The Peacock Emporium(80)

They were crossing the square when Suzanna noted the three young men leaving the delicatessen, chatting, their bags slung easily over their shoulders. They glanced at Alejandro’s trousers, and said something possibly rude to each other in Italian, then saluted.

Alejandro and Suzanna lifted their hands in return.

“He’s taken them back,” she breathed.

“Who?”

“It would take too long to explain but it’s good news. Jessie will be so pleased.” She found she could not stop smiling, a broad, uninhibited smile. The pleasure of the day had been intensified by the uniquely miserable way in which it had begun.

“I’d better go,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I’m on a late shift.”

“I guess I should head down to the shop,” she said, trying not to look as crestfallen as she felt. “See whether any deliveries have been left outside.” She didn’t want to leave.

She looked down, then back at him. “Thank you,” she said, hoping he would understand all that that meant. “Thanks, Ale.” He stood there for a minute, then smoothed a stray hair from her forehead. He still smelled of grass, his skin drenched in sun.

“You look like your mother,” he said.

She frowned slightly. “I don’t think I know what that means,” she said carefully.

His eyes hadn’t left hers. “I think you do.”



* * *



—

He wasn’t at home when she got there. A message on the answering machine said he wouldn’t be in till much later: playing squash with work buddies, he said, he had told her that morning, but he was pretty sure she hadn’t remembered. He added, jokingly, that she should try not to miss him too much.

She didn’t eat any supper. For some reason she still had no appetite. She tried and failed to find something that would interest her on television, then moved restlessly around the little house, staring out of the window at the fields she had walked earlier that day, until the skies grew dark.

Finally, in her tiny bedroom, Suzanna sat in front of her mirror, which only just fitted under the low part of the sloping roof. She stared at her reflection for some time and then, almost unconsciously, she pulled up her hair, and pinned it at the crown of her head. She outlined her eyes with kohl, painted the lids in the closest approximation she could find to that singular icy blue.

Her skin, pale as her mother’s, was untouched by the sun. Her hair, free of dyes and disguises, a deep, almost unnatural black. She stared into her own eyes, lifted the corners of her mouth in an approximation of that smile.

Then she sat, motionless, as Athene stared back at her. “I’m sorry,” she said to the reflection. “I’m so, so sorry.”





18


Isadora Cameron had the sort of springy red hair you didn’t often see anymore: once common on impossibly teased schoolchildren, a new generation of relaxants and leave-in conditioners had generally obliterated the kind of mad carrotty frizz that framed her face. Not that she seemed to mind it; since the first day she had come to Dere House, she had let it bounce loosely around her, a kind of russet explosion, dwarfing a face that would otherwise have been almost circular. “Woman looks like a rusting Brillo pad,” Rosemary had said with a sniff on the first day that she came. But, then, Rosemary would have been inclined to dislike her whatever the condition of her hair.

To Rosemary, Mrs. Cameron was described as a cleaner, someone to help Vivi now that she was spending more time with Douglas. It was a big house, after all. It was only surprising she’d managed so long without help. To everyone else, Mrs. Cameron was Rosemary’s chauffeur, cleaner, underwear launderer, and general home help. “Someone to take the weight off your shoulders,” Douglas had said, when he announced her employment. Mrs. Cameron didn’t bat an eyelid at unhygienic food cupboards or hazardous refrigerators. She didn’t let moth-eaten cats or dishonest terriers trouble her cheerful demeanor. She considered soiled sheets and undergarments simply part of the job. And for four hours every morning, for the first time since Rosemary had arrived, since the children had grown up, perhaps in her entire married life, Vivi now found herself able for several hours a day, to do anything she wanted.

At first she had found the freedom almost intimidating. She had sorted cupboards, gardened, baked extra cakes for the Women’s Institute. (“But you don’t even like baking,” Ben had said. “I know,” said Vivi. “But I feel it’s a waste of your father’s money otherwise.”) Then, gradually, she had begun to enjoy the empty hours. She had started a patchwork quilt with fabrics she had saved over the years from the children’s favorite clothes. She had driven into town, by herself, to have a cup of tea that she hadn’t made and enjoy the luxury of reading a magazine without interruption. She took her dog for proper walks, rediscovering the estate from ground level, taking pleasure in the land she had never really got to see. And she had spent time alone with Douglas, sharing sandwiches with him in the tractor, blushing pleasurably when she overheard one of the men remark that she and the “old man” were like a pair of honeymooners, these days.

“I don’t like her,” Rosemary would complain, querulously, when Vivi and Douglas returned to the house. “She’s very impertinent.”

“She’s very nice, Mother,” Douglas said. “In fact, I would go so far as to say she is a treasure.”