by Iris Danbury
‘But I thought hotels encouraged conferences in the autumn when most of the summer visitors had gone,’ objected Fenella.
‘Cameron has different ideas.’ With a muttered excuse Miriam dashed away to attend to some urgent task.
A fine state the hotel was in to house a conference, thought Fenella, as she returned to the reception office. The bedrooms would never be finished, the restaurant was still full of workmen. As for the kitchens, no staff could possibly cope with a sudden influx of people who would need everything at set times and plenty of extra service in between.
In the office she was appalled by the number of incoming letters that had arrived soon after midday. Mr. Ramsay or Miriam had sorted them and scribbled brief indications of replies.
On this first day of her post, it had not occurred to Fenella to look before lunch at the pile of letters, but now she realized that to cope with the routine even when the hotel was shut and empty was going to be quite a task. What on earth would it be like when guests kept interrupting by arriving or leaving or wanting information of one sort or another?
Fortunately Fenella had learned to type and now she worked hard at the correspondence until dinner.
With the exception of breakfast which he often prepared himself at an impossibly early hour, Mr. Ramsay took most of his other meals with the two girls in the snug, unless he was so frantically busy that he could spare time for only a sandwich.
Tonight Miriam announced, ‘Cameron said not to wait for him.’
‘I’m in a hurry, too. I’ve still a load of stuff to type,’ Fenella said.
‘It certainly takes a big slice out of the day going to the hospital to see your father,’ Miriam observed.
‘I can’t do anything else, can I?’ queried Fenella.
Miriam averted her eyes. ‘It means that someone else has to fill in while you’re absent.’
‘But I’m making up the time later. All the rest of this evening, in fact.’
Miriam smiled. ‘I doubt whether that’s going to suit Cameron eventually. Now, perhaps—while the hotel is empty, but in the season it’s going to be absolutely imperative to have the replies to letters ready to post when the van comes along at five o’clock.’
Fenella remained silent for a minute or so. ‘Is that the way you did the job?’ she asked.
‘Of course. How else? People who write to us don’t always realize that their enquiry takes two days if they post late at night. If our reply is going to be delayed, they book somewhere else and we’ve lost their custom.’
‘I see,’ murmured Fenella. ‘I’ll have to think about it according to how my father progresses.’
‘Cameron has asked us to keep out of the kitchen tomorrow and the following day or two. He says perhaps we can exist on snacks or odds and ends of food. New cooking stoves are being put in.’
‘I can always keep out of kitchens,’ said Fenella. ‘But have we to exist on cold stuff out of the fridge?’
‘The fridge will be out of use, too,’ replied Miriam, ‘but we shall have the baby cooker that used to serve the bar. That is, unless the electricians cut off the supply altogether.’
‘I shall go down to the Trachan Arms for lunch,’ declared Fenella. ‘Much simpler.’
‘Except that they don’t serve lunches at this time of year,’ Miriam reminded her.
Fenella laughed and said nothing more. After dinner she still had piles of letters to answer. Several, she noticed, were from touring agencies enquiring about coach party accommodation and facilities. To these Mr. Ramsay had instructed that she was to promise to send the new brochure as soon as possible.
What brochure was that? she wondered. Her father had always supplied a four-page booklet with photographs of hotel exterior and interiors of some of the rooms, but she knew these would not do for Mr. Ramsay. Too modest.
Eventually she considered she had finished work for the day and sighed thankfully as she put the cover on her typewriter. All she had to do now was find Mr. Ramsay and get him to sign the letters so that they could be collected early in the morning by the post van on its way from Trachan village to Fort William.
Now that she had stopped her own clattering typing, Fenella realized that plenty of noise was going on outside the hotel. When she stepped out of the main entrance she saw that dozens of men were still at work, powerful lamps were strung on cables fastened to whatever support could be found so that workmen could see what they were doing. In addition, a huge yellow earth-mover with dazzling headlamps trundled along a stretch of ground on the opposite side of the hotel from the new wing.
