Thirteen

It had been easy enough at first for Ottilie to be brave, to walk out of the Grand and find herself lodgings in St Elcombe. Just as at first it was very easy not to miss the daily grind of bed-making, and seeing to everyone and everything, and usually all at the same time. Not to miss standing in for a waitress or a maid, not to miss Chef’s grumbling, the chaos and the heat in the kitchen, and most of all not to miss the endless hostility she had known over the last eighteen months at the hotel. But now, after five weeks without a job and with her money running out, her early courage started to desert her.

She dared not risk driving to another town in search of work because every penny had to be counted, and if she wanted to be sure that she would be able to eat and pay her rent for the next few weeks she simply could not risk throwing away pounds on petrol. She knew that she could always sell her car, but a question mark lay over that too, because although the Cartarets had given it to her, Ottilie had no actual proof that they had done so. They had bought her the second-hand Citroën, but a suspicion lay in Ottilie’s mind that should she put poor Oscar up for sale, St Elcombe being such a small place, her parents might find out and claim back the money on the grounds that they had only bought her the car for her use while she worked at their hotel. The memory of the police station and Ma’s howls of despair as she protested her innocence still haunted Ottilie, and kept her from wanting to invite any kind of disgrace upon herself.

On her own now, night after night, watching endless feet walking past her on the pavement by the railings which reached down to her basement window, she knew for the first time what it felt like to be really desperate and not to know which way to turn. She was far too proud to write for help to Lorcan or Mrs Le Martine, and besides, having not heard back from either of them for many months, she felt that if she described her new circumstances too fully to them it might appear as if she was asking them for money anyway, so she did not write at all.

But if Ottilie was too proud to beg, she was also too poor not to realize how it came about that girls of her age took to the streets. They did so because they were desperate. But in her letter to Philip, waiting to be posted, she naturally made a joke of it all.

I am lodging in downtown St Elcombe where the nightly entertainment is taking bets on how many steps the local drunks can make when they come out of the Pirate’s Cabin, and how soon they fall into the road.

Sometimes she could hardly bring herself to get out of bed she felt so hungry in the mornings, and so dismal at the idea of setting out on yet another search for a job. She had signed on at the Labour Exchange but it would be some weeks yet before she could draw any money, and anyway it would not be enough to cover the rent and her food. Desperate, Ottilie took to praying again, and even to going to church. It didn’t seem at all right after all these years of not praying, of not going to church after Ma had died so suddenly, to start beseeching the Almighty, but at least it was warm in church, and the brightly painted statues seemed to exude a Mediterranean cheerfulness with their bright blue or red garments and their silver orbs and bare feet.

‘Catholic churches are so ugly,’ Melanie used to say as if that excused her ever attending one, and she certainly never bothered to take Ottilie.

But as she grew up Ottilie had realized that Melanie was right. The Catholic church in St Elcombe was little more than a tin hut, but the people she met there were not unfriendly and suspicious like so many downtown. Ottilie found that when she went to church people who did not know her smiled at her, and it wasn’t like the Grand – they never stopped you going in because you had poor clothes or were not wearing a tie.

It was after early morning church one day (Ottilie had gone less because she wanted to pray than because St Antony’s was a great deal warmer than her basement room) that she clearly heard a voice behind her calling her old childhood name.

‘Ottie! Ottie Cartaret!’

She was so caught up in her thoughts, so full of the usual mixture of elation and despair that going to church seemed to bring on, that when she turned she fully expected to see some sort of statue come to life, calling her back to prayer once more, calling her back to kneel among the other sinners and ask God’s forgiveness for offending her parents. Instead, she saw a face she only barely recognized, the face of a priest.

It was also the face of her eldest brother Lorcan.

‘Lorcan!’

‘Well now, let me look at you.’ He held her away from him, and shook his head in a kind of avuncular wonder. ‘Ottie. You’re a young lady. Will you let me look at you, will you look at that?’

