The Peacock Emporium

  'That's a good idea, petal. You could put your favourite customers' drawings in the best spot.' Jessie seemed to treat all her daughter's pronouncements seriously.

  'And put frames on them. People like to see their pictures in frames.'

  'There you go,' said Jessie, giving a final polish to the coffee machine. 'Retail psychology. How to make your customers feel valued.'

  Suzanna, while acknowledging the benefit of extra custom, was struggling with the sensation of being overwhelmed by Jessie and her extended family. She couldn't cope with The sight of someone else behind the counter, the reorganisation - even though they undoubtedly looked better - of her shelves. The shop hadn't felt hers in the same way since Jessie had been in it.

  In fact, after the peaceful previous weeks, so many people had come in that afternoon that Suzanna had had to fight a sneaking sense of inadequacy and a faint jealousy that this girl could have succeeded so apparently effortlessly where she had failed.

  This is stupid, she told herself, heading into the cellar to fetch up some more bags. It's a shop. You can't afford to keep it all to yourself. She sat down heavily on the stairs - now polluted by the ghosts of snogging teenagers - and surveyed the downstairs shelves, which had apparently once held illegal game that you could order with your vegetables. Perhaps it wasn't that Jessie was better at it, perhaps it was that she didn't like the feeling of everyone belonging, of obligation and expectation that a close relationship with your customers seemed to engender. It was all veering a bit too close to the idea of family.

  I'm not sure I'm cut out for this, she thought. Perhaps I only liked the decorating, creating something beautiful. Perhaps I should do something where I hardly have to deal with people at all.

  She flinched as Jessie's head appeared at the top of the stairs. 'You okay down there?'

  'Fine.'

  'Mum brought us in some nice orange juice. Figured you'd probably had enough of coffee.'

  Suzanna forced a smile. 'Thanks. I'll be right up.'

  'You want any help down there?'

  'No, thank you.' Suzanna tried to convey in her tone that she would rather have five minutes on her own.

  Jessie glanced off to some unseen point on her left, and then back to her. 'There's someone else in you've got to meet. Liliane from across the road - I used to do cleaning for her. She's just bought that pair of earrings, the ones in the case.'

  They had been the most expensive item in the shop. Briefly forgetting her previous reservations, Suzanna half ran up the stairs.

  Liliane MacArthur's face was as closed as Jessie's was open. A tall, slim woman with the kind of mutely reddened hair beloved of Dere Hampton's female population, she eyed Suzanna with the practised once-over of someone who had learnt the hard way that women, especially those a good twenty years younger than herself, were generally not to be trusted.

  'Hi,' said Suzanna, immediately awkward. 'Glad you spotted the earrings.'

  'Yes. I like topaz. Always have.'

  'They're Victorian, but you can probably see that from the box.'

  Jessie was wrapping it in an intricate arrangement of raffia and tissue paper. 'They for you, Liliane?'

  The older woman nodded.

  'They'll go lovely with that blue coat of yours. The one with the high collar.'

  Liliane's expression softened slightly. 'Yes, I thought that.'

  'How's your mum, Liliane?' Jessie's mother leant over, so that she had an uninterrupted view past the till.

  'Oh, much the same . . . She's had some problems holding her cup lately.'

  'Poor thing. You can get all sorts with special handles and things now to make it easier. I saw it on the telly. Specially for people with arthritis. Ask Father Lenny, he can usually get stuff like that,' Jessie said.

  'He's our priest,' explained Cath, 'but he's like a Mr Fixit. He'll get hold of anything for you. If he doesn't know someone, he'll track it down on the Internet.'

  'I'll see how we go.'

  'It's a very cruel thing, the arthritis.' Cath shook her head.

  'Yes,' said Liliane, her head down. 'Yes, it is. Well, I'd better get back to the shop. I'm glad to meet you, Mrs Peacock.'

  'Suzanna, please. You too.' Suzanna, her hands twitching uselessly at her sides, tried to loosen her smile as Liliane closed the door quietly behind her. She felt, even if she didn't hear, the 'poor thing' lingering in the air as the older woman left.

