Ottilie stared at her face in the mirror. She actually could not wait for Pierre to tear all her rooms apart. She didn’t know why but it seemed to her to be going to be the most exciting moment of all the transformation of the hotel. She wasn’t in the least sentimental about her old furnishings. She could not wait to say goodbye to the swan-shaped bath, to the endless pink, even to the curtains with their Kate Greenaway figures. She thought of all this as she turned and turned in front of the mirror with its childish decorations of deer, looking anxiously at herself. She wondered what Pierre would think of her in her new dress? He had hardly ever seen her out of navy blue. She had to admit that deep down she feared that when he saw her dressed up he might laugh at her as Monsieur had done that evening in Paris.
This fear had not been helped by Veronica who when she saw the dress being lifted from its box had murmured, ‘Very seductive, Miss C.’
‘A Gina Fratini silk jersey dress is bound to be a little revealing.’
‘After you with it, I’ve got my eye on the newly arrived sous chef one Bruno by name. So handsome, so charming, I have already started learning real live Italian – so much better than from a book.’ Veronica rolled her eyes, and they both laughed. ‘You’re going to look fantastic in that.’
But was Veronica going to be proved right? Ottilie sat down and pulled on her evening shoes, or rather stepped into them, for they were very high heeled. There was little point in wondering what Pierre would think of her. If the recent past had taught Ottilie one thing it was that anxiety and above all guilt were a destructive waste, just so many dead leaves that had to be burnt.
Ottilie stood back in front of the mirror. Jean, who had come in to help her put her hair up, hovered anxiously behind her. Now the shoes were on they could both really assess the dress, and Ottilie saw at once that Veronica was quite right, the dress was very clinging indeed. It showed every contour of her body.
‘Not many girls could wear a dress like that, Miss Cartaret, and you are one of the few,’ Jean murmured and she gave a satisfied sigh as if she had just finished a glass of champagne. ‘Colour’s wonderful on you, with your dark hair, couldn’t be better.’
Jean was right about the colour, it was a beautiful shining deep brown and what with the dress having such a high collar with its long sleeves, and its skirt cut to fall in graceful folds, the waistline emphasized by a thick gold chain belt, it couldn’t have been a better choice. Even so, Ottilie turned away saying, ‘I don’t know, maybe I can’t carry it off.’
Seeing how nervous she was, and probably knowing why, Jean clucked maternally. ‘Course you can. Sit down while Jean does your hair for you. You’ve got yourself in a right tizz, haven’t you? Course you can wear it. Not many could, but you can. Now you let me see.’
Swiftly she pinned up Ottilie’s still damp hair, and with the hair dryer on high she started to dry it. The drying process had necessarily to be done fast and furiously, leaving neither of them time to talk, because Ottilie hated her hair to frizz. Jean ended by pinning up the thick fall on top of her mistress’s head, while allowing a few small strands to wisp at the back.
‘You look what my dad would call “peachy”, you really do, Miss Cartaret, and don’t forget your bracelet.’
She handed Ottilie the bracelet that Lorcan had brought to her tenth birthday party. Realizing the time Ottilie snatched at it and started to hurry towards the door, but then abruptly she turned back.
‘Thank you, but I think I will just stay here – just a moment. On my own. I think perhaps I need a little quiet, if you don’t mind?’
Jean gave her a worried little look but she left her saying, ‘You look like a film star, really you do, Miss Cartaret, a real star.’
Once Jean had left Ottilie started to pace about her room. She knew that Jean was right, she did look like a film star, her mirror told her that, but inside her, right inside her, Ottilie still felt that she was in Philip’s phrase ‘damaged goods’ and consequently in her own eyes she was ugly. Ottilie had told herself, and she had meant it, that what was over was over, but now that she was wearing this beautiful dress, her hair put up, her make-up immaculate, in contrast to her appearance those awful feelings of self-disgust were returning and no matter how she tried to stem them they were coming back, threatening to be a tidal wave which would prevent her going out of the door, dressed as a beautiful woman, looking to be loved.
