Grand Affair

There it was. Ottilie stared at it hard, convinced just for a moment that it would go away. But no, it stayed. Quite black, confidently black, in fact the figures appeared to be so black that they almost seemed to be sitting up on the page on which they had been typed. But sitting up or lying down there they were and they were insistently exciting, because they meant there was money in her newly opened bank account, and in her name, and she had earned it all for herself, by herself.

She put the envelope with her bank statement into the top drawer of the old white-painted chest of drawers and sitting down at her dressing table she stared at her image in the mirror in front of her. Things would not continue so well unless she found out, and soon, just who was behind paying that couple to put glass in their food the previous week. It would only take a few more such incidents and trade could be ruined in months.

After all not every piece of glass could be proved not to be the property of the hotel, or as Veronica said, succinctly, ‘It’s going to be more difficult to prove that, say, a corn plaster in the soup is not the property of the Angel Inn, isn’t it?’

She was right, and because she was right, Ottilie made, light of it. ‘Yes, that will be difficult,’ she agreed. ‘Still, all is not doom and gloom. I see the share price for the Clover House Group has rocketed.’ She gave a little whistle. ‘It seems Sir Harold’s enthusiasm for the individual is beginning to pay off.’ Ottilie placed the business section of the Daily Telegraph across Veronica’s typewriter.

From the time she was quite small Ottilie had grown into the habit of consulting share prices, because she had so often been put to read them aloud to the old ladies and gentlemen staying at the Grand. The habit of reading the business news first had become strangely ingrained.

This time it was Veronica who laid the newspaper across Ottilie’s own desk. Ottilie picked it up. Amid all the words in front of her, small items of late foreign news, she saw only three – British officer killed.

Right up until his posting, all through the winter, Philip had occasionally written to Ottilie, letters full of humorous observations and funny little cartoons of himself and fellow officers in the mess, himself with hangover, and all the usual sort of jokes doing the round of his regiment. Ottilie had read and re-read his few letters so often that they had become quite faded with the intensity of her devotion, and since he had been posted abroad she had tried to tell herself that crossing the road in St Elcombe, or driving too fast to London, was probably just as dangerous as being in the Army. Unfortunately, she was unable to convince herself.

She knew just from the way he talked that being in the Army was all about being killed and no matter what Philip said or wrote to her about ‘keeping the peace’ in reality his life was all about being shot at. So that try as she might again and again, in the middle of the night, or when there was a slight lull in the day, she would find herself turning away from the image of Philip’s flag-draped coffin arriving back at St Elcombe station.

Sometimes Ottilie had longed to ring Constantia, knowing that she was most probably more up to date with news about the conflict and surmising that she would doubtless have the kind of news that would never reach a newspaper. Most of the Granvilles’ friends were in the Army. Constantia would know wives with husbands in the same regiment as Philip, be friends with other sisters whose brothers were his fellow officers.

Yet much as Ottilie longed to ring Constantia she knew that to do so would be to risk a rebuff. Philip’s disappearing to the island with Ottilie the night of the dinner dance would have been too public a display of ardour for Constantia. She was Philip’s only sister, his only real relative – his falling in love with Ottilie would not have been something she could welcome. Which was obviously the reason that Ottilie had not heard from anyone at Tredegar since the night of the party, which made it all the more surprising when minutes after seeing under ‘Late News – British officer killed in Cyprus’ Veronica, having answered the telephone, called quietly across the office, ‘A Miss Granville on the line for you, do you want to speak to her?’

Ottilie nodded and took the receiver from Veronica, but as she did so she was so sure that Constantia was telephoning to tell her that Philip had been killed that she found she could not find her voice enough to say ‘hello’.

Constantia spoke first, not bothering with ‘hello’. ‘No longer a Cartaret, eh?’ she said in her strangely boyish voice. ‘Well, never mind. Whatever you are now come to lunch tomorrow, will you?’

Without saying any more she replaced the receiver, and Ottilie handed Veronica back the telephone. It was not until a few seconds had elapsed that she realized with relief that Constantia had never even mentioned Philip.

Twenty-four hours later Ottilie found herself looking round the Angel’s restaurant and imagining what Constantia might be doing at that moment. Preparatory to their luncheon she would probably have been woken at around eight thirty by her maid bringing her the newspapers and a Lord Roberts Workshop tray laid with fresh orange juice, fresh coffee and some healthy toasted homemade bread.

After that she would most likely have gone for a ride around the estate on her part-thoroughbred, jumping logs, cantering across meadows, her hair streaming out behind her, before returning to throw the reins at the groom and walk slowly up to the house for a long soak in a bath. Next she would dress slowly and carefully, probably choosing a plain silk shirt and immaculately cut trousers, which, after she had carefully knotted an Hermès scarf around her neck, would make her look just as everyone, everywhere, wanted their daughters to look. Correct, conservative, beautifully dressed, obviously and becomingly well bred and immensely suited to country life, and most particularly the front picture of the magazine of that name.

