The Shell Seekers Read online

  The headache had gone. She took her compact from her handbag and inspected her face in its small mirror, dabbed some powder on her nose, worked her mouth to settle her lipstick. The new magazine lay on her lap, as full of delights as an unopened box of dark-coated, soft-centered chocolates. She began to turn the pages and saw advertisements for furs, for houses in the south of Spain, for time-sharing estates in the Scottish Highlands; for jewellery, and cosmetics that would not only make you look better but actually repair your skin; for cruise ships sailing to the sun; for …

  Her desultory leafings were abruptly halted, her attention caught. A full-page spread, inserted by Boothby’s, the Fine Art Dealers, announced a sale of Victorian art that was to take place in their Bond Street Galleries on Wednesday, the twenty-first of March. To illustrate this, there was reproduced a picture by Lawrence Stern, 1865–1946. The painting was entitled The Water Carriers (1904) and depicted a group of young women in various postures, bearing copper urns on shoulder or hip. Studying them, Nancy decided eventually, that they must be slaves, for their feet were bare and their faces unsmiling (poor things, no wonder, the urns looked dreadfully heavy) and their garments minimal, flimsy draperies of grape-blue and rust-red, with an almost unnecessary revealment of rounded breast and rosy nipple.

  Neither George nor Nancy were interested in art, any more than they were interested in music or the theatre. The old Vicarage had, of course, its fair share of pictures, the sporting prints mandatory for any self-respecting country house, and some oils depicting dead stags or faithful hounds with pheasants in their mouths, which George had inherited from his father. Once, with an hour or two to spare in London, they had gone to the Tate Gallery and dutifully shuffled through an exhibition of Constables, but Nancy’s only recollection of that occasion was a lot of woolly green trees and the fact that her feet had hurt.

  But even Constable was preferable to this painting. She gazed at it, finding it hard to believe that any person should want such a horror hanging on the wall, let alone pay good money for it. If she had been lumbered with such an object, it would have ended its days either in some forgotten loft or on top of a bonfire.

  But it was not for any aesthetic reason that Nancy’s attention had been caught by The Water Carriers. The reason that she gazed at it with so much interest was the fact that it was by Lawrence Stern. For he had been Penelope Keeling’s father, and so, Nancy’s grandfather.

  The strange thing was that she was almost totally unfamiliar with his work. By the time that she was born, his fame—at its peak at the turn of the century—had dwindled and died, his output long sold, dispersed and forgotten. In her mother’s house in Oakley Street there had hung only three pictures by Lawrence Stern, and two of these made up a pair of panels, unfinished, depicting a couple of allegorical nymphs scattering lilies onto slopes of daisy-dotted grass.

  The third picture hung on the wall of the ground-floor hall, just below the staircase, the only space in the house that could accommodate its considerable size. An oil, and product of Stern’s later years, it was called The Shell Seekers. It had a lot of white-capped sea, and a beach, and a sky full of blowing clouds. When Penelope moved from Oakley Street to Podmore’s Thatch, these three precious possessions had moved with her, the panels to end up on the landing, and The Shell Seekers to dwarf the sitting room, with its low, beamed ceiling. Nancy now scarcely noticed them, so familiar were they, as much part of her mother’s house as the sagging sofas and armchairs, the old-fashioned flower arrangements crammed into blue-and-white jugs, the delicious smell of cooking.

  In truth, for years Nancy had not even thought of Lawrence Stern, but now, sitting in the train, in her furs and her boots, memory caught at her coat-tails and jerked her back into the past. Not that there was much to remember. She had been born at the end of 1940, in Cornwall, in the little cottage hospital in Porthkerris, and had spent the war years at Carn Cottage, beneath the shelter of Lawrence Stern’s roof. But her babyhood recollections of the old man were misty—more the awareness of a presence rather than a person. Had he ever taken her on his knee, or for a walk, or read aloud to her? If he had, then she had forgotten. It seemed that no impression was made upon her childish mind until that final day, when, with the war safely over, she and her mother had left Porthkerris for all time and caught the train back to London. For some reason, this event touched Nancy’s consciousness and stayed forever, clearly imprinted upon her memory.

