Ottilie stared at him, made uneasy by his sober look. Edith was dead. Surely there could be no more news that could be difficult to break?
‘I have been sent here today by my firm to tell you that you have been left a bequest by Miss Edith Emilia Stanton, a somewhat sizeable bequest. No – a more than sizeable bequest.’ Nicholas Phelps paused and shuffled the papers he had taken out of his elegant briefcase as if what he was about to say would embarrass them both. ‘This is what I mean by its being difficult for lawyers to break things to people,’ he continued more gently, lowering his voice. ‘Any news that one has to tell someone that will change their entire life is very, very difficult indeed, as I am sure you will appreciate. Some people of course completely refuse to let this kind of news change their lives. Some people just wish to carry on as they are despite whatever is coming to them. They may be what we would call “contented”, or they may be people who have lived their lives in so fixed a fashion that to change at some late date is quite impossible. I imagine that is what happened to Miss Stanton, because she herself was left this bequest late in life.’
He paused and then sighed.
‘In fact as I understand it, from everything my senior partner told me, it was, alas, the news of this bequest that caused Miss Stanton to have the first of her heart attacks. But you are considerably younger. I dare say we will not have such problems. I dare hope not, Miss O’Flaherty? I certainly hope not.’
‘Please go on,’ Ottilie said, with assumed calm, because she was having to suppress the surge of relief that she felt on hearing the reason why Edith had suffered her heart attack.
‘To continue. As we understand it from her letters, by the time my senior partner was writing to her of her mother’s bequest to her Miss Stanton was already suffering from a weak heart, and was not able or was completely unwilling to change her life in any degree at all. She continued as she was, undisturbed, and determined to leave everything to you to enjoy.’
‘What do you mean by “everything”,’ Ottilie asked, clearing her throat and suddenly feeling as if the world had stopped turning on its axis and Mr Phelps was actually an elegant apparition who would shortly disappear.
‘What I mean by everything is – literally – everything. You see Miss Stanton was a very rich woman, Miss O’Flaherty, although I am sure you would never have thought it. She lived all her life as a spinster, as you know, worked at the Grand, and looked after her mother who was one of those miserly reclusive women whom you have no doubt read about in the newspapers from time to time? Not to put too fine a point on it, Miss Edith’s mother literally lived in dread of anyone finding out that she was rich and consequently became quite mad as a result. Her own father was a Conroy, Miss Edith’s maternal grandfather that is. They made the tops that fit into Biro pens, do you know what I mean by them?’
Ottilie nodded, finding herself speechless and at the same time overcome with a deep desire to laugh. ‘Biro pens’ sounded so terribly funny. Why didn’t he say ‘Biros’ like everyone else?
‘To continue. Edith Stanton knew nothing of her mother being an heiress and her mother determined that she should know nothing of it either. The daughter lived and worked, as you know, all her life in St Elcombe, looking after her mother until she died. The house was quite bare when we went there to value it for probate, nothing but bare boards, no curtains at the windows – and yet all the time Miss Stanton’s mother had a fortune on tap, but no desire to spend it, just lived with the terror that somebody might find out she was rich. She would only eat at the weekends and took nothing but toast and tea during the week, and she saved paper bags so obsessively that what with the state of the electricity quite frankly it was a miracle that the place did not catch fire and herself with it.
‘She finally departed this life leaving poor Miss Edith to cope with the running of this huge fortune, which of course she could not do. Nothing in her life had prepared Miss Edith for such an eventuality as being rich and the very idea of it was impossible for her to grasp. She had lived all her life in service and that is how she wanted to continue, which is why when she died she left it all to you. As of today, Miss O’Flaherty, you are a very rich young lady indeed.’
Ottilie stared at Nicholas Phelps and then rolled her eyes towards the door and gave him a panic-struck frown. Years of living in close proximity to resident staff had made her permanently afraid of eavesdroppers. As a result she found herself frequently dropping her voice, or, as at this moment, whispering in case someone overheard what she was saying. Now she murmured to the lawyer as quietly as it was possible for her to murmur and him still to hear, ‘Quickly, say “Only joking!” in case someone’s listening.’