She turned in desperation, near to despair, looking round her room for reassurance, something to which she could cling, something that would send those feelings away. Finally, she found herself going to her old toy chest, filled as it was with all her childhood souvenirs which she never really looked at, but which were too infinitely precious to throw away. In among the treasures, where she always kept it, a little hidden, lay the beautiful hand-marbled folder in which she kept Monsieur’s drawing that she so loved.
There it was, or rather there she was, herself before the awful event of Joseph’s party. There she was without a stitch on but glowing with health, happy and innocent. She pressed the drawing to her, willing it to send away the revulsion, the feelings of disgust, the ugliness that she felt was still inside her.
As she held it to her she remembered the happiness she had enjoyed in Paris, she remembered that evening as she came out of the bathroom, the turban of towelling on her head, the larger towel caught up around her, and how they had both spontaneously delighted in the moment, and all the subsequent wonder of those days and weeks, and she shed everything that had happened since, so that by the time she replaced the drawing, opened her door and started to climb the stairs towards the top suite, where she knew Pierre was waiting, it seemed to her that although it was evening the sun was shining, and she could hear the laughter and the slight pause in conversation as she had made her way through the crowded restaurant.
‘Courage, Ottilie!’ Monsieur would have said. ‘Courage!’
Outside the newly renamed Blue Suite Ottilie stopped and caught her breath. She must not rush in and talk too much. She must not become flushed with excitement. She put up her hands to her face and happily they were ice cold from nerves and they cooled not just her face but the whole of her, as if the cold was reaching down to her very centre. Next she breathed in and out a few times, but still she could not bring herself to put her hand on the door knob. Come on, she urged herself, it’s just an evening for heaven’s sakes! She breathed in once more and then, head held high, turned the handle of the suite.
As promised there was a tape stretched across the door and Pierre was in the middle of the room waiting for her, himself in immaculate evening dress, but carrying a large pair of kitchen scissors. He turned as he saw the door opening and as soon as he saw her he walked towards her with one hand stretched out and Ottilie knew straight away that everything was going to be all right because there was that wonderful smile of his lighting up his eyes.
‘Stay there, stay there, you have to make a speech and cut the tape.’
‘No glasses?’ she asked as she took the scissors, the tape dividing them, their eyes uniting them.
‘I sat on them, would you believe? Just as we all had everything in place, I stepped back and sat down in that lovely armoire over there. At least for once I knew exactly where my spectacles were.’
The newly hired hotel waiters standing behind him in the candle-filled room all laughed and clapped after Ottilie announced in clear royal tones ‘I declare this suite open’ and cut the tape.
Pierre bowed deeply from the waist. ‘Welcome to the Blue Suite, Miss Cartaret, ma’am.’
Ottilie stepped into the room, into this place that she knew so well, and yet was unrecognizable, so changed had it become. What Pierre’s artistry had wrought was not a transformation so much as a miracle.
The place embraced you as you came in, and without being in the least bit nautical its whole ambience directed your senses towards the sea beyond the French windows, for the room was indeed blue, as Pierre had promised, but like
the waves seemed to be reflecting the colour of the sky for although it was blue to the eye it was in actuality a French grey which is a grey with much blue in it yet subtly suggests blue not grey. And the white, like the cliffs on either side of the bay, a bone white, but there were many gradations of both, so that each when present in either curtains or upholstery, like the presentation of one colour in a painting presented not one colour but many. Pierre took her round explaining the provenance of each piece of furniture, and how he had brought back, from one of his many treasure hunts, a set of 1930 reproduction eighteenth-century furniture.
‘Very well made and can be adapted without a tremor,’ he had joked when he had first shown them to her, but now they too had been repainted a French grey and they looked charming, not pretending to be antiques in any way at all, but graceful none the less, and as Pierre said, very well made.