She was horrified. How was it that she had not noticed what was going on? The same scene of destruction here as in the front drive; bushes uprooted, lawns torn into lumps of twisted earth, the little kitchen garden where Angus had grown his fresh produce swept away. The whole place had been turned into a building site far beyond the original idea of adding a new wing.
Eventually, after much searching, she found Mr. Ramsay in what was left of the main bar. He was sitting on a high stool at the counter, a mass of papers spread in front of him. Here again, there were changes. The old mahogany shelves had been taken down, replaced by huge sheets of faintly pink-toned mirror; in the corner stood a new counter fitment in teak with a magnolia top.
‘I’ve finished all the letters,’ she announced abruptly. ‘D’you want me to bring them to you or will you sign them in the reception office?’
He looked up and yawned. ‘Would you mind bringing them here, please?’
When she returned with the folder of mail, she said, ‘Are you making an extension on the opposite side of the hotel?’
‘That’s for the pavilion,’ he answered.
‘It seems a pity that you had to tear up such nice grounds.’
‘We shall make new gardens and grounds in due course.’ He was reading rapidly through the letters, signing them and handing them to her to put in envelopes.
‘But why do you want a pavilion? It makes the place sound like a seaside resort,’ she persisted.
‘Wait until I’ve finished signing and I’ll tell you all you want to know,’ he promised, but there was more than a hint of threat in his tone.
She remained silent for a few minutes, marshalling her arguments, her objections, yet knowing that he would demolish them just as easily as his bulldozers knocked down trees, bushes, huts or anything else that stood in the way.
‘Now,’ he said, signing the last letter, ‘you haven’t worked too badly on your first day. A few slips, perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be put right easily.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, and could not keep the ice out of her voice.
‘We may yet be able to make a creditable receptionist out of you,’ he added, a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
‘Sorry to be such poor material,’ she retorted. Then she reflected that, however much he provoked her, perhaps she ought not to answer back so bitingly.
‘What was it you wanted to know about the pavilion?’ he asked.
‘Miriam says it’s for the first conference.’
‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘We must have some sort of conference hall obviously if we want to attract these large parties of people.’
‘But surely you could wait until the hotel is really running well before you take on such numbers.’
He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand the position, Fenella.’
She was momentarily surprised by his use of her name instead of the formal ‘Miss Sutherland.’
Seeing her face, he added, ‘D’you mind if I call you “Fenella”? I find “Miss Sutherland” rather a mouthful.’ There he was again! As ungracious as he possibly could be over even the merest trifle.
She nodded her approval. She wanted to know more about his plans and if she argued he would probably refuse to tell her.
‘I know what you’re going to say—that conferences are usually held in the autumn, but that’s all right for these old mausoleums of hotels a
ll round the coast. They were built in Victorian or Edwardian times for rich people who liked comfort. Now they can’t pay their way because the kind of people who stayed there go to Greece, Madeira or the Lebanon for holidays. What I want to do here is attract small conferences—conventions we call them in Canada and the States—and publicize the Gairmorlie as a place where you can spend a wonderful Scottish spring or early summer holiday. Oh, we’ll have them, too, in the autumn—any time we can get them,’ he continued, building up his own enthusiasm.
‘But the strain on the staff—when you get them, that is—that’s going to be enormous. Dozens of things will go wrong,’ she pointed out.
‘I’m sure they will, but the idea of opening first for this conference is to give the staff an opportunity to practise. Don’t you understand that it’s practically a captive audience, you might say? Almost everything can be done to a routine. Then afterwards we’ll be able to vary it to suit more individual tastes.’
‘My father was always proud of the latitude he gave his guests,’ she said. ‘There was none of that “too late for meals” idea. If visitors came in from a long day’s tramping on the hills or fishing, there was always a good meal for them any time.’
