The Peacock Emporium

  'I don't know if the laundry will take things that are . . . soiled.'

  'Well, what's the bloody point of it being a laundry, then? You're hardly going to send things that are clean.'

  Vivi didn't think she could bear the thought of the staff remarking upon the state of the Fairley-Hulmes' bedding. 'I don't . . . I just don't think it's a good idea.'

  'Well, I've told you what I think, Vivi. If you don't want to send it away and you don't want to do it yourself, then I don't know what you want me to suggest.'

  Vivi wasn't sure either. If she said she just wanted a bit of sympathy, understanding, the faintest idea that she wasn't in this on her own, she knew Douglas would look at her blankly. 'I'll sort something out,' she said glumly.

  Suzanna and Neil had not argued in almost five weeks. Not a cross word, a mean-minded snipe, a careless spat. Nothing. When she realised this, Suzanna had wondered whether things were changing, whether her marriage, by some peculiar osmosis, had begun to reflect the satisfaction that she was gleaning from her shop - that on waking she felt, perhaps for the first time in her working life, something approaching anticipation when she thought about her day and the people who now populated it. From the moment she put her key in the door, her spirits lifted at the sight of the cheerful, stuffed interior, the brightly coloured ornaments, the gorgeous scents of honey and freesia. It was almost impossible to retain a bad mood within its walls. And despite her reservations, Jessie's presence had not just worked for the shop economically: something of her Pollyanna-ish nature seemed to have rubbed off on herself too. Several times, Suzanna had caught herself whistling.

  When she allowed herself time to think about it she realised it wasn't that she felt any closer to her husband, it was simply that, with both of them working long hours, they had neither the time nor the energy to fight. On three nights this week Neil had not been home before ten. Several times she had left the house before seven, only dimly aware that they had spent any time in the same bed. Perhaps this is how marriages like Dad and Mum's survive, she mused. They just make sure they're too busy to think about them. There were more convincing kinds of comfort.

  Neil ruined it, of course, by bringing up the subject of their apparently imminent children. 'I've been finding out about childcare,' he said. 'There's a nursery attached to the hospital that doesn't just take staff children. If we put our name on the list now, we might have a good chance of getting a place. Then you can keep working, like you wanted.'

  'I'm not even pregnant.'

  'It doesn't hurt to plan ahead, Suze. I was thinking, I could even take the baby there on my way to work in the morning so you wouldn't have to cut into your day too much. It makes sense, now that your shop's doing okay.'

  He couldn't keep the excitement from his voice. She knew that now he overlooked lots of things about her that had previously irritated him, her preoccupation with the appearance of her stock, her persistent lack of courtesy towards Vivi, the fact that her exhaustion made her bad-tempered and killed her libido, because of the greater favour she was about to pay him - in around seven months' time.

  Despite her promise, Suzanna did not feel the same sense of excitement, despite Jessie's breathless reassurances that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, that having children made you laugh, feel, love more than you ever dreamed possible. It wasn't just the sex thing that bothered her - in order to get pregnant they were going to have to embark on a fairly regular bout of sexual activity - it was the feeling that her promise had hemmed her in, that she was now bound by obligation to produce this thing, to harbour it in a body that had always been, quite comfortably, entirely hers. She tried not to think too hard about her mother. Which made her feel something else.

  In one of his more irritating moments, Neil had put his arms round her and said she could 'always get some counselling', and she had had to restrain herself physically from hitting him. 'It would be perfectly understandable. I mean, it's no wonder you have reservations,' he went on.

  She had wriggled free of his grasp. 'The only reservations I have, Neil, are because you keep harping on about it all the time.'

  'I don't mind paying for you to see someone. We're doing okay at the moment.'

  'Oh, just drop it, will you?'

  His expression was sympathetic. It somehow made her even crosser. 'You know,' he said, 'you're more like your dad than you think. You both just sit on your feelings the whole time.'

  'No, Neil. I just want to get on with my life and not obsess about some non-existent baby.'

  'Baby Peacock,' he mused. 'Neil Peacock Junior.'

  'Don't even think about it,' said Suzanna.