Outside the long windows there was a beautiful sunset such as sometimes happens in Cornwall even after the rainiest day. As Ottilie took a glass of champagne and moved around the room it seemed to her that the glow that was lighting up the skyline reflected itself in every corner of the room.
‘There’s always been something about this suite that I just can’t explain, as if I knew that one day it would mean a great deal to me,’ she confessed to Pierre but couldn’t say any more because the waiters were hovering and there was more champagne to be drunk and finally dinner to be eaten.
After the waiters left, wheeling the old mahogany trolleys towards the newly mended lifts, Pierre closed the doors and holding out his arms and smiling he said, ‘All alone at last,’ and Ottilie ran into them and they started to dance to the record he had just put on but only for a minute or so, for what with the moon outside standing still and small dark clouds starting to run across it and the rain starting to fall once again, and above all the sound of the sea outside the windows, kissing and making love became a matter of what was both best and beautiful.
The following morning so early that not even Nantwick was up and about they crept down to Ottilie’s suite wearing only the newly arrived white towelling hotel dressing gowns. Pierre was unshaven and Ottilie’s hair was around her shoulders. They held hands, creeping like children, both of them longing for the coffee that Ottilie kept in her suite, made in a secondhand cafetière brought back from a shop on the Left Bank. Coffee made, they drank it and watched the sun rising over the sea from the safe warmth of her sitting room. There was much to talk about between coffee and kissing. Their future plans and present problems, and how Ottilie came to be left enough money to buy the Grand, and how the Cartarets had thrown her out, but not why.
‘I know I am the only child of indulgent parents, but I simply can’t understand what you could have done for the Cartarets to have treated you that way. I mean we are in the so-called Swinging Sixties.’
Pierre shook his head, but Ottilie only said, ‘We won’t speak about the past any more.’ She looked up at Pierre. ‘Last night you made me a whole person again, this morning I know that even if you leave tomorrow I will still be a whole person. And how can I ever thank you enough for that?’
‘I’m not leaving tomorrow unless you intend to fire me.’
‘Yes but one of these days you will be leaving, and I have to understand that, the hotel will be finished, the ball we are planning will be over – literally – and you won’t want to be here any more. St Elcombe is a small place and you are too cosmopolitan to want to stay.’
‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ Pierre asked, shaking his head in mock wonder.
‘Living here all this time, seeing things that I have seen, I know only too well what happens to people. Life is transient, made up of a few memorable moments. To cling to even one second of what has been perfect would be to destroy it.’
‘So how come my parents were happily married for years and until the day he died last year my father lived only to see my mother again? Even when she was gone he still spoke to her every day, spoke to her photographs, to the paintings he had done of her. He died still living for her. These are not transient emotions. Of course not, they live on for ever, in my heart, in all hearts that knew them, as everyone who has truly loved always will, you must understand that, you little pagan.’
After a small pause Ottilie said, ‘Pantheist actually, not pagan. I worship nature. As a child just imagining the life beneath the sea used to fill me with a sort of religious wonder.’
‘You fill me with wonder, but you do know that you are going to have to fire me to get rid of me? Now that really will be a transient moment.’
Ottilie frowned and stared out at the sea. She didn’t really know how to say what she knew she had to say as she saw Pierre sinking dramatically to his knees in front of her, his chin still unshaven, but she knew, no matter what, that nevertheless it had to be said, for both their sakes. Making love was one thing but by no means everything.
‘Will you marry me, Miss Cartaret?’
Ottilie stared down at him on his knees. ‘You look like a pirate, I don’t want to marry a pirate,’ she said, running a finger round his chin.
‘Ottilie, if you don’t say yes you know what will happen to you, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Ottilie was laughing and moving away from him when Pierre caught her hand and started to pull her towards the bedroom. ‘Yes, yes, I do know, thank goodness.’
