The Peacock Emporium(42)

“Jason thinks I lie even when I don’t,” said Jessie cheerily. “We had a massive fight once because I didn’t vacuum when I was ill. He likes to see those little lines in the carpet, you see, just to prove I’ve done it. But I had this food poisoning, chicken I think it was, so I just lay in bed.

“When he got home I was feeling a bit better and he accused me of sitting around on my arse all day, even though I’d managed to make his tea. And I was so cross I just hit him with the pan. You don’t know how much I’d wanted to puke just peeling his spuds.” She laughed guiltily.

“That’s men, dear,” said Mrs. Creek, vaguely, as if they were some kind of affliction.

“What did he do?” said Suzanna, struck by this casual depiction of violence, and unsure whether to take what Jessie had just said at face value.

“He hit me back. So I hit him with the pan again, and knocked out half his tooth.” She gestured toward the back of her mouth, showing where the damage had been done.

Mrs. Creek had stared across the road, as if she hadn’t heard. After a moment’s stillness, Suzanna had smiled vaguely, as if she had forgotten to pick something up, then turned and walked back into the shop.

“Are you scared of him?” she asked, sometime later, when Mrs. Creek had gone. She had been trying to imagine Neil filled with enough violence to hit her.

“Who?”

“Your . . . Jason.”

“Frightened of him? Nah.” Jessie had shaken her head, her expression one of fond indulgence. She glanced at Suzanna and evidently decided the concern in her expression made some sort of explanation necessary. “Look, his problem is I’m better with words than he is. So I know how to really wind him up. And if he starts getting at me I just twist his words back, tie him in knots, which makes him feel stupid. I know I shouldn’t, but . . . you know how they get on your nerves sometimes?”

Suzanna nodded.

“And sometimes I just get a bit carried away. And I don’t leave him”—her smile faded—“I guess I don’t really leave him anywhere to go.”

There was a brief silence.

Outside, two schoolboys were kicking someone’s bookbag back and forth across the road.

“I love this shop,” said Jessie. “I don’t know what it is about it, because it wasn’t like this when it was the Red Horse, but it’s like it’s got a really good vibe to it. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes. I thought when I came in first that it was just the smell of the coffee and stuff. Or perhaps all the pretty things. It’s a bit of an Aladdin’s cave, isn’t it? But I think there’s something about the shop itself. It always makes me”—she paused—“feel better.”

The two boys had stopped, were examining something that one had pulled from his pocket, muttering in low voices.

The women watched them from the window.

“It’s not what you’re thinking,” said Jessie, eventually.

“No,” said Suzanna, who felt suddenly middle class and na?ve. “Of course not.”



* * *



—

Jessie had left at a quarter past two to pick up her daughter from school early and, with the head teacher’s permission, take her for a birthday treat. If Emma fancied it, she said, they might buy ice-cream bars, and sit at the table outside the shop to eat them. “They go on a school trip to France next year,” she said as she left. “I told her that was how the French eat and now all she wants to do is drag our chairs outside.”

Suzanna was halfway down the cellar steps when she heard the door open. She shouted that she would be there in a second. She tripped up the last step, and swore softly as she nearly dropped her armful of suede-bound notebooks. Things invariably seemed easier when Jessie was there.

Her father stood in the middle of the shop, his arms crossed awkwardly as if he was unwilling to be seen standing too close to anything. He was staring down behind the counter. When Suzanna came in, he jumped.

“Dad,” she said, blushing.

“Suzanna.” He nodded.

There was a silence. She wondered, fantastically, whether he was going to apologize for his previous comments to her. But she was old enough to understand that his arrival in her shop was as conciliatory a gesture as he was likely to make. “You nearly missed me,” she babbled, raising a smile. “I was out till about half an hour ago. You would have got Jessie . . . my assistant.”

He had removed his hat and held it in his hands, a curiously courteous gesture. “I was just passing. Had to come in to meet my accountant, so I thought I’d . . . take a look at your shop.”

Suzanna stood, clutching her notebooks. “Well, here it is.”

“Indeed.”

She made as if to peer behind him. “No Mum?”

“She’s at home.”

She put the notebooks on a table, and glanced at the objects around them, trying to see them through her father’s eyes. “Fripperies and nonsense,” she could imagine him saying. Who was going to want to spend good money on a mosaic candleholder, or a pile of secondhand embroidered napkins?

“Did Neil tell you? We’re doing really well.” It felt easier to pretend that this was Neil’s venture too. She knew her father thought him a more sensible fellow.