Peacock Emporium (44 page)

‘The main thing I wanted to tell you is that we have permission to convert the barns by Philmore House into holiday cottages.’

Ben shuffled in his chair, making it obvious that he already knew this. Lucy nodded vaguely. Suzanna’s face was blank.

‘We think there’s a potential market, and that, with reasonable occupancy levels, we could clear the cost of conversion within a few years.’

‘Weekenders,’ said Lucy. ‘Cater for the upper end of the market and you’ll be laughing.’

‘And people who want a full week. Less laundry and cleaning,’ said Ben.

‘My boss says there are hardly any really nice weekend cottages for people with money to spend. He says it’s all plastic cutlery and nylon sheets.’

‘Mum, make a note that we don’t want nylon sheets.’

Vivi leant forward. ‘I don’t believe they even sell them any more. Awful things. Used to make you sweat terribly.’

‘Ben is going to oversee the building work, and manage them.’ Douglas scanned his three children. ‘He’ll look after the bookings, the cleaning and the handing over of keys, as well as the money side of things. If he fails, obviously, we’ll have him shot.’

‘Which will save on raising pheasants.’

‘I’ve got this image of Ben now, running naked through the wood, pursued by tweed-clad bankers,’ said Lucy, laughing. ‘It’s put me right off my lunch.’

‘Witch,’ said Ben. ‘Pass me a cheese and pickle.’

‘There are some other issues, one of which is to do with subsidies. I won’t bore you with them today, as I know none of you has much time. But, Suzanna, there was one thing I wanted particularly to mention to you.’

Suzanna sat with her mug of tea in her lap. She hadn’t, Vivi noticed, taken a single bite of her sandwich.

‘When I was discussing what to do with the barns, I had a long talk with Alan Randall – you know, the estate agent. He’s told me that the owner of your shop is thinking of selling. We wondered if you’d like us to take a financial interest.’

Suzanna placed her mug carefully on the table beside her. ‘What?’

‘In the Peacock Emporium. Neil has told me things aren’t great for you at the moment, and I know you’ve been working very hard at it. I think it’s a good little business, or has the potential to be, and I’d like to help it have a future.’

Vivi, watching her daughter, saw almost as soon as Douglas started to speak that yet again they had done the wrong thing.

Suzanna swallowed hard, then lifted her head, her features rearranged into something painfully controlled. ‘You don’t have to do this, Dad.’

‘Do what?’

‘Compensate me. For how we’ve been. For Ben’s holiday cottages. Whatever.’

‘Suzanna . . .’ said Lucy, exasperated.

‘It’s a legitimate business offer,’ said Douglas.

‘I’m not being rude. Really. But I’d rather you all stayed out of my business. I’ll decide what happens to it.’

‘Jesus, Suzanna,’ Ben said crossly. ‘They were just trying to help.’

Suzanna’s voice was icily polite. ‘I know. And it’s very kind of you to think of me, but I don’t want any help. Really. I’d rather you all just left me alone.’ She looked around the room. ‘I’m really not being difficult,’ she said, sounding curiously poised. ‘I would rather you just left me and Neil to it.’

Douglas’s face had closed. ‘Fine, Suzanna,’ he said, his head lowering over his paperwork. ‘Whatever you want.’

Lucy found Suzanna where she had expected, on the stone steps that overlooked the offices. Suzanna had been smoking, hunched over her knees like someone trying to combat stomach ache. When Lucy closed the house door behind her, her sister nodded acknowledgement.

‘I like the hair,’ Lucy said.

Suzanna raised a hand to it.

‘Why d’you cut it? I thought you liked it long.’

Suzanna wrinkled her nose. ‘Just needed a change. Actually,’ she said, stubbing out her cigarette, ‘that’s not strictly true. I got sick of people telling me I looked like that stupid painting.’

‘Oh.’ Lucy waited for something more. She reached out and took a cigarette from her sister’s packet.

‘Neil likes it,’ Suzanna said eventually. ‘He’s always liked me with short hair.’

The sky was cloudy, threatening more rain, and the two pulled their jackets closely round them, each shifting as the cold of the stone step seeped unforgivingly through their clothes.

Lucy took a long drag. ‘Two years since I gave up, and the odd one still tastes delicious.’

‘So do the odd twenty,’ said Suzanna.

There was something peculiar in her tone. Lucy, changing her mind, stubbed out her cigarette and tossed the evidence behind a flowerpot, as if they were still teenagers.

‘Are you going to tell me off?’

