Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  Ottilie could not guess so she remained silent but she smiled nevertheless and waited for what her overwhelmingly kind eldest brother would have to say.

  ‘Our Joseph’s not no-one any more. Do you know he is a very important young man now? Not yet thirty and managing director of Vision Hotels, Europe. How about that? Our Joseph? All those days hanging around doing odd jobs at the Grand, they obviously really paid off.’

  Ottilie felt that it had to be a miracle of sorts that she was able to make any kind of reply to this news, but as Lorcan was clearly so happy she was able to get by with a murmur. She waved him goodbye for so long after he had actually gone that had anyone come into the kitchen she imagined they would have thought her both mad and drunk. Eventually, unable to control her feelings, she found herself turning back to the bottle of whisky, unscrewing the top, and pouring herself a second glass of Scotch which she sat and drank all by herself.

  Veronica was giving Ottilie one of her shrewd looks.

  ‘You’ve been up all these nights worrying,’ she said flatly.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Probably from the lines under your eyes, the fact that you have not eaten any lunch in a week, let alone I suspect any dinner, and you are sounding tired and depressed. Otherwise you’re fine.’

  Veronica carefully removed her with-it glasses and pulling at her polo-neck jumper cleared her throat. ‘I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill. One single piece of glass planted in a salad—’

  ‘Roast pork, actually—’

  ‘Is not something with which we cannot cope, and will not cope again, and again, and again, if need be.’

  ‘No, true.’ Ottilie put her cup of coffee down with unusual care. When Veronica wasn’t looking or was answering the telephone, she determined that she would quickly rummage in the bottom drawer of her desk and swallow some aspirin to relieve her throbbing head. ‘But what I think you will agree we cannot cope with, Veronica, is Vision Hotels taking us over.’

  ‘You are joking.’

  ‘No, I am not.’

  ‘No you are not. Oh, sh— ugar, just as everything was going right,’ said Veronica morosely.

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  ‘Perhaps one of us could seduce the managing director?’

  Ottilie sighed. ‘Well, maybe you, but certainly not me.’ And then in answer to Veronica’s questioning look, ‘He’s my brother. Besides, I don’t think you’d want to, not really.’

  But one look at Joseph and Ottilie could see that Veronica did not believe her. One look at Joseph and Veronica fell for him, hook, line and sinker, and Ottilie could not really blame her. He walked into their office the following week looking every inch the successful businessman, dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, gold cuff links, except Joseph had the looks of a movie star. More than that, he had the tanned even-featured looks of a young god. In all the months that Ottilie had known Veronica she had never once known her to take any real notice of a man of any age, but one look at ‘Joseph Maximus’ and she fell for him. And that was before he had even opened his mouth and started to charm not just Veronica but the whole of St Elcombe. Certainly from the moment he gave notice of his arrival he could do no wrong for Lorcan. Arriving back in grand style – Mercedes, chauffeur driven – he invited Ottilie and Lorcan to join him at the Grand where he had taken the top suite – Blue Lady’s suite.

  Lorcan was in such a state when Ottilie went to pick him up for their reunion dinner that she thought he would most likely burst out of his dog collar within seconds of seating himself beside her in the car.

  ‘Imagine Joseph, in the top suite,’ Lorcan kept saying, over and over. ‘Can you imagine, Ottie? Our Joseph in the top suite at the Grand, as rich as a rajah and even now ordering caviar and champagne most like, and in the very place where we both once painted the railings and put up wallpaper? It’s hard put to understand it all I am. Wait until we hear about his adventures, Ottie, that is indeed going to be something. How did he do it? My, but how proud Ma would be on this day, wouldn’t you say? An O’Flaherty in the top suite at the Grand, and a managing director at that.’

  Ottilie was finding Lorcan’s enthusiasm understandable but embarrassing. To her the Grand was just the Grand, a place that was either successful or not successful. Besides, Lorcan’s overt enthusiasm reminded her of the bad old days when she was the little princess in the castle and her brothers were the workmen. She herself was dreading her return, walking up the steps of the Grand again, dreading the looks that she would get from those staff that had not yet incurred Mrs Tomber’s displeasure and been dismissed – although she reasoned that the likelihood of still seeing anyone she knew there was very small.

