Grand Affair

Ottilie, Mrs Blandorf and her friends were having their last luncheon together at the Parisian School of Cookery. They had all tried their best with the menu, and it had to be said, in celebration of their last meal together, that the result had been very satisfactory, if only to them. If the proprietress and her assistant assumed their usual polite if studied expressions as they ate their navarin de mouton, or discussed the amount of oil in the salad, there was no such problem for their pupils, who were now, in their own imaginations at least, experts on French food. And if husbands, so gaily referred to in the previous fortnight – Ludgrove Blandorf, or Pip Bartlett, or Tom Zeigler, in Connecticut, Ohio, or Los Angeles, did not and never would like French cuisine, it was evident that their wives had been and seen and conquered, and that as far as they were concerned this meant that they had fought through the cooking and eating equivalent of the Korean War. They were heroines in their own and each other’s eyes. They would write to each other, of course, they would never forget each other, naturally.

Ottilie could have hugged all of them to her, so endearing did she find their conversation, and so much did she want them to be returning home to men who would listen to their anecdotes and at least try to share their enthusiasm for Paris, French food, and holidays in Europe. That they would very probably not be doing so she already knew from the determined gaiety with which they enjoyed their last self-cooked luncheon together. Although they were flying off home with new ideas that could, if they were allowed, add so much colour to their lives and interest to their existence, Ottilie knew that their accounts of their fortnight in Paris would be met with stony stares and ‘What’s this?’ expressions, and that soon all they would have would be their letters to each other, and their photographs of themselves in front of well-known Parisian buildings or monuments.

Ottilie knew all this because of having grown up at the Grand. She knew all about the fleeting nature of holiday friendships and the formality of the exchanging of addresses. She knew all about wives asking for recipes, and husbands trying to get away from their conversations to play what they always called in martyred voices ‘some quiet golf’, as if being on holiday was a penance from which a man could, once in a while, be allowed to have some time off, time off from his wife who, it always seemed to Ottilie, had spent most of her life waiting for a holiday with her husband, so that she might talk to him.

And although Edith only ever said it in a laughing kind of way Ottilie knew that it was true. By the time she became a teenager Ottilie had seen too much, though not of the kind of harsh backstreet behaviour that Edith sometimes hinted at – gangs with knives, near-escapes from rape, nothing like that.

What Ottilie had seen were the terrible silences of married people, the hatred underneath the polite conversation, the narrowed eyes as one or other of a couple left a room, the mocking laughter of the staff as they retold their experiences with guests at the end-of-season staff dinner.

By the time she was a teenager Ottilie knew all about couples who tried to make love in front of the waiters or waitresses when they took up their breakfast on a tray, and other couples who were not married but pretending to be, and yet others who had, the waiters always hinted, ‘strange tastes’. She knew to hang about in the corridor if she heard Mrs Tomber’s disapproving command, ‘Don’t go in there until I’ve done the bed, Miss Ottilie!’ She knew too how to tell a married woman from a mistress, or a husband from a lover (different size suitcases, different expression, different way of signing the register – lovers always smiled too much and looked far too ‘natural’, the receptionists had told her, and it was not long before Ottilie was able to realize the truth of this).

But most of all Ottilie knew that the golden rule was never, whatever happened, to start a conversation. Rather, by being of service she had learnt to encourage guests to talk to her, not the other way round. Never to tell one guest of the previous visit of another (in case they were meant to be somewhere else at the time), never to refer in any way to anyone who had stayed at the hotel before. Discretion was the key to everything, because as Mrs Tomber often said, her eyes dramatically narrowed, ‘You would be surprised, really you would, Miss Ottilie, the complications that can occur in even the nicest establishments.’

‘I will come to the airport to see you all off,’ Ottilie said to Mrs Blandorf as with sighs of delight and sighs of contentment, and still more sighs of ‘If only we were at the start of this instead of the finish’, she and her friends the ‘girls’ finally walked away from the Parisian School of Cookery for the last time, under the archway of vines, and off down the narrow little street that led once more to the busy boulevards and life as it is normally lived from day to day, filled with ordinary little tasks and not enough laughter.

Ottilie did not, but she smiled and said she did because it somehow seemed the right thing to do, and anyway she suddenly felt lonely at the thought of staying on in Paris without the girls, of going to the cooking school for the second part of her course with new versions of them, or an entirely different set of them.

They flew off with much waving of handkerchiefs, leaving Ottilie with a number of addresses in America where she could contact them, either written in largish handwriting on small notepads in black ink, or printed in smallish letters that looked like handwriting on large cards with frilly edges, and put in envelopes that had coloured tissue paper on the inside.

‘Here, have these, honey.’ Mrs Zeigler had handed Ottilie a smart carrier bag which said ‘Rue Rivoli’ printed very small in gold on one side and was filled with international magazines. ‘No point in taking them back to Los Angeles with me when I’ve read them.’

