The Peacock Emporium(33)
“But they’re making me unhappy.”
“I can’t believe you’re obsessing over what happens to Dad’s money after he dies. I can’t believe you’re prepared to split this family apart over something that isn’t yours in the first place. He’s not going to leave either of us short, you know.”
“It’s not about Dad’s money. It’s about the fact that he believes in some outdated system where boys matter more than girls.”
“Primogeniture.”
“Whatever. It’s just wrong, Lucy. I’m older than Ben. It’s wrong, and it’s divisive, and it shouldn’t happen in this day and age.”
Lucy’s voice rose in exasperation. “But you’ve never wanted to run the estate.”
“It’s not the bloody point.”
“So you’d rather it be broken up and sold off, just so you can have an equal share?”
“No, Lucy. I just want an acknowledgment that I—that we—are as important as Ben.”
Lucy made as if to stand. “It’s your problem, Suze. I feel just as important as Ben.
“Look, no one else is going to say this to you, but you need to get this into perspective, Suzanna. This all bears no indication of what Dad thinks of you. If anything, you got more attention than either me or Ben when we were young.” She held up a hand, silencing Suzanna’s protest. “And that’s fine. You probably needed it more. But you can’t blame him for everything that’s happened since. He’s given you a house, for God’s sake.”
“He hasn’t given it to us. We’re paying rent.”
“A peppercorn rent. You know as well as I do that you’ve got it for good if you want it.”
Suzanna fought a childish urge to say she didn’t want it and she hated that little house with its tiny rooms and its cottagey beams. “It’s because he feels guilty. He’s overcompensating.”
“God, you sound spoiled. I can’t believe you’re thirty-five.”
“Thirty-four.”
“Whatever.”
Perhaps conscious that her tone had been a little hard, she nudged Suzanna with her elbow, a conciliatory gesture. Suzanna, who had started to feel chilly, wrapped her arms around her knees and wondered how her sister, at twenty-eight, had achieved this level of certainty, this self-possession.
“Look. It’s Dad’s right to divide things up as he chooses. And things might change, you know. You just need a bit more going on in your own life and then it won’t matter.”
Suzanna swallowed the bitter retort. There was something particularly galling about being patronized by one’s baby sister, hearing an echo of family discussions that had taken place without her. Especially if you knew she was right.
“Make a go of this shop and Dad will have to look at you differently.”
“If I make a go of this shop Dad will die of shock.”
She was shivering now. Lucy was getting to her feet with the balanced ease of someone for whom exercise was a daily ritual. Suzanna, standing, thought she heard her own knees creak. “Sorry,” she said. And then, after a pause, “Happy birthday.”
Lucy held out her arm. “Come on, let’s go inside. I’ll show you the tin of biscuits Gran gave me for my birthday. It’s the exact one Mrs. Popplewell gave her for Christmas two years ago. Besides, if we stay out much longer she’ll convince herself that you’re giving birth already.”
* * *
—
Vivi sat down heavily on the stool, and began to wipe the day from her face. She was not a vain woman—there were only two pots on her dressing table, one for cleansing and one a supermarket moisturizer—but tonight she looked at the reflection before her and felt immensely tired, as if someone had placed an intolerable weight on her shoulders. I might as well be invisible, she thought, for all the influence I have in this family. As a younger woman, she had shepherded her three children around the county, had supervised their reading, eating, and brushing of teeth, had refereed their squabbles and dictated what they should wear. She had fulfilled her maternal tasks with certainty, rebuffing their protests, setting their boundaries, confident in her own abilities.
Now she was incapable of intervening in their fights, of helping to lighten their unhappinesses. She tried not to think about the opening of Suzanna’s shop: that discovery had made her feel like such an irrelevance she had been almost winded.
“That dog of yours has been at my slippers.”
Vivi turned. Her husband was examining the heel of his leather slip-ons, which had been visibly gnawed.
“I don’t think you should let it upstairs. I don’t know why we don’t put it in a kennel.”
“It’s too cold outside. The poor thing would freeze.” She turned back to her reflection. “I’ll nip into town tomorrow and get you another pair.”
They completed their ablutions in silence. Vivi, slipping into her nightdress, wished she hadn’t recently finished a book. Tonight she could have done with a little escape.
“Oh. Mother wants to know if you can dig her out a baking tray. She wants to make scones tomorrow and she doesn’t know where hers has gone.”
“She left it in the walled garden. She used it to feed the birds.”