The Shell Seekers (65 page)

It was sad to see such a wilderness. Penelope sighed. "A shame. It must have been lovely once. All box hedges and neat beds."

"It was like that when I stayed before the war. But then there were two gardeners. Impossible, on your own, to keep a place like this going."

They emerged by a second door, found a path leading down to the creek. Penelope picked a bunch of daffodils, and they sat on the jetty and watched the tide seeping in. When they felt hungry, they went back to the house and ate bread and ham and some wrinkled apples that they found in the larder. Late in the afternoon, when the tide was high, they borrowed oilskins from the Bradbury's cloakroom, collected the oars and the sail, and took out the little dinghy. In the shelter of the creek, they made slow progress, but once out into open water, the breeze caught them. Richard slammed down the centre-board and hauled in the main sheet. The little dinghy listed alarmingly, but held its own, and they sped, close-hauled and spray-drenched, across the deep and choppy waters of the Passage.

It was a secret house and, as well, a house that seemed to slumber in the past. Life here, it was clear, had never been anything but quiet and leisurely, lived at a snail's pace; and like a very old and erratic clock, or perhaps a very old and erratic person, it had lost all sense of time. This gentle influence was very strong. By the end of the first day, sleepy and stunned by the soft air of the south coast, Richard and Penelope, unresisting, were seduced by Tresillick's drowsy spell, and after that, time ceased to have importance or even to exist. They saw no newspapers, never turned on the wireless and, if the telephone rang, they left it to ring, knowing that the call was not for them.

The days and nights flowed slowly into each other, unbroken by the necessity for regular meals, or urgent appointments, or the tyranny of clocks. Their only contact with the outside world was Mrs. Brick who, true to her word, came and went. Her visits were irregular, to say the least of it, and they never had any idea when she would turn up. Sometimes they would come upon her at three o'clock in the afternoon, polishing, scrubbing, or wielding an old-fashioned sweeper over the worn carpets. One morning, very early, when they were still in bed, she burst in upon them, bearing a tray of tea, but before they had collected their wits and found words to thank her, she had drawn back the curtains, commented on the weather, and gone.

As Richard remarked, it could have been very embarrassing.

As well, like some benevolent hobgoblin, she kept them provided with food. Going into the kitchen to forage for a meal, they would find, on the slate shelf in the larder, a dish of ducks' eggs, a trussed fowl, a pat of farm butter, or a freshly baked loaf of bread. Potatoes were peeled and carrots scraped, and once she had left them a couple of Cornish pastries so enormous that even Richard was unable to finish his.

"We haven't even given her our ration cards," Penelope pointed out in some wonder. She had lived with ration cards for so long that this abundance seemed to her nothing short of a miracle. "Where on earth does it all come from?"

They were never to find out.

The weather, that early spring, was fitful. When it rained, which it did with drowning intensity, they either put on waterproofs and went for long wet walks, or stayed by the fireside, with books to be read, or a game of piquet to be played. Some days were blue and warm as summer. They spent them out of doors, picnicking on the grass, or supine on battered old garden chairs. One morning, feeling energetic, they took the Bentley and drove the short distance to St. Mawes, to wander around the village, inspect the sailing boats, and end up having a drink on the terrace of the Idle Rocks Hotel.

It was a day of cloud and sunshine, the sun blinking in and out, the soft, sweet air spiced by the freshness of the salt breeze. Penelope leaned back in her chair, her eyes on a brown-sailed fishing boat chugging its way out to the open sea.

"Richard, do you ever think about luxury?" she asked him.

"I don't crave it, if that's what you mean."

"Luxury, I think, is the total fulfilment of all five senses at once. Luxury is now. I feel warm; and, if I wish, I can reach out and touch your hand. I smell the sea and, as well, somebody inside the hotel is frying onions. Delicious. I am tasting cold beer, and I can hear gulls, and water lapping, and the fishing boat's engine going chug-chug-chug in the most satisfactory sort of way."

"And what do you see?"

She turned her head to look at him, sitting there with his hair ruffled, and wearing his old sweater, and the leather-patched Harris tweed jacket that smelt of peat. "I see you." He smiled. "Now it's your turn. Tell me your luxury."

He fell silent, entering the spirit of the game, considering. At last, "I think, perhaps, contrast," he told her. "Mountains, and the bitter cold of snow, all glittering beneath a blue sky and a savage sun. Or lying, baking, on a hot rock, and knowing that, when you can't bear the heat another moment, the cold, deep sea is only a yard away, waiting for you to dive."

"How about being out on a freezing wet day, and coming home, chilled to the bone, and being able to wallow in an im-mensely hot, deep bath?"

"That's a good one. Or spending a day at Silverstone, deafened by racing cars, and then, on the way home, stopping off at some vast, incredibly beautiful cathedral, and going in, and just listening to the silence."

"How awful it would be to crave for sables and Rolls-Royces and huge, vulgar emeralds. Because I'm certain that, once you got them, they would become diminished, simply because they were yours. And you wouldn't want them any more, and you wouldn't know what to do with them."

"Would it be the wrong sort of luxury to suggest that we have lunch here?"

"No, it would be a lovely one. I was wondering when you were going to suggest it. We can eat fried onions. My mouth's been watering for the past half hour."

But their evenings, perhaps, were the best of all. With the curtains drawn and the fire blazing, they listened to music, working their way through Helena Bradbury's collection of records, and taking turns to get up and change the needle and wind the handle of the old wooden gramophone. Bathed and changed, they dined by the fireside, drawing up a low table, setting it with crystal and silver, eating whatever Mrs. Brick had left for them, and drinking the bottle of wine which Richard, acting on instructions, had fetched up from the cellar. Outside, the night wind, blowing offshore, nudged and rattled against the windows, but this only served to underline their own seclusion, their snugness and their undisturbed solitude.

