Grand Affair

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 turn 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.

Sometimes Ottilie wished that Mum and Dad were not so very proud of her. On the other hand she knew it was very little to pay in return for living at the Grand and having so many friends in the new staff that came every year, and very often in some of the older guests who came to stay too. She was lucky in every way. She was lucky in being able to use the swimming pool any day of the summer, and in having pretty clothes and food and all those things that everyone everywhere must want. So being polite and nice was really a very small thing. It was just that sometimes she wished that she could be more herself with Mum and Dad, and not the person that they thought she was, or ought to be. On the other hand she also dreaded that they might discover just what a bad person she could be, because if they did they might get rid of her as quickly as they had adopted her. That person, the person they had not adopted, could only be let out once the door of her bedroom was shut in the evening and everyone was downstairs in the large, old-fashioned dining room. Then Ottilie could lie in bed and in her imagination be as wicked as she liked.

She would fantasize about going down into the dining room of the hotel wearing only her bathing suit and jumping out from under the pudding table and frightening all the old ladies in their evening dresses and diamond brooches. Or she would imagine putting an old hat under the silver meat dishes so that when Gianni, the head waiter, removed the silver dome with his usual flourish, instead of a magnificent fillet of beef there would be Mum’s best hat with the veiling, or the hotel cat. Sometimes she would laugh so much at these ideas that she would have to go to her bathroom and splash her face to stop herself from laughing until she was sick.

‘There now.’ Melanie looked proudly from her husband’s face hovering just behind them both to the scene below, down the steps into the great dining room of the Grand. ‘There now, isn’t that lovely, Alfred darling, isn’t that just something?’

Melanie nodded towards the central table round which were sitting ten carefully selected children, all of them dressed in one or another version of a theme on black and white. The staff had set the table with black and white napkins and flowers dyed specially, and black and white candles, and right in the middle the famous chocolate cake with an outer icing of black and white and a lucky black cat on the top. And of course the staff themselves, Edith and everyone, were in black and white as well, because they always were in black and white.

‘Isn’t that just charming, darling?’ Melanie asked her husband. He darted forward to photograph his wife and Ottilie on the grand semi-circular staircase coming down to the dining room, and after that their arrival at the birthday table, before taking another of the cake and the table with the staff standing behind the chairs of the small guests who were now applauding the birthday girl.

But while Ottilie was going from guest to guest and shaking hands, all she could think of was that Lorcan would be arriving soon. She hoped that he would not feel shy and embarrassed from not being in black and white too. In between opening presents and talking to the guests Ottilie found herself fantasizing that Lorcan might arrive wearing his white overalls, the ones he was wearing all morning to paint the railings. She wished he would, because it would look so funny in the grand dining room, and it would mean that they could laugh together the way they had always used to do in the old days before she came to live at the hotel.

She had not seen Lorcan close to for a long time, not since before Christmas when he and Joseph and Sean came to lunch with her in her apartment on the top floor of the hotel, and then they had all been so hungry that they could not wait to tuck their napkins into the collars of their best white shirts and eat as if they were sure they were never going to eat again. It had seemed to Ottilie that there had been hardly any time to hear how they were or what had been happening to them, before the two eldest had to go back to work, and Sean back to school.

Ottilie had been longing to see them all and to give them their presents, things that she had spent practically all year making them, a felt pig for Sean, a long scarf knitted on big needles for Joseph, and a book of funny drawings for Lorcan who said how funny they were without even looking at them, so great a hurry was he in to get through all five courses and back to work before Mr Hulton discovered that he was gone.

‘It’s all right, everyone knows you’re here,’ Ottilie had kept saying once the waiters had served them, because the boys didn’t seem to understand that it didn’t matter the three of them being there with her, that no-one would mind, that the Cartarets had truly laid on the lunch for them all especially, so that Ottilie could see them before Christmas was upon them and she was needed at the hotel to be charming to all the elderly guests who booked in every year at the Grand for the festivities. But the boys, besides eating as fast as they could swallow every course that was put in front of them, seemed to have spent their precious time with her looking uneasily around at everything, the paintings, the cut glass on the table, the silver forks engraved with the hotel crest, as if a policeman was going to arrive at any moment and accuse them of breaking and entering. Joseph had said when he was leaving, ‘I envy you all this, Ottie,’ and although Ottilie had smiled up at him to cover her embarrassment she had been grateful to him too because, all in all, she realized that perhaps it was better said than not.

Seated at her birthday table Ottilie looked round at the faces of all the invited children as she herself sat down and pulled at her starched napkin to put it on her knee. She knew everyone who had come to her party because they were all children who had come to the hotel at some time or another with their parents, or their grandparents, or were connected to the Grand in some other way. All except for Philip and Constantia Granville who had never come to the hotel before, whom Melanie had invited because she had just met their mother at a cocktail party. The Granvilles were one of the fifty oldest families in Cornwall. Ottilie knew this because Edith had told her. Ottilie was not terribly interested in people’s families, unless they were guests at the hotel, but looking at them she thought the Granvilles looked quite gentle and polite, unlike some of the children. They were both tall and blond, as tall and blond as Ottilie was petite and dark.

