The Shell Seekers (84 page)

"What sort of a drive did you have?"

"Not too bad, but the traffic was hellish. Hello, Nancy. Hi, George. Olivia, who's the old boy in the blue suit hovering around the garage?"

"Oh, that'll be Mr. Plackett. He's going to come and house-sit while we're all in the church."

Noel raised his eyebrows. "Are we expecting bandits?"

"No, but it's the local custom. Mrs. Plackett insisted. It's either bad luck or not comme ti faut to leave the house empty during a funeral service. So she fixed for Mr. Plackett to stay, and he's been told to keep the fires going, and put kettles on the boil, and such."

"How very well organized."

George once more looked at his watch. He was getting res-tive. "I really think we should leave. Come along, Nancy."

Nancy stood, and went to the mirror that hung over Mumma's desk, in order to check the angle of her dreadful hat. This done, she drew on her gloves. "What about Antonia?"

'Til call her," said Olivia, but Antonia was already downstairs, waiting for them in the kitchen, sitting on the scrubbed wooden table and talking to Mr. Plackett, who had made his way indoors and taken up his post as caretaker. As they came through the kitchen door, she got off the table and smiled politely. She wore a navy-and-white-striped cotton skirt and a white shirt with a frilled collar, over which she had pulled a navy-blue cardigan. Her bright and shining hair was drawn back into a pony-tail and tied with a navy-blue ribbon. She looked young as a schoolgirl, and as diffident, and quite dreadfully pale.

"Are you all right?" Olivia asked her.

"Yes, of course."

"George says it's time we went . . ."

"I'm ready."

Olivia led the way, out through the porch, stepping into the pale, clear sunshine. The others followed, a small and sombre party. As they set out across the gravel, a new sound began. The church bell, tolling gravely. Measured peals rang out over the tranquil countryside, and rooks, disturbed, scattered, cawing from the tree-tops. They're ringing the bell for Mumma, Olivia told herself, and all at once, everything was coldly real. She paused, waiting for Nancy to catch up with her, to walk by her side. And doing this, turning back, she caught sight of Antonia suddenly stopping dead in her tracks. She had been pale before, but now she was as white as a sheet.

"Antonia, what is it?"

Antonia looked panic-stricken, "I ... I've forgotten something."

"What have you forgotten?"

"I ... a ... handkerchief. I haven't got a handkerchief. I must have one ... I won't be a moment. Don't wait. You go on ... I'll catch you up . . ."

And she bolted back into the house.

Nancy said, "How extraordinary. Is she all right?"

"I think so. She's upset. Perhaps I should wait for her . . ."

"You can't wait," George told her firmly. "There's no time to wait. We'll be late. Antonia will be all right. We'll keep a seat for her. Now, come along, Olivia. . . ."

But even as they stood there, hesitating, there occurred yet another interruption: the sound of a car being driven far too fast down the road that ran through the village. It appeared around the corner by the pub, slowed down, and drew up only a few feet away, by the open gate of Podmore's Thatch. A dark green Ford Escort, and unfamiliar. Silenced by surprise, they watched while its driver got out from behind the wheel and slammed the door shut behind him. A young man, unrecognized as his car. A man whom Olivia had never before seen in her life.

He stood there. They all stared, and nobody said a word, and in the end it was he who broke the silence. He said, "I'm sorry. For arriving so precipitously and so late. I had rather a long way to drive." He looked at Olivia and saw the total bewil-derment written all over her face. He smiled. "I don't think we've ever met. You must be Olivia. I'm Danus Muirfield."

But of course. Tall as Noel, but heavier in build, with wide shoulders and a deeply sun-tanned face. A most personable young man, and Olivia found an instant to realize exactly why Mumma had become so fond of him. Danus Muirfield. Who else?

"I thought you were in Scotland" was all she could think of to say.

"I was. Yesterday. It wasn't until yesterday that I heard about Mrs. Keeling. I am most dreadfully sorry. . . ."

"We're just going to the church now. If you . . ."

He interrupted her. "Where's Antonia?"