‘Only joking, of course!’
‘I knew you were. You lawyers. Imagine if I had believed you.’ Ottilie laughed a little loudly and long while at the same time springing to her feet and encouraging Nicholas Phelps to do the same. ‘I expect you’d like some sea air? Let’s go for a walk, if you wouldn’t mind.’
This time the young lawyer was on to what she was telling him with her eyes, his own eyes fixed on hers, which were sliding towards the door, so he said, ‘Of course, sea air. Just what I need after London.’
He followed her out of the door, and into the courtyard outside. It was not a particularly cold day but Ottilie found she was shivering, from the shock she supposed, and her teeth were chattering.
‘Let’s go into the town,’ she murmured, ‘there’s a café down near the quays, it will be so noisy no-one can overhear us. Staff can be such a problem in hotels, always listening in – it’s a sort of hobby with them, like fretwork or knitting.’
They walked along to the café at a brisk pace. Once seated either side of the formica table Ottilie said, ‘Look, just to begin with, I think you’d better just write down the amount I’ve been left. That way there’s less chance that I will make a fool of myself and faint or something.’
‘Very well.’
‘And then I’ll swallow the piece of paper and we can both forget about it,’ she joked and insisted on ordering two coffees before looking at the note that Nicholas Phelps had pushed towards her. Ottilie took a good sip of coffee when it arrived and then opened the piece of writing paper which was headed, inevitably, PHELPS, PHELPS and PHELPS. ‘And now for the awful truth,’ she continued as she stared blindly at the figures written down for her benefit by the lawyer. Having tried to take them in she finally looked across at him. ‘Nothing about a cameo brooch, by the way?’
‘Nothing about a cameo brooch, I’m afraid.’ Nicholas Phelps smiled. ‘Still I expect you can afford one yourself now, if not a dozen,’ he added, holding her look a little too long.
Ottilie nodded. It would not be the same at all just to go out to buy one, and she dropped her eyes.
‘I also imagine that you would like us to put you in touch with the people who manage all your new investments.’
‘Oh, I’ll leave all that to you. But. I mean. This changes so much. I mean. What will I do about my job? Will I have to leave it? How strange it all is.’
Ottilie frowned, trying hard and failing to imagine how it would feel not to have to work. It seemed to her that all at once she knew a little of the awful panic poor Edith herself must have felt on being told of her inheritance, as if she had been used to swimming backwards and forwards in a swimming pool, touching one end one minute and the other the next, only to find of a sudden that there was an ocean in front and behind her and no edges that needed touching.
‘Tell me, does everyone feel when they’re suddenly told they’re going to be very, very rich as if – well, as if there’s not much point to anything any more, as if they perhaps don’t know who they are or what they should be doing?’
‘Of course. That’s why their first reaction is so often “nothing’s going to change”. Dreaming of wealth is one thing, reality rather different.’
There didn’t seem very much to say after that.
Certainly Ottilie felt t
here was very little she could say. She listened to the lawyer talking about how the financial people were investing for her, and having only too recently prided herself on taking such an interest in how shares were doing Ottilie now found that she had no actual interest in them at all.
She could only think of Edith and her calming smile and how she had used to take her part so often against Melanie, but in such a way that Mrs Cartaret never knew, smuggling her up biscuits and little petits fours from the dining room once Madame was safely downstairs. ‘Just put it out of your mind, Miss Ottilie,’ she would say after Ottilie had been punished for some new offence. ‘Just put it out of your mind.’
At that moment that seemed just about the best piece of advice Ottilie could give herself.
Later, returning to the office, Ottilie found she was not to be alone with Veronica. To her irritation Joseph had somehow found his way down from the Grand to the inn and was sitting on the side of her desk charming her, one leg swinging to and fro, and Veronica who had always seemed so sensible was blushing and giggling in a way that made Ottilie want to shake her. Had she forgotten that Joseph was after all Vision Hotels – the enemy?
