Head Shot

26

'Wel my God; it's our Mario! It's not like you to frequent the family business. What brings you here?' Paula Viareggio grinned at her cousin across the counter, her dark eyes carrying a mix of mockery and challenge, as they had done since they were children.

'A packet ofporcini mushrooms and some Seranno ham, actual y,' he said.

As he looked at Paula, across the counter, he was struck by the contrast she presented to the girl he had just left. Ivy Brennan was locked in a sort of extended childhood, her life shaped by her diminutive size and her elfin features. Paula, on the other hand, was ageless, her silver hair, high cheekbones and velvet skin giving her the appeal of a work of art, of an old master oil painting.

For a time in his late teens and early twenties, Mario McGuire had lusted after his Uncle Beppe's older daughter… something which Paula had understood from an early stage. The chal enge had been in her eyes from that time on, but he had been sensible enough to know that if he rose to it, he would be setting off down a dangerous path from which there would be no turning. There had been a couple of close cal s though; one at a party at Beppe's, and another after he had left home, when Paula had turned up at his flat late at night with a couple of drinks under her belt and mischief on her mind. And in truth, there had been another night, another party at which everyone had been very drunk, after which he had never been entirely certain what had happened. He had never asked, and Paula had never mentioned it.

'Mushrooms and ham indeed,' she laughed, scornful y.

'Why not? We're having friends for dinner and Maggie's got this new recipe.'

'So she sends you here to shop for her?'

He glanced around the big, double-fronted shop. 'This is still a deli, isn't it?'

'For the moment, yes. Come on, cuz, this is Paula; you're not kidding me. Your office is just along the road, but in al the time you've been 104 working out of it, you've never set foot in here. Now, the day after Aunt Christina drops her bombshell, here you are. This is an inspection visit by the new trustee, isn't it?'

He smiled at her; the full high-octane Mario smile, the killer leg opener from his single days which he had always been careful, until then, never to flash in her direction, for fear of what it might unleash.

'No fooling you, eh. Okay I admit it; I thought I'd drop in for a chat.'

'I'll chat to you any time, Big Irish, but why here? You can come round to my place any time you like.'

'I don't like to drop in there unannounced; you might have company.'

'Not right now, I don't; the lady is on her own. Anyhow, I never used to bother about paying you a surprise visit.'

'I remember.'

'Much good it used to do me, too. So what do you want to chat about?'

It was his turn to throw her a chal enging look. 'Now who's being coy? You know bloody well; I want to talk about you, our Paula, and your place in the family business. By the way, how's Uncle Beppe taking it?

I thought he was uncharacteristical y quiet after Mum made her announcement.'

'Dad's very sad that she's going. He's relied on her advice whenever a major decision has had to be made in the past, and he'll miss her greatly.'

Mario laughed out loud. 'Hah! That's a belter, that one. Whatever Mum said he did the opposite. Remember after Papa died, he left a plan to launch Viareggio fish and chip shops as a franchise? My mother was all for going ahead with that; she pleaded, almost, with Uncle Beppe to agree to it. But did he? Not on your life. I was only sixteen then, and more interested in birds than business, but I remember Mum coming home from that last meeting with him. I've never seen her so angry; before or since. At the end he'd laughed at her. "Franchised fish and chip shops," he'd said. "Never heard anything so fucking stupid in my life."

'He's a real business tycoon, is your dad,' he chuckled, sarcastically.

'If he'd relied on my mother's advice, he'd be the chairman of a pie right now. D'you know there's a Harry bloody Ramsden in Singapore? If Papa Viareggio hadn't dropped down dead twenty years ago, it would have been his name… and yours… over the door.'

Paula looked at him cool y. He had tried to rattle her, but he had failed. 'Do you think you're going to change things then, Mario? Because if you do, I have to remind you that my father stil has the casting vote in the event of a disagreement between the two trustees. You've got no more power than Aunt Christina had. You'l be a figurehead just like she was.

McGuire crumpled up his mask of false bonhomie, and threw it away.

He looked at her without a flicker of humour in his eyes. 'Don't you believe that, cousin, not for one moment. You see, I'm not blind to my mother's only fault; she had this classical y Italian thing against washing the family linen in public. That's why she let Uncle Beppe get away with it, that time and on every occasion since. But I'm not like that; if I believe as a trustee that the casting vote is being used in a way that's against the best interests of the beneficiaries, then I won't hesitate for one second to go to court to have it overturned. That's the truth, a our dad better believe it. You too, for that matter.'

A flame kindled in her dark eyes. 'Are you threatening me, Mario?'

He shook his head, firmly. 'No. I'm telling you, that's all. Paula, I've got my own life to lead and a career outside the family business, so I've got no wish to get involved in day-to-day management things. I have got one or two ideas that I'm going to air, but I don't think that Uncle Beppe wil have a problem with any of them. There's contracts of employment, for example. As I understand it, our managers have none at the moment; not formally, at least. That's dodgy legal y, and it's not right moral y, so I'm going to propose that they have.

'They don't need to be fancy; just the standard rights and obligations, and the customary loyalty clause.'

'What's that?' asked his cousin.

'You know, the one about no additional like employment without approval. It just means that if one of our managers, like you are, wanted to take on a second managerial appointment in her spare time. .. let's say she ran a few saunas for example… she couldn't without the approval of her principal employer, the trust.'

He watched as her face seemed to set into a hard shell. 'Now,' he said, his smile back in place, 'about those mushrooms and that ham.'