Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  Twenty-Three

  ‘Never ever do that again!’

  They were on their way home and Ottilie was pretending to be furious with Pierre, because following his pretence of not being able to ride he had proceeded to trot and canter bareback round and round Philip’s wretched school, riding sometimes clinging to the front of the horse, sometimes appearing to disappear underneath it, all the time whooping and hollering, finally ending by jumping over a set of jumps so fast that when he finally pulled to a stop Ottilie was quite sure so had her heart.

  ‘Oh come on, admit it, it was funny! Seeing their faces was so funny, you must admit. Did you like the screams of terror, by the way? I modelled those on Peter Patent, you know the man I was telling you about the other day, the one in the London office? Only he does them when he thinks he has seen a flaw in a roll of cloth.’

  Pierre repeated the high-pitched screams fortunately not as loudly as he had reproduced them while riding.

  ‘No. Yes. No. Yes. Really. They were hilarious.’

  ‘I think we taught Mr Granville a lesson, didn’t we, Ottilie?’ Pierre was unable to stop himself from laughing even though Ottilie was still sitting poker-faced. ‘He thought, I mean come on, from the moment he met me, because he’s in the Army – and the Army is such a man’s world, my dear – he thought, “Well here’s a right fruit that Ottilie Cartaret has in tow, so I’ll put him up on a bad-tempered old cob and have fun watching him fall off.” That’s what he hoped, didn’t he?’

  ‘Well yes, that was exactly what he did think, and what he wanted. I was terrified, no – I was petrified.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I was on to him at once. That’s why I kept frowning at you. You see what he didn’t know was that at that horse farm I used to attend as a child back in the States there was an old film stunt man, name of Walter – naturally – what else should old film hands be called? Anyway, the moment my mother left me at that place to learn to ride like a little gentleman, Walter forgot all about teaching me the gentlemanly bit and set to and taught me all the things that I wanted to learn and not what my mother had in mind at all. He taught me everything he knew from film stunting, falling off, jumping on, standing up, sitting down, yes sirree so much so that by the age of twelve I could have made myself a mint in them there movies, ma’am!’

  ‘Oh dear.’ Ottilie’s reserve finally broke and she started to laugh for the first time, because now that they were speeding away from Tredegar in retrospect the whole episode did seem hilarious. Just the memory of Constantia’s face and the sound of her voice saying ‘Oh – does he always do this sort of thing when he sees a horse?’ as Pierre careered round the school doing acrobatics was too funny for words.

  Still laughing at the memory Pierre and Ottilie parked the car and walked up the green sward in front of the hotel. Ottilie looked up at it, thankful that the façade was once more being returned to its old dignity, with the lettering mended, the painting completed and the new blinds about to arrive.

  But as she was about to walk on Pierre pulled her back, frowning at the building ahead.

  ‘You know what we need here,’ he said and ‘we’ suddenly seemed to sound quite natural to both of them, ‘we need some separate villas, in keeping of course, but designed with a much simpler architecture than the main house, less Gothic, more Pompeiian, colonnades, square. You know at the back of the property there’s plenty of room to build, don’t you? It could be enchanting, very Continental in feel, which is all right here in Cornwall which after all prides itself on not being part of Britain anyway. I’ll draw what I have in mind. I can just see it. Classical façades, pale paint.’

  Ottilie looked up at him. How strange that what he had just described to her seemed suddenly familiar, a place where she had been before, but it was getting dark, and she thought she could already see Jean waiting, and so she hurried on up to her without pausing to try to recall where it was that she had seen or heard what Pierre had just finished describing to her.

  As it was, she was hardly within a yard of the hotel when Jean sprang out at her, as always looking fraught, and Ottilie had not even reached the swing doors before she had already begun to tell her the bad news.

