Guilty Pleasures

‘St Martin’s is very creative,’ said Abby, taking the photograph from Emma and looking at it as if she really understood it. She had only just left university herself; her father was a friend of Saul’s which is how she got the job but Emma was now beginning to doubt the wisdom of having invited her along at all. Although Emma liked her a great deal, her bubbly enthusiasm couldn’t disguise her inexperience. In fact, so far she had brought very little to the evening’s proceedings beyond throwing the odd lingering look in Ruan’s direction.

‘Look, this is serious,’ said Emma. ‘Obviously we’ve got to make the right appointment but I’ve got meetings with the banks next week and they are going to want to know who our management team are.’

‘What about going back to Roger?’ said Abby, trying to fill the silence.

‘I’m not sure that’s the best way forward,’ said Emma diplomatically, although she knew the choice was narrowing between Roger and Mr Straight-jacket.

‘How about I open a bottle of wine?’ said Ruan looking in his bag. ‘I swiped this from the boardroom.’

‘Great idea,’ smiled Abby, jumping up to fetch some glasses. ‘By the way, did you find out who wrote “Bailey Out” on the wall outside Byron House?’ she asked as she was rummaging in a cupboard.

Emma shook her head sadly. She was beginning to find running her own company less of a dream and more of a nightmare that she couldn’t wake up from. She understood why people in the factory and the village as a whole were nervous of change, but they hadn’t seen the Milford accounts. If Emma couldn’t find a way to reverse the company’s fortunes, the factory would close and they would all be out of jobs. And at the moment, she didn’t need the pressure of that responsibility to add to her worries.

‘I’ve spoken to Johnston, the floor manager,’ said Ruan briskly. ‘He says he will launch a discreet inquiry but doesn’t reckon any of his lot would do anything like that.’ His voice had a note of reproach that caught Emma unaware. Ruan had been supportive of her plan to modernize the products and the working practices, and she’d rather assumed that Ruan was on her side all the way. But his protective attitude towards the factory floor – people he’d worked alongside and probably grown up with – was only natural. Emma made a mental note: Must remember that this is life and death for some people.

‘It was probably some pissed kids from the pub,’ said Abby, trying to make light of it. Emma smiled at her, but she was unconvinced.

‘Perhaps,’ said Emma feeling her voice wobble. Abby caught the gesture and looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. She put the glasses on the table.

‘I’m just going through into the other room to phone my boyfriend,’ she said with mock cheeriness. ‘It’s 8 p.m. He’ll be wondering where I am.’

When they were alone, Ruan walked over and awkwardly put an arm around her. Emma had known Ruan McCormack almost all her life. Both his mother and father had been artisans at the factory. He had been a couple of years ahead of her at the local primary school, but at such a small village school, the kids all played together, plus Saul had allowed the children of Milford employees to swim in the lake at Winterfold, so Ruan had taught her to swim the front crawl and to dive. As they grew older they had drifted apart; just awkward smiles across the street when Ruan was with his friends. By the time Emma moved away to boarding school, Ruan had grown into a handsome young man; moody and super-cool; the hunk of the village. Whenever she came home in the holidays, if Emma saw him, she would blush furiously and run away.

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.