But instead of standing around being made to feel foolish listening to Joseph charming her secretary, Ottilie left them and went to the kitchens to see how the luncheon buffet was going. Once there a voice in her mind kept murmuring, ‘What does it matter? What does it matter now that you are so rich?’
Try as hard as she could it didn’t seem to matter any more whether or not Mrs East had overdone the rolls or the butter pats were looking warm, or whether they should take another ham out of the fridge. Two hours earlier, before Nicholas Phelps had arrived, it had seemed not only important but vital. Now, do what she would, in the light of what the lawyer had just told Ottilie, and always providing that he was not some sort of sick confidence trickster, it seemed faintly absurd to worry about such things as butter pats and hot rolls.
‘Mrs East, this cheese has had it, and these tomatoes – I thought we agreed yesterday that they were tasteless and we would not put them on the buffet any more?’ Without realizing it and probably to compensate for how she was feeling Ottilie’s tone had become hectoring, and she saw the kitchen staff turning round and staring at her in surprise. ‘Sorry, I’m expecting a food inspector,’ she lied on seeing their stares, and then disappeared up to her room before they could ask her any more.
Lying on her bed she tried to think of Philip, but even he seemed confused and far away, not real, and although she continued to try to imagine what he would say to her, how he would make her laugh and tease her the way he had when her parents threw her out of the Grand, she somehow could not hear his voice any more, or even see his face in her mind’s eye. Later she went back to her office.
‘I can’t wait to know. Did you get left the cee ay em ee oh?’ Any outbreak of spelling was always a sign that Veronica had just seen Jean approaching through the half glass of the office door.
‘Sorry, what was that?’
Ottilie turned and frowned at Veronica who once again started to spell out the words ‘cameo brooch’ silently, using her finger to indicate the letters that she was slowly and carefully writing in the air. Watching her, Ottilie felt almost guilty. Cameo brooch! If she knew.
Over the next few days Nicholas Phelps and Ottilie met frequently. At these meetings they both struggled to reach some agreement as to what to do with the money – now code-named It. In her heart of hearts, try as she might (because she could see that he wanted so much to interest her in her new inheritance), Ottilie found that just the sight of the young lawyer undoing his briefcase started to fill her with unreasoning panic.
‘I can see business is tedious to you,’ he said sorrowfully one afternoon, actually catching Ottilie smothering a yawn after only ten minutes.
‘No, it’s not that. It’s just that I have really no interest in simply making money. My fascination is in making something from something I have done, not just being given it. I suppose what I’m saying is – I can’t see the point of money just being there for you, without working for it.’
‘You are only just twenty.’
‘Of course,’ Ottilie agreed. ‘Far too young to have so much money and much, much too young just to live off investments like old ladies do. I could give it away, of course, but Edith wouldn’t like that. I could travel, but I would be alone, and travelling alone for no purpose doesn’t sound much fun, does it?’ There was a long silence while Nicholas Phelps waited for Ottilie to voice her conclusions. ‘As a matter of fact, something did occur to me last night, in the middle of the night. I mean I have been thinking of what I really, really would like to do, a wonderful, crazy, hilarious thing that I could do with all the money, and what’s more I think Edith would approve.’
She paused.
Nicholas Phelps leaned forward and waited.
Ottilie cleared her throat and wondered how she should phrase what she was about to say. She found herself staring at his serious expression and, due to the tension of the moment and the protracted length of the meeting, suddenly started to laugh helplessly because it seemed impossibly, ridiculously funny to think that she was actually about to say what she was about to say, to think that she, Ottilie O’Flaherty, who had grown up with Ma at Number Four in London’s Notting Hill, could be even thinking of what she was thinking and that it might even be possible.
