The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  She thought they were perfect. Sometimes, invited to other children’s homes, sitting through prim and formal meals with grim nannies making sure of your table manners, or being forced to play team games by some beefy father, she wondered how they could endure their restricted, disciplined lives, and could not wait to get home.

  Now, Sophie did not say anything about the new war that had started. She simply came to kiss her husband, put her arm around her daughter, and showed them the flowers she had picked. Dahlias. A great explosion of them, in orange and purple and scarlet and yellow.

  “I think,” she told them, “they make me think of the Russian Ballet.” She had never lost her charming accent. “But they have no scent.” She smiled. “No matter. I thought you might be late. I’m glad you’re not. Let’s go and open a bottle of wine, and then have something to eat.”

  * * *

  Two days later, on the Tuesday, their war started in earnest. The frontdoor bell rang, and Penelope, going to answer it, found Miss Pawson on the doorstep. Miss Pawson was one of those very masculine ladies who turned up in Porthkerris from time to time. The misfits of the thirties, Lawrence called them, who, un-desirous of the normal joys of husband, home, and children, earned their livings in a number of ways, usually associated with animals, and taught riding, or ran kennels, or photographed other people’s dogs. Miss Pawson bred King Charles spaniels and was a well-known sight, exercising these creatures on the beach, or being dragged through the town by them on their multiple leash.

  Miss Pawson lived with Miss Preedy, a demure lady who taught dancing. Not folk-dancing, nor ballet, but some strange new conception of the art, based on Greek friezes, deep breathing, and eurhythmics. Every now and again, she held a Display in the Town Hall, and once Sophie had bought tickets, and they had all dutifully gone. It was an eye-opener. Miss Preedy and five of her students (some very young, others old enough to know better) walked onto the stage barefoot, and wearing orange knee-length tunics and headbands, low on their foreheads. They arranged themselves in a semicircle, and Miss Preedy stepped forward. Speaking in a high, clear voice to reach those at the back of the hall, she told them that perhaps a little explanation was necessary, and went on to give them this. It seemed that her method was not dancing in the accepted sense of the word, but a series of exercises and movements that were in themselves an extension of the body’s natural functions.

  Lawrence muttered, “Dear God,” and Penelope had to dig him in the ribs with her elbow to keep him quiet.

  Miss Preedy burbled on for a bit and then stepped back into her place and the fun began. She clapped her hands, gave the order “One,” and she and her students all lay down on their backs as though stunned or dead. The mesmerized audience had to crane its neck in order to see them. Then, “Two,” and they all very slowly raised their legs in the air, toes pointing to the ceiling. The orange tunics fell away, revealing six pairs of voluminous matching bloomers, caught at the knee with elastic. Lawrence began to cough, sprang to his feet and disappeared, like a dose of salts, up the aisle and out through the doors at the back. He did not return, and Sophie and Penelope were left to sit through the next two hours, convulsed with suppressed laughter, their seats shaking, their hands clamped to their mouths.

  When she was sixteen, Penelope had read The Well of Loneliness. After that she looked at Miss Pawson and Miss Preedy with new eyes, but still remained innocently baffled by their relationship.

  And now here was Miss Pawson at the door, in her stout shoes, her trousers, her zip-up jacket, her collar and tie, and a beret on her cropped grey head, pulled down sideways at a cocky angle. She carried a clipboard with papers, and her gas mask was slung over one shoulder. She was obviously dressed for battle and, given a rifle and a belt of bullets, would have been an asset to any self-respecting band of guerrillas.

  “Good morning, Miss Pawson.”

  “Is your mother in, dear? I’ve come to see about billeting evacuees.”

  Sophie appeared and they led Miss Pawson into the sitting room. As this was so obviously an official occasion, the three of them sat at the table in the middle of the room, and Miss Pawson unscrewed her fountain pen.

  “Now.” No beating about the bush; it was urgent as a Conference of War. “How many rooms have you got?”

  Sophie looked a little surprised. Miss Pawson and Miss Preedy had been several times to Carn Cottage, and knew perfectly well how many rooms there were. But she was so enjoying herself that it would have been churlish to spoil the fun, and Sophie told her, “Four. This room and the dining room, and Lawrence’s study and the kitchen.”

  Miss Pawson wrote “four” in the relevant box of her form.

  “And upstairs?”

  “Our bedroom, and Penelope’s bedroom, and the guestroom and the bathroom.”

  “Guest-room?”

  “I don’t want anybody living in the guest-room, because Lawrence’s sister Ethel is quite elderly and alone in London, and if the bombs start, then she may want to come and live with us.”

  “I see. Now, lavatories.”

  “Oh yes,” Sophie assured her, “we’ve got a lavatory. In the bathroom.”

  “Only one lavatory?”

  “There’s an outside one, in the yard at the back of the kitchen, but we use it as a log-store.”

  Miss Pawson wrote, “One lavatory, one privy.”

  “Now, how about the attics?”

  “Attics?”

  “How many bods could you sleep up there?”

