The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “Hello! Here we all are. What perfect timing. Aunt Ethel. Gorgeous to see you … Ambrose, hello.” She gave him a quick peck. “You’ve never met the Cliffords, have you? Professor and Mrs. Clifford. Peter and Elizabeth. And this is Ambrose’s mother.…” Everybody looked pleasant and shook hands and said “How do you do.” Dolly smiled and nodded and was charming, the while her eyes busy, darting from one face to another, missing nothing, making their usual instant assessment.

  Penelope looked as though she were wearing fancy dress, and yet, maddeningly, beautiful too—stunning and distinctive. She was so tall and slender, and the long, loose creamy dress, an heirloom, Dolly guessed, only served to accentuate this enviable elegance. Her hair she had knotted up into a loose coil at the nape of her neck, and she wore an enormous straw hat of acid green, wreathed with daisies.

  Mrs. Clifford, on the other hand, resembled a retired governess, probably very clever and brainy, but dowdily attired. The Professor was slightly smarter (but then it was always easier for a man to be well dressed) in a dark grey flannel chalk-striped suit and a blue shirt. He was tall and thin, hollow-cheeked, ascetic. Quite attractive in a scholarly way. Dolly was not the only one who thought him attractive. From the corner of her eye she had spied Aunt Ethel greet him with an embrace, hanging from his neck and kicking up her little old legs behind her like the soubrette in a musical comedy. She wondered if perhaps Aunt Ethel was slightly mad, and hoped this did not run in the family.

  Finally, they were all organized by Ambrose, who told them that if they did not get going soon, then he and Penelope would miss their slot. Aunt Ethel settled her hat, and they trooped indoors for the ceremony. Which took no time at all, and was over before Dolly had found a moment to dab at her eyes with her lace-trimmed handkerchief. Then they all trooped out again and moved on to the Ritz, where Peter Clifford, acting on instructions from Cornwall, had booked a table for lunch.

  There is nothing like delicious food and a quantity of champagne, all dispensed by an urbane host, for improving any situation. Everybody, even Dolly, began to relax, despite the fact that Aunt Ethel chain-smoked throughout the meal and told countless questionable anecdotes, screaming with laughter long before the punch line was even reached. The Professor was charming and attentive, and told Dolly that he liked her hat, and Mrs. Clifford seemed really interested in life at The Coombe Hotel and wanted to hear all about the people who lived there. Dolly told her, dropping the name of Lady Beamish more than once. And Penelope took off her acid-green hat and hung it on her chair, and darling Ambrose got to his feet and made a dear speech, referring to Penelope as his wife, whereupon everybody gave a little cheer. All in all it was a good party, and by the time it was over, Dolly felt that she had made friends for life.

  But the best of everything has to come to an end, and at last, reluctantly, it was time to gather their belongings, push back their little gilt chairs, get to their feet and head for their various destinations—Dolly to The Basil Street, the Cliffords to an early evening concert at the Albert Hall. Aunt Ethel went on to Putney, and the young couple to Oakley Street.

  It was while they stood, mildly tipsy, in the foyer, waiting for the taxis that would finally disperse them, that the event occurred which doomed forever Penelope’s relationship with her mother-in-law. For Dolly, woozy with champagne, and feeling sentimental and magnanimous, took Penelope’s hands in her own and, gazing up at her, said, “My dear, now that you are Ambrose’s wife, I should like you to call me Marjorie.”

  Penelope blinked in some astonishment. It seemed a funny thing to call your mother-in-law Marjorie, when you knew perfectly well that her name was Dolly. However, if that was what she wanted …

  “Thank you. Of course I will.” She stooped and kissed the soft and scented cheek offered so graciously.

  And for a year, she did call her Marjorie. Writing to thank for a birthday present, “Dear Marjorie…” she began the letter. Phoning The Coombe Hotel to give news of Ambrose, “Oh, Marjorie, it’s Penelope speaking,” she was to say.

  It was not until many months had passed, by which time it was too late to rectify the situation, that she realized that Dolly had really said, in the foyer of the Ritz, “My dear, I should like you to call me Madre.”

