Seashells

Gillian Drake

Lowri eased the car along the Pembrokeshire lane. The sky was leaden, overcast and misty, and the grey line of the sea was barely visible on the horizon. A tangle of wild flowers fringed the road – pretty on a sunny day, she thought, but today the daisies were tightly closed and the wild roses hung their heads, heavy with rain.

She glanced at the estate agent’s details on the seat beside her. Shell Cottage. She would surely be there soon. It was a pity Sam had been unable to take time off work so that they could view the house together. But, ‘A house like that won’t be on the market long,’ he had said. ‘It’ll be another fortnight before I’ve finished this account and it could be gone by then. You go; you can let me know what you think.’

She sighed as yet another bend in the road appeared before her. This place was so remote…she feared that she already knew what she thought of it. True, the cottage looked delightful in the property details, but then it was the estate agent’s job to make sure that it did. Moving to Pembrokeshire for Sam’s job transfer sounded fine in theory, but what would it be like to live in an old, probably damp, cottage after their comfortable flat in Cardiff Bay? In the two years since they married she had settled happily there, enjoying being able to walk through town to her job in the small mail-order business that had now folded, leaving her redundant. How would she adjust to life in the country – especially in weather like this? Perhaps they would be better off looking for something in the town of Haverfordwest after all.

Her phone rang. There was no other traffic in the lane and Lowri stopped the car in a lay-by.

‘Are you there yet?’ Sam’s cheerful voice was so welcome.

‘Couple of miles to go,’ said Lowri.

‘How’s it looking? Promising?’

‘Can’t really tell…’ She peered into the drizzle. Fields, a wood in the distance, the rooftops of what must be the village, huddled below a church tower. ‘Be better when the mist clears.’ She hoped with all her heart that it really would.

‘I’ll ring you in about an hour, then.’ She heard the sound of a phone in the background, busy voices. ‘I’ll have to go,’ he added. ‘Sorry!’

Lowri drove the last mile or two, arriving at Shell Cottage as arranged at three o’clock. As the sound of the engine died down into the silence, she formed her first impression of the place. ‘Tucked into a fold of the hillside, on the edge of the village on the road to the sea…’ well, the estate agent had been right about the location. She got out of the car and swung open the wooden gate with its peeling blue paint. The path to the front door was of shingle: stones and small pebbles, mixed with masses of tiny shells. Along its length was a border of larger shells – cockles, scallops, even the occasional big nautilus, interspersed with smaller whelks, limpets, cowries and mussels. It wasn’t difficult to see how the cottage had got its name. Somebody must have collected these for years, adding them to the border and also to the tops of the low walls which surrounded the house.

Lowri approached the front door. In the flowerbeds, Canterbury bells, lavender, foxgloves, stocks, crowded together in front of a wild rose hedge, mixed with bindweed and, she noticed, plenty of dandelions. An elderly lady had lived all her life in the house, the estate agent had told her on the phone; she had passed away peacefully in the local hospital. Now, there was only a nephew in Australia who could not come back to take possession of it. The place looked a bit neglected, but then it had been empty for some time.

As arranged, the key was in the lock. That would never happen in Cardiff – or almost anywhere else, for that matter.

Lowri pushed the door, surprised to find that it opened easily. The house had charm, certainly, she thought, looking at the windows set deeply into the thick walls, the upstairs dormers protruding like raised eyebrows over the roof edge. But it would need a lot of work. Nothing had been changed here for years, by the look of it. She felt rather daunted at the prospect. DIY was hardly Sam’s speciality, but he would cheerfully set to and get started, she knew; and besides, he had wanted to get away from what he called the ‘Rat Race’ for some time now.

The door led to a narrow passageway with old terracotta floor tiles underfoot. There were two rooms, one on either side of the passageway, and at the end, an antiquated kitchen with a stone butler’s sink and some huge wooden cupboards, which must have been there since the house was built. No other furniture remained anywhere in the house; nothing to indicate the tastes of the woman who had lived there for so many years. Lowri turned back and set off upstairs to the bedrooms. No central heating either, she noted drily, folding her arms and wishing she had brought her jacket in with her.

What should she tell Sam? There was work to be done, certainly, but more importantly, would they be happy here? Uncertainty overwhelmed her as she plodded up the stairs, her footsteps echoing on the wooden treads.

At the top of the stairs there was a bathroom with a claw-footed bath, and then, across the landing, three bedrooms with deep set windows at knee level and uneven floors. As she entered the smallest of these, she stopped suddenly. This room, like all the others, was empty but on one wall was a picture: painting, print, photograph…? It was difficult to tell. Whoever had cleared the house had obviously overlooked it. Lowri crossed the creaking floorboards for a closer look. The picture showed a young girl aged about eight standing on the sea shore. She wore a faded floral dress and a battered straw hat, and was absorbed in gazing into a rock pool. Her long hair fell over her face and she held up the hem of her dress delicately in both hands, to make a sort of hammock for the seashells she was collecting.

Lowri was captivated. She glanced around the neat room at the wallpaper patterned with seaside flowers and shells. A small wardrobe and low-level chest of drawers had been built in on either of the cast-iron fireplace: the room must have belonged to a child. Perhaps it had been the bedroom of the owner of the house, when she was young. And maybe this was her on the wall. Lowri looked more closely at the picture, noticing that it was perfectly placed to catch the light from the single window: a window, she noticed, which framed a square of sky now surprisingly, gratifyingly, beginning to lighten from dull, heavy pewter to soft, pale grey.

Lowri went downstairs and flung open the back door. A fresh breeze rushed in, swirling around the kitchen and stirring the old blue curtains that still hung at the window. Outside there was a wild garden divided by another shingle path edged with shells, leading straight to the beach. She caught the tang of the salt sea air, heard the cry of the gulls and the sound of the waves. A short walk followed by a scramble over some rocks soon brought her to a crescent-shaped sandy beach edged by low grassy cliffs. Pink sea thrift and glossy buttercups bobbed in the gentle breeze. Directly in front of the cliffs were rock pools. Lowri blinked. She had thought she was alone on the beach, but had caught sight of a sudden movement. She rounded a small promontory and saw a child, a girl of about eight years old. The child was gazing into one of the pools, completely absorbed in collecting shells. These she held in the hem of her trailing floral dress. Her face was obscured by long hair and a battered straw hat.

For a second, time seemed to stand still as a cloud moved over, and then the sun came out and illuminated the scene. The girl turned slowly, looked in Lowri’s direction, and smiled. Then she waved. Lowri’s heart lifted and she looked around in surprise, seeking perhaps the girl’s parent, friends…but the beach was deserted and when she turned back to wave, the girl was gone.

Walking back, the sunlight was bright enough to make the raindrops sparkle on the grassy edge of the shingle path. It gleamed on the shells, highlighting their ribbed and whorled shapes and bringing out their delicate pinks and greys and soft beige colours, all glistening and shining with rain. The upstairs windows of the house flashed with gold, and the wet slate roof had turned to silver.

With a light step Lowri hurried back along the shell-lined path to the open door of the cottage. From there she stopped to look at the view before her, then reached for her phone and keyed Sam’s number.

‘Sam!’ she cried, as his cheerful voice answered. ‘The cottage! It’s wonderful! We’re home!’