Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  Constantia’s sitting room was immensely private and completely Constantia, so much so that it appeared to Ottilie to resemble nothing more or less than a designer showroom, or some specialist shop licensed to trade in small household items for the county, but housed in a much larger building, as if Tredegar was the main store and her sitting room an in-house boutique.

  Here there was not only no touch of Philip anywhere, there was no sight of anything that would have been allowed by him anywhere else in the house, where nothing could be found that had not been there for at least fifty years.

  To begin with everything, without exception, was new. The china ornaments, the porcelain dogs, the bookends, the flower vases from the General Trading Company, the yellow carpet with the small design of keys on it, everything was new and recently designed, and very pretty, but not at all Tredegar. The sofa which, like the ruffled blind at the window, was Colefax and Fowler chintz, was very feminine, and Ottilie knew after just one glance at it how Philip would hate it.

  ‘Iced sherry?’

  Constantia moved easily and elegantly across her closely carpeted sitting room talking about her chic ‘other’ life, as she called it, in London, while Ottilie sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs, a rather small chair more suited to a bedroom, and gazed around her in some interest. She never opened a conversation, force of habit from working in the hotel.

  ‘I hear,’ Constantia went on, eventually, handing Ottilie a very small iced sherry in a Stuart crystal glass, ‘I hear from everyone that you are executing miracles at the Angel. Very brave of you to take it on, Ot-ti-lie, really, really brave.’

  Ottilie smiled. She smiled because it was amusing to think that everyone Constantia knew was talking about Ottilie’s so-called achievement and yet no-one had deigned to come and visit her, and because she knew that by not mentioning it Constantia was also indicating to Ottilie that she knew all about her having been thrown out of the Grand by the Cartarets, and doubtless too about her impoverished sojourn in the unheated basement.

  ‘My dear, why didn’t you simply sell your car? Really, you could have sold the car, surely, and not lived in such a terrible place?’

  ‘I could have,’ Ottilie agreed, ‘but I didn’t fancy being thrown into Truro gaol.’ And then to Constantia’s questioning look she answered, ‘The car was registered in my father’s name. He could easily have come after me.’

  ‘He could have done, but he would not have. Your father is much too much the gentleman.’ Constantia lit a cigarette and smiled through the smoke at Ottilie. ‘Much too much the gentleman,’ she repeated.

  ‘Have you heard from Philip?’ Ottilie asked her, impatient to hear news.

  ‘Not since his posting; you know boys. He’s wildly in love with you, you know that? Terribly sweet.’

  There was something awful about Constantia’s describing the innocent treasured romance of those last two days and the loneliness that followed as ‘terribly sweet’. A dress was ‘terribly sweet’, an invitation to a dinner party could possibly be ‘terribly sweet’, a Shetland pony or even a pet canary, but not someone madly in love. It was so dismissive. Made all the endless pain seem really rather ridiculous, pathetic even.

  I am out of place here, Ottilie thought. I am completely out of place here. It’s a wonder she hasn’t commented on how rough my hands are and the fact that there is mud on the edge of my skirt. I should be talking about Courrèges boots and miniskirts and whether or not I like geometric haircuts. I am so provincial, such a country bumpkin, my hair is not cut at Vidal Sassoon, I’m still wearing shirtwaister dresses and flat shoes, and I’ve never even been to a Beatles concert, let alone to an all-white première with Michael Caine and Peter Sellers. Not only that but one of my eyes won’t stop flickering because I have not had more than five hours’ sleep in weeks.

  Constantia must have seen or felt something of Ottilie’s impatience at being locked into what seemed now to her to be an unnecessary waste of time, time when she would normally be working, because she returned to the subject of Philip.

  ‘I expect you saw an officer had been killed in Cyprus?’ she stated, not pausing to have this confirmed. ‘Well I heard this morning from a friend of a friend that the officer killed is – or rather was, poor chap – a great friend of Philip’s and they had been together only the evening before. A sniper, you know? But anyway, this friend, she thinks he’s all right, that Philip is all right, so we can only hope that he will be home soon and then we can all stop worrying.’

