Peacock Emporium (27 page)

‘The answer to what?’ Vivi moved closer to her husband.

‘I refuse even to discuss this further, Douglas. You know very well your father had firm views on these things.’

‘And I’m sure Father would not have wanted to see anyone in this family made unhappy by—’

‘No. No, I will not have it.’ Rosemary placed her hands on her knees. ‘Now, Vivi, when is supper? I thought we were eating at seven thirty, and I’m sure it’s past that already.’

‘Will one of you please tell me what you are discussing?’

Douglas placed his glass on the top of the piano. ‘I had some thoughts. About changing my will. About perhaps setting up some sort of trust that gives the children equal say in the running of the estate. Perhaps even before my death. But . . .’ his voice lowered ‘. . . Mother is unhappy about the idea of it.’

‘Equal say? For all three?’ Vivi stared at her husband.

‘Will someone help me up? I can never get out of this ridiculous chair.’

Douglas shrugged, his weathered face offering Vivi a complicit exasperation. ‘I tried. I can’t say I’ve felt entirely happy about how things are.’

‘You tried?’

Rosemary struggled to lift herself from the chair, her weight resting on bony arms. Then she fell back and let out a grunt of irritation. ‘Do you have to ignore me? Douglas? I need your arm. Your
arm.’

‘Does that mean you’re just going to give in?’

‘It’s not giving in, old thing. I just don’t want to make things worse than they already are.’ Douglas moved towards his mother and placed his arm under hers to elevate her.

‘How can they be worse than they already are?’

‘It’s Mother’s decision too, Vee. We all live here.’

Rosemary, on her feet, tried, with some effort, to straighten herself. ‘Your dog,’ she announced, looking directly at Vivi, ‘has been on my bed. I’ve found hairs.’

‘You have to remember to keep your door shut, Rosemary,’ she said quietly, still staring at Douglas. ‘But that would solve everything, darling. Suzanna would be so much happier. All she needs is to feel equal. She doesn’t actually want to run the thing. And the others wouldn’t mind – I don’t think they’ve ever been comfortable with the plans.’

‘I know, but—’

‘Enough,’ said Rosemary, making her way towards the door. ‘Enough. I would like my supper now. I do not want to discuss this matter any further.’

Douglas reached out a hand to Vivi’s arm. His touch felt light, insubstantial. ‘Sorry, old thing. I tried.’

As Rosemary passed her, Vivi found her breath had become tight in her chest. She watched Douglas turn to open the door for his mother and recognised that, as far as they were both concerned, the conversation was already over, the issue closed. Suddenly she heard her voice, loud enough to make Rosemary turn in her tracks, and uncharacteristically angry. ‘Well, I hope you’ll both be terribly pleased with yourselves,’ she said, ‘when you’ve alienated the poor girl completely.’

It was several seconds before her words registered with them.

‘What?’ said Rosemary, who was clutching Douglas’s arm.

‘Well, we’ve never told her the truth, have we? Don’t look at me like that. No one’s told her the truth about her mother. And then we wonder why she’s grown up confused and resentful.’ Finally she had their full attention. ‘I’ve had just about enough – of all of it. Douglas, either you make her your heir or introduce some kind of equal trust, or you tell her the truth about her mother, including what we don’t know.’ She was breathing hard, then muttered almost to herself, ‘There. I’ve said it.’

A brief silence followed. Then Rosemary lifted her head and began to speak, as if to someone mentally impaired: ‘Vivi,’ she said, deliberately, ‘this is not what this family does—’

‘Rosemary,’ Vivi interrupted, ‘in case it has escaped your notice, I
am
this family. I am the person who makes the meals, who irons the clothes, who keeps the house clean, and who has done for the last thirty or so years. I am the bloody family.’

Douglas’s mouth had opened fractionally. But she didn’t care. It was as if a kind of madness had infected her. ‘That’s right. I am the person who washes your dirty smalls, who is the butt of everyone else’s bad moods, who cleans up after everyone else’s pets, the person who does their best to try to hold the whole bloody thing together. I am this family. I may have been Douglas’s second choice, but that doesn’t mean I’m second best—’

‘No one ever said you—’

‘And I deserve an opinion.
I – too – deserve – an – opinion.
’ Her breath came in gasps, tears pricking her eyes. ‘Now, Suzanna is my daughter, as much as she is anybody’s, and I am sick,
sick
, I tell you, of having this family,
my
family, divided over something as trivial as a house and a few acres of bloody land. It’s unimportant. Yes, Rosemary, compared to my children’s happiness, to my happiness, it really is unimportant. So there, Douglas, I’ve said it. You make Suzanna an equal heir, or you tell her the bloody truth.’ She reached behind her to untie her apron strings, wrenched it over her head and tossed it on to the arm of the sofa.