‘For what?’

‘For refusing Dad’s help. Like Ben did.’

‘Why would I?’

‘It doesn’t seem to stop anyone else.’

They sat in silence, each alone with her thoughts, watching the clouds race across the sky, occasionally revealing the odd game patch of blue.

‘What’s up, Suze?’

‘Nothing.’ Suzanna stared straight ahead at the barns.

There was a lengthy pause.

‘I heard about what happened at the shop. I tried to ring a couple of times – to make sure you were okay.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I keep forgetting to return calls.’

‘Are you fully back in business?’

‘In theory. Neil tells me I can’t last long at this rate. I’m not really making any money. It’s hard – it’s hard to know what to do to bring people in.’ She smiled at her sister apologetically. ‘I don’t suppose I’m the most welcoming person at the moment. Not a great draw at the best of times. That’s really why I can’t see any point in Dad investing in it.’

Lucy leant forward, drawing her knees up to her chest. ‘And you and Neil?’

‘Fine.’

‘I’m assuming the cigs mean Peacock minor is not yet imminent . . .’

‘I think the accepted phrase is “if it happens it happens”. I guess I’ll try a bit harder when I’m feeling a bit . . . brighter.’ Her voice tailed away.

‘Try a bit harder?’ Lucy pulled a face. ‘What are you trying to turn into? Some kind of Stepford wife?’ She studied her sister’s profile, her smile fading when she saw that there would be no jocular reply. ‘You don’t sound like yourself, Suze. You sound . . .’ She couldn’t find the right words. ‘Married, for a change?’ When Suzanna turned back to her Lucy was shocked to see that her eyes filled with tears.

‘Don’t mock me, Luce. I’m doing my best. Really. I’m trying to do my best.’ Her hair, caught on the wind, stood up on one side, looking shorn and brutal.

Lucy Fairley-Hulme hesitated for just a second, then placed her arms round her beautiful, troubled, complicated sister and held her tighter than she had since they were children.

Suzanna was about to close the shop. She needn’t have bothered coming back after her parents’ lunch. It had probably cost more in petrol to return than she had made in coffee profits. The skies had grown steadily greyer, heralding a premature dusk, and the wind had picked up, sending tin cans rattling disconsolately along the gutters.

She knew the shop looked as unwelcoming as it felt. Despite the builders’ promises, the new windows had still not arrived, and the boards that stood in their place looked increasingly faded and grubby, an unwelcome reminder of Jessie’s fate. The previous day she had had to peel off several stickers from the outside, offering the chance for ‘homeworkers’ to make ‘tens of thousands’ if they only rang the mobile-phone number advertised, and a crude poster advertising a car-boot sale outside the White Hart.

She couldn’t seem to summon the energy to chase the builders. She stared around at the unwanted stock, at the empty gaps on the shelving that she hadn’t yet filled from the new boxes, wondering how much she would miss it when it was gone. She had accepted now that it would be gone. If she had cared enough, her father’s offer might have seemed like a lifeline. Instead it felt like the latest in a long line of affronts, which she no longer had the strength to get worked up about.

Suzanna checked the cartons of milk in the fridge and, out of habit rather than necessity, refilled the coffee machine, noting that with the school-run mothers gone home, she was unlikely to get any further custom that day. She didn’t care. She felt tired. She thought of her cool bed, of the deadening comfort of going home and crawling between the sheets. She would set the alarm for seven thirty that evening so that she would be up again before Neil returned. It seemed to work quite well that way.

The door opened.

‘Have you seen the jam in the market square?’ said Mrs Creek.

‘I was going to close.’

‘The cars have got themselves into a complete gridlock. All over one parking space. They’re all out there shouting at each other.’ She removed her hat and sat down at the blue table. ‘The market traders are laughing at them. Silly old fools. All because they can’t be bothered to pay the forty pence to park behind the church.’ She had made herself comfortable and was squinting at the blackboard as if it had changed since the previous day, as if Suzanna had ever offered anything but seven different types of coffee. ‘I’ll have a cappuccino, please, with those brown cube sugars on the side. The ones from the pretty box. They taste quite different from what you get at the supermarket.’

There was no point protesting. Suzanna wasn’t even sure she could raise her voice enough to do it. She thought of showing Neil the till receipts for the day, the fact that this afternoon she would have sold the grand total of three coffees, one for each hour the shop had been open.

