The Peacock Emporium

  Suzanna had told her that the reason she liked to have the portrait in her own house was simply that it was beautiful. It was not as if she remembered Athene: Vivi had been the only mother she had known. She couldn't articulate the real reason. It was to do with guilt and resentment and that, for as long as her father found it nearly impossible to talk about his first wife, she felt it difficult to confront him with the evidence that he had had one. It was since she had let her hair grow dark again, since she had acquired, as Neil called it, something of her mother's fierce beauty, that her father had found it so difficult even to look at her at all. 'Athene Forster', it read, the writing just visible against the crumbling gilt of the frame. Perhaps in deference to Suzanna's feelings, it had never detailed the manner of her death.

  'You going to put that up? Is it for sale?'

  Suzanna eyed the young woman who stood, head cocked, in the doorway.

  'She's like you,' the girl said cheerfully.

  'It's my mother,' Suzanna said reluctantly.

  The picture hadn't looked right in the cottage: it was too grand. Athene, with her glittering eyes and her pale, angular face, had filled the sitting room, and left little space for anything else. Now, staring at it in the shop, Suzanna realised it didn't belong here either. The mere fact that this stranger was inspecting it made her feel uncomfortable, exposed. She turned it to the wall, and moved towards the till. 'I was just taking it home,' she said, and tried to suggest, through her tone, that the conversation was closed.

  The girl was struggling to remove her coat. Her blonde hair was pulled into two plaits, like a schoolgirl, although she was clearly older. 'I nearly lost my virginity on your stairs. Drunk as a skunk, I was. Are you serving coffee?'

  Suzanna, moving towards the espresso machine, didn't bother to turn round. 'You must be mistaken. This used to be a bookshop.'

  'Ten years ago it was a wine bar. The Red Horse. For a couple of years, anyway. When I was sixteen we all used to come up on a Saturday night, get hammered on Diamond White in the market square, then come in here to cop off with each other. It's where I met my bloke. Snogging away on those stairs. Mind you, if I'd known then . . .' She tailed off, laughing. 'Can I have an espresso? You are doing coffee?'

  'Oh. Yes.' Suzanna wrestled with levers and coffee measurements, grateful that the din of the machine temporarily drowned the need to talk. She had envisaged that people would come in here, sit down and talk to each other. That she would preside over it all from the safety of the counter. But in the two months that she had been open, she had found that, more often than not, they wanted to talk to her, whether she felt sociable or not.

  'They closed the bar down in the end. Not surprising, really, with all the underage drinking that went on.'

  Suzanna placed the filled cup on a saucer with two sugar lumps, and carried it carefully to the table.

  'That smells gorgeous. I've been walking past for weeks, and I kept meaning to come in. I love what you've done with it.'

  'Thank you,' said Suzanna.

  'Have you met Arturro, in the deli? Big man. Hides behind his salamis when women go in the shop. He gave up doing coffee about eighteen months ago because his machine kept breaking down.'

  'I know who you mean.'

  'Liliane? From the Unique Boutique? It's just there. The clothes shop. On the corner.'

  'Not yet.'

  'Both single. Both middle-aged. I think they've been hankering after each other for years.'

  Suzanna, mindful that she didn't want to find herself discussed in this manner at some later date, said nothing. The girl sipped her coffee. Then she leant back in her chair, and noticed the small pile of glossy magazines in the corner. 'Mind if I have a look?'

  'It's what they're there for,' she said. She had bought them a week ago, hoping it would mean customers didn't always want to talk. The girl gave her a strange look, then smiled easily, and began flicking through Vogue. She examined the pages with the kind of relish that suggested she didn't get to read too many magazines.

  She sat there for almost twenty minutes, during which the two men who ran the motorbike spares shop dropped in to down quick, silent fixes of strong coffee, and Mrs Creek made her twice-weekly foray around the shelves. She never bought anything but she had given Suzanna several years' worth of her life story. Suzanna had listened to the story of her career as a dressmaker in Colchester, the Unfortunate Incident on the Train, and about her various allergies, which included dogs, beeswax, certain synthetic fibres and soft cheese. Mrs Creek hadn't known she had these allergies for most of her life, of course. There had been little in the way of indication. But she had been in to see one of those homeopathic types in the little shop on the corner, and they had done some test involving buzzers and little phials and she had discovered there was no end of things she shouldn't go near. 'You don't have any beeswax here, do you?' she said, sniffing.