Back at the flat and trying to pretend that she was not feeling momentarily rather flat because the second part of her cooking course did not begin until the following Monday and she faced spending the weekend entirely in her own company, Ottilie ran a bath as she had often done when she was small back at the hotel, just for want of anything else to do.

A young man – the article stated that he was ‘under twenty-five’ and ‘compellingly handsome’ with ‘dark hair and dark grey eyes and a slight Southern accent’. The confident but wary look in the eyes, the determined set to the looks, they were unmistakable. She was looking at a photograph of her brother Joseph.

Open-mouthed, Ottilie read that her middle brother was now named Joseph Maximus, and he was not the second son of three boys and a girl, but the eldest son of a Mr Maximus and born into the hotel trade. Originally from England, he had emigrated to America and was now one of the managers, at what must be the youngest age ever, of the flagship of an international hotel group.

Before she read on, Ottilie sat down on the stool in the bathroom, her hair curling in the steam. No-one in the family had heard from Joseph since that terrible night when Ottilie had given him the wretched earrings to throw away for her. Ottilie only knew many days later that he had left home the following day, to Lorcan’s hurt and Sean’s desolation, leaving only a letter to say that he was going because there was nothing more for him in St Elcombe.

Ottilie stared at the picture, holding it too close to her eyes as if by doing so she could make quite sure that it really was Joseph whom she was seeing, as the water continued to rush and gush into the great iron bath. It was as if by staring at his photograph she could understand Joseph and his going better. But most of all it was as if by staring at the photograph, at his expression of confidence in himself and his future, she could fully grasp what it meant to her that he was, after all, at least alive.

In her innocence that night, Ottilie had honestly thought that Joseph would simply throw away the earrings for her. It had been stupid of her really, because knowing Joseph and his often voiced determination to free himself of what he saw as the confines of his family she ought to have guessed that he would be incapable of ridding himself of something that could provide the means of his escape from St Elcombe.

Yet, being only ten years old at the time, she had sincerely believed that he would throw the earrings away, and that would be that. She had really imagined that, as Joseph had said that night, he would be like the priest in confession, and that Ottilie, having confessed to taking the earrings and promising to throw them away for Melanie, would then be able to run away and forget about the whole wretched business, that she would have been absolved for her part in Melanie’s deception of the insurance company.

But such had not been the case, and could never have been really, not if she thought about it. Indeed, as she stared grimly through the bathroom steam at Joseph’s photograph, Ottilie agonized yet again over how she could ever have been so foolish. Joseph had been the middle boy. Not the oldest one like poor Lorcan, not the one forced to replace Da in Ma’s life, compelled by circumstances to be a ‘pretend husband’ to his own mother.

Nor had he been the youngest like Sean – easily forgiven for a great deal, spoilt by the attention of two older brothers – no, Joseph had been the middle one. The one who was at neither extreme of his mother’s love, the one who had been conveniently there to be a companion for both the elder and the younger boy and because of this was in effect cut in half. Someone so divided could only become whole on his own. In other words, out of all of them, Joseph had been the loner.

He had lied to Ottilie about being able to trust in him, but bad as that could be, hurtful as that could be, it had not been as hurtful as his disappearance. Whatever anyone said or did, beating you or cutting you in two with their words as Alfred sometimes liked to do, nothing could be as bad as simply disappearing. And no amount of prayers (and how Ottilie had prayed) and no amount of poor Lorcan’s saying endless novenas, no amount of making sacrifices to Our Lady to speed Joseph’s return, had brought him back. Indeed, if prayers could have returned Joseph to his family he would have been back within the month, but as it was it seemed that heaven was deaf to his family’s entreaties, until Sean, who had always been a religious boy, finally stopped going to Mass altogether, as a bribe to God.

For weeks after his disappearance, from afar, and in an agony of guilt, Ottilie had watched Lorcan turning up daily for work at the Grand, looking older and older as the time went by and they heard nothing. He grew so thin that finally Mr Hulton noticed and sent him to see a doctor at his own expense, but the doctor had said it was just shock. Just shock. Edith said just shock could kill you. Edith said that calling what Lorcan was suffering from just shock was just what a man would do, and that the trouble with most doctors was that they certainly did not understand that the person inside was as important as the person on the outside, and that until they did they would never be able to help people suffering from just shock.

It was from this time onwards that Ottilie had started to work so hard for her parents in the hotel. Every time she ran upstairs when she did not need to, every time she ran downstairs when she did not have to, every time she stood in for the telephonist or the receptionist (she could say ‘Grand Hotel reception speaking’ as well as anyone) it seemed to her that God might just be watching her hundredth willing errand and forgive her the trespass of giving Joseph those wretched earrings that evening. That being so, He would, out of the kindness of His heart, send Joseph back, not to her but to Lorcan and young Sean who were missing him so much, who imagined even now that, like Ma, he might have been swept over the cliffs into the sea.

But it seemed that God was not watching, and nor it seemed did He appear to care in the least, and eventually Ottilie found that she was simply running errand after errand for the sake of it. At first she did it to take her mind off imagining Joseph dead and it being all her fault, but after that, as she grew older, she did it to help her parents out, and after that because the hotel was doing so badly.

