THE BIGGEST SHELL ON THE BEACH

Jane Berry was ordinary. Even her name was ordinary.  At thirty-seven, with long brown hair, a nose sprinkled with freckles and pale, English skin, she was unremarkable.  She lived by the sea in the Cornish town of Pendrift, in a white house with a grey slate roof, the same as any other.  Her husband, Martin, worked in Newquay, their three young children went to the village school, and Jane baked cakes in her gingham apron, kept the house clean, and drank herbal tea with her friends until pick up time.  She was happy enough.  After all, she had a beautiful view of the sea, a vast, uninterrupted sky, and her children gave her a deep and satisfying joy.  As for Martin, he was as regular as any other beer drinking, football loving Englishman.  He wasn’t totally generic; he collected shells.  He’d spend hours combing the beaches, diving with aqua lungs and searching the bags of shell sellers during the summer season.   He didn’t set her world alight, but he had a good heart. She didn’t expect more. 

It was June when she received news of her great aunt’s death.  Gilda had been a wonderful character.  A formidable woman whose past was strewn with secret lovers she had sometimes let slip when oiled by her six o’clock tipple of whiskey and soda.  The older she grew the more she revelled in the adventures of her youth, as if they were stolen diamonds she liked to take out and polish from time to time.  Jane’s mother had vehemently disapproved, feeling sorry for Gilda’s long-suffering husband.  But Gilda had always guffawed with laughter at any rebuke, claiming that life was for living and she didn’t want to die wondering.  Now she was gone, Jane speculated on whether she had died having lived it all, or whether she had passed away with regrets.  Judging by the exuberance with which she had cavorted into old age, she doubted there had been many who had got away.

So Jane found herself on a train bound for Skipton, Yorkshire, for the funeral.  She sat  by the window reading Zola’s Nanna, a novel her great aunt had given her long ago which she had never bothered to read.  It was a story set in 1860s France about a prostitute who rises to great wealth, then suffers a terrible demise, dying in a seedy hotel room.  Jane found herself blushing as she read it, but also wondering what it would be like to live such a wanton life, like Gilda, taking lovers when and where it suited her, without guilt or inhibition.  She reflected on her own, sensible life.  She had met Martin when she left university at twenty-three with a degree in modern languages.  They had married shortly after, dissolving her dreams of living abroad in Spain or France and enjoying perhaps a more colourful life.  Martin was her first and only lover.  There had been men who had made a play for her, but she had put sex on a pedestal, saving herself for the man with whom she would eventually fall in love and take vows before God to share a lifetime together.  Now there were no mysteries.  She’d tasted the forbidden fruit and the earth hadn’t shaken.  Now every Danielle Steele novel glared out from the bookcases like an affront.  Real life just wasn’t like that.  Childbirth was the final frontier where all secrets of womanhood were revealed in all their crudeness.  She didn’t think there existed anything beyond pleasant, unremarkable sex.

She was drifting off to sleep when the train screeched to a halt in Leeds.  She changed platform to catch the Skipton train, to find to her dismay that all trains were cancelled due to a suicide on the line.  She took a deep breath, considering the inconvenient death, and remembered Aunt Gilda’s words: Life was for living.  She could go under a bus at any minute.  Would she die wondering?

She decided to check into a small, inexpensive hotel in Leeds and take a taxi to Skipton the following morning.  Her room was pretty, though modest.  She took a shower, changed into the black dress she was to wear for the funeral, then went downstairs to eat.  The restaurant wasn’t full.  But feeling self conscious she opened her novel and proceeded to read over a glass of Chardonnay. 

“Hello.”  She looked up, expecting the waiter.  To her surprise a tall, long-haired man stood before her.  He grinned at her raffishly.  “Haven’t we met before?”

            She took in his pale blue eyes and weathered skin and shook her head.  “I’m afraid you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”  Then Aunt Gilda’s face surfaced in her mind and she felt a moment’s recklessness.  Here she was, in a strange city where no one knew her.  She could be whoever she wanted to be, do whatever she wanted to do, and in the morning it would all be forgotten and she could return to her life.  The man was very handsome, and he was grinning at her in a way that no man had for over fifteen years.  “Well, maybe,” she corrected.  “You do seem vaguely familiar.”

            “May I?” he asked, pulling out the chair.  “You look like you’re on you own.”

