Grand Affair

by Charlotte Bingham

  Ottilie stared at Mrs Burgess, imagining the scene, two girls brushing out each other’s hair, one covering the other with the scent. Mrs Ballantyne perhaps pushing the maid towards the bedroom door. What must it have been like?

  ‘Kitty told me herself that they put all the lights out, and covered her in the girl’s perfume, this Mrs Ballantyne’s perfume—’

  ‘“A La Fuite Des Heures.”’

  ‘Really? I wouldn’t know. Well, anyway apparently she covered herself in it, and that was that, she slipped between the sheets with him, and the deed was done, and the old gent was satisfied and everything would have been fine, if it had been left at that. Except something always does go wrong, don’t it? In this case it was that the maid, this Kitty Shelborne, I mean she only went and fell in love with the old gent. And I mean really in love – whenever she talked about him I could see she was besotted of him, and the young wife, this Mrs Ballantyne, after that she couldn’t stop young Kitty from slipping off to see her husband. Finally, she had to sack her to stop her! She cooked up some story to her husband about wanting to be alone with the old gent and she took him away, somewhere in Devon, I think, and sacked the maid. Course she paid her off, quite handsomely, but really, how long does that last? But that’s how she came to be here and took up sewing with me.

  ‘But then of course, and you probably know this, this Mr Ballantyne, the poor old gent, Kitty Shelborne found out from the valet, he only went and died on his honeymoon just as the girl herself, seeing the maid had been so dotty on him, had begun to realize what a treasure he was, very handsome and nice, apparently, never mind his age. So you can imagine, what with your mother dying on us upstairs and none of us knowing she’d been up the spout anyway and the poor old man dying on his honeymoon, while he was away in Devon, or wherever they were, it was a right old muddle, if you like. But you probably knew all this?’

  ‘No. I have this bracelet. Lorcan gave it to me one birthday thinking it had belonged to my mother.’

  ‘And so it did, Lorcan was right. This Mrs Ballantyne she gave it to Kitty, in all honesty she did, it was on one of her impulses, after the honeymoon night, that she gave it to Kitty. I mean, she never took it, Kitty didn’t, and yet when she asked for all her diaries to be sent on the girl only went and accused her of taking it and slammed down the phone. Poor Kitty, she regretted those diaries, I know, all her life was in those diaries, she told me, she’d kept them since she was knee high. I know she rang the old man’s valet and asked him to send them on here, but she never did hear from any of them again. Well she wouldn’t, would she? She knew too much, Kitty did. And of course that was it, she was poor and they was rich, and we all know how equal the world is when it comes to that.’

  ‘But – Kitty really did love Mr Ballantyne, didn’t she? I mean she did at least have that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, dear, really,’ she said, ‘I only know that when the doctor and the midwife turned up with you on the doorstep, that your ma, Mrs Mac, she thought it was a miracle. She loved you so much, you know. She was your real mother, dear, not poor little Kitty Shelborne.’

  Finally, with one eye on the clock and the time of her departing train, Ottilie was able to extract herself from the flat, and from Mrs Burgess, but not without having been given a doll.

  And so she found herself eventually, alone once more on Paddington station, a crinoline doll under one arm and thinking not of the poor girl who had made it, but remembering instead Ma with her thick red plait of hair and her rich laugh, and it came to her that Pierre had been wrong. It had mattered a great deal to Ottilie to find out where she came from, or to go back to where she came from, but now she realized that he had been right too, for it did not matter in the least who had actually made her.

  She felt so exhilarated by this thought, and by the realization that she had been truly loved as a child, and remembering the boys and all the laughter they had shared, the hustle and bustle and warmth of a family life where there was not much to go round except plenty of Ma’s love, she hurried back out into the rain to telephone Pierre’s office.

  ‘He’s gone to France, Miss Cartaret, for the linen for the Maize Suite. He said it was quicker, the manufacturer has been driving him mad. But he left a message – it says “Gone for linen, Ottilie darling, and a rather beautiful wedding dress. Made from the best Lyon silk, and designed for my grandmother. I can picture you in it. Make it a day in May, kid!”’

  Ottilie put the phone down and wandered once more back into the station. Despite her disappointment she had to admire a man who went to France at a moment’s notice to fetch linen and a wedding dress. It was worse than romantic. It was cataclysmically romantic, and it had made Alanna sigh with envy as she put down the phone.

  The train was not in so Ottilie wandered restlessly around the station, eventually settling on a bench where a young family joined her minutes later.

  Ottilie looked across at the mother. She was a poor woman, but like Ma she was proud, for everything about her and her children was neat and clean, polished shoes, mended gloves. Ottilie turned suddenly to the mother.

  ‘Don’t think I’m mad, but I was wondering – I was wondering if your daughter would like this doll? It sounds funny, but I don’t really like dolls.’

  The woman stared at Ottilie in astonishment.

  ‘It belonged to my mother, but I actually don’t want it any more.’