  * * *

  On the Sunday morning, Ambrose drove Penelope to Paddington to put her on the Riviera for Cornwall. The train, as usual, was stuffed to the gunwales with troops, seamen, and soldiers, kitbags and gas masks and tin hats. It had been impossible to book a seat, but Ambrose found an empty corner that he piled with her luggage, so that no other person could claim it.

  They returned to the platform to say goodbye. It was hard to find the words, because all at once everything was alien and new; they were husband and wife, and neither knew what was expected of them. Ambrose lit a cigarette and stood smoking it, gazing up and down the platform, glancing at his watch. Penelope longed for the guard to blow his whistle, for the train to start to move, for it all to be over.

  She said, with some violence, “I hate goodbyes.”

  “You’ll have to get used to them.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. In a month, when I come back to Portsmouth for my discharge, will you be gone?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Where will they send you?”

  “It’s anybody’s guess. The Atlantic. The Med.”

  “The Med would be nice. Anyway, sunny.”

  “Yes.”

  Another pause.

  “I wish Papa and Sophie could have been there yesterday. I so wish you could have met them.”

  “When I get some decent leave, I’ll maybe get down to Cornwall for a few days.”

  “Oh, do.”

  “I hope everything goes all right. The baby, I mean.”

  She blushed a little. “I’m sure it will be all right.”

  He looked at his watch again. She said, in some desperation, “I’ll write to you. You must—”

  But at that moment the guard’s whistle pierced the air. At once the usual small panic ensued. Doors were banged, voices raised, a man came sprinting, catching the train at the last possible second. Ambrose dropped his cigarette, ground it out with his heel, stooped and kissed his wife, bundled her aboard, and slammed the door behind her. She let down the window and hung out. The train began to move.

  “Will you write and let me know your new address, Ambrose?”

  An extraordinary thought occurred to him. “I don’t know your address.”

  She began to laugh. He was running now, keeping alongside. “It’s Carn Cottage,” she shouted, above the din of clanking wheels. “Carn Cottage, Porthkerris.”

  Now the train was going too fast for him, and he slowed to a halt, stood there, waving her away. The train took the curve of the platform and, belching steam, rolled out of sight. She was gone. He turned and began the long walk back up the deserted platform.

  Carn Cottage. The Elizabethan manor that he had dreamt up for himself, the sailboat on the Helford River—faded and dissolved, gone for ever. Carn Cottage. It sounded disappointingly ordinary, and he could not help feeling that he had, in some way, been cheated.

  But still. She had gone. And his mother had returned to Devon and it was all safely over. Now, all he had to do was drive himself to Portsmouth and report for duty. In a funny way, he realized, as he ambled in the direction of the car-park, he was looking forward to getting back to routine, and Service life and his shipmates. Men, on the whole, were easier to live with than women.

  A few days later, on the tenth of May, the Germans invaded France, and the war started in earnest.

  9

  SOPHIE

  It was the beginning of November before they saw each other again. After the long months of separation, there came a telephone call out of the blue. Ambrose, from Liverpool. He had a few days leave, was catching the first available train and coming to Carn Cottage for the weekend.

  He came, stayed, and departed again. Due to
a number of adverse circumstances, the visit was an unqualified disaster. One was the fact that it rained, a steady downpour, for the entire three days. Another was that Aunt Ethel, never the most tactful nor conventional of guests, was also there at the time. The other reasons were too numerous, and too disheartening, to be either analysed or counted.

  When it was over, and he had returned to his destroyer, Penelope decided that it had all been too depressing even to think about, and so, with the single-mindedness of youth, coupled with incipient pregnancy, firmly put the unhappy episode out of her mind. There were other, more important things, to bother about.

  * * *

  The baby arrived, bang on cue, at the end of November. She was not born, as her mother had been, in Carn Cottage, but at the little cottage hospital in Porthkerris. She made her appearance so swiftly that the doctor did not arrive until it was all over, and Penelope and Sister Rogers were left to cope on their own. Which they did, efficiently and neatly. Once Penelope had been set, more or less, in order, Sister Rogers, as was the custom, bore the baby away, to wash it and tidy it up generally and dress it in the tiny vest and gown and the Shetland shawl which Sophie—it went without saying—had unearthed from some drawer, smelling strongly of mothballs.

