The Peacock Emporium(122)

Her father and brother were at the other side, motioning to the men in the bulldozers, her father breaking off occasionally to talk to two others, one of whom appeared to be in charge of the bins.

By the time she had arrived, two buildings were already down, their metamorphosis from shelter to sculpture almost dismayingly swift.

Ben had seen her. He pointed to his father and she nodded, watching as he walked over to interrupt the older man’s conversation. He and Ben walked with the same stiff-legged gait, shoulders hunched forward as if permanently ready to do battle. Her father, tilting his ear toward his son, ended his conversation and, following his son’s hand, gestured toward her. She stood still, not wanting to have to make polite conversation. Finally, perhaps sensing her reticence, he came across to her, dressed in a thin cotton shirt that she remembered from her youth, oblivious, as he seemingly always had been, to the elements.

“Lunch,” she said, handing over the basket. And then, as he was about to thank her, she added, “Got a minute?” He indicated to the one remaining barn, and passed Ben’s sandwiches to him on the way.

They had not seen each other in the twenty-four hours she had been in the house. He had been out with the demolition team, and she had spent much of her time in her room, a good portion of it asleep. She rested carefully against an old fertilizer sack as he hauled one over for himself.

There was an expectant pause.

“Looks strange, without the middle barns.”

He glanced up to the holes in the roof. “I suppose it does.”

“When do you start work on the new houses?”

“It’ll be a while. We’ll have to level the ground first, put in new drainage, that sort of thing.” He offered her a sandwich, and she shook her head. “It’s a shame,” he said. “We’d originally thought we could convert the lot. But there are times when you have to accept that you’re just going to have to start from scratch.”

They sat side by side, her father breaking off from his sandwich to drink from a flask of tea. She found herself staring at his hands. She remembered Neil telling her that when his own father had died, he had realized, with shock, that he would never see his hands again. Something so familiar and mundane, suddenly to disappear.

She glanced down at her own. She didn’t need to see a picture to know that they were her mother’s.

She placed them between her knees, and looked out to where the men had stopped for lunch. Then, finally, she turned to her father. “I wanted to ask you something.” Her palms pressed against each other, her skin surprisingly cool. “I wanted to ask if you’d mind if I took a little of my share of the estate money now.”

She saw from the way he looked at her that he hadn’t known what was coming. That what he had perhaps expected was somehow worse. His eyes were both questioning and relieved, checking that this was what she wanted.

“You need it now?”

She nodded. “Ben will do good things with the estate. It . . . it’s in his blood.”

There was a brief silence as the words descended between them. Silently, he took a checkbook from his back pocket, scribbled a figure, then handed it to her.

Suzanna stared at the check. “That’s too much.”

“It’s your right.” He paused. “It’s what we spent putting Lucy and Ben through university.”

He had finished his sandwich. He screwed up the grease-proof paper it had been wrapped in, and put it back into the basket.

“You might as well know,” she said, “that I’m going to go abroad with it. Spread my wings.”

She was conscious of his silence, of the silences with which he had spoken to her all her life. “Lucy’s got me a ticket. I’m going to Australia. I’ll be staying with a friend of hers for a while, just till I find my feet.”

Her father shifted position.

“I haven’t done much with my life, Dad.”

“You’re just like her,” he said.

She felt herself boil up. “I’m not a bolter, Dad. I’m just trying to do what’s right for everyone.”

He shook his head, and she realized that the look on his face had not been one of condemnation or judgment. “I didn’t mean that,” he said slowly. “You . . . need to strike out. Find your own way of doing things.” He nodded, as if reassuring himself. “You sure that money will be enough?”

“God, yes. Backpacking’s pretty cheap, from what Lucy says. Actually, I’m hoping not to spend too much. I’m going to leave most of it here in the bank.”

“Good.”

“And Father Lenny’s going to sell off my remaining stock for me. So that will be a bit more coming in, hopefully.”

They watched as Ben moved between the two bulldozers, apparently issuing instructions, breaking off once to answer his mobile phone and laugh uproariously.

Her father stared at him for a while, then turned to her. “I know things haven’t been easy between us, Suzanna, but I do want you to know something.” His knuckles were white around the flask. “I never did a test, you know—we didn’t have DNA and suchlike in those days—but I knew from the start you were mine.”

Even in the darkened barn Suzanna could see the intensity of his gaze, heard the love in what he was saying. She realized that even he was bound by the past, by deeply ingrained beliefs about blood and heritage. There were ways to be certain about these things. But suddenly she understood they were irrelevant. “It’s all right, Dad,” she said.