  The woman looked down at the obviously expensive doll in its crinoline and cloak that Ottilie was holding, probably feeling suspicious.

  ‘I’ve grown out of it, you might say.’

  The woman still looked doubtful but seeing the expression on her daughter’s face as Ottilie held out the beautifully dressed doll to her she must have changed her mind, because she said, after a moment, ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Ottilie stood up. ‘She’ll love her more than I possibly could. I know that, you see, because I was given away.’

  At which she walked off towards her train, and home.

  It was very late when Ottilie eventually arrived back at the Grand, but as the taxi drew away from the green sward outside her home, she looked up at its lights spilling out over the grass, just reaching the edge, and gave a great sigh of contentment. There was her home, and she knew every room backwards, and now she even knew how she came to be there, and why the top suite had always held a fascination for her. Mrs Ballantyne was gone, never to return, and the top suite would, even now, be playing its romantic part and bringing joy to some more fortunate honeymoon couple. The old colonels and the lavender-scented ladies and their moustached husbands from long ago were gone, but they had been replaced, and would always be replaced by other couples and other old colonels. In a few years Ottilie knew she would walk through the old swing doors into the dining room and hear Constantia longing for the good old days and deploring the ways of the young, which heaven only knew, thanks to the human heart, were exactly the same as the old.

  She walked up the steps, slowly, savouring her homecoming as if she was a guest and not the owner of the great white house in front of her. The first person to greet her was Nantwick, despite the hour. His face lit up as soon as he saw her.

  ‘They’ve arrived, Miss Cartaret, and they’re beautiful.’

  Ottilie stared at him. She was worn to a thread paper, as Edith would say, but Nantwick’s enthusiasm was so infectious she too smiled.

  ‘Oh good, Nantwick, that is good,’ she said, not having the faintest idea what he was talking about.

  ‘And very nice too, Miss Cartaret, if I may say so.’

  ‘Oh good, Nantwick,’ Ottilie said, still smiling, hoping for a clue. ‘They’ might be new guests, or new plants for the greenhouse, or even the new machines for the laundry. Such was Nantwick’s enthusiasm for the place, and such his devotion, the slightest innovation or arrival was always greeted like Christmas.

  ‘Yes, yes, they’re here,’ Nantwick agreed and his shrewd eyes twinkled.

&
nbsp; ‘Oh good,’ Ottilie agreed. ‘That is good.’

  ‘Shall I bring them up, Miss Cartaret?’

  If he was going to bring them up, Ottilie somehow doubted that they could be new machines, and nor could they, she supposed, be guests, for she would have thought by this hour even the most celebratory of guests would be more than reluctant to meet the proprietor.

  ‘Oh yes, bring them up, Nantwick, do.’ Ottilie gave him an encouraging nod. ‘Meanwhile I am going to the bar where I am going to have a soothing nightcap after my journey.’

  She poured herself a small brandy and sank down into one of the new large sofas, avoiding the memory of how and where and with whom she had chosen them, concentrating instead on the more immediate question of what or who Nantwick was going to bring in to show her. Not remembering she had ordered anything, too tired to try.

  ‘Here they are then,’ Nantwick said, proudly bursting through the door.

  Ottilie looked down at ‘here’ and ‘they’ and saw before her two resplendent black labrador puppies in matching blue harnesses and leads.

  ‘Course they only came the moment you left, Miss Cartaret, just as you left for the station. We ran after the station taxi, but of course you’d gone by then. Nothing to be done. Still, now you’re here, all’s well. Nothing like it, is there, Miss Cartaret, coming home?’

  Veronica never forgot to read the births and deaths columns in the Daily Telegraph. Ottilie often wondered why it was such a duty with her, since she did not seem to have a wide enough circle of friends to warrant spending such a meticulous amount of time on them, but read them she did, and most religiously.

  ‘All right,’ Ottilie said to her the following morning, seeing her involved in her usual daily occupation, ‘today, you can read me some names out loud from the births column.’

  ‘Anyone we know expecting?’

  ‘Us. We have had two boys.’

  Veronica stared at her for a second and Ottilie could see her thinking that not even Ottilie could have given birth to twins during the time she was in London.

  ‘Yes, now – did this happen last night in the hotel?’

  ‘Black labradors. I need to name them, hence my request for you to read from the columns of that noble newspaper to which you are even now referring.’

  ‘Black labradors. How very jolly.’

  ‘I chose black labradors because I thought they would look welcoming. In the winter they can sit in front of a roaring fire in the hall, and in summer they can look noble on the top steps. Nantwick is thrilled with them already, and I think you will find that they are training themselves beautifully to the new Persian rugs.’

  ‘We surely can’t force names on the poor things without at the same time having a look at them and seeing if they will suit?’

  As soon as the puppies had been brought in Veronica started to read. ‘“AINSLY, to Richard and Elizabeth, a son, James Richard.” “BARRACLOUGH, to Paul and Emily, a son, Ian Barry.”’ By the time Veronica was filleting through the Gs and Hs each birth seemed to be getting duller and more unsuitable than the last.

