to make her feel like the visitor from Porlock, breaking Coleridge’s flow on Kubla Khan, but if he thought it’d have that effect on Carole Seddon, he’d got the wrong woman.
‘I gather you want to give me some kind of briefing, before I speak to Professor Teischbaum.’
‘In a way.’ Reluctantly, he added the letters he was reading to the refuse tip on his desk. ‘I have to say, I’m not in favour of your meeting this frightful Yank, anyway.’
‘I’m not that keen on it myself, but Gina is very insistent that I should. When I agreed to be a Trustee, I took on certain responsibilities, and this is just one of them. If we clam up completely and refuse to let anyone talk to Professor Teischbaum, she’ll just think we’ve got something to hide.’
‘Yes. I suppose I see the logic of that.’ He didn’t sound convinced. He still reckoned, if the Bracketts hierarchy completely ignored his rival biographer, then she’d go away. ‘But I don’t think Gina should be the one to decide who talks to the woman.’
‘Gina is Director of this organization. I would have thought this was exactly the sort of decision that she should make.’
‘Yes, I know she’s Director . . .’ He dismissed the title as an irrelevance, ‘but she doesn’t really know Bracketts. She hadn’t even read any Esmond before she mugged him up for the job interview. And though she’s absolutely fine as a kind of office manager, she shouldn’t be making decisions about important things like this.’
‘So far as I can gather, her thinking in suggesting that I talk to Professor Teischbaum is that I know relatively little about Bracketts, and therefore won’t be able to give much away.’
Graham Chadleigh-Bewes pulled at his fat lower lip disconsolately. ‘It still should be someone aware of the issues at stake.’
‘You’re not suggesting you should talk to the Professor, are you? Rival biographers meeting at dawn? Who’d have the choice of weapons?’
‘No,’ he replied testily. ‘The obvious person to do it is Sheila.’
‘Why?’
‘Because she knows Bracketts. She knows everything about the place, everything about Esmond. She would see this woman off with no problem at all.’
‘But, as I understand it, Graham, Sheila no longer has any official role at Bracketts. She certainly isn’t the Director. I gather she isn’t even a Trustee.’
‘Oh, that’s just office politics.’
‘What, do you mean she was voted off by the other Trustees?’
‘No, no, no. She went entirely of her own accord. Sheila had been wanting to reduce her commitment to Bracketts for some time. She’s put so much into the place, she wanted to have a bit of time to herself. Who can blame her?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Of course not. So eighteen months ago, she resigned as Director – for which, incidentally, she was never paid – and she became a Trustee. Then after six months, she resigned as a Trustee.’
‘Why?’
‘She didn’t want to affect the freedom of the Trustees to take new initiatives. Sheila knew the management of Bracketts had to change. She was the one who suggested advertising for a professional Director, for heaven’s sake. She said she didn’t want to outstay her welcome, like Margaret Thatcher. She wanted to give whoever took over from her a completely free hand and, as for herself, just withdraw gracefully.’
If Sheila Cartwright’s behaviour at the recent Trustees’ Meeting had been an example of her graceful withdrawal, Carole had even more sympathy for the impossible position into which Gina Locke had been placed. The new Director’s power was only theoretical. Every decision she made was going to be scrutinized – and quite possibly countermanded – by her predecessor.
The Board of Trustees, the regulatory body with the mandate to control such behaviour, seemed to be so awed by – or possibly in love with – Sheila Cartwright, that they gave Gina Locke no support at all. And since the discovery of the skeleton in the kitchen garden, no one even attempted to maintain the illusion that Sheila had taken a back seat.
‘Well,’ said Carole firmly. ‘It is going to be me who talks to Professor Teischbaum, so what do you want me to say to her?’
Whether Graham might have argued his point further was impossible to know, because they were interrupted by the arrival of his aunt with the coffee. And not just coffee, either. As well as the silver pot and bone china cups on the tray – with a tray-cloth! – there was an untouched circular sponge cake whose midriff revealed a jam and cream filling. Side-plates and silver cake forks completed the layout.
In the speed with which this apparition distracted Graham Chadleigh-Bewes from their conversation lay the explanation for his spreading girth. His Aunt Belinda not only pampered his ego and kept house for him; she also saw it as her duty to fatten him up. And the gleam in Graham’s eye showed that he loved being fattened up. The arrival of the sponge cake crystallized a vague feeling that Carole had formed about the man – that he was asexual, driven by pique rather than passion, that even his enthusiasm for the works of Esmond Chadleigh was in some way automatic. But there was nothing half-hearted or unspontaneous about his love of food.
Carole refused the offer of a slice. She had only had breakfast a couple of hours before and, anyway, didn’t ever eat between meals. Having resisted the biscuit-nibbling culture of the Civil Service all her working life, she wasn’t going to relax her standards in retirement.
Her host had no such scruples. His ageing face looked ever more babyish as he watched his Aunt Belinda make one incision in the powdered surface of the sponge and remove the knife. Then she went through a little pantomime of moving the knife round the arc to find exactly the size of slice he favoured. An angle of twenty-five degrees was condemned as ‘Too mean’, and her overreaction of moving the knife round to forty-five degrees prompted a squeal of ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Auntie – I’ll explode!’ But the slice he ended up with was still a pretty substantial one.
Carole found the display a little unwholesome, because it was clearly such a well-established routine. The two of them did this every day – possibly at every meal – the elderly woman playing mothering games with the middle-aged man-child. Carole found herself wondering what had happened to Graham’s real mother, and how long Belinda had been looking after her nephew.
As soon as he’d got his slice of cake, Graham Chadleigh-Bewes said, with some brusqueness, ‘Now you must go, Auntie. Carole and I have got important things to discuss.’
The old lady, unoffended, reached for the tray. ‘Shall I take this with me?’
‘No,’ her nephew replied hastily. ‘I . . . or my guest . . . might want some more . . . coffee.’
The coy exchange of looks between them made Carole realize that this was an extension of their game. Aunt Belinda threatened to take Graham’s cake away every morning. Every morning he stopped her – and no doubt later helped himself to a second slice. Carole felt increasingly uncomfortable as, with a little chortle, Belinda Chadleigh left the room.
‘Now where were we?’ asked Graham, as though he were a serious executive in a serious
