The Shell Seekers

by Rosamunde Pilcher

For some time Richard neither sought her out nor claimed her, but this did not matter, for it simply extended the anticipation of finally finding herself at his side and being with him again. As though performing some ritual dance, they circled, never within earshot; smiling into other faces, listening to other conversations.

“I think a conservatory is the most enviable of rooms. One day, if I ever have a proper house of my own, I shall build one. Just as big and spacious and sunny as this.”

I’d rather have music. It makes it feel a bit like being in a film.”

“It’s true. I was always with grown-ups, and treated like an adult. My best friends were my parents’ friends. But that doesn’t sound so odd when you remember how young my mother was. More like a sister, really.”

And she could make a home anywhere. She carried a sort of security about with her.

And for me, it made the war a personal thing. Horrifying; frightening; but personal. So the next day, I went out and walked into the first recruiting office I came to, and joined the Wrens. End of story. Pathetic, really.”

to go over, in her mind, every single word that he had spoken during the course of the evening.

What was happening to her had been meant to happen, was going to go on happening. Without any recognizable beginning, it did not seem possible that it could ever have an end.

He came to join her. He said, with some satisfaction, “The Shell Seekers.” “Of course. It was painted from this window.”

“That’s about as good as saying if we had some bacon, we could have bacon and eggs, if we had some eggs.”

Some years, if there’d been bad storms during the winter, the sand came up to the window, in great banks. But other years, it was like it is today, with a twenty-foot drop, and we had to climb down to the beach by a rope ladder.”

“And you?” She knew that she had to be honest, not only with Richard but with herself. “I don’t talk about him because it’s something I’m not very proud of. I don’t come out of it very well.”

Never said as much, but a straight question deserves a straight answer.

“There’s a war on. We don’t know how anything’s going to end. We just have to grasp each fleeting moment of joy as it whizzes by. If he loves you and you love him, then you just go ahead. I’m right behind you both and I’ll do everything I can to help.

In Cornwall, spring comes early. A scent in the air, a warmth in the sun makes itself evident, whilst the rest of the country continues to shiver.

“Right now, tomorrows are at a premium.” “You mean the war?” “Like birth and death, it is part of life.”

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.

“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.”

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.

Penelope learned to live without him, because there was no alternative. You couldn’t say “I can’t bear it” because if you didn’t bear it, the only other thing to do was to stop the world and get off, and there did not seem any practical way to do this.

And people buy newspapers, and read them, then and there, on the pavement outside the paper shop. It’s like it was at the time of Dunkirk, or the Battle of Britain, or El Alamein.”

The whole country’s waiting. Waiting was the worst. Waiting for war; waiting for news; waiting for death. She shivered, closed the gate, and made her way slowly back up the garden.

All of it was good, in every sense of the word. And in this life, nothing good is truly lost. It stays part of a person, becomes part of their character. So part of you goes everywhere with me. And part of me is yours, forever. My

“On D-Day. He went over with the men he’d trained here. The Second United States Rangers.” “He didn’t have to go?” “No. But he wanted to be with them. And they were proud to have him.”

… 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 last.

She remembered him smiling, and realized that time, that great old healer, had finally accomplished its work, and now, across the years, the face of love no longer stirred up agonies of grief and bitterness. Rather, one was left feeling simply grateful. For how unimaginably empty the past would be without him to remember. Better to have loved and lost, she told herself, than never to have loved at all. And know that it was true.

A gift which she had offered to each of her three children and which they had, one by one, turned down.

There is just one more thing. The Shell Seekers has gone. I have given it, as a memorial to my father, to the Art Gallery in Porthkerris which Papa helped to found.

I have not written to Noel nor Nancy. They will find out about everything sooner or later, and will probably be extremely resentful and annoyed, but I can’t help that. I have given them all I can, and they always want more. Perhaps now they will stop pestering me, and get on with their own lives. But you, I believe, will understand.

Like I said, she asked us all to go with her and none of us would. We had our chance and we turned it down. We have no one to blame but ourselves.”

“It was. For years, it was. But I think now that she feels she can do without it. She wants to share it. She wants other people to enjoy it.”

They have hung The Shell Seekers in quite the most important position and it looks utterly at home, bathed in the cold brilliant light of Porthkerris, where it was originally conceived.

And nothing could ever alter that marvellous blue, silken sweep of the bay, nor the curve of the headland, nor the baffling muddle of streets and slate-roofed houses tumbling down the hill to the water’s edge.

Dahlias, with all the work they entailed, were no longer grown at Carn Cottage. “Where did these come from?”

It was one of the worst things that happened during the war. And I could never get it out of my head that, when he died, he took part of you with him, and left no part of himself behind.”

If I had been married to Richard, I could have comforted and consoled her. As it was, I think I simply added to her personal sense of tragedy.”

“Penelope.” She turned back. “Yes?” “If he’s Richard, then who’s Antonia supposed to be?” Doris was no fool. Penelope smiled. “Myself?”

She was not a painter, she could not even draw, but his influence had been enormously strong, and she had lived with this so long that, quite naturally, she was able to observe any prospect with his acute, all-seeing artist’s eye.

For, although it was blue, it was a blue made up of a thousand different hues. Over sand, shallow and translucent, it was jade-green, streaked with aquamarine. Over rocks and seaweed, it darkened to indigo. Far out, where a small fishing boat bucketed its way across the waves, it became a deep Prussian blue. There was little wind, but the ocean lived and breathed; swelled in from distant depths, formed waves. The sunlight, shining through these as they curved to break, transformed them to moving sculptures of green glass. And, finally, all was drowned in light, that unique suffused brilliance that had first brought the painters to Cornwall, and had driven the French Impressionists into a passion of creativity.

Other voices, other worlds. It was good and nothing good is ever lost. Richard’s voice. He looks like Richard.

And as for The Shell Seekers, that picture was mine. Don’t ever forget that. Papa gave it to me as a wedding present, and now, with it hanging in the Art Gallery at Porthkerris, I feel I’ve simply handed it back to him.

“But of course I do. And you can’t give them to me. I’m sure they’re far too valuable.” “No more so than our friendship. No more so than the pleasure you have brought me.”

“I’m bewildered. I can’t think why you should be so kind to me.” “One day, when you’re as old as I am, I think you’ll find the answer to that.” “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll wear them this evening, but tomorrow morning you may have had second thoughts, and if you have, I’ll give them back.”

It was not a very long letter, more of a note, to let Olivia know that she had given Aunt Ethel’s earrings to Antonia. For some reason, it was important that Olivia knew about this.

Saying that someone was the love of your life sounds the most banal cliché, but that’s what he was to me. When he died, something in me died as well. There was never anybody else.”

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.”

Happiness is making the most of what you have, and riches is making the most of what you’ve got.

I’m wary of you and your needs and your schemes, it’s because I’ve lived through it all before with your father, and I’m not about to start again.”

Can’t you see that if I didn’t love you beyond all else, I would never trouble to say these things?”

For the present, grief would be set aside, like a package to be opened at a more convenient time. It