Grand Affair Page 8

  Philip laughed at that. ‘I suppose I did,’ he admitted. ‘It’s just that one time a friend of Constantia’s helped when I was staging Waterloo and she lost some rather good figures, ran off with them into the garden or something and we never did find them.’

  ‘OK. I’ll just watch you, then.’

  Ottilie smiled reassuringly across at Philip who she saw was shy but determined not to give on this point. Living in a hotel meant she was really quite used to people not wanting you to do things sometimes and at other times wanting you very much to do things, and straight away.

  But soon after, only a matter of minutes as it happened, they were both too involved in arranging the battle of Balaklava for Philip to remember Constantia’s friend, and Ottilie was moving soldiers into battle order with matched concentration.

  Tea was a very relaxed affair. Philip handed round scones and toast with something he called ‘Gent’s Relish’ on it with gay abandon and pulled faces the moment the Portuguese maid who had served it left them to cake and their own devices. They both talked non-stop and halfway through tea Ottilie realized that she had at last found a friend of the kind that she had only really dreamed of until then, not just someone she could chatter to as she chattered all day to the old ladies and gentlemen who stayed at the hotel, but someone whom she could talk with on equal terms. Not like her brothers, who she remembered now were always stopping and sighing, and saying in tired voices, ‘Well, Ottie, what is it now?’

  ‘Philip, can I ask you something?’

  ‘If you want.’

  ‘Do you – well, do you really like Elvis Presley records and rock and roll and that sort of thing?’

  When Ottilie finally screwed up enough courage to ask this question they were both still seated at the tea table contemplating a second slice of the quite delicious chocolate cake. Knowing that so much ran on Philip’s reply Ottilie stared at the lace insets in the tablecloth rather than at him, but she soon looked up as Philip fixed his clear blue eyes on her and, having helped her to a fresh piece of cake, shook his head slowly.

  ‘No,’ he told her, raising his voice slightly as if his determination to be truthful made him nervous. ‘No I do not. I don’t like anything like that. I just like being out of doors and riding, and playing with soldiers and reading books like Beau Geste and that sort of thing. Constantia says I’m going to grow up stuffy like our father, just liking the outdoors and not going to the theatre or cinemas.’

  Ottilie looked at Philip with relief.

  ‘Well then so am I, because I don’t like that sort of thing either. I’m ever so glad that you don’t, because – well, because I thought I was like that because I’m always having to sit with the older guests at the hotel and they only play old gramophone records of Noel Coward singing “I’ll See You Again” and they don’t know who Grace Kelly is or Frank Sinatra or anyone like that. They never go to cinemas and they only really know the conjuror who comes at Christmas.’

  ‘In that case you must be just a bit old-fashioned, like me. Don’t worry, lots of people are, it’s just how it is. I get teased at school for it, but I take no notice and I’m older than you.’

  Philip smiled suddenly at Ottilie.

  ‘Come on, let’s go and see Ludlow and play with him.’

  When it was time to leave, and Ottilie was just about to start explaining away Edith to the Tredegar housekeeper with ‘I’m just about to be collected by my sort of old nurse person’, because if she was honest she was more than a little embarrassed by Edith’s macintosh and funny hat and was in a positive fury of inner embarrassment in case the Tredegar staff thought Edith was her mother, Philip smiled at her most particularly.

  She was so grateful for that smile, which was directed right at her. It was as if he understood exactly, as if he knew just what it was like to be picked up by people who are not your real mum or dad. His smile said that he knew only too well how Ottilie felt. It was as if he really understood people like Edith coming to fetch you, and that he had had an ‘Edith’ too, so that as Ottilie was driven back to the Grand, agonizingly slowly, and with a great lack of smoothness and comfort due to the constant screech of Edith’s gear-changing, she found herself staring out into the darkness of the late February day and hoping that Philip and she could go on being friends until they were quite grown up.