Later she laughed a great deal more as she watched Pierre bathing in her swan-shaped bath. A more incongruous sight she thought she had never seen than six foot of Pierre sitting with still unshaven chin in a child’s bath.
‘How will you do these rooms for – us?’
‘How will I “do” them? I will “do” them as you call it in a way that will make it habitable for both sexes, in other words I will give the place a classical calm. I have great ideas for the bed. I was thinking about it, I shall design it myself. A fourposter, but a modern fourposter, extra large, because once all the clutter is removed this is actually a very large set of rooms. We will twist cloth around the newel posts, round and round, plain linen – and the top of the canopy will be a great roll of cloth descending towards the front, but caught up finally, before it drops, by two great leather buckles.’
‘Sounds – interesting.’
Pierre looked at her over the top of the swan. ‘You are being cheeky, aren’t you?’
‘No, no, it does, it sounds very – interesting.’
‘Just an idea,’ he said shooting her a look from under his surprisingly long black eyelashes.
‘What about the floors?’ Ottilie wanted to know as Pierre stood up and climbed out of the bath, grabbing a towel and drying himself with great speed and vigour.
‘Follow me,’ he commanded, and without a stitch on but with the towel hung around his neck as if it was a scarf he strode through to the main room and started to indicate how he thought he could draw the whole suite together using natural linens and basket weaves, again so that the eye would inevitably be drawn, as in the top suite, back out to the scene beyond the windows but this time to the sand and the rocks.
‘And what about paintings and things?’ Ottilie wanted to know.
‘I hadn’t really thought. Beach scenes perhaps, nudes – but only if they are modern, none of those slab-like figures, although a Picasso might be nice,’ he joked.
But Pierre wasn’t really listening, he was concentrating on what he might do and what he might not do, and so Ottilie went to her old toy chest, and once more opened the precious marbled folder and took out the drawing that Monsieur had done of her.
‘I have something that might do, something that I love so much. But if I show it to you, you mustn’t get ideas because I did not pose for this, although my parents did not believe me when I said as much. The artist did it from his imagination and then he gave it to me as a present, my last night in Paris.’
Pierre was standing over by the window, murmuring, ‘The light bright sand of the coves around here, that is what we will have in here
. Linen blinds, everything uncluttered. And what is this?’
‘I was just telling you.’ Ottilie pushed the marbled folder towards him. ‘It’s one of my treasures. A drawing of me, but I did not pose for it, the artist did it from his imagination.’
Pierre stared at it, completely silenced, and after a moment he said, ‘But it’s beautiful. And it’s just like you. May I ask you something, none of my business, but did you love this man?’
Ottilie stared at him in astonishment and then started to laugh.
‘I do not find this a laughing matter, I do assure you,’ Pierre said coldly. ‘Not at all. Please tell the truth. Did you love this man?’
‘Love him? Good heavens, I hardly knew him! It was just that Mrs Le Martine knew him – “Monsieur” is what we nicknamed him and she somehow talked him into letting me stay in his Paris flat for a month. And well, I think he thought I was a bit lonely, and so on my last night in Paris he took me out to dinner and gave me this drawing as he left to go back to Lyon. I mean I think it’s brilliant because he really did do it from his imagination, from just meeting me once. He was obviously very clever.’
‘Very clever,’ Pierre agreed. ‘Very clever indeed. In fact I should say from looking at this that he was a man after my own heart, which was just as well, since he was my father.’
‘Le Bonnier is my father’s name,’ Pierre continued, much later for as always with lovers the interval between the discovery of something new and astonishing and continuation with their conversation had been delightfully filled.
‘Justin was my mother’s maiden name. But you know how it is in France, you take both the names of your parents. Mine are Le Bonnier Justin, which is too much of a mouthful for anyone, so when my mother died so suddenly I took her name shortened, in her memory, for professional use. When I joined Nancy, my partner, we called the company Justin and Gordon. My full names are Jean-Pierre Le Bonnier Justin, but I sidetrack.’
Grand Affair Page 40