The Peacock Emporium(114)

She had thought this might bring her some secret satisfaction. Now that she was here, this hurried disposal of Athene’s things seemed almost indecent. Douglas no longer talked of her. Rosemary and Cyril had forbidden mention of her name. Suzanna was too young to remember her—her age allowed her to accept the love of the strangers around her as a happy substitute. But, then, one didn’t know how much Suzanna had been loved before.

Vivi picked her way past a heap of expensive wool coats and stood on the edge of the lawn, as a man dumped a box of photographs beside her. Afterward she wasn’t sure what had made her do it. Perhaps the thought of Suzanna’s rootlessness, perhaps her own discomfort at what seemed an almost fervid desire among those who had known Athene to obliterate her from history.

Vivi bent down, pulled a handful of photographs and newspaper cuttings from the box and stuffed them into the bottom of the pram, under her bag. She wasn’t sure what she would do with them, or if she even wanted them. It just seemed important that, no matter how unpalatable, or how many awkward questions it might raise, when she was older Suzanna might have some idea where she had come from.

As Vivi made her way back up to the brow of the hill Suzanna had begun to cry. She lifted her from the pram and whirled her around, letting the baby’s cheeks pink in the brisk air. “Who’s my beautiful, beautiful girl?”

“She certainly is.”

She spun around to find Douglas standing behind her, and flushed. “I’m sorry,” she said haltingly. “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Don’t be sorry.” His tweed collar was lifted against the cold, his eyes weary and red-rimmed. He stepped closer, adjusted Suzanna’s woolen bonnet. “Is she okay?”

“She’s fine.” Vivi beamed. “Very bonny. Eating everything in sight, aren’t you, precious?” The baby thrust out a fat hand and pulled at one of the blond curls that emerged from under Vivi’s hat. “She’s doing very well indeed.”

“I’m sorry,” said Douglas. “I’ve neglected her. Both of you.”

Vivi flushed again. “You don’t have to . . . nothing to apologize for.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly. He glanced down toward the lawn, where they were already tidying up now. “For everything. Thank you.”

“Oh, Douglas . . .” She was unsure of what else to say.

Douglas had placed his coat on the ground and they had sat on it in silence for a while, facing the house, he staring at the lawn, at the child whose fingers grabbed the blades of grass, from the safety of Vivi’s lap.

“Can I take her?”

She handed over the baby. “I keep thinking it’s all my fault,” he said. “That if I’d been a better husband . . . that if she’d stayed here, none of this—”

“No, Douglas.” Her voice was unusually sharp. “There was nothing you could have done. Nothing.”

He looked down.

“Douglas, she was gone from you a long time ago. Long before this. You must know that.”

“I know.”

“The worst thing you could do is make her tragedy your own.” She wondered at the strength of her own words. This certainty came somehow easier to her these days. There was pleasure in supporting him. “Suzanna needs you,” she said, pulling the child’s rattle from a pocket. “She needs you to be cheerful. And to show her what a wonderful daddy you are.”

He made a mild scoffing noise.

“You are, Douglas. You’re probably the only father she’s known, and she loves you to bits.”

He looked at her sideways. “She loves you to bits.”

Vivi reddened with pleasure. “I love her. It’s impossible not to.”

They watched as Rosemary’s erect figure marched backward and forward between the remaining piles, gesturing and pointing with military efficiency. And then at the bonfire, which had started to burn, just out of sight, its plume of smoke hinting at the irrefutable end of Athene’s tenure of the house. As the gray column gained in strength, lost its translucency, she felt Douglas’s hand creep across the grass to hers, and squeezed it reassuringly in return.

“What’s going to happen to her?” she said.

He stared at the child between them, and let out a long sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t look after her alone.”

“No.”

At that Vivi felt something shift inside her, the stirrings of a confidence she had never felt before. The sense of being—for the first time in her life—indispensable. “I’ll be here,” she said, “for as long as you need me.”

He had looked up at her then, his eyes—too old and sad for his youthful face—seeing her as if for the first time. He had observed their linked hands, and then he had shaken his head slightly, as if he had been missing something all these years and was chastising himself for doing so. At least, that was how she liked to remember it afterward.

Then, as her breath stalled in her chest, he had lifted his free hand to her cheek, in almost the same way as he had to the child’s. Vivi’s sweet, generous smile broke through, willing strength, joy, love into him as if she could do it by willpower alone. So when his lips met hers, it was no great surprise.

“Darling,” she had said, marveling at the determination, the certainty that requited love could bestow. And her blood sang when he answered her in the same way, his arms enclosing her in an embrace that said as much about his need as it did hers. Not quite a fairy tale, but no less momentous, no less real, for that.