God, Joseph, how could you? I mean really how could you? How could you have left us all in such agony all this time? Not knowing if you were alive or dead? Changing your name so that we could not find you. Getting rich on the money you must have made from my mother’s diamond earrings. Becoming rich and now, it seems from this magazine, even a little famous, and still not letting us know? It doesn’t seem possible. Could you not once have sent Lorcan just a little card to say you were alive? For heaven’s sake, did you not know that after your disappearance everything would change for ever?

Because of your disappearance the family just broke up – Sean went to Australia, and Lorcan to train for the priesthood. After that day you disappeared Lorcan became obsessed by the idea that it was all his fault. He thought if he had kept a better eye on you, been a better brother to you, you would never have gone. He thought you felt unloved, without parents. He kept saying to me, ‘If only I’d been a better brother to him, not let him just drift on.’

But Lorcan was a wonderful brother to you, Joseph. No-one could have had a better brother. He even learned to cook for you and Sean, Joseph. Don’t you remember how after Ma died he learned to cook beautiful omelettes and home-made pies for you, and puddings the way Ma always used to make them, and how you told me he would even wash up on his own so that you and Sean could get on with your homework?

That’s how much he loved you both and tried to make up to you for what had happened, with Ma dying and us all being left, and yet all you could do was disappear and never send a word! I can hardly believe that all the time we were crying ourselves to sleep at night there you were, all safe and sound in America, all the time knowing – you must have known – that we were all in St Elcombe praying for your safety?

Ottilie would never know how long she sat on the bathroom stool staring at the picture in Mrs Zeigler’s magazine and making that pathetically indignant speech over and over again in her head to her middle brother, but eventually she rose to her feet, and having bathed and tied a towel around herself, and another around her still damp hair, twisting it into a turban on top of her head, she stepped out of the bathroom door and down the long corridor, straight into the arms of a tall Frenchman with dark hair, immaculately cut, greying at the sides, and wearing one of those soft sports coats that Englishmen never care to wear – which is to say a jacket that fitted beautifully, in a soft cashmere.

Ottilie knew it was soft cashmere because she actually walked right into it, and for one fleeting moment she could feel that softness that only cashmere gives against her own soft skin. It was surprisingly sensual, and she sensed immediately, although her thoughts had been anywhere except where she was, that the man was French because he smelt so appealingly of Gauloise cigarettes and a recent cup of coffee, and rarely scented aftershave. Also he had on a soft-collared shirt with a thin tie, which again was not something which Englishmen, anyway in St Elcombe, ever wore.

Ottilie jumped backwards as soon as she heard his voice, but as she did so she made sure to put her hand around the top of her towel to reassure herself that it was knotted quite tight. And yet she smiled at him, because just for a moment it seemed a pity not to allow herself a few seconds to enjoy the situation. He, an older, handsome, distinguished man, she a much younger woman, just out of girlhood. He very much clothed, and she without a shred on despite the thickness of the towel – his towel, the towel belonging to the flat.

He was tall, quite a lot more than fifty possibly, urbane of course, suntanned, with eyes of a startling hazel green. Ottilie knew at once as she stared across the space between them that whatever his age – perhaps because of it, she would not know since she herself was not yet seventeen – she knew immediately that he was far too attractive for his age, and hers.

‘You knew that, did you?’ he asked in a French-accented English which was really more American than British, while his eyes took in her standing there in a towel, her hair in a turban on the top of her head, her feet and legs dry, but also suntanned and bare.

‘Yes,’ Ottilie nodded, determined to carry on the conversation as if she was fully clothed. ‘I’m afraid it is from being in this flat. And I knew just what you would look like, even though there were no pictures of you. It’s just that feeling that one gets living in someone else’s apartment. What I mean is— What I should say, rather, is it was very kind of you to say to Mrs Le Martine that I could stay here,’ she added a little hastily, remembering her manners rather too late. ‘And . . . Are you sure it’s still all right? I mean if you want to be here too? If you would rather be on your own, I will quite understand. I prefer to be on my own myself, I find, quite a lot of the time.’ Too many words said too quickly as usual, but there – they were out, and that was that.

A look came into Monsieur’s eyes at just the mention of Mrs Le Martine’s name that was difficult to understand. It was as if just hearing Mrs Le Martine’s name brought back something that Monsieur (as the concierge always called him) would rather not remember. But he said in a firm, loyal tone, ‘I would do anything for Madame Le Martine. And of course you can here stay, my Gahd, but of course! I am old enough to be your grandfazzer, and you are une jeune fille très bien elevée, n’est-ce pas? This appartement is very big, even fer two, and my son he may be ’ere soon, so I will stay in case, because with him about you may need a chaperon, you know. Sons!’

