Tasmina Perry - Guilty Pleasures

‘Fancy jumping in this one?’

‘This is actually my driver,’ said Cassandra quickly. ‘But feel free to join me.’

‘Donna Karan?’

‘Sorry?’ asked Emma as she struggled to get her case onto the seat next to her.

‘Your suit. Donna Karan last season.’

‘Er, yes. I think so,’ replied Emma remembering how she had bought the trouser suit because it was smart and black and for no other reason beyond that.

‘Beautiful service, though,’ said Cassandra. Her mind had already moved on: ‘I got Robbie Van Helden to do the flowers. He does Elton’s parties.’

Emma nodded nervously.

‘How long are you staying?’ she asked, filling the silence.

‘Oh, I have to get back to London tonight,’ said Cassandra. ‘It’s all rather inconvenient, slap bang in the middle of the collections. Never mind. When duty calls …’

She smiled and Emma thought how unusual it was that Cassandra seemed to be in such a buoyant mood. Emma found her spiky and was usually walking on egg-shells whenever she spoke to her. The slightest thing could send her into a hissy-fit.

‘I’d leave now but I can’t miss the big family powwow,’ continued Cassandra ordering her driver to take them to Winterfold.

‘Pow-wow? What do you mean?’

‘Oh, didn’t you hear? Apparently Saul wanted his will to be read, so it’s happening tonight while everyone is still here.’

Emma frowned. ‘How odd. I thought that the reading of the will died out about fifty years ago.’

‘You know Saul, the old queen. He loved a bit of drama. Anyway, you shouldn’t complain about it happening tonight. It saves you coming back from Boston,’ smiled Cassandra.

‘I suppose Uncle Roger will finally get his hands on the company then,’ said Emma, wondering for the first time what would happen to Saul’s extensive assets. Cassandra dipped her hat, so Emma couldn’t see her face.

‘Don’t be so sure.’

They fell into silence as the car sped through the lanes of the village. Past the Feathers pub where Emma had bought her first drink, past the park where her father had chased her and pushed her on the swings. There were many happy memories but some were still too painful to think about. She looked away.

The car swung into the avenue of lime trees that ran up to the manor house. A grand Georgian mansion, set in 800 acres of grounds, Winterfold had a haughty, almost severe beauty. Emma knew the story well of how the house came to be in her family; as a child it had been told to her at bedtime like a fairy tale of the beautiful aristocracy and their fantasy lives. The house had once belonged to the Greystone family, who had built the house from the proceeds of their merchant banking fortune. Merrick Milford, Emma’s great-grandfather, was a local saddler’s apprentice who had developed a reputation for being exceptionally skilled. The lady of the house, Lady Eleanor Greystone, was a keen horsewoman and had admired Merrick’s work on her own saddles, so had asked to meet this young talent. Visiting the house, Merrick had been fascinated by a beautiful collection of trunks in the hall which Lady Greystone informed him were made by Goyard, the Parisian luggage house who supplied everyone from Indian maharajas to French aristocracy.

Buoyed by his mistress’s praise and full of the arrogance of youth, the handsome young artisan had boasted: ‘If you provide the materials, m’lady, I will make you a set of luggage even finer than this one.’

Taking him at his word, Lady Greystone delivered the finest leather, wood, brass pellets and canvas to Merrick’s cottage on the outskirts of the village the following week. Six weeks later Merrick delivered six trunks that all neatly fitted inside one another like Russian dolls. The leather had been hand-stitched and coated with beeswax to seal it. Each trunk had a fine brass lock, forged by himself. The influential Lady Eleanor told her friends and the young saddler was in business. When the First World War had passed and the upper classes resumed their travels, it was to the small Oxfordshire company Milford that they turned for exquisite bespoke luggage, not Goyard and Vuitton.

Twenty years and one good marriage later, Merrick Milford had elevated his position in society. The fortunes of the Greystone family, however, had not been so fortunate, so when Lady Eleanor’s son Nathaniel gambled away the family fortune, the Greystones found a wealthy and eager buyer in the form of Edward Milford, Merrick’s son. And in the Milford family, Winterfold had grown and thrived.

As Cassandra’s car pulled up at Winterfold it was obvious, even now, that it was a well-tended and much-loved home. Flanking the pillars either side of the whitewashed steps were clipped bay trees and the black and white tiles on the pathway positively gleamed. The dove-grey brickwork and vast, sash windows looked well-kept, while spirals of smoke ascended from the four chimneys dotted around the roof.

‘It really is a beautiful place, isn’t it?’ said Emma, almost as if voicing her own thoughts.

‘Do you think?’ asked Cassandra. ‘It rather gives me the creeps.’

As they were shown inside, Emma had to admit Winterfold was an acquired taste, a unique house that was part home, part museum, adorned with an eclectic mixture of antiques, art and objets d’art from Saul’s travels around the world. Crossed Maori war-clubs and grinning masks looked down disapprovingly over an exquisite Louis-Quinze writing desk; a stuffed lion’s head shot on the Serengeti plains loomed over a roughly-carved French medieval fireplace that Saul claimed had once belonged to Gallic royalty itself. The owner’s living environment reflected the man and Saul Milford had been an adventurer. So much so, that when Emma had heard about her uncle’s death, she had been surprised that it had been something as ordinary as a heart attack, and that he hadn’t been lost as he ballooned over the Pacific or been savaged by wild jackals in Tanzania. Emma smiled at the scene: amid all this chaos, this eclectic clash of cultures, tea and cake was being quietly, reverently served. Saul would have roared. Nevertheless Emma accepted an elegant bone-china cup from Morton, Saul’s butler, and watched as visitors quietly stepped forwards to offer condolences to the family, the only note of drama being the swelling sound of Wagner in a background. The wake lasted barely an hour; the mourners seeming to disperse almost as quickly as they had arrived at Winterfold. Slowly the mourners left and Roger began ushering the family into Saul’s study to the left of the grand staircase. Emma rubbed her red eyes; her jet-lag was kicking in and she would be grateful when the whole thing was over and she could get back to Boston.

‘Em! How are you? I haven’t managed to talk to you all day.’

A handsome young man in his mid-twenties nudged Emma’s arm.

‘Hello Tom,’ she smiled, grateful for the first genuinely warm welcome she’d had since she’d arrived in England.

‘How’s the mistress of the universe? That’s what they call you people, isn’t it?’

Emma laughed. ‘I’m a management consultant, not some Wall Street banker.’

‘Oh yes, Mum did tell me,’ grinned Tom, running his fingers through his hair. ‘Sounds like a right old racket to me. You’re brought in and paid millions of quid to tell the management team they’re not good enough at their job?’

She tapped him playfully on the arm.

‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’

She liked Tom. He was funny, sweet and handsome, with a scrub of dirty blonde hair and a square chin that stopped him being pretty. She heard from him through emails full of smiley faces and barely legible missives about his latest line of work. Expelled from practically every public school that would have him, he had spent the time since he’d ‘mucked up’ his A-levels drifting round Europe and the US doing bar work in Amsterdam, photography in New York and some ill-defined ‘business’ or other in Dublin.