The Peacock Emporium(117)

“I really just wondered . . . perhaps if I could”—she reached into her pocket and held the envelope in front of her—“contribute anything?”

Cath stared at her outstretched hand.

“Financially. It’s not much. But I thought if there was a trust fund or something . . . for Emma, I mean . . .”

Cath’s hand reached for the little gold cross around her neck. Her expression seemed to harden. “We don’t need anyone’s money, thank you,” she said crisply. “Emma and I will do just fine.”

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.” Suzanna stuffed the envelope into her pocket, scolding herself for her tactlessness.

“You haven’t offended me.” Cath stood up, and Suzanna wondered if she was about to be told to leave, but the older woman moved over to the serving hatch at the end of the room, reached through, and flicked the switch on the kettle. “There is one thing you could do,” she said, her back to the room. “We’re making Emma a memory box. Her teacher suggested it. You get people to write their memories of Jessie. Nice things that happened. Good days. So that when she gets older Emma can still have . . . a full picture of what her mum was like. What everyone thought of her.”

“That’s a lovely idea.” Suzanna thought of the shelf in the shop that bore a small shrine of Jessie’s things.

“I thought so.”

“A bit like our displays, I suppose.”

“Yes. Jess was good at those, wasn’t she?”

“Better than I was. I don’t suppose you’ll be short of those sorts of memories. Good ones, I mean.”

Cath Carter said nothing.

“I’ll try to do something that matches up, that does her justice.”

The older woman turned. “Jess did everything to the full, you know,” she said. “It wasn’t much of a life, a pretty small life to some. I know she didn’t really do anything, or go anywhere. But she loved people, and she loved her family, and she was true to herself. She didn’t hold back.” Cath was staring at the picture above the mantelpiece.

Suzanna sat, motionless.

“No . . . She used to divide people into drains and radiators. Did you know that? Drains are the type that are always miserable, that want to tell you their problems, suck the life out of you . . . Radiators are what Jess was. She warmed us all up.”

Suzanna realized with some discomfort where she had probably sat in the equation. Cath no longer seemed to be speaking to her: she was addressing the picture, her face softened. “I’m going to teach Emma to do the same. I won’t have her growing up frightened, cautious of everything, just because of what happened. I want her to be strong, and brave, and . . . like her mother.” She adjusted the frame, moving it a fraction along the shelf. “That’s what I want. Like her mother.”

She brushed nonexistent fluff from her skirt. “Now,” she said, “about that tea.”



* * *



—

Alejandro stood up suddenly in the little boat, making it rock dangerously, and threw down his rod in disgust. At the other end, his father looked up at him in incomprehension. “What’s the matter? You’ll frighten the fish!”

“Nothing is biting. Nothing.”

“Have you tried one of these damsel nymphs?” Jorge held up one of the brightly colored flies. “They seem to be biting better on the smaller lures.”

“I tried them.”

“Then a sinking line. I don’t think your floating one is any good.”

“It’s not the line. Or the lure. I just can’t do it today.”

Jorge pushed back his hat. “I hate to remind you, but it’s the only day I have.”

“I can’t fish anymore.”

“That’s because you are fidgeting like a dog with fleas.” Jorge leaned over and made Alejandro’s rod secure within the boat, then laid his own next to his landing net of stunned, glistening fish. He was nearly up to his ticket allowance of six. He was going to have to eat into his son’s soon.

He shifted on his seat and reached into the hamper for a beer, holding it up like a peace offering. “What’s going on? You were always a better fisherman than me. You’re like a five-year-old today. Where’s your patience?”

Alejandro sat down, shoulders hunched. His formerly languid air had vanished over the past days.

“Come,” said Jorge, with a hand on his shoulder. “Have something to eat. Another beer . . . Or something stronger?” He tapped the whiskey flask in the pocket of his fishing vest. “You’ve hardly touched this food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am. And if you keep thrashing about like you have been, there will be nothing left in the water for miles.”

They ate the sandwiches Alejandro had made in silence, letting the boat drift in the middle of the lake. It was not a bad flat, Jorge told him. Spacious. Light. Secure. Lots of pretty young nurses going past. (He hadn’t actually said the last bit.) Yes, he had been pretty taken with the area, the rolling countryside, the quaint cottages, the low-ceilinged English pubs. He liked the tranquility of this lake, the fact that the English were considerate enough to restock it with fish every year. England seemed to stay the same, he said. It was reassuring, when you could see a once-proud country like Argentina going to the dogs, to know that there were some places where civilized standards, a little dignity, still mattered. Alejandro had told him then of the landlords who had rejected him for being “dark,” and Jorge, spluttering, had said the place was obviously full of half-wits and ignorants. “Calls itself a civilized country,” he muttered. “And half the women wearing men’s shoes . . .”