"She went back into the house. Something she'd forgotten. I don't think she'll be long. If you want to wait, Mr. Plackett's in the kitchen. ..."

George, by now at the end of his patience, could bear to listen no longer. "Olivia, we have no time to stand and chat. And there can be no question of waiting. We must go. Now. And this young man can hurry Antonia along and make certain that she isn't late. Now, let's stand here no longer. . . ." He began to herd them all forward, as though they were sheep.

"Where will I find Antonia?" Danus asked.

"In her room, I expect," Olivia called back over her shoul-der. "We'll keep seats for you both."

He found Mr. Plackett sitting at the kitchen table peacefully reading his
Racing News
.

"Where's Antonia, Mr. Plackett?"

"Went upstairs. Looked in tears to me."

"Do you mind if I go and find her?"

"No skin off my nose," said Mr. Plackett.

Danus left him and ran, two at a time, up the narrow stair-way. "Antonia!" Unfamiliar with the upstairs geography of the house, he opened doors, found a bathroom and a broom cup-board. "Antonia!" Down the small landing and a third door opened into a bedroom, obviously occupied but at the moment empty. At the other side of this stood yet another door; leading into the far end of the house. Without knocking, he burst through it and there found her at last, sitting forlornly on the edge of her bed, and in floods of tears.

Relief made him feel quite light-headed. "Antonia." He was beside her in two strides, sitting, taking her into his arms, pressing her head onto his shoulder, kissing the top of her head, her forehead, her streaming, swollen eyes. Her tears tasted salty, and her cheeks were wet, but nothing mattered except that he had found her, and was holding her, and loved her more than any human being on earth, and was never, never going to be separated from her again.

At last, "Didn't you hear me call?" he asked.

"Yes, but I didn't think it was true. I couldn't really hear anything except that terrible bell. I was all right until the bell started and then ... all at once I knew I was going to fall to bits. I couldn't go on with the others. I miss her so much. Every-thing's dreadful without her. Oh, Danus, she's dead, and I loved her so much. And I want her. I want her all the time. . . ."

"I know," he told her. "I know."

She continued to sob onto his shoulder. "Everything's been so awful. Since you went. So awful. There wasn't anybody. . . ."

"I'm sorry. . . ."

"And I've been thinking about you so much. All the time. I did hear you calling but I couldn't believe it ... it was really you. It was just that awful bell, and me, making it up. I wanted you to be here so much."

He said nothing. She continued to weep, but the sobs were subsiding, the worst of her storm of grief just about over. After a little, he loosened his grip of her and she drew away, turning her face up to his. A lock of hair fell across her forehead, and he smoothed this back, and then reached for his clean handkerchief and gave it to her. He watched tenderly while she wiped her eyes, and lustily, like a child, blew her nose.

"But, Dan us, where have you been? What happened? Why didn't you telephone?"

"We didn't get back to Edinburgh until yesterday at noon. The fishing was too good to leave, and I hadn't the heart to deny Roddy his fun. When I got home, my mother gave me your message. But every time I tried to call, the telephone here was engaged."

"It never stops ringing."

"In the end, I just said, to hell with it, and got into my mother's car and drove."

"You drove," she repeated. The significance of this took a second or two to sink in. "You
drove
? Yourself?"

"Yes. I can drive again. And I can drink myself silly if I so choose. Everything's all right. I'm not an epileptic and I never was one. It all started with a mistaken diagnosis by that doctor in Arkansas. I was ill. For a time I was very ill. But it was never epilepsy."

For a terrible moment, he thought she was about to burst into tears again. But all she did was to fling her arms about his neck and hug him so tightly that he wondered if he was about to choke to death. "Oh, Dan us, my darling, it's a miracle."

Gently he disentangled himself, but kept a hold of both her hands. "But that's not the end of it. It's just the beginning. A whole new start. For both of us. Because, whatever I do, I want us to do it together. I don't know what the hell it will be, and I still have nothing to offer you, but please, if you love me, don't let's ever be apart again."