  'Or soft cheese,' said Suzanna, evenly. Mrs Creek had bought one coffee, and complained, grimacing, that it was 'a little bitter for my taste'. 'The Three Legged Stool, up the road, they put CoffeeMate in theirs, if you ask. You know, like powdered milk. And they give you a free biscuit,' she said hopefully. Then, as Suzanna ignored her, she added: 'You don't need a food licence for biscuits.' She had left shortly before twelve, having made, as she told the girl, 'a promise to play a little gin rummy with one of the elderly ladies up at the centre. She's a bit of a bore,' she confided, in a stage whisper, 'but I think she's a bit lonely.'

  'I'm sure she'll be glad to see you,' said the girl. 'There are a lot of lonely people in this town.'

  'There are, dear, aren't there?' Mrs Creek had adjusted her hat, looked meaningfully at Suzanna, and tottered briskly out into the watery spring sunshine.

  'Can I have another coffee?' The girl stood up, and walked with her cup to the counter.

  Suzanna refilled the machine. As she was about to start it up, she felt the girl's eyes on her. She was, she saw, being quietly assessed.

  'It's an odd choice, running a coffee shop,' the girl said. 'I mean, for someone who doesn't like people.'

  Suzanna stood quite still. 'It's not really a coffee shop,' she said tartly. She glanced down at her hands, which were holding the cup. Then she added, 'I'm just not big on small-talk.'

  'You'd better learn, then,' the girl said. 'You won't stay afloat long otherwise, no matter how beautiful your shop is. I bet you've come up from London. London people never talk in shops.' She glanced around. 'You need some music. Always cheers things up, music.'

  'Oh?' Suzanna was fighting irritation. This girl appeared to be some ten years younger than her, and was presuming to tell her how to run her business.

  'Am I being a bit blunt? Sorry. Jason always tells me I'm too blunt with people. It's just it's a really nice shop, really magical, and I think it will do really well as long as you don't keep treating every customer like you wish they weren't there. Can I have sugar with that?'

  Suzanna pushed the bowl towards her. 'Is that how I come across?'

  'You're hardly welcoming.' Seeing Suzanna's dismayed expression, she corrected herself: 'I mean, I don't care because I'll talk to anyone anyway. Like that old lady there. But there's a lot of others round here who'd be put off. Is it London you're from?'

  'Yes,' said Suzanna. It was easier than explaining.

  'I grew up on the estate near the hospital. Meadville, you know it? But it's a funny old town. Very green wellies. Very up itself. You know what I'm saying? To be honest, there's a lot round here who aren't going to give you a second look because everything in your window - it will just look weird to them. But there are some people who feel they don't fit in. People who don't want to sit with their flapjack and lapsang souchong and some headscarfed old blue rinse braying at the next table. I reckon if you were a bit friendlier you'd get a lot of trade from them.'

  Despite herself, Suzanna found the corners of her mouth lifting in recognition of the girl's description. 'You think I should become a kind of soc
ial service.'

  'If it brings the punters in.' The girl popped a sugar cube into her mouth. 'You need to make money, don't you?' She gave Suzanna a sly look. 'Or is this shop your little hobby?'

  'What?'

  'I didn't know whether you were one of those - you know, "hubby works in the City. She needs a little hobby."'

  'I'm not one of those.'

  'Once your customers knew they were welcome, you could put a notice up saying, "Don't talk to me." If you get the right sort of regulars they'll understand . . . I mean, if talking to people is really that painful . . .'

  Their eyes locked and they grinned. Two grown women, recognising something in each other, yet too old to acknowledge that they were making friends.

  'Jessie.'

  'Suzanna. I'm not sure I can do that chatty stuff.'

  'Are you getting enough custom not to?'

  Suzanna pondered. Thought of her echoing till. Of Neil's knitted brow when he went over the figures. 'Not really.'

  'You pay me in coffee, I'll come and help for a couple of hours tomorrow. Mum's having my Emma for a couple of hours before night school, and I'd rather do this than the Hoovering. It's nice to do something different.'

  Suzanna stiffened, unbalanced by the idea that she was being manoeuvred. 'I don't think there's enough work for two.'