‘I’m so sorry, really I am,’ she said eventually, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘I’ll start again.’ This time Nicholas Phelps leaned forward even more eagerly and the solemnity of his expression was even greater. Ottilie started to laugh once again but even less controllably, the tears actually running down her face until, shoulders still shaking, she eventually managed to straighten up, wiping her eyes and apologizing, ‘I’m so terribly sorry, so rude, oh dear, it’s just your face – so serious. Oh, I am sorry.’ Taking the laywer’s handkerchief for her eyes. ‘Thank you. Oh dear. Goodness, how rude. No, I’m fine. Really. No. Very well. Start again. What. I would. Like. Is – no, it’s no good, I’m going to go again. I’ll just have to write it down.’
She sprang up and going to a writing desk took a pen and some paper and wrote down what she wanted to do with her inheritance. The lawyer took the piece of paper from her, read it, folded it, and then put it among his papers as if it was a legal document.
‘You must be mad,’ he said, quite factually.
Eighteen
It was Joseph’s last night and he was in a party mood. He rang Ottilie to say so.
‘You must come and celebrate with me.’
‘I don’t think I can, Joseph. Really, I have some sort of bug. I’m full of antibiotics, feeling terrible.’
‘You’re going to feel worse when I tell you that the news has just come through – we are about to buy you out, Miss O’Flaherty. The Clover House shareholders are about to be made an offer that will make them all as happy as clams. From now on you will be employed by your brother, how about that?’
His tone was so gloating, so cock-a-hoop, that Ottilie could hardly bear to listen to any more. Instead she put her hand to her throbbing head and said, ‘Are you sure about all this?’
‘Sure I’m sure. Clover House have had it – it’s official, Ottie. The new group will be called Clover Vision. Don’t worry, it won’t affect you. They can’t afford to lose people like you, it’s the slack undergrowth they’ll cut away—’
‘I have actually been in a Vision hotel, I do know what they’re like, Joseph. Slack undergrowth means no more night porters, no more real fires, one waitress to six tables, watered down drinks, bland food, and no atmosphere at all, just as we had all set our hearts on bringing back the old-style small hostelry. Vision is so characterless, Joseph.’
‘It is nothing of the sort. You forget yourself if you criticize Vision to me, Ottie. Vision is my whole life. I believe in Vision. It is my faith.’ She could hear him pounding the telephone table with his fist. ‘I eat, drink
and live Vision. You must never criticize it to me.’
There was no point in continuing so, head throbbing, pulse racing, Ottilie curtailed the conversation. Seconds after she had replaced the telephone receiver she found herself wondering why in heaven she had not successfully pleaded illness? Who cared if it was Joseph’s last night in St Elcombe? If Vision were taking over he would soon be back among them, if only to supervise the ruination of the Angel and whatever other hostelries they had bought. She sat down suddenly.
What on earth would she say to her little staff? Once a place was taken over by one of the big groups that was it, no-one stayed. It was said to be a sign of weakness to dismiss staff once an acquisition had been made, but that was not something that would trouble the organization that Joseph worked for. Everything they had all done together was about to disappear.
Depressed beyond measure, Ottilie managed to drag herself upstairs. After swallowing one of her antibiotic pills she changed once more into her blue silk shirt dress, and set out once again for the Grand. She felt ghastly, but at least there was a time limit to the party since Joseph had already announced that he was leaving for London later that evening. Handsome and charming he might be but in Ottilie’s eyes Joseph already stood for all that was grey and mediocre. He had become yet another zombie executive. He stood for people who cared not a jot for adding to the beauty of the world, but only to paper profit.
This evening he opened the door of his suite to her, drink in hand, every inch the immaculately suited businessman, charm back in place, exactly the right amount of shirt cuff showing beneath the tailored sleeve of his suit.
‘My but you sounded mad at me on the telephone. You’re not mad at me, are you?’
‘No, no, of course I’m not mad at you, Joseph, I’m just not feeling too good.’
‘I’m sorry about that, Ottie, but I really needed someone to get loaded with tonight. Lorcan’s out on a call and only coming along later,’ he went on, pouring her a whisky and topping up his own.
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