Peacock Emporium (42 page)

‘I didn’t know,’ said Suzanna, moving all the mugs along the shelf in an attempt to find Jessie’s favourite.

‘It’s not very good for custom.’

She found it. A blue and white one with a line drawing of a bulldog and the words
‘chien méchant’
on the other side. Jessie had said it reminded her of Jason when he woke up in the morning. She had thought this was funny.

‘I had to go to the Coffee Pot instead,’ Mrs Creek continued. ‘I don’t like their sandwiches. But you left me no choice.’

‘I don’t do sandwiches.’

‘That’s not the point, dear. You can’t have a coffee in there after eleven thirty if you’re not prepared to have something to eat. Their cheapest cheese and tomato is more than two pounds, you know.’

‘Do you want those taped boxes at the back?’ Neil emerged briefly from the cellar, checking his trousers for marks. ‘They’ve got “Christmas” written on them, so I’m assuming you don’t want them up yet.’ Suzanna turned. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The back will be fine. As long as I can get to the other stuff.’

‘You’re lucky the builders took all of this in for you,’ he said, gesturing to the cellar, where delivery boxes sat in teetering columns, disguising the fact that the area had only recently been cleaned and reorganised. ‘Some people might have taken them for themselves.’

‘It’s not like that round here,’ said Suzanna, who didn’t feel like being grateful to anyone. Especially not builders who were costing her an excess of four hundred pounds on her insurance policy and apparently drinking almost half that amount daily in finest Brazilian coffee beans. ‘Did you want another drink or are you going soon?’

‘I’m all right for the moment. I’ll get as much done as I can before I have to head off. Leave you free to sort things out up here,’ Neil said, and disappeared down the stairs again.

‘That your husband?’ Mrs Creek was toying with an old magazine.

The way she glanced towards the stairs, as if Suzanna had done something duplicitous in having him here, made her feel intensely irritable. ‘Yes,’ she said, and went back to her display.

‘I saw him with you at the funeral.’

‘Oh.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Who?’

‘The daughter, Emma. Nice little girl she is. I made her a daisy outfit.’

‘I know,’ said Suzanna, to the pink paper flowers in front of her.

‘Fitted her beautifully, it did. I made it out of an old piece of crêpe-de-Chine. I hadn’t made a dress out of crêpe-de-Chine for twenty – no, must be thirty years.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Poor girl. Doesn’t seem right somehow.’

Suzanna had been trying to keep the vision of Jessie’s display intact in her head. She had known exactly what she wanted when she left the house, but already her ideas were blurred at the edges, corrupted by conversation.

‘Ballgowns and wedding dresses. Crêpe-de-Chine was lovely for those. Of course, most wedding dresses were silk – those who could afford it, anyway. But some of those finer fabrics can be a bugger to sew. You’d be unpicking the seams two, three, four times to make sure they didn’t gather or drag.’

What was left of her vision evaporated. Oh, please go away, thought Suzanna, fighting the urge to bang her head repeatedly on the counter’s hard surface. Just leave me alone. I can’t listen to your ramblings today.

The wind rattled down the lane, sending paper cups and the first stray leaves of autumn scuttling in errant circles in its wake. On the other side of the plywood hoardings, she heard the builders calling and exclaiming to each other, interrupted by the occasional burst of an electric drill. The windows would be going in next week, they said. Handmade by a local carpenter. Even better than the old ones. In a perverse way she had decided she quite liked the bare wood enclosure, the dim light. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to be so exposed again.

‘You couldn’t do us another coffee, could you, love?’ The oldest builder, a man with silver hair and a strong sense of his own charm, slid his face round the front door. ‘It’s turned bitter out here, and I could do with a bit of warming up.’

She mustered a smile. Like she had mustered one for Mrs Creek. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Coming right up.’

Several minutes later she heard the door open again. But when she finally turned away from the coffee machine it wasn’t the builder who stood in front of her.

‘Suzanna,’ he said and, for a second, she could see nothing except him, his blue hospital tunic, his battered holdall, his intimate, lowered gaze. He glanced round the shop, at Mrs Creek, apparently engrossed in her magazine, and stretched a hand across the counter towards her. ‘The shop was always closed,’ he said quietly. ‘I didn’t know how to reach you.’

His sudden proximity made her short of breath. She blinked hard at the coffees in front of her. ‘I have to take these out,’ she said, her voice cracking.