  Sophie was horrified. “I wouldn’t put anybody in the attics. They’re dark and full of spiders.” And then added, doubtfully, “I suppose in the old days, the maids did use to sleep there. Poor things.”

  This was enough for Miss Pawson.

  “In that case, I’ll put you down for three in the attic. Can’t be too choosy these days, you know. Mustn’t forget there’s a war on.”

  “Have we got to have evacuees?”

  “Oh yes, everybody has to. All got to do our bit.”

  “Who will they be?”

  “Probably East Enders from London. I’ll try to get you a mother and a couple of kids. Well…” She gathered her papers up and got to her feet. “I must be on my way. I’ve got a dozen or more visits to make.”

  She took herself off, still grim and tight-lipped. When she said goodbye, Penelope half expected her to salute—but she didn’t, just strode away down the garden. Sophie closed the door and turned to face her daughter, torn between laughter and dismay. Three people living in the attic. They went upstairs to inspect this gloomy loft, and it was even worse than they remembered. Dark, dirty, and dusty, full of cobwebs and smelling of mice and sweaty shoes. Sophie screwed up her nose and tried to open one of the dormer windows, but it was stuck fast Old wall paper, in a hideous pattern, peeled from the ceiling. Penelope reached up and took the dangling corner and tore it loose. It fell to the floor in coils, bringing with it a cloud of plaster dust.

  She said, “If we painted it all white, it mightn’t be so bad.” She went to the other window, rubbed a bit of glass clean, and looked out “And there’s the most marvellous view.…”

  “Evacuees won’t want to look at the view.”

  “How do you know? Oh, come on, Sophie, don’t be so despondent. If they come, they’ve got to have a bedroom. It’s this or nothing.”

  It was her first bit of War Work. She stripped the wallpaper and whitewashed walls and ceiling, washed the windows, painted the woodwork, and scrubbed the floor. Sophie, meanwhile, took herself off to an auction sale where she bought a carpet, three divan beds, a mahogany wardrobe and chest of drawers, four pairs of curtains, an etching entitled Off Valparaiso and a statuette of a girl with a beach-ball. For all this she paid eight pounds, fourteen shillings, and ninepence. The furniture was delivered and humped up the stairs by a kindly man in a cloth-cap and a long white apron. Sophie gave him a tankard of beer and half a crown and he went away happy, and then she and Penelope made up the beds and hung the c
urtains, and after that there was nothing to do but wait—hoping against hope that they would not come—for the evacuees.

  They came. A young mother and two small boys. Doris Potter, Ronald and Clark. Doris was a blonde, with a Ginger Rogers hair-style and a tight black skirt. Her husband was called Bert, and had already been called up and was in France with the Expeditionary Force. Her sons, aged seven and six, were called Ronald and Clark after Ronald Colman and Clark Gable. They were undersized and skinny and pale, with knobbly knees and rough dry hair that stuck up on end like bristles of a brush. They had all come, in a train, from Hackney. They had never been farther than Southend before, and the children wore luggage labels tied to their skimpy jackets, in case they got lost on the journey.

  The peaceful pattern of life at Carn Cottage was shattered by the arrival of the Potters. Within two days, Ronald and Clark had broken a window, wet their beds, picked all the flowers in Sophie’s border, eaten unripe apples and been sick, and set fire to the tool shed, which burned to the ground.

  Lawrence was philosophical about this last, merely remarking that it was a pity they hadn’t been inside it.

  At the same time, they proved pathetically timid. They didn’t like the country, and the sea was too big, and they were frightened of cows and hens and ducks and wood-lice. They were frightened, too, of sleeping in the attic bedroom, but this was only because they took turns scaring each other to death with ghost stories.

  Mealtimes became a nightmare, not because there was any lull in conversation, but because Ronald and Clark had never been taught the simplest of manners. They ate with their mouths open, drank with their mouths full, grabbed for the butter dish and knocked over the water jug, quarrelled and hit each other, and flatly refused to eat Sophie’s wholesome vegetables and puddings.

  As well, there was the constant noise. The simplest action was accompanied by shrieks of joy, fury, indignation, and insult Doris was no better. She never addressed her children in anything but a yell.

  “What do you think you’re doing, you dirty little tyke? You do that again, and I’ll belt you one over the ear’ole. Look at your ’ands and your knees. They’re filthy. When did you last wash them? Dirty little scrubber.”

  Penelope, reeling from the din, realized two things. One was that Doris, in her rough, slap-happy way, was a good mother, and fond of her stringy little boys. The other was that she yelled at them because she had been yelling at them all their lives, up and down the length of the Hackney street where they had been born and bred, just as, in all probability, Doris’ mother had yelled at her. She simply didn’t realize there was any other way of doing things. And so, not surprisingly, when Doris called for Ronald and Clark, they never answered her. Whereupon, instead of going to search for them, she simply raised her voice another octave and shrieked again.

