The Honey Queen (27 page)

‘Immaculate condition,’ she’d said, looking around, trying not to touch anything. ‘But you know … dated.’

Flowers and plants helped dress it up a bit. Peggy bought flowers whenever she could afford them. But today the scent of the single Tiger Lily in her bedroom was making her sick.

The vain hope of it being stress delaying her period or a bug making her ill every morning this week could not be clung to any more. She had to face the truth and buy a pregnancy test.

On Saturdays, she opened the shop at half past nine instead of nine. Most people were up a bit later on Saturdays and she allowed herself a smidge of a lie-in. A concept which was of no benefit at all when she was awake and nauseous at six. By half past eight this particular Saturday, she was on her way to the pharmacy at the far end of Redstone, a twenty-four-hour one she’d passed before but had never been in.

It was small, gloriously unmodern and unlike any of the glossy chain-store chemists where rows of intimate products were laid out for all to see. After ten minutes wandering around peering at shelves looking for something with a predictor or ‘
Are you or aren’t you?
’ on the box, Peggy realized that if you wanted condoms, pregnancy-testing kits or anything of that nature in here, you had to ask.

‘Can I help you, love?’ said a middle-aged woman at the cosmetics racks sticking prices on lipsticks.

A young male pharmacist sat on a chair reading a car magazine and didn’t even glance up, while another middle-aged lady with long purple fingernails that matched her chunky necklace and floaty lilac T-shirt was doing paperwork behind the counter. There were no other customers in the shop but even so, Peggy felt weirdly embarrassed to be asking for a pregnancy test.

There was so much fear and anxiety churning around inside her that it took her a moment to find the courage to reply.

‘I’m … I’m looking for a pregnancy-testing kit,’ she said, realizing how loud her voice sounded in the silence.

‘Una, pregnancy-testing kits,’ said the woman loudly to her colleague behind the counter. ‘Get them out there, will you?’

‘Right you are, Marjorie,’ said the other woman in return.

The man reading the magazine took no notice as Una rifled through drawers, pulling out a variety of boxes, which she put on the counter. Una and Marjorie displayed them all for Peggy and began discussing the pros and cons of each of them.

‘Now this one,’ said Una, pointing with her purple nails, ‘this one is super because you have two packets in case you don’t believe the first one entirely. Very reliable – you’d like that one. Sells well, but it is a bit dearer.’

‘It is a bit dearer,’ agreed Marjorie, who was in tasteful pearls and a floral blouse like somebody’s granny. ‘But then you have a double test so it’s
double
the reliability. Although sometimes,’ Marjorie added, ‘they can be wrong, even so. False positives or false negatives or whatever, I can’t remember.’

‘How long do you think you’re pregnant?’ Una said, peering over her spectacles at Peggy. ‘I mean, are we talking a few weeks …’

Peggy shifted uncomfortably.

‘Mmm,’ said Marjorie, scanning Peggy’s figure, ‘you’re very slim, love. No sign of a bump. How are your boobs? That always does it for me. Do they feel bigger? Or, you know, tender, like you couldn’t bear anything to bang into you?’

Both of them looked expectantly at Peggy, who wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

‘That’s always a sign. That was always a sign for me,’ Una said, patting her own considerable bosom, which was more of a bolster than a pair of breasts. ‘Lord, how many times did I fall? Seven! Lord have mercy on dear Stanley! Even his old mother used to say she didn’t know he had it in him. ’Course, we didn’t have pregnancy tests in those days. You had to go to the doctor and do a wee and they sent it off to a laboratory with a rabbit. If the rabbit died, you were pregnant – or was it the other way round? You didn’t see the rabbit or anything,’ Una went on, keen to point out that whatever rabbit cruelty was involved, the patient wasn’t privy to it.

‘A rabbit?’ said Peggy.

‘That’s the way they used to do it,’ Marjorie said. ‘You did your specimen in the doctor’s and then he sent it off and they did something with the rabbit. I think the rabbit died if you were pregnant. Or perhaps if the rabbit died, you weren’t pregnant,’ she added, turning to Una. ‘Very cruel really. I don’t hold with that type of carry on. No rabbits any more, you just pee on the stick. Do you think you’re pregnant though? Do the boobs feel … you know …?’ She looked enquiringly at Peggy.

