The Shell Seekers (76 page)

"Then one day, towards the end of my time there, I got ill. Felt lousy, started vomiting and shivering and then ran a raging temperature. I must have become delirious because I don't remember being moved out of the bunk house and into the ranch house, but that's where I found myself, with Sally Rogers nursing me. She did a good job and, after a week or so, I'd recovered and was back on my legs again. We decided it had been some virus I'd picked up, and when I could walk three paces without keeling over, I went back to work again.

"And then, soon after, with no warning . . . nothing . . . I blacked out. Went over like a felled tree, flat on my back and stayed unconscious for about half an hour. There seemed to be no reason, but a week later it happened again, and I felt so appall-ingly ill that Sally piled me into the truck and drove me to the doctor in Sleeping Creek. He listened to my tale of woe and made some tests. A week later, I went back to see him and he told me that I had epilepsy. He gave me drugs to take, four times a day. He said I'd be okay if I took them. He said there wasn't anything else he could do for me."

He fell silent. Penelope felt that some comment was expected of her but could think of nothing to say that was neither trite nor banal. There was a long pause and then, painfully, Danus continued.

"I'd never been ill in my life. I'd never had anything worse than measles. I asked the doctor, why? And he asked me a few questions, and we finally ran it down to a kick I'd got on the head at school when I'd been playing rugger. I'd suffered concussion, but nothing worse. Until now. I had epilepsy. I was nearly twenty-one, and I was an epileptic."

"Did you tell those kind people you were working for?"

"No. And I made the doctor promise that he would honour his medical confidence. I didn't want anybody to know. If I couldn't deal with it on my own, then I wasn't going to be able to deal with it at all. Eventually, I came back to this country. I flew to London and caught the night sleeper back to Edinburgh. By then I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to take up that place at Edinburgh University. With time to think about it, I'd discovered the truth. That I could never take lan's place. And I was afraid of failing, and letting my father down. As well, there was something else I'd found out during those last months. That I needed to be out of doors. I needed to work with my hands. I wanted no person standing at my shoulder, with expectations of me that I could never fulfil. Telling my parents all this was one of the worst things I've ever had to do. At first, they were disbelieving. And then hurt, and desperately disappointed. I didn't blame them. I was destroying every plan they'd ever made. Finally, they became resigned and made the best of it. But, after all that, I couldn't bring myself to tell them about my epilepsy."

"You never told them? But how could you not?"

"My brother died of meningitis. I felt that, with one thing and another, they'd had enough to cope with. And what good would it have done to load them with yet more worry and anguish. And I was all right. I was taking the drugs and I wasn't blacking out. To all intents and purposes, I was perfectly normal. All I had to do was register with a new young doctor ... a man who knew nothing of me or my medical history. And he gave me a permanent prescription for my drugs. After that, I enrolled for three years at a Horticultural College in Worcestershire. That was all right, too. I was just another ordinary guy. Did everything the other students did. Got drunk, drove a car, played football. But still, I was epileptic. I knew that, if I stopped taking the drugs, it would all start happening again. I pretended not to think about it, but you can't stop what goes on inside your head. It was always there. A great weight, like a loaded haversack that you can never put down."

"If only you'd shared your problem, it mightn't have felt so heavy."

"I did eventually. I was forced into it. When I finished col-lege, I managed to get the job with Autogarden in Pudley. I saw an advertisement in the paper, and applied and was accepted. I worked till Christmas and then I went home for a couple of weeks. Over New Year, I got flu. I was in bed for five days, and I ran out of drugs. I couldn't go and get them for myself, so finally I had to ask my mother to go and pick them up, and then of course it all came out."

"So she knows. Oh, thank heavens for that. She must have wanted to strangle you for being so secretive."

"In an extraordinary way, I think she was relieved. She'd suspected something was up, and had imagined the very worst but had kept her fears to herself. That's the trouble with my family, we've always kept things to ourselves. It's something to do with being Scottish and independent, and not wanting to be thought a nuisance. That's the way we were brought up. My mother was never demonstrative, never what you might call particularly cosy; but that day, after she'd shot off and got my pills from the chemist, she sat on my bed and we talked for hours. She even talked about lan, which she'd never done before. And we remembered good times and we laughed. And then I told her that I'd always realized that I was second-best, and that I could never take lan's place, and, with that, she became her old brisk and businesslike self and told me not to be a blithering idiot; I was my own self and she didn't want me any other way; all she wanted was to see me well again. Which meant another diagnosis and a second opinion. No sooner was I on my feet after the flu than I was sitting in an eminent neurosurgeon's consulting room, being asked a thousand questions. There were more tests and an EEG ... a brain-scan ... but at the end of the day I was told that no accurate diagnosis could be made while I was taking drugs. So I was to go off them for three months and then go back for a second consultation. If I was careful, I should come to no harm, but under no circumstances was I to drink alcohol or drive a car."

"And when is the three months up?"

"It's overdue now. Two weeks overdue."

"But that's foolish. You must waste no more time."

"That's what Antonia told me."

Antonia. Penelope had almost forgotten about Antonia. "Danus, what happened yesterday evening?"

"You know most of it. We met in the bar, and waited for you, and when you didn't come, Antonia went upstairs to find you. And while I was on my own, I sat and made mental lists of every single thing I was going to tell her. And I imagined that it was going to be hideously difficult, and found myself searching for the right words, and composing ridiculously formal sentences. But then she came back, wearing the earrings that you had given her, and looking so sensationally adult and beautiful that all those carefully prepared phrases flew out of the window, and I just told her what was in my heart. And as I spoke, she started speaking too, and then we began to laugh, because we both realized that we were saying the same thing."

"Oh, my dear boy."