  ‘It’s that poor Mrs Ballantyne, she’s had a terrible accident, at that place in Devon she would insist on going to.’ Jean started to cry. ‘Oh the poor dear, I’m afraid she’s only gone and died, the daft woman. Her chauffeur rang through to reception, Miss Veronica being off, today being Sunday. Poor Mr Butterworth, he’s that upset, it seems he’s been with her ever such a long time, too. They pulled Mrs Ballantyne out of the river. Oh, Miss Cartaret, I knew all along that she shouldn’t have gone away on her own. I did say. I don’t know her like what you do, but I had a feeling that nothing good would come of it. She was acting so very strange. Miss Veronica has the police with her, and they are at a loss I must say. There’s no answer to her home, of course, Mrs Butterworth having gone to her mother in Ealing it seems, and only the chauffeur at the Devon place, and he’s distraught as you can imagine, because he found her, poor fellow. It’s not suicide they don’t think. Just must have fallen in and that’s that. Or gone for a swim and got overpowered.’

  Ottilie put her hand on Jean’s arm.

  ‘You go and have a nice cup of tea in the kitchen, Jean,’ she told her, ‘I’ll deal with all this.’ And she sighed. Five minutes before she and Pierre had been laughing so much Pierre had nearly had to stop driving the car, and now Mrs Ballantyne was dead.

  There was no good reason to feel so unreasonably cast down by the death of a guest. Ottilie knew this. She knew this, she told herself this, and she accepted that this was sensible, but there was no reasoning with the unreasonable, and for some unaccountable reason Mrs Ballantyne’s death, helping to pack up her things and deal with all the little details over the next few days, threw her into an unaccountable depression that was difficult to shake off.

  The chauffeur was visibly upset when he returned from Devon and came to see Ottilie. Mrs Ballantyne had no family, he told her. ‘I know she made a will, but it was many years ago now. She laughed when she told me. “Left everything to Battersea Dogs Home, Butterworth,” she said, “I think dogs are a great deal more kind than humans, as you know.” Not that she ever kept a dog. More’s the pity, poor woman,’ Mr Butterworth told Ottilie. ‘Her bank acts as her solicitors, and they should take care of everything here,’ he added with a discreet cough.

  ‘That’s the least of our worries,’ Ottilie reassured him, knowing he was worrying about paying the bill. ‘Will you come upstairs, Mr Butterworth?’

  Ottilie and the chauffeur stood in the Blue Suite, and looking round its new fine furnishings she said in a desolated voice, ‘I so wanted her to see all this, after all these years she’s been coming, I really thought she would enjoy everything that Justin and Gordon have done here. I even thought it might change things for her, drive away the ghosts.’

  ‘And it might well have done, Miss Cartaret, might well,’ Mr Butterworth reassured her, stroking his magnificent white moustache. ‘This really is a changed place, hardly known it I wouldn’t have, Miss Cartaret. Just Mrs Ballantyne’s sort of taste too, Miss Cartaret, just her taste, a bit Noel Coward, sophisticated, but nice.’ He looked round appreciatively, himself momentarily cheered, and although Ottilie knew that there was a strong chance that the rooms’ new decor would not have been to his mistress’s taste she saw for a second that he was enjoying imagining her delight.

  ‘Well, now. We’ve packed up all her remaining . . .’ Ottilie paused, she hated the word ‘effects’. ‘We’ve packed up all her things, and put them back in these suitcases. If you would like to check them through for me, and sign for them? And of course there was this—’

  ‘Oh yes, her precious papers.’ The chauffeur looked at the shabby little vanity case that had traditionally always followed his mistress up the stairs of the Grand to the suite. ‘I always understood that’s all her life in there, Miss Cartaret, not that there
was much to it, not after her honeymoon, as you may have gathered.’

  ‘What did happen, Mr Butterworth? I know I shouldn’t ask, but what do you think really did happen to Mrs Ballantyne?’

  ‘I know no more than you, Miss Cartaret, and I worked for her, six days a week for the last ten years. It all happened long before my time, you know. She was all right, day to day, she wasn’t certifiable or anything, the doctor reassured my wife and me about that when we first came to work for her, definitely not dangerous, nothing like that. But this last time, as Jean probably told you herself, I don’t know why but I noticed as soon as I was driving her up to Devon that she was definitely not herself, so much more distracted, just not herself at all. She seemed to be suffering from some kind of a delusion.’