  At last Lawrence could bear it no longer, and told Sophie that unless the Potters quietened down a bit, he would be forced to pack a bag, leave home, and go and live in his studio. He meant it, too, and Sophie, enraged at being put in such a position, stormed into the kitchen and had it out with Doris.

  “Why do you scream at zem all ze time?” When she was upset, her accent became more pronounced than usual, but now she was so angry that she sounded like a Marseilles fishwife. “Your cheeldren are only just around ze corner. You don’t have to scream. Mon Dieu, this is a little house, and you are driving us all mad.”

  Doris was taken aback, but had the good sense not to be offended. She was an easygoing girl, and astute as well. She knew that, with the Sterns, she and the two boys had found a good billet. She’d heard a few nasty tales from other evacuated families, and she didn’t want to be moved in with some toffee-nosed old cow who’d treat her like a servant and expect her to live in the kitchen.

  “Sorry,” she said, in her careless fashion. She grinned. “I s’pose it’s just my way.”

  “And your cheeldren…” Sophie was simmering down, but still decided to strike while the iron was hot. “… must learn ze table manners. If you cannot teach them, then I will. And they must learn to do as zey are told. They will, if you speak quietly. They aren’t deaf, but you will make them so if you scream.”

  Doris shrugged. “Okay,” she agreed good-naturedly. “We’ll ’ave a try. And now, ’ow about those potatoes for dinner? Want me to peel them for you?”

  After that, things got better. The noise lessened, the children, badgered by Sophie and Penelope in turn, learned to say please and thank you, eat with their mouths shut, and ask for the salt and pepper. Some of this even rubbed off on Doris, who became quite dainty, crooking her little finger, and dabbing at the corner of her mouth with her napkin. Penelope took the boys to the beach and taught them to make a sandcastle, and they became so intrepid, they actually paddled. Then school started, and they were out of the house most of the day. Doris, who had thought that all soup came out of a can, began to learn a little rudimentary cooking, and helped with the housework. Things settled down. They would never be the same, but at least now they were bearable.

  * * *

  The rooms on the second floor of the house in Oakley Street were occupied by Peter and Elizabeth Clifford. Other tenants came and went, but they had lived there for fifteen years, during which they had become the Sterns’ closest friends. Peter was now seventy. A Doctor of Psychoanalysis, he had studied in Vienna under Freud, and ended a prestigious career as Professor in one of the big London teaching hospitals. Retired, however, he did not cease to work, but returned each year to Vienna to lecture at the University.

  They had no children, and on these occasions, he had been invariably accompanied by his wife. Elizabeth, a few years younger than Peter, was, in her own way just as brilliant. Before her marriage, she had travelled widely, studied in Germany and France, and produced a series of thoughtful, semi-political novels, articles, and essays, gems of precise and scholarly construction that had earned her a much-respected international reputation.

  It was the Cliffords who first made Lawrence and Sophie aware of the sinister things going on in Germany. To them they talked long into the night, sitting over coffee and brandy, curtains drawn, their troubled voices conveying their anxiety and apprehension. But only to them. As far as the outside world was concerned, they remained intensely discreet, and kept their views to themselves. This was because many of their friends in Austria and Germany were Jewish, and their official visits to Vienna provided good cover for their own personal undercover operations.

  Under the eye of the authorities, and at great personal risk to themselves, they made contacts, obtained passports, saw to travel arrangements, and lent money. Their enterprise and fortitude resulted in a number of Jewish families’ getting out of the country, escaping across the guarded borders to reach the safety of England, or to travel on and settle in the United States. All arrived penniless, having been forced to abandon property, possessions, and wealth, but all, at least, were free. This dangerous work continued right up to the start of 1938, when it was made clear by the new regime that their presence was no longer welcome. Somebody had talked. They were suspect and blacklisted.

  In January, at the beginning of the New Year, 1940, Lawrence and Sophie and Penelope held a family conference. With Carn Cottage now bulging, and Dorís and her children established, presumably, for the duration of the war, it was agreed that there could be no question of them returning to Oakley Street. But Sophie did not want to simply abandon her London home. She had not seen it for six months, and she needed to check on the tenants, make black-out curtains for the basement, list inventories, find some person willing to dig the garden. She wanted to collect their winter clothes, for the weather had turned bitterly cold and Carn Cottage had no central heating; and she wanted to see the Cliffords.

  Lawrence thought this a splendid idea. Apart from anything else, he was worried about The Shell Seekers. When the bombing started, as it undoubtedly would, he feared for the picture.

  Sophie told him that she would take
care of The Shell Seekers, arranging for it to be crated and duly transported to the relative safety of Porthkerris. She rang Elizabeth Clifford to tell her that they were coming. Three days later they all walked down to the station, and Penelope and Sophie got on the train. Lawrence did not. He had chosen to stay behind, to keep an eye on the little household, and to be left in the tender care of Doris, who seemed quite happy to take on this responsibility. It was the first time he and Sophie had been separated since their marriage, and Sophie was in tears as the train drew out, as though fearful that she would never see him again.