Grand Affair Read online

  ‘I hate you,’ she said silently to the Sacred Heart before returning to her class.

  ‘You can’t come to the funeral, Ottie. You’re too young!’

  Sean was taking advantage of them all, pushing home his point, making sure that Ottilie felt that she was yards younger than the rest of them, too young for this, too young for that.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming!’ Ottilie bent her head down low. ‘I want to come.’

  ‘You can’t come. You’re too young, and you’re a girl.’

  Lorcan appeared wearing a black tie and a white shirt and a suit that Mr Hulton had given him from his attic, which had once belonged to Mr Hulton’s son.

  ‘Of course Ottilie’s coming, Sean, and that’s that. Ma was her mother too, the only one she has known.’

  Sean shook his head of red curls towards his sister, his green eyes taking in her appearance. ‘But she’s not got a black dress, Lorcan. Everyone will talk.’

  Lorcan disappeared back into the cottage and then reappeared with the black lace mantilla veil that Ma always wore for church, which he placed gently over Ottilie’s dark hair. ‘There,’ he told her, ‘you’re as smart as paint now.’

  Carrying their missals, they all walked up in a file to the tiny modern Catholic church with the corrugated iron roof where they had worshipped so many times with Ma, whom Ottilie fully expected to see seated at the back of the church saying her rosary, or slowly reading her way through one or other of the Catholic newspapers on sale outside the door. Or sighing gently through most of the service, as if the priest was keeping her from something far more important.

  But Ma was not there, she was in the wooden box with the single red rose on it, and Lorcan’s hand holding Ottilie’s tightened as they all walked towards it.

  ‘Please help Lorcan not to cry,’ Ottilie could not help praying. It would be terrible if Lorcan, who had always been so tall and so old and a father to them all, it would be terrible if he started to cry because that would mean that they really were truly alone.

  Lorcan did not cry. He conducted himself as perfectly as a man should, and although Ma had not known many people in St Elcombe there were others in the church, whom Lorcan had shaken hands with when the service was over, and they had followed the coffin to the churchyard and thrown the earth upon the wooden lid. Lorcan now asked them back to tea at the cottage. Mr Hulton and his wife, and two people whom Ottilie did not know at all, Mr and Mrs Cartaret, a handsome dark-haired couple who Ottilie was told by Joseph ‘might be going to look after you’.

  ‘And you. They want to look after you and Sean and Lorcan too, don’t they?’

  ‘No,’ Joseph said, running ahead to the cottage door at which he jumped with flattened hands before turning to look at Ottilie, his dark eyes thoughtful and concerned. ‘They don’t want me or Sean but they’ll let me help with the building work on their hotel once I’m sixteen, and they’ll look after you. Mr Hulton told Lorcan they don’t want boys, they want a girl because Mrs Cartaret lost a little girl in the sea years ago, and now you could be a new daughter for her and she could bring you up, but you’ll have to be called Cartaret like them, not O’Flaherty, but since the Little People brought you that doesn’t matter, does it, Ottie?’

  ‘I don’t want to be called Ottilie Carter-let. I want to go on being me.’

  ‘Shsh.’ Joseph nudged her, and pulled her into the kitchen away from the other mourners and shut the door. ‘Listen. It’s good they want you, Ottie. They’ll give you new shoes and clothes and you’ll have lots to eat because of its being a hotel where they live, and when you grow up Lorcan says you’ll learn to arrange flowers and answer the telephone like a lady, and there will be lots of money. Always. Think of that, Ottie, you’ll always have something to eat.’

  ‘But I don’t want to do flowers, I want to be here with you and Lorcan and Sean.’

  ‘Shsh,’ Joseph said angrily, and he widened his large dark grey eyes with their thick black lashes dramatically, at the same time jerking his head in the direction of the door which was now opening to reveal Lorcan. ‘Shsh, Ottie, or you’ll spoil everything for all of us, do you hear?’ He squeezed her arm hard and with intent, the way he would do sometimes when Ottilie wriggled too much while he was watching television. ‘They’re Mr Hulton’s friends, these Cartarets, and they’re going to help us all. Tell her, Lorcan, tell her how lucky she is that Mr and Mrs Cartaret want her to go and live with them.’