  'First husband died,' murmured Jessie. 'He was the love of her life.'

  'No. Roger was.'

  'Roger?' Suzanna said.

  'Second husband,' said Cath. 'He told her he didn't want children, and she loved him so much she agreed. Two days before her forty-sixth birthday he ran off with a twenty-five-year-old.'

  'Twenty-four, Mum.'

  'Was she really? She was pregnant. God, there's no justice. Eighteen years Liliane gave to that man. She's never been the same.'

  'Lives with her mum now.'

  'She had no choice, not with things being the way they are . . .'

  As Liliane crossed the road, the lumbering figure of Arturro could be seen heading towards her at right angles. On seeing her, he picked up speed, his arms swinging as if he were unused to travelling at such a pace. He might have spoken to her as, with a nod of recognition and only a faint pause, she disappeared into her shop.

  Arturro stopped in inelegant stages, like a large vehicle needing more space to apply the brakes, his face still set towards the door of the Unique Boutique. Then he glanced towards the Peacock Emporium, his expression almost guilty, and, with just a hint of indecision, entered.

  Jessie, who had seen the whole thing, switched on the coffee machine, calling innocently, 'Come for a top-up, Arturro?'

  'If you don' mind,' he said quietly, and sat heavily on the stool.

  'I knew you'd be back for a second cup. Italians love their coffee, don't they?'

  Suzanna, for whom the exchange had been almost painful, felt her earlier misgivings melt away. Through the window, she could just make out the older woman, safely back in her own domain, mistress of the buttoned-up and held-in, surrounded by her expensive fabric armoury. There was something in Liliane's brittle exterior, her discomfort with casual conversation, the pain only hinted at in her demeanour that made her fearful, as if she were witnessing the Ghost of Christmas Future.

  'Do you want to come again?' she asked Jessie later, after Arturro and Cath had gone. They had placed the chairs upside-down on the tables and Jessie was sweeping the floor, while Suzanna counted her takings. 'I'd really like it if you did,' she added, trying to feed some conviction into her voice.

  Jessie had smiled, her wide, unguarded smile. 'I can do till school pick-up, if that's any good to you.'

  'After today I don't see how I can manage without you.'

  'Oh, you'd be all right. You just need to get to know everyone. Get them coming through the door every day.'

  Suzanna peeled off several notes and held them out. 'I can't pay much to begin with, but if you increase takings like that again, I'd make it worth your while.'

  After a moment's hesitation, Jessie took them and thrust them into her pocket. 'I wasn't expecting anything for today, but thanks. You sure you won't get bored of me prattling on all the time? I drive Jason mad. He says I'm like a stuck record.'

  'I like it.' Suzanna thought she might eventually believe that. 'And if not, I'll put up one of those notices you mentioned - "Don't talk to me," or whatever it was you said.'

  'I'll ask him indoors. But he can't say we don't need the money.' She began to swing the chairs off the tables.

  Suzanna locked the till, noting, as she began her nightly routine for closing, that it was the first evening in which there had been a hint of peach-coloured daylight remaining. Gradually it built in strength, illuminating the interior of the shop, transforming the blues into neutrals, suffusing the documents she had pasted on to the walls with a rich glow, criss-crossing them with the shadows of the window frames. Out
side, the narrow lane was already nearly empty of people: things closed down early in The town, and only the shopkeepers remained to say goodnight to each other as night fell. She loved this part: loved the silence, loved the feeling that she'd spent a day working for herself; loved the knowledge that the imprints she left on the shop would remain until she opened it again the next morning. She moved around almost silently, breathing in the myriad fragrances that lingered in the air from wax-papered soap and Byzantine bottles of scent, hearing in the silence the laughter and chatter of the day's customers, as if each had left some spectral echo behind them. The Peacock Emporium had been a pleasurable dream, but today it had felt magical somehow, as if the best of both the shop and its customers had rubbed off on each other. She rested against a stool, seeing ahead of her something other than the disappointments and restrictions she had been picturing as her future, seeing instead a place of possibilities to which beautiful things and people were drawn. A place she could be herself, her better self.

