Peacock Emporium (28 page)

‘We don’t really eat meat,’ Jessie was saying. ‘Not in the week, anyway. Apart from chicken it’s too expensive – and I don’t like thinking of them in all those battery cages. Plus Emma’s not that bothered. But I do love roast beef. For Sunday lunch.’

‘One day I will find you some good Argentinian beef,’ Alejandro said. ‘We let our animals get older. You will know the difference.’

‘I thought old steers were meant to get stringy,’ said Suzanna, and immediately regretted it.

‘But you tenderise your meat, dear,’ said Mrs Creek. ‘You beat it with a wooden thing.’

‘If the meat is good,’ said Alejandro, ‘it should not need beating.’

‘You’d think the cow had been through enough.’

‘Beef dripping,’ said Mrs Creek. ‘Now there’s something you never see in the shops any more.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing as lard?’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ Suzanna was starting to feel queasy. ‘Jessie, have you finished that coffee?’

‘You never told us,’ Jessie turned to Alejandro, leaning over the counter, ‘about your life before you came here.’

‘Not much to tell,’ said Alejandro.

‘Like why you wanted to be a midwife. I mean, no offence, but it’s not a normal profession for a bloke, is it?’

‘What is normal?’

‘But you’d have to be pretty comfortable with your feminine side in a macho country like Argentina to do what you do. So why do you do it?’

Alejandro took his cup of coffee, and dropped two sugar cubes into the thick black liquid. ‘You are wasted in a shop, Jessie. You should be a psychotherapist. In my home it’s the most prestigious job you can have. Next to a plastic surgeon, of course . . . Or perhaps a butcher.’

Which was, Suzanna thought, as she began to unpack a new box of bags, a pretty neat way of not answering the question.

‘I was just telling Suzanna I used to make dresses.’

‘I know,’ said Jessie. ‘You showed me the pictures. Lovely, they were.’

‘Have I shown you these ones?’ Mrs Creek held out a fan of battered photographs.

‘They’re beautiful,’ said Jessie, obligingly. ‘Aren’t you clever?’

‘I think we were better with our hands then. Girls today seem to be . . . less resourceful. But then we had to be, with the war and all.’

‘And what did you do, Suzanna, before you opened this shop?’ His voice, with its strong accent, was low, comforting. She could imagine it, consoling, in childbirth. ‘Who were you in your past life?’

‘The same person I am now,’ she said, aware as she spoke that she didn’t believe what she was saying. ‘I’ve got to nip out and pick up some more milk.’

‘No one is the same person for ever,’ insisted Jessie.

‘I was the same person . . . but with less strong views on people minding their own business,’ she said sharply, and slammed the till drawer.

‘I come here for the atmosphere, you know,’ Mrs Creek confided to Alejandro.

‘Are you all right, Suzanna?’ Jessie leant over to get a better view of her expression.

‘Fine. Just busy, okay? There’s a lot to do today.’

Jessie caught the implicit criticism and winced. ‘That fish,’ she said, to Alejandro, as Suzanna shoved mugs unnecessarily around the shelf above the till, ‘the one you used to catch with your dad, the peacock something.’

‘Peacock bass?’

‘It’s known for being really grumpy, right?’

Mrs Creek coughed quietly into her coffee.

There was a short pause.

‘I think maybe it has to be grumpy, as you call it, to survive in its environment,’ said Alejandro, innocently.

They waited until Suzanna, with a flashing glance their way, closed the shop door hard behind her. They watched her striding up the lane, head down, as if walking into a fierce wind.

Jessie breathed out, shook her head admiringly at the man opposite. ‘Blimey, Ale, I’m not the only one who’s wasted in my job.’

Father Lenny walked down Water Lane, turned left and nodded through the window at the occupants of the Peacock Emporium and, on seeing the cheerful face surrounded by blonde plaits, waved vigorously. He thought back to the conversation he had had earlier that morning.

The boy – for he was still a boy, no matter what maturity he thought paternity had conferred – had come to deliver a storage heater to the presbytery. The central heating was next to useless, these days, and the diocese funds wouldn’t run to a new system. Not with the church roof needing doing. They knew of Lenny’s reputation, knew he could always be relied upon to scrape by on his contacts; after twenty years they turned a blind eye to any commercial activities that might, on close inspection, appear a little inappropriate compared with those normally undertaken by servants of the Church. So the delivery van had turned into the drive, and Lenny had found himself preparing to show in the boy himself.