‘And don’t call me “old thing”,’ she said, to her husband. ‘I really, really don’t like it.’ Then, under the stunned gaze of her husband and mother-in-law, Vivi Fairley-Hulme walked past the kitchen, where Rosemary’s elderly cat was making a youthful stab at the lamb chops, and out into the evening sun.

Fourteen

The Day My Mum Got Angel’s Nails

My mum’s nails were really short. She never bit them – she said that when she used to do cleaning she dipped her hands in bleach too many times and they never grew strong after that. Even though she’d rub cream into them every night, the white bits never really got past the end of her finger. They used to break all the time, and when they did she’d swear and then say, ‘Oops! Don’t tell your dad I said that.’ And I never did.

Sometimes, if I had been good, she would sit down with me and take my hand like they do in the shop and smooth cream into it, then rub a file on my nails. It made me giggle because it was all tickly. Then she would let me choose one of her bottles of polish and she would paint it on really carefully so that there were no smudges. When you do that, you mustn’t pick anything up for ages because if you do you get digs in the colour, and she used to make me a drink and put a straw in it so that I could flap my hands around to dry them.

We always had to take it off again before school, but she used to let me keep it on overnight, or sometimes on a weekend. When I was in bed I used to hold my hands up and wave my fingers about because they looked so pretty, even in the dark.

The day before my mum died she booked an appointment to have some nails stuck on her fingers. She showed me them in a magazine – they were really long, and they had white tips that didn’t show the dirt, because your real nails stay underneath. She said she’d always fancied having long nails, and now she was earning a bit of money she was going to treat herself. She wasn’t bothered about clothes, she said, or shoes, or fancy haircuts. But beautiful nails was the one thing she really, really wanted. She was going to let me come with her after school. I’m quite good, you see. I can sit and read and be quiet, and I promised I wouldn’t make a noise in the salon, and she said she knew, because I was her petal.

When my grandma got me from school and told me my mum had died I didn’t cry because I didn’t believe it. I thought they had got it wrong, because my mum had dropped me at drama club and she said after she picked me up she was going to get chips and we were going to have a late tea together. Then when the teacher got upset and cried I knew it wasn’t a joke. Later on, when my grandma was holding me, I asked her what we were going to do about Mum’s appointment. It might sound funny, but I felt worried that she was never going to go, and I knew it was something she really wanted.

Grandma looked at me for a long time, and I thought she was going to cry because her eyes went all watery. Then she held both my hands and said, ‘Do you know what? We’re going to make sure your mum gets her nails because, that way, she’ll look just fine when she gets to heaven.’

I didn’t look at my mum in her coffin on the day of the funeral even though Grandma said she looked lovely, just like she was sleeping. I asked her if someone had given her long nails, and she said that a nice lady from the salon had and that they were very beautiful, and that afterwards, if I looked up in the sky at night, I’d probably see them twinkling. I didn’t say anything, but I thought that at least if Mum didn’t know anyone she could wave her hand, like I used to in bed, and people wouldn’t have to know she used to be a cleaner.

My dad can’t do nail varnish. I was going to ask him, but I’ve been staying with my grandma and she says she’ll do it for me, when things calm down a bit. She cries a lot. I’ve heard her when she thinks I’m in bed, although she always puts on her happy voice when she thinks I’m listening.

Sometimes I cry too. I really miss my mum.

Steven Arnold says my mum’s nails won’t be shiny by now. He says they’ll be black.

Actually, I don’t want to do this any more.

