The Peacock Emporium(126)

“No one’s asking you to humiliate yourself—”

The woman was staring at her now.

“I don’t even know if it’s near Patagonia, or Puerto Rico, or what. I just know it’s got lots of cows, and drinks that taste like twigs and water, and horrible mean fish, and that it’s really, really big, and if he leaves here I haven’t got a hope of finding him. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to try. Please. Please just let me know if he’s still here.”

The woman gazed at Suzanna for a minute, then moved to the back of her office and pulled a file from a bulging drawer. She stood over it, reading carefully, too far away for Suzanna to see its pages. “We’re not allowed by law to reveal the personal details of staff files. What I can tell you is that he’s no longer an employee of the hospital,” she said.

“So he no longer works for you?”

“That’s what I said.”

“So you can tell me where he is. If he no longer works for you, he’s no longer staff.”

“Nice try,” said the woman. “Look, you could try his agency—the people who brought him over and placed him with us in the first place.” She scribbled a number on a piece of paper and handed it to Suzanna.

“Thanks,” said Suzanna.

“And it’s next to Uruguay.”

“What?”

“Argentina. It’s next to Brazil and Uruguay.”

The woman, smiling to herself, turned away from the counter and headed back toward her filing.



* * *



—

    Arturro hadn’t seen him. He asked the three young assistants, who shook their heads theatrically, then continued their graceful lobbing of large pieces of Stilton, and jars of quince paste. Arturro hadn’t seen him for more than a week. Neither had Mrs. Creek, nor Liliane, nor Father Lenny, nor the woman who ran the antiques stall, nor the thin man who ran the Coffee Pot, nor the assistants at the café by the garage where he had once been known to get a newspaper.

“About six foot? Quite tanned? Dark-haired?” she said to a nurse outside the newsstand, just on the off chance.

“Shove him my way if you find him.” She smirked.

When it started to get dark, Suzanna went home.

“Are you all packed?” said Vivi, handing her a cup of tea. “Lucy rang to say she’ll be here at midday tomorrow. I was wondering whether you’d mind having a little sit with Rosemary before you left. It would mean a lot to her, you know.”

Suzanna was on the sofa, wondering whether it was madness to head to Heathrow now. The local airport didn’t do flights to Argentina, and Heathrow wouldn’t give out names on their passenger list, as a matter of security, obviously. “Sure,” she said.

“Oh, and you know you said you couldn’t get any reply from that number earlier?” said Vivi. “Well, they called back. A nursing agency, they said. Is that who you wanted? I didn’t think it could be right.”

Suzanna leaped up and snatched the piece of paper from her mother’s hand. “It is right,” she said.

“A nursing agency?”

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, thank you.” She threw herself along the sofa toward the telephone table, heedless of her mother’s bemused look.



* * *



—

The man at the agency was very nice. Almost too nice. But Alejandro de Marenas had signed off their books two weeks previously. Having paid their “introduction fee,” he was under no obligation to keep in touch. He was probably back in Argentina. The average stay in England was under a year for midwifery. “I’ll take your number, if you like,” he said. “If he contacts us again I can keep it on file for him. Are you NHS?”

“No,” she said, staring at the feather in her hand. She’d just remembered you weren’t meant to keep them in your house because they were bad luck. “Thanks, but no,” she whispered. And then, finally, her head dropping gently onto the telephone, she wept.



* * *



—

It was almost nine thirty, and the slight increase in pedestrians that constituted Dere Hampton’s rush hour was easing, as the last of the shops opened and the trailing mothers returned home from the school run.

Suzanna stood in the Peacock Emporium for the last time. The windows were in place, their frames freshly painted, a sign advertising next week’s one-day closing-down sale. “All stock half price or less,” it read in bold black letters. That was the left-hand side, though. The right-hand window would fulfill a different purpose.

She checked her watch, noting that Lucy would be there in two and a half hours. She had only invited a few people, Arturro and Liliane, Father Lenny, Mrs. Creek, those who could be considered to have had daily contact with Jessie, those to whom the objects might mean something, might add to their memory of her.

She looked out through the gauze curtain she had placed in the window that morning, an uncomfortable reminder of the net curtains of the days before, watching as they stood in a little huddle. She had wondered whether this was the right time to do it, but Father Lenny, the only one who had known her plan, had said it was exactly the right time. He had been at previous inquests. He had known that after a death there were images and words that should be blocked out, painted over with something sweeter.