Peacock Emporium

by Jojo Moyes

  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 devoted 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 cop
y 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.’

  ‘That’s a good idea, petal. You could put your favourite customers’ drawings in the best spot.’ Jessie seemed to treat all her daughter’s pronouncements seriously.

  ‘And put frames on them. People like to see their pictures in frames.’

  ‘There you go,’ said Jessie, giving a final polish to the coffee machine. ‘Retail psychology. How to make your customers feel valued.’

  Suzanna, while acknowledging the benefit of extra custom, was struggling with the sensation of being overwhelmed by Jessie and her extended family. She couldn’t cope with The sight of someone else behind the counter, the reorganisation – even though they undoubtedly looked better – of her shelves. The shop hadn’t felt hers in the same way since Jessie had been in it.

  In fact, after the peaceful previous weeks, so many people had come in that afternoon that Suzanna had had to fight a sneaking sense of inadequacy and a faint jealousy that this girl could have succeeded so apparently effortlessly where she had failed.

  This is stupid, she told herself, heading into the cellar to fetch up some more bags. It’s a shop. You can’t afford to keep it all to yourself. She sat down heavily on the stairs – now polluted by the ghosts of snogging teenagers – and surveyed the downstairs shelves, which had apparently once held illegal game that you could order with your vegetables. Perhaps it wasn’t that Jessie was better at it, perhaps it was that she didn’t like the feeling of everyone belonging, of obligation and expectation that a close relationship with your customers seemed to engender. It was all veering a bit too close to the idea of family.

  I’m not sure I’m cut out for this, she thought. Perhaps I only liked the decorating, creating something beautiful. Perhaps I should do something where I hardly have to deal with people at all.

  She flinched as Jessie’s head appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘You okay down there?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Mum brought us in some nice orange juice. Figured you’d probably had enough of coffee.’

  Suzanna forced a smile. ‘Thanks. I’ll be right up.’

  ‘You want any help down there?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Suzanna tried to convey in her tone that she would rather have five minutes on her own.

  Jessie glanced off to some unseen point on her left, and then back to her. ‘There’s someone else in you’ve got to meet. Liliane from across the road – I used to do cleaning for her. She’s just bought that pair of earrings, the ones in the case.’

  They had been the most expensive item in the shop. Briefly forgetting her previous reservations, Suzanna half ran up the stairs.

  Liliane MacArthur’s face was as closed as Jessie’s was open. A tall, slim woman with the kind of mutely reddened hair beloved of Dere Hampton’s female population, she eyed Suzanna with the practised once-over of someone who had learnt the hard way that women, especially those a good twenty years younger than herself, were generally not to be trusted.

  ‘Hi,’ said Suzanna, immediately awkward. ‘Glad you spotted the earrings.’

  ‘Yes. I like topaz. Always have.’

  ‘They’re Victorian, but you can probably see that from the box.’

  Jessie was wrapping it in an intricate arrangement of raffia and tissue paper. ‘They for you, Liliane?’

  The older woman nodded.

  ‘They’ll go lovely with that blue coat of yours. The one with the high collar.’

  Liliane’s expression softened slightly. ‘Yes, I thought that.’

  ‘How’s your mum, Liliane?’ Jessie’s mother leant over, so that she had an uninterrupted view past the till.

  ‘Oh, much the same . . . She’s had some problems holding her cup lately.’

  ‘Poor thing. You can get all sorts with special handles and things now to make it easier. I saw it on the telly. Specially for people with arthritis. Ask Father Lenny, he can usually get stuff like that,’ Jessie said.

  ‘He’s our priest,’ explained Cath, ‘but he’s like a Mr Fixit. He’ll get hold of anything for you. If he doesn’t know someone, he’ll track it down on the Internet.’

  ‘I’ll see how we go.’

  ‘It’s a very cruel thing, the arthritis.’ Cath shook her head.

  ‘Yes,’ said Liliane, her head down. ‘Yes, it is. Well, I’d better get back to the shop. I’m glad to meet you, Mrs Peacock.’

  ‘Suzanna, please. You too.’ Suzanna, her hands twitching uselessly at her sides, tried to loosen her smile as Liliane closed the door quietly behind her. She felt, even if she didn’t hear, the ‘poor thing’ lingering in the air as the older woman left.

  ‘First husband died,’ murmured Jessie. ‘He was the love of her life.’