Fifteen

In Suzanna’s teenage years, on days like these, Vivi would have described her as having woken up feeling ‘a bit complicated’. It was nothing one could put one’s finger on, the result of no tangible misfortune, but she had started her day overhung by an invisible cloud, with a sense that her universe was skewed in some way and that she was only a hair’s breadth from bursting into tears. On such days one could usually guarantee that inanimate objects would rise (or lower themselves?) to the occasion: a piece of bread had got wedged in the toaster, and she had shocked herself trying to get it out with a fork; she had discovered a slow leak under a pipe in the bathroom, and bumped her head on the low doorway as she came out; Neil had failed to put the rubbish out, as he’d promised. She had bumped into Liliane in the delicatessen when she’d nipped in to buy a box of sugared almonds, as suggested by Jessie for the next ‘love token’, and been forced to whip them into her bag like a shop-lifter, which she had theoretically become when she left the shop having forgotten to pay for them. And when she finally arrived at the Emporium she had been ambushed by Mrs Creek, who told her with perverse relish that she had been waiting outside for almost twenty minutes, and asked if Suzanna could donate some of her ‘bric-a-brac’ for one of the pensioners’ jumble sales.

‘I don’t have any bric-a-brac,’ she had said pointedly.

‘You can’t tell me all of this stuff is for sale,’ said Mrs Creek, staring at the display on the back wall.

Mrs Creek had then segued effortlessly into a story about dinner-dances in Ipswich and how, as a teenage girl, she had supplemented her parents’ income by sewing dresses for her friends. ‘When I started making my own clothes, it was all the New Look,’ she said. ‘Great swirling skirts and three-quarter sleeves. You used to use ever such a lot of fabric on those skirts. You know, when the fashion first came out, people here were scandalised. We’d spent years scrimping on fabric during the war, you see. There was nothing. Not even for coupons. Lots of us went out dancing in dresses we’d made from our own curtains.’

‘Really,’ said Suzanna, flicking on switches and wondering why Jessie was late.

‘The first one I ever made was in emerald silk. Gorgeous colour it was, ever so rich. It looked like one of Yul Brynner’s outfits in
The King and I
– you know the one I’m talking about?’

‘Not really,’ said Suzanna. ‘Are you having coffee?’

‘That’s very kind of you, dear. I don’t mind keeping you company.’ She sat on the seat near the magazines and began pulling bits of paper from her bag. ‘I’ve got photographs somewhere, of how we used to look. Me and my sister. We used to share dresses then. Waists that you could stick your hands round.’ She breathed out. ‘Men’s hands, that is. Mine have always been on the small side. Of course, you had to nearly suffocate yourself with corsetry to get the look, but girls will always suffer to be beautiful, won’t they?’

‘Mm,’ said Suzanna, remembering to take the sugared almonds from her bag, and place them under the counter. Jessie could take them over later. If she ever decided to turn up.

‘She’s got a colostomy now, poor thing.’

‘What?’

‘My sister. Crohn’s disease. Causes her terrible trouble, it does. You can wear all the baggy clothing you like but you do have to make sure you don’t bump into anyone, you know what I’m saying?’

‘I think so,’ said Suzanna, trying to concentrate on measuring coffee.

‘And she lives in Southall. So there you go . . . It’s a recipe for disaster. Still, it could be worse,’ she said. ‘She used to work on the buses.’

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Jessie. She was dressed in cut-off jeans, with lavender-coloured sunglasses on her head, looking summery and almost unbearably pretty. She was followed closely behind by Alejandro, who stooped as he entered. ‘His fault,’ she explained cheerfully. ‘He needed directing to the good butcher’s. He’s been a bit shocked by the state of the supermarket meat.’

‘It is shocking, that supermarket,’ said Mrs Creek. ‘Do you know how much I paid the other day for a bit of pork belly?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Alejandro, who had registered Suzanna’s set mouth. ‘It’s hard for me to discover these things when I’m off my shift. The hours never match anyone else’s.’ His eyes held a mute appeal that made Suzanna feel both appeased and irritated.

‘I’ll make up the extra minutes,’ said Jessie, shedding her bag under the counter. ‘I’ve been hearing all about Argentinian steak. Tougher, apparently, but tastier.’

‘It’s fine,’ Suzanna said. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ She wished she hadn’t seen the look that had passed between them.

‘Double espresso?’ said Jessie, moving behind the coffee machine. Alejandro nodded, seating himself at the small table beside the counter. ‘Can I get you one?’ she asked Suzanna.

‘No,’ said Suzanna. ‘I’m fine.’ She wished she hadn’t worn these trousers. They picked up lint and fluff, and the cut, she saw, made them look cheap. Then again, what did she expect? They were cheap. She had bought no quality clothes since they left London.