He shrugged and laughed, waved his hand in an elegant gesture, and, turning towards the corridor from which Ottilie had so suddenly appeared in her bath towel, he disappeared towards his own suite of rooms, singing all too appropriately, it seemed to his admiring audience of one, ‘La Vie en Rose’.

Ottilie closed her bedroom door and lay against it the way she had once seen Ingrid Bergman doing in a very old film to which Edith had taken her at the St Elcombe fleapit. She was on her own in a stylish apartment in Paris with a Frenchman with an American accent who was far too attractive for his own good. How Mrs Le Martine would laugh if she told her and say, ‘Whatever next, Miss Ottilie!’

After that first encounter with Monsieur, by which name his lodger always thought of him, there was added electricity in the Parisian air for Ottilie, and she could not help recognizing it. Every morning when she slipped out of bed – making sure not to run her bath in what she now realized was his bathroom, but to use the shower room next to her own – she chose her clothes with ever greater care. And every afternoon when her cooking lessons finished, leaving her new set of American friends at the cooking school to discover the Louvre on their own, unable to help herself, Ottilie returned to the apartment, somehow drawn back to that electricity that an attractive man can create around him, that feeling that any minute now something would happen, although quite what she hardly knew.

‘Monsieur’ might be how Ottilie thought of him, and yet she had not so much as glimpsed him again since that first meeting when she had only been in a bath towel, and somehow she thought if she did meet him again she would never dare to ask him what she really wanted to know, which was if he was Monsieur, where was Madame?

Where was the beautiful woman in all the paintings and drawings around the flat? Where was the mother of his son, seen posing so elegantly with her new baby in her arms? Where was the smiling young woman in the drawing that Ottilie thought was so beautiful? A slender beautiful young woman having her hair brushed by a little dark-haired boy dressed in a Tyrolean suit?

Without realizing it, and in between enjoying the riot of the new intake of more good-natured and gloriously carefree ladies from Texas and Ohio, all intent on having themselves what they called ‘a ball’ at the Parisian School of Cookery, Ottilie began to fantasize about her ‘Monsieur’.

This was yet another legacy of growing up at the Grand Hotel, St Elcombe. Ottilie was almost physically incapable of meeting someone and not compulsively making up some story around them. A childhood and early adolescence spent watching new arrivals and wondering about them, wondering why they were coming to the hotel, what they would be doing while they were there, and what their lives were like at home, meant that with each new face came a new story waiting to be invented.

But fantasize as Ottilie might about the man who was allowing her to reside in his beautiful apartment, after that first evening Ottilie never did encounter Monsieur again, and wilfully the last days of her last fortnight in Paris raced by, each day seeming determined to increase its speed to such an extent that Ottilie started to dread waking in the mornings, hating to see daylight once more, because each new autumn morning meant one day less, and one day less meant that soon she would be back to everyday life at St Elcombe, and nothing would ever be the same again.

That morning she chose to wear her navy blue travelling outfit with the stiff white collar, and so dressed, stylishly and impeccably in a suit that had once belonged to her mother, which Edith had altered especially for Paris, Ottilie left a note on the hall table for Monsieur.

She did not think this was at all the correct French for a formal acceptance, although she did know enough to put ‘vous’. At the same time she signed herself not ‘Mile Cartaret’ but, after some deliberation, ‘Ottilie Cartaret’, and then she skipped off towards the cookery school, running past the concierge’s little house and calling ‘bonjour, madame!’ and feeling in a fury of excitement at the idea of having dinner with Monsieur despite its being her last night in Paris.

It was also her last day at the cookery school. And at half past two o’clock it was time to walk for what she knew had to be the last time under the little archway wreathed in vines, and onto the narrow street outside with a feeling of must remember this, a feeling of don’t ever forget, a feeling of whatever happens no-one can ever take these four weeks away from you, not ever.

Ottilie was feeling sad. She had to admit to that. What she could not, however, also admit to was a feeling of intense excitement, as if something wonderful was going to happen to her that evening, as if her whole world was suddenly going to change, which indeed it was, although it would be some years before she discovered why, or just how completely.

Monsieur stared at Ottilie in amazement and seemed just about to smile, or even laugh, but then he appeared to check himself and think better of it, and instead he put his head to one side and made an ‘ah!’ sound with a flat ‘a’ not an ‘aaah’. So it was not exactly, Ottilie quickly noted, an appreciative sound but rather an abrupt ‘Let’s think again’ sound, the kind of sound a person makes when they have suddenly thought of something they had not thought of before, or changed their minds about something completely.

If Ottilie could have seen what he was actually thinking she thought perhaps she might not like it at all, but happily for her she could not, so she waited in the doorway, looking at him where he stood by the collection of drinks at the further end of the salon, shyly wondering why it was that when a Frenchman looked at you, any Frenchman anywhere, on the Métro, by the bus stop, if you were English you always had the feeling that he was smiling at you rather than with you.

‘Mademoiselle Cartaret – Ottilie – if I may? Yes, ’ow can I tell you? We are going to Tour d’Argent for dinner, yes? So. You must look wunnerful becoz there will be many wunnerfully chic women there, le tout Paris, enfin! I cannot – I cannot take you to Tour d’Argent dress as an armchair!’