"What I'd been afraid of was hurting or distressing her. She'd always seemed to me so very young and so very vulnerable. But she was amazing. Immensely practical. And, like you, horrified to know that I'd let the weeks slide by without making that second appointment."

"But now it's made?"

"Yes. I called at nine o'clock this morning. I'm to see the neurosurgeon on Thursday, and have another EEG then. I should have the results almost at once."

"You'll ring us up at Podmore's Thatch and let us know."

"Of course."

"If you've been three months without drugs and without a black-out, surely the prognosis is hopeful."

"I can't let myself think about it. I daren't hope."

"But you'll come back to us?"

For the first time, Danus seemed uncertain of himself; he hesitated. "... I don't know. The thing is, I may have to have some form of treatment. It may take months. I may have to stay in Edinburgh. . . ."

"And Antonia? What will happen to Antonia?"

"I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen to me. Right now, I can see no prospect of being able ever to give her the good life she deserves. She's eighteen. She could do anything with her life, have anybody. She only has to ring Olivia, and within months she'll be on the front page of every glossy magazine in the country. I can't allow her to commit herself to me until I can see some sort of a future for the both of us. There really is no alternative."

Penelope sighed. But, against her better judgement, she re-spected his reasoning. "If you have to be parted for a while, it might be best for Antonia to go back to London and Olivia. She can't simply hang around at Podmore's Thatch with me. She'd die of boredom. She'll be better with a job. New friends. New interests . . ."

"Will you be all right without her there with you?"

"Oh, of course." She smiled. "Poor Danus, I am sorry for you. Illness is hateful, whatever form it takes. I am ill. I had a heart attack but would admit it to nobody. I walked out of the hospital and told my children that the doctors were idiots. I in-sisted that there was nothing wrong with me. But, of course, there is. If I get upset, my heart jumps up and down like a yo-yo, and I have to take a pill. At any moment, it might conk out altogether and I shall be left lying with my toes turned up. But until such time, I am really very much happier pretending that nothing at all has happened. And you and Antonia mustn't worry about me being on my own. I have my dear Mrs. Plackett. But it's no good pretending that I shan't miss you both. We've had a good time. And this last week, I could have asked for no better companions. I do thank you for coming to this so special place."

He shook his head in smiling bewilderment. "I'll never know why you've always been so exceptionally kind to me."

"That's easily explained. I took to you right away because of the way you look. Quite uncannily like a man I knew during the war. It was as though, from the very first, I recognized you. Doris Penberth, too, remarked on the resemblance, that evening you and Antonia came to fetch me from her house. Doris and Ernie and I are the only people left who remember him. He was called Richard Lomax, and he was killed on D-Day at Omaha Beach. Saying that someone was the love of your life sounds the most banal cliche, but that's what he was to me. When he died, something in me died as well. There was never anybody else."

"But your husband?"

Penelope sighed, shrugged her shoulders. "I'm afraid ours was never a very satisfactory marriage. If Richard had survived the war, I should have left Ambrose, and taken Nancy and gone to live with Richard. As it was, I went back to Ambrose. It seemed the only thing to do. And I felt a little guilty about him. I was young and selfish when we married, and we were parted almost at once. The marriage had never had a chance. I felt I owed Ambrose that chance, if nothing else. As well, he was Nancy's father. And I wanted more children. Finally, I knew that I would never, wholly, love again. There could never be another Richard. And it seemed the sensible thing, just to make the best of what I had. I have to admit that Ambrose and I didn't make much of a success of our life together, but I had Nancy, and then I had Olivia, and then Noel. Little children, for all their tedious ways, can be a great comfort."

"Have you ever spoken to your children about this other man?"

"No. I never told them, never spoke his name. For forty years I never spoke of him. Until the other day when I was with Doris, and she talked of Richard as though he'd just that mo-ment walked out of the room. It was lovely. Not sad any longer. I lived with sadness for so long. And a loneliness that nothing and nobody could assuage. But, over the years, I came to terms with what had happened. I learned to live within myself, to grow flowers, to watch my children grow; to look at paintings and listen to music. The gentle powers. They are quite amazingly sustaining."

"You'll miss
The Shell Seekers
."

She was touched by his perception.

"No, Danus. Not any more.
The Shell Seekers
has gone, as Richard has gone. I shall probably never say his name again. And you will keep what I have told you to yourself, for ever."

"I promise."

"Good. Now, as we. seem to have talked ourselves to a standstill, isn't it time we thought about moving? Antonia will be thinking that we have disappeared for good." Danus stood up and held out a hand to help her to her feet. These, she discovered, ached. "I am too tired to walk up the hill. We'll ask that long-haired young man to phone for a taxi to take us back to the hotel. And I shall leave
The Shell Seekers
and all the memories of my past behind me. Right here; in this funny little Gallery, where they all started, and where it is entirely appropriate that they should end their days."

14

PENELOPE

The hall porter of The Sands Hotel, resplendent in his dark green uniform, slammed the car door shut and wished them a safe journey. Antonia drove. The old Volvo moved forward, down the curve of the drive, between the banks of hydrangeas, and turned out into the road. Penelope did not look back.

It was a good day for leaving. The spell of perfect weather seemed, for the time being, to have broken. During the night a mist had rolled in from the sea and all was veiled in moisture, dispersing, to gather again, like smoke. Only once, just before they reached the motorway, did the fog clear, admitting a diffused gleam of sunlight, and the estuary was revealed. It was ebbtide. The mud-flats lay empty of life, save for the eternal, scav-enging sea-birds, and in the distance could be glimpsed the white rollers of the Atlantic breaking in over the sand-bar. Then the steep embankment of the new road reared skywards, and all was gone.