Peacock Emporium Read online

  Now she was impotent, incapable of intervening in their fights, of helping to lighten their unhappinesses. She tried not to think about the opening of Suzanna’s shop: that discovery had made her feel like such an irrelevance she had been almost winded.

  ‘That dog of yours has been at my slippers.’

  Vivi turned. Her husband was examining the heel of his leather slipper, which had been visibly gnawed.

  ‘I don’t think you should let it upstairs. The place for dogs is downstairs. I don’t know why we don’t put it in a kennel.’

  ‘It’s too cold outside. The poor thing would freeze.’ She turned back to her reflection. ‘I’ll nip into town tomorrow and get you another pair.’

  They completed their ablutions in silence. Vivi, slipping into her nightdress, wished she hadn’t recently finished a book. Tonight she could have done with a little escape.

  ‘Oh. Mother wants to know if you can dig her out a baking tray. She wants to make scones tomorrow and she doesn’t know where hers has gone.’

  ‘She left it in the walled garden. She used it to feed the birds.’

  ‘Well, perhaps you could bring it in for her.’

  ‘Darling, I think you might have been a little hard on Suzanna today.’ She kept her tone light, tried to avoid any hint of reproach.

  Her husband made a dismissive sound, a kind of guttural exhalation of air. His lack of a verbal response gave her courage. ‘You know, having a child might be the making of her. She and Neil have had such problems. It would give them a new focus.’ Her husband was staring at his bare feet. ‘Douglas? She’s trying so hard. Both of them are.’

  It was as if he hadn’t heard.

  ‘Douglas?’

  ‘And what if my mother’s right? What if she does end up like Athene?’

  It was so rare that he even said her name. Vivi felt it solidify in the atmosphere between them.

  ‘You need to think about this, Vivi. Really. Think about it. Because who’s going to be left picking up the pieces?’

  Nine

  The Dereward estate was one of the largest in that part of Suffolk. Backing on to what later became known as Constable country, it dated back to the 1600s, was unusual in that it had housed an almost unbroken ancestral line, and its land, which was notably hilly for the region, was well placed for a variety of uses, from arable farming to game fishing, and contained an exceptional – some said uneconomic – number of tied cottages. Most estate houses that oversaw some 450 acres were rather grander, perhaps with a portrait gallery or ballroom to indicate the gravitas of the incumbent family. The Dereward estate took some pride in its history – its family portraits were renowned for not just showing every heir in the past four hundred years but for detailing, in rather bald language, the manner of their death – but the mustard-coloured heavily beamed eight-bedroomed house had been extended rather haphazardly, and in occasionally inappropriate architectural styles.

  But, then, the original home of the Fairley-Hulmes had been latched on to a mere sixty acres, and had only increased its size as the result of a wager between Jacob Hulme (1743–90, killed by inadvisably close contact with one of Suffolk’s first threshing machines) and the habitually inebriated head of the neighbouring Philmore estate; for a family so keen on trumpeting its history, this snippet was often forgotten. In fact, Jacob Hulme’s calling-in of this gambling debt had led to a near-riot among the local villagers, who feared for their homes and their livelihoods, until Jacob, who was unusually canny for a member of the landholding classes, promised that under him, tithes would be reduced and a new school would be built, to be run by one Catherine Lees. (Miss Lees later had a child in unexplained circumstances, although Jacob showed rare benevolence in offering to support the unmarried schoolmistress and provide a roof over her head.)

  The Philmore house had remained largely empty and, it was said, had subsequently been the site of many discreet trysts for the male members of the Hulme family until one Arabella Hulme (1812–1901, choked on a sugared almond), whose brother, the heir, had died in the Crimea and who had been responsible, through marriage, for the addition of the ‘Fairley’, put an end to what she saw as the placing of unnecessary temptation in her husband’s path. She had employed a particularly dour housekeeper, and spread ghoulish rumours about the emasculating tendencies of the house’s supposed ‘ghosts’. She needed to: the house had become something of a local legend by then, and it was said that a man need only step through the front door to be overcome by lustful thoughts. Travelling families would set up home nearby so that their girls could be ready to take advantage of such weakness.