‘Well, yes,’ Peggy said, wondering whether to get into the spirit of things or burst into tears. After all, this chattiness was what she loved about Redstone. The fact that there was a real sense of community. And there could be no more sense of community than standing in the pharmacy discussing whether you were pregnant or not with two middle-aged women. It was just a pity that neither of the women was the one woman with whom she really wanted to be having this conversation: her mother.

For a brief moment, Peggy wanted to lie her head down on the counter and cry. She felt so terribly alone. Instead, she said, ‘I’ll take this one,’ gesturing at the double-test kit.

‘Come back if you are pregnant and we’ll fill you up with all the right stuff,’ said Marjorie. ‘You know, folic acid and the like and iron. The iron is great. Now me, I couldn’t take the iron, went right through me.’

She gestured from her mouth down to her middle and out on to the floor. Peggy got the picture. ‘But if you can take it, it’s great. Very good for the baby.’

The baby
. Peggy swallowed. If she didn’t want to go ahead with this, she mustn’t think of what was inside her as a baby. She felt as if she might possibly faint. The blood drained from her face. Una and Marjorie looked at each other, went round the other side of the counter, grabbed hold of Peggy and sat her on a chair.

‘It does come over some people like that,’ said Una, or was it Marjorie?

Peggy was getting confused at this point.

‘Never mind, love, I’ll make you a cup of tea. The double test is the best one and you can head off and do that. You’re the girl running that nice wool shop, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Peggy faintly. So much for discretion.

‘You shouldn’t be going into work today, I mean people will understand.’

‘Oh no, I have to,’ said Peggy. ‘I mean, it’s my business, my shop, I have to be there.’

‘What about your assistant?’ Una turned to Marjorie. ‘You remember Fifi: sweet girl, dark hair. Used to come in with her mother. Such a nice family. The father died a few years ago, decent man he was.’ She turned back to Peggy: ‘Let Fifi take over, tell her.’

‘I don’t want anyone to know,’ Peggy said awkwardly.

‘Ah,’ said Una.

‘Right,’ said Marjorie. ‘We get it totally. Our lips are sealed.’

Fifteen minutes later with a cup of hot sweet tea inside her, a big chemist’s bag and a list as long as her arm of the things that would help the morning sickness – including apparently crystallized ginger, ginger biscuits and dry crackers – Peggy was back on the street again. This time there was a smile hovering on her lips. It hadn’t been what she’d expected when she’d gone in to buy a pregnancy test, but somehow the whole visit had made her feel better. She wasn’t the only one who knew. Marjorie and Una knew too.

It helped, having someone else in on the secret. But she wasn’t about to go telling anyone else. Certainly not David Byrne. Not now, not ever. Because he’d want to make a family of them, and Peggy just couldn’t. There were too many family scars inside her to ever dream of recreating any sort of family.

As she crossed the road to the shop, she realized that it was indeed a glorious morning. March was bursting out and the trees lining both sides of the street were shooting fabulous green buds towards the sky. Primroses had replaced the daffodils around the base of the trees and Peggy wondered, not for the first time, who did all the careful tidying of the streets. It wasn’t normal council work, it had to be a group of local people who wanted to make their home as fabulous as possible. This was an idea she
loved
.

The thought of people sitting down and making plans:
Right, in January we’ll do a tidy-up and make sure the bulbs have some hope of coming through. Keep an eye on the trees, too, mind. Aye, and don’t forget we’ll need to have the primroses ready to go down as soon as the daffodils die.
She could imagine someone saying that.

Peggy thought of her bungalow at home – not that it had ever felt like home to her. Her mother didn’t have time for gardening and the ground was useless in any case. Terrible top soil. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t plenty of manure from the neighbouring farms that could be brought in to help make the soil vibrant, but her father had never been bothered so her mother’s plants had been limited to a few little supermarket pots placed here and there. But they would invariably be dead within a week or two. The sad thing was that her mother loved flowers. Loved the few times Peggy had bought her peonies.

There was something about peonies; all those delicate petals like ladies’ crinoline skirts. Her father wasn’t impressed though.

‘You shouldn’t be spending your money on flowers – it’s a waste, a total waste,’ he’d say when he saw them.

