The Shell Seekers (30 page)

She dropped the haversack on the doormat and they hugged, holding each other very tight, Penelope filled with relief and affection, and Antonia simply thankful to be here at last, safe and in the arms of just about the only person whom, at the moment, she wanted to be with.

"Antonia." They drew apart, but Penelope still held her arm, drawing her through the inner door, away from the dark, cold, wet night, and into the warmth of the kitchen. "Oh, I thought you were never going to get here."

"So did I."

She looked the same, much as she had looked at thirteen. Taller, of course, but just as slender . . . she had a beautiful long-legged figure . . . and her face had grown to her mouth, but otherwise nothing much seemed to have changed. Still the freckles on her nose, the slanting, greenish eyes, the long, thick, fair eyelashes. Still the red-gold hair, shoulder-length, heavy and straight. Still, even, the same sort of clothes; blue jeans, and a white sweat-shirt with a man's thick V-necked sweater pulled over it.

"It is so lovely to have you here. Did you have a good drive down? Was it dreadfully rainy?"

"Pretty bad."

Antonia turned as Noel came through the door to join them, bearing, not only Antonia's suitcase and his own bag, but the abandoned haversack as well.

"Oh, Noel." He set down the cases. "What a perfectly dreadful night."

"Let's hope we don't have rain the entire weekend, other-wise we won't get a thing done." He sniffed. "Something smells good."

"Shepherd's pie."

"I'm ravenous."

"No wonder. I'll take Antonia up and show her her room, and then we'll have dinner. Give yourself a drink. I'm sure you need one. We'll be down in a moment. Come along, Antonia. . . ."

She picked up the haversack and Antonia carried her bag, and Penelope led the way upstairs, across a tiny landing, through the first bedroom and into the second.

"What a marvellous house," said Antonia from behind her.

"It's not for privacy. All the rooms lead into each other."

"Like Ca'n D'alt."

"It used to be two cottages. There are still two staircases and two doors. Now here we are." She set down the haversack and glanced around the carefully prepared room, checking that she had forgotten nothing. It looked very nice. The white, closely fitted carpet was new, but all else dated back to Oakley Street. The twin beds, with their polished, wheel-back heads; the rose-flowered curtains that did not match the bedspreads. The little mahogany dressing-table, and the balloon-backed chairs. She had filled a lustre jug with polyanthus and turned down one of the beds to reveal crisp white linen and pink blankets. "This cupboard is the wardrobe, and through the other door is the bathroom. Noel's room is just beyond and you'll have to share the bathroom with him, but if he's using it, you can come to the other end of the house and use mine. Now . . ." With all ex-plained, she turned to Antonia. "What would you like to do? Have a bath? There's plenty of time."

"No. I'll just wash my hands if I may. And then I'll come down."

There were shadows like smudges beneath her eyes. Penelope said, "You must be tired."

"I am, rather. I think it's a sort of jet lag. I haven't quite caught up with myself yet."

"Never mind, you're here now. You don't have to go anywhere else, not until you want to. Come down when you're ready and Noel will give you a drink."

She returned to the kitchen, where she found Noel, with a large, dark whisky and soda, sitting at the table and reading the paper. She closed the door behind her, and he looked up. "Everything okay?"

"Poor child, she looks drained."

"Yes. She didn't talk much on the way down. I thought she was sleeping, but she wasn't."

"She hasn't changed in the very least. I think she was the most attractive child I ever knew."

"You mustn't put ideas into my head."

She gave him a cautionary glance. "You behave yourself this weekend, Noel."

He looked the picture of innocence. "Now what could you mean by that?"

"You know perfectly well what I mean."

He grinned, still good-humoured, unabashed. "By the time I've finished harrowing all that rubbish out of your attic, I'll be too shagged to do anything except pass out in my own little bunk."

"I certainly hope so."

"Oh, come off it, Ma, you must realize she's not at all my type . . . white eyelashes have no appeal. Makes me think of rabbits. I'm starving. When are we going to eat?"

"When Antonia comes down." She went to open the oven door and check on the shepherd's pie to make certain that it was neither overcooked nor inedible. Which it wasn't. She closed the door. Noel said, "What did you think about Wednesday's sale?
The Water Carriers
."

"I told you. Quite unbelievable."

"Have you decided what you're going to do?"

"Have I got to do anything?"

"You're being obtuse. It went for almost a quarter of a mil-lion! You own three Lawrence Sterns, and the financial responsibility, if nothing else, completely alters the situation. Do what I suggested the last time I was here. Get them professionally val-ued. If you still don't want to sell them, then for God's sake have them reinsured. Any cunning joker could walk into the house one day when you're out in the rose-beds and simply walk off with them. Don't be too stupid about it all."

Across the table, she eyed him, torn between a sort of motherly gratitude for his concern and a nasty suspicion that her son —so like his father—was up to something. He met her eyes with a clear and open blue gaze, but she remained undecided.

She said at last, "All right, I'll think about it. But I shall never sell my darling Shell Seekers, and I shall continue to get the utmost satisfaction and comfort from looking at it. It's all I've got left of the old days, and being a child, and Cornwall and Porthkerris."

He looked slightly alarmed. "Hey. Just listen to those sob-bing violins. It's not like you to start getting maudlin."

"I'm not being maudlin. It's just that, lately, I've developed this yearning to be there again. It's something to do with the sea. I want to look at the sea again. And why not? There's nothing to stop me going. Just for a few days."

"Are you sure that's wise? Isn't it better to remember it as it was? Everything changes, and never for the better."

"The sea doesn't change," Penelope told him stubbornly.

"You'd know nobody."

"I know Doris. I could stay with her."