  ‘Yes, I realized that when she thought I was someone else, but I hardly saw her this visit, what with dealing with all the alterations, and so on. But Jean did say she was acting really quite strangely. Every time she opened the door Mrs Ballantyne would look round as if she was frightened that a ghost was coming in, and Jean said she would stare at her in such a funny way.’

  ‘It was the loss of her husband, truly. It was just that, quite simply it turned her mind. She loved him that much. And the Devon thing, that was where they had gone you see, at the end of their honeymoon to this old hunting lodge, just the two of them, very cosy and romantic, so that was why – that was why she went back there, every year, part of re-enacting the whole honeymoon. Course if she’d had children, or anyone else in her life, not just people like me, it might have made a difference, but she didn’t, and no interests neither. In London she just spent her whole day either walking round the shops or going to museums, up and down and round and about, and then back to the flat. Very eerie I thought, quite honestly, but if that was how she wanted to spend her life, who was I to say anything? My wife kept the place, her flat, like a new pin, and I drove her round to the shops every day and waited, but though she saw us day in and day out she hardly talked. Not what I would call talk. Didn’t seem to notice what year it was, never had the radio on, never watched the television, never cared to talk about politics, nothing. But she never had a bad word to say about anyone either, I’ll say that for her.’

  He turned away suddenly, perhaps overcome by the realization that he would never now take his mistress round the shops or back to the flat again, never drive her down to St Elcombe on her annual visit. Ottilie put a sympathetic hand on his arm.

  ‘Go down and have something to eat and drink with the others. They’re all lunching early. It will do you good after all this, to have lunch.’

  Butterworth nodded, giving Ottilie back the pen with which he had signed for the luggage and turning his cap in his hand.

  ‘I’ll have the cases taken down to the car meanwhile, and don’t you worry about a thing. My secretary’s in touch with her bank and they have everything in hand. I’m afraid your wife and you may have to do all the arrangements for her but if the bank are her executors, they will be sure to tell you most precisely.’

  The chauffeur seemed only too grateful to get out of the suite, striding off quickly in the direction of the lifts as Ottilie rang down to reception to send up Nantwick to fetch Mrs Ballantyne’s elegant suitcases, and an hour or so later Ottilie and Veronica saw Mr Butterworth and the car off.

  ‘I should shoot off early today,’ Ottilie told Veronica who looked suddenly grateful although murmuring, ‘Are you sure?’

  Ottilie watched her secretary’s car drive off. Downstairs in the kitchen and the staff rooms they would still be talking about Mrs Ballantyne and her watery fate, but there were none of the old guard left, no-one who had really known her all down the years, as Ottilie had. Recently Jean had taken her meals up to her every day and become really rather devoted but it wasn’t the same as having known her, as Ottilie had known her, since childhood, looking forward to her arrivals and witnessing her departures, both soon becoming as much part of the changing year as the sunshine or the gales.

  As she wandered about the hotel distractedly checking the flowers Ottilie kept hearing Mrs Ballantyne’s voice, so pretty and light, saying ‘Put the tea down there’ or ‘You may remove the tea tray now, thank you’ and seeing her turn towards the chair that was unoccupied except to her, with the inevitable ‘Do go on, darling’.

  At the time it had all seemed so wrong to be living in the past the way Blue Lady had, but now she was gone it seemed to Ottilie that it was intensely, passionately romantic and that the fierce way that she had clung to the memory of her dead love was impressive in the way a great piece of music or a painting is impressive, in the way that the sea outside her suite was impressive.

  Feeling at such a loose end and not wanted by anyone in particular downstairs, lonely for Pierre’s company, longing for him to ring and talk endlessly as he did every evening now, Ottilie’s sadness intensified. It was raining and she longed to hear Pierre’s deep warm baritone, longed to look up at just the sound of his quick light step, see him arriving in her office, drawing board in hand, Alanna in hot pursuit, her suede sandals making flopping sounds on the hotel floors as she tried to keep up not just with him, but with all his exuberant ideas.

  Alone in the hotel, and perhaps because it was raining, Ottilie did what she had always done on such days, if she could, she wandered up to the top suite to be alone, only this time it was to remember. To look out of the windows of the Blue Suite and remember dancing and making love with Pierre up there, that would lift the sense of darkness descending.