  Nowadays probably only Blackie would be a face that she would recognize. And after their last encounter he certainly would not want to even pass the time of day with her. Alfred she knew would not bother to mind or not mind where she was. After finding the nude drawing of Ottilie it seemed he had put his adopted daughter out of his mind for ever. And Melanie, it being past midday, would be on to at least her second large gin and tonic and not caring who was in the hotel unless room service was not responding to her calls.

  ‘Do I look all right, now, Ottie?’

  Ottilie turned round to Lorcan. Standing there looking so nervous outside the heavy old mahogany doors of the Great Suite he was no longer a priest but her beloved brother who had arrived so hopefully at the hotel that day of her tenth birthday. As she patted his jacket and smiled reassuringly at him Ottilie remembered how even as a child she had noticed how cheap Lorcan’s suit had looked, and how heavy his shoes must have seemed as he walked bravely down that whole flight of stairs and into the dining room of the Grand.

  ‘You look grand,’ she said, squeezing his hand the way she remembered Ma would always do when Lorcan went off for school of a morning from Number Four. ‘Really grand.’

  Lorcan nodded, and Ottilie noticed that he looked slightly flushed with excitement. Seeing what a wonderful moment it was for him her own sense of dread about what Joseph’s revelations might be, about the diamond earrings, about everything, quite vanished and there and then she determined to take the attitude that with Lorcan so happy and Joseph so successful everything had surely all turned out for the best?

  ‘Lorcan. Ottie.’

  Joseph turned from the balcony and came quickly back into the large sitting room, his arms outstretched in welcome. Lorcan had always been taller than Joseph, but no longer. Now Joseph seemed to tower over his older brother, and even if he had not, dressed as he was, and with his aura of success, and power, and money, he swamped poor Lorcan in his cheap priest’s suit – until, that is, Lorcan held his younger brother at arm’s length and said in his warm fatherly way, ‘Well now, will you let me look at you, will you let me look at you, my little brother?’ at which point all Joseph’s confidence seemed to visibly melt away and for a second he appeared to be waiting for Lorcan’s verdict on him. Would he ‘do’ as the O’Flahertys would say? Would Lorcan be proud of him? Perhaps, most of all, had Lorcan forgiven him for disappearing?

  ‘You look grand, just grand, Joseph,’ Lorcan said quietly. ‘God bless you.’

  ‘Ottie.’

  It was like some religious ceremony, for seconds later it was Joseph who was holding Ottilie away from him.

  ‘How about this girl?’ he asked Lorcan. ‘I mean, how about this girl? Isn’t she grown beautiful? Isn’t she grown smart? You are one hell of a smart and beautiful girl, Ottilie. Turn round. My God, you must knock them all out around here. You look, well, so – New York, Paris, Tokyo, London, nothing to do with St Elcombe.’

  Ottilie had her hair knotted as Monsieur had taught her and was wearing a navy blue silk shirt dress, just above the knee, very new, terribly expensive from a dress shop in Plymouth, but she had felt that no less was required for the return of a prodigal brother.

  As Joseph poured some champagne Lorcan started to wander around the suite and they
began reminiscing about the old days when they had both worked on the rebuilding of the hotel, and all the eccentric characters they had known. Mention was even made of ‘Blue Lady’ and how she used to scare the pants off everyone with her strange, clothes, always talking to someone who wasn’t there.

  As he sipped at his champagne Lorcan kept shaking his head and saying, ‘Ah God, yes, imagine you remembering that, Joseph’. But as she stood laughing and talking with them, that awful moment when Ottilie had agreed to put Melanie’s earrings in her pocket seemed to have happened only the day before, and she could smell Joseph’s cigarettes and see the pot of tea on the dirty table as she handed them to him and said that she thought they were worth a thousand pounds.

  ‘I told the waiter to go away,’ Joseph said as he handed the champagne round. ‘I wanted us all to be quite, quite alone, to be able to talk, to be able to tell each other things that no-one else should hear. Like how much we love each other, like how much we loved Ma, all those things. Things that we must say to each other, no holds barred, don’t you think?’ Joseph raised his glass. ‘Come, let us drink to Ma, to Number Four, to us all.’