  'Oh, I'll make sure there is. I know everyone, you see. Look, I've got to go. Think about it, and I'll turn up tomorrow. If you don't want me, I'll have a coffee and go. Yeah?'

  Suzanna shrugged. 'If you're sure.'

  'Oh, hell. I'm late. His nibs'll be doing his conkers. See you.' Jessie tossed some money on to the counter - the right amount, it turned out - threw her coat over her shoulder and flew out into the lane. She was tiny. Watching her go, Suzanna thought she looked like a child. How can someone like that have a child herself, she thought, and me still feel unready?

  She was unwilling to admit it, even to herself, but Suzanna was cultivating a new crush. She knew this because every day, in the few minutes before she closed the shop to buy her daily sandwich from the deli, she found herself checking her appearance, reapplying her lipstick, and wiping the detritus of the morning from her clothes. It was not her first: during her marriage to Neil she thought she'd probably averaged one a year. They ranged from her tennis coach, who had the most compellingly muscular forearms she'd ever seen, to her friend Dinah's brother, to the boss of the marketing company she'd worked for, who had told her she was the kind of woman who gave men sleepless nights. She had been pretty sure he meant this nicely.

  Nothing ever happened, as such. She either adored them from afar, building up a kind of parallel life and personality for them in her imagination - often one far more desirable than theirs actually was - or allowed herself a swiftly intimate friendship, in which questions hung unspoken in the air, and tended to evaporate when the man surmised that she was prepared to take it no further. Once, with the marketing boss, she had allowed herself the guilty pleasure of a stolen kiss - it had been rather romantic when he closed the office door behind them and looked at her with silent intent - but had been so horrified when he had subsequently declared himself in love with her that she had never gone back. (She felt it perversely unfair that Neil still saw this as another example of her inability to take employment seriously.) She was not being unfaithful, she would tell herself, just enjoying a little window-shopping, nurturing the kind of frisson that tended to disappear with security and domesticity.

  Except that in this case she wasn't sure who her crush was focused on. Arturro's delicatessen, whose large, shy proprietor Jessie had been telling her about, employed three of the most handsome young men Suzanna had ever seen. Lithe, dark and filled with the cheerful exuberance of those who not only know they are beautiful but are made more so in a town without competition, they shouted cheerful insults to each other, hurling cheeses and jars of olives with what Suzanna saw as a sublime grace, while Arturro hovered benignly behind the counter.

  When Suzanna entered, they were invariably yelling out some weight or measurement.

  'Seven point eight!'

  'No, no. Eight point two.'

  For a town that appeared to view anything more foreign than the tired offerings of the local Chinese takeaway as too challenging, and still had reservations about the tandoori restaurant, Arturro's deli was always well populated. The townswomen, in to purchase their weekly cheese platter or posh coffee-morning biscuits, would stand in their orderly queue, breathing in the dense aromas of peppered salami, Stilton and coffee, eyeing the young men with polite amusement (while occasionally reaching up to smooth the odd stray hair). The younger girls would stand in the queue and giggle, whispering to each other, then remembering only when they got to its head that they didn't have any money.

  They were beautiful, sleek and dark as seals. Their eyes held the knowing glint that spoke of summer evenings full of laughter, squealing rides on stylish mopeds, nights of guilty promise. I'm too old for any of them, Suzanna told herself, in a determinedly maternal manner, while wondering if increased levels of poise and sophistication outweighed the definite lines on her face and the increasingly square outline of her behind.

  'Nine. Nine point one.'

  'You're dyslexic. Or blind. You've got your numbers the wrong way round.'

  'Can I have a mortadella, tomato and olive sandwich on brown? No butter, please.'

  Arturro blushed as he acknowledged her order. It was quite an achievement for someone with such dark skin.

  'Busy today,' Suzanna said, as one of the young men leapt up a step-ladder to reach a brightly wrapped panettone.

  'And you?' He spoke quietly and Suzanna had to lean forward to hear him.

  'Not very. Not today. But it's early days.' She painted on a bright smile.

  Arturro handed her a paper bag. 'I am coming in tomorrow to see. Little Jessie come in this morning and invited us. This is okay?'

  'What? Oh, yes. Yes, of course,' she said. 'Jessie's helping me out.'