  What seemed like half a century later, due to her creepy crawly driving, Edith dropped Ottilie at the bottom of the great sweep of steps that led into the foyer of the hotel. Looking up at the impressive white mock Gothic façade Ottilie felt as she always did when she looked up at the hotel that was now her home, both pleasantly surprised and strangely excited. The hotel, living and being at the hotel all the time, was the part of being ‘little Miss Cartaret’ that Ottilie really loved.

  And never more so than this evening after returning from Tredegar.

  There everything, although beautiful and gracious, had seemed strangely empty. At Tredegar footsteps rang out on the stone floors of the halls and the wood of the stairs, the heels of the softest leather shoes sounding as if they were metal-tipped so much did sounds echo. At Tredegar, besides herself and Philip and the staff there had seemed to be no human beings, just sculptures in alcoves and niches, and paintings, and everyone in those paintings so very dead and gone.

  Whereas now, from the moment Ottilie walked back up into the hotel, there were no empty spaces, and no sound of her shoes ringing out and echoing in the cold air as there had been when she had walked round Tredegar with Philip, Ottilie all the time imagining that they might already themselves be ghosts, or a boy and a girl stepped down from one of the paintings hanging darkly in halls and corridors, so different was it from the Grand where there were people everywhere. The page boys calling for people who weren’t there or people who should be there, guests treading across the acres of red carpet to make a telephone call, or to go to the cocktail lounge, or to dinner. People of all ages and all types, some dressed for dinner, some for arrival, and all there at the Grand for different reasons. Love affairs, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, reunions, honeymoons, rest, recuperation, any and every reason brought people to a hotel such as the Grand at St Elcombe, even off season.

  To Alfred Cartaret the guests at the Grand were there to be entertained. ‘We’re in show business too, you know,’ he would tell the new staff every season. ‘We’re here to please as much as anyone singing and dancing with the Roller Coasters down at the Theatre Royal. Only unlike the Roller Coasters, or even the Queen, we’re on show twenty-four hours a day. They may have time off but for us, here at the Grand, there is no time off. If an eccentric millionaire wants to call down for teacakes at two in the morning we must see he has them. If a star from the films wants only white roses and Bollinger champagne, that’s what we supply, day and night and whenever he wants them. For us there is no backstage, no time off, no putting our feet up. That is part of the job, to be always on call, so to speak, all the year round, and what a pleasure it is, you will find, when you see the joy people take in coming back here, time and again, to find it just the same dear, impeccable old Grand as it was last year, a real joy for them and a source of pride to us.’

  Alfred always made the same speech, but it was a good one, and although the old staff knew it by heart the season’s new intake never did, and they would look impressed, as if they were joining something that mattered, which the Grand at St Elcombe did to Alfred, and ever more increasingly to Ottilie.

  Melanie was quite different. She enjoyed the Grand as if she was yet another of its guests, to her mind the most important of its guests. The Grand was her backdrop. She had once been an actress, for a very short period before her marriage, but long enough for her to learn how to wear her clothes and walk into a room as if she was walking on stage. Her greatest enjoyment, once she was dressed in one of her many beautiful evening gowns, was to walk down the steps of the great gold staircase, her blond hair coiffured into her favourite Marlene Dietrich style, the sequins on h
er evening dress glittering, and the jewellery at her throat and ears glowing. Descending the gold staircase at the Grand was an art that she knew all about and enjoyed to the hilt.

  ‘My dance and drama teacher always said, “Melanie, never, ever look down. Look straight ahead when you walk down a staircase. Everyone looks at you, you know, if you look straight ahead, and smile.”’

  And that was what she would do every evening. Melanie would stare straight ahead as she descended the stairs, not once allowing her head to bend to see what her elegant feet in their evening shoes were doing, not once allowing her lips to do anything but smile.

  Halfway down the stairs she would always pause to allow that night’s diners to look up and note the beautiful Mrs Cartaret’s evening dress and elegant figure before proceeding into the restaurant where the waiters, all of whom Ottilie always thought had a crush on her, fell over themselves to pull out her chair, place her napkin on her knee, present her with the menu, or merely look up at her as she paused on the stairs and sigh with reverence at her elegance and beauty. The hotel was Melanie’s theatre and she was without doubt the star of its nightly production.