  At that moment Ottilie really envied Constantia her cigarettes. They must be such a relief at times like these.

  ‘Shall we lunch?’

  Ottilie did not really feel like lunch after such grim news, but since Constantia was indicating for her to follow her to the small informal dining room at the back of the kitchens she did so, passing on the way memories of Philip, of them all playing in the corridors on rainy days like today. Or waiting impatiently at the windows to go outside to go fishing. Now perhaps he really was in danger, not just the pretend danger that they had loved to imagine as children, and there would be no more running around the lake. Indeed so much had Tredegar changed since he left it, by the time Ottilie sat down for lunch she felt that Philip might already be dead, so little of him seemed to have remained in the house.

  It was not just that the house now seemed to be filled with the kind of Constance Spry flower arrangements that he always professed to loathe, not just that Sporting Life no longer lay thrown carelessly crumpled across some armchair, or that the house seemed immeasurably hotter with fires still lit even though it was summer, or that his .22 rifle was not sticking out of the landing window on red alert for shooting at marauding magpies intent on stealing the swallows’ eggs. Not just that Ottilie could see from the breakfast room window that there were last year’s leaves on top of the swimming pool cover because only Philip liked to swim at all temperatures and all the year round, or that there were bright orange marigolds in the kitchen garden which he would hate, or that smoked salmon was being served for lunch – Philip always called smoked salmon ‘the bane of the upper class kitchen’ – but the whole of his presence was gone from Tredegar, as if it had never been.

  The truth was that until now Ottilie had never realized just how much her enjoyment of Tredegar depended on him. She thought all this over as she ate politely and listened to Constantia talking about ‘the Snowdons’ at ‘KP’ and endless London personalities who all seemed to be from another planet to Ottilie whose whole life centred round her work leaving no time for anything else.

  The lunch coming to a close, at last, Ottilie was just rising thankfully to her feet, looking forward to going back to work which now seemed most especially welcoming, most particularly warming, when Constantia said, quite casually, ‘I thought you’d like to know that I’d heard from a friend that Vision Hotels are looking to take over the Clover House Group in the next few weeks. I thought I ought to tell you, because if this is so I would think that putting in too much effort at that funny little place where you’re working, well, it would be really rather a waste of time, wouldn’t it?’

  Of course Ottilie herself knew nothing of the sort but what she did suddenly know was that this was the sole reason that Constantia had asked her across to lunch, nothing to do with Philip or his friend who had been killed.

  Like the fatal PS in a letter where the sender so often unveiled the real motive for writing to the recipient, Constantia had finally revealed the true reason for asking Ottilie to lunch, and it was to tell her that her days at what she referred to as that ‘funny little place where you’re working’ were numbered.

  Back at work, but feeling stunned by the news, Ottilie nevertheless went about her usual duties, smiling at guests, helping in the kitchens, supervising the dining room, yet all the time all she could see was the ‘V’ for Vision sign on everything. For God’s sake it must have been only yesterday that she had been entertaining Sir Harold Ropner and praying for a bu
dget to do the place up, and now it seemed it was only seconds later and everything that she had accomplished would be swept aside and replaced by corner-cutting, profit motives and worst of all, the pride and joy of the Vision group, portion control. She resolved to go to bed purposefully late having tried to overtire herself.

  But she knew the moment she climbed into bed she would lie awake for the rest of the night unable to switch off Constantia’s voice as she left.

  ‘It’s one of those things, Ottilie dear, it’s happening everywhere – takeovers, you know. You will have to find somewhere else to devote yourself to, you poor thing, and after all your hard work. Tut, tut. Never mind.’

  But Ottilie did mind, she minded terribly, far more than she would have thought possible.

  Seventeen

  Ottilie stared down at the news items on the damp floor in front of her. When the newspaper was laid on her breakfast tray in the morning she never found anything to interest her outside of the headlines, but once put on the dampened floor by Jean last thing at night certain items appeared to take on a fascination and a vitality that they had never had when Ottilie was first flicking through them.