‘We’ll do that, too,’ he promised. ‘We shall eventually have a snack bar running all day, with hot dishes up till about ten o’clock. The kitchen staff will work on a rota and have their own separate cooking apparatus.’
‘That idea isn’t new,’ she said smugly. ‘We’ve had a small cooker in the bar for ages and always served snacks. Perhaps you haven’t had time to notice among all the drastic alterations.’
‘I didn’t say I’d invented the idea,’ he returned. Then he smiled. ‘You’re determined to cut me down to size every time, aren’t you? But there’s possibly one thing your father didn’t have, and I’m going to have a darned good try at it.’ He paused, obviously waiting for her inevitable query, but she remained tantalizingly silent. ‘I’ve bought a small steamer for the loch,’ he announced as though he had bought a fleet of Cunarders.
‘And what are you going to do with it? Trips on the loch for trippers?’
‘I doubt if she’d be all that seaworthy, but I intend to moor her close by the hotel. She’d have dozens of purposes. Conferences, but more than that. Dancing, receptions, a most convenient bathing station—we might find it possible to instal a heated swimming pool on board. Then we have all the accommodation, cabins, saloons and so forth.’
Fenella smiled. ‘It sounds lovely—if only you—’
‘Eventually we might be able to use the ship for exhibitions, concerts, dramatic performances, all sorts of jamborees. We could make Trachan and the Gairmorlie hotel as famous as Pitlochry, or even Edinburgh.’
‘I was going to point out when your enthusiasm ran away with you,’ said Fenella with exaggerated patience,, ‘that you have still to get a sizeable steamer on the loch. Will she fly? Or do you intend to drop her by helicopter?’
‘Wet blanket!’ he scolded. ‘D’you think we have no lakes in Canada? The size of some of ours would make yours look like a puddle.’
‘Exactly. That’s what I’m saying,’ she persisted. ‘How easy for you to get a steamer up the St. Lawrence! It’s much harder to put one into a puddle.’
‘It’s a problem, I admit, but she can come up as far as Fort William, then up part of the Caledonian, but I’ll have to wait until the rivers are in flood. I think we shall manage to get her to the loch without taking her apart and sending her by lorry. That means a lot of work making a ship watertight again.’
Fenella smiled and twisted round on her stool facing him.
‘Well, at the moment you have enough on your plate to cope with the summer traffic. Getting the steamer here will be a nice quiet occupation for the winter months when we’re closed.’
‘Closed? Who said anything about closing in the winter?’ he demanded.
‘But my father—’
‘I know exactly when your father closed and that’s where he made mistakes.’
‘But no one—simply no one comes here in the winter,’ she argued.
‘They will,’ he told her. ‘We’ll catch some of the winter-sporters on their way to and from the Cairngorms. We can’t quite compete with the Adriatic where you can ski in the morning and bathe in warm seas in the afternoon, but we can offer other attractions. Does the loch freeze over in winter?’
‘Sometimes. Often only parts of it are fit for skating. We usually go to a smaller pool for our own skating.’
‘Where?’
‘On land belonging to the McNicols,’ she replied.
He nodded. ‘I must consider that.’
But Fenella’s thoughts were focused on the fact that he did not intend to close the hotel for the winter.
His plans could not possibly affect her. She had agreed to stay for part of the summer months. After that she would be free. She realized of course that with a large influential company behind him, Cameron Ramsay could afford to take risks impossible for her father to sustain.
She collected all the letters now and stepped down from her high stool.
‘Fenella, if I can spare the time tomorrow morning, would you tour the village with me? I want to call on several women who’ve worked here in the peak season.’
‘D’you want me to be interpreter?’
He tilted back his stool to an alarming angle and laughed. ‘I might even need you for that. No, I thought you’d know them better, where they live, whether they’re efficient and so on.’
‘Very well. Tell me what time you want to start.’