Ottilie looked down at her flowered cotton summer evening dress. It was an ‘Edith special’, cut down from one of Melanie’s dresses long ago. Ottilie had worn it many times in the hotel restaurant and for staff birthdays. It was meant to be a classic, or what Edith always called a ‘classic’.

‘I am afraid I will have to go dressed as an armchair, Monsieur, or not at all, because I only have this dress,’ Ottilie explained haughtily, determinedly resolute on the exterior, head held high, while inside she melted at the very idea of how terrible a flower-printed dress with a ribbon under the bust must look to a rich, chic, Frenchman who had silk mills and a historic factory which, Mrs Le Martine had told her in impressed tones, produced some of the finest and most beautiful fabrics for the top Italian and French designers.

‘But of course,’ Ottilie readily agreed, as always suddenly feeling liberated in his company. ‘I do look terrible, don’t I?’ she confided to him, suddenly unable to keep up her haughty façade, and yet wide-eyed at this immediate intimacy that they had achieved.

‘Awful!’ he agreed, walking ahead of her and indicating for her to follow him. ‘So Ingleesh, so awful!’ he told her, turning back. ‘This dress, you poor darling – my Ghad, she is so badly made! Perhaps all right for an old couch, n’est-ce pas? But you don’t want people at Tour d’Argent to sit on you, ma petite, enfin, do you? Look at you, but not sit on you, I think!’

‘My Ghad, Ottilie! Promise me. Never ever wear Ingleesh clothes again, will you? You are too petite, too fine, you know? You must always wear European clothes, and sometime maybe some of the new American younger designers, but not Ingleesh. You are not tall enough, although you ’ave a good little figure and that is great.’

‘Come with me. My factory ‘as made some beautiful silks for many beautiful couturiers, and when they are finished they often send me back something, an original for my museum of costume near Lyon. Sometime I like, sometime I do not and I give it to a woman friend, but yesterday something very new and beautiful arrive. It is not quite original enough for my museum, but it is ravissant, and I hope you will be ravished by it.’

She followed him down a long dark corridor into an unoccupied but obviously once very feminine room. Going to a great dark oak cupboard, he opened it and took the dress, with reverential and minutely artistic care, from underneath its cocoon of cotton covers, unwrapping it piece by piece, many, many times, because such is the fear of daylight, he explained to Ottilie, that when an original and beautiful garment is finished it must be wrapped over and over in only the best cotton for fear of sunlight harming it.

Finally there it was, the dress he had chosen to unveil for her, and he stood back, holding it up against her. They both viewed what could be about to be a fine result in the long looking glasses that decorated the end wall of the elegant, old-fashioned boudoir in which they stood.

‘A little is great, a little is all you must wear with such a dress, Mademoiselle Ottilie, you know? And when you step in, let me tell you not to worry yourself because you will find it is all built in, n’est-ce pas? All very tight. It will embrace you inside, n’est-ce pas? And just some sheer on the legs, mmm, stockin’ very sheer, yes? Much smoother. And shoes, let me see?’

‘All samples, you know? We are sent samples of so much, my Gahd! And zen I send zem to my nieces, to their friends, to the charities for the ladies’ causes, you know? ’Ere, these will be very pretty, ravishing. I think I have your size quite right. I have the eye, you know, for the female size. I have many, many sisters, and I the only boy.’

Monsieur nodded at his reflection in the mirror almost affectionately. As for Ottilie, she could hardly wait to tear off the dress she was wearing, which she too now thought of as an old chair cover, and throw it out of the window down to the place where the concierge kept the dustbins, because that was where it quite obviously belonged.

Bedroom door firmly locked, she struggled into the dress which Monsieur had chosen for her. All the time she was struggling out of the chintz dress and into the model dress she did not dare to look at herself in her mirror, because just seeing the beauty of the dress and how it was made filled her with dread that she was not going to look very nice in this ravishing garment, that beautiful though it was it was not going to suit her, or she it. But when she turned to face herself in the wall mirror she saw how very wrong she was.

She saw what now seemed to be a much taller and more slender dark-haired girl, a girl with a solemn awestruck expression, a girl who looked as if she was always meant to grow into someone out of the ordinary, someone she would not have known from a few minutes before. Could just a dress make such a difference to her? It was as if she had never seen herself before, as if with the putting on of just one dress she was a butterfly finally emerged from the chrysalis of childhood.

Off the dress had certainly looked lovely, but on it seemed to her that the dress was almost too beautiful. Made of gold iridescent silk with a high Medici collar that framed her face behind her head, it had a pleated train and skin-tight sleeves. It was not only a beautiful dress now, Ottilie realized, it was a dress for all time, fashion at its most haut and couture at its most arresting, but at the same time owing everything to yesterday.