When Lorcan had last communicated with her – and it must have been two years ago – it was from Ireland, from the priests’ college where he was still studying. He had wanted her to come to his Ordination Mass but Ottilie had been needed at the hotel, so she had sent him a present of a silver crucifix and although he had written hastily to thank her she had not heard from him since, for – as Edith had often gently reminded her – ‘Brothers are not like that, I don’t think, Miss Ottilie, they just think of you as being there, and not really needing them, not really. They don’t think like girls.’

‘Lorcan.’

As she said his name, and to her horror, Ottilie felt a devastating embarrassment sweeping over her. She might be a young lady but Lorcan was a priest. He was a person set apart, someone to whom she could confess her sins, someone who would come to her if she was dying and say the Last Rites over her, someone who was empowered to hold up the Host at daily Mass. Lorcan, who had always seemed to be either building something or painting something. Lorcan, who had appeared at her birthday party when she was ten, was now a person whom she could ask for a blessing like the nuns and the priest at her first school.

Could she treat him like Lorcan and tease him, or would it be more fitting if she respected the barrier that she sensed was already between them?

‘You have changed so much,’ Lorcan told her, as if he had not, and he stood back to openly admire her still smart coat and shoes, a residue of her former life, her long hair brushed back, her treasured leather gloves and shoulder bag. ‘You are really beautiful now, Ottilie.’ Ottilie must have looked embarrassed for him, because he went on quickly, ‘Oh, no, don’t look shocked, Ottie. It is perfectly all right for me to say so. In fact Father Peter encourages us to admire women and their beauty. They are all part of God’s Creation.’

‘I should think so too!’ Ottilie said, laughing suddenly, and her embarrassment started to dissipate as she realized that although he was mostly not the same at all, a part of Lorcan was still very much the same.

Of course they were not like brother or sister any more, that feeling could never come back, they had grown too far apart. Yet when he smiled so endearingly down at her, Ottilie could see that he was still the same tall, handsome eldest brother who used to swing her onto his shoulders and jogtrot her up to the cottage door.

‘Are you at the eight o’clock every morning? Being the youngest I take the six o’clock, for my sins!’

‘Practically every morning,’ Ottilie replied.

She did not dare to tell Lorcan that she was attending Mass regularly not just to pray but to warm up after a long damp night in her lonely basement.

‘It’s good your faith still means so much to you, Ottie.’

Seeing the sincerity in his eyes and hearing the warmth in his voice, Ottilie did not make a joke of her recent regular churchgoing as she might have done to Philip, for the sweetness and solemnity of Lorcan’s look prevented her.

‘Look, Ottie. Wait until I change, will you? Father Peter will allow me half an hour with you, I’m sure, great man that he is.’

Ottilie put out her hand to delay Lorcan, but he was already walking quickly off towards the priest’s house, his gown billowing behind him. Time enough perhaps to tell him of her newly reduced circumstances.

But as she waited for him to change to a dark suit Ottilie herself changed her mind, deciding not to take Lorcan back to her lodgings which were a good twenty minutes’ walk from the church anyway. Instead she would take him to a local café for a cappuccino coffee, using the excuse that she did not want to upset Melanie by bringing Lorcan back to the hotel as her guest in the middle of the season.

They had hardly sat down when Lorcan, with his suddenly familiar slow, kind smile which reached up to his eyes and took Ottilie back to the dear days of Number Four, said, ‘So tell me, Ottie, what did you do that was wrong enough for Mrs Cartaret to throw you out of the Grand?’

Ottilie looked up from sprinkling sugar on the top of her coffee. To gain time she helped herself to another spoonful which she scattered thickly all over the white froth before finally saying to Lorcan, ‘How did you know?’

‘St Elcombe’s a small place, and I had hardly arrived back in the parish last week when I rang the hotel and was told, “Miss Cartaret no longer lives or works here.” And then of course I asked Mr Hulton and he told me of the scandal at the Grand and how you had been thrown out in disgrace, or so they said.’

Lorcan succeeded in looking both sage and grave at the same time while Ottilie only managed to look rueful.

‘You know me, Lorcan. I could always get into trouble when I really wanted to, couldn’t I, no matter what? Always out in the corridor in some kind of disgrace, always in trouble. Ma used to laugh and think it funny, but the nuns didn’t think I was very good at all, I’m afraid.’

