The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

  “I must say for Ambrose, once he got around to organizing himself, he made a good job of it. It was all so neat, so cut and dried, such a perfect fait accompli that there really wasn’t anything for me to say. There wasn’t anything I wanted to say. I knew that I didn’t mind his going. I would be better on my own. I would keep my children, and I would have my house. I agreed to everything, and he got off the bed and went downstairs, and I went on brushing my hair, and felt very peaceful.

  “A few days later his mother came to see me; not to commiserate, nor, to give her her due, to blame, but simply to make quite certain that because of Ambrose’s defection, I would not keep the children, either from him or from her. And I told her that my children were not my possessions, to give or withhold, but people in their own right. They must do what they wanted, see who they wanted to see, and I would never stop them. Dolly was much relieved, because although she’d never had much time for Olivia and Noel, she worshipped Nancy, and Nancy loved her. They were of like mind, those two, with everything in common. When Nancy married, it was Dolly who arranged her big London wedding, and, because of this, Ambrose made the journey from Huddersfield to give her away. That was the only occasion we ever saw each other after the divorce. He had changed, become very prosperous-looking. He’d put on a lot of weight, his hair had gone grey, and his complexion was very red. I remember, that day, that he wore, for some reason, a gold watch-chain, and he looked the very picture of a man who had lived in the North for the whole of his life and done nothing but make money.

  “After the wedding, he went back to Huddersfield, and I never saw him again. He died about five years later. He was still a comparatively young man, and it was a dreadful shock. Poor Dolly Keeling, she outlived him by years, but she never got over losing her son. And I was sorry, too. I think with Delphine he at last found the life he was looking for. I wrote to her, but she never answered my letter. Perhaps she thought that I was presumptuous to write. Or perhaps she simply didn’t know what to say in reply.

  “And now I really am going to make some tea.” She rose to her feet, her hand raised to secure the tortoiseshell hairpin that pierced her knot of hair. “Will you be all right on your own for a moment or two? Are you warm enough? Would you like me to light the fire?”

  He assured her that he would be, he was, he did not need a fire, so she left him, absorbed once more in the sketches, and went out to the kitchen and filled the kettle and put it on to boil. She felt very peaceful, just as she had felt that summer evening, brushing her hair and listening to Ambrose telling her that he was leaving her for good. This, she told herself, was how Catholics must feel when they have been to confession—cleansed, freed, and finally exonerated. And she was grateful to Roy Brookner for having listened; and grateful as well, that Boothby’s had sent her a man not simply professional, but human and understanding as well.

  Over tea and gingerbread, they became, once more, businesslike. The panels would be sold. The sketches catalogued and taken to London for appraisal. And The Shell Seekers? That, for the moment, would stay where it was, over the fireplace of the sitting room at Podmore’s Thatch.

  “The only hitch about selling the panels,” Roy Brookner told her, “is the time factor. As you know, Boothby’s have just mounted a big sale of Victorian paintings, and there won’t be another for at least six months. Not in London. Maybe our New York sale-room would be able to handle them, but I’d have to find out when they are scheduling their next sale.”

  “Six months. I don’t want to wait six months. I want to sell them now.”

  He smiled at her impatience. “Would you consider a private buyer? Without the competition of an auction, you mightn’t get such a good price, but perhaps you’d be prepared to take the risk.”

  “Could you find me a private buyer?”

  “There is an American collector, from Philadelphia. He came over to London with the express intention of bidding for The Water Carriers, but he lost the sale to the representative of the Denver Museum of Fine Arts. He was very disappointed. He has no Lawrence Sterns, and they come on the market so seldom.”

  “Is he still in London?”

  “I’m not sure. I could find out. He was staying at The Connaught.”

  “You think he might want the panels?”

  “I’m certain he would. But of course the sale would depend on how much he was prepared to offer.”

  “Will you get in touch with him?”

  “Of course.”

  “And the sketches?”

  “It’s up to you. It would be worth waiting a few months before we sold them … give us time to advertise and arouse interest.”

  “Yes, I see. Perhaps in their case it would be better to wait.”

  So it was agreed. Roy Brookner, then and there, commenced to catalogue the sketches. This took some time, but when he had finished, and presented her with a signed receipt, he returned them to their folder and neatly bound and tied the string. After that was done, she led him out of the room and back up the stairs to the landing, and he gently lifted the panels from the wall, leaving only a few cobwebs behind and two long strips of unfaded wallpaper.

  Outside, all was loaded into the back of his impressive car, the sketches in the boot, and the panels, carefully wrapped in a tartan rug, laid on the back seat. With these stowed to his satisfaction, he stepped back and slammed the car door shut. He turned to Penelope.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Mrs. Keeling. And thank you.”

  They shook hands. “I’ve so enjoyed meeting you, Mr. Brookner. I hope I didn’t bore you.”

  “I’ve never been less bored in my life. And as soon as I have any news, I’ll be in touch.”

  “Thank you. And goodbye. Safe journey.”

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Keeling.”