The collar that framed the face, the train, the skin-tight sleeves, everything about it said ‘the past is present in me’. And because Monsieur had cleverly chosen such high-heeled shoes for Ottilie’s small, slender feet, when she walked up and down she found the length of the dress seemed quite perfect, and that her slim, not quite seventeen-year-old figure was also perfect for its exaggeratedly tight figure-hugging lines.

Ottilie unlocked her bedroom door. As she walked slowly down the corridor towards the double doors of the salon she found her greatest difficulty was not to smile. Outside the room, within which she knew Monsieur would now be waiting for her with some impatience, one eye on the great gold clock, she tried to assume her most serious expression. She tried to think of cold, blue, sad, bad things, and having done so she put her hand over the old handle of one half of the double doors and turned it.

Monsieur frowned and walked towards Ottilie, one hand by his side, the other poised to adjust whatever he thought needed adjusting. The collar – twitch. The skirt – twitch. The tiny train – he spread it out a little before standing back and then walking all round her. Finally he stretched out his hands and pulled back her long dark hair in a manner that was as detached and disinterested as a hairdresser’s.

He smiled suddenly and picked up his beautiful, red-silk-lined evening coat and nodded for her to precede him. For a second, as he handed her an evening cloak and helped her put it round her shoulders, Ottilie felt terrified. How would she survive all evening with an older man, walking ahead of him into hotels or restaurants? Then, remembering Melanie making her nightly descent down the steps of the gold staircase at the Grand, she pretended that she was doing the same. Staring straight ahead of her, head held high, hips slightly forward, eyes blank, lips smiling just slightly, she started to walk elegantly forward, and it was in this way that she entered what seemed to her to be the great arena of the Tour d’Argent.

On their way to the restaurant in his chauffeur-driven Citroën Monsieur had appeared to suddenly bow to a whim and stop off at the Georges Cinq to ‘show you off to my old American friends there. My Gahd! Why should the Tour d’Argent ’ave all the fun?’

All the eyes on her in her figure-hugging dress said ‘Oh yes?’ but in truth all the time she was sipping her grenadine through a straw, and he was sipping his dry martini – without a straw – Monsieur treated her with such courtly detachment, and yet looked so proud of her appearance – head held high, dark hair caught into the nape of her neck, no make-up except for a little touch of lipstick – that after only a few minutes not only had he convinced his acquaintances of his godfatherly status, he had somehow managed to convince Ottilie that she was indeed his goddaughter.

At the Tour d’Argent it was quite different. Here the waiters looked her up and down with outward appreciation, but, as they pulled her chair back for her and spread her heavy linen napkin over the precious dress, Ottilie had the feeling that the expression in their eyes definitely said ‘cocotte’. And she herself felt that Monsieur had, for many evenings, long ago, or perhaps even just recently, brought the beautiful woman from the paintings and drawings to this very table, but she was too discreet, too well trained from her childhood at the Grand, to ask him anything, or indeed to do more than look forward to listening to him, to lighting his cigar, and look as decorative and sophisticated as it was possible to be when you are still only sixteen and dining in perhaps the greatest restaurant in Europe.

What will happen when we go back to the apartment? This thought would keep recurring. The trouble was, Ottilie had never had to think ahead for herself because at the Grand there was always someone she could talk to, or someone to whom she could turn. From the moment she stepped out of her bed to the moment she went back to it at night she was never alone, and although nowadays Alfred looked permanently worried, and Melanie rarely left her suite except on Saturday nights, nevertheless everything that happened was taken care of by them and the staff, and all that was required of Ottilie was that she should be what they always called of use.

It was very different now that she was alone in a restaurant with an older sophisticated man, and for a few seconds, as she contemplated this thought that ‘something might happen’ when they returned to the apartment, it seemed to her that she really should begin to learn to think ahead a little. Yet even though she was indeed afraid of that thought, even though she felt a sense of foreboding, the truth was that dangerous though her situation was, or might be, she still somehow could not find it in herself to care so much that she would allow it to dominate the evening. From the moment that she had seen Monsieur looking exactly as she had always wanted an older man to look, tall, tanned, dark hair greying at the sides, slim, elegant, and displaying a very evident enjoyment in her youth and beauty, she had only wanted to continue to live from minute to minute, as she had been doing for the past four weeks, because that, it seemed to her, was what real happiness was all about.

It was all about now, catching hold of the moment and not letting it slip away. Now was the colour of the coral-pink lobster against the plate, now was the woman dressed in black at another table with a violet-coloured sash and a little evening hat with a veil in the same colour.

Ottilie smiled and she herself coloured a little as she realized that perhaps a too-long silence had elapsed while she had selfishly allowed herself too much time to look, however surreptitiously, around at the other diners, at the other women, at the evening, at the darkened skies and the stars beyond the windows, at everything except Monsieur who was after all her host, her godfather for the evening.