  This place is making you fanciful, she thought, and found herself smiling. Some nights, like tonight, she didn't want to leave: she harboured a secret desire to swap the pew for an old sofa, and bed down for the night. The shop felt so much more hers than the cottage.

  As she was dragging in the pavement sign Arturro walked by, swerved, took it wordlessly from her and placed it carefully inside. 'Beautiful evening,' he said, his head tucked inside a soft red scarf.

  'Gorgeous,' she said. 'A Marsala sunset.'

  He laughed, and lifted a heavy hand as he made to leave.

  'Arturro,' Suzanna called after him, 'what is it you're weighing all day? The thing you all yell at each other? Because it's not the cheeses, is it? I noticed earlier that you weigh them at the counter.'

  The big man looked down. Even over the peach-coloured light she could see that he was embarrassed. 'It's nothing.'

  'Nothing?'

  'It's not weighing exactly . . .' he said.

  'All this "seven point two", "eight point one". They must be weighing something.'

  His face, when it met hers, was guiltily amused. 'I've got to go. Really.'

  'You don't want to tell me?'

  'It's not important.'

  'Why won't you tell me?'

  'It's not me, okay? It's the boys . . . I have told them not to but they don' listen . . .'

  Suzanna waited.

  'They are . . . ahem . . .'

  She raised an eyebrow.

  '. . . weighing up the customers.'

  Suzanna's eyes widened, and she felt a sharp pang, as if she, personally, had somehow been made a fool of. Then she thought back to the queues of women, waiting patiently to be assessed, and let out a rare gulp of laughter. As Arturro walked off, chuckling, down the darkening street, she was still trying to remember exactly what numbers had been traded on the occasions when she had walked in. It was time to go. Neil was coming home early, especially, he said, to cook her a meal, although she knew it was because of the big match, which began before he normally reached the cottage. But that was okay. She fancied a long bath anyway.

  She walked around the shop, straightening things, giving the surfaces a wipe, then placed the cloth in the sink. She checked that the till was turned off and, as she stood at the counter, noticed that the painting was still turned towards the wall. On a whim, she reversed it back, so that Athene, revealed, became instantly burnished, incandescent. The evening sun, burning with the urgent intensity that told of its imminent disappearance, reflected off the canvas, gleamed in points off the old gilded frame.

  Suzanna stared at her. 'Night, Mother,' she said.

  Then she glanced round the shop, flicked off the lights and headed for the door.

  Ten

  The pants were in the middle of the dining-room table. Still wrapped in Cellophane, stacked like breakfast pancakes, still advertising their 'discreet, comfortable security', they were as untouched as when Mrs Abrahams had left them outside Rosemary's door that morning, their current positioning under the Venetian chandelier a mute, furious protest.

  Vivi and Rosemary had had some spats over the years, but Vivi could not remember one as bad as that which had resulted from the visit of the Incontinence Lady. She couldn't remember having been shouted at so long and hard, could not remember seeing that level of puce, stammering fury on Rosemary's face, the threats, the insults, the slamming of doors. She had been in there for almost two hours now, only the elevated volume of daytime television giving any clue as to her continued presence in the house.

  Vivi removed the pants from the table, walked along the corridor, and stuffed them under the old pew as she passed it. She reached the end and knocked tentatively. 'Rosemary, will you want lunch today?' She stood for some minutes, her ear pressed to the wood. 'Rosemary? Would you like some stew?'

  There was a momentary pause, then the television volume increased, so that Vivi withdrew, eyeing the door nervously.