  Joseph was so much the young managing director of a business, had adopted such a Churchillian manner, that Ottilie was hard put to it not to smile. Nevertheless, she raised her glass. ‘To Ma.’

  There was a short awkward silence while they sipped their champagne and conjured Ma back from their childhood memories, and it seemed to Ottilie that they could all hear her rich laugh and see her throwing back her thick plait of auburn hair and hear her say ‘Well now, isn’t this fine?’ and Ottilie thought of how her eyes would have really sparkled as only Ma’s eyes could at seeing Lorcan an ordained priest, at seeing Joseph in his fine suit, and how she would have wondered at the miracle of his success, and how she would have loved to have seen her two sons standing in the Great Suite at the Grand.

  ‘I still miss her, you know,’ Joseph said, sighing. ‘I still hold on to those wonderful years when she was all right, when we were all so happy at Number Four.’ He turned to Lorcan. ‘How proud she would have been of you. Her eldest son a man of God, a priest.’ Joseph shook his head.

  ‘And you,’ Lorcan said warmly. ‘You, Joseph, how proud she would have been of you. All we are missing today is little Sean and he will surely make his mark. Did you know he had gone into Australian television? Oh yes, he is making his way all right. He will get on, will our Sean.’ Ottilie’s heart went out to Lorcan as she watched him speaking, he was so much the proud eldest brother, and she could see that there was so much that he wanted to say, and yet it was almost as if the words would hardly come out so great was his love for and pride in his brothers. And then, realizing that she had not rated a mention, she felt a little sad, as he finished by saying, ‘This is a wonderful day, a great day for the O’Flaherty brothers.’

  And it was a wonderful day and it was a great evening, and when at last they left, Lorcan smiling from ear to ear, and Joseph waving goodbye from his front balcony way above them, Ottilie could not bear to lower Lorcan’s mood by questioning him about his own impressions. But the next morning as soon as Veronica came into their office Ottilie pounced on her, saying, ‘I don’t know what has happened to the Grand. I wouldn’t have known it, filthy food, thick with dust, no flowers—’ but finally she ended up, quite despite herself, looking rather pleased.

  ‘You’re making such a success of this place soon they’ll be on their knees begging you to go back.’

  As she spoke Veronica handed Ottilie a letter stamped PRIVATE. The envelope had no familiar look to it, no Clover House crest on the back, so she was not it seemed being given her marching orders, and yet it had a London postmark. As she always did when she did not know what the contents of a letter from London might be, Ottilie set it aside, giving herself the necessary time to think about where the letter might have come from, what it might have in it, to prepare herself in some way mentally in case it should be something that she would not like. It was a seemingly incurable habit of hers stemming from the days when Melanie would leave letters in the downstairs hall for her, letters of bitter crossness, full of indignation at the way the hotel was being run – usually written at half past one in the morning when the wine was flowing if not the ink. They were sometimes completely incomprehensible, sometimes all too comprehensible.

  Still feeling in some superstitious way that the letter might contain something she would not want to hear she passed it back to her secretary saying, ‘Tell me the worst. It’s probably a demand for money from the charming couple who put the piece of glass in their food.’

  ‘It might be good news.’

  ‘Oh my God it’s a lawyer’s letter. Don’t tell me, I’m right, they’re suing us.’

  Veronica cleared her throat before beginning. ‘“Dear Miss O’Flaherty, We understand from our investigations that you might be the former Miss Ottilie Cartaret who lived for many years at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe, but that you have now changed your name back to O’Flaherty and are residing at the above address.”’

  Veronica looked up, briefly lowering her glasses and looking at Ottilie over the top of them. ‘So far, so good. To continue. Yes. “If this is so might we ask you to get in touch with our Mr Nicholas Lyall Phelps, and arrange a convenient time for you to meet him? Or if this is difficult he could come to see you in Cornwall? The matter concerns a bequest made to you by the late Miss Edith Emilia Stanton. We regret having taken so long to be in touch with you about this matter but all letters addressed to Miss Ottilie Cartaret at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe, were returned ‘address unknown’. Yours sincerely, George Gray Phelps.”’ Veronica smiled across at Ottilie. ‘It seems that chance might be a fine thing after all.’