  But neither Joseph’s words nor his arm-squeezing made any difference to Ottilie.

  ‘Please don’t make me go and live with Mr Hulton’s friends, Lorcan,’ she cried, and she threw herself at her eldest brother and clasped his knees to her face. ‘Please, please, don’t let me go and live anywhere except with you. I just want to be with you and Joseph and Sean. Oh please, Lorcan. I’ll be so good. I won’t make jam tarts or anything again, not ever, not if you don’t want it, oh please don’t send me away.’

  ‘Shut the door, Joseph, for God’s sake, before they all hear her.’

  Lorcan unclasped Ottilie’s arms from around his lower half and lifting her up quite easily he placed her on a tall, wooden kitchen stool, the one from which she always used to wash up, the one she was ready never ever to make tarts from again, if only Lorcan would not send her away.

  ‘Now stop this, Ottie, do you hear? Ma’s dead and we have to make the best of everything, see? Mr and Mrs Hulton, well, they’ve been very kind to us, being that they’re Catholics and all that, and they’ve found you a place in a proper home where you can be a proper girl, and grow up to be a lady in a pretty dress, and have all those things Ma would have wanted for you, but couldn’t give you.’

  ‘I don’t want anything, I just want to be here, always,’ Ottilie sobbed. ‘Please, please don’t send me away, Lorcan.’

  ‘You will go away and like it.’

  Lorcan’s face was suddenly furious and he shook Ottilie.

  ‘You will go away and like it, do you hear? And you’re not to cry or they won’t want to take you, they don’t want a little girl with a blotchy face and untidy clothes. They want you same as you were in church just now, see? Looking like a little angel in black lace and being good. That’s why they came to Ma’s funeral, to see you, and because Mr Hulton told them you were a nice little girl who needed a home. You’re lucky, Ottilie, we all are. Ma was a thief, and most people don’t want anything to do with the children of a thief.’

  ‘Ma was not a thief! How dare you, Lorcan!’

  Joseph sprang at Lorcan ready to hit him, but his eldest brother fended him off with one hand, determinedly speaking in a low voice for he was terrified of being heard by the other mourners.

  ‘She was, Joseph. Ma was a thief all right. A good thief I’ll warrant you, but a thief all the same. All those trips over the cliffs to Branhaven, all those tins of peaches and that, they were all stolen. Every single one of them. You didn’t know, none of you knew, but I knew. She didn’t take that tea and those biscuits from the St Elcombe shop, but she took a hell of a lot of other things. Ah, for goodness sakes, Joseph, she even took the bucket and spade she gave to Ottilie here.’

  Joseph and Ottilie stared at Lorcan, completely silenced. Realizing he had their attention now Lorcan continued with one eye on the still shut kitchen door.

  ‘It all began in London, when Da left her, see? She started to take in children and look after them for people who didn’t feed them enough and didn’t have money. That’s why she was called “Mrs Mac” never “Mrs O’Flaherty” while we were at Number Four. MacDonagh’s was where she took all the things, see? She stole food for us and the other children she looked after. Don’t ask me what went on in her head for her to think that she could, don’t ask me, please. But at Number Four it didn’t matter, because the manager of Macs always turned a blind eye and of course the story in the neighbourhood was that Ma went there at the end of the day just so she could buy all the cheap foods, and that’s why they – you know, t
he neighbours – they called her “Mrs Mac”. As a matter of fact, in the end I think even Ma came to believe that story herself, that she was actually paying, just getting everything cheap, not stealing it.’

  Lorcan paused.

  ‘It was all right when we were back there, all that time we were at Number Four, but then we came down here, and of course it wasn’t the same, for why would it be? There was no kind manager and no Macs or anything like that, no greenies on Saturday from Charlie’s uncle, just Ma and her big coat pockets and her paper bags waiting to be filled up with things she hadn’t paid for.’