  Who wanted to know whether or not miniskirts would be allowed into the Royal Enclosure for Ascot? Now that they might all be going to be chucked out just as everything had started to come good it all seemed so trivial. Ottilie sighed suddenly and straightened up, but finding that she was afraid to go to bed in case she could not sleep she sat down suddenly instead in Mrs East’s rocking chair – ‘’tes mine and no-one’s else’s, Miss Flar-tee’, she always told Ottilie, patting it as if it was a dog.

  The whole hotel, above Ottilie, and across the courtyard was completely quiet. It was that nearing-midnight kind of quiet that made her think of the old days at the Grand when she was little and she would have nightmares and wake up to find herself completely alone, because her parents slept on another floor and Edith on another corridor.

  Sometimes she would feel so frightened that she would go right to the bottom of her bed, right to the end, and shut her eyes tight and just hope and pray that morning would come soon. Her eyes would close, as she could feel they were doing now, and she would fall asleep as she seemed to be doing now. She knew she shouldn’t sleep, that she should go upstairs to her room, but somehow what with the tiredness and the warmth of the kitchen range, and Mrs East’s rocking chair slowly tipping her backwards and forwards, sleep was irresistible.

  How much later she wouldn’t at first know, but she was suddenly bright awake hours or possibly minutes later, with that feeling that someone or something was watching her. She stood up and looked around her. The kitchen was still warm, but she felt cold, and even colder when she heard what had woken her. Someone or something was scratching at the window. After a few seconds she knew that such an insistent sound must belong to a human being, and that the human being could not be someone who knew her or they would surely be calling to her instead of watching her.

  Fear always had the same effect on Ottilie. It made her go forwards rather than backwards. Edith would always say ‘Grasp the nettle, dear, and then it stings less’ so now Ottilie straightened her shoulders and forced herself forward to the old-fashioned kitchen windows which ran in one long small-paned length down the whole of one side. The kitchen was halfway between the courtyard and the cellar so that it was quite easy for people outside to look down into them. Determinedly she climbed on a chair and pressed her face to one of the square pieces of old glass in front of her. Seconds later a face appeared, suddenly and instantly pressed against the same pane, but pressed far too hard so that the features were squashed beyond recognition. Ottilie jumped backwards from the window and as she did so heard a man laughing, but before she could run to the door and up the stairs into the main body of the hotel to fetch Nantwick, she heard her name being called. ‘Ottie! Ottie!’

  She didn’t know why but half asleep as she was she immediately went and unlocked the door and flung it open to see a tall man in a polo-necked jumper and dark trousers, dark hair, grey eyes. Her hands flew to her face, and she said faintly, ‘My God, Joseph, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Now, Ottie, why on earth would you say Joseph like that, and after all this time? That is really quite, quite extraordinary.’

  Lorcan stepped out of the darkness as Ottie stepped back, only realizing when Lorcan stood in front of her that, half asleep as she was, she had mistaken him for his middle brother, which was ridiculous because Lorcan had always been taller than Joseph, and although they shared the same colouring their manner was quite different. Well, practically everything about them was different except their grey eyes which were precisely the same, as if Mother Nature having given the eldest boy beautiful clear grey eyes with brown flecks had decided that they were so arresting she would press the button again with the second O’Flaherty boy.

  ‘I had to abandon the old dog collar because I’ve been down on the quays, hence the un-priest-like appearance.’ Lorcan indicated his polo-necked jumper. ‘You know how it is, Ottie. So many of my parishioners have the less than virtuous habit of spending their money on beer I have to try and meet them informally and remind them of their duties to their poor families before they get so insanely inebriated after returning from sea there is nothing left for shoes and food for their childer. Can’t go down to the quays dressed as a member of the clergy – I’d end up being thrown to the sharks. A dog collar is a red rag to a bull down there.’

  Ottilie didn’t like to tell Lorcan that he had actually given her the fright of her life. Instead she went to one of the cupboards and brought out a bottle of whisky and two small glasses. She held up the bottle questioningly to Lorcan.