  He had come to the station to see them off. Very old, very tall, growing frail, leaning on a silver-handled stick, he had stood on the platform by the open window and kissed Penelope goodbye. His white hair had lain long on the tweed collar of his Inverness cape, and on his twisted, deformed hands he wore woollen mittens from which the useless fingers protruded, white and bloodless as bones.

  At the very last moment, even as the train started to move, Penelope had snatched Nancy up into her arms, and the old man had reached out a hand and laid it against Nancy’s rounded baby cheek. She remembered the cold of his hand, like marble against her skin. There was no time for more. The train gathered speed, the platform curved away, he stood, growing smaller, waving his great broad-brimmed black hat in a final farewell. And that was Nancy’s first and last memory of him, for he died the following year.

  Ancient history, she told herself. Nothing to get sentimental about. But extraordinary that any person, nowadays, should want to buy his work. The Water Carriers. She shook her head, uncomprehending, and then abandoned the conundrum and turned happily to the comforting unrealities of the Social Diary.

  2

  OLIVIA

  The new photographer was called Lyle Medwin. He was a very young man with soft brown hair that looked as though it had been cut with the aid of a soup bowl, and a gentle, kind-eyed face. He had an unworldly air about him, like some dedicated novice, and Olivia found it hard to believe that he had successfully come so far along the rat race of his chosen profession without getting his throat cut.

  They stood by the table at the window of her office, where he had laid out a selection of his past work for her inspection: two dozen or so large, glossy colour prints hopefully displayed for approval. Olivia had studied them minutely and decided that she liked them. In the first place, they were lucid. Fashion photographs, she always insisted, must show the clothes, the shape of them, the drape of a skirt, the texture of a sweater, and this came across with a punchy impact that would catch any eye. But as well, the pictures breathed with life, movement, enjoyment, even tenderness.

  She picked one up. A man with the build of a full-back jogging through surf, blinding white track suit against a cobalt-blue sea. Tanned skin, sweat, the very smell of salty air and physical well-being.

  “Where did you take this?”

  “Malibu. That was an ad I did for sports clothes.”

  “And this?” She took up another, an evening shot of a girl in blowing flame-coloured chiffon, her face turned towards the glow of the setting sun.

  “That was Point Reays … an editorial feature for American Vogue.”

  She laid the prints down, turned to face him, leaning against the edge of the table. This brought her down to his height, and so their eyes were level.

  “What’s your professional experience?”

  He shrugged. “Technical college. Then a bit of free-lancing, and then I joined Toby Stryber and worked with him for a couple of years as his assistant.”

  “It was Toby who told me about you.”

  “And then, when I left Toby, I went to Los Angeles. I’ve been living out there for the past three years.”

  “And doing well.”

  He smiled, deprecating. “Okay, I guess.”

  His clothes were pure Los Angeles. White sneakers, washed-out jeans, white shirt, a faded denim jacket. In deference to the bitter London weather, he had wound a coral-coloured cashmere muffler around his slender tanned neck. His appearance, though rumpled, was nevertheless deliciously clean, like fresh laundry, dried in
the sunshine, but not yet ironed. She found him extremely attractive.

  “Carla’s told you the brief?” Carla was Olivia’s Fashion Editor. “It’s for the July issue, a last feature on holiday clothes before we go into tweeds for the moors.”

  “Sure … she mentioned location shots.”

  “Any suggestions where?”

  “We talked about Ibiza … I have contacts out there.…”

  “Ibiza.”

  He was quick to accommodate her. “But if you’d rather someplace else, its okay by me. Morocco, maybe.”

  “No.” She pushed herself away from the table and went back to her chair behind her desk. “We haven’t used Ibiza for some time … but I think not beach shots. Rural backgrounds would be a bit different, with goats and sheep and hardy peasants tilling fields. You could rope some of the locals in to add a bit of authenticity. They have wonderful faces and they love having their pictures taken.…”

  “Great…”

  “Talk to Carla about it then.…”

  He hesitated. “So, I’ve got the job?”