  Lorcan paused as he looked at the shocked faces of the two younger children and for a second he felt for them, but he also knew it was better that it was he who was doing the telling and not someone else. It had to be said, especially now that Ma was dead. They had to understand, all of them, that their mother was a human being, that they had not lost an angel or a saint.

  ‘The three of you, you thought it was some sort of conspiracy, that the shop people were just getting back at her because of her getting punchy with that fellow who was ticking Ottilie off the first day here, but of course it was nothing of the sort. He’s just a poor old gombeen, queer in the head and simple at that. The poor people who owned that shop, when they put the things into the box to catch Ma – which I am sure, quite sure, they definitely did do – you have to feel for them, for weren’t they all at the end of their tether because they knew her pockets had been filled with their stuff on so many occasions? All those times Ma was meant to be watching Ottilie on the sand, she was in and out of there when they were at their busiest, taking things. You couldn’t blame them for wanting to catch her, really you couldn’t, it’s their livelihood too, you know.’

  ‘But Ma always said she’d put my hand in the fire if she caught me stealing.’

  ‘That’s it, Joseph, that’s just it, and she would have done exactly that. She didn’t want us to grow up the way she was. But for herself she – well, you see, she never thought what she was doing was wrong, she didn’t see it that way. I reckon she was so much in the habit of doing what she did, I reckon she just thought she was feeding us, helping us, the way a mother bird brings back the worms, you know? That’s why I think she took to the drink the way she did, after it was in the paper about her being fined. She drank not because she wanted to stop taking the things, because she didn’t, but because she just couldn’t understand being caught. That’s different, isn’t it? She still went on going over the cliffs, still went back to the same old ways. Only in Branhaven she started to steal gin as well, which she’d never done before – she never stole for herself before – and then she’d drink it on her way home. The police told me that they found the path where she walked was littered with the half-bottles that she’d thrown down towards the sea. It was inevitable that one day she would fall. And shall I tell you something?’

  Ottilie and Joseph stared up at him.

  ‘It was far better that she did. Better for her to be dead than locked up in some six foot by nine foot prison cell with only a lavatory for company.’ Lorcan looked directly at Joseph, excluding Ottilie. ‘She was a wild bird, our mother, she would have just battered her poor wings against the prison bars. As it is she’s gone before us, and sleeps the sleep of peace, God rest her.’

  Lorcan turned and looked into Ottilie’s eyes, his own beautiful grey ones as sad and solemn as Ottilie had ever seen them.

  ‘So now you know, Ottie,’ he told her, still speaking in a hushed and urgent manner, ‘why you’re so very lucky that Mrs Cartaret has decided to take you in as she has done. God help you, being taken on by Mrs Cartaret, you must be the luckiest little girl in the whole world. And do you know something? Do you know that from now on, for ever and ever, you will never want for anything? Imagine that, Ottie, imagine being that lucky? You will never need to take things from a shop to feed your children, you will never believe that you have to do those things to help your babies. You will always have shoes for your feet, as they say in Ireland.’

  Ottilie turned away from Lorcan, a helpless despair descending on her. From now on she was quite sure that for her the sun would never shine again, the flowers would never flower again and she would never again he in the grass listening for the sound of grasshoppers or ants on the march.

  If she had known that in all her life she would never feel sadder than she did at that moment she might have been comforted, but as it was all she knew was that from now on she was completely alone.

  Part Two

  To mourn a mischief that is past and gone

  Is the next way to draw new mischief on.

  Shakespeare, Othello

  Five

  Cornwall, 1958

  Ottilie was upstairs, high up in the top of the hotel, but if she stretched herself enough, holding on to the sturdy iron bars that protected the window, and turned her head sideways, she could just see Lorcan, far below, painting the black railings that bordered the private frontage of the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe.

  The reason she was so anxious to make sure that Lorcan was below her window was because at last the great day had come, the day upon which the hotel staff had spent all week remarking, namely her tenth birthday, and despite Melanie’s having asked ten children around Ottilie’s age to a real birthday tea, with cake and candles, all Ottilie could think about was that her beloved Lorcan had promised to join them.