"Oh, no. Don't let's. Ever." She had stopped crying, tears were forgotten, she was his own dear Antonia again. "We'll get that market garden. Somehow. Someday. And we'll find the money somewhere. ..."

"I really don't want you to go to London and be a model."

"I wouldn't if you made me. There must be other ways." All at once, she was struck by a brilliant idea. "I know. I can sell the earrings. Aunt Ethel's earrings. They're worth at least four thousand pounds ... I know it's not very much, but it would be a beginning, wouldn't it? It would give us something to start with.

And Penelope wouldn't mind. When she gave them to me, she said I could sell them if I wanted."

"Don't you want to keep them? To remember her by?"

"Oh, Danus, I don't need the earrings for remembrance. I have a thousand things to remember her by."

All the time they had been talking, the bell from the church tower had continued its tolling. Bong, Bong Bong, out across the countryside. Now, abruptly, it stopped.

They looked at each other. He said, "We must go. We have to be there. We mustn't be late."

"Yes, of course."

They stood up. Swiftly, composedly, she tidied her hair, smoothed her fingers across her cheeks. "Does it show that I've been crying?"

"Only a little. No one will remark upon it."

She turned away from the mirror. "I'm ready," she told him, and he took her hand, and together they went from the room.

As the family walked to church, the toll of the bell grew louder, clanging above them, silencing all other sounds from the village. Olivia saw the cars parked along the pavement's edge, the little stream of mourners making their way beneath the lychgate and up the path that wound between the ancient, leaning gravestones.

Bong. Bong. Bong.

She paused for a moment to exchange a word with Mr. Bedway, and then followed the others into the church. After the warm sunshine out of doors, the cold struck chill, from flagged floors and unheated stone. It was a little like walking into a cave, and there was a strong musty smell, suggestive of death-watch beetle and organ mould. But all was not gloom, for the girl from Pudley had done her work, and everywhere one looked stood profusions of spring flowers. As well, the church, being so small, was filled. This comforted Olivia, who had always found the sight of empty pews intensely depressing.

As they made their way down the aisle, the tolling abruptly stopped. In the ensuing silence, their footsteps clattered on the bare flags. The two front pews stood empty, and they took their places, filing in. Olivia, Nancy, George, and then Noel. This was the moment that Olivia had dreaded, for, at the altar steps, the coffin waited. In cowardly fashion, she averted her eyes and looked about her. Dotted amongst the sea of unfamiliar country faces ... the inhabitants, she supposed, of Temple Pudley, come to pay their last respects . . . she found others, known for years, and converged from far afield. The Atkinsons from Devon; Mr. Enderby of Enderby, Looseby & Thring; Roger Wimbush, the portraitist, who years ago, when he was an art student, had made his home in Lawrence Stern's old studio in the garden of Oakley Street. She saw Lalla and Willi Friedmann, distinguished as ever, with their pale, cultured refugee faces. She saw Louise Duchamp, immensely chic in inky black; Louise, the daughter of Charles and Chantal Rainier, and one of Penelope's oldest friends, who had made the long journey from Paris to England in order to be here. Louise looked up and caught Olivia's eye, and smiled. Olivia smiled back, touched that she had felt impelled to come so far, and grateful for her presence.

With the bells stilled, music now began, seeping into the dusty silence of the church. Mrs. Tillingham, as promised, was playing the organ. The Temple Pudley organ was not a fine instrument, being both breathless and aged, like an old man, but even these defects could not mar the cool perfection of the
Eine Kleine Nacht Musik
. Mozart. Mumma's favourite. Had Mrs. Tillingham known, or had she simply made an inspired guess?

She saw old Rose Piikington, nearing ninety but gallant as ever, wearing a black velvet cape and a violet straw hat so battered that it looked as though it had travelled around the world twice. Which it probably had. Rose's wrinkled nut of a face was tranquil; from it her faded eyes gazed out in peaceful acceptance of what had happened and what was about to happen. Simply to look at Rose made Olivia feel ashamed of her own cowardice. She faced forward, listened to the music, looked at last at Mumma's coffin. But could scarcely see it, because it was awash with flowers.