‘Ma. She thought the sun shone every time your eyes opened.’

Lorcan shook his head, remembering, and smiled, but his eyes never left Ottilie’s face and from his quiet but determined manner Ottilie quickly realized that she was talking to a trained priest, not just to an elder brother whom she now hardly knew. ‘Priests,’ Ma used to say with a laugh, ‘have minds like athletes, pet.’

‘It will shock you, what happened will shock you.’

‘Very little, you’ll find, shocks even a young priest. The Bible is shocking.’

‘Well, if you really want to know. . .’ Ottilie took a deep breath and began, only to stop a moment later as she remembered how Philip had laughed and teased her on the day she had been kicked out. ‘If you really want to know, I was given a drawing of a nude when I was in Paris,’ she went on, finally unable to stand the silence. ‘It’s really rather beautiful, actually, even though I say it myself, and it is of me, though it was drawn from the artist’s imagination, how he remembered me.’

Lorcan nodded, and Ottilie noticed that not even his eyes blinked, so reassuringly unshocked was he. ‘Go on.’

‘I never posed for it, Lorcan. I mean I don’t actually think it matters a damn if I did, for heaven’s sakes, God made our bodies, didn’t He? But as it happens I didn’t.’

‘You once fainted clean out in a shop when Ma removed your pullover, even though, as Ma said, you were wearing a blouse, a skirt, a petticoat, a vest, long tights and little lace-up boots,’ was all Lorcan thought to say with a fond smile.

This encouraged Ottilie to go on, which it was obviously meant to do.

‘What happened was that this much older man, “Monsieur” I called him, I can’t even remember his name now, but he was a friend of a friend and he owned the apartment where I was staying. Anyway, he saw me coming out of the bathroom wearing only a towel. I mean it was quite by mistake, and he went away and drew me from memory, but without the towel, if you can imagine?’

Lorcan obviously did not seem to find this as difficult to believe as Alfred and Melanie, because he merely nodded for her to go on.

‘And to be honest, when he gave it to me I was thrilled. I love it. It reminds me of Paris. But even so I didn’t frame it or hang it, in case the staff saw it and jumped to the wrong conclusion, you know how staff can? Not because I was ashamed of it or anything. What I did instead was, I bought a special sort of folder to put it in, and I really didn’t think anything much more about it, except that it was beautiful. Then Philip Granville came home on leave. You remember Philip, Lorcan? He used to come to the hotel and play tennis sometimes when you were still working there? Anyway, he was home on leave for forty-eight hours and he came to the hotel and he asked me to this party and I went, but without telling the parents because I knew they would try and stop me. That was wrong, I do admit, and, well, when I got back – you can imagine, the heavens and the earth split open.’

‘They would have done. . .’

‘Yes. They had spent most of the night going through all my things to see if I had a diary and had written about where I was going or something. Anyway, of course they ended up finding the drawing, and of course—’

‘They didn’t believe you hadn’t posed for it.’

‘No. They didn’t believe me, and perhaps worse – they didn’t want to believe me, which was strange, because even if I don’t believe someone I find I always want to believe them, because it helps when it comes to forgiving them, don’t you think?’

‘Certainly.’

Lorcan had watched Ottilie slowly drinking her cappuccino with small appreciative sips, having made a meal of the froth and the sugar off a teaspoon first, which was why he now said in his usual down-to-earth way, ‘And now, you’re starving.’

‘No, I’m fine, really, Lorcan.’

‘You’re starving,’ Lorcan corrected her. ‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I fast, Ottie. I know the signs. Look at you, you’re as thin as a pencil, there’s nothing of you. I would hardly have recognized you at Mass but for those large eyes of yours staring out from under your black veil. You must eat to live, you know.’

‘I just can’t get a job, Lorcan,’ Ottilie confessed, knowing the game was up. ‘You see I haven’t a reference, despite all my experience at the hotel.’

‘So, what are you going up for, Miss Cartaret?’