  So, Arabella Hulme was the crinoline-clad exception in this row of self-aggrandising male faces – although her jawline was so heavy and her profile so undelicate it often took a second look to be sure. From the turn of the twentieth century, various attempts had been made to portray more female members of the family, just as there had been increasing protests about the possibility of the house falling to the female line of the family. But the wives and daughters tended to look a bit half-hearted, as if they were not convinced of their right to pictorial immortality. They occupied less ornate gilded frames, and less prominent positions, and frequently vanished without trace. The Fairley-Hulmes, as Rosemary was fond of saying, had not survived four hundred years by swaying to fashion and political correctness. For traditions to last, they had to be strong, shored up with rules and certainty. For one so strident on the matter, she spoke little about her own family’s history – with good reason: Ben had looked her up on an Internet genealogy database and discovered that Rosemary’s family hailed from a slaughterhouse in Blackburn.

  But perhaps mindful of modern social mores, and living in an age where grandiloquence was less relished than it had been, the portraits looked likely to stop with Suzanna’s father, of whom a dreadful ‘interpretive’ mask, in oils, sat in lesser stately splendour on the wall of what had been known to successive generations as the bearpit: a low-ceilinged beamed den with an oversized roughly carved stone fireplace where children scattered toys, teenagers watched television and dogs lay in peace. The last portrait would have been Suzanna’s mother’s. A young artist had been commissioned on her eighteenth birthday to paint it and, several decades on, had become Important. But it was now Suzanna’s, and lived with them in the cottage, although Vivi had repeatedly assured her that she would be more than happy for Athene to take her rightful place on the wall. ‘She’s very beautiful, darling, and if it would mean something to you to have her up, then that’s where she should be. We can get that frame restored, and it will look lovely.’ Vivi, always bending over backwards, always so anxious to spare everybody’s feelings. As if she had none of her own.

  Suzanna had told her that the reason she liked to have the portrait in her own house was simply that it was beautiful. It was not as if she remembered Athene: Vivi had been the only mother she had known. She couldn’t articulate the real reason. It was to do with guilt and resentment and that, for as long as her father found it nearly impossible to talk about his first wife, she felt it difficult to confront him with the evidence that he had had one. It was since she had let her hair grow dark again, since she had acquired, as Neil called it, something of her mother’s fierce beauty, that her father had found it so difficult even to look at her at all. ‘Athene Forster’, it read, the writing just visible against the crumbling gilt of the frame. Perhaps in deference to Suzanna’s feelings, it had never detailed the manner of her death.

  ‘You going to put that up? Is it for sale?’

  Suzanna eyed the young woman who stood, head cocked, in the doorway.

  ‘She’s like you,’ the girl said cheerfully.

  ‘It’s my mother,’ Suzanna said reluctantly.

  The picture hadn’t looked right in the cottage: it was too grand. Athene, with her glittering eyes and her pale, angular face, had filled the sitting room, and left little space for anything else. Now, staring at it in the shop, Suzanna realised it
didn’t belong here either. The mere fact that this stranger was inspecting it made her feel uncomfortable, exposed. She turned it to the wall, and moved towards the till. ‘I was just taking it home,’ she said, and tried to suggest, through her tone, that the conversation was closed.

  The girl was struggling to remove her coat. Her blonde hair was pulled into two plaits, like a schoolgirl, although she was clearly older. ‘I nearly lost my virginity on your stairs. Drunk as a skunk, I was. Are you serving coffee?’

  Suzanna, moving towards the espresso machine, didn’t bother to turn round. ‘You must be mistaken. This used to be a bookshop.’