  “Of course you’ve got the job. Just do it well.…”

  “Sure. Thanks…” He began to gather up his prints and stack them into a pile. The buzzer on Olivia’s intercom rang, and she pressed the button and spoke to her secretary.

  “Yes?”

  “An outside call, Miss Keeling.”

  She looked at her watch. It was twelve-fifteen.

  “Who is it? I’m just going out for lunch.”

  “A Mr. Henry Spotswood.”

  Henry Spotswood. Who the hell was Henry Spotswood? And then the name came back to her, and she remembered the man she had met two evenings before at the Ridgeways’ cocktail party. Greying hair and as tall as she was. But he had called himself Hank.

  “Put him through, Jane, would you?”

  As she reached for the telephone, Lyle Medwin, the folder of photographs under his arm, made his soft-footed way across the room and opened the door.

  “’Bye,” he mouthed as he let himself out and she raised her hand and smiled, but he had already gone.

  “Miss Keeling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Olivia, Hank Spotswood here, we met at the Ridgeways’.”

  “Of course.”

  “I have a free hour or two. Any chance of lunch?”

  “What, today?”

  “Yeah, right now.”

  “Oh, I am sorry, I can’t make it. My sister’s coming up from the country and I’m having lunch with her. I’m already late, I should be on my way.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. Well, what about dinner this evening?”

  His voice, remembered, filled in the details. Blue eyes. A pleasant, strong-featured, wholly American face. Dark suit, Brooks Brothers shirt with a button-down collar.

  “I’d like that.”

  “Great. Where would you like to eat?”

  For perhaps an instant she debated, and then made up her mind.

  “Wouldn’t you like, just for once, not to have to eat in a restaurant or an hotel?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Come to my house, and I’ll give you dinner.”

  “That would be great.” He sounded surprised but by no means unenthusiastic. “But isn’t that a chore for you?”

  “No chore,” she told him, smiling over the homely word. “Come about eight o’clock.” She gave him the address and a simple direction or two in case he found himself a moronic taxi driver, and they said goodbye and she rang off.

  Hank Spotswood. That was good. She smiled to herself, then looked at her watch, put Hank out of her mind, sprang to her feet, collected hat, coat, bag, and gloves, and stalked from the office to keep her luncheon date with Nancy.

  Their venue was L’Escargot in Soho, where Olivia had booked a table. This was where she always came for business lunches, and she saw no reason to make any other arrangement, although she knew that Nancy would have been much more at home in Harvey Nichols, or someplace full of exhausted women resting their feet after a morning’s shopping.

  But L’Escargot it was, and Olivia was late, and Nancy was waiting for her, fatter than ever, in her heather wool sweater and skirt and a fur hat roughly the same colour as her faded fair curls, which made her look as though she had grown another head of hair. There she sat, a single female in a sea of business men, with her handbag on her lap and a large gin and tonic on the small table in front of her, and she appeared so ridiculously out of place that Olivia knew a pang of guilt, and as a result sounded more effusive than she felt.

  “Oh, Nancy, I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry, I got held up. Have you been waiting long?”

  They did not kiss. They never kissed.

  “It’s all right.”

  “You’ve had a drink, anyway … you don’t want another, do you? I booked a table for a quarter to one, and we don’t want to lose it.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Keeling.”

  “Oh, hello, Gerard. No, not a drink, thank you, we’re a bit pushed for time.”

  “You have a table ordered?”

  “Yes. A quarter to one. I’m afraid I’m a bit late.”

  “No matter—if you’d like to come through.”

  He led the way, but Olivia waited for Nancy to heave herself to her feet, gather up her bag and her magazine, and pull her sweater down over her considerable rump before she followed him. The restaurant was warm and packed and loud with masculine conversation. They were led to Olivia’s usual table, in a far corner of the room, where after the customary obsequious ceremony, they were finally seated on a curved banquette, the table pushed back over their knees and the massive menus produced.