  * * *

  He telephoned the next day.

  “Mrs. Keeling. Roy Brookner here.”

  “Yes, Mr. Brookner.”

  “The American gentleman I mentioned to you, Mr. Lowell Ardway, is no longer in London. I rang The Connaught, and they told me that he’s gone to Geneva. His intention is to return direct to the United States from Switzerland. But I have his address in Geneva, and I’ll write today to tell him about the panels. I’m certain when he knows they are available, he’ll return to London to look at them, but we may have to wait a week or two.”

  “I can wait for a week or two. I just couldn’t bear to wait for six months.”

  “I can assure you, you won’t have to do that. And as for the sketches, I showed them to Mr. Boothby and he was immensely interested. Nothing so important has come on the market for years.”

  “Have you…” It seemed almost indelicate to inquire. “Have you any idea what they might be worth?”

  “In my estimation, no less than five thousand pounds each.”

  Five thousand pounds. Each. Replacing the receiver, she stood there, in her kitchen, trying to comprehend the enormity of the figure. Five thousand pounds multiplied by fourteen was … impossible to do it in her head. She found a pencil and worked out the sum on her shopping list. It came to seventy thousand pounds. She reached for a chair and sat down, because her knees had, quite suddenly, gone weak.

  Thinking about it, it was not so much the idea of riches that astonished her, but her own reaction to it. Her decision to summon Mr. Brookner, to show him the sketches, to sell the panels, was going to change her life. It was as simple as that, but still, took a little getting used to. Lawrence Stern’s two insignificant, unfinished paintings, which she had always loved but never thought of any value, were now with Boothby’s, awaiting an offer by an American millionaire. And the bundle of sketches, hidden, and out of mind for years, had all at once become worth seventy thousand pounds. A fortune. It was like winning the pools. Considering her altered status, she remembered the young woman who had done just this thing, and whom Penelope had watched, in disbelief, on television, pouring champagne over her head and shrieking, “Spend, spend, spend!”

 
; An astonishing scene, like something from a manic fairytale. And yet now she found herself in more or less the same situation, and realized—and this was the astonishment—that it neither appalled nor overwhelmed her. Instead, she was filled with the gratitude of a person lavished with unexpected largesse. The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent’s own independence. That was what she had said to Noel and Nancy, and she knew that it was true and the freedom of security was priceless. Also, there were the possibilities of self-indulgent pleasures.

  But what pleasures? She was inexperienced in extravagance, having saved and contrived and penny-pinched for the whole of her married life. She had felt no resentment or envy of other people’s luxuries, but simply had been grateful to be able to raise and educate her children and still keep her head above water. It was not until she had sold the house in Oakley Street that she was able to lay claim to any sort of capital, and this had at once been prudently invested—to produce a modest income and be spent the way she most enjoyed spending money. On food, wine, entertaining her friends. Then there were presents—in these she was immensely generous—and, of course, her garden.

  Now, if she wanted, she could do up the house from floor to ceiling. Everything she owned was worn and shabby beyond belief, but she liked things that way. The battered Volvo was eight years old, and had been second-hand when she bought it. Perhaps she should splash out on a Rolls-Royce, but there was nothing wrong with the Volvo—yet—and it would be something of a sacrilege to load up the boot of a Rolls with bags of peat and earthy pots of plants for the garden.

  Clothes, then. She had, however, never been interested in clothes, an attitude of mind set for ever by the long years of war and the deprivation of the years that followed it. Many of her favourite garments had been purchased at the Temple Pudley Church Jumble Sale, and her naval officer’s boat cloak had kept her warm for forty winters. She could always give herself a mink coat, but she had never relished the idea of wearing a garment made out of a lot of dear little furry dead animals, and she’d look a fool wandering down the village street on a Sunday morning to pick up the papers dressed up to the nines in mink. People would think she’d gone mad.

  She could travel. But somehow, at sixty-four and not, it had to be faced, in the best of health, she knew that she was too old to start out across the world on her own. The days of leisurely car journeys, the Train Bleu and the mail-boats, were over. And the thought of foreign airports and ripping through space in supersonic jets she had never found particularly appealing.

  No. None of these things. For the moment, she would do nothing, say nothing, tell nobody. Mr. Brookner had come and gone and no person knew of his visit. Until he got in touch with her again, it was better to carry on as if nothing had happened. She told herself that she would put him out of her mind, but found this impossible. Each day, she waited to hear from him. Every time the telephone rang, she dashed for it, like an eager girl awaiting a call from her lover. But, unlike that eager girl, as the days went by and nothing happened, she stayed unanxious, unperturbed. There was always tomorrow. There was no hurry. Sooner or later he would have news for her.