  She pushed open the familiar double doors, half expecting to see Blue Lady still, and fully expecting to see the old decor, the old brown furniture, the rug, the chintz, all the old familiar objects and Mrs Ballantyne by the window with the empty chair opposite her, sewing and talking to a ghost that no-one but her could see.

  But there was no Mrs Ballantyne and the new French grey of the curtains and the gradations of the same colour reflected in the upholstery, everything in the room was once more a revelation which momentarily lifted Ottilie’s spirits. Beyond the windows seas were running, their white tops seeming to chase each other endlessly, fruitlessly, backwards and forwards, but the sound of the wind moaning and crying around the Blue Suite was eerie, and all of a sudden Ottilie didn’t want to be up there on her own any more. She turned quickly to go because her blood was changing, because she was sure, she was quite sure, she had the quite definite sensation, that Blue Lady had been standing behind her all the time that she had been at the windows looking out. She thought she could smell her scent, ‘A La Fuite Des Heures’ – fleeting time. Edith had always said that when the spirits of those recently departed returned that was how you knew they were beside you, because of the smell of their perfume.

  She’s dead! She can’t come back! It’s just her scent lingering on the air! Ottilie told herself neverthless moving towards the door as rapidly as she could, but as she turned to pull the old double doors to behind her, she noticed a small piece of hand luggage over by the new desk. It didn’t seem possible, but after all that packing up and labelling Nantwick had only gone and left Mrs Ballantyne’s old vanity case behind.

  Seeing it Ottilie went back into the room. He couldn’t really be blamed because Nantwick, like all hall porters and hotel staff, was such a suitcase snob, he would never have thought that such a small, cheap piece of luggage could possibly belong to the late chic, rich, imperious Mrs Ballantyne.

  Ottilie picked the shabby little item up and then promptly put it down again, bored at the idea of taking it all the way down to the hall where she would have to leave it in her office which was already full to bursting. Much more sensible to leave it for Nantwick to take down tomorrow. She glanced down at it briefly. Really, Nantwick could not be blamed for leaving it behind, it was such a dreadful-looking thing, and what Mrs Ballantyne was doing, poor old bat, taking a few old papers around in it she could not imagine. Ottilie picked it up again. She had changed her mind, she thought tiredly,
she would put it outside in the corridor in case Jean or someone brought visitors up to the suite. Honeymooners were always arriving unexpectedly and demanding to see round the best rooms.

  As she picked it up a second time, she glanced down at the label because in what had once been a bold hand was written not MRS BALLANTYNE as might be expected, but MISS K. SHELBORNE.

  Ottilie straightened up after reading the label and picked up the vanity case once more. Miss K. Shelborne must be Mrs Ballantyne’s maiden name before she married the unlucky Mr Ballantyne who died so tragically on their honeymoon. She started to walk towards the door with her tatty burden but after a second or two paused. There was no-one about, no-one in the hotel, it was raining, it was wrong, but she suddenly felt irresistibly drawn to opening the case and finding out just a little more about poor Mrs Ballantyne. Knowing her as she had for so many years, it was too tempting not to have a look at what her personal papers might say about her. And after all, she was gone, and she had no dependants. The bank, or Mr and Mrs Butterworth – they would just throw the papers away. In reality they would be of no interest to anyone but Ottilie.

  She put the small suitcase on the floor, and greatly daring because she still had the feeling that there was someone else in the room with her, she tried the locks. But they were locked, and there was no key attached. Mr Butterworth would have charge of all the keys now. Ottilie stared at it and then shook the case. It rattled with what sounded like a few papers, not much more, just a few old papers. Finally becoming exasperated she tried to hit the cheap locks open with a nearby paperweight. That failing, but definitely committed to her crime now, she took a steel paperknife and started to prise the cheap locks apart. Cheap the vanity case might be, but it was stubborn too. It simply would not open. Desperate now, and knowing that she had already gone far too far, she continued until at last the case opened, spilling out its few papers on to the floor and looking up at her in a pathetic fashion. It was as if the papers were a too-small fish that Ottilie had been playing for hours and had at last landed, only to feel embarrassed by its size and insignificance.