Peacock Emporium (41 page)

She made herself keep looking at him, struggled to gather her thoughts. ‘To Mum’s?’ And then, as she took in his words, ‘Oh, no, Neil. Not there. I don’t think I can face it today.’

Neil had already turned away. ‘I’m going. You can do what you want, Suzanna.’

‘You’re going?’

He kept walking, stiff in his dark suit, leaving her standing on the grass. ‘It’s a day for family,’ he said, over his shoulder, just loud enough for her to hear. ‘Your parents have been kind enough to support you today. And, to be honest, I can’t see the point in you and me being alone right now. Can you?’

Alejandro had walked the length of the graveyard with Cath and Emma. She had turned back in time to see him reach the gates. When he got there he had squatted down to say something to Emma, and pressed something into her hand. As she left, he might have nodded at Suzanna. At that distance it was hard to be sure.

‘Nearly six hundred people came when your father died. The church was so full they had to seat people out on the grass.’ Rosemary accepted a second cup of tea. She was addressing her son as he leant back in his chair. ‘I always thought we should have used a cathedral. I think, if there had been more space, we would have had even more.’

Vivi squeezed Suzanna’s arm as she sat beside her daughter on the sofa. She really looked terribly pale. ‘Lovely cake, Mrs Cameron,’ she said. ‘Very moist. Do you use lemon rind in it?’

‘The archbishop had offered to give the sermon. Do you remember, Douglas? Dreadful man with a lisp.’

Douglas nodded.

‘And four eggs,’ said Mrs Cameron. ‘Good free-range ones. That’s what gives it the yellow colour.’

‘I thought your father would rather have the vicar. He had been a good friend to the family, you see. And Cyril was never one for pomp and circumstance, despite his position.’ She nodded, as if confirming this to herself, then eyed Mrs Cameron as the younger woman took away the teapot to refill it.

‘I didn’t like that ham in the sandwiches. It’s not proper cut ham.’

‘It was, Rosemary,’ said Vivi, in emollient tones. ‘I got a whole one specially from the butcher.’

‘What?’

‘It was proper ham,’ she said, her voice raised.

‘Tasted like that re-formed stuff. Scraped off the factory floor and glued together with goodness-knows-what.’

‘I cut it off the bone myself, Mrs Fairley-Hulme.’ Mrs Cameron turned back from the doorway, with a wink at Vivi. ‘Next time I’ll carve it in front of you, if you like.’

‘I wouldn’t trust you near me with a carving knife,’ said Rosemary, sniffing. ‘I’ve heard about you so-called care assistants. You’ll have me changing my will in my sleep next—’

‘Rosemary!’ Vivi nearly spat out her tea.

‘—and then making sure I have a so-called “accident” like Suzanna’s friend.’

There was a stunned silence in the room as its occupants tried to work out which of Rosemary’s statements had been the most offensive. Reassured by Mrs Cameron’s easy guffaw as she disappeared into the kitchen, all eyes had fallen on Suzanna, but she appeared not to be listening. She was staring at the floor, locked into the same misery as her silent husband.

‘Mother, I hardly think that’s appropriate . . .’ Douglas leant forward.

‘I’m eighty-six years old, and I shall say what I like,’ said Rosemary, settling back into her chair. ‘As far as I can see, it’s about the only advantage of having this many years.’

‘Rosemary,’ said Vivi, gently, ‘please . . . Suzanna’s friend has just died.’

‘And I’ll be the next to go, so I think that gives me more of a right than most to talk about death.’ Rosemary placed her hands in her lap, then gazed around at the mute faces in front of her. ‘Death,’ she said, finally. ‘Death. Death. Death. Death. Death. There, you see?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Douglas, rising from his chair.

‘What?’ She looked up at her son, her expression challenging beneath the immovable pathways of veins and wrinkles. ‘Death. Death. Death.’ She ended each word abruptly, her jaw snapping shut like an angry turtle’s.

‘Not today, Mother. Please.’ He moved towards her. ‘Do you want Mrs Cameron to take you into the garden? So you can see the flowers?’

‘What did you say? I don’t want that woman near me,’ she said.

‘I think a breath of fresh air would be just the thing,’ said Douglas. ‘Mrs Cameron!’

‘I do not want to go into the garden,’ said Rosemary. ‘Douglas, do not put me in the garden.’

Vivi turned to her daughter, still limply acquiescent to having her arm held. ‘Darling, are you okay? You’ve been dreadfully quiet since we got back.’