  Penelope had always held her own private theories about babies. She had never had anything to do with them; had never even held one, but she believed implicitly that once you actually saw your own child for the first time, you would recognize it instantly. Why, of course, you would say, moving aside the swaddling shawl with a gentle forefinger and gazing down at the new little face, why, of course. It’s you.

  But this did not happen. When Sister Rogers finally returned, bearing the infant with as much pride as if she had just given birth herself, and laid her tenderly into Penelope’s waiting arms, Penelope stared at the child with sinking disbelief. Fat, fair, with cornflower blue, rather closely set eyes, huge chubby cheeks, and the general aspect of a cabbage rose, she resembled no person that Penelope had ever known. Certainly neither of her parents; nor Dolly Keeling; and as for the Sterns, she might not have had a drop of their blood coursing through her hour-old veins.

  “Isn’t she a beauty?” cooed Nurse Rogers, leaning over the bed to gloat.

  “Yes,” Penelope admitted faintly. If there had been any other mothers in the hospital, she would have insisted that there had been a mix-up and she had been presented with another woman’s baby, but as she was the only maternity case in the place, this was hardly likely.

  “Look at those blue eyes! Like a little flower, she is. I’ll leave you with her for a moment, while I go and ring your mother.”

  But Penelope did not want to be left with the baby. She couldn’t think of anything to say to it. “No, take her, Sister, please. I might drop her or do something awful.”

  Sister, tactfully, did not question this. Some young mothers were funny, and heaven knew, she’d seen a few. “Right then,” She scooped the woolly bundle back into her arms. “Who’s a little love, then?” she asked it. “Who’s Sister’s little pet?” And, with her apron crackling, she went out of the room.

  Penelope, thankful to be rid of the pair of them, lay back upon the pillows. Lay, gazing at the ceiling. She had a baby. She was a mother. She was the mother of Ambrose Keeling’s child.

  Ambrose.

  She discovered, to her dismay, that it was no longer possible to ignore and put out of her mind all that had happened during that dreadful weekend, which had been doomed before it even started, because Ambrose’s projected visit had been the cause of the only real row she had ever had with her mother. Penelope and Aunt Ethel had gone off for the afternoon together, to have tea with some decrepit old acquaintance of Aunt Ethel’s, who lived in Penzance. Returning to Carn Cottage, a delighted Sophie informed Penelope that she had a lovely surprise waiting for her upstairs. Dutifully she had followed her mother up to her room, and there saw, instead of her own much-loved bed, a new and monstrous double bed, which took up all the space. They had never quarrelled before, but in a gust of uncharacteristic rage, Penelope lost her temper and told Sophie that she had no right, it was her bedroom, and it was her bed. And it wasn’t a lovely surprise at all, it was a hateful surprise. She didn’t want a double bed, it was hideous, she wouldn’t sleep in it.

  And Sophie’s quick Gallic temperement flared to match her own. No man who had been bravely fighting a war could be expected to make love to his wife in a single bed. What did Penelope expect? She was a married woman now, a little girl no longer. This was no longer her bedroom, it was their bedroom. How could she be so childish? And Penelope had burst into furious tears and shouted that she was pregnant, and she didn’t want to be made love to, and by the end of it they were both screaming at each other like a couple of fish-wives.

  There had never been such a fight before. It upset everybody. Papa was furious with the pair of them, and others in the house crept around on tiptoe as though an explosion had taken place. Eventually, of course, they made it up, apologised and kissed, and the matter was not mentioned again. But it did not augur well for Ambrose’s visit. Indeed, looking back, it did much to contribute to the resultant disaster.

  Ambrose. She was Ambrose’s wife.

  Her lips trembled. She felt the lump, swelling in her throat. Tears gathered, welled into her eyes, fell, unchecked, sliding down her cheeks, soaking the pillow-case. Once started, it was impossible to stop. It was as though all the unshed tears of years had decided to come at once. She was still crying when her mother arrived, bursting joyously through the door. Sophie was dressed in the rust-red canvas trousers and fisherman’s guernsey which she had been wearing when Sister Rogers telephoned, and as well, bore in her arms a huge bunch of Michaelmas daisies, hastily gathered from her border as she made her way through the garden.