  “A glass of sherry while you decide?”

  “Perrier for me, please, Gerard … and for my sister…” She turned to Nancy. “You’d like some wine?”

  “Yes, that would be very nice.”

  Olivia, ignoring the wine list, ordered a half bottle of the house white.

  “Now, what do you want to eat?”

  Nancy did not really know. The menu was terrifyingly large and all in French. Olivia knew that she could sit there all day, debating over it, so she made a few suggestions, and in the end Nancy agreed to consommé and then escalope of veal with mushrooms. Olivia ordered an omelette and a green salad and, with this settled and the waiter gone, “What sort of journey did you have up this morning?” she asked.

  “Oh, very comfortable, really. I. caught the nine-fifteen. It was a bit of a rush getting the children off to school, but I made it.”

  “How are the children?”

  She tried to sound as though she were really interested, but Nancy knew that she was not and so did not, thankfully, expound on the subject.

  “All right.”

  “And George?”

  “He’s well, I think.”

  “And the dogs?” Olivia persevered.

  “Fine…” Nancy started to say and then remembered. “One of them was sick this morning.”

  Olivia screwed up her face. “Don’t tell me. Not until we’ve eaten.”

  The wine waiter appeared, with Olivia’s Perrier and Nancy’s half bottle. These were deftly opened and the wine poured. The man waited. Nancy remembered that she was meant to taste it, so she took a sip, pursed her lips professionally, and pronounced it delicious. The bottle was placed on the table and the wine waiter, expressionless, withdrew.

  Olivia poured her own Perrier. “Don’t you ever drink wine?” Nancy asked her.

  “Not during business lunches.”

  Nancy raised her eyebrows, appearing almost arch. “Is this a business lunch?”

  “Well, isn’t it? Isn’t that what we’re here to do? Talk business about Mumma.” The baby name as usual irritated Nancy. All three of Penelope’s children called her by a different name. Noel addressed her as Ma. Nancy, for some years, had called her Mother, which she considered suitable to their ages and to Nancy’s own station in life. Only Olivia—so hard-hearted an
d sophisticated in every other way—persisted with “Mumma.” Nancy sometimes wondered if Olivia realized how ridiculous she sounded. “We’d better get on with it. I haven’t got all day.”

  Her cool tones were the last straw. Nancy, who had travelled up from Gloucestershire for this meeting, who had wiped up dog’s sick and cut her thumb on the Bonzo tin, somehow got her children to school and caught the train by the skin of her teeth, experienced a great surge of resentment.

  I haven’t got all day.

  Why did Olivia have to be so brusque, so heartless, so unfeeling? Was there never to be an occasion when, cosily, they could talk as sisters without Olivia flaunting her busy career, as though Nancy’s life, with its solid priorities of home, husband, and children, counted for nothing?

  When they were small, it was Nancy who was the pretty one. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, with sweet ways, and (thanks to Granny Keeling) pretty clothes. It was Nancy who had attracted eyes, admiration, men. Olivia was brainy and ambitious, obsessed by books, exams, and academic achievement; but plain, Nancy reminded herself, so plain. Painfully tall and thin, flat-chested and bespectacled, she displayed an almost arrogant lack of interest in the opposite sex, relapsing into a disdainful silence whenever one of Nancy’s boyfriends turned up, or disappearing up to her bedroom for a book.

  And yet, she had her redeeming features. She would not have been her parents’ daughter had she not been blessed with these. Her hair, which was very thick, was the colour and sheen of polished mahogany, and the dark eyes, inherited from their mother, glittered, like those of some bird’s, with a sort of sardonic intelligence.

  So what had happened? The gangling, brilliant University student, the sister no man would dance with, had somehow, sometime, somewhere, transformed herself into this phenomenon, of Olivia at thirty-eight. This formidable career woman, this Editor of Venus.