  ‘How kind of Edith to leave me something.’ Ottilie sighed.

  ‘Who was this Edith that you’re always talking about? Was she your nurse or your teacher?’

  ‘No, no, she was one of the housekeepers at the Grand, but she turned into a sort of nurse. She took me everywhere with her really, because my adopted mother, Mrs Cartaret, didn’t believe in schools, only in reading books, learning French – oh, and dancing.’

  ‘What do you think it is that she could possibly have left you?’

  ‘I know what I would like . . .’ Ottilie said after a second or two’s thought as Veronica looked questioningly in her direction, momentarily distracted from the rest of the post. ‘It may sound really rather dreadful but I would simply love it if she had left me her cameo brooch.’

  Nicholas Lyall Phelps was what Edith herself would have described as ‘quite a dish’. Tall, even-featured, but with a good big head of hair. Immaculately suited, beautifully shod, his shirt crisply white, his tie dark but not too dark. Only the colour of his socks – like his lapis lazuli cuff links a quite bright blue – showed just the right amount of dash.

  ‘Miss O’Flaherty, I am Nicholas Lyall Phelps. How do you do?’

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ Ottilie replied, and she looked up at him mischievously, realizing at once that although his fashionably thick gold wedding ring might declare him to be married, he was certainly not dead. ‘Do sit down, and would you like some coffee?’

  ‘I would love some coffee, Miss O’Flaherty, thank you.’

  Ottilie picked up the telephone, ordered coffee and sat down opposite him. It was a sunny morning, as yet there was no bad news of Philip, and she had every reason to feel as sunny as the morning, particularly since Edith might, just might, have left her the little cameo brooch which Ottilie loved and thought of as so much ‘Edith’.

  ‘I hope you are staying somewhere comfortable, Mr Phelps.’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly and then looked embarrassed before he went on. ‘I regret to say that I am staying at the Grand. My grandmother used to stay there every summer and always enjoyed it but I fear she wouldn’t know it today. I ordered coffee for breakfast and a poached egg and was served tea and a boiled egg and that was only the last straw. Before
that my room was not ready when I arrived at four thirty, the tea tray not removed when I went to bed, and they forgot to wake me up at eight o’clock. Frankly it’s hell at a horrible price.’

  ‘It’s a wonder you’re still alive.’

  Nicholas Phelps coloured slightly, but not for the reason she might have thought. ‘I’m sorry, I forgot you used to live there. You must find this rather rude.’

  ‘No, I entirely agree. For my sins I was there a few days ago and I found the service shocking and the food inedible. It was heartbreaking.’

  ‘There is some ghastly woman in charge who seemed quite drunk,’ he continued. ‘A Mrs – Mrs Coffin or something.’

  ‘Mrs Tomber?’

  ‘That’s her. Slurring her words, hardly able to stand up. It seems to have become a home for derelicts. When I went down for a nightcap I found even the hall porter was drunk.’

  ‘The poor old Grand. In its heyday it was so lovely.’

  ‘Still could be if the right person was in charge.’

  After which Jean came in bearing an immaculately laid coffee tray with fresh white tray cloth, coffee pot gleaming, cups and saucers shining, home-made biscuits on an old Masons Ironstone plate. As Ottilie poured them both coffee and offered the lawyer a biscuit, she tried not to think nostalgically of Edith’s cameo as the lawyer first sipped his coffee and then broached the matter of their meeting.

  ‘Now, I have to ask you once, very boring, but necessary. Are you the former Miss Cartaret who resided at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe? This is just for our records, you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I am the former Miss Cartaret, Mr Phelps.’

  ‘Good.’ The fact that Ottilie was indeed the former Miss Cartaret seemed to please Mr Phelps no end, for he was now smiling broadly. Then he frowned and cleared his throat. ‘I have been told – this is always rather a difficult moment for lawyers, Miss O’Flaherty. One never quite knows how to break this sort of very serious news.’