The Peacock Emporium(81)

“She’s overly familiar with me. And I don’t like the way she cleans.”

Vivi and Douglas exchanged looks. Mrs. Cameron was resolutely deaf to Rosemary’s rudenesses, met her bad-tempered complaints with the same soothing cheerfulness with which she had no doubt treated the old men of the nursing home from where Douglas had tempted her. She had been glad to come, she confided to Vivi. Those geriatric men might have been frail, but they weren’t above giving you the odd goosing when they had the opportunity. And it wasn’t as if you could give them a good whack in return, not with them prone to falling over.

“I’ll have a word with her, then, Mother. Make sure she’s not missing anything out.”

“She should do something with her hair,” Rosemary muttered, making her way slowly back into her annex. “I really find it very vexing that she doesn’t tidy herself up a bit.” She turned and stared suspiciously at her son and daughter-in-law. “Things are going on around here,” she said. “Hair and all sorts. And I don’t like it.”

Rosemary was going to have a field day this morning, Vivi thought, as Mrs. Cameron entered. The muggy heat of previous weeks had broken with a thunderstorm and Mrs. Cameron had been apparently caught without an umbrella, and in the short walk from her car to the door, her hair had sprung up in wild corkscrews around her head. The children used to draw lions with manes like that, Vivi thought, trying not to stare.

“Will you look at it?” Mrs. Cameron said, shaking her headscarf, wiping the rivers from her face with a handkerchief and examining the sleeves of her scarlet cardigan.

“Thank God for it,” said Douglas, as he came up behind them. “Thought we were going to have to start irrigating if we didn’t get some soon.”

“Do you—do you want to borrow a hairdryer?” said Vivi, motioning toward her hair.

“God no. If you think it looks wild now, you should see it after a few volts. No, I’ll let it dry naturally. I’ll just stick my cardie on the stove, though, if it’s okay by you.” Mrs. Cameron walked briskly down to the kitchen, a plump red inverted exclamation mark.

Douglas stood by the window, then turned to his wife. “You remember we’re off to Birmingham today, to look at trailers? Are you sure you’re going to be all right with us taking your car?”

The Range Rover had gone in for its annual service and, rather than Douglas and Ben canceling their plans, she had offered them hers. “I’ll be fine. With the weather like this, I’ll just potter around at home. Besides, if I need anything I can always get Mrs. Cameron to run into Dere for me.”

He had lifted a hand to her cheek, a wordless gesture, but an acknowledgment all the same. He left it there long enough to make Vivi blush. He indicated upstairs to the gallery. “Have you rung Suzanna?” He was smiling at her high color.

“No, not yet.”

“Are you going to get her over here? Today might be a good day, with the rain and all. I don’t suppose she’ll be doing much business.”

“Oh, you never know. Tomorrow, perhaps.” Her eyes had not left her husband’s. “But I think you should call her. It will mean more coming from you.”

He placed his hat on his head, moved in to hold her. She felt his hands enclosing her waist, the comforting security of his chest against hers, and wondered how she could be so embarrassingly happy this late in life.

“You are a remarkable woman, Vivi Fairley-Hulme,” he said into her ear. He had placed his emphasis on the “are,” as if it were only she who had ever held this in doubt.

“Go on,” she said, stepping back and opening the door so that the rain darkened the slate of the hall floor. “Before Ben disappears somewhere and it takes you an hour to find him. He’s been itching to go since before breakfast.”



* * *



—

By lunchtime the rain had worn out its welcome. Even those who had expressed relief at its arrival, exclaiming at the desperate thirst of their gardens, or the heaviness of the recent heat, were finding the relentless force of the downpour oppressive. It was, said the few visitors to the Peacock Emporium that morning.

“I went to Hong Kong in the rainy season once,” said Mrs. Creek, who came in after her lemon sole and boiled potatoes at the Pensioners’ Friday Lunch Club, “and it rained so hard the water was actually flowing over the tops of my feet. Ruined my shoes, it did. I thought it was probably a way of getting us to spend more money.”

“What?” said Suzanna, who had given up trying to do anything and was watching the downpour through the window.

“Well, it’s a good way of forcing you to buy more shoes, isn’t it?”

“What—making it rain?” Suzanna had rolled her eyes at Jessie.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Not providing proper drainage so the water has somewhere to go.”

Suzanna tore herself from the window and tried to take in what Mrs. Creek was saying. A watched pot never boils, that was what her mother had told her. But it didn’t stop her looking out for the lithe, dark figure that had become familiar to her. A figure that, today, had so far resolutely refused to show itself. I mustn’t think like this, she told herself, for possibly the thirtieth time that day.

Suzanna pulled herself back into the snug interior of the shop, only dimly aware of the soft jazz in the background and the muted chatter of the women in the corner, who had been glad to use the rain as an excuse to indulge in a couple of hours’ conversation. Mrs. Creek was poring over a box of antique fabrics, unfolding each piece and muttering under her breath as she examined it closely for loose threads and holes, and a young couple was riffling through a box of Victorian and art-deco beads that Suzanna had not yet got around to pricing individually. It was the kind of rain that usually made the Peacock Emporium feel like an exotic bolthole, had made it glow, snug and bright, against the wet gray cobbles outside, and allowed her to imagine herself somewhere else entirely. Today, however, she felt disquieted, as if the gray clouds, swept in from the North Sea, had brought with them some distant unease and blown it into the shop.