  ‘Ten years ago it was a wine bar. The Red Horse. For a couple of years, anyway. When I was sixteen we all used to come up on a Saturday night, get hammered on Diamond White in the market square, then come in here to cop off with each other. It’s where I met my bloke. Snogging away on those stairs. Mind you, if I’d known then . . .’ She tailed off, laughing. ‘Can I have an espresso? You are doing coffee?’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ Suzanna wrestled with levers and coffee measurements, grateful that the din of the machine temporarily drowned the need to talk. She had envisaged that people would come in here, sit down and talk to each other. That she would preside over it all from the safety of the counter. But in the two months that she had been open, she had found that, more often than not, they wanted to talk to her, whether she felt sociable or not.

  ‘They closed the bar down in the end. Not surprising, really, with all the underage drinking that went on.’

  Suzanna placed the filled cup on a saucer with two sugar lumps, and carried it carefully to the table.

  ‘That smells gorgeous. I’ve been walking past for weeks, and I kept meaning to come in. I love what you’ve done with it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Suzanna.

  ‘Have you met Arturro, in the deli? Big man. Hides behind his salamis when women go in the shop. He gave up doing coffee about eighteen months ago because his machine kept breaking down.’

  ‘I know who you mean.’

  ‘Liliane? From the Unique Boutique? It’s just there. The clothes shop. On the corner.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Both single. Both middle-aged. I think they’ve been hankering after each other for years.’

  Suzanna, mindful that she didn’t want to find herself discussed in this manner at some later date, said nothing. The girl sipped her coffee. Then she leant back in her chair, and noticed the small pile of glossy magazines in the corner. ‘Mind if I have a look?’

  ‘It’s what they’re there for,’ she said. She had bought them a week ago, hoping it would mean customers didn’t always want to talk. The girl gave her a strange look, then smiled easily, and began flicking through Vogue. She examined the pages with the kind of relish that suggested she didn’t get to read too many magazines.

  She sat there for almost twenty minutes, during which the two men who ran the motorbike spares shop dropped in to down quick, silent fixes of strong coffee, and Mrs Creek made her twice-weekly foray around the shelves. She never bought anything but she had given Suzanna several years’ worth of her life story. Suzanna had listened to the story of her career as a dressmaker in Colchester, the Unfortunate Incident on the Train, and about her various allergies, which included dogs, beeswax, certain synthetic fibres and soft cheese. Mrs Creek hadn’t known she had these allergies for most of her life, of course. There had been little in the way of indication. But she had been in to see one of those homeopathic types in the little shop on the corner, and they had done some test involving buzzers and little phials and she had discovered there was no end of things she shouldn’t go near. ‘You don’t have any beeswax here, do you?’ she said, sniffing.

  ‘Or soft cheese,’ said Suzanna, evenly. Mrs Creek had bought one coffee, and complained, grimacing, that it was ‘a little bitter for my taste’. ‘The Three Legged Stool, up the road, they put CoffeeMate in theirs, if you ask. You know, like powdered milk. And they give you a free biscuit,’ she said hopefully. Then, as Suzanna ignored her, she added: ‘You don’t need a food licence for biscuits.’ She had left shortly before twelve, having made, as she told the girl, ‘a promise to play a little gin rummy with one of the elderly ladies up at the centre. She’s a bit of a bore,’ she confided, in a stage whisper, ‘but I think she’s a bit lonely.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be glad to see you,’ said the girl. ‘There are a lot of lonely people in this town.’

  ‘There are, dear, aren’t there?’ Mrs Creek had adjusted her hat, looked meaningfully at Suzanna, and tottered briskly out into the watery spring sunshine.

  ‘Can I have another coffee?’ The girl stood up, and walked with her cup to the counter.

  Suzanna refilled the machine. As she was about to start it up, she felt the girl’s eyes on her. She was, she saw, being quietly assessed.

  ‘It’s an odd choice, running a coffee shop,’ the girl said. ‘I mean, for someone who doesn’t like people.’

  Suzanna stood quite still. ‘It’s not really a coffee shop,’ she said tartly. She glanced down at her hands, which were holding the cup. Then she added, ‘I’m just not big on small-talk.’

