Guilty Pleasures. Tasmina Perry
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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.
‘I wanted to drop by and see if you were OK,’ he said with a note of concern. ‘How is it going so far?’
‘Difficult,’ she said honestly.
‘Roger?’
Emma caught the co-conspirator’s smile.
She grinned back and nodded.
‘Roger always had a high opinion of himself. Always been the failing of this company in my opinion. Saul allowed him to get away with far too much, indulged Roger’s ego. Actually, I think he was a little afraid of him. As I’m sure you know, Roger can be very charming, but he’s also very manipulative. Saul made him creative director at 25 because, well, because that’s what Roger wanted. And the company has been going downhill ever since.’
‘Well, he isn’t creative director of Milford any longer.’
‘You fired him?’ said Christopher, surprised.
‘Not exactly. Moved him along.’
‘Well, good for you,’ said Christopher. ‘But watch out for that one. You know what a rat will do when it’s cornered.’
Emma frowned. A rat? It was obvious Christopher didn’t think much of Saul’s younger brother, but that last comment was laced with venom.
‘Sorry, Emma,’ interrupted Christopher, glancing at the clock on the wall, then at his own wristwatch, ‘I really must be going. Chessie is at the Feathers. We’re staying there tonight and then we’re off to London.’
‘Oh. OK, if you must,’ said Emma, following him out of the library towards the door. ‘It’s always lovely to see you. How are the children, by the way?’
‘All fine. Well, I think they’re fine. I don’t see as much of them as I’d like. My two eldest live in Scotland. Stella, my youngest, lives in the States now. She’s a fashion designer. I tried to get her to follow in her old man’s footsteps – she studied sculpture at the Slade, but it seems she prefers working with cloth rather than clay.’
Emma’s ears had pricked up.
‘She’s a designer. Really? Who does she work for?’
‘Oh, some trendy American company in LA. Can’t even remember the name,’ he laughed.
‘LA?’
‘“La-la-land”, I know, but her mother lives on the West Coast. Stella went over there after college and never came back.’
‘Is she a good designer?’ asked Emma cautiously.
He laughed heartily. ‘How could she fail with my genes? Hey, maybe you should give her Roger’s old job? I’d be glad to have her back in the country.’
Emma smiled weakly. ‘Maybe it’s not such a crazy idea,’ she said under her