  Meantime, life went on and spring, in more ways than one, was in the air. The orchard was bright with drifts of daffodils, their yellow trumpets dancing in the breeze. Trees were misted in the tender green of new foliage, and in the sheltered beds close to the house the wallflowers and polyanthus opened their velvety faces, filling the air with nostalgic scent. Danus Muirfield, with the vegetable garden neatly planted, had given the lawn its first cut of the season and was now engaged in hoeing, raking, and mulching all the borders. Mrs. Plackett came and went, started in on an orgy of spring-cleaning and washed all the bedroom curtains. Antonia pegged them out, like banners, on the line. Her energy was enormous, and she gladly took on any task that Penelope could not be bothered to do for herself, like driving to Pudley to do the huge weekly shopping, or clearing out the store cupboard and scrubbing all the shelves. When she was not occupied indoors, she could usually be found in the garden, erecting a trellis for the sweet-pea seedlings, or clearing the terrace tubs of their early narcissus and filling them with geraniums and fuchsia and nasturtiums. If Danus was there, she was never far from his side, and their voices floated across the garden as they laboured together. Seeing them, pausing to watch from an upstairs window, Penelope was filled with satisfaction. Antonia was a different person from that strained and exhausted girl that Noel had driven down from London; she had lost the pale sadness that she had brought from Ibiza, lost the dark rings beneath her eyes. Her hair shone, her skin bloomed, and as well there was an aura about her, undefinable, but still, to Penelope’s experienced eye, unmistakable.

  Antonia, she suspected, had fallen in love.

  * * *

  “I think the nicest thing in the world is doing something constructive in a garden on a fine morning. It’s a combination of the best of everything. In Ibiza, the sun was always so hot and you got dreadfully sweaty and sticky, and then you’d have to go and jump into the pool.”

  “We haven’t got a pool here,” Danus pointed out. “I suppose we could always go and jump into the Windrush.”

  “It would be icy. I put my feet in the other day and it was terrible. Danus, will you always be a gardener?”

  “Why do you suddenly ask that?”

  “I don’t know. I was just thinking. You seem to have so much behind you. School and going to America and then your Horticultural degree. It seems a bit of a waste if you’re never going to do anything but plant other people’s cabbages and pull up other people’s weeds.”

  “But I’m not always going to do that, am I?”

  “Aren’t you? Then what are you going to do?”

  “Save up until I’ve got enough to buy a bit of land, have my own place, grow vegetables, sell plants, bulbs, roses, gnomes, anything anybody wants to buy.”

  “A garden centre?”

  “I’d specialize in something … roses or fuchsias, just to be a bit different from all the others.”

  “Would it cost an awful lot? To start up, I mean?”

  “Yes. The cost of land’s high, and it would need to be large enough to make it a viable proposition.”

  “Couldn’t your father help you? Just to get started.”

  “Yes, he could if I asked him. But I’d prefer to do it on my own. I’m twenty-four now. Perhaps by the time I’m thirty I’ll be able to establish myself.”

  “Six years to wait seems for ever. I’d want it now.”

  “I’ve learned to be patient.”

  “Whereabouts? I mean, where would you have this garden centre?”

  “I’m not bothered. Wherever it was needed. I’d prefer to stay this end of the country, though. Gloucestershire, Somerset.”

  “I think Gloucestershire’s the best. It’s so beautiful. And think of the market. All those rich commuters from London, buying gorgeous golden stone houses and wanting their gardens filled with goodies. You’d make a fortune. If I were you, I’d stay right here. Find yourself a little house and a couple of acres. That’s what I’d do.”

  “But you’re not going to open a garden centre. You’re going to be a model.”

  “Only if I can’t think of anything else to do.”

  “You’re a funny creature. Most girls would give their eyes for a chance like that.”

  “Wouldn’t that rather defeat the purpose?”

  “Besides, you wouldn’t want to spend your life hoeing turnips.”

  “I wouldn’t grow turnips. I’d grow delicious things like corn on the cob and asparagus and peas. And don’t look so sceptical. I’m very proficient. In Ibiza we never bought a single vegetable. We grew them all, and fruit as well. We had orange trees and lemons, too. Daddy used to say there was nothing more splendid than a gin and tonic with a slice of freshly picked lemon. They taste quite different to horrid, bought, shop ones.”

  “I suppose you could grow lemons in a glasshouse.”


  “The nice thing about lemon trees is that they fruit and flower at the same time. That way they always look pretty. Danus, did you never want to be a lawyer like your father?”

  “Yes, I did at one time. Thought I’d follow in the old man’s footsteps. But then I went to America, and after that, things sort of changed. And I decided to spend my life using my hands rather than my head.”

  “But you do use your head. Gardening takes a lot of thought, a lot of knowledge and planning. And if you get your garden centre, you’ll have to do all the accounts and the ordering and the taxes.… I don’t call that not using your head. Was your father disappointed that you stopped wanting to be a lawyer?”

  “To begin with. But we talked it over and he came around to seeing my point of view.”

  “Wouldn’t it be utterly awful to have a father you couldn’t talk to? Mine was perfect. You could tell him anything. I wish you could have met him. And I can’t even show you my darling Ca’n D’alt, because some other family are living in it now. Danus, was it anything special that made you switch careers? Was it something that happened in America?”