‘Waitressing, cleaning, anything—’

‘Dressed like you and speaking as you do, you haven’t a hope,’ Lorcan told her, at his most practical. ‘Folks don’t want cleaners who speak like ladies, Ottie, you should know that. You’ve employed enough people at the Grand. People want cleaners who speak like cleaners; and they don’t want beautiful girls waiting on their tables either. It distracts the customers from the main business of the day, spending their money on food, eating it and clearing off as quick as time will allow. Waitresses who are too pretty make the customers linger over their food or their drinks, but they do not necessarily spend any more. A full table is not necessarily a paying table. However, no matter. I think I can get you a job, as it happens, a very good job, as a matter of fact, and one which will not only suit you perfectly, but for which you are perfectly suitable. When I heard of your disgrace I thought you might need me!’

He grinned, suddenly very much the elder brother.

‘Come back with me to the presbytery and we’ll ring up Mrs Blaize.’

Although Lorcan looked smart and handsome in his dark suit and clerical collar, Ottilie started to feel distinctly uneasy as she was walking down the street with him towards the Angel.

Ottilie paused on the threshold of the ancient coaching inn.

‘It’s no good, Lorcan, I can’t go in there. They’re sure to know who I am. Staff from here used to come dressed up as customers and spy on our menus.’

‘It’s all changed now, Ottie, I promise you.’

‘Yes, for the worse, I heard.’

‘Exactly, that’s why they’re looking for a new manageress. Someone young with a light touch but experienced in the old ways, someone who will attract back their old customers and bring them new ones.’

‘I know, the usual camel that a committee has in mind.’

Lorcan laughed. ‘You’ve become some kind of a right hard young businesswoman then, now haven’t you, Ottie?’

Ottilie smiled at his constant use of her childhood nickname. Just hearing ‘Ottie’ said with an Irish accent was like pressing a button which brought back golden memories of warmth, and in a second she could once more feel herself a small child, her hand clutching at Ma’s index finger as they ambled away from Number Four and towards the shops, and hear Ma’s voice saying, ‘Come on, pet, and maybe we will even be able to have ourselves a sweet when we get to see Mr North at MacDonagh’s?’

So along they’d go, and first there would be the railings across which Ottie would be allowed to run a stick as she passed, making a satisfying clatter as they walked round the corner into the High Street, and all the time Ottilie’s grip on Ma’s index finger would become tighter and she would glance up anxiously every few seconds just to make sure that not only was Ma’s finger there, but Ma was too.

And sure enough Ma would be there, her great thick plait of hair tossed back, her lips parted in a smile as at every turn they seemed to pass someone they knew, or who knew them. But once they had trailed on past them, Ma, still preceding Ottilie with her stately amble, would glance down at her and mutter, ‘Heaven only knows who that was, pet, and who cares for heaven’s sakes? Just so long as they don’t come round wanting supper we should be all right.’

But all that was over, and now it was Lorcan saying, ‘Here we are, Ottie.’

The new priestly Lorcan had a quietly confident air about him, so unlike the young man Ottilie remembered walking towards her birthday table, painfully shy, seemingly all too aware of his thick clothing and heavy boots, his Irish accent most particularly because he must have felt himself to be such an awkward contrast to the Cartarets in their fine tailoring and with their refined accents and gentrified ways.

Ottilie glanced at the clock. It was after half past nine and yet there was no staff about, giving the Angel Inn a neglected air. Mentally Ottilie compared it to the Grand at the same time of the morning, when all the flowers would have been changed, and the carpets cleaned, when the receptionist would be ready and smiling, and even Blackie striding about as if the Grand was a station and he the station master.

‘Ah now, good morning to you, Father O’Flaherty, we were expecting you.’ A dumpy little grey-haired woman in a much worn tweed skirt appeared to have arrived from what looked like a broom cupboard under the stairs. She spoke with an Irish accent and looked worn and harassed. Not a welcoming sight, least of all if you happened to be an arriving guest.

‘This is my sister, Ottilie O’Flaherty.’ Lorcan turned and his eyes warned Ottilie, ‘You’re O’Flaherty here, OK?’

As she picked up the warning look Ottilie warmed at the familial closeness which Lorcan and she were able to resume so quickly, as if no time at all had elapsed since they were both living under the same roof, and she suddenly remembered the old days when Lorcan would give her just such a look if Ma had one of her ‘bad’ days, and they needed to help her upstairs and he didn’t want Ottie opening her trap and saying something that might set Ma off.

