The Peacock Emporium, Page 28

She wasn't there. Having checked each room twice, Vivi stood in the hallway and tried to think where else her mother-in-law might have gone. Mrs Cameron had left, so she couldn't be out with her. She wouldn't be in the gardens in weather as filthy as this. 'Rosemary?' she called again.

  It was then, above the dull rumble of the rain, that she heard the noise: a distant grunting, a shuffling, heralding some unseen effort. She waited, then turned her head better to gauge the direction from which it emanated. She looked, disbelievingly, at the ceiling and called again. 'Rosemary?'

  There was a silence that Vivi would remember for weeks afterwards, and then, as she made for the door, a muffled exclamation from somewhere upstairs, the briefest pause, and then a terrible, sickening crash, overlaid by a furious, strangulated cry.

  'I brought you something,' Alejandro said, but he was looking down and Suzanna wasn't sure to whom he had spoken.

  'A present?' said Jessie, excitedly. She had perked up when he arrived: somehow he always had that effect on her.

  'Not exactly,' he said apologetically. 'It's the Argentinian national drink. Mate. Our version of your cup of tea, if you like.' He pulled a brightly coloured packet from inside his wet jacket and handed it to Suzanna, who was standing behind the counter. 'It's bitter, but I think you might like it.'

  'Mate,' said Jess, turning the word over in her mouth. 'La Hoja Yerba Mate,' she read from the packet. 'Fancy a cup of Mate, Suze? Milk and two sugars, is that?'

  'Not milk,' said Alejandro, grimacing, 'but you can add sugar. Or orange pieces. Maybe lemon, grapefruit.'

  'Shall I make a pot?' said Suzanna.

  'No, no. Not a pot. Here.' He walked behind the counter so that Suzanna was suddenly acutely aware of his proximity. 'You make it in a mate. Like this.' From the other side of his jacket he produced a voluptuous silver pot, like a miniature pitcher. 'Here, let me prepare it. You can both try it and tell me what you think. I will serve you, for a change.'

  'It looks like Chinese tea,' said Jessie, staring at the contents of the packet. 'I don't like Chinese tea.'

  'It looks like a pile of old leaves and twigs,' said Suzanna.

  'I'll make it sweet,' said Alejandro, shaking the yerba mixture into the pot.

  Suzanna stood back against the blackboard, unaware that today's coffee listings were smudgily transferring themselves to her dark T-shirt. He was so close she could smell him: a mixture of soap and rainwater, and something, underneath it, that made her tense involuntarily. She felt oddly vulnerable.

  'I - I've got to get on with moving these boxes downstairs,' she said, desperate to regroup. 'Call me when it's ready.' She looked at Alejandro and added unnecessarily, 'We - we've got loads more stock coming tomorrow. And no room. There's just no room.' She ran down the rickety staircase, and sat on the bottom step, cursing herself for her weakness as her heart thumped erratically against her chest.

  'You're not usually here at this time,' she heard Alejandro say to Jessie, his voice betraying none of the turmoil she felt. But, then, she had no idea what he felt. What am I willing to happen here? she thought, clutching her head. I'm married, for God's sake, and here I am, throwing myself head first into another crush. Anything to avoid what's really going on in my life.

  'Emma's got drama club,' said Jessie.

  Suzanna could hear her feet moving on the wooden floor, see the slight give in the timbers above her as she travelled from one end of the shop to the other. 'I thought I'd stay a bit later, seeing as how I haven't been around much lately.'

  'Your head? It looks better.'

  'Oh, it's fine. I've literally plastered myself in arnica cream. And you can't really notice my lip if I have lipstick on . . . Look.' There was a brief silence as, presumably, Alejandro examined Jessie's face. Suzanna tried not to wish that it was her face on which his fingertips rested gently. She heard Jessie mutter something, and then Alejandro saying it was nothing, nothing at all.

  There was a silence, during which Suzanna's mind was blank.

  'That smells,' said Jessie, laughing. 'Disgusting.'

  Alejandro was laughing too. 'No, wait, wait,' he was saying. 'I'll add sugar. Then you can try it.'

  I've got to get a grip, Suzanna thought, and picked up a weighty box of Victorian photograph albums she had bought at auction. She had planned to remove the pictures and place them in individual frames, but she had failed to get round to it. She jumped as Jessie's face appeared at the top of the stairs. 'Are you coming up? We're about to be poisoned.'