‘I too love couleur. That is why – my Gahd, that is why I am so fortunate in my business. Silk is all about couleur. And you know, when they unroll those couleurs in front of my eyes, sometime, sometime I think I am the luckiest man on zis earth. To be living and working with what to me is sacred – to be living and working with couleur, well, you can appreciate, Ottilie, it is so sensual. You know? So – ’ow can I say? – well yes, if you will forgive the vulgarity, it is sexy!’

‘No, no, at least yes, no, not at all, I quite understand. As a matter of fact I think you’re right, as a matter of fact. It is sexy, colour is sexy, it is just that I never thought of it like that before, and that is pretty strange when you come to think of it, considering I live by the sea and the sea is all about changing colour, and in a hotel, and people are all about colour, and so yes, of course it is sexy, and that other word – sensual. And you’re right, I am in love with colour.’

The words had tumbled over themselves – Ottilie even spoke what little French she had managed to master too quickly – but now they were out and lying about the table, and Monsieur seemed to like them, because he appeared to be picking over them before replying.

If Monsieur knew everything about dining and wining, if he knew on which side of which hill a grape had been grown, if every waiter in the room appeared to know him, and more than that, if everyone in the restaurant did too, and stopped by their table to talk and smile, and appreciate the sight of this handsome older man dining in company with his English goddaughter, and if the men murmured their appreciation of Ottilie’s beauty to Monsieur, and if he seemed to want to share their pleasure in her appearance, in her youth, in the delight of the evening, the glamour of the occasion, Ottilie at least knew how to make people talk.

People were what growing up at the Grand had been all about, and not just old or lonely people without friends but all people, and so it was, without realizing it, that Ottilie had mastered the ability to watch people when they were not talking, and listen to them when they were silent.

So now, as they were served coffee and Monsieur rolled a cigar between his fingers and then held it out for Ottilie to light, she remembered the expression in his eyes that first evening when he had arrived in the apartment, when he had stood looking at her, wrapped only in one of his own chic navy blue bath towels with the dull purple edge.

‘Ha! You may well ask that question, Ottilie. How did I meet ’er? I met ’er because long after the war, because my parents have this so great respect for ’er. She has come over here from England under cover many, many times. Mrs Le Martine she go straight ahead and she volunteer for this work, because she know all these people because her husband had a French fazzer. That is why she is so good for the undercover work, not just that she speaks French without any accent, but her name is French, enfin! If the Gestapo shout “Arrêtez, Le Martine!” and you do not turn, in those day you are dead, mort, believe me. You have two second, maybe less, you can imagine, n’est-ce pas? You have two, maybe three second and then bang, you are dead because everyone only turn, comme ça’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘when they hear their name shouted if it is their name. She was “Le Martine” already ten years, so – no problems for her.

‘You know, every time I see un général, no matter who he is, with all these médailles – medals – I think of those days. It was Mrs Le Martine, and she has no medals, it was small people like her who had the courage. Fifteen times she was dropped into France. Once she walk into an ’otel and she put something quite small into the pocket of this Gestapo general, and it was a revolving door where she pass him, nice smile, beautiful clothes, you know? So he smile and he follow her into this revolving door thinking of making a “pick-up” for himself. This man – c’est un diable – he was famous for hanging children, you understand? So. She walk off, the door she jam, the explosion happen, and no-one think this young woman with her beautiful clothes has put an explosive in his pocket and jam the door. All they see is this woman, very pretty, very nice, and she walk off, slowly, slowly round the corner, then the general blow up and no-one understand how it happen!’

Ottilie always loved stories, but she particularly loved stories that were true – growing up at the Grand she had heard so many from the old ladies and the gentlemen. It was not difficult for her to imagine a younger Mrs Le Martine, always so well dressed, even during the war, her slender figure swaying on slightly too high a heel in front of the Gestapo general, her smile, even her entrancing laugh, and how she would walk ahead, and how he would follow her not realizing what she had slipped into his greatcoat pocket, not realizing that she was his angel of death, sent perhaps by the little children he had murdered to do to him what they could not do to him themselves.

‘Yes, even that. But you know – merci, oui, encore un café!’ as the waiter leaned over to offer them more coffee. ‘I tell you ’ow many times that woman come to France? So many times, and after so many times she must have become more frightened. My Gahd, you know how it is, you do something once’ – Monsieur shrugged his elegant shoulders – ‘and it is all right, you do it twice, a little bit more frightened, n’est-ce pas? You do it three, four, fourteen times, you must know terror! Always thinking this time it must be the last, but always with Mrs Le Martine, she is always thinking, she told me, “Just one more time, one more time to kill someone who has killed so many innocents, to stop him killing more.”’

Ottilie frowned. Up until that moment she had not thought of Mrs Le Martine, despite her name, as having had so many international relations that she could slip in and out of wartime France with such confidence, knowing that she would always know someone.

‘My dear Ottilie, if you think that le tout Paris – le gratin as we call it in France – if you think that we know many, many people I do assure you that we do not. We are as nothing compared to the waiters, the chefs, the concierges. The people who know everyone are the people who work in these places, the restaurants, the hotels.