It was Cath Carter who had initially sought his advice: Cath who on several occasions now had invited him round supposedly to offer him tea and what she called a ‘catch-up’ but really to solicit his opinion on her daughter’s ever-burgeoning collection of bruises and ‘accidental’ knocks. It wasn’t like she hadn’t a temper herself, she said, and she’d be a liar if she said she and Ed had never come to blows in all their years together, but this was different. He had overstepped a line. And whenever she had tried to broach the subject with Jessie, she had snapped at her to mind her own businesses, or words to that effect. ‘Mothers and daughters, eh?’ he had said, glibly. But there wasn’t much he could offer. Cath believed the girl would be offended if she thought they were discussing her, so he wasn’t allowed to approach her. It wasn’t serious enough, she said, to call the police. In the old days, when he was growing up, a couple of the older men would go round and mark the boy’s card, rough him up a little, just to let him know they were on to him. Most of the time it worked. But there was no Ed Carter around any more, no one outside the social services who was likely to want to take up this little issue. And there was no way Cath or Jessie would want that lot involved. So his hands were tied.

Until the boy turned up on his doorstep. Because no one had said anything, after all, about the two of
them
having a discreet word.

‘You enjoying your new job, eh?’

‘It’s not bad, Father. Regular hours . . . Pay could be better.’

‘Ah, now, there’s a universal truth.’

The boy had looked at him, as if struggling to gauge his meaning, then lifted the heater with formidable ease, and carried it, as directed, into the front room, where he ignored the boxes of discount crockery and alarm clocks stacked high against the walls, partially obscuring two Virgin Marys and a St Sebastian. ‘You want me to put it together for you? It’ll take me five minutes.’

‘That would be grand. I have no gift with a screwdriver. Shall I go and find one?’

‘Got me own.’ The boy had held it up, and Lenny had been suddenly uncomfortably aware of the strength in those shoulders, the potential force behind the now contained movements.

The irony was that he was not a bad lad: generally well thought of, polite, brought up on the good part of the estate. While not churchgoers, his parents were decent people. His brother, Lenny remembered, had taken himself abroad to do voluntary service. There might have been a sister, he couldn’t remember. But the boy had never been in any trouble, had not been one of those he would occasionally scoop up from the market square in the early hours of Sunday, semi-conscious from cheap cider and God only knew what else. He had never been found racing stolen cars up and down the moonlit country lanes.

But that didn’t mean he was
good.

He stood, watching, as the metal legs were forcefully tightened to the body of the thing, the screws and nuts tightened with a spare efficiency. Then, as the boy grasped the heater, preparing to right it, Lenny spoke: ‘So, how’s your woman enjoying her new job?’

The boy did not raise his face from his work. ‘She says she likes it.’

‘It’s a nice shop. Good to see something different in the town.’

The boy grunted.

‘And good for her to be earning some money, no doubt. Every little helps, these days.’

‘We did all right before she started there.’ The boy placed the heater the right way up on the rug, and kicked at his shoe, as if to dislodge something.

‘I’m sure you did.’

Outside, two cars had come to an impasse in the road behind the churchyard. Lenny could just see them, each refusing to back up sufficiently to enable the other to pass. ‘Must be hard work for her.’

The boy looked up, uncomprehending.

‘It’s obviously a more physical job than it looks.’ Lenny kept the boy’s eye, trying to look more at ease than he felt. He chose his words carefully, and delivered them slowly, letting their aftershock kick like a mule. ‘Must be, anyway, considering the number of injuries I hear she’s been getting.’

The boy started now, glanced away from the priest and back again, his eyes flickering with his discomfort. Then he bent and picked up his screwdriver, placing it in his top pocket. Although his face betrayed little emotion, the tips of his ears had flushed a deep red. ‘I’d best be off,’ he muttered. ‘Got other deliveries.’

‘I’m very grateful to you.’

He walked down the narrow corridor after him. ‘You go easy on her now,’ Father Lenny continued, seeing the boy out. ‘She’s a good girl. I know that with the support of a man like yourself she can find a way to hurt herself a little less often.’