  ‘Your mum is one of the great attractions in this place,’ Alfred would tell Ottilie. ‘There are men who come here for dinner every month just to catch sight of her. She is a great asset, Ottilie, your mother – a great, great asset.’

  Ottilie knew that Dad worshipped Mum and everyone else knew it, but not everyone agreed with him that ‘Madame’, as Melanie always insisted on being called by the staff, was an asset to the hotel. Sometimes Edith could be heard murmuring about the expense of Madame’s clothes.

  ‘Something new every night. Hardly a week goes by but Madame’s sending for something from Knightsbridge or Harrods or somewhere. And as for the hairdressing salon, she’s never out of it. Sometimes it seems to me that it was put into the hotel just for her, really it does. But then Madame must have what Madame must have.’

  This last was only too true, as everyone at the Grand was well aware. Madame did not approve of the St Elcombe schools, finding them ‘common and horrid’, so Ottilie’s schooling had ceased the moment Dad and Mum had privately adopted her. Mum did not approve of sending children to convent schools and said so. She also said that she would not dream of adopting a child and then sending her away to a private school.

  ‘There is no law in England to say that a child has to go to school, Ottilie darling. There is only one rule and that is that a child must be educated, so we will hire tutors and teachers for you,’ Ottilie’s new mother had told her very grandly on the little girl’s second night at the hotel, as she pulled the old linen sheets around Ottilie and tucked her in. ‘I don’t want you mixing any more with St Elcombe children. It will do you no good at all if you are to live here and be an asset to the hotel.’

  But as time went by and no-one ever seemed to remember to hire tutors or teachers for her, it was finally left to Ottilie to educate herself from the hotel library.

  Edith had bought her a small Oxford dictionary for her birthday, but Ottilie was far too impatient to look up any words that she did not understand, so she was always using them all wrong, and of course once she discovered that that made people laugh she had even less reason to look up their proper meaning. All this was part of the Ottilie Cartaret who lived at the Grand and nothing to do with the Ottilie O’Flaherty who had been born in Notting Hill and lived there until she was six.

  But although not going to school was so much nicer than having to look serious and wear a grey jumper and skirt and attend church all the time, it also meant that her whole life was at the hotel, and there were hardly ever children staying. When Philip and Constantia went back to their boarding schools Ottilie’s mind turned once more to her beloved brothers. She missed them all, but somewhat to her surprise she missed Sean the most, because he had sometimes played games with her or read to her, before Ma had died and Ottilie had been given away to the Cartarets.

  Out in the town for their afternoon walk Ottilie fell into the habit of nagging Edith to be allowed to walk past Sean’s school when the children were coming out, in the hope of catching sight of him, which they finally did. As soon as she saw her brother Ottilie’s face became pink with excitement and she let go Edith’s hand and ran towards him.

  ‘Sean! Sean!’ she called out, jumping up and down in her lace-up fur-lined boots, her heart leaping when she saw how he had grown into looking like Joseph had just finished looking. ‘Sean!’ She ignored the stares of the children passing her, swinging their satchels, their faces already determined by life at home, by their parents, by not being rich as Ottilie was now she was living at the Grand with so many people to wait on her.

  At last Sean saw her, and once again Ottilie’s heart jumped with the excitement of it. Here she was, Ottilie, the youngest, and there was Sean, her next brother whom she loved so much. But at the sight of his sister coming towards him Sean looked so appalled Ottilie might as well have been naked. He looked frightened, too, and Ottilie suddenly realized that he was probably afraid she might fling her arms round his neck and kiss him or something, in front of his friends.

  ‘Don’t come here, Ottie. Really. Don’t come here no more, d’ye hear? ’S bad enough without yer comin’ ’ere and makin’ things much wuss. All right?’ Sean pushed Ottilie on the arm. ‘Really, go away, all right?’ he called to her angrily, his Cornish accent more emphatic than ever, and he ran off as fast as he could.

  Ottilie’s eyes filled with tears and she looked away from Edith, quickly wiping her clean white gloves across her eyes. He hadn’t meant it, of course. That was just Sean, he always had been a bit shy.