  'Shouldn't we call a few of our favourite customers,' she said lightly, 'so that they can join us?'

  'No, no,' said Alejandro, laughing. 'Just you two. Please. I want you to try it.'

  Suzanna ran up the stairs and noted that the rain was still plummeting down, as grey and determined as it had been all day. The shop, however, felt suddenly warm and cosy, brightly lit against the dull, damp outside, infused with unfamiliar smells. She moved towards the shelf, began to pull down cups, but Alejandro, with a touch to her arm, stayed her. 'No,' he said, gesturing at her to replace them. 'That's not how you drink this.'

  Suzanna looked at him, then down at the mate pot, from which now emerged a silver straw, twisted like a barley sugar. 'You sip it through this,' he said.

  'What? All of us?' said Jessie, staring.

  'One at a time. But, yes, through the straw.'

  'That's a bit unhygienic'

  Alejandro nodded. 'It's okay. I'm a trained medic'

  'You haven't got cold sores, have you?' said Jessie to Suzanna, laughing.

  'You know, it is a great offence to refuse to share with someone,' said Alejandro.

  Suzanna stared at the straw. 'I don't mind,' she said. She held back her hair then sucked up a mouthful of the liquid. She winced - it was bitter. 'It - it's different,' she said.

  He offered her the straw again. 'Think how coffee tasted the first time you tried it. You have to see mate the same way. It's not bad, just different.'

  Suzanna, her eyes on his, put her lips round it. Her hand was on the side of the pot, supporting it, or herself, she wasn't quite sure. She stared at her fingers, so pale and smooth next to his, which were tanned and foreign and unmistakably male, shielded from the light by the dark curtain of her hair. Those hands delivered children, wiped tears from female eyes, had met birth and death and lived and worked in places a million miles from here. A hand could tell its owner's history, she thought distantly. Her father's were scarred and roughened from decades of manual work, and Vivi's had aged from the sheer act of caring. Her own were pale and ephemeral, not weathered yet by work or humanity. Hands that had not yet lived. She took another sip of mate, as Jessie muttered something about needing to buy more sugar. Then she watched as his broad hand moved, just a fraction, to rest on hers.

  The lightness of the previous minutes was replaced by something disturbing, something electrifying. Suzanna tried to swallow the pungent liquid, her eyes on their hands, all her senses tuned to his warm, dry palm against her skin, fighting an impulse to lay her mouth against it, press her lips to his skin.

  She blinked hard, tried to regulate her thoughts. It might have been an accidental movement, she told herself. It had to have been.

  She let out a long, tremulous breath, and lifted her eyes to his. They were already on her. His expression not one of amused complicity, of sexual invitation, even of ignorance, as she had half expected, but as if he was bewildered, searching for answers.

  His gaze, locked on hers, sent a jolt through her that was almost painful. It made a mockery of reason, sliced through her own beliefs and excuses. I don't know either, she wanted to protest. I don't understand. Then, almost as if they belonged to someone else, her own fingers shifted on the pot until they were entwined with his.

  She heard him swallow, and looked away to where Jess was pulling cups from the shelf, both thrilled and appalled by what she had done, unsure if she could cope with the emotion she appeared to have provoked, the weight of that small movement threa
tening to crash down on her.

  He didn't move his hand.

  She was almost relieved when the quiet of the room was interrupted by the shrill ring of the telephone. Suzanna, taking back her hand, could not look at Alejandro. She wiped her mouth, and turned towards the phone, but Jess had got there first. She felt dizzy, disoriented, was so conscious of Alejandro's eyes on her that at first she could not make out what the other girl was saying. And then, slowly, as her senses came back into focus, she took the receiver. 'It's your mum,' said Jess, looking anxious. 'She says your gran's had an accident.'

  'Mum?' Suzanna held the receiver to her ear.

  'Suzanna? Oh, darling, I'm so sorry to bother you at work but Rosemary's had a fall, and I desperately need some help.'

  'What happened?'

  'I've got no car. The boys have gone off with mine, your father refuses to carry a mobile phone, and I need to get Rosemary to hospital. I think she may have cracked a rib.'

  'I'll come,' said Suzanna.