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ she said, dully.

Vivi glanced at Neil. ‘Some more tea, Neil?’ she said hopefully. ‘Another sandwich, perhaps? It really is ham off the bone. I wouldn’t buy that square stuff.’

He at least attempted a smile. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Vivi.’

Outside, they could hear Rosemary protesting furiously at being wheeled round the courtyard garden, punctuated by Mrs Cameron’s cheerfully oblivious exclamations.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Douglas, coming back into the drawing room, wiping his head. ‘She can be a bit – difficult at the moment. Not been quite the same since her fall.’

‘I guess she just tells the truth,’ said Neil.

Vivi could have sworn he looked meaningfully at Suzanna, but he turned away so fast she couldn’t be sure. She looked up at Douglas, trying to signify silently that she was unsure what to do next. He walked over to the sofa, took her hand in his. ‘Actually,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘we called you here for a reason, Suzanna.’

‘What?’

‘I know it’s been a pretty bad day for you. Your mother and I – we wanted to show you something.’

Vivi felt the swell of something hopeful. She took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it, then made to remove her empty cup and saucer from her lap.

Suzanna glanced at Neil, then at her parents. She allowed herself to be led from the sofa, like someone sleepwalking. Vivi, conscious that Neil’s part in this was important, placed her arm round her son-in-law’s waist, wishing she occasionally saw Suzanna do the same.

‘Upstairs,’ said Douglas, gesturing to them.

They walked silently up to the gallery. Through the window, Vivi could just make out Rosemary, shaking her head as Mrs Cameron bent towards a flower-bed.

‘We’re thinking of putting some new lights up here, aren’t we, darling?’ Douglas’s voice came from ahead of her. ‘Brighten this floor up a bit. Always been a bit gloomy,’ he said to Neil.

They stopped at the top of the stairs, and stood clustered together, Suzanna looking unreceptive, Neil gazing at Vivi’s face for clues.

‘What?’ said Suzanna, eventually, in a thin voice.

Douglas looked at his daughter and smiled.

‘What?’ she said again.

He gestured towards the far wall. And it was then that Suzanna saw it.

Vivi’s eyes never left her as she stood motionless and stared at the oil painting of her mother, undamaged by its brush with Rosemary, now overlit by a narrow brass light. Suzanna’s fine profile, so like Athene’s, was as still and white as that of a Grecian statue. Her hair, swept back from her face, made Vivi wince. Even after all these years. She reminded herself of her blessings, especially the most recent ones. This is for Suzanna, she told herself. For Suzanna’s happiness.

She felt Douglas beside her, his arm sliding round her shoulders, and reached her fingers up to his, gleaning comfort from the gesture. It was the right thing. Whatever Rosemary said, it was the right thing.

But when Suzanna turned to them, her colour was high, her eyes furious. ‘And this – this is meant to make it all okay?’

Vivi took in the granite set of Suzanna’s mouth, the echo of the worst, most damaged part of Athene. And realised, too late, that the hurt went way deeper than could be addressed by the hanging of a picture.

‘We just thought . . .’ Douglas began, his habitual confidence deserting him. ‘We thought it might make you feel better.’

Neil’s eyes were flicking between the three of them, his earlier expression replaced by something less certain.

‘Feel better?’ Suzanna asked.

‘To see it here, I mean,’ Douglas continued.

Vivi reached out a hand to her. ‘We thought it would be a good reminder—’

Suzanna’s voice pierced through the silent gallery. ‘Of another person whose death I inadvertently caused?’

Douglas flinched, and Vivi tightened her hold on him. ‘You didn’t—’

‘Or how about, I got over what happened to her so I’ll get over what happened to Jess too? Is that it?’

Vivi’s hand was pressed to her mouth. ‘No, no, darling.’

‘Or, even, let’s do something really meaningless to make up for the fact that we don’t believe Suzanna is as worthwhile as her younger brother.’

Douglas had stepped forward. ‘Suzanna, you’ve—’

‘I can’t stay here,’ Suzanna said and, her eyes bright with tears, pushed past them towards the stairs. After a split second’s hesitation, Neil went after her.

‘Get off me!’ she shouted, as he caught her up half-way down the stairs. ‘Just get off me!’ The ferocity in her words made him recoil.