‘This is Mrs Blaize. She is leaving very suddenly and having to look for someone to replace herself, Ottilie. A bit of a novel situation, isn’t it, Mrs Blaize?’

Mrs Blaize nodded, all the time trying to smooth down her skirt while indicating for them to follow her and sit down in the small, overcrowded office to which she had conducted them.

‘There’s been no time to tidy up since I arrived, I’m afraid, Father O’Flaherty,’ she told Lorcan apologetically as she removed telephone directories and full ashtrays from various worn seating arrangements around the room. ‘It’s terrible to have to ask you in here, but there’s been no time to turn my hand to anything, and because I have to return immediately to Liverpool to nurse my poor husband there’s no time to advertise either. And then too, as you may imagine, since the Clover Group have taken over we’re all at sixes and sevens. Now tell me, Miss O’Flaherty—’

She stared at Ottilie for the first time. ‘Oh dear, you look really rather young for this position, if you don’t mind my saying, Miss O’Flaherty. What might your previous experience in the hotel trade be, may I ask?’

‘She has been helping to run the Grand for the couple who adopted her, a Mr and Mrs Cartaret, but there has been a misunderstanding and so she is looking for a new position,’ Lorcan put in quickly, speaking for Ottilie.

Ottilie saw suspicion flash into Mrs Blaize’s eyes at Lorcan’s words, but perhaps it was the dog collar or Lorcan’s confident manner because she seemed to pause only for a fraction of a second, long enough to allow suspicion to enter her mind and be rejected, and then she said, ‘I see. In that case perhaps you would like to tell me what you were in the habit of doing – your normal day and hours, as it were, at the Grand?’

Ottilie told her, exactly. There was a short silence during which Lorcan smiled his slow, warm smile, and Mrs Blaize also smiled, only with relief, but then she made an impatient little sound and said, ‘Such a nuisance about your references, though as I understand it from Father O’Flaherty there will be some difficulty in obtaining any at all. With such experience you are obviously perfect! And what’s more, which is more important, willing. As we both know, even in a small hotel, that is almost more important than anything. Still,’ she sighed, ‘I have to be able to recommend you with utter confidence.’ She turned to Lorcan. ‘Father O’Flaherty, much as I appreciate your recommending your sister, and clearly as I can see she would be perfect for the position, the Clover House Group will not accept my recommendation, however warm, unless backed by a reference of some sort. It is just not possible.’

There was a long disappointed silence which both Lorcan and Ottilie were wise enough not to try to fill with explanation. After all, if there was no way out, there was no way out.

‘Mrs Tomber, the housekeeper, might give me a reference, but she knew me as Miss Cartaret – my adopted name,’ Ottilie volunteered, suddenly desperate at the idea of returning jobless to her wretched basement once more. ‘I’m sure she would give me a telephone reference if you rang her, in fact I know she would. But you would have to ring her at her sister’s house. I think she would be frightened to say anything nice about me otherwise.’

‘Well now, this is more hopeful.’ Mrs Blaize paused and nodded at Lorcan as Ottilie wrote down Mrs Tomber’s sister’s number from her own small address book, and handed it to her.

‘Mrs Tomber always goes there on Saturday night.’

‘I will ring her on Saturday night then.’ Mrs Blaize nodded, quickly interrupting. ‘It will be a great relief to me if I can get this matter settled as soon as possible, as you will appreciate. Thank you for coming, Father, and what a miracle it was that you heard about our plight. Something for your favourite cause, Father.’

Lorcan looked embarrassed as Mrs Blaize slipped him an envelope, but he took it none the less, saying, ‘I take this in a spirit of humility and I thank you, Mrs Blaize.’

Outside, as they walked along, Ottilie could hardly believe what she knew might be about to happen. She might actually be about to be able to leave the basement with its constant dreary sight of feet walking or shuffling or stopping by her windows, the lavatory that took seventeen pulls to work, the basin that only ran hot water for five minutes and the gas ring that was forever consuming shillings and running out just as she tried to boil a kettle.