  'Oh, darling, would you? I wouldn't ask, but it's that or an ambulance, and Rosemary is absolutely refusing to have one near the house. The thing is, I can't get her down the stairs by myself.'

  'Upstairs? What's she doing there?'

  'It's a long story. Oh, Suzanna, are you sure you don't mind?'

  'Don't be silly. I'll be as quick as I can.'

  Suzanna hung up. 'I've got to go,' she said. 'Jess, I'd better shut the shop. Oh, God, where did I put my keys?'

  'What about the boxes?' said Jess. 'You've got those deliveries tomorrow. Where are we going to put everything?'

  'I can't think about it now. I've got to run my grandmother to hospital. I'll just have to deal with tomorrow when it comes. Maybe I'll come back tonight if we don't have to wait too long in A and E.'

  'You want me to come?' said Alejandro.

  'No, thanks.' Suzanna smiled despite herself at the thought of explaining him to Rosemary.

  'Let me ring Mum,' said Jess. 'She can pick up Emma and I'll stay here and do it for you. I'll pop the keys in through your door later.'

  'Are you sure? Will you be okay? Some of the boxes are quite heavy.'

  'I'll help her,' said Alejandro. 'You go. Don't worry. We'll sort it out.'

  Suzanna ran from the shop towards her car, her hands lifted above her head in a futile attempt to shelter from the rain, wondering at how, even in a dire family emergency, even in the face of Jessie's generosity, even knowing Jessie's resolute devotion to another man, she could find room for a stab of jealousy that the two of them would now be alone in the shop together.

  The display in the window was about Sarah Silver. It was fair to say that it was one of the least interesting the Peacock Emporium had put on, focusing as it did on the day she moved into her eight-bedroom Georgian rectory, Brightmere - now renamed Brightmere Manor - on the edge of Dere Hampton. It told of how she had had to wait eight nail-biting days to discover if their sealed bid had secured the house, and of the long, tortuous weeks spent choosing fabrics and soft furnishings (the agonies of choice!) and the crippling responsibilities of hosting the endless rounds of charity coffee mornings and the annual village fete. It included one of the 'mood boards' she had created to furnish each room, taking inspiration from various castles and stately homes with which she boasted a tenuous connection. Several paragraphs from the bottom, there was a couple of lines about her wedding day, an order of priorities that surprised no one who knew her. She had been up for two weeks now, and Suzanna and Jessie had taken secret pleasure in subtly altering the display by degrees: they had tired of Sarah boasting about its prominence and passing it 'accidentally' several times a day to show it off to her acquaintances - while failing to bring them in to buy anything. So far they had inserted an MFI catalogue and an advert for septic-tank clearance between her carefully arranged Interiors magazines, had substituted 'plastic' for 'tree' surgeon in her passage on the importance of a good gardener, and added several noughts to the price she had paid for the house. For good measure, next to the endless section about her first dinner party as 'lady of the manor', Jess had planted a tin of Brains' Faggots.

  'I wouldn't have done it to anyone else,' she explained to Alejandro, as she brought another box up the stairs, 'but she really is the most pompous cow you ever met. When she comes in here she won't even talk to me, just directs all her conversation to Suzanna. I let slip one day that she was a Fairley-Hulme and old Fancy Pants thinks they're all one big aristocratic family.' She paused. 'You know how her husband makes his money, don't you? Internet porn. Except she says, "He's something in computers." We wouldn't have stuck her in at all but I was short of a subject and promised Suzanna I could keep this going.'

  Alejandro was gazing at the display. 'What,' he said, 'are Brains' Faggots?'

  It was after six, and the bright evening skies had been prematurely darkened by the thunderous weather: from teatime onwards Jess had progressively turned on all the lights in the shop. She had piled all the rubbish into black bin bags, which had been relatively easy to carry up the stairs. Now, however, she was having to move the boxes, some of which were weighty, loaded with crockery or books. 'God only knows what she's been buying,' she said, hauling another up the stairs. It was the only way she could make room to move the others around. 'I don't think she knows half the time.' She let out a gasp of pain.

  Alejandro dived over to take the box from her. 'Are you okay?'

  'Just put a bit too much weight on my hand. I'm fine,' said Jessie, examining her finger, which was still in the homemade splint.

  Alejandro put the box on the floor and lifted her hand. 'You know, you should get this X-rayed.'