"Doris?"

"She was our evacuee at the beginning of the war. Lived with us at Cam Cottage. She never went back to Hackney. She just stayed at Porthkerris. And we still correspond and she's always asking me to go and visit her. . . ." She hesitated, and then, "Would you come with me?" she asked her son.

"Come with you?" He was so taken aback by her suggestion that he made no attempt to conceal his astonishment.

"It would be company." That sounded pathetic, as though she were lonely. She tried another tack. "And it might be fun for us both. I don't regret many things in my life, but I do regret never taking you all to Porthkerris when you were children. But I don't know; things just never worked out that way."

A faint embarrassment lay between them. Noel decided to turn it all into a joke. "I'm a bit long in the tooth for sand-castles on the beach."

His mother was not particularly amused. "There are other diversions."

"Such as what?"

"I could show you Cam Cottage, where we used to live. Your grandfather's studio. The Art Gallery that he helped to start. You seem so interested, all of a sudden, in his pictures, I should have thought you would be interested in seeing where it all began."

She did this sometimes; delivered a glancing blow, right beneath the belt. Noel took a mouthful of whisky, composing himself. "When would you go?"

"Oh. Soon. Before the spring is over. Before summer conies."

He knew relief at having a watertight excuse. "I couldn't get away then."

"Not even for a long weekend?"

"Ma. We're up to the eyes in the office, and I'm not due for leave until July at the earliest."

"Oh well, in that case it's impossible." To his relief she abandoned the subject. "Noel, would you be kind and open a bottle of wine?"

He got to his feet. He felt a bit guilty. "I'm sorry. I would have come with you."

"I know," she told him. "I know."

By the time Antonia reappeared it was a quarter to ten. Noel poured the wine, and they all sat down to eat the shepherd's pie, and the fresh fruit salad, and biscuits and cheese. Then Noel made coffee for himself, and, announcing that he was going up to the loft to give it a preliminary once-over before starting work the next day, took himself off upstairs, bearing his coffee with him. 

When he had gone, Antonia, as well, rose to her feet, and began to stack the plates and glasses, but Penelope stopped her.

"There's no need. I'll put it all in the dishwasher. It's nearly eleven, and you must long for your bed. Perhaps you'd like a bath now?"

"Yes, I would. I don't know why, but I feel frightfully dirty. I think it's something to do with being in London."

"I always feel that way, too. Take lots of hot water and have a good soak."

"That was a lovely dinner. Thank you."

"Oh, my dear . . ." Penelope was touched, and all at once found herself at a loss for words. And yet there was so much to be said. "Perhaps, when you're in bed, I'll come up and say good night to you."

"Oh, will you?"

"Of course."

When she had gone, Penelope slowly cleared the table, stacked the dishwasher, put out the milk bottles, laid the breakfast. Upstairs, in this house where sounds echoed through open doors and wooden ceilings, she heard Antonia run the bath; heard, high above, Noel's muffled footsteps as he edged his way around the cluttered loft. Poor man, he had taken on himself a gargantuan task. She hoped that he would not lose heart half-way through and that she would not be left with an even bigger muddle than before. The bath-water, gurgling, ran away down the waste-pipe. She hung up the tea-towel, turned off the lights, and went upstairs.

She found Antonia in bed, awake, and turning the pages of a magazine Penelope had left on the bedside table. Her bare arms were brown and slender, and her silky hair spread itself out over the white linen pillowslip.

She closed the door behind her.

"Did you have a good bath?"

"Blissful." Antonia smiled. "I put in some of those delicious bath salts I found. I hope that was all right."

"That was what you were meant to do." She sat on the edge of the bed. "It's done you good. You don't look so weary."

"No. It's woken me up. I feel all alert and chatty. I couldn't possibly go to sleep."

From overhead, beyond the beamed ceiling, came the sound of something being dragged across a floor.

Penelope said, "Perhaps that's just as well, with the din that Noel's creating."

At that moment, there was a thud, as though some heavy article had been inadvertently dropped, and then Noel's voice. "Oh, bloody hell."

Penelope began to laugh, and Antonia laughed too, and then quite suddenly was not laughing any longer, for her eyes were filling with tears.

"Oh, my dear child."

"So silly . . ." She sniffed and groped for a handkerchief and blew her nose. "It's just that it's so wonderful to be here, with you, and be able to laugh about silly things again. Do you remember how we used to laugh? When you were staying with us, funny things happened all the time. It was never quite the same after you left."

She was all right. She was not going to weep. The tears had receded, scarcely shed, and Penelope said gently, "Do you want to talk?"

"Yes, I think I do."

"Do you want to tell me about Cosmo?"

"Yes."

"I was so sorry. When Olivia told me ... I was so shocked ... so sorry."

"He died of cancer."

"I didn't know."

"Lung cancer."

"But he didn't smoke."

"He used to. Before you knew him. Before Olivia knew him. Fifty a day or more. He kicked the habit, but it killed him just the same."

"You were with him?"

"Yes. I've been living with him for the past two years. Ever since my mother remarried."

"Did that upset you?"

"No. I was very happy for her. I don't much like the man ' she chose, but that's beside the point. She does. And she's left Weybridge and gone to live in the North, because that's where he comes from."

"What does he do?"

"He has some sort of woollen business . . . worsteds, weav-ing, that sort of thing."

"Have you been there?"

"Yes, I went the first Christmas they were married. But it was dreadful. He has two of the most ghastly sons, and I couldn't wait to get out of the house before one of them actually raped me. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but that's the reason I couldn't have gone to my mother after Daddy died. I just couldn't. And the only person I could think of who would help me was Olivia."