Peggy knew better than to respond. She had an all-purpose smile she’d perfected for such occasions. It said,
Of course I agree with you, you’re completely right
, without her ever having to open her mouth.

Because if she opened her mouth, she might be tempted to tell him he was a mean bastard and that it was bad enough he never bought Kathleen flowers himself, but did he have to begrudge the bit of pleasure she got when someone else bought them for her?

Why was she thinking about him now? That was then. The past. Although the past was still with her because she would have to visit soon for her mother’s birthday.

She stopped, the key to the metal shutter in her hand. If only her family were different, she’d have been on the phone to her mother first thing.

Mum, I’m pregnant! I’m not with the guy any more, but I want this baby.

But her family were what they were, she was the way she was, and there was no place in that world for a baby.

She knelt down and unlocked the steel shutters, letting the world know that Peggy’s Busy Bee Knitting and Stitching Shop was open for business.

‘Hiya, Peggy, beautiful morning, isn’t it?’

It was Sue from across the road, waving energetically at her.

‘Lovely,’ she said, waving back automatically.

She thought of the night Sue had come to the shop opening and how upset she’d seemed at the thought of her sister being pregnant. Something to do with miscarriage … Peggy had never got round to having that quiet chat with her. How could she do that now, if she was pregnant? Seeing other people get pregnant must hurt like a knife to the guts if you wanted desperately to get pregnant yourself and couldn’t, she thought.

Inside the shop, she went through her morning routine, switching on lights, checking the shop, getting the till ready, and all the while her mind was working away quietly. Una and Marjorie from the pharmacy had hit the nail on the head: tender breasts, ready to burst into tears at any moment, nausea …

Peggy pictured Marjorie and Una at her age: settled and content, husbands that loved them, wanting to share it all with a child. Not like her: twenty-seven and single, with a new business to run in a dubious financial climate, an unasked-for baby inside her and an ache in her heart.

It was still only ten past nine so she locked the front door behind her and went through to the back. The kitchen and toilet were spotless. Fifi had cleaned it all yesterday. ‘Better to keep on top of the dirt,’ she’d said, a jaunty red apron protecting her jeans and hand-knitted pink mohair sweater.

They’d take it in turns to clean the place, Peggy had said: her carefully worked out business plan didn’t include money for anyone else to clean up. One member of staff apart from herself was as much as the budget allowed. Running the place on her own would be a mistake, as one of her night courses in entrepreneurship had explained. Fifi was glad of four days’ work a week: she was a single mother. How did she cope? Lots of people coped, Peggy reminded herself. It was perfectly possible.

And just because single motherhood hadn’t featured in her must-do-before-I’m-thirty plan, that didn’t rule it out, did it?

She set the kettle to boil, found a herbal teabag instead of her normal instant coffee and went into the bathroom.

Ten minutes later, what she knew instinctively had been confirmed by the appliance of science. There were two blue lines on the tester. Peggy rubbed a finger gently over the window of the tester, as if the spirit of the baby had rippled through it, making her mark.

Her. It should be two pink lines, she decided. Because she was having a girl, she was sure of it.

She sat heavily down behind the counter and looked out on Main Street. The place was already busy with Saturday-morning activity. There were people walking dogs, people strolling along with the Saturday newspapers swinging in bags and people rushing in and out of the deli and Sue and Zeke’s place, buying breads and olives for lazy Saturday lunches. She could see Bobbi’s Beauty Salon from her seat, the door was opening and shutting, people whizzing in and out. Wouldn’t that be nice now, to have time on a Saturday morning to go in and have all your things done: hair done, toenails painted coral, nails painted … Coral! Suddenly she wanted coral toes desperately, and fingernails too. Yes, that was it, that’s what she wanted. That and an almond croissant. Coral toes and fingers, an almond croissant with a squelch of frangipane in the centre, and time to think.

Normally, the notion of leaving the shop for something as self-indulgent and expensive as a manicure would have shocked Peggy, but Fifi would be in at ten. Surely it wouldn’t matter to open half an hour late?

She didn’t do little luxuries for herself. That was how she’d built up her savings: from doing her own nails, toes, everything. But nothing about today was normal.