  ‘You’d better learn, then,’ the girl said. ‘You won’t stay afloat long otherwise, no matter how beautiful your shop is. I bet you’ve come up from London. London people never talk in shops.’ She glanced around. ‘You need some music. Always cheers things up, music.’

  ‘Oh?’ Suzanna was fighting irritation. This girl appeared to be some ten years younger than her, and was presuming to tell her how to run her business.

  ‘Am I being a bit blunt? Sorry. Jason always tells me I’m too blunt with people. It’s just it’s a really nice shop, really magical, and I think it will do really well as long as you don’t keep treating every customer like you wish they weren’t there. Can I have sugar with that?’

  Suzanna pushed the bowl towards her. ‘Is that how I come across?’

  ‘You’re hardly welcoming.’ Seeing Suzanna’s dismayed expression, she corrected herself: ‘I mean, I don’t care because I’ll talk to anyone anyway. Like that old lady there. But there’s a lot of others round here who’d be put off. Is it London you’re from?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Suzanna. It was easier than explaining.

  ‘I grew up on the estate near the hospital. Meadville, you know it? But it’s a funny old town. Very green wellies. Very up itself. You know what I’m saying? To be honest, there’s a lot round here who aren’t going to give you a second look because everything in your window – it will just look weird to them. But there are some people who feel they don’t fit in. People who don’t want to sit with their flapjack and lapsang souchong and some headscarfed old blue rinse braying at the next table. I reckon if you were a bit friendlier you’d get a lot of trade from them.’

  Despite herself, Suzanna found the corners of her mouth lifting in recognition of the girl’s description. ‘You think I should become a kind of social service.’

  ‘If it brings the punters in.’ The girl popped a sugar cube into her mouth. ‘You need to make money, don’t you?’ She gave Suzanna a sly look. ‘Or is this shop your little hobby?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t know whether you were one of those – you know, “hubby works in the City. She needs a little hobby.”’

  ‘I’m not one of those.’

  ‘Once your customers knew they were welcome, you could put a notice up saying, “Don’t talk to me.” If you get the right sort of regulars they’ll understand . . . I mean, if talking to people is really that painful . . .’

  Their eyes locked and they grinned. Two grown women, recognising something in each other, yet too old to acknowledge that they were making friends.

  ‘Jessie.’

  ‘Suzanna. I’m not sure I can do that chatty stuff.’

  ‘Are you getting enough custom not to?’

  Suzanna pondered. Thought of her echoing till. Of Neil’s knitted brow when
he went over the figures. ‘Not really.’

  ‘You pay me in coffee, I’ll come and help for a couple of hours tomorrow. Mum’s having my Emma for a couple of hours before night school, and I’d rather do this than the Hoovering. It’s nice to do something different.’

  Suzanna stiffened, unbalanced by the idea that she was being manoeuvred. ‘I don’t think there’s enough work for two.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll make sure there is. I know everyone, you see. Look, I’ve got to go. Think about it, and I’ll turn up tomorrow. If you don’t want me, I’ll have a coffee and go. Yeah?’

  Suzanna shrugged. ‘If you’re sure.’

  ‘Oh, hell. I’m late. His nibs’ll be doing his conkers. See you.’ Jessie tossed some money on to the counter – the right amount, it turned out – threw her coat over her shoulder and flew out into the lane. She was tiny. Watching her go, Suzanna thought she looked like a child. How can someone like that have a child herself, she thought, and me still feel unready?

  She was unwilling to admit it, even to herself, but Suzanna was cultivating a new crush. She knew this because every day, in the few minutes before she closed the shop to buy her daily sandwich from the deli, she found herself checking her appearance, reapplying her lipstick, and wiping the detritus of the morning from her clothes. It was not her first: during her marriage to Neil she thought she’d probably averaged one a year. They ranged from her tennis coach, who had the most compellingly muscular forearms she’d ever seen, to her friend Dinah’s brother, to the boss of the marketing company she’d worked for, who had told her she was the kind of woman who gave men sleepless nights. She had been pretty sure he meant this nicely.