‘I need to talk to you.’

She glanced at Mrs Creek, then up at him. ‘The shop’s quite busy at the moment,’ she said distinctly, trying to convey something – she wasn’t sure what – in her voice.

From the other end of the shop, Mrs Creek called, ‘Are you charging those men full price for their coffees?’

Suzanna tore her gaze away from him. ‘What? No,’ she said. ‘I’m not charging them anything.’

‘That’s hardly fair.’

Suzanna breathed in. ‘If you’d like to help replace my windows, Mrs Creek, or compile my insurance claim, perhaps even my accounts, I’d be delighted to give you a free coffee.’

‘Suzanna,’ he murmured at her left ear now, equally insistent.

‘Hardly very friendly, is it?’ Mrs Creek muttered. ‘I don’t suppose Jess . . .’ She apparently changed her mind. ‘I suppose things will go back to how they were, now.’ Her tone left no one in any doubt as to what she thought of that.

‘I kept thinking about you . . .’ he said quietly. She was focusing on his mouth now, several inches from hers. ‘I have hardly slept since . . . I feel guilty that I can feel so much joy, so much . . . at a time that’s so . . . so bad.’ Despite the weight of his words, something had lifted in him: his face was glowing.

Suzanna’s gaze flickered from his mouth to Mrs Creek, reading again in the corner. Outside she could hear people talking in the street, the answering tones of the builders, and wondered whether they were leaving more flowers. She was dimly aware of Neil’s whistling, which had started several feet below them. He was whistling ‘You Are My Sunshine’.

‘You think it’s wrong?’ Alejandro’s hand touched hers, the contact featherlight. ‘To be so happy?’

‘Ale – I—’

‘Did you say what you wanted done with that bin bag? I could ask the guys outside if I could dump it in their skip.’

She jumped, snatching back her hand, and whipped round as Neil, several feet away, rubbed at his nose then examined his fingers as if expecting to see dirt. ‘Oh,’ he said, amiably. ‘Sorry to interrupt.’

Suzanna struggled to stop herself blushing. She felt, rather than saw, Alejandro take a step away from the counter, and wished she hadn’t been a party to his surprise.

‘It’s fine,’ said Alejandro, stiffly. ‘I just wanted a coffee.’

Neil stared at him for a minute. ‘Spanish accent,’ he said. ‘You must be the gaucho. Sorry, the girls did tell me your name.’

Suzanna’s knuckles had whitened on the handles of the tray. She willed herself to grip it less tightly.

‘Alejandro.’

‘Alejandro. You work at the hospital, right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Great job,’ Neil said. ‘Great job,’ he repeated. ‘Yes, Jessie told me all about you.’ He paused. ‘She was very fond of you, old Jess.’

‘I was very fond of her.’ Alejandro was looking intently at him, as if he were measuring him, determining his worth, the strength of his claim on Suzanna. There was something different about his stance, a hint of combativeness in his heightened vigilance, his squared shoulders. Suzanna, her senses vibrating so hard she thought they must be visible, felt both thrilled by this and appalled, conscious of Neil’s blindness. She wanted to take the tray outside, to be anywhere other than where she was. But her feet were rooted to the spot.

‘Terrible,’ Neil said. ‘Terrible.’ Outside, someone began hammering. ‘I’ll just pull those shelves out before I go,’ he said to Suzanna. ‘Somehow a load of rubble has ended up behind them. God knows how.’ He disappeared back down the stairs, whistling as he went.

Alejandro glanced past her to the cellar door, to the sounds of boxes being shifted below, and moved forward. ‘I have to tell you,’ he murmured, ‘how I feel. I have to speak to you. It’s like the first time I’ve really spoken.’

She lifted her face, her body remembering reflexively. ‘Please, don’t—’

‘She saw it, Suzanna. She saw it before we did.’

‘I’m
married
, Ale.’

He shot a dismissive look at the cellar door. ‘To the wrong man.’

At the other end of the shop, Mrs Creek was regarding them with interest. Suzanna stepped back towards the shelves and fiddled with the coffee syrups, organising them into a neat row.

‘Suzanna.’

‘I’m married,’ she said quietly. ‘I might even be carrying his child.’

He looked at her stomach, then shook his head.

‘I can’t just ignore that fact, Ale. I’m sorry.’

Alejandro came closer, his voice low in her ear as he said, ‘So what are you telling me, that you’re going to stay with him? After everything?’

