Bertie felt a great sense of loss.
106. Lunch at the Café St Honoré
Sasha had been shopping in George Street. She had spent more than she intended – over two hundred pounds, when one totted it up – but she reminded herself that money was no longer an object. A few days earlier, she had received a letter from a firm of solicitors to the effect that the residue of her aunt’s estate, which had been left to her, amounted to over four hundred and eighty thousand pounds. When she had been first told that she was the residuary beneficiary, Todd had explained that the residue was what was left after everybody else had taken their share.
“It’s unlikely to be more than a couple of hundred pounds,”
he had said. “The legacies are bound to swallow most of it up, not that the old trout had very much, I suspect.”
The old trout, however, had been as astute an investor as her legacies had been mean. Five hundred pounds had been left to the Church of Scotland. Twenty-five pounds had been left to the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; a further twenty-five pounds to the Ghurka Trust, and ten pounds to St George’s School for Girls. The residue was to go to Sasha, and now that the estate had been ingathered by Messrs Turcan Connell it amounted to almost half a million pounds after the payment of duty.
It had taken some time for Sasha to accustom herself to the fact that she now had a considerable amount of money at her disposal.
They had been comfortable enough before on Todd’s drawings on the partnership of Macaulay Holmes Richardson Black, but having these uncommitted hundreds of thousands of pounds was material wealth on a scale which Sasha had previously not experienced. She 310
Lunch at the Café St Honoré
was not a spendthrift, though, and this minor shopping spree in George Street had made her feel vaguely uncomfortable. If she spent two hundred pounds a day, every day, she wondered, how long would it take her to get through her fortune? About eight years, she calculated, allowing for the accumulation of interest.
She thought for a moment of what eight years of profligacy might be like. She could buy a new pair of shoes every day, and have at the end of that eight-year period more than two thousand pairs of shoes. But what could one do with such a mountain of shoes? This was the problem; there was a limit to what one could do with money. And yet here I am, she thought, feeling guilty about spending two hundred pounds.
She was thinking of this when she wandered into Ottakars Bookshop. Sasha was not a particularly keen reader, but she belonged to a book group that met every other month and she needed to buy the choice for their next meeting: Ronald Frame.
At their last meeting they had discussed a novel by Ian Rankin, and one or two of the members had been slightly frightened.
Sasha had been able to reassure them, though: nothing to worry about, she had said. Very well written, but nothing like that ever happens in Edinburgh. Or at least not in the Braids.
She moved to the Frame section in Ottakars. There was The Lantern Bearers, and there was Time in Carnbeg, the book group’s choice. She picked it up and looked for a picture of the author. Sasha liked to know what the author looked like when she read a book. She did not like the look of Somerset Maugham, and had not read him for that reason. And she did not like the look of some of the younger woman novelists, who did nothing, it would seem, with their hair. If they do nothing with their hair, then will they do much more with their prose? she asked herself. And answered the question by avoiding these writers altogether. Such frumps. And always going on about how awful things were. Well, they weren’t awful – and certainly not if one had four hundred and eighty thousand pounds (minus two hundred).
It was while she was examining the Carnbeg book for a picture of Ronald Frame that she became aware of another customer Lunch at the Café St Honoré
311
standing on her right, examining a shelf of wine books. And a further glance revealed that it was Bruce, the young man from the firm who had come to the Edinburgh South Conservative Association Ball at the Braid Hills Hotel. She had liked him even before the ball and his courteous behaviour on that evening – he had been extremely polite to Ramsey Dunbarton when he was going on about having been the Duke of Plaza-Toro in some dreadful operetta back in the year dot – had endeared him further to her. And he was terribly good-looking too, bearing in mind that he came from somewhere like Dunfermline, or was it Crieff?
She moved towards him and he looked up from the wine atlas he had been studying.
“Mrs Todd!”
“Please, not Mrs Todd,” she said. “Please – Sasha.”
Bruce smiled. “Sasha.”
“You’re looking at wine books,” she said, peering at the atlas.
“I wish I knew more about wine. Raeburn is quite informed, but I’m not.”
Bruce smirked. Raeburn Todd would know nothing about wine, in his view. He would drink – what would he drink? Chardonnay!
“I find the subject very interesting,” said Bruce. “And this atlas looks really useful. Look at this map. All the estates are listed in this tiny section of river bank. Amazing. Pity about the price, though. It’s really expensive.”
Sasha took the wine atlas from him and glanced at the back cover. Eighty-five pounds did seem like a lot of money for a book, but then the thought crossed her mind. Eighty-five pounds was not a great deal of money if you had over four hundred thousand pounds.
“Let me get it for you as a present,” she said suddenly. And then she added: “And then let me take you for lunch at the Café St Honoré. Do you know it? It’s just round the corner.”
“But I couldn’t,” protested Bruce. “I couldn’t let you.”
“Please,’ she said. “Let me do this. I’ve just had wonderful good fortune and I want to share it. Please let me do this – just this once.”
Bruce hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. Women 312
Confidences
were always doing this sort of thing for him. They couldn’t help themselves.
“All right,” he said. “But at least let me buy us a bottle of wine at the restaurant. What do you like?”
“Chardonnay,” said Sasha.
107. Confidences
They sat at a table for two, near the window. Bruce, who had completed a survey earlier than he had expected, was pleased to spend the few hours that he had in hand having lunch, and if this was in the company of an attractive woman (even if slightly blowsy) and at her expense, then all the better. The survey in question had been a singularly unpleasant chore – looking around a poky flat off Easter Road. The flat had been modernised by a developer in shim-sham style, with chip-board cupboards and glossy wallpaper. Bruce had shuddered, and had written in a low valuation, which would limit the price which the developer got for the property. Now, in the considerably more pleasing surroundings of the Café St Honoré one might almost be in Paris, and he sat back and perused the menu with interest.
“I’m rather glad I bumped into you,” said Sasha, fingering the gold bracelet on her wrist. “I had been wanting to talk to you.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “I enjoyed the ball,” he said. “Even if there were very few people there. More like a private party.
Good fun.”
Sasha smiled. “You were very good to poor old Ramsey Dunbarton,” she said. “It can’t have been much fun for you, listening to him going on about being the Duke of Plaza-Toro.”
Bruce smiled. One could afford to be generous about the boring when people found one so fascinating. “It meant a lot to him, I suppose,” he said. “Who was the Duke of Plaza-Toro anyway? Was he in the Tory Party?”