It was not often that Vivi felt truly sympathetic towards her mother-in-law but, conscious of the bewildered hurt on Douglas’s face as he stood beside her, listening now to the muffled sound of her daughter and son-in-law screaming at each other out on the drive, staring at the far wall at that smirking mouth, those ice blue eyes, as knowingly amused as if they knew the trouble they caused still, Vivi thought she might finally have understood how Rosemary felt.

Suzanna walked the entire perimeter of the forty-acre field. She walked through the forest, along the bridleway known as Short Wash, up the hill that backed on to the beet field and sat at the top of the hill where she had sat with Alejandro less than two weeks earlier.

The evening had brought cool, soft breezes from the coast, easing down the high temperatures of the day. The land was settling slowly for the evening, bees bumbling lazily across meadows, ducks fussing and squawking in the water, seeds blown up from meadow grass hovering briefly in the near-still air then floating slowly to earth.

Suzanna sat and thought about Jessie. She thought about Arturro and Liliane, whom she had seen together outside the church, her arm linked in his as he stooped to offer her a handkerchief, and wished that Jessie could have seen it too. She thought about the way her father had closed his eyes as she turned from him, a look of quiet despair, so fleeting that it was likely only she had seen it. She had recognised it all right: it was the same expression she had seen on Neil that morning.

A few feet away, a starling was jabbing at the soil, its oil-slick feathers gleaming in the evening sun as it hopped across the cracked earth. Across the valley, she heard the distant sound of the market-square bell: it struck five, six, seven o’clock, as it had for all the years she had been absent, creating a life for herself many miles from here, as it had all the years before she even existed. Time to get up. Time to move on.

Suzanna laid her head on her knees, and breathed deeply, wondering at the sheer number of people in her life to whom she needed to say sorry.

Only some of whom would ever hear her.

Twenty-One

The shop stayed shut for just over a week. Suzanna had arrived to open it on the morning after the funeral and then, having stood on the doorstep for almost seven minutes, long enough for the woman who ran the pet shop at the corner to enquire solicitously whether she was all right, she put the key back into her bag and walked home. Two suppliers had rung to ask her whether there was a problem. She had told them politely that there wasn’t, but that she wouldn’t be taking any deliveries in the near future. The builders rang to ask if it would be okay if they put a skip right outside the door, and she had surprised them with the readiness with which she had said yes. Arturro had rung her at home to make sure she was okay. She fought the suspicion that he was afraid something would happen to her too.

Suzanna had done little that week. She had completed various domestic tasks, which she had somehow never had time for when the shop was open: she washed windows, hung curtains, painted the unfinished part of the kitchen. She made a few cursory attempts at weeding. She cooked several meals, at least one of which was both attractive and edible, none of which she herself had been able to stomach. She had said nothing to Neil about the shop’s temporary closure. When he discovered it several days later, having been asked by a fellow commuter when she was likely to reopen, he said nothing in return. And if she was rather quiet, he didn’t say much about that either. It was an odd, unbalancing time for everyone. Grief was a strange thing. They were still a little fragile with each other, since the exchange at Jessie’s funeral. And even he knew well enough by now that there were times in a marriage when not talking too much was the right thing to do.

On the following Monday, exactly nine days later, Suzanna got up at half past seven. She ran a bath (the cottage didn’t have a shower), washed her hair, put on makeup and a freshly ironed shirt. Then, on a day windy enough to snatch at her hair and turn her pale cheeks pink, she accepted a lift from her husband to the Peacock Emporium (he had the morning off). With no visible hesitation, she put her key in the steel anti-squatter door and opened up. Then, having offered the builders a mug of tea, sorted the pile of post and noted, with mixed feelings, the disappearance of the vast bank of old flowers – and the arrival of several newer bunches, including a posy from Liliane – she pulled out of her bag all the things she had collected over the course of the week, things she had examined and fretted over, things she had remembered and sometimes chosen just because of the way they looked. She laid them out on the pink-painted table, an expression of intense concentration on her face, then began to gather up Jessie’s things.

Mrs Creek, perhaps predictably, was the first customer to appear. The short gap between her and Suzanna’s arrival made Suzanna wonder afterwards whether she hadn’t spent the last days positioned surreptitiously somewhere, one eye on the shop, waiting for the moment when the door would open again. She looked as windswept as Suzanna felt, her silver hair sticking out from under her crocheted beret as if she had been electrocuted. ‘You didn’t tell anyone you were going to close,’ she said accusingly, as she arranged her bag on the table beside her.