‘Do you like parties?’ she asked Philip Granville.

‘Not really, no. I prefer staying at home with my tame hare as a matter of fact.’

The seriousness of young Philip’s manner impressed Ottilie, and she couldn’t help agreeing with him that staying at home with a tame hare would be much more interesting than going to a tea party because someone happened to be ten that day.

‘Do you like going to the cinema?’

‘Not really, no,’ Philip answered, and he looked at Ottilie, his blue eyes very serious. ‘I only really like animals and being outside.’

‘Where does your hare live?’

‘In my room. With me. I rescued him.’

Ottilie gave a small sigh of admiration but before she could ask Philip Granville more about his hare she saw Lorcan arriving in his best tweed suit, his hair smoothed down, his white collar as stiff as anything, his tie just so. She wanted to get up and run across to him and fling her arms around his neck but Melanie, who was standing behind her chair, leaned forward and gently but firmly pushed Ottilie back into her seat again as soon as she started to rise to greet her eldest brother.

‘It’s all right, darling, I’ll deal with this.’

Before Lorcan had finished walking slowly and self-consciously, his best shoes squeaking, down the great semicircular staircase that led into the dining room, Mrs Cartaret had hurried up to him.

Ottilie tried not to look, but finally all she could do was look – as Lorcan, the dearest of all her three brothers, smiled shyly and awkwardly at Mrs Cartaret coming towards him wearing her best cocktail party smile. Although she could only see the back of her head Ottilie knew that Melanie would be smiling at Lorcan the way she smiled at the hotel guests, and trying to take the small present Lorcan was holding from him before he had even finished speaking, thereby making it plain that she did not expect him to do more than leave the present with her and then take himself off.

Watching anxiously from the other side of the dining room Ottilie swallowed hard, wondering how much it had cost Lorcan to take time off work to come to the party to which she had invited him so many weeks before. It must have cost him money that he dearly needed to save for all the books he was studying at night so that he could go to some religious college that he had tried to tell her about at Christmas. Ottilie had not really wanted to hear about it, because she had hated going to the convent and enjoyed going to church even less.

She could see Melanie talking to Lorcan as if he was a hotel guest, laughing and smiling but blocking his progress to the birthday table all the same. She would not be able to imagine, as Ottilie could imagine, how much trouble it would have been for Lorcan to come here today. Her mum could not see in her mind what Ottilie could see – Lorcan returning home in the middle of the day and carefully bathing and changing his clothes, ironing his own shirt, brushing his hair, putting the bicycle clips on the bottom of his clean trousers, bicycling back to the hotel, chaining his bicycle to those railings that he had not yet finished painting, walking into the foyer of the hotel, talking his way past the staff who knew him only as one of the builders, and then summoning up the courage to come into the dining room in his best suit. Worst of all, Mum could not imagine, as Ottilie could imagine, just how much he would have looked forward to the party, only to be turned away by Mrs Cartaret as he was now being, politely but firmly, charmingly and sweetly turned away, and not allowed to join Ottilie and her friends.

Back he would have to go, not just up the staircase, this time feeling even more awkward, but across the foyer, back to his bicycle where he would put on his clips again, and all the way back to the cottage where he would have to take everything off once more, the specially starched shirt, the neatly pressed suit, the black polished shoes, the tie that was normally only taken out for church.

And tomorrow morning, at work, what would he say to Mr Hulton about all the time he had taken off work – the best part of an afternoon, just to come into the hotel by the front doors and leave a present and go away again? What would he say? Ottilie’s legs under the birthday table wrapped themselves tightly round each other at the thought of how embarrassed he would feel, and knowing the other men working on the hotel she could imagine just how they would tease him and call him a snob for wanting to take Ottilie a present himself, because Ottilie suddenly knew that was how it would look to his mates at work, just as though Lorcan had wanted to join in with the snobs at her tea party, to push himself forward where he was not wanted, whereas the truth was that Lorcan would not have dreamed of coming to the party had not Ottilie asked him so particularly.

‘Lorcan!’

Ottilie pushed her chair back and ran as fast as she could after him. Lorcan was halfway up the stairs. He turned and looked down at her.

‘Come back, please, Lorcan! Please, please, please! Come back and sit beside me and watch me cut the cake, please?’

Lorcan looked first at Ottilie’s pleading face and then across the room at Melanie and the formal group over at the table.

‘There’s no place laid for me, Ottie,’ he said, his face half smiling and half rueful.

‘Oh but there is, Lorcan, I laid one specially, and wrote your name.’ She nodded towards the table. ‘Please come!’

Melanie’s smile had now become more fixed than ever, but Ottilie pulled on Lorcan’s hand, and now his own smile had lost its hesitancy and he murmured, taking her hand, ‘Very well, Ottie, if you have laid for me.’