One night, very late, they listened to the whole of the
New World Symphony
. Richard lay on the sofa, and Penelope sat on a pile of cushions on the floor, her head leaning against his thigh. The fire had collapsed to a pile of ashes, but as the last notes finally died away, they did not move, simply staying as they were, with Richard's hand on her shoulder, and Penelope lost in dreams.

He stirred at last, and broke the spell.

"Penelope." -     "Yes."

"We have to talk."

She smiled. "We've done nothing else."

"About the future."

"What future?"

"Our future."

"Oh, Richard . . ."

"No. Don't look so worried. Just listen. Because it's important. You see, one day, I want to be able to marry you. I find it impossible to contemplate a future without you, and this means, I think, that we should get married."

"I already have a husband."

"I know, my darling. I know only too well, but still, I have to ask you. Will you marry me?"

She turned, and took his hand, and laid it against her cheek. She said, "We mustn't tempt Providence."

"You don't love Ambrose."

"I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about Ambrose. He doesn't belong here. I don't want even to say his name aloud."

"I love you more than words can say."

"I too, Richard. I love you. You know that. And I can think of nothing more perfect than to be your wife, and to know that nothing can ever separate us again. But not now. Don't let's talk about it now."

For a long time he was silent. Then he sighed. "All right," he said. He bent and kissed her. "Let's go to bed."

Their last day was bright and fair, and Richard, doing his duty and paying his rent, trundled the motor mower from the garage, and cut the grass. It took a long time, and Penelope helped by harrowing the grass cuttings to the compost heap at the back of the stable, and clipping all the edges with a pair of long-handled shears. They did not finish until four o'clock in the afternoon, but the sight of the sloping lawns, smooth as velvet and striped in two different shades of green, was worth all the effort and eminently satisfactory. When they had cleaned and oiled the mower and put it back in its place, Richard announced that he was parched and was about to make them both a cup of tea, so Penelope went back to the front of the house and sat in the middle of the newly mown lawn and waited for him to bring it to her.

The fresh-cut grass smelt delicious. She leaned back on her elbows and watched a pair of kittiwakes, come to perch on the end of the jetty, and marvelled at them, so small and pretty com-pared to the wild great herring-gulls of the north. Her hands moved over the grass, stroking it as one might stroke the fur of a cat. Her fingers came upon a dandelion which the mower had missed. She pulled at it, tugging the leaves and the shoot, trying to dislodge the root. But the root was stubborn, as dandelions always are, and broke, and she was left with only the plant and half the root in her hand. She looked at it, and smelt its bitter smell and the fresh smell of the damp earth adhering to and dirtying her hands.

A footstep on the terrace. "Richard?" He had come with their tea, two mugs on a tray. He lowered himself beside her. She said, "I have found a new luxury."

"And what is that?"

"It's sitting on a newly mown lawn, all by yourself and without the one you love. You're alone but you know that you're not going to be alone for very long, because he's only gone for a little while, and in a moment or two he's going to come back to you." She smiled. "I think that's the best one yet."

Their last day. Tomorrow, early in the morning, they would be leaving; returning to Porthkerris. She closed her mind to the prospect, refusing to envisage it. Their last evening. They sat as usual, close to the fire, Richard on the sofa, and Penelope curled up on the floor beside him. They did not listen to music. Instead, he read aloud to her MacNeice's
Autumn Journal
; not just the love poem, which he had quoted that far-off day in Papa's studio, but the whole of the book, from beginning to end. It was very late when he came to the last words.

"
Sleep to the noise of running water

Tomorrow will be crossed, however deep;

There is no river of the dead or Lethe

Tonight we sleep

On the banks of the Rubicon—the die is cast

There will be time to audit

The accounts later, there will be sunlight later 

And the equation will come out at las
t."

He slowly closed the book. She sighed, not wanting it to be finished. She said, "So little time. He knew the war was inevitable."

"I think, by the autumn of nineteen-thirty-eight, most of us did." The book slipped from his hand onto the floor. He said, "I am going away."

The fire had died. She turned her head and looked up into Richard's face and found it filled with sadness.

"Why do you look like that?"

"Because I feel I am betraying you."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know. I can't say."

"When?"

"As soon as we get back to Porthkerris."

Her heart sank. "Tomorrow."

"Or the next day."

"Will you be coming back?"

"Not immediately."

"Have they given you another job?"

"Yes."

"Who's going to take your place?"

"Nobody. The operation's over. Finished. Tom Mellaby and his administrative staff will be staying on at the RMHQ to wind everything down, but the Commandos and the Rangers will be moving out in a couple of weeks. So Porthkerris will get back its North Pier, and as soon as the rugger pitch has been de-requisitioned, Doris' boys will be able to play football again."

"So it's all over?"

"That part of it is, yes."

"What happens next?"

"We'll have to wait and see."

"How long have you known about this?" 

"Two, three weeks."

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Two reasons. One is that it's still secret, classified information, although it won't be for very much longer. The other is that I didn't want anything to spoil this little time we've had together."

She was filled with love for him. "Nothing could have spoiled it." She said the words, and realized that they were true. "You shouldn't have kept it to yourself. Not from me. You must never keep anything from me."

"Leaving you will be the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

She thought about his going and the emptiness beyond. Tried to imagine life without him and, dismally, failed. Only one thing was certain. "The worst will be saying goodbye."