The Peacock Emporium(39)
“Do you want to come again?” she asked Jessie later, after Arturro, and Cath with Emma in hand, had gone. They had placed the chairs upside-down on the tables and Jessie was sweeping the floor, while Suzanna counted her takings. “I’d really like it if you did,” she added, trying to feed some conviction into her voice.
Jessie had smiled, her wide, unguarded smile. “I can do till school pick-up, if that’s any good to you.”
“After today I don’t see how I can manage without you.”
“Oh, you’d be all right. You just need to get to know everyone. Get them coming through the door every day.”
Suzanna peeled off several notes and held them out. “I can’t pay much to begin with, but if you increase takings like that again, I’d make it worth your while.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Jessie took them and thrust them into her pocket. “I wasn’t expecting anything for today, but thanks. You sure you won’t get bored of me prattling on all the time? I drive Jason mad. He says I’m like a stuck record.”
“I like it.” Suzanna thought she might eventually believe that. “And if not, I’ll put up one of those notices you mentioned—‘Don’t talk to me.’”
* * *
—
Suzanna locked the till, noting, as she began her nightly routine for closing, that it was the first evening in which there had been a hint of peach-colored daylight remaining. Gradually it built in strength, illuminating the interior of the shop, transforming the blues into a rich neutral glow, crisscrossing them with the shadows of the window frames. Outside, the narrow lane was already nearly empty of people: things closed down early in the town, and only the shopkeepers remained to say goodnight to each other as night fell. She loved this part: loved the silence, loved the feeling that she’d spent a day working for herself, loved the knowledge that the imprints she left on the shop would remain until she opened it again the next morning. She moved around almost silently, breathing in the myriad fragrances that lingered in the air from wax-papered soap and Byzantine bottles of scent, hearing in the silence the laughter and chatter of the day’s customers, as if each had left some spectral echo behind them. The Peacock Emporium had been a pleasurable dream, but today it had felt magical somehow, as if the best of both the shop and its customers had rubbed off on each other. She rested against a stool, seeing something ahead of her other than the disappointments and restrictions she had been picturing as her future, seeing instead a place of possibilities where she could be herself, her better self.
She found herself smiling. On nights like tonight, she didn’t want to leave: she harbored a secret desire to swap the pew for an old sofa, and bed down for the night. The shop felt so much more hers than the cottage.
As she was dragging in the pavement sign, Arturro walked by, took it wordlessly from her, and placed it carefully inside. “Beautiful evening,” he said, his head tucked inside a soft red scarf.
“Gorgeous,” she said. “A Marsala sunset.”
He laughed, and lifted a heavy hand as he made to leave.
It was time to go. Neil was coming home early, especially, he said, to cook her a meal, although she knew it was because of the big match, which began before he normally reached the cottage. But that was okay. She fancied a long bath anyway.
She walked around the shop, straightening things, giving the surfaces a wipe, then placed the cloth in the sink. She checked that the till was turned off and, as she stood at the counter, noticed that the painting was still turned toward the wall. On a whim, she reversed it, so that Athene, revealed, became instantly burnished, incandescent. The evening sun, burning with the urgent intensity that told of its imminent disappearance, reflected off the canvas, gleamed in points off the old gilded frame.
Suzanna stared at her. “Night, Mother,” she said.
Then she glanced around the shop, flicked off the lights, and headed for the door.
10
The underpants were in the middle of the dining-room table. Still wrapped in cellophane, stacked like breakfast pancakes, still advertising their “discreet, comfortable security.” They were as untouched as when Mrs. Abrahams had left them outside Rosemary’s door that morning, their current placement under the Venetian chandelier a mute, furious protest.
Vivi and Rosemary had had some spats over the years, but Vivi could not remember one as bad as that which had resulted from the visit of the Incontinence Lady. She couldn’t remember having been shouted at so long and hard, could not remember seeing that level of puce, stammering fury on Rosemary’s face, the threats, the insults, the slamming of doors.
Vivi removed the underwear from the table, walked along the corridor, and stuffed them under the old pew as she passed it. She reached the end and knocked tentatively. “Rosemary, will you want lunch today?” She stood for some minutes, her ear pressed to the wood. “Rosemary? Would you like some stew?”
There was a momentary pause, then the television volume increased, so that Vivi withdrew, eyeing the door nervously.
It had seemed a sensible idea. She hadn’t felt strong enough to broach it with Rosemary herself, but as the person who did the household laundry she had become aware that her mother-in-law’s control, for want of a better word, was not what it had been. Thanking Mr. Hoover for the automatic washing machine, she had found herself, several times this month, loading Rosemary’s bed linens sporting rubber gloves and a pained expression. And it wasn’t just the bed linens: over a period of months, Vivi had become aware that Rosemary’s undergarments had significantly lessened in number. She had waited until she was out, then searched the annex. Initially, she had discovered the offending items soaking in Rosemary’s bathroom sink. More recently, Rosemary had taken to hiding them. In the past weeks Vivi had discovered them beneath Rosemary’s sofa, in the cupboard under the sink, and even stuffed into an empty chopped-tomatoes can, high on a bathroom shelf.