The Shell Seekers Read Online Free PDF Page A

that if he would only buck himself up a bit, wear a nice tweed suit and buy a pair of hornrims, then perhaps his business would perk up a bit, too. For this part of the world, since the opening of the motorway from London, had fast become enormously fashionable. New and wealthy residents moved in, farms changed hands at staggering sums; the most decrepit of cottages were snapped up and transformed, at enormous expense, into weekend hideaways. Estate agents and building societies blossomed and prospered; exclusive shops opened in the most unlikely little towns, and it was beyond Nancy's powers of comprehension why Chamberlain, Plantwell and Richards had not climbed onto this bandwagon of prosperity and reaped some of the rewards that were surely just there for the taking. But George was old-fashioned, sticking to the traditional ways and terrified of change. He was also a cautious man, and a cagey one.
    Now, "What have I got to listen to?" he asked her.
     
    "I'm going to London tomorrow to have lunch with Olivia. We've got to talk about Mother."
     
    "What's the problem now?"
     
    "Oh, George, you know the problem. I told you, I had a word with Mother's doctor, and he says she really mustn't live alone any longer."
     
    "So what are you going to do about it?"
     
    "Well . . . we'll have to find a housekeeper for her. Or a companion."
     
    "She won't like that," George pointed out.
     
    "And even if we find somebody . . . can Mother afford to pay her? A good woman would cost forty to fifty pounds a week. I know she got that enormous sum for the house in Oakley Street, and she's not spent a brass farthing on Podmore's Thatch except to build that ridiculous conservatory, but that money's capital, isn't it? Can she afford all this expense?"
     
    George shifted in his chair, reaching for his whisky glass.
     
    He said, "I've no idea."
     
    Nancy sighed. "She's so secretive, so damned independent. She makes herself impossible to help. If only she'd take us into her confidence, give you some power of attorney, it would make life so much easier for me. After all, I am the eldest child, and it's not as though Olivia or Noel ever raise a finger to help."
     
    George had heard all this before. "What about her daily lady . . . Mrs. What's-it?"
     
    "Mrs. Plackett. She only comes in three mornings a week to clean and she's got a house and a family of her own to look after."
     
    George set down his glass and sat, his face turned to the fire, his hands arranged like a little tent, fingertip to fingertip.
     
    After a bit, he said, "I cannot quite fathom what it is you are getting in such a state about." He sounded as though he were speaking to some particularly dim-witted client, and Nancy was hurt.
     
    "I am not in a state."
     
    He ignored this. "Is it just the money? Or is it the possibility that you may be unable to find any woman saintly enough to agree to live with your mother?"
     
    "Both, I suppose," Nancy admitted.
     
    "And what do you imagine Olivia is going to contribute to the conundrum?"
     
    "She can at least discuss it with me. After all, she's never in her life done a single thing for Mother ... or for any of us, for that matter," she added bitterly, recalling past hurts. "When Mother decided to sell Oakley Street and announced that she was going back to Cornwall to live in Porthkerris, it was I who had the most dreadful time persuading her that it would be madness to take such a step. And she still might have gone if you hadn't found her Podmore's Thatch, where at least she's within twenty miles of us and we're able to keep an eye on her. Supposing she was in Porthkerris now, miles away, with a groggy heart and none of us knowing what on earth was going on?"
     
    "Let us try to keep to the point," begged George, at his most maddening.
    Nancy ignored this. The whisky had wanned her, and kin-dled old resentments as well.
     
    "And as for Noel, he's practically abandoned Mother, ever since she sold Oakley Street and he had