  All of the schools in Dere Hampton broke for lunch between twelve thirty and one forty-five, and this stretch of the day was marked, outside the windows of the Peacock Emporium, by passing bunches of leggy schoolgirls in inappropriately customised uniforms, exasperated mothers dragging their younger charges away from the sweet shop, and the arrival of unhappily self-employed regulars, looking for what might just be coffee but was more usually a bit of human contact to break up their day. It had been their first real stock-take, so in honour of this, and that it was the first really hot day of the year, the door of the shop had been propped open and a solitary (probably illegal) table and chairs left outside on the pavement. They had been used legitimately twice, more frequently provided a brief sitting-down opportunity for some of the older ladies, and for climbing through, or knocking over, by a significant number of toddlers and older children.

  It felt, Suzanna told herself, almost Continental. She had not yet tired of staring out, through her meticulous arrangements, of the prismed lit window, still enjoyed standing, her clean white apron starched to old-fashioned stiffness, behind her till. Sometimes she wondered if she hated Dere Hampton less than she had previously thought: having created her own space, imprinted on it her own character, she had felt, at times, almost proprietorial - and not just about the shop.

  Jessie had soon learnt to play to their respective strengths and today, dressed in a flower-printed dress and heavy boots, she was serving at the counter, often nipping out to make conversation with the cement-booted builders and the old ladies, while Suzanna walked around the shop with her jotter, totting up the remaining stock, noting with a vague disappointment how little she had sold in the past few weeks. It was not what you would call a roaring success but, as she frequently reassured herself, at least the shop was on its way to paying for its own stock and staffing costs. If it would only pick up a bit, Neil said, they could start repaying some of the capital outlay. Neil liked saying such phrases. She thought finance was one of the few areas left in which he had unchallengeable authority in their relationship.

  Arturro had come in, drunk two espressos in quick succession, then left. Father Lenny had poked his head round the door, supposedly to ask Jessie if Emma was coming back to Sunday school, but also to introduce himself to Suzanna and remark that if she wanted any more fairy-lights he knew someone near Bury St Edmunds who did them wholesale.

  Mrs Creek had come in, ordered a milky coffee, and sat outside for half an hour, removing her hat so that her wispy hair was exposed to the sun, looking as fragile as frostbitten grass. She told Jessie that this weather reminded her of the first time she had gone abroad, to Geneva, where her husband had been in hospital. The aeroplane had been a terrific adventure - actual nurses they'd used as stewardesses then, not the over-painted striplings they employed nowadays - and her arrival in a foreign country so exciting that she had almost forgotten the reason she was there, and managed to miss visiting time on the first day. Suzanna, occasionally venturing outside to pick up coffee-cups, or just to feel the first rays of sun on her face, had heard her reminiscing, with Jessie, chin in hand, soaking up every last detail with the sun. He had been ever so cross, her husband, had refused to talk to her for two days. Afterwards it had occurred to her that she could have fibbed, could have told him her aeroplane had been delayed. But she was
never one to lie. You always ended up in a muddle trying to remember what you'd said to whom.

  'Jason thinks I lie even when I don't,' said Jessie, cheerily. 'We had a massive fight once because I didn't Hoover when I was ill. He likes to see those little lines in the carpet, you see, just to prove I've done it. But I had this food poisoning, chicken I think it was, so I just lay in bed.

  'When he got home I was feeling a bit better and he accused me of sitting around on my arse all day, even though I'd managed to make his tea. And I was so cross I just hit him with the pan. You don't know how much I'd wanted to puke just peeling his spuds.' She laughed guiltily.

  'That's men, dear,' said Mrs Creek, vaguely, as if they were some kind of affliction.

  'What did he do?' said Suzanna, struck by this casual depiction of violence, and unsure whether to take at face value what Jessie had just said.

  'He hit me back. So I hit him with the pan again, and knocked out half his tooth.' She gestured towards the back of her mouth, showing where the damage had been done.

  Mrs Creek had stared across the road, as if she hadn't heard. After a moment's stillness, Suzanna had smiled vaguely, as if she had forgotten to pick something up, then turned and walked back into the shop.