  He nodded approvingly. 'Nice girl. I know her a long time.'

  As Suzanna wondered which of the three young men might constitute Arturro's 'us', he walked heavily to the end of the counter, and pulled an ornate tin of amaretti biscuits from a high shelf. He walked back and handed it to her. 'For your coffee,' he said.

  Suzanna looked down at it. 'I can't take this,' she said.

  'It's for good luck. For your business.' He smiled shyly, revealing two tiny rows of teeth. 'You try when I come later. Very good.'

  'Uh-oh, Arturro's on the pull.' There was a catcall behind her. Two of the young men were gazing at him, their arms crossed across their white aprons, mock disapproval on their faces. 'You got to watch out, ladies. Next stop Arturro will be offering you a free taste of his salami . . .'

  There was stifled laughter in the queue. Suzanna found herself blushing.

  'And you know what they say about Italian salami, eh, Arturro?'

  The big man turned towards the till, lifted an arm the width of a ham and let off a volley of what Suzanna assumed was Italianate abuse.

  'Ciao, Signora.'

  Suzanna left the deli blushing, trying not to smile too hard in case it made her look like the kind of woman who becomes overexcited when given a bit of attention.

  When she got back to the shop she discovered she had forgotten to pick up her sandwich.

  Jessie Carter had been born in the Dere maternity hospital, the only daughter of Cath, who worked in the bakery, and Ed Carter, who had been one of the town's postmen until his death from a heart attack two years ago. It was fair to say her life had not been exotic. She had grown up with her friends on the Meadville estate, attended Dere Primary, then gone on to Hampton High School, which she had left at sixteen with two GCSEs in art and home economics, and a boyfriend, Jason, who became the father of her daughter, Emma, two years later. Emma hadn't been planned, but was much wanted and Jessie had never regretted her arrival - especially as Cath Carter was the most devot
ed of grandmothers, which meant she had never been tied down in the way that some girls complained of.

  No, it was not Emma who caused any constraints on her life. If she was honest, it was Jason. He was dead possessive, which was stupid, really, as she'd only ever been with him and had no intention of going elsewhere. She didn't want to give the wrong impression, though. He was a great laugh, when he wasn't being an arse, and a great dad, and there was a lot to be said for a bloke who really loved you. Passion, you see. That was the key. Yes, they fought, but they did loads of making up too. Sometimes she thought they probably fought just to get to the making-up bit. (Well, there had to be some reason for it.) And now that the council had given them a house, not that far from her mum's, and he had got used to the idea of her doing night school, and was earning a bit himself, driving the delivery van for the local electrical store, things were getting better for them.

  Suzanna discovered all of this within the first forty minutes or so of Jessie's tenure at the shop. Initially, she didn't mind the chatter: Jessie had cleaned the entire shop almost effortlessly as she spoke, properly lifting and sweeping under all the chairs, had reorganised two shelves and washed up all the coffee cups from the morning. It had made the shop feel warmer, somehow. And she - or it - had helped give the Peacock Emporium its most profitable afternoon ever, drawing a seemingly endless trail of locals through the doors with magnetic efficiency. There had been Arturro, who had come alone, had drunk his coffee with the considered attention of the connoisseur and answered Jessie's relentless questions with shy pleasure. After he left, Jessie had pointed out that he had spent much of the time gazing through the window at the Unique Boutique, as if hopeful that Liliane might emerge from its smoked-glass door and join him.

  There had been the ladies from the department store, where Jessie's aunt worked, who had oohed and aahed over the wall hangings and ducked under the glittery mobiles and fussed over the glass mosaics and eventually bought one each, exclaiming at their extravagance. There had been Trevor and Martina from the hairdresser's behind the post office, who had known Jessie since school, and had bought one of the raven-black feather dusters, because it would look good in the salon. There had been several young people Jessie knew by their first names, probably from the estate, and there had been Jessie's mother and daughter, who had come in and sat for a good three-quarters of an hour, admiring almost everything they could see. Emma was a carbon copy of her mother, a self-possessed seven-year-old in myriad shades of pink who pronounced the Amaretti biscuits 'weird, but nice, especially the sugar', and said that when she was grown-up she was going to have a shop 'exactly the same. Except in my shop I'm going to give people bits of paper and they can do drawings to put on the walls.'