The Peacock Emporium(73)

Several times now he had arrived when Jessie was out at lunch and Suzanna had found herself almost incapacitated by awkwardness. Occasionally, perhaps when he appeared engrossed in a newspaper or book, she was able to compose herself and then, gradually, they would begin to talk. Sometimes even for the whole hour until Jessie came back.

Once he had told her he wanted to visit the town’s museum, a series of overcrowded rooms dedicated to Dere’s rather grisly medieval history, and she had closed the shop for a whole hour and gone with him. While they dawdled around the dusty exhibits, he had told her about his own history, and that of Buenos Aires. It was probably not the best business practice, but it was good to hear a fresh perspective from someone. To remind yourself that there were other ways of being, other places to be.

And when he smiled, she noted how his whole face changed.

It was good to have a new friend, she rationalized. She just never seemed to mention him to Neil.



* * *



—

Jessie was in the window, pinning Chinese lanterns around a display, occasionally waving at passers-by when she called out: “Your old man’s coming up the road.”

“My dad?”

“No. Your husband. Sorry.” She backed out, grinning, her mouth full of drawing pins. “I forget you’re from the moneyed classes.”

“What does he want?” Suzanna stepped forward to the door, saw Neil wave as he drew closer.

“Canceled meeting. I don’t need to be in the office till lunchtime,” he said, kissing her cheek. He had taken off his suit jacket, slung it over his shoulder. He glanced over at the tables of chatting customers, then at the wall space by the counter. “Shop looks nice. Where’s the portrait gone?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” She herself wasn’t sure what to think. Her mother and father had come in two days previously. The portrait, they had decided, needed attention. “Thirty years” moldering away in the attic, and now all of a sudden it needs “urgent” restoration. They had been odd with her. Her father had kissed her and told her the shop looked grand. Her mother, unusually, had said almost nothing, but stood back, beaming, as if this were something she had somehow engineered. “I don’t understand why it’s taken you so long,” Suzanna had said. They hadn’t mentioned it, but she had had to fight the suspicion that they were using the painting as a way of trying to fob her off about the will.

“So, what are you doing here, anyway?” she asked Neil now.

“Do I need an excuse? Thought I might come and have a coffee with my wife before I head off.”

“How romantic,” said Jessie straightening some ribbon. “It’ll be flowers next.”

“Suzanna doesn’t like flowers,” said Neil, sitting down at the counter. “It means she has to wash up a vase.”

“Whereas jewelry . . .”

“Oh, no. She has to earn jewelry. There’s a whole points system involved.”

“I won’t ask what she had to do for that diamond ring, then.”

“Hah! If that was on a points system, she would be wearing pull tabs.”

“You’re both hilarious,” said Suzanna, filling the coffee machine. “You’d think feminism had never been invented.”

They had met only three times, but Suzanna thought Neil was probably a little in love with Jessie. She didn’t mind: nearly all the men she knew were, in varying degrees. Jessie had that cheerful, uncomplicated thing going on. She was pretty in a girlie way, all peachy skin and sweet smiles. She brought out a testosterone quality in them: her size and fragility made the most unlikely men become all caveman and protective. Most men, anyway. Plus she got Neil’s sense of humor, an attribute he probably thought went sorely unappreciated at home.

“I never thought of you as a bra-burner, Suzanna.”

“I wouldn’t describe my wife as militant . . . not unless you count the time they forgot to open Harvey Nichols at the correct hour.”

“Some of us,” said Suzanna, handing him a coffee, “are working for a living as opposed to sitting around drinking coffee.”

“Working?” Neil raised his eyebrows. “Gossiping in your shop? It’s hardly working down a mine.”

Suzanna’s jaw clenched involuntarily. “Whereas selling financial products requires a stunt double, obviously. I don’t believe there was any gossiping, darling, until you came in.” The “darling” could have cut glass.

“Ooh. Talking of gossip, guess what? Ale isn’t gay. He had a girlfriend in Argentina. Married, apparently.” Jessie had climbed back into the window, and was rearranging it, her legs folded as neatly into themselves as a cat’s.

“What? He was?”

“No, the girlfriend. To some Argentine television star. You’d never guess, would you?”

“Your gaucho?”

“He’s a male midwife who comes in here. From Argentina. I know, fab, isn’t it?”

Neil grimaced. “Bloke sounds like a weirdo. What kind of man is going to want to spend his working day doing that?”

“I thought you were the one who was so interested in childbirth.”

“My own wife in childbirth, yes, but I still think I’d rather be up the head end, if you know what I mean.”