‘But how did you hear about this?’ she said, stopping and frowning, although she knew that Lorcan most probably would not tell her anyway because he always did have a way of working things without letting on to anyone. ‘How did you hear they were looking for someone, Lorcan?’

Lorcan carried on walking as he answered, ‘Put it this way, Ottie. The good Lord brought the position to my attention, and when I heard from you of your plight it seemed to me that restoring the Angel Inn could be just the job for you.’

‘I hope so,’ Ottilie said fervently and she closed her eyes for a second and prayed, for if there was anything that might drive her to the edge of despair it would be the idea that she would have to spend another month in that basement in downtown St Elcombe.

‘There’s a call for you, dear, at least I think it’s for you. Ottilie something, that’s you, în’tit?’ Ottilie’s landlady always called down the stairs, never came down herself, as if she was afraid of entering the appalling reality of her own basement flat. ‘A Mrs Blaize on the telephone for you, dear.’

Why she called Ottilie ‘dear’ Ottilie could not imagine, but it didn’t matter what she called her just so long as Mrs Tomber had given her a good reference. Ottilie jumped up the stairs to the narrow hallway of the main part of the house with its shiny linoed floor and its public telephone box (‘for incoming calls only, dear’) that made walking down the corridor anything but sideways so difficult.

‘Don’t be long, dear.’

Ottilie could hardly hear Mrs Blaize, her soft Irish voice being almost drowned by the landlady’s harsher English accent.

‘Yes, this is Mrs Blaize from the Angel Inn.’

‘Hello, Mrs Blaize.’ Ottilie could suddenly hear just how much she wanted the job from the tension in her own voice.

Mrs Blaize sounded equally tense, but, as it turned out, for other reasons. ‘It’s very embarrassing, Miss O’Flaherty, particularly in view of your brother’s position, but I’m afraid – well, I’m afraid that Mrs Tomber does not recommend you for the situation.’

‘What?’

There was a long pause.

‘Mrs Tomber says she does not think you are at all suitable for the position for which you applied,’ Mrs Blaize repeated. ‘She says, moreover, that she herself would never employ you.’

Ottilie could hear her heart pounding in her ears as she tried to take in what Mrs Blaize had just said, and make sense of it.

‘Are you sure it was Mrs Tomber you spoke to?’

‘Positive. I spoke first to her sister and then to her.’ A pause and then, ‘I think you should come back and see me, Miss O’Flaherty. I think there is definitely a great deal more to this than meets the eye. I am suspicious, let us say. That’s why I think we should talk it over at once.’

‘I will be with you as soon as I can.’

Ottilie ran down the familiar winding streets of St Elcombe that seemed, on bad days such as this, to be mean and more than ever full of ugly people with narrow minds and hard feelings. She pounded up the short hill towards the Angel, where she stopped suddenly to regain her breath. She was angry with Mrs Tomber, but whatever her feelings it made no sense to arrive in a state of breathless indignation. It would only look as if she was over-reacting like a guilty person. She should arrive calm, collected, and above all not defensive.

At least Mrs Blaize had given her a second chance to speak for herself, she had that for which to be grateful.

‘Good girl, you came back as soon as may be.’ Mrs Blaize gave Ottilie an approving glance as she walked her from the hotel foyer back to her small, overcrowded office. ‘Sit down now while I order us both some tea and we talk this thing through. I need to know more from you about this Mrs Tomber and why she might be so intent on preventing you taking up this position?’

‘I really don’t know. I actually thought she was my best friend, my only friend I mean after Edith – the other housekeeper at the hotel – died. Edith looked after me, you see, when I was little, and she and Mrs Tomber were the best of friends. I thought I was too, but obviously not.’ Ottilie’s voice dropped as she realized the full implications of Mrs Tomber’s betrayal. ‘It was an odd situation, you see,’ she continued after a few seconds’ thought. ‘Mrs Tomber was the official housekeeper, but Edith and I were too, in a way. Mr Cartaret was a bit disorganized like that. I mean no-one quite knew where the dividing lines lay. We all had to step in for each other, so finally, in the shake-up, we were all doing a bit of everything, if you know how that can be?’