  ‘Come on, Miss Ottilie,’ Edith said quietly, having given Ottilie time to swallow away the lump in her throat as they both watched Sean disappear round the bottom of the main street, his satchel bobbing about on his back, his socks around his ankles, his red hair bright against the grey of the buildings. ‘Time to go home to tea.’

  Home to the cheerful sound of the reception bell being ting-ting-tinged for the page boys. Home to the arrival of new guests. Ottilie ran back up the steps of the Grand and thought, ‘Yes, this is home now.’ She never again asked to go and see Sean or Joseph, and Edith never offered to take her, as if they both accepted that trying to meet up with Sean had been a failure, as if they both knew that nowadays Ottilie in her smart pale blue or grey Hayward’s coats or navy blue jackets with brass buttons and expensive Scotch House kilts looked just too different from the poorer children streaming past them back to their cottages and flats, too different to be able to pass herself off once again as one of them.

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever wise to go back into the dim and distant past, Miss Ottilie,’ Edith said later, as Ottilie, her tea uneaten, retired to bed early without so much as a word or a joke. ‘You take my mother, now, she’s still keeping wool against the war being on again and rationing her butter and being sensible with the marmalade when she could be enjoying herself same as the rest of us. No, you want to keep to the present, Miss Ottilie, really you do. Nothing else is healthy to my mind.’

  But when she was left alone Ottilie found it difficult to accept Edith’s advice about the past, particularly now she was ten and Lorcan had given her Ma’s precious bracelet, which Edith had taken and put ‘somewhere safe’.

  Six

  There was a special feeling to the start of each season at the Grand. Even before Ottilie had become so much part of the place that regular guests would look for her within minutes of their arrival, she could sense it. She could sense it before Blackie, the Grand’s ageing porter, had puffed and panted and staggered with the first luggage to the lift. Before the sea had stopped raging and the winds whipping around the newly painted exterior of the Grand, Ottilie would know without even looking in the hotel diary that the first day of the season was upon them.

  It was a sixth sense that came from living all the time in the hotel, knowing its rhythms, its heartbeat, its sense of i
ts own fitness. As if on the exact day given in the guide books, the hotel was like an actor viewing itself in the mirror to the side of the stage, checking its appearance and adjusting its costume most precisely, before saying ‘Now!’ and sweeping on into the full glare of the summer season.

  ‘Mrs Le Martine is arriving at four o’clock today,’ Ottilie heard Edith being told by Mrs Tomber the senior housekeeper. ‘Shall we have a last check of her suite?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ottilie said before Edith could put down her duster and turn to answer Mrs Tomber. ‘You stay, Edith, and I’ll go. You know how much she likes me!’

  Neither of the staff could argue with her. Mrs Le Martine and Ottilie had been confidantes for three or four seasons now.

  Mrs Le Martine always asked for Ottilie within minutes of her arrival. Mum said it was because she had no children and was a widow and that it was ‘rather pathetic really’, but Ottilie found Mrs Le Martine fascinating and not at all pathetic. Just seeing her expensive luggage, heavy leather with deep gold initialling and a trunk that opened outwards like a wardrobe so that all her clothes could be taken straight out of it on their own hangers, was thrilling. And then to put her heavy glass scent bottles on her dressing table and place her silver brushes beside them, and help the maid hang the clothes or put away the satin handkerchief sachet and the matching nightdress case, was a magical ritual which made Ottilie feel as if she was helping to serve at a religious ceremony.

  All Mrs Le Martine’s clothes had discreet labels in them and, unlike Mum who boasted that she could dress in five minutes, Mrs Le Martine never dressed without the help of one of the hotel maids. She rang down when she was ready, and they came up and helped her. Ottilie was sometimes allowed to watch the last stages of her dressing in the evening. She especially liked the moment when Mrs Le Martine opened the small safe in her suite and took out one or two of the many leather boxes with her initials on them. She would view their contents and plump for one or another of the necklaces and matching earrings that she so liked to wear.