Tasmina Perry - Guilty Pleasures

She had hardly seen him in the last ten years but she had heard about his rise through the ranks of Milford to become head of merchandise. She knew he was well thought of and in the last two years he had been given a position on the board. He was still sexy, she thought with a smile. Dark wavy hair curled round the top of his white shirt. He had colouring that whispered of pirate ancestry; deep brown eyes, lightly-tanned skin and a strong mouth.

She dismissed the thought, feeling herself flush – she hoped it was the heat from the Aga. Today she was just grateful for his reassurance rather than his good looks. Ruan had been a tower of strength since the day she had arrived at Milford and he was about her only friend out here in the middle of nowhere.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine. It was just a bit of silly graffiti,’ she lied.

Ruan had uncorked a bottle of wine and handed her a glass.

‘I feel as if I’m stumbling around in the dark here,’ she smiled. ‘Tell me if you think we’re wasting our time.’

‘With the revamp?’

She nodded.

‘A revamp is exactly what Milford needs,’ said Ruan with such confidence it instantly buoyed Emma. ‘Our manufacturing is good. Our leather is even better than what they use at Connolly or Valextra. We just need a break.’

She leant into him just a fraction.

‘You could always cancel the meetings with the bank until we get a designer,’ said Ruan.

‘And prolong the agony?’ said Emma, shaking her head. ‘The longer the downward spiral continues the more difficult it’s going to be to climb out of it.’ She didn’t want to tell him the whole truth, that suppliers hadn’t been paid in three months, that unless something decisive was done, the company would be bankrupt within twelve months. Milford was Ruan’s life and home and there was little other work in the area beyond agriculture, which in any case wasn’t terribly healthy either after a series of environmental and political disasters. Theoretically, Ruan could find similar work elsewhere, but the reality was that Britain’s manufacturing industry was on its knees. Whatever you needed, it could be made cheaper and faster in the Third World. It would be even worse for Milford’s two hundred or so employees and Emma felt she had to protect them from such dire news until she was sure it was inevitable. But who could she share the burden with? She could hardly tell Roger – he probably hadn’t ever looked at the company accounts in twenty years – and besides, he would feel vindicated if the ship went down with Emma at the helm. ‘Oh, if I’d been in charge, I could have done something,’ he would tell his cronies. ‘But what hope did old Saul’s legacy have with some young floozy playing shop?’ Or her mother? She’d only care about Emma’s problems as they impacted on her, specifically her shareholding and any awkwardness it would cause at dinner parties. Her Aunt Julia? It was reasonable to assume she would believe that the company should have gone to her own daughter. No, the bottom line was that Emma was all alone in this and would have to face it by herself. She was grateful when she heard the doorbell chime.

‘Is that the food already?’ said Ruan. ‘They usually take hours.’

Along with Milford, Emma had inherited Morton, Saul’s septuagenarian butler whom she could ill afford to keep on but who was a Cordon Bleu standard chef. As it was his night off and as the only things in the fridge were duck and lamb shanks, (none of which were right for Emma’s single signature dish of spaghetti bolognaise,) she’d done the decent thing and ordered Chinese food from the village takeaway. ‘I’ll go and see.’

Emma had to yank hard on the brass doorknob to open the door and cold night air rushed in. There was an old man standing there, not a delivery boy. At first she didn’t recognize him as his face was lined and creased.

‘Uncle Christopher?’ she said flatteringly. ‘Is that you?’

Christopher Chase was not a real uncle, rather one of Saul’s oldest friends, often appearing at family gatherings and at Saul’s villa. He was also one of the country’s most famous sculptors; one of the few surviving members of the St Ives movement. As far as Emma could remember, he still lived in Cornwall, in fact she always thought of Uncle Chris in terms of the old nursery rhyme: ‘As I was going to St Ives/I met a man with seven wives …’. Christopher was on his fourth wife and had three children aged from 24 to 50.

‘It is indeed,’ said the old man, taking off his hat with a dramatic gesture. He was still a debonair man now. His face was wrinkled, but his eyes were still bright blue and twinkly, and he was wearing a rakish maroon cravat at his neck.

‘Gosh, well, you must come in,’ said Emma, moving aside. ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘Provence, I think, maybe fifteen years ago?’ smiled Christopher as he took off his coat. ‘As I remember, you told me off for not reading and you gave me a book. What was it? The one set in the South of France.’

‘Tender Is the Night.’

‘That was it!’ he exclaimed, snapping his fingers. ‘It was excellent.’

‘I was so pompous,’ laughed Emma, her earlier gloominess melting away. ‘Anyway, have a seat and I’ll nip through to the kitchen, I have some friends round for supper.’

‘Oh, I don’t want to intrude. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said waving her hand. ‘Let me go and tell them to entertain themselves for a while.’

By the time she returned Christopher had wandered into the library.

‘I see you’ve added a few feminine touches.’

She smiled. There hadn’t been a great deal of time to do anything with the house, but she had removed a few of Saul’s slightly more masculine decorations: the dented blunderbuss on the mantelpiece, the antique pistols, the buffalo skin Zulu shields, the rather severe-looking stuffed stag’s head which looked down from the eaves.

‘I tried to tell myself that poor stag had been dead for twenty years, but his eyes still seemed to be following me around, giving me evil looks,’ she smiled.

Christopher laughed. ‘I was there when Saul shot it. Perhaps I should have taken it myself and pickled it; I could have appealed to a whole new generation of art lovers.’

They both found themselves looking at the grand portrait of Saul above the fireplace. ‘I do miss that old rogue …’ said Christopher quietly. ‘I didn’t see him enough over the last few years. I regret that.’

‘We all do,’ said Emma.

Christopher nodded, then shivered, shaking his shoulders like a dog.

‘Anyway, sorry for dropping by unannounced. I was on my way to London and thought I’d take a detour into Chilcot. I’ve just been to the church to pay my respects to Saul. I couldn’t make the funeral; Chessie my wife was in hospital.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Nothing serious I hope?’

Christopher shook his head.

‘Everything’s fine.’

He wandered over to the mantelpiece and picked up a silver frame containing a black and white photograph of Saul and himself in Egypt, and another of them arm-in-arm at the top of Mount Cook.

‘Look at him,’ said Christopher with affection, ‘he always was a big showman.’

‘You noticed he has the biggest gravestone in the church grounds?’ smiled Emma.

‘Of course he has,’ laughed Christopher. ‘He should have been an entertainer, not a businessman. I know he wouldn’t mind me saying that. But he was shrewd enough to give the company to you. That news filtered down as far as St Ives.’

‘Shrewd? Not everybody sees it that way.’

Christopher looked at her, rubbing his chin with his hand. Emma was startled to see that his artistic fingers were now twisted and gnarled by arthritis.