The Peacock Emporium(101)

Neil told her the shop was failing. He didn’t say it in so many words. He probably didn’t want to make her sadder than she already was. He just looked at the books every few days, and the way he rested his forehead on his hand as he examined the receipts told her everything she needed to know.

She ought to care more than she did, she realized, but its brightly repainted exterior, the posters someone had put up to hide the ugly hoardings over the windows, failed to draw her or anyone as they once had. The brightly colored tables suddenly looked sad and makeshift, the drinks leaving colored rings on their surfaces where she hadn’t wiped them enough. The bare patches on the walls where she couldn’t face replacing the photographs and pictures they had pasted up there, the white emulsion, which she had one afternoon, with a strange urgency, painted over the maps, and the lack of display all somehow conspired to make the shop feel different. Less welcoming. Less about its people. Less like the thing that, almost a year previously, she had first imagined.

Suzanna knew it. Like everyone else did. Somehow, corny as it sounded, the heart of the shop had gone.



* * *



—

The weather, so the good ladies of the Women’s Institute market had told Vivi that morning, was definitely on the turn. The seemingly endless weeks of balmy blue skies and windless heat had been replaced with stiff breezes, gray skies, and patchy smatterings of rain for whole days at a time. The flowers had long blown over, their heads brown and shriveled, while trees were shedding leaves prematurely, showering faded green and gold across the pavement. Perhaps, for a summer like the one they had had, Vivi thought, there had to be a price. She changed her mind about putting the washing outdoors.

“All set?” Douglas stood behind her, his hands on her hips, and kissed her cheek.

“As set as we can be. I’ve taken you at your word about not wanting a proper lunch.”

“Sandwiches in the study will be fine,” he said. “I don’t imagine any of them will want to stay long. Well, Lucy might if she’s taken the day off.”

“No, she told me she’d get the train back this afternoon and go into the office.”

“Girl’s a workaholic,” said Douglas, moving over to check the sandwiches. “Can’t imagine where she gets it from.”

The barns were full of hay and straw. The wheat and barley fields had been topped and plowed. Vivi watched her husband as he gazed absently out of the kitchen window, monitoring the darkening skies for the prospect of rain, as he had done, several times a day, all his adult life. The first drops were spitting on the window, and she felt melancholy that the summer was over.

“Have you said anything to your mother?” she asked, peeling the paper off a shop-bought cake. She had not troubled to lower her voice: Rosemary’s hearing was so bad now that she rarely caught anything said in normal conversation.

“I have,” said Douglas. “I told her that, despite what she thought, we were not ignoring her wishes. I’ve told her that this is a happy compromise, and that if she looked at it carefully, she should be able to see it as such.”

“And?”

“And I told her the family’s happiness was the most important thing. Including hers.”

“And?”

“She shut the door on me,” he said.

“Poor darling,” said Vivi, moving forward to give her husband a hug, then slapped his hand as he dug a roughened finger into the icing.



* * *



—

Suzanna was the first to arrive and Vivi trod on the cat as she hurried down the hallway to open the door. It uttered a wail so feeble that she realized it probably no longer had enough energy to complain.

“I think I’ve just squashed Rosemary’s cat,” she said, as she opened the door.

Suzanna didn’t appear to have heard. “I can’t stay long,” she said, kissing her mother’s cheek. “I need to open the shop again this afternoon.”

“I know, darling, and it’s very good of you to make the effort. Daddy won’t take long, I promise. I’ve put a few sandwiches out so you can eat them while he talks. Will you look at Rosemary’s cat and tell me if you think I’ve broken anything?”

“It’s hard to tell.” Suzanna’s smile was forced. “It’s always been a bit bandy-legged. Look, it’s walking. I shouldn’t worry.”

She looked thin, Vivi noted, as she followed Suzanna into the kitchen, where Mrs. Cameron was laying a tray. But it wasn’t just the thinness: she looked gray, beaten, as if her essence had somehow been washed away. Vivi wished that in her unhappiness her daughter could have found more comfort in Neil. But, then, these days, she was never sure how much Neil was part of the problem.

“Did you want us to put something else out for Mrs. Fairley-Hulme? If I remember rightly she’s not a great lover of sandwiches,” Mrs. Cameron enquired.

“Actually, I was going to ask you if you wouldn’t mind doing her some scrambled eggs.” She lowered her voice. “She’s not coming out of the annex today, apparently.”

“Is this a protest?” asked Suzanna, leaning against the range, as if she could absorb its warmth.

“Rosemary’s whole life’s a protest, I think,” said Vivi, and felt disloyal. “I’ll just finish off the shirts, and then I’ll make her up a tray.”