  'It's not broken. It would have swollen up if it was broken.'

  'Not necessarily.'

  'I can't face the hospital again, Ale. I feel those nurses all look at me like I must be some kind of idiot.' She sighed. 'He's so stupid! I've never even looked at another man. Well, of course I've looked, but I've never - you know - considered doing anything.' She wrinkled her nose. 'I know everyone thinks I'm a bit of a flirt but I'm actually one of those boring people who thinks there's one man for one woman.'

  'I know.' Alejandro turned her hand over, gently separating the fingers. The bruising was turning a sickly green. 'If it is broken, and you don't get it seen to, you could lose some of the use of the finger.'

  'I'll take the chance.' She glanced down at it, raised a smile. 'Hey, I never had much use for that one anyway.'

  He turned back to the box and lifted it. 'Okay, from now on I do the lifting. You direct me. Then we both get home faster. Where do you want this?'

  She sat on the stool by the counter. 'Blue table. I think that's summer stock, and I know she wants most of the summer stock either in a sale or back downstairs.'

  He put it effortlessly at the other end of the shop, the invigorating ease of his movements suggesting a man glad to have a purpose. Outside, in the unlit lane, the rain still came down in sheets, now heavy enough to almost obliterate even the view of the wall on the other side of the road. Jessie shivered, noting that the water had started to creep in under the door.

  'It's okay,' said Alejandro. 'It shouldn't come in any further. It's just because the drains are full.' He tapped her lightly on the elbow. 'Hey, come on, Jessie. You don't get to sit around, you know. You have to show me which ones to move.'

  About thirty feet down the lane, Jason Burden sat in the van, unseen by the occupants of the shop. He'd had a few drinks, shouldn't really be driving by rights, but when he'd walked round to Cath's to pick them both up earlier, she'd said Emma was still at drama club, and Jessie was supposedly getting her nails done at some beauty salon. They'd be back soon, her mum said. He was welcome to wait, have a cup of tea with her, and they could walk round and pick Emma up together. He'd gone to the pub instead.

  He hadn't really known what had made him come here. Perhaps it was that nothing felt right at the moment. Nothing felt secure, like it had done. Not Jessie, with her f
ancy friends, her books, shutting herself away from him night after night as she studied, no doubt preparing to build a new life away from him. Not Jessie, too tired to have a laugh down the pub with him now she was working, always chattering on about people he didn't know, about some girl from the Fairley-Hulme estate, giving herself all sorts of airs and graces. Always trying to get him to come to the shop, meet her new 'friends', trying to make him into something he wasn't. Not Jessie, looking at him with a new reproach in her eyes, baring her bruises at him like it didn't hurt him enough already.

  Perhaps it was that he'd seen Father Lenny walking towards Cath's house, swaggering like he owned the whole bloody estate, and he'd given him that look, like Jason was somehow no better than the dirt under his feet, even if he'd covered it up with some phoney wave.

  Perhaps it was the phone number he'd found in her pocket. The number that had been answered by some foreign-sounding bloke before he rang off.

  He wasn't sure why he had come.

  Jason sat in the van, listening to the ticking of the engine cooling, the periodic swish of the windscreen wipers as they revealed, every few seconds, in the brightly lit shop, the sight he hadn't wanted to see.

  The man holding her hand.

  Talking to her with his face inches from hers.

  Motioning to her, smiling, to go downstairs to the cellar, to the place where Jason and Jessie had shared their first kiss. The place where he had first made her his own.

  They didn't come back up.

  Jason rested his buzzing head on the steering-wheel.

  Then, an eternity later, he placed his hand on the keys in the ignition.

  The last box was neatly stacked into the makeshift shelving, and Alejandro dusted off his hands on his trousers. Jessie, sitting on the stairs above him (there hadn't been enough room for two people to move round each other, not with the boxes), surveyed the cellar and smiled with satisfaction. 'She'll be pleased.'

  'I hope so.' He grinned at her, picked up a piece of screwed-up paper from the stairs and tossed it neatly into the bin.

  Jessie was watching him, her head tilted to one side. 'You're as bad as he is, you know.'

  'Your boyfriend?' he asked, evidently perplexed.

  'Neither of you able to say what you feel. The difference is, he resorts to punches and you just bottle it all up.'