‘Certainly. I used to be a nurse when I was young, Miss O’Flaherty,’ Mrs Blaize said briskly. ‘We had sisters on the wards like that. Chaos usually resulted, but if it did not it was no thanks to the sister. Now.’ Mrs Blaize paused, having spent the previous minute staring at the top of her fountain pen. She looked directly at Ottilie. ‘I don’t know how much I can tell you, or how much I should tell you, but since I made that call on Saturday night to Mrs Tomber . . . oh, I really don’t know – Father O’Flaherty would say I am causing scandal – but I suppose I must tell you if we are to come to any satisfactory conclusion. The thing is, Miss O’Flaherty, I made a few enquiries for myself before calling you this morning. St Elcombe is a small town – I myself come from a small town in Ireland, and in my experience everything comes to light sooner rather than later in small towns. It is very difficult – impossible – for people to keep things to themselves, or indeed for people not to talk about each other. Gossip let us say is a recreation, for there is very little else to do in small towns, is there?’

Ottilie stared at Mrs Blaize, realizing that she obviously knew a great deal more than Ottilie herself. She wanted to say, ‘Come on, come on’ but she couldn’t, so she sat very still instead, her large eyes never leaving Mrs Blaize’s face until Mrs Blaize’s own eyes seemed to be wandering round the room looking at everything except Ottilie.

‘So. After I telephoned Mrs Tomber, I telephoned Father O’Flaherty and we set to putting our thinking caps on. It occurred to us that there would have to be some other reason why this woman should let you down in this way. I mean I could see that you gave her name with complete confidence. Frankly, I have a wide experience of people in this work, Miss O’Flaherty, and why in the name of all that is holy should you have given me this woman’s name if you had any reason to believe she would not recommend you? No, there had to be a reason for her “spinning” you, as they say in Ireland, and I felt I had to uncover her motive, if only to satisfy my own curiosity, and of course for my own selfish sake too, because as you know I want to leave here and be with my poor husband as soon as I possibly can. It is so terrible to be here when I should be with him, caring for him.’

More and more Ottilie wanted to urge Mrs Blaize to come on, and the front of her knees hurt in her effort to keep still and not show the impatience she felt.

‘This is how it is, then.’ Mrs Blaize paused, considering her words. ‘First of all Father O’Flaherty and I, we thought it must be that she did not want to lose her situation. She has only a year or two to go before she is due to retire, and she would not want to do anything to risk her pension, which is understandable all right. But then I said to Father O’Flaherty, that’s not quite right either. The woman was most vehement. She was most insistent on, let us say, running you down, and that does not make much sense. If she just did not want to be discovered recommending you, even verbally, she would merely have said so and replaced the telephone receiver and that would have been that. She would not have gone to the lengths she did to run you down to me. She was, to put it mildly, most unkind. Poisonous, actually.’

‘I really can’t believe it,’ Ottilie said, unable to keep quiet any longer. ‘She has always been such a friend to me. These last months, she was the only person I felt I could really trust. She cried when I left, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Things change very quickly in any establishment, Miss O’Flaherty. Most of all in a hotel, as you might have observed.’

Ottilie stared at Mrs Blaize.

‘To put it delicately, I believe that Mrs Tomber is more than influential in your parents’ establishment nowadays.’

Ottilie heard herself asking, ‘Mrs Tomber?’

Mrs Blaize nodded. ‘Housekeepers have a habit of taking over hotel proprietors. It’s often seen as a natural progression, especially if a wife dies. One person goes, and another takes their place. In this case, though, it was not the wife dying, but the daughter going. You, after all, as I understand it from Father O’Flaherty, more or less ran the Grand in place of your mother, didn’t you?’

‘Of course. It makes such sense,’ Ottilie said to herself, but out loud. ‘The last thing she wants is me setting up in opposition to them, so she gave me a bad reference.’

‘Indeed it does make sense, Miss O’Flaherty. When you left, Mr Cartaret would have suddenly found himself having to rely upon someone new and strange. Proximity is the first step towards temptation.’