She moved away out of the bar and in the reception office stamped the letters. A strange man, Cameron Ramsay, but already a small part of his enthusiasm for the success of the hotel had infected her. She was dimly realizing that far from desiring its failure because her father could no longer direct it, she wanted it to prosper.
Next morning a huge parcel of brochures arrived by one of the lorries that brought the gangs of men.
Fenella was entranced. She thumbed through the glossy pages, appreciative of the good layout, the descriptive matter not only about the hotel itself but its surroundings. The cover carried an artist’s impression of what the Gairmorlie would eventually look like, but what intrigued Fenella was that inside the booklet were a dozen photographs, either in colour or black and white, of rooms that were not yet finished, but still cluttered with workmen and their paraphernalia. Here they were depicted in unbelievable neatness, carpets laid, furnished, tables and chairs, curtains at windows, beds made—everything as it would be when the rooms were complete.
She could only suppose that Mr. Ramsay had collected photographs from brochures of other hotels owned by his company. After all, who would know the difference?
But a closer look indicated that the restaurant, the lounge and the situation of the main bar appeared to belong to the Gairmorlie. Even the views of distant hills through the windows were accurate.
‘How does he manage this?’ Fenella asked Miriam, when the latter had a moment to spare.
‘Publicity people do it for him, I suppose,’ was Miriam’s indifferent answer, but Jamie studied the brochure intently.
‘Perhaps Mr. Cam-Ram cuts out tables and chairs from other photographs and sticks them into the rooms here,’ he suggested.
‘Ha! Collage!’ exclaimed Fenella. ‘Most up-to-date. I shall ask him, Jamie, exactly how he does it.’
Fenella had to wait until late in the morning before Cameron Ramsay could leave the work of supervising the erection of the pavilion. Great motor-driven rollers flattened the earth and pounded it smooth for the concrete to be laid on top.
She stood at a safe distance watching the workmen levelling off each section of grey liquid concrete.
When Mr. Ramsay signalled to her that he was ready to leave, she smiled and when he approached within speaking distance, she said, ‘It only needs one playful dog to jump about on that concrete before it’s set to spoil the lot
.’
‘Your sense of humour is devastating at this time of the morning,’ he replied. ‘I hope you haven’t such a dog ready to let loose.’
‘Your sense of humour is non-existent,’ she retorted. ‘But is that all the foundation that the pavilion needs?’
‘Yes. A concrete raft will support the rest of the structure.’
She had imagined that they would drive to the village in his car, but he was already striding out on to the road and Fenella had to hurry along by his side.
She spoke about the brochures. ‘Marvellous advertising,’ she said with sincere admiration. ‘But do tell me how you get photographs of rooms that are still in chaos or not yet completed.’
He turned towards her and grinned. ‘Magic! The eye of the future! We’ve invented special cameras to record what is only in the architect’s mind.’
‘Rubbish!’ she said, laughing.
‘Theatres make up miniature sets before they start spending money on the full scale idea. We do the same, make up the appropriate rooms, then photograph them.’
‘Of course! Simple. I must remember to tell Jamie.’
‘Don’t forget to send the brochures to all those people to whom they were promised,’ he reminded her.
They had now arrived at Mrs. Macgregor’s house, but although she spoke pleasantly enough, she declared that she would not be available to work at the Gairmorlie during the season.
‘No offence, you’ll be understanding, but my time is taken up.’
Fenella knew most of the village women, but it was the same story everywhere. All of them refused to work at the hotel.
‘What’s biting them all?’ asked Cameron angrily. ‘Is it a put-up job? Some sort of boycott?’
Fenella thought for a moment or two. Then she said, ‘You sent Mrs. Macgregor away with a flea in her ear and she may have gossiped a bit to the others.’
‘But gossip or no, they’d have worked for your father?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied. ‘Usually glad to earn a little extra money in the summer.’
‘So they’ve ganged up against me personally.’ He cast an oblique glance at her. ‘I suppose it couldn’t be your doing?’