‘I’m sorry.’ She turned to him, her back against the wall.

‘I don’t understand.’ His voice was rising dangerously. Suzanna looked at Mrs Creek, who was now examining the magazine with the intense concentration of someone trying – or pretending – not to eavesdrop.

She looked at him pleadingly. ‘Look, I’ve never done the right thing, Ale, not really.’ She thought of the previous night, of how she had lain awake in the spare room and then, at half past three, crept into their bed, and curled up, pulling Neil’s arm over her, trying to make him own her, trying to offer herself up as an apology. They had made love, something sad and resigned in it. She had prayed during it that he would not speak.

Neil’s voice floated up the stairs: ‘Do you want to leave these posters down here, Suze? The ones by the trolley?’

Suzanna tried to steady hers. ‘Can you leave them there, please?’ she called.

‘I’ve done a lot of thinking,’ she murmured to Alejandro. ‘And I’ve realised things have got to change. I’ve got to change.’

‘You told me, Suzanna.
You told me
– there is a time to let go of the past, of ghosts. You showed me it was time to live.’ He took her hands in his, apparently no longer caring if they were observed. ‘You can’t go back. You know that. You can’t. I can’t.’

‘I can.’ She stared at their hands. It was as if they belonged to other people.

‘Everything has changed, Suzanna.’

‘No.’

‘You have to listen to me.’

‘Ale – I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you. You know nothing about me. All we knew was that we loved the same girl, and we lost her. It’s hardly enough to base a relationship on, is it?’ She stepped sideways, hearing Neil’s footsteps in the cellar, his quiet exclamation as something fell heavily into place.

‘You think that’s it? You think that’s all we are?’ He had dropped her hands now, was staring at her in disbelief.

Suzanna forced her voice to stay calm. ‘I’m sorry. But I’ve done this all my life. I’ve done it all through my marriage – you’re not the first person I’ve had a crush on.’

‘A crush? You think this is a
crush?’
He was little more than inches away from her now. She could smell the leather of his coat, the faint tang of
mate
on his breath. The builders had begun banging something against the boarding, and she felt the impact reverberate through her.

‘I
know you
, Suzanna.’ He had her backed up against the boarded window now, his hands on each side of her shoulders, a just-contained fury on his face.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You don’t.’

‘Yes, I do. I know you as well as I know myself. I knew you the moment I saw you, so beautiful and – and furious, trapped behind the counter of your shop.’

She was shaking her head now, the vibrations of the hammer echoing through her, filling the shop, drowning everything but him, the smell of his skin, the terrible nearness of him. ‘I can’t—’

‘Tell me you don’t know me,’ he whispered.

She was crying silently now, no longer caring if Mrs Creek was watching.

‘Tell me. Tell me you don’t know who I am.’ His voice was hoarse, urgent in her ear.

‘No – I—’

He slammed the board by the side of her head, so that the banging stopped temporarily. ‘Suzanna, please.
Tell me you don’t know me.’

She nodded, finally, her face crumpling, her eyes closed against him, lost in the scent of him, the proximity of him. ‘I do . . . I do know you, Ale. I do.’

Vindicated, he turned from her with a sharp gasp, wiping at his face with one hand.

Her voice came at him from behind, halting: ‘But that doesn’t make it right.’

He had left less than a minute later, his face so hurt and furious that she thought she might shrivel and die. That might have been preferable to him ever again looking at her like that. Seconds later Neil had emerged, dusty and satisfied, at the sound of the steel door slamming. ‘You’ll be glad when you get your good one back,’ he said, fanning his ears. ‘Sounds like you’re being locked up in prison every time that one shuts.

Right. I’m done. Do you want to examine my handiwork?’

‘No,’ said Suzanna, biting back tears. ‘I trust you.’

‘More fool you, eh?’ said Neil, winking at Mrs Creek. Before he left, he gave her a supportive hug. ‘You look washed out,’ he said kindly. ‘Why don’t you see if there’s someone else who can help you for the next few weeks? It’s a big job, running it all by yourself.’

He couldn’t understand why this made her start crying again.

PART THREE

Twenty-Two

It is said, among the rare few who have returned from such a state, that the last few moments before drowning are quite pleasant. As the fight ends, and the water floods into the lungs, the victim enters a passive, accepting state, even sees a kind of perverse beauty in their condition.