Mrs Blaize looked at Ottilie, and Ottilie knew at once from the solemn nature of the words she was using that she was probably quoting Lorcan. ‘So you see, it seems to me, given that this is so, and we have it on good authority that it is, we know now that this woman’s testimony as to your character not only cannot be relied upon, it must not be relied upon. I shall recommend you for the post of manageress. Head Office will be told you are the subject of a calumny. It happens a great deal, I assure you!’

Mrs Blaize put out her hand in a strange little gesture of formality, but her eyes were full of warmth. As for Ottilie, she could hardly believe it.

Indeed, so great was Ottilie’s happiness that as she walked out into the winter sunshine she was quite sure that she could hear Edith’s voice reading to her from their favourite book – ‘The sunshine struck hot on his fur, soft breezes caressed his heated brow, and after the seclusion of the cellarage he had lived in so long the carol of happy birds fell on his dulled hearing like a shout.’

That was just how Ottilie felt now, as if the song of the birds was more like a shout, as if the cold wind blowing so strongly from the sea was just a soft breeze. She started to run back to her lodgings, but she was hard put to it not to stop each person she passed and tell them, ‘I’ve got a job! I’ve got a job!’ It didn’t seem possible that after all this time someone wanted to employ her at last.

Mrs Blaize was explaining to Ottilie that the Angel had not always been a hotel. It had once been an old coaching inn, so now, Ottilie found, standing in the centre of its cobblestone courtyard, it was not at all difficult to imagine the scenes at the end of the eighteenth century when the inn was at the height of its popularity and sometimes horses would be changed at such speed it was breathtaking, and at other times coach and horses rested overnight while men and boy passengers climbing stiffly from the outside of the coaches and the ladies and older folk from the inside would all retire thankfully to stand by glowing fires and eat warm food, to be served by cheerful staff and sleep in comfortable feather beds.

‘You know of course that it was actually the fine quality of its coaching inns that made England famous, now, don’t you?’ Mrs Blaize told Ottilie as they walked round the old place on Ottilie’s first day, for Mrs Blaize appeared briskly expectant that Ottilie would take over from her within hours of her arrival. ‘The fact is, and it was a fact, I’m afraid, that until the improvement in the services at the old coaching inns foreigners dreaded to come to England, and worse than that even English people could not travel about freely without taking their lives in their hands, such was the low quality at the inns at which the staging coaches halted. People were regularly robbed of their possessions. There were nothing but brigands and ex-convicts to change the horses, and nothing but slatterns and prostitutes staffing the inns. But then someone or other realized that things had to get better because it was affecting the coaching trade and only the aristocracy could travel safely, and so they took out the convicts and put in proper grooms, which led to faster changes for the horses and better stabling, and from the end of the eighteenth century until the coming of the railways the English coaching inn was the most admired hostelry in Europe. And still could be if someone new could see sense!’

As Ottilie was listening to Mrs Blaize’s potted history lecture she was pushing open the doors of the old stables, her eyes narrowing in the darkness of each interior, trying to find old-fashioned light switches, and staring at the great tangling muddles inside the old unkept storage spaces, some full of nothing better than old lawnmowers and petrol cans and garden shears and other ageing or rusting implements. There was even a set of heavy old harness from a team of horses, now long gone, their names carefully engraved on a copper plate down the side.

‘What’s the Chairman of the Clover House Group like, exactly, Mrs Blaize?’

Mrs Blaize abandoned her history lecture and thought for a minute before answering, ‘Sir Harold Ropner? All right, possibly.’

‘So if say someone wrote to him with an idea, he might listen?’

‘Oh no, Miss O’Flaherty, Sir Harold might be nice, but he’s not that nice. Someone like you couldn’t write to him and expect a reply, really you couldn’t. Chairmen of groups do not have anything to do with area managers or manageresses of individual establishments, nothing at all.’

‘In that case, Mrs Blaize, perhaps it is high time they did?’

Seeing the determined look on Ottilie’s face, Mrs Blaize smiled. As they turned to retrace their steps back to the main part of the hotel, she gave a satisfied nod. ‘I knew you’d be the right person.’

Two days later she was gone.