The Peacock Emporium(96)

Vivi glanced at Neil. “Some more tea, Neil?” she said hopefully.

He attempted a smile. “I’m fine, thanks, Vivi.”

Outside, they could hear Rosemary protesting furiously at being wheeled around the courtyard garden, punctuated by Mrs. Cameron’s cheerfully oblivious exclamations.

“I’m sorry,” said Douglas, coming back into the drawing room, wiping his head. “She can be a bit—difficult at the moment. Not been quite the same since her fall.”

“I guess she just tells the truth,” said Neil.

Vivi could have sworn he looked meaningfully at Suzanna, but he turned away so fast she couldn’t be sure. She looked up at Douglas, trying to silently indicate that she was unsure of what to do next. He walked over to the sofa, took her hand in his. “Actually,” he said, clearing his throat, “we called you here for a reason, Suzanna.”

“What?”

“I know it’s been a pretty bad day for you. Your mother and I—we wanted to show you something.”

Vivi felt the swell of something hopeful. She took her daughter’s hand and squeezed it.

Suzanna glanced at Neil, then at her parents. She allowed herself to be led from the sofa, like a sleepwalker. Vivi, conscious that Neil’s part in this was important, placed her arm around her son-in-law’s waist, wishing she occasionally saw Suzanna do the same.

“Upstairs,” said Douglas, gesturing to them.

They walked silently up to the gallery. Through the window, Vivi could just make out Rosemary, shaking her head as Mrs. Cameron bent toward a flower bed.

“We’re thinking of putting some new lights up here, aren’t we, darling?” Douglas’s voice came from ahead of her. “Brighten this floor up a bit. Always been a bit gloomy,” he said to Neil.

They stopped at the top of the stairs, and stood clustered together, Suzanna looking unreceptive, Neil gazing at Vivi’s face for clues.

“What?” said Suzanna, eventually, in a thin voice.

Douglas looked at his daughter and smiled.

“What?” she said again.

He gestured toward the far wall. And it was then that Suzanna saw it.

Vivi’s eyes never left her as she stood motionless and stared at the oil painting of her mother, undamaged by its brush with Rosemary, now overlit by a narrow brass light. Suzanna’s fine profile, so like Athene’s, was as still and white as that of a Grecian statue. Her hair, swept back from her face, made Vivi wince. Even after all these years. She reminded herself of her blessings, especially the most recent ones. This is for Suzanna, she told herself. For Suzanna’s happiness.

She felt Douglas beside her, his arm sliding around her shoulders, and reached her fingers up to his, gleaning comfort from the gesture. It was the right thing. Regardless of what Rosemary said, it was the right thing.

But when Suzanna turned to them, her color was high, her eyes furious. “And this—this is meant to make it all okay?”

Vivi took in the granite set of Suzanna’s mouth, an echo of the worst, most damaged part of Athene. And realized, too late, that the hurt went way deeper than could be addressed by the hanging of a portrait.

“We just thought . . . ,” Douglas began, his habitual confidence deserting him. “We thought it might make you feel better.”

Neil’s eyes were flicking between the three of them, his earlier expression replaced by something less certain.

“Feel better?” Suzanna asked.

“To see it here, I mean,” Douglas continued.

Vivi reached out a hand to her. “We thought it would be a good reminder—”

Suzanna’s voice pierced through the silent gallery. “Of another person whose death I inadvertently caused?”

Douglas flinched, and Vivi tightened her hold on him. “You didn’t—”

“Or how about, I got over what happened to her so I’ll get over what happened to Jess too? Is that it?”

Vivi’s hand was pressed to her mouth. “No, no, darling.”

Douglas had stepped forward. “Suzanna, you’ve—”

“I can’t stay here,” Suzanna said, and, her eyes bright with tears, pushed past them toward the stairs. After a split second’s hesitation, Neil went after her.

“Get off me!” she shouted, as he caught her up halfway down the stairs. “Just get off me!” The ferocity in her words made him recoil.

It was not often that Vivi felt truly sympathetic toward her mother-in-law but, conscious of the bewildered hurt on Douglas’s face as he stood beside her, listening now to the muffled sound of her daughter and son-in-law screaming at each other out on the drive, staring at the far wall at that smirking mouth, those ice-blue eyes, Vivi thought she might finally have understood how Rosemary felt.



* * *



—

Suzanna walked the entire perimeter of the forty-acre field. She walked through the forest, along the bridleway known as Short Wash, up the hill that backed on to the beet field and knelt at its crest where she had sat with Alejandro less than two weeks earlier.

The evening had brought cool, soft breezes from the coast, easing the high temperatures of the day. The land was settling slowly for the evening, bees bumbling lazily across meadows, seeds blown up from meadow grass floating slowly to earth.