The Peacock Emporium(62)
“Equal say? For all three?” Vivi stared at her husband.
Douglas shrugged, his weathered face offering Vivi a complicit exasperation. “I tried. I can’t say I’ve felt entirely happy about how things are.”
“You tried?”
Rosemary struggled to lift herself from the chair, her weight resting on bony arms. Then she fell back and let out a grunt of irritation. “Do you have to ignore me? Douglas? I need your arm. Your arm.”
“Does that mean you’re just going to give in?”
“It’s not giving in, old thing. I just don’t want to make things worse than they already are.” Douglas moved toward his mother and placed his arm under hers to elevate her.
“How can they be worse than they already are?”
“It’s Mother’s decision too, Vee. We all live here.”
Rosemary, on her feet, tried, with some effort, to straighten herself. “Your dog,” she announced, looking directly at Vivi, “has been on my bed. I’ve found hairs.”
“You have to remember to keep your door shut, Rosemary,” she said quietly, still staring at Douglas. “But that would solve everything, darling. Suzanna would be so much happier. All she needs is to feel equal. She doesn’t actually want to run the thing. And the others wouldn’t mind—I don’t think they’ve ever been comfortable with the plans.”
“I know, but—”
“Enough,” said Rosemary, making her way toward the door. “Enough. I would like my supper now. I do not want to discuss this matter any further.”
Douglas reached out a hand to Vivi’s arm. His touch felt light, insubstantial. “Sorry, old thing. I tried.”
As Rosemary passed her, Vivi found her breath had become tight in her chest. She watched Douglas turn to open the door for his mother and recognized that, as far as they were both concerned, the conversation was already over, the issue closed. Suddenly she heard her voice, loud enough to make Rosemary turn in her tracks, and uncharacteristically angry. “Well, I hope you’ll both be terribly pleased with yourselves,” she said, “when you’ve alienated the poor girl completely.”
It was several seconds before her words registered with them.
“What?” said Rosemary, who was clutching Douglas’s arm.
“Well, we’ve never told her the truth, have we? Don’t look at me like that. No one’s told her the truth about her mother. And then we wonder why she’s grown up confused and resentful.” Finally she had their full attention. “I’ve had just about enough—of all of it. Douglas, either you make her your heir or introduce some kind of equal trust, or you tell her the truth about her mother.” She was breathing hard.
A brief silence followed. Then Rosemary lifted her head and began to speak, as if to someone mentally impaired: “Vivi,” she said, deliberately, “this is not what this family does—”
“Rosemary,” Vivi interrupted, “in case it has escaped your notice, I am this family. I am the person who makes the meals, who irons the clothes, who keeps the house clean, and who has done so for the last thirty years. I am the bloody family.”
Douglas’s mouth had opened fractionally. But she didn’t care. It was as if a kind of madness had infected her. “That’s right. I am the person who washes your dirty smalls, who is the butt of everyone else’s bad moods, who cleans up after everyone else’s pets, the person who does their best to try to hold the whole bloody thing together. I am this family. I may have been Douglas’s second choice, but that doesn’t mean I’m second best—”
“No one ever said you—”
“And I deserve an opinion. I—too—deserve—an—opinion.” Her breath came in gasps, tears pricking her eyes. “Now, Suzanna is my daughter, as much as she is anybody’s, and I am sick, sick, I tell you, of having my family divided over something as trivial as a house and a few acres of bloody land. It’s unimportant. Yes, Rosemary, compared to my children’s happiness, to my happiness, it really is unimportant. So there, Douglas, I’ve said it. You make Suzanna an equal heir, or you tell her the bloody truth.” She reached behind her to untie her apron strings, wrenched it over her head, and tossed it onto the arm of the sofa.
“And don’t call me ‘old thing,’” she said, to her husband. “I really, really don’t like it.” Then, under the stunned gaze of her husband and mother-in-law, Vivi Fairley-Hulme walked past the kitchen, where Rosemary’s elderly cat was making a youthful stab at the lamb chops, and out into the evening sun.
15
In Suzanna’s teenage years, on days like these, Vivi would have described her as having woken up feeling “a bit complicated.” It was nothing one could put one’s finger on, the result of no tangible misfortune, but she had started her day with an invisible cloud hanging over her, a sense that her universe was askew and that she was only a hair’s breadth from bursting into tears. On such days one could usually guarantee that inanimate objects would rise to the occasion: a piece of bread had got wedged in the toaster, and she had shocked herself trying to get it out with a fork; Neil had failed to put the rubbish out, as he’d promised. Today she had bumped into Liliane in the delicatessen when she’d nipped in to buy a box of sugared almonds, as suggested by Jessie for the next “love token,” and been forced to whip them into her bag like a shoplifter. She, theoretically, became one when she left the shop having forgotten to pay for them. And when she finally arrived at the Emporium she had been ambushed by Mrs. Creek, who asked if Suzanna could donate some of her “bric-a-brac” for one of the pensioners’ jumble sales.