            She smiled, feeling strangely confident in her new persona.  “Of course.”

            “My name’s Andy Shawton,” he said, shaking her hand across the table.

            “Gilda,” she lied, settling into character. 

            He gazed at her with intensity.  “Beautiful name.”

            “Thank you.  It was my grandmother’s.” She was now on a roll.

            “So where are you from, Gilda?”

            “I was born in Spain, raised in France, settled in London.”

            He raised his eyebrows, impressed.  “You’re very exotic.”  She noticed how attractive the lines were around his mouth when he smiled.  He noticed her rings. “I see you’re married.”

            She glanced at them disdainfully the fixed him with a steady gaze.  “Yes, but my husband is terribly dull.”

They ordered a bottle of wine, ate heartily, and talked until one in the morning.  Jane enjoyed her new guise.  In the black dress she felt sexy. Andy enjoyed her too.  He seemed to devour her features with an appreciative smile, and he laughed at all her jokes. She had never felt so attractive, and her confidence grew.  He told her he was an artist.  In the same breath he told her she was beautiful, that he’d like to paint her.  It wasn’t long before they fell into bed.  She took her wonton pleasure as Gilda and the earth didn’t just shake but trembled and shuddered and shifted on its axis.

As the moonlight slipped through the gap in the curtains, she lay awake watching him sleeping.  He was muscular, toned and bronzed – a world away from Martin.  She imagined him surfing off the beach in Cornwall, his long curly hair bleached by the sun, his skin buffed by the salt, his laugh weathered by the storms that batter the cliffs and thought how very natural it was to imagine him there.  She was too excited to sleep, but remained watching him until the dawn broke upon his naked back.

The following morning, she continued to Skipton knowing she would never see him again.  Knowing, too, that she’d never be the same.  She had tasted the forbidden fruit in all its nakedness and it was sweeter than she could ever have imagined.

And so, she returned to her life.  The funeral was a miserable affair beneath a grey sky that started to drizzle, but inside she felt as bright and positive as if her heart were made of sunshine.  She took the train home feeling like she had shed a dull skin and gained a shiny new one.  She walked with a bounce in her step, laughed from the pit of her belly and understood why Gilda had cavorted exuberantly into old age.  She would too, because she had been so unashamedly wicked.

It was a sunny August morning when the shell seller came to her door.  Jane’s children rushed to open it.  “Mummy, Mummy,” they cried.  “Look at these pretty shells.”  Jane wiped her hands on her apron, having iced her youngest son’s birthday cake, and joined them.  She looked at the shell seller’s wares. They were truly stunning pieces of sea treasure. 

“How much are they?” she asked.  The man raised his eyes in recognition.  She felt his stare and raised hers too.  She gasped in horror.  He was unmistakeable.  Those pale blue eyes with long, white crows-feet fanning out from his tanned and weathered skin were forever embossed upon her adulterous soul.   She felt the blood rush to her cheeks and the dizzy sensation of being on the brink of losing everything she cherished. 

She felt her husband move behind her.

            “Look at those,” he exclaimed, his voice full of admiration.

            Andy had eyes only for Jane.  He held her gaze and a small smile softened his leonine face.  “They range from twenty to a hundred and twenty,” he said.  “Secrets of the sea.  It costs a lot to keep them quiet.”

            Martin laughed.  “Where did you find them?”

            “Right here,” he replied.  “I come every year to paint.  Shells are a side line.”

            “A lucrative one,” Martin added.

            “That depends,” Andy replied.  “So, Jane, would you like one?”

            “Yes,” she said quickly, her voice hoarse with fear that he would shatter her sensible but solid life.  She picked up the largest and most expensive shell.  “I’ll buy this one,” she said, turning to Martin.  “A present for my husband.”

            “For me?” said Martin in astonishment.

            “Yes.”

            “I thought my collection of shells did nothing but irritate you.”

            “No,” she replied.  “They’re wonderful.  Sometimes one fails to appreciate what’s under one’s nose.  Besides, a little extravagance once in a while can be a very good thing.”  She turned to see that Andy was grinning at her with benign amusement.  She grinned back at him, her eyes full of gratitude. 

            “The big one it is then,” he said.

            “And one for me.” She took another and ran her fingers over its smooth surface.  “An unexpected indulgence.”

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