Ottilie pulled out Lorcan’s chair and smiled round at her young guests.

‘This is my brother, Lorcan,’ she told them all proudly.

Mrs Cartaret leaned over Ottilie’s chair and for a second the smell of Chanel No 5 overwhelmed her adopted daughter as she said, ‘Really, Ottilie, I don’t think Lorcan wants to sit with all you children.’

‘On the contrary, Mrs Cartaret,’ Lorcan replied, ‘I am greatly honoured.’

‘This is Philip Granville, Lorcan,’ Ottilie said, introducing the young fair-haired boy who shook hands with the dark-haired young Irishman. ‘Lorcan’s a painter,’ Ottilie went on proudly.

‘A painter?’ Philip Granville looked impressed.

‘Yes, he paints railings.’

Lorcan smiled suddenly at Ottilie’s obvious pride in him and then placed the small packet he’d brought with him beside Ottilie’s plate.

This belonged to your mother. Ottilie stared at the words written in Lorcan’s careful hand as Philip Granville leaned over to look at the contents of the small old-fashioned cardboard box, a beautifully wrought bracelet.

‘Rather pretty, isn’t it? One of my aunts has jewellery just like this.’

Philip took the bracelet from Ottilie and held it up, staring at the insets of tiny sapphires and diamonds.

‘I know Ma wanted you to have it, Ottie,’ Lorcan murmured to her alone, and his eyes softened as Ottilie put it on her wrist, slipping it over her hand without unfastening the catch because it was still much too big for a child.

Philip Granville looked across at Melanie in her Balmain dress and pearls.

‘Your mother is a very pretty woman.’

Later, in the kitchens of the hotel, she heard Edith extolling Tredegar’s exotic flower arrangements set in immense silver and crystal vases and the vast kitchen with its centuries-old flagstoned floors and its kitchen range that dated from a hundred years ago, but Ottilie herself was not interested in these things. She only noticed the Great Danes the colour of gunmetal with their strange yellow eyes, who sat silent and still in front of the warmth of the immense fire that burned in the dark panelled hall, as if hoping that by remaining so still they would be mistaken for stone. Yet fascinated by the dogs as she was, she was more than happy to run up the stairs after Philip to his suite of rooms and meet his tame hare.

‘This is Ludlow.’

‘He’s beautiful.’

This was a rare moment. Ottilie, who was hardly ever silenced, was overcome by the sight of a tame hare seated on an old sofa. For once, she could think of nothing whatsoever to say as the animal sat quite still and allowed her to stroke his head, watched by his proud owner.

‘Do your mum and dad mind him being here, inside with you? I can’t have animals because of being in a hotel.’

‘No, mine don’t mind, they’re divorced. Divorced people don’t mind what you do, at least not if you’re their children, I find. They don’t come here very often. Most of the time there’s just Constantia and me. And the staff, of course. They look after us. Mamma and Pappa, they just argue about everything if they come here, so it’s better just to have staff. Besides, they’re much nicer to you than parents, actually. Come on, I’ll show you my soldiers if you like.’

Ottilie suspected that soldiers were not going to be very interesting, but because of always being on show at the hotel she knew very well that she had exquisite manners even though she was only ten, and so she said nothing but followed the slender figure of Philip Granville through the connecting doors into another of his large rooms. If he wanted to play with his soldiers then she was perfectly prepared to watch him. But when she saw what he meant by ‘soldiers’ Ottilie was amazed.

What Philip had laid out was a whole great battle, and what he called ‘soldiers’ were truly elegant lead figures of men in uniform, on foot or on horse, or riding gun beside carriages, endless lines of them, each piece of their uniform picked out in still brilliant colours. The plumes, the gold, the scarlet, the regimental colours, everything that had been the mighty spectacle of war before the reality of death, was laid out in meticulous lines, and it was beautiful, as beautiful as the sea, even though what was to come was so terrible. Ottilie thought of the sound of the gunfire, of the terror of the horses, of the beautiful uniforms stained with blood, of the poor boys dead in the mud.

‘I’m in the middle of the Crimea, actually,’ Philip told her. ‘It’s pretty good fun. Do you know anything about the Crimea?’

‘I certainly do.’ As Philip looked pleased but quite definitely surprised, Ottilie said by way of explanation, ‘There’s an old gentleman who comes to the hotel every year and he tells me all about battles, but although he’s a general he hasn’t any soldiers any more. He only has books and maps which he shows me, and medals that he wears in the evening. This is much more interesting, though,’ she continued at her usual conversational gallop. ‘Because you see this old general, well, he really only knows about the Second World War, North Africa, Italy and so on, and by then there were no horses. Do you want me to help you with your battle? I can if you like.’

Philip frowned. The idea of a girl helping him stage a battle was obviously pretty startling to him.

‘I tell you what,’ Ottilie went on, seeing the doubt in his eyes. ‘I’ll stand by in case – because you look a bit wobbly about that.’

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 her 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’.