  ‘So many Johns and Jameses,’ Ottilie complained as she stared at the puppies and repeated the names to them, while they in their turn busied themselves tearing at the laces of Veronica’s outdoor shoes.

  Veronica put the newspaper down. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find suitable names for puppies in the births column,’ she admitted. ‘What we really need is one of those baby names books—’

  She stopped suddenly, looking down at Ottilie who was still busily playing with the puppies on the other side of her desk.

  ‘Nicholas Phelps has been arrested. Your lawyer’s been arrested for attempted assault.’

  Ottilie straightened up. ‘Not my laywer any more, V. Not for some time.’

  Veronica handed her the newspaper. ‘Just as well. It seems he’s quite definitely not safe in taxis.’

  Ottilie stared at the item in the newspaper, and for a second found herself wondering if she should not have been as brave as the woman who was now taking Phelps to court, but then she remembered how little she herself had to go on, nothing at all really, less than nothing. She gave the newspaper back to Veronica without saying anything. Veronica seemed to understand because a few minutes went by before she said, ‘I’m glad you dropped him. I never really liked that Phelps, you know.’ She pushed her spectacles back up her nose. ‘Too smooth.’

  Ottilie sat back on the floor again and after some minutes, during which she played with the puppies and they discussed more names for them, they eventually chose Amos and Andy.

  The following May the weather was perfect. The kind of perfect, soft, early sunshiny Cornish days before tourists and the more mettlesome days of summer arrive, when the daffodils are still delaying their exit, and everyone has set to and finally finished scraping off last year from the bottom of their boats and put to into the water with slow easy strokes and smilingly decided that life is quite as good as they remembered it from the previous year.

  On just such a day Ottilie and Pierre were married. The little church that they chose to be married in was filled with people, but not just their guests. It was filled with the people from past days, the Cornish saints, many of whom were buried within its sanctuary, the people who had known them both, and were there, who had loved them, but were now gone, but most of all it was filled with the happy promise that fills the hearts of those who have decided to hand destiny each to the other.

  Afterwards, back at the Grand in St Elcombe, as the wedding breakfast spread into luncheon, and luncheon into tea, and tea into dinner and the dancing and the drinking continued unabated, Ottilie and Pierre, by previous arrangement and without more ado, crept off to the top suite. Here the sign DO NOT DISTURB stayed in place for so long that Nantwick was heard to remark that he thought it must be some sort of record. Everyone else however remained silent on the subject, only Amos and Andy being allowed up.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Charlotte Bingham comes from a literary family – her father sold a story to H.G. Wells when he was only seventeen – and Charlotte wrote her autobiography, Coronet among the Weeds, at the age of nineteen. Since then she has written comedy and drama series, films and plays for both England and America with her husband, the actor and playwright Terence Brady. Her most recent novels include Goodnight Sweetheart, The Enchanted, The Land of Summer and The Daisy Club.

  Also by Charlotte Bingham:

  CORONET AMONG THE WEEDS

  LUCINDA

  CORONET AMONG THE GRASS

  BELGRAVIA

  COUNTRY LIFE

  AT HOME

  BY INVITATION

  TO HEAR A NIGHTINGALE

  THE BUSINESS

  IN SUNSHINE OR IN SHADOW

  STARDUST

  NANNY

  CHANGE OF HEART

  DEBUTANTES

  THE NIGHTINGALE SINGS

  THE BLUE NOTE

  LOVE SONG

  THE KISSING GARDEN

  THE LOVE KNOT

  Novels with Terence Brady:

  VICTORIA

  VICTORIA AND COMPANY

  ROSE’S STORY

  YES HONESTLY

  Television Drama Series with Terence Brady:

  TAKE THREE GIRLS

  UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS

  THOMAS AND SARAH

  NANNY

  FOREVER GREEN

  Television Comedy Series with Terence Brady:

  NO HONESTLY

  YES HONESTLY

  PIG IN THE MIDDLE

  OH MADELINE! (USA)

  FATHER MATTHEW’S DAUGHTER

  Television Plays with Terence Brady:

  MAKING THE PLAY

  SUCH A SMALL WORD

  ONE OF THE FAMILY

  Films with Terence Brady:

  LOVE WITH A PERFECT STRANGER

  MAGIC MOMENTS

  Stage Plays with Terence Brady:

  I WISH I WISH

  THE SHELL SEEK
ERS

  (adaptation from the novel by Rosamunde Pilcher)

  TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

  61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

  www.transworldbooks.co.uk

  Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

  First published in Great Britain in 1997 by Doubleday

  an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Bantam edition simultaneously published

  Copyright © Charlotte Bingham 1997

  Extracts from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame copyright © The University Chest, Oxford, reproduced by permission of Curtis Brown, London.

  Charlotte Bingham has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781446464144

  ISBN 0 553 50500 9

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  5 7 9 10 8 6 4