‘They know us, of course, but they also know each other, so they know double what we know, what you and I know. Mrs Le Martine she had been first a waitress at the Georges Cinq ’otel, and then she was a lady’s maid to the Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne. A beautiFOOL woman! A woman who everyone has love. And she has love everyone! Many, many men, but all her secrets they are with Mrs Le Martine. No-one but Mrs Le Martine know who has loved her mistress. She is discreet, always, Mrs Le Martine, but she know everyone. The lovers they all have valets and lady’s maids, and they ’ave ’usbands and wives, and so—’ Monsieur shrugged his shoulders. ‘And so Mrs Le Martine she is someone who know everyone!’

Ottilie was amazed, yet somehow unsurprised as well, because after all everything Monsieur had just said made sense of everything that Mrs Le Martine was, and everything that she was quite definitely not. Her adoration of everything that was fine and beautifully made from clothes to furnishings. Her ability to cheer Ottilie and pull her out of her occasional adolescent self-pity, her staunch support of her young friend over the years, from the dreadful night when she had left the Grand in such a furious hurry once she learned of Ottilie’s having been beaten by her mother. Everything made sense, given her previous occupation of a lady’s maid. Now she thought about it Ottilie realized that Mrs Le Martine was too carefully elegant to be real, too insistent on standards to be like Philip and Constantia Granville. Everything about her was really rather too much the Countess, and too little the maid.

‘And so, most sadly, the poor young Countess she died young, of something that young girls still die from in those days before we have penicillin, huh? But in her maid, in Mrs Le Martine, she made sure that she lived on because – Mrs Le Martine became her!’ Ottilie’s eyes widened as Monsieur went on to explain. ‘Everything, everything we think of as our Mrs Le Martine, every strong characteristic – that is not her originally, originally that is the Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne come to life. I know this because I have spoke with many, many people, and they are old friends of this famous young woman, and they all say when they have met Mrs Le Martine with me, but it is Marie-Thérèse to the life! The laugh, the walk, the clothes – everything is her mistress come to life. Of course that is why she became so good for this work against the Gestapo, when she become this beautiful woman in place of the maid, you know? She become la Comtesse. She is a – how you can say, a doppelgänger? Of course it happen many times, you know, the secretary become like her boss, the valet become like his master, but maybe never quite so well, I am told, as Mrs Le Martine and the beautiful Comtesse de la Chard de Corbonne. Here, I will show you.’

Ottilie gave Monsieur back the photograph. She could not say so to this man, but quite a large part of her was now suffering a sense of disappointment, of being let down. If Mrs Le Martine was only a replica of someone else long dead, if she was most definitely not herself, if she was only a maid imitating a Countess, she seemed somehow a little lessened in Ottilie’s eyes. She suddenly felt as if she had been tricked. Perhaps Monsieur sensed what Ottilie was thinking because he said, ‘Of course, you know, it does not matter if she is a maid or a Countess, she is a great woman, and a very brave woman,’ and he replaced the photograph in his wallet. ‘I like to think of you, Ottilie, as always having a friend such as her. So. Alas, now this beautiful evening must end, I must return to Lyon, you must go back to England. I hope you will always remember what I have said to you, all the wise advice I have given you, yes? Please repeat to me like a good pupil.’

There. It was all over. The glorious evening was over, and to Ottilie the realization was like a bucket of cold water, because all of a sudden, without more than a few minutes’ warning, he was leaving the restaurant and she was walking in front of him. He was handing her into the chauffeur-driven car and all her worries about what was going to happen when they returned to the flat were over, and although Ottilie knew that she should feel relieved for some strange reason all she was actually feeling was disappointment. So much so that when they arrived at the station where he was to take his train and Monsieur leaned across and gave her a large envelope with her name on it, she even forgot to thank him.

They both laughed and then he was gone, walking quickly away, a small expensive suitcase in one hand, towards the train, towards the manufacturing of his beautiful silks, towards his colours, his other life about which Ottilie knew nothing, and now did not want to know any more. It did not matter that he was too old and Ottilie too young, all that mattered was that tonight, this one evening, they had shared something that perhaps neither of them would ever forget, something which added to and did not subtract from the beauty of the city, like the light rain on the road glittering in the car’s headlights, the few people loitering around the station waiting perhaps for their lovers, or their friends.

The night outside the car window was as smooth and dark and as beautiful as any night in Paris, and along the black and wondrous waters of the river bateaux mouches made their leisurely coloured way, great barges of inviting pleasure set about with joyous little lights of different hues.

‘Thank you,’ she called to the chauffeur. ‘Thank you,’ she called to the concierge. ‘Thank you,’ she called to the stars, and it was only when she tripped up the stairs and back into the arms, the warm dark embrace, of the apartment that she thought to open the large brown envelope carefully inset with cardboard which Monsieur had handed her so quickly at the station. And although, happily for her, it would be some months before Monsieur’s gift to her brought about misery as great as the happiness she had recently known, the impact on her of first seeing Monsieur’s surprise gift was very far from miserable.