The Peacock Emporium(130)

She began to nod, and then laugh, not even sure why she was doing so—feeling a great bubble of emotion forcing its way out of her in short, breathless bursts. And for some time, they stood in the door of the shop that used to be the Peacock Emporium, talked about in dismissive and curious whispers for weeks after by those who knew them in the small town and those who didn’t. Barely touching each other, and watched by the few people who had once been its customers, the Argentinian man, and the woman with the short black hair, a woman who, considering all that had happened, should have been a little less elated, perhaps a little more discreet. The girl, after all, was the image of her mother.



* * *



—

Much, much later, Suzanna stood on the painted step of the shop, locked the door for the final time, and looked around. He was seated, fiddling with the paper butterfly, waiting as, for the seventeenth time, she checked that everything she needed was there. “You know I’m meant to be going to Australia. In about an hour. I’ve got the ticket and everything.”

He reached over and put his arm around her legs as she came to him, a gently proprietorial gesture. “Argentina is closer.”

“I don’t want to rush into anything, Ale.”

He smiled at the paper butterfly.

“I mean it. Even if I do come to Argentina, I’m not sure whether we’re going to be together, not yet anyway. I’ve just come out of a marriage. I want to go somewhere for a while where my history doesn’t count.”

“History always counts.”

“Not to you. Not for us.”

She sat beside him and told him about her mother, and how she had run away. “I should hate her, I suppose,” she said, feeling the warmth of his hand around hers, savoring the fact that it could now linger there. “But I don’t. I just feel relief that I didn’t cause her death.”

“Well. You have a mother who loves you.”

“Oh, I know. And Athene Forster.” She looked at the photograph Vivi had given her, which was sitting on top of a cardboard box. “I look like her, I know, but I feel like she has nothing to do with me. I can’t mourn someone who left me without a backward glance.”

Alejandro’s smile faded as he thought of a baby in a Buenos Aires maternity ward, spirited away by a blond woman determinedly oblivious to someone else’s pain. “Perhaps she never wanted to leave you,” he murmured.

“Oh, I think she knew what she was doing.” She was surprised at her lack of animosity. “I had her down as this glamorous, doomed figure. I think perhaps I was half in love with the idea of being the same. Now I just think Athene Forster was probably rather a stupid, spoiled little girl. Someone who just wasn’t meant to be a mother.”

He stood up and held out his hand to her. “It’s time to be happy, Suzanna Peacock,” he announced. He tried to make his face solemn. “With me or without me.”

She smiled back, accepting the truth in this. “You know what?” she said. “Your gifts were way off the mark. Because there is no Suzanna Peacock. Not anymore.”

She paused. “My name is Suzanna Fairley-Hulme.”





28


The girl in the blue boucle suit descended backward from the train, struggling with the huge pram, whose wheels had stuck on some ledge. It was a cumbersome thing from the 1940s, and as she nodded her thanks to the guard who helped wrestle it onto the platform, she thought of her landlady, who had complained for weeks about its presence in her narrow hall. She had twice demanded its removal, but the girl knew the old woman was intimidated by her accent, and had used it to devastating effect. Just as she did now on the guard, who grinned at her, checking that she had no other bags that also required carrying, and gave her long, slim legs an appreciative glance as she walked away.

It was a blustery day, and outside the station she leaned forward and tucked the blankets more securely into the sides of the pram. Then she smoothed her hair and pulled up her collar, watching wistfully as the latest of several taxicabs roared past. It was at least a mile and a half to the restaurant and she had only enough money for her return ticket. And a packet of cigarettes.

She was going to need those cigarettes.

As she reached Piccadilly, perhaps predictably it began to rain. She flipped the hood up on the pram, and walked faster, her head down against the wind. Because she had not worn stockings, her ridiculous shoes were rubbing her heels. But some vestige of vanity had meant she didn’t want to be seen in a pair of cheap shoes. Not today.

The restaurant was in a side street behind a theater, its dark-green exterior and stained-glass windows advertising its discreet quality. She slowed as she approached, as if she were reluctant to reach her destination, and stood outside, staring at the menu, as if trying to decide whether to go in. A row of builders were leaning against the scaffolding above her, temporarily taking shelter from the light rain, one whistling to Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By,” which issued furrily from a transistor radio. They watched with unconcealed interest as she attempted to repin her hair, sabotaged by the wind and the lack of a mirror, then peered into a nearby window in an attempt to see whether her makeup had smudged.

She lit a cigarette and smoked it in short, urgent gasps, shifting on her feet and peering distractedly down the street. Finally she turned to the pram beside her, and glanced inside at the sleeping baby. Suddenly she stood immobile, the intent look on her face still and strange, oblivious to the builders, to the foul weather. She reached in, as if to touch the child’s face, her other hand gripping the pram handle tightly, as if to steady herself. Then she leaned under the hood, stooping so that her face couldn’t be seen.