the right moment to mention it, but there have been other ladies."

Olivia laughed at his discomfiture. "And Antonia didn't mind?"

"She understood. She's philosophical. She made friends. She's very self-contained."

A silence fell between them. He seemed to be waiting for her reply. Olivia looked down into her glass of wine. "It's a big decision, Cosmo," she said at last.

"I know. You must think about it. How would it be if we got ourselves something to eat and talked the matter over?"

Which they did, returning to the house where he said that he would make pasta, with a mushroom-and-ham sauce, and as he was obviously a much better cook than she, Olivia took herself off and back into the garden. She found her way to his vegetable patch, picked a lettuce and some tomatoes, and discovered, deep in shady leaves, a cluster of baby courgettes. These spoils she bore back to the kitchen, where she stood at the sink and made a simple salad. They ate their meal at the kitchen table, and afterwards Cosmo said it was time for a siesta, so they went to bed together and it was even better than it had been the time before.

And at four o'clock, when the heat of the day had eased a little, they went down to the pool and swam, naked, and then lay in the sun to dry.

He talked. He was fifty-five. He had been called up the day he left school, and had been on Active Service for most of the war. He found that he enjoyed the life, and so, when the war was over and he could think of nothing else that he wanted to do, he signed on as an officer in the Regular Army. When he was thirty, his grandfather died and left him a little money. Financially independent for the first time in his life, he resigned his commission, and without ties or responsibilities of any sort, set out to see the world. He travelled as far as Ibiza, unspoiled in those days and still amazingly cheap, fell in love with the island, decided that this was where he would put down his roots, and travelled no farther.

"What about your wife?" Olivia asked.

"What about her?"

"When did she happen?"

"My father died, and I went home for his funeral. I stayed for a bit, helping my mother to sort out his affairs. I was forty-one by then, not a young man any longer. I met Jane at a party in London. She was just about your age. She ran a flower shop. I was lonely—I don't know why. Perhaps it was something to do with losing my father. I'd never felt lonely in my life before, but I did then, and for some reason, I didn't want to come back here by myself. She was very sweet, and very ready to get married, and she thought Ibiza sounded madly romantic. That was my biggest mistake. I should have brought her out here first, rather like taking your girl-friend to meet your family. But I didn't. We were married in London, and the first time she set eyes on this place it was as my wife."

"Was she happy here?"

"For a bit. But she missed London. She missed her friends and the theatre and concerts at the Albert Hall and shopping and meeting people and going away for weekends. She got bored."

"What about Antonia?"

"Antonia was born out here. A proper little Ibecenco. I thought having a baby would calm her mother down a bit, but it only seemed to make matters worse. So we agreed, quite amicably, to part. There wasn't any acrimony, but then there wasn't anything much to be acrimonious about. She took Antonia with her and kept her until she was eight, and then, once she'd started proper school, she started coming out here, in the summer and at Easter time, to spend her holidays with me."