  It had seemed a sensible idea. She hadn't felt strong enough to broach it with Rosemary herself, but as the person who did the household laundry she had become aware that her mother-in-law's control, for want of a better word, was not what it had been. Thanking Mr Hoover for the automatic washing-machine, she had found herself, several times this month, loading Rosemary's bedlinen sporting rubber gloves and a pained expression. And it wasn't just the bedlinen: over a period of months, Vivi had become aware that Rosemary's undergarments had significantly lessened in number. She had waited until she was out, then searched the annexe, wondering if they had been left absentmindedly in the washing basket. Initially, she had discovered the offending items soaking in Rosemary's bathroom sink. More recently, it was as if the mental effort involved in such handwashing had become too much for the old lady and she had taken to hiding them. In the past weeks Vivi had discovered them beneath Rosemary's sofa, in the cupboard under the sink, and even stuffed into an empty chopped-tomatoes can, high on a bathroom shelf.

  When she had tried to discuss it with Douglas, he had looked at her with an expression of such unalloyed horror that she had backtracked, promising to sort it out herself. Several times she had sat with Rosemary at lunch, trying to muster the courage to ask whether she was having a bit of trouble with her 'waterworks'. But there was something about her mother-in-law's trenchant demeanour, about the aggressive way she now shouted, 'What?' whenever Vivi tried to broach some innocent topic of conversation that prevented her. And then her GP, a matter-of-fact young Scottish woman, had rifled through her desk and presented her with a whole range of state-subsidised services that had meant Vivi could perhaps remedy this without having to talk directly about it to her mother-in-law.

  Mrs Abrahams - a plump, capable sort with a comforting manner that suggested not only that she had seen it all but had a plastic-backed non-sweat-inducing discreetly wrapped solution for it - had arrived shortly before eleven. Vivi had explained the delicacy of the situation, and that she had not yet felt brave enough to mention the nature of Mrs Abrahams's visit to her mother-in-law.

  'Much easier if it comes from outside the family,' Mrs Abrahams said.

  'It's not that I mind the washing, as such . . .' Vivi had trailed off, already feeling guilty of betrayal.

  'But there are health and hygiene considerations as well.'

  'Yes . . .'

  'And you don't want the old lady to lose her dignity.'

  'No.'

  'You leave it to me, Mrs Fairley-Hulme. I tend to find that once they've got over the initial hurdle, most ladies are rather relieved of the help.'

  'Oh . . . good.' Vivi had knocked on Rosemary's door, and placed her ear to the wood to see if the old lady had heard.

  'Sometimes I find that the younger ladies, those just entering middle age, end up taking a few packs off me.'

  Vivi couldn't hear Rosemary's familiar tread. 'Oh, yes . . . ?'

  'I mean, after a couple of children, things are often not what they were. No matter how many pelvic-floor exercises. You know wha
t I'm saying?'

  The door had opened, leaving Vivi crouched awkwardly.

  'What are you doing?' Rosemary had stared crossly at her daughter-in-law.

  Vivi righted herself. 'Mrs Abrahams to see you, Rosemary.'

  'What?'

  'I'll make some coffee and leave you to it.' She had scuttled into the kitchen, flushed, aware that her palms were sweating.

  There had been peace for almost three minutes. Then the earth had cracked open, volcanic fire spewed forth and, moments later, against the backdrop of some of the worst language Vivi had ever heard uttered in a cut-glass accent, she had witnessed Mrs Abrahams walking briskly across the gravel to her neat little hatchback, her handbag clutched to her chest, glancing back at the house as various plastic-wrapped items were hurled after her.

  'Douglas, darling, I need to talk to you about your mother.' Ben had gone out for lunch. Rosemary was still locked in her annexe. Vivi didn't think she could keep this to herself until bedtime.

  'Mm?' He was reading the newspaper, thrusting forkfuls of food into his mouth, as if he was in a hurry to get out again. It was the drilling season, time to get the arable fields sown - he rarely hung around for long.

  'I had a woman here, for Rosemary. To talk about . . . that thing we discussed.'

  He looked up, raised an eyebrow.

  'Rosemary took it rather badly. I don't think she wants any help.'

  Douglas's head dropped, and his hand waved dismissively above it. 'Send it all to the laundry, then. We'll pay. Best thing all round.'