The Peacock Emporium(41)

Neil ruined it, of course, by bringing up the subject of their apparently imminent children. “I’ve been finding out about childcare,” he said. “There’s a nursery attached to the hospital that doesn’t just take staff children. If we put our name on the list now, we might have a good chance of getting a place. Then you can keep working, like you wanted.”

“I’m not even pregnant.”

“It doesn’t hurt to plan ahead, Suze. I was thinking, I could even take the baby there on my way to work in the morning so you wouldn’t have to cut into your day too much. It makes sense, now that your shop’s doing okay.”

He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. She knew that now he overlooked lots of things about her that had previously irritated him—her preoccupation with the shop, her persistent lack of courtesy toward Vivi, the fact that her exhaustion made her bad-tempered and killed her libido—all because of the greater favor she was about to pay him when the year was up.

Despite her promise, Suzanna did not feel the same sense of excitement, despite Jessie’s breathless reassurances that it was the best thing that had ever happened to her, that having children made you laugh, feel, and love more than you ever dreamed possible. It wasn’t just the sex thing that bothered her—in order to get pregnant they were going to have to embark on a fairly regular bout of sexual activity—it was the feeling that her promise had hemmed her in, that she was now bound by obligation to produce this thing, to harbor it in a body that had always been, quite comfortably, entirely hers. She tried not to think too hard about her mother. Which made her feel something else.

In one of his more irritating moments, Neil had put his arms around her and said she could always get some ”counseling,” and she had had to restrain herself physically from hitting him. “It would be perfectly understandable. I mean, it’s no wonder you have reservations,” he went on.

She had wriggled free of his grasp. “The only reservations I have, Neil, are because you keep harping on about it all the time.”

“I don’t mind paying for you to see someone. We’re doing okay at the moment.”

“Oh, just drop it, will you?”

His expression was sympathetic, and it somehow made her even more irritated. “You know,” he said, “you’re more like your dad than you think. You both just sit on your feelings the whole time.”

“No, Neil. I just want to get on with my life and not obsess about some nonexistent baby.”

“Baby Peacock,” he mused. “Neil Peacock Junior.”

“Don’t even think about it,” said Suzanna.



* * *



—

All of the schools in Dere Hampton broke for lunch between twelve thirty and one forty-five, and this stretch of the day was marked, outside the windows of the Peacock Emporium, by passing bunches of leggy schoolgirls in inappropriately customized uniforms, exasperated mothers dragging their younger charges away from the sweet shop, and the arrival of unhappily self-employed regulars, looking for what might just be coffee but was more usually a bit of human contact to break up their day. In honor of this being the first really hot day of the year, the door of the shop had been propped open and a solitary table and chairs left outside on the pavement.

It felt, Suzanna told herself, almost continental. She had not yet tired of staring out, through her meticulous arrangements, of the prismed-lit window, and still enjoyed standing behind her register, her clean white apron starched to old-fashioned stiffness. Sometimes she wondered if she hated Dere Hampton less than she had previously thought. Having created her own space, and imprinted her own character on it, she had felt, at times, almost proprietorial—and not just about the shop.

Jessie had soon learned to play to their respective strengths and today, dressed in a flower-printed dress and heavy boots, she was serving at the counter, often nipping out to make conversation with the cement-booted builders and the old ladies, while Suzanna walked around the shop with her jotter, totting up the remaining stock, noting with a vague disappointment how little she had sold in the past few weeks. It was not what you would call a roaring success but, as she frequently reassured herself, at least the shop was on its way to paying for itself. If it would only pick up a bit, Neil said, they could start repaying some of the capital outlay. Neil liked saying such phrases. She thought finance was one of the few areas left in which he had unchallengeable authority in their relationship.

Arturro had come in, drunk two espressos in quick succession, then left. Father Lenny had poked his head around the door, supposedly to ask Jessie if Emma was coming back to Sunday school, but also to introduce himself to Suzanna and remark that if she wanted any more fairy-lights he knew someone near Bury St. Edmunds who did them wholesale.

Mrs. Creek had come in, ordered a milky coffee, and sat outside for half an hour, removing her hat so that her wispy hair was exposed to the sun, looking as fragile as frostbitten grass. She told Jessie that this weather reminded her of the first time she had gone abroad, to Geneva, where her husband had been in the hospital. The airplane had been a terrific adventure and her arrival in a foreign country so exciting that she had almost forgotten the reason she was there, and managed to miss visiting time on the first day. Suzanna, occasionally venturing outside to pick up coffee cups, or just to feel the first rays of sun on her face, had heard her reminiscing with Jessie, who, chin in hand, was soaking up every last detail along with the sun. Her husband had been ever so cross, and refused to talk to her for two days. Afterward it had occurred to her that she could have fibbed, could have told him her airplane had been delayed. But she was never one to lie. You always ended up in a muddle trying to remember what you’d said to whom.