  ‘No. Roger was.’

  ‘Roger?’ Suzanna said.

  ‘Second husband,’ said Cath. ‘He told her he didn’t want children, and she loved him so much she agreed. Two days before her forty-sixth birthday he ran off with a twenty-five-year-old.’

  ‘Twenty-four, Mum.’

  ‘Was she really? She was pregnant. God, there’s no justice. Eighteen years Liliane gave to that man. She’s never been the same.’

  ‘Lives with her mum now.’

  ‘She had no choice, not with things being the way they are . . .’

  As Liliane crossed the road, the lumbering figure of Arturro could be seen heading towards her at right angles. On seeing her, he picked up speed, his arms swinging as if he were unused to travelling at such a pace. He might have spoken to her as, with a nod of recognition and only a faint pause, she disappeared into her shop.

  Arturro stopped in inelegant stages, like a large vehicle needing more space to apply the brakes, his face still set towards the door of the Unique Boutique. Then he glanced towards the Peacock Emporium, his expression almost guilty, and, with just a hint of indecision, entered.

  Jessie, who had seen the whole thing, switched on the coffee machine, calling innocently, ‘Come for a top-up, Arturro?’

  ‘If you don’ mind,’ he said quietly, and sat heavily on the stool.

  ‘I knew you’d be back for a second cup. Italians love their coffee, don’t they?’

  Suzanna, for whom the exchange had been almost painful, felt her earlier misgivings melt away. Through the window, she could just make out the older woman, safely back in her own domain, mistress of the buttoned-up and held-in, surrounded by her expensive fabric armoury. There was something in Liliane’s brittle exterior, her discomfort with casual conversation, the pain only hinted at in her demeanour that made her fearful, as if she were witnessing the Ghost of Christmas Future.

  ‘Do you want to come again?’ she asked Jessie later, after Arturro and Cath had gone. They had placed the chairs upside-down on the tables and Jessie was sweeping the floor, while Suzanna counted her takings. ‘I’d really like it if you did,’ she added, trying to feed some conviction into her voice.

  Jessie had smiled, her wide, unguarded smile. ‘I can do till school pick-up, if that’s any good to you.’

  ‘After today I don’t see how I can manage without you.’

  ‘Oh, you’d be all right. You just need to get to know everyone. Get them coming through the door every day.’

  Suzanna peeled off several notes and held them out. ‘I can’t pay much to begin with, but if you increase takings like that again, I’d make it worth your while.’

  After a moment’s hesitation, Jessie took them and thrust them into her pocket. ‘I wasn’t expecting anything for today, but thanks. You sure you won’t get bored of me prattling on all the time? I drive Jason mad. He says I’m like a stuck record.’

  ‘I like it.’ Suzanna thought she might eventually believe that. ‘And if not, I’
ll put up one of those notices you mentioned – “Don’t talk to me,” or whatever it was you said.’

  ‘I’ll ask him indoors. But he can’t say we don’t need the money.’ She began to swing the chairs off the tables.

  Suzanna locked the till, noting, as she began her nightly routine for closing, that it was the first evening in which there had been a hint of peach-coloured daylight remaining. Gradually it built in strength, illuminating the interior of the shop, transforming the blues into neutrals, suffusing the documents she had pasted on to the walls with a rich glow, criss-crossing them with the shadows of the window frames. Outside, the narrow lane was already nearly empty of people: things closed down early in The town, and only the shopkeepers remained to say goodnight to each other as night fell. She loved this part: loved the silence, loved the feeling that she’d spent a day working for herself; loved the knowledge that the imprints she left on the shop would remain until she opened it again the next morning. She moved around almost silently, breathing in the myriad fragrances that lingered in the air from wax-papered soap and Byzantine bottles of scent, hearing in the silence the laughter and chatter of the day’s customers, as if each had left some spectral echo behind them. The Peacock Emporium had been a pleasurable dream, but today it had felt magical somehow, as if the best of both the shop and its customers had rubbed off on each other. She rested against a stool, seeing ahead of her something other than the disappointments and restrictions she had been picturing as her future, seeing instead a place of possibilities to which beautiful things and people were drawn. A place she could be herself, her better self.

  This place is making you fanciful, she thought, and found herself smiling. Some nights, like tonight, she didn’t want to leave: she harboured a secret desire to swap the pew for an old sofa, and bed down for the night. The shop felt so much more hers than the cottage.