  'Are you scared of him?' she asked, some time later, when Mrs Creek had gone. She had been trying to imagine Neil filled with enough violence to hit her. It had proven impossible.

  'Who?'

  'Your . . . Jason.'

  'Frightened of him? Nah.' Jessie had shaken her head, her expression one of fond indulgence. She glanced at Suzanna and evidently decided the concern in her expression made some sort of explanation necessary. 'Look, his problem is I'm better with words than he is. So I know how to really wind him up. And if he starts getting at me I just twist his words back, tie him in knots, which makes him feel stupid. I know I shouldn't, but . . . you know how they get on your nerves sometimes?'

  Suzanna nodded.

  'And sometimes I just get a bit carried away. And I don't leave him . . .' her smile faded '. . . I guess I don't really leave him anywhere to go.'

  There was a brief silence.

  Outside, two schoolboys were kicking someone's kit-bag back and forth across the road.

  'I love this shop. Your shop,' said Jessie. 'I don't know what it is about it, because it wasn't like this when it was the Red Horse, but it's like it's got a really good mood to it. Do you know what I mean?'

  Suzanna's head was still filled with moods of a different kind.

  'Yes. I thought when I came in first that it was just the smell of the coffee, and stuff. Or perhaps all the pretty things. It's a bit of an Aladdin's cave, isn't it? But I think there's something about the shop itself. It always makes me . . .' she paused '. . . feel better.'

  The two boys had stopped, were examining something that one had pulled from his pocket, muttering in low voices.

  The women watched them from the window.

  'It's not what you're thinking,' said Jessie, eventually.

  'No,' said Suzanna, who felt suddenly middle class and naive. 'Of course not.'

  Jessie reached for her coat, took a step back from Suzanna and stared at the shelves behind her. 'I think I'll give those a good wash later. Dusting never really gets the dirt up, does it?'

  Jessie had left at a quarter past two to pick up her daughter from school early and, with the head teacher's permission, take her for a birthday treat. If Emma fancied it, she said, they might buy ice lollies, and sit at the table outside the shop to eat them. 'They go on a school trip to France next year,' she said as she left. 'I told her that was how the French eat and now all she wants to do is drag our chairs outside.'

  Suzanna was half-way down the cellar steps when she heard the door open. She shouted that she would be there in a second. She tripped up the last step, and swore softly as she nearly dropped her armful of suede-bound notebooks. Things invariably seemed easier when Jessie was there.

  Her father stood in the middle of the shop, his arms crossed awkwardly as if he were unwilling to be seen standing too close to anything. He was staring down behind the counter. When Suzanna came in, he jumped.

  'Dad,' she said, blushing.

  'Suzanna.' He nodded.

  There was a silence. She wondered, fantastically, whether he was going to apologise for his previous comments to her. But she was old enough to understand that his arrival in her shop was as conciliatory a gesture as he was likely to make. 'You nearly missed me,' she babbled, raising a smile. 'I was out till about half an hour ago. You would have got Jessie . . . my assistant.'

  He had removed his hat and held it in his hands, a curiously courteous gesture. 'I was just passing. Had to come in to meet my accountant, so I thought I'd . . . take a look at your shop.'

  Suzanna stood, clutching her notebooks. 'Well, here it is.'

  'Indeed.'

  She made as if to peer behind him. 'No Mum?'

  'She's at home.'

  She put the notebooks on a table, and glanced at the objects around them, trying to gauge them through her father's eyes. 'Fripperies and nonsense,' she could imagine him saying. Who was going to want to spend good money on a mosaic candle-holder, or a pile of second-hand embroidered napkins?

  'Did Neil tell you? We're doing really well.' It felt easier to pretend that this was Neil's venture too. She knew her father thought him a more sensible fellow.

  'He didn't, but that's good.'

  'Turnover's up by - erm - around thirty per cent on the first quarter. And I - I've just done my first stock-take.' The words sounded solid, reassuring, not the kind of words uttered by a feckless, irresponsible, flibbertigibbet.

  He nodded.

  'I might have to take some tips from you soon about VAT. It looks impenetrable to me. I don't see how you manage it.'