Jason turned in the porch. His expression, now revealed, was both hurt and furious, his shoulders hunched forward. ‘It’s not what you—’

‘Of course.’

‘I love Jess—’

‘I know you do. And there are always ways to avoid these things, aren’t there?’

The boy said nothing else. He breathed out, as if he had considered, then decided against, speaking again. His walk, when he headed out to his van, contained the defiant hint of a swagger.

‘Because we wouldn’t want the whole town concerned about her, after all?’ the priest called, waving as the van door slammed and the overloaded vehicle skidded out of the drive and on to the road.

There were occasions on which he felt a longing for a larger life, broader horizons, Lenny thought, with some satisfaction, as he turned back towards his neglected, long-undecorated house, his hand shielding his pale, Celtic skin against the sun. But sometimes there were benefits to living in a very small town indeed.

Liliane MacArthur waited until the young men had disappeared, their bags slung carelessly over T-shirted shoulders, their rolling gait taking them swiftly across the square. Then, peering into the shop to ensure that she would be alone, she pushed open the door tentatively and walked in.

Arturro was busy at the back. At the sound of the bell he called that he would only be a minute, and she stood awkwardly in the centre of the shop, sandwiched between the preserves and the dried pasta, listening to the hum of the refrigeration units and smoothing her hair.

When he emerged, drying his hands on his large white apron, his face broke into a broad smile. ‘Liliane!’ The way he spoke her name made it sound like someone announcing a toast.

She nearly smiled back, until she remembered why she was there. She reached into her bag and pulled out the box of sugared almonds, checking that the corners hadn’t been crushed against the prescription medicines she’d just collected. ‘I – I just wanted to say thank you . . . for the chocolates and everything. But it’s starting to feel like too much.’

Arturro looked blank. He gazed at the box in her hand, which she proffered to him, his own hand rising obediently to take it from her.

She pointed up at the chocolates on the shelf, keeping her voice low as if she were shielding it from other customers. ‘You’re a very kind man, Arturro. And it’s . . . it’s been . . . well, I don’t get many surprises. And it’s been very kind of you. But I – I’d like it to stop now.’

She held her handbag tight against her side, as if it were shoring her up. ‘You see, I’m not sure what you . . . what you’re expecting from me. I have to look after my mother, you see. I can’t – there are no circumstances in which I’d be able to leave her alone.’

Arturro moved a step closer to her. He ran a hand through his hair.

‘I thought it only fair to let you know. I’ve been very touched, though. I wanted you to know that.’

His voice, when it came, was thick, unwieldy. ‘I’m sorry, Liliane . . .’

She raised a fluttering hand, her expression anguished. ‘Oh, no. I don’t want you to be sorry – I just . . .’

‘. . . but I don’t understand.’

There was a lengthy silence.

‘The chocolates? All the gifts?’

He kept looking at her expectantly.

She studied his face now. ‘You left me chocolates? Outside my door?’ Her voice was insistent.

He stared at the box in his hand. ‘They are from here . . . yes.’

Liliane flushed. She glanced down at the box, then back at him. ‘It wasn’t you? You didn’t send any of these?’

He shook his head slowly.

Liliane’s hand had lifted unconsciously to her mouth. She gazed around the shop, then wheeled towards the door. ‘Oh! Forgive me. I’m . . . Just a misunderstanding. Do – please, please forget what I said—’ And then, her bag still clutched to her like a life-raft, she ran from the delicatessen, her heels clattering on the wooden floor.

For some minutes Arturro stood in the middle of the empty shop, staring at the box of sugared almonds, the faintest remnant of her scent hanging in the air. He glanced at the nearly empty market square, across whose surface pigeons strutted through lengthening shadows, and the last of the delivery vans prepared to leave.

Then he looked up at the three white aprons recently abandoned on the hook by the door, and his face darkened.

A few hundred yards away, Suzanna was preparing to close the Peacock Emporium. Jessie had left almost half an hour previously, and she had been a little disconcerted to note that Alejandro, who did not appear to have worked that day, had not gone with her. He had written a series of postcards and now sat, reading a newspaper, occasionally gazing out into the lane, his thoughts apparently far from there.