  ‘Well now thank you, Ottie, just a very small dram will not go amiss. Staying sober while everyone else is intent on getting footless is an enormously taxing occupation, believe me. It’s trying to get through to the poor fellows before the hop completely fogs their brain and they even forget where they live that exhausts you – did you know that’s why they paint their doors such different colours, so that they can remember where they live?’

  Lorcan sighed and laughed, and shook his head as he watched Ottilie pouring them both small glasses of Scotch. Ottilie raised her glass to him, noting as she did that he, as she herself must be, was pale from tiredness.

  ‘Imagine your mistaking me for Joseph of all people, Ottie,’ he exclaimed, shaking his head and returning to their first conversation. ‘It’s almost like telepathy, so strange, really strange, that you should suddenly mention his name that way.’ The first taste of the Scotch had obviously had a reviving effect.

  ‘I was fast asleep—’

  ‘I know. But would you believe it, I have just, today, had a letter from him?’

  Ottilie would not have believed it for one second had she not already read about ‘Joseph Maximus’ in the American magazine in Paris all that time before. She had not felt that she could tell Lorcan, fearing that after all their anxieties, after all they had been through thinking that Joseph might be dead, Lorcan might be unimaginably hurt.

  ‘You’ve had a letter from Joseph?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes, Ottie, our brother Joseph is alive and well and coming to England. Imagine! All this time he has been in America, alive and well.’

  Lorcan stared at Ottilie. She stared back, completely silenced, but not as Lorcan must imagine because she was in shock from the realization that their brother was alive, but from having to cope anew with the realization that it was she, Ottilie, not Joseph, who had been really to blame, the cause of all Lorcan’s suffering over his brother. The immensity of this suffering, which up until that moment she had only ever been able to imagine, she could now see and hear for herself because it was reflected in the sheer relief in Lorcan’s eyes, and in the wonder in his voice as he caught at her hands, his own so warm and strong. ‘After all this time, Ottie, we have heard from Joseph at last. He is alive, he is well and he is coming to see us, here, in St El
combe. Imagine, our Joseph is coming back to us. Our prayers have at last been answered, Ottie.’

  Lorcan knocked on the table at which they were both seated in a steady, unceasing manner as he repeated, ‘Joseph is alive and coming back to us. Joseph is alive and coming back to us. God is good, Ottie. God is so good.’

  Ottilie took a much larger sip of her Scotch and smiled but she still could not find words that were suitable for the moment. Of course Lorcan must be right, God was good, and of course it was wonderful that Joseph was coming back to them, alive and well, but then Ottilie herself had known that he was alive and well for three years now.

  What she was not sure of was how much God Himself had to do with Joseph’s return to St Elcombe. But seeing the shining look in Lorcan’s eyes, his utter sincerity and belief in the goodness of the Almighty, she had to attempt to suppress her feelings, push aside the guilty knowledge that by throwing those wretched earrings at Joseph that night, some people might say it was she who had been responsible for his disappearance.

  ‘May God forgive me if I am wrong, Ottilie, but at last everything seems to be coming right for us all, everyone settled the way Ma would have wanted us to be, everyone with some good purpose, some place to which they can really direct their efforts.’

  Forget about God forgiving you, Lorcan, Ottilie thought. May God forgive me.

  But aloud she said, ‘Let’s have another little Scotch, shall we, Lorcan?’

  Lorcan shook his head and stood up.

  ‘Many thanks, Ottie, but I must be on my way, for I am surely late as it is. Father Peter likes me to take him a hot cup of cocoa when I get in. The poor old priest has terrible trouble sleeping. I keep teasing him that if only he would give up the cocoa he would probably sleep like a baby. God bless you, Ottie.’

  Lorcan smiled and waved to her from the door, and Ottilie began to shut it, feeling nothing but relief at the idea that her eldest brother was going, but before she could put the chain across again Lorcan turned back. ‘Oh, and one more thing, Ottie. I forgot to tell you in the excitement of my news. You’ll never guess what?’