  'It's just practice.' He had been staring at the portrait of her mother. Suzanna glanced behind the counter, and saw it, face outwards, clearly visible through the counter's slim wooden legs. Her mother's enigmatic smile, which had never appeared maternal, now seemed inappropriately intimate in the public space. Jessie had loved it, saying she was the most glamorous woman she'd ever seen, and urged her to put it on the wall. Now it made Suzanna feel guilty, although she couldn't be sure why.

  'What's that doing here?' He cleared his throat as he spoke.

  'I'm not selling it, if that's what you're worried about.'

  'I was--'

  'We're not that badly off for money.'

  Her father paused, as if he were weighing up his possible responses. He let out a little breath. 'I was just curious, Suzanna, about what it was doing in a shop.'

  'Not "a shop", Dad. You make it sound like I was trying to offload it. My shop . . . I was going to put it on the wall.' Defensiveness had made her snappy.

  'What would you want to put it in here for?'

  'I just thought it would be a good place for it to go. It doesn't - it doesn't really fit at home. The house is too small for it.' She couldn't help herself.

  Her father eyed it sideways, through narrowed eyes, as if he found it difficult to look directly at the image. 'I don't think it should be left down there.'

  'Well, I don't know where else to put it.'

  'We can take it back to the bank if you want. They'll store it for you.' He looked sideways at her. 'It's probably worth a bit of money, and I doubt you've got it insured.'

  He never expressed any emotion when he talked of her. Sometimes, Suzanna thought, it was as if when Athene had died he had decided she would be of no more lasting emotional importance to him than some distant relative, than the generations-old ancestors who lined the upstairs corridors. The limited family history that had been made public to her and her siblings showed he had moved pretty swiftly on to Vivi after all. At other times she wondered if he had battened down his emotions because he found the memory of Athene just too painful, and felt the familiar flush of her own implicit guilt. There were no boxes of clothes, no well-thumbed photograp
hs. Only Vivi had saved any remnants of her at all: a yellowed newspaper cutting about the wedding of 'the last debutante', and a couple of photographs of her on a horse. Even those were only brought out when Douglas was elsewhere.

  His presence in her shop, so apparently devoid of any emotional reaction, had the reverse effect on her. Is it so impossible for you to show any emotion at all? Suzanna suddenly wanted to shout. Even if it is supposedly for my sake, do you have to pretend she never existed? Do I have to pretend she never existed?

  'You could hang it in the picture gallery.' The words hung, too loud, in the air, Suzanna's voice holding a faint tremor of challenge. 'Vivi wouldn't mind.'

  Her father had turned away from her, was bending to examine a piece of Chinese silk.

  'I said Vivi wouldn't mind. In fact, she suggested it. Getting the frame mended, and putting it up. Quite recently.'

  He picked up one of the miniature silk purses, examined the price, then placed it gently back on its pile. The timing of those actions, and the faint criticism she felt they implied, caused something to swell inside her, unbidden, unstoppable. 'Did you hear what I said, Dad?'

  'Quite well, thank you.' He still wouldn't look at her. There was an excruciating delay. 'I just . . . I just don't think it's appropriate.'

  'No. But, then, I suppose even if they're just on canvas you don't really want women cluttering up the ancestral line, do you?'

  She wasn't sure where it had come from. Her father turned very slowly, and straightened up before her, his expression unreadable. She had the sudden sensation of being a small child found guilty of some misdemeanour and waiting, in silent terror, to discover her punishment.

  But he simply replaced his hat on his head, a measured gesture, and turned to the door. 'I think my parking meter's probably running out. I just wanted to tell you that your shop looks very nice.' He lifted a hand, his head inclined towards her.

  Her eyes had filled with tears. 'Is that it? Is that all you're going to say?' She heard the shrill tones of a teenager in her voice, and knew, with fury, that he had heard them too.

  'It's your painting, Suzanna,' he said, as he left. 'You do with it what you want.'

  There was almost no sign of blotchiness left on her face when Jessie returned, entering the shop apparently in mid-conversational flow, although she was plainly by herself.