The Peacock Emporium(70)

He stroked his chin.

“You look like you need one.”

“No. No, really. I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t know why I bought them.”

“You okay?” she said, pushing the glass toward him.

He breathed out, a deep sigh.

“Bad shift?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ll be outside,” she said and, unsure why she needed to leave him there, walked slowly back into the sun.

To a passer-by, had there been any, Suzanna would have looked relaxed, leaning on her table, sipping a glass of iced water, watching the town’s inhabitants meander slowly back and forth on their way to the market square. But she was painfully aware of every minute, felt, or imagined she felt, every glance on her warm back from the shadowy figure inside the shop. So that when he finally came outside and sat beside her, she had to fight the urge to exhale, as if she had been through some demanding test.

“Who is she?”

He looked more at ease, she noted. The almost manic glint in his eyes had dissipated.

“The girl in the painting? It’s not you. Your sister?”

Suzanna shook her head. “No, she’s my mother. My real mother.” The words, for once, came easily.

“You don’t keep the picture at your home?”

“It’s complicated.” He was looking at her. “She was at my family home. My father’s home. He’s remarried. But when I moved here they gave her to me.”

“They didn’t want her in their home?”

“I’m not sure it’s that, exactly . . .”

“You don’t want her in your home.”

“It’s not that either . . . It’s just that she doesn’t really belong anywhere anymore.”

The conversation already felt less agreeable. She wished she had left the painting facing the wall. She shifted in her seat, reached for the broad-brimmed hat, and put it on so that her face was in shadow.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend—”

“Oh, it’s okay. Jessie’s probably told you. I know Jessie tells everyone everything. But it’s just that me and my dad have this tricky relationship. And things are a bit difficult with us at the moment.”

He had moved his chair to face her. She struggled with the conflicting sensations of wanting to leave him, and a simultaneous, almost fundamental need to explain herself.

“It’s to do with inheritance,” she said eventually. “Who gets what.”

He looked at her steadily.

“My family owns a big estate here. My dad doesn’t want me to inherit it. It’s going to my younger brother. Perhaps you have the same thing in Argentina?”

“In Argentina it’s not an issue.” He smiled wryly. “The sons get everything.”

“I was obviously born in the wrong country. Or my dad was.”

“It bothers you?”

She was a little embarrassed. “You think it’s greedy, right? To be so upset about something you didn’t earn?”

“No . . .”

“I’m not a greedy person.”

He waited.

“I mean, I like nice things, sure, but it’s not about the money. It—it’s about how he sees me.”

She found the intensity of his attention almost too much. She looked down and realized she had finished her water. “Sometimes I think it’s because I look like her. I’ve seen other pictures, you know, photographs, and I’m exactly like her.” She stared at her white limbs, which never tanned, the ends of her straight dark hair, just visible, lying sleekly against her shoulders.

“So?”

“I feel like he’s making me pay.”

He touched her hand, so lightly that afterward she found herself staring at the spot where their skin had met, as if unsure whether it had happened. “For not being your mother?”

Suzanna’s eyes had filled inexplicably with tears. She chewed at her lip, trying to hold the tears back. “You wouldn’t understand.” She half laughed, made awkward by this show of emotion.

“Suzanna.”

“For . . . for being responsible. For her death. I was the reason she died, after all.” Her voice had become hard, brittle, her face strained under the smile. “She died in childbirth, you see. No one talks about it, but there it is. She’d still be here if it wasn’t for me.” She rubbed dismissively at her nose.

“I’m sorry,” she said briskly. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Because you’re a midwife, I suppose. You’ll have seen it happen . . . Anyway. It doesn’t usually get to me like this.”

The lane was empty, the sun bouncing off the cobbles. She turned back to him, her smile brave and bright. “Some inheritance, huh?”

For reasons she didn’t understand, he took her hand gently between his, bent his head low on their clasped fingers, and rested it there, as if in supplication. She felt the skin of his forehead, the hardness of the bone beneath, and her tears evaporated at the strangeness of what he was doing.

When he eventually looked up, she thought he might apologize. But instead he nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if this had been something he had already known, had been waiting all this time for her to say it.