  “Oh, my darling, you clever girl, and in no time at all…” She dropped the flowers onto a chair and came to embrace her child. “Sister Rogers says…” She stopped. The joy faded from her face and was replaced by an expression of acute concern. “Penelope.” She sat on the edge of the bed and reached for Penelope’s hand. “My darling, what is it? Why do you cry? Was it so difficult, so bad?”

  Incoherent with weeping, Penelope shook her head. Her nose was running, her face blotched and swollen.

  “Here,” Ever practical, Sophie produced a clean handkerchief scented and fresh. “Blow your nose, mop up your tears.”

  Penelope took the handkerchief and did as she was told. Already, she felt marginally better. Just having Sophie there, sitting beside her, improved the situation. When she had blown, and mopped, and sniffed for a bit, she felt strong enough to pull herself into a sitting position, and Sophie pummelled the pillows and turned them over, so that the wet, tear-soaked sides were on the bottom.

  “Now. Tell me what is it? There is nothing wrong with the baby?”

  “No. No, it isn’t the baby.”

  “Then what?”

  “Oh, Sophie, it’s Ambrose. I don’t love Ambrose. I should never have married him.”

  It was out. It was said. The relief of having actually admitted it, out loud, was enormous. She met her mother’s eyes, and saw them grave, but Sophie, as always, was neither surprised nor shocked. She simply sat, silent, for an instant, and then said his name, “Ambrose” as though it were the answer to some unsolved conundrum.

  “Yes. I know now. It’s all been the most ghastly mistake.”

  “When did you know?”

  “That weekend. Even as he got off the train and came walking up the platform towards me, I was filled with misgiving. It was like seeing a stranger coming and one that I didn’t particularly want to see. I didn’t think it was going to be like that. I felt a bit shy about seeing him again after all these months, but I never imagined it would be like that. Driving back to Carn Cottage with him beside me, and the rain bucketing down, I tried to pretend that it was nothing—just an awkwardness between us. But as soon as he walked into Carn Cottage I knew tha
t it was hopeless. He was wrong. Everything was wrong. The house rejected him and he didn’t fit. And after that, it just went on getting steadily worse.”

  Sophie said, “I hope that had nothing to do with Papa and me.”

  “Oh, nothing, nothing,” Penelope hastened to assure her. “You were angels to him, both of you. It was me that was so vile to him. But I couldn’t help it. I was bored by him. It felt like having the most impossible stranger to stay. You know, how people say, so-and-so will be in your neighbourhood, so nice, I know you will be kind to him. And you are kind, and you ask them for the weekend and it’s all a nightmare of suffocating boredom. And I know it rained all the time, but that shouldn’t have mattered. It was him. He was so uninteresting, so useless. Do you know, he couldn’t even clean his own shoes? He’d never cleaned his own shoes. And he was rude to Doris and Ernie and he thought the boys no better than a pair of urchins. He’s a snob. He couldn’t understand why we all sat down to meals together. He couldn’t think why Doris and Clark and Ronald weren’t all banished to live in the kitchen. I think that was what upset me more than anything else. I never realised that he—that anybody for that matter—could think such things; could say them; could be so hateful.”

  “In fairness, my darling, I don’t think you can blame him for his views. That is the way he has been brought up. It is perhaps we who are out of line. We have always conducted our domestic lives quite differently from other people.”

  But Penelope was not to be comforted. “It wasn’t just him. Like I told you, it was me as well. I was horrible to him. I didn’t know I could be so horrible. I didn’t want him there. I didn’t want him to touch me. I wouldn’t let him make love to me.”

  “In the condition you were in at the time, that is hardly surprising.”

  “He didn’t think it was surprising. He was just angry and resentful.” She gazed at Sophie in some dispair. “It’s all my fault. You said that I shouldn’t marry him unless I truly loved him and I didn’t listen to you. But I do know that if I had been able to bring him to Carn Cottage, to meet you both, before we even got engaged, then I would never, in a thousand years, have married him.”