She began to prepare the machine, only half listening to Mrs Creek’s chatter, nodding as required. Mrs Creek often needed little input: Jessie and Suzanna had long ago decided that she was simply desperate for an audience. ‘Nod and smile,’ Jessie had once advised her. It gave one the appearance of listening.

‘I’ve been asked to make a wedding dress, did I tell you?’

Suzanna had never asked Jessie if she’d wanted to get married. She could imagine her as a bride; some insane bright pink confection, with beads and feathers and flowers spilling off it. She thought of what Cath Carter had said at the funeral about Jessie’s nails, and wished suddenly that she could have had the chance to wear a bridal dress, too. Except that that would have implied she was bound even more tightly to Jason. The thought of him brought the van crashing through the front of the shop again, as it did several times a day, and Suzanna willed the image away.

‘You’ve forgotten the sugars. The ones from that box, please.’

‘What?’

‘The sugars, Suzanna. I asked for two sugars.’

She thought she might have entered a state where almost nothing could touch her. The pain of Jessie’s death had not lessened, but she knew that she was increasingly being cushioned from it by an encroaching numbness, a feeling that little mattered, that circumstances were genuinely beyond her control. Things seemed to be just gently slipping away, and she no longer cared enough to fight for them. It was easier just to allow herself to be carried with these strange new tides. Ironic, she thought, that as she entered this passive state Alejandro had burst out of his. She could still feel the ringing in her ears from when he had slammed the board beside her head, the whoosh of air that told her he had become someone else. But, then, she didn’t think about Alejandro.

‘It’s for the girl from the library. The one with the teeth – do you know her? Dreadful hair, but girls don’t seem to care in the same way they did. We used to get a set twice a week, you know.’

‘Really?’ Suzanna placed the coffee in front of Mrs Creek, and moved towards the remaining window, watching the passers-by, heads down, coats flying up behind them.

‘You know, I haven’t done a wedding dress for . . . goodness, must be nigh on thirty-five years. I was talking to her about a book in the library. All the Hollywood stars of the fifties, you know. And she said that that was the kind of look she wanted but she hadn’t seen it done anywhere. So I told her I could do it. Cheaper than those bridal shops, anyway. You wouldn’t believe what they charge for a wedding dress now.’

It was raining again. As it had rained on the day that Alejandro had walked in and made them drink
mate.
She glanced behind her at the shelf, and saw that his silver pot was still there, shoved behind a pile of things still to be sorted out after what everyone politely called ‘the accident’. She could barely believe she hadn’t noticed it until now.

‘Yup, thirty-five years. The last one was for a wedding in this town, too.’

‘Mmm,’ said Suzanna. She picked up the pot carefully, held it in both hands, feeling its weight, its smooth silver contours. I’m sorry, Ale, she said silently.

‘Beautiful it was. White silk, cut on the bias. Very simple, a bit like what the girls like today. I modelled it on a dress Rita Hayworth wore in . . . Ooh, what’s that film where she was a real vamp?
Gilda
, is it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Suzanna. She lifted the pot and held it against her cheek, letting the cold penetrate her skin, then feeling it warm gradually against her. The transformation was comforting.

‘Come to think of it, Rita Hayworth wasn’t a bad model. The bride was a bit of a fast piece too. Ran off – what was it? – two years after the wedding?’

‘Oh.’ Suzanna had closed her eyes.

‘What was her name? Unusual name. Atalanta? Ariadne? Athene something. That was it. Married one of the Fairley-Hulmes.’

The name took several seconds to register. Suzanna turned her head slowly towards Mrs Creek who was blithely stirring her cup, her woollen hat beside her on the table. ‘What did you just say?’

‘Pretty girl. Had an affair with a salesman, of all things, and left her husband with the baby. Except it wasn’t his baby. Oh, they kept it quiet, but everyone knew.’

Time had stopped. Suzanna felt as though the shop was rushing backwards, away from her, as Mrs Creek’s words dropped heavily into the space between them. ‘That was it. Athene Forster. You probably won’t remember the Fairley-Hulmes, you being so long in London and all, but they were a big farming family out here when I was a girl.’ She took a sip of her coffee, oblivious to the frozen figure by the window. ‘Lovely dress it was. I was very proud of it. I think I’ve even got a picture of it somewhere. I felt awful afterwards, though, because I was in such a rush to finish it and I forgot to sew a piece of blue ribbon into the hem. We used to do that, you know. Just for good luck. “Something old, something new . . . ” ’ The older woman gave a shrill cackle. ‘Years later, when I found out the girl had gone and bolted I said to my husband, “There you go. It must have been my fault . . .”’