  ‘Do get down, Miss Ottilie. Oh for heaven’s sakes would you look at you, and in your party dress!’ Edith, one of the staff, tut-tutted at her, fussing as always, her great round face looking as worried as if she thought Ottilie was about to try to jump from the window, not just look down at Lorcan. ‘There.’ She straightened Ottilie, pulling down the child’s long black velvet party dress with its old lace collar and cuffs, while at the same time whipping a hairbrush from the window sill and beginning once more to brush Ottilie’s long dark hair away from her face and down her back, rearranging her black pearl-studded Alice band and the small strand of coral beads round her neck. ‘Mrs Cartaret will tell me off something awful she will, if she sees you perched up there. Anyway, who was you lookin’ at, might I ask? Not got an admirer already, have we now?’

  Edith drew in a mighty breath and her large bosom responded in kind to the intake of air.

  ‘Oh, Edith,’ Ottilie said, and she raised her large brown-flecked grey eyes to Edith’s face before sighing and saying with a patronizing air, ‘You really must try not to be so terribly esoteric.’

  She had no idea what ‘esoteric’ meant, but she had heard it on Blackie the hall porter’s radio that morning very early and thought it might apply to Edith, that it might somehow suit her. Edith looked as if she just might be ‘esoteric’ with her old-fashioned hair and her cameo brooch in the middle of her white uniform collar.

  ‘Don’t be personal, Miss Ottilie,’ Edith reproved, trying to look stern but failing. ‘You and your long words. You’ve more words to your bow than most people have hot dinners. I don’t know where you get it all from, I’m sure I don’t. Still, now you’re in double figures I dare say someone will give you a grown-up dictionary and that way you might start to understand half the things you come out with, because I’m sure I don’t, really I am. But who were you looking at down there, anyway?’ She stared at Ottilie for a second.

  Ottilie turned away, lifting up her head and gesturing grandly. ‘Don’t worry about my safety, my dear old nurse—’

  ‘You and those old pictures you keep making me take you to at that fleapit cinema. Really, Miss Ottilie. I am not your old nurse, and what’s more you know it.’

  Ottilie looked up at Edith who was smiling and patting her crisp, tightly permed hair, and looking as if she was trying to decide whether being an old nurse to Ottilie was worse or better than being an old maid at the Grand. Not that it mattered which conclusion Edith came to, and they both knew it. Ever since seeing Romeo and Juliet at the cinema in Branhaven Ottilie had found it impossible not to tur
n poor Edith into an old nurse. At that particular moment, though, all that really mattered was that Ottilie had successfully avoided answering Edith.

  Although she could not say exactly why, Ottilie was quite certain that Edith must not be told that she had asked Lorcan to her birthday party, because if she were Ottilie felt she would be sure to try to discourage him. Ottilie did not know why exactly Edith would try to stop Lorcan coming to her birthday party, she just knew she would. But no-one was going to stop Lorcan coming to her party, and Ottilie had already been downstairs and written his name on a card and put it on a plate next to her own, for it was no exaggeration to say that if she wanted nothing else for her birthday, Ottilie wanted Lorcan to come to her tea party. Her heart actually ached just seeing him so far down below, painting all those railings day after day. She so wanted him to know that she had watched him every day, working his way round. That was why she wanted him to come to her party, so that he would know that she still loved him, and watched him from above, and to give him a piece of her birthday cake. Chef had baked it and it was quite grown-up, chocolate with black cherries and lots of fresh whipped Cornish cream, and ten candles on it.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’ Melanie Cartaret paused in the doorway looking vaguely surprised as she always did on seeing Ottilie, as if she was still amazed at herself for taking the orphaned girl in, for adopting her, for bringing her up. Yet the expression in her eyes was very proud when she saw how pretty Ottilie was looking in her new dress. ‘My dear, you look all of ten years old suddenly,’ Melanie went on admiringly. ‘Really, I am pleased with myself for thinking of putting you in black velvet. It is very flattering for your skin, Ottilie dear, truly.’ She rearranged Ottilie’s coral beads to lie more tidily in the lace collar of the dress and then, taking her hand, she walked down the main stairs of the hotel with her.