By contrast, in order to take the necessary time out to go to lunch with Constantia at Tredegar Ottilie had had to set her alarm an hour earlier – at five o’clock instead of six. She went to market to buy all the fresh flowers preparatory to arranging them, and then checked with Mrs East as to the state of breakfast, especially for those guests who were having it in their rooms. The quality of the bread rolls and brioches must always be tested daily. (Two of Ottilie’s many hatreds were over-baked breakfast rolls or a brioche that was in any way greasy.)

Next would be the luncheon dishes – which cold or hot soup they would be making, and which salads; and it never went amiss to check on the quality of the vegetables and taste the stock. Again, Mrs East, if not watched like a hawk, had the shocking habit of using cooked bones for stock which gave the soup a greasy edge.

After this Ottilie had hopped upstairs to the dining rooms and checked on the table settings, the state of the cloakrooms and the bookings for the day, and popped in to see Veronica – this morning she had been in fine fettle, the inn having received a strong commendation in Saxone Addington’s Guide to England. Although not a Michelin star, they both agreed it was at least something.

After all this Ottilie had just enough time to run up to her newly painted white room and throw herself into a cotton dress, at the same time pulling on her new navy shoes – which had to double both for good occasions and work – and equally hurriedly brush her hair, freshen her lipstick, jump into Oscar and drive herself to Tredegar, and so it was only as she was heading out through the high hedges, her mind still back at the hotel, that Ottilie realized with a sudden rush of feeling that she was, after all this time, actually on her way to Philip’s old home, and that even if he himself was not there, something of him would be.

More than that perhaps something of both of them would still be there? Perhaps their auras had been left on the island dancing to his small portable gramophone. As Oscar chugged noisily through the winding lanes, Ottilie once again lived through waiting in Philip’s car at Tredegar while he said goodbye to family and friends. She remembered the way they held hands even when he changed gear on the way to the station, and how the sounds of the train doors closing seemed so final as they clung to each other. And then the sight of his fair hair out of the window and his hand still waving, until the railway track turned and sloped away and the train disappeared from sight.

Ottilie felt sure that all that part of her life would still be there waiting for her at Tredegar, and suddenly she felt so excited it was almost as if she was driving to meet Philip himself. Being at Tredegar again would be like holding hands with Philip. It would be magical.

There was a mile-long drive at Tredegar but no way that visitors could arrive outside the Elizabethan front door except on foot, feet that took them over an old, worn, and slightly sloping stone path flanked on either side by immaculate lawn, a walk which was so quietly executed in the quiet of the English countryside that Ottilie imagined that not even the dogs could have heard her, yet somehow Constantia had – managing to throw open the old oak door the moment Ottilie stretched out her hand to reach the door knocker, able to stand framed in the old entrance with her family’s coat of arms over the front door and greet Ottilie as if she had known to a second when she would arrive.

Ottilie had forgotten Constantia’s habit of breaking up her name into three syllables making it sound strangely foreign and Frenchified. As a child Ottilie had found it vaguely irritating, as she did now, but they bumped cheeks adroitly in greeting, neither of them wishing to leave lipstick on the other’s face.

‘Come in, come in.’ Constantia beckoned to Ottilie, even though she was already stepping over the threshold into the cool air of the still familiar large hall with its rush matting, its suits of armour, but no dogs. ‘Both the dogs died, I’m afraid,’ Constantia said, as Ottilie’s eyes looked and did not find. ‘Danes don’t live that long, and what with Philip being away I didn’t know what new beasts to order, really.’

She was speaking of the magnificent Great Danes with their dark grey-black coats and their yellow eyes as if they had been part of the inanimate fire ornaments, iron ‘dogs’ or toasting forks or pokers, not the beautiful creatures that Philip loved so and upon whose heads he and Ottilie had used to lean and stare into the fire while they toasted muffins or roasted chestnuts.

‘Tredegar doesn’t seem Tredegar somehow without Great Danes,’ Ottilie told Constantia who immediately looked irritated, her eagle’s eyes becoming cold and dismissive, and once again Ottilie realized just how quickly things changed within only a few months.

But seconds later the heavens appeared to have opened, so that when they approached the landing and turned to go down the main corridor off which Constantia had made herself a sitting room, Ottilie could see the rain bouncing erratically off the old diamond-shaped window panes, and lightning zedding across from the sea that lay beyond the trees. Lunching outside did not seem to be going to be an option.

Constantia’s sitting room was immensely private and completely Constantia, so much so that it appeared to Ottilie to resemble nothing more or less than a designer showroom, or some specialist shop licensed to trade in small household items for the county, but housed in a much larger building, as if Tredegar was the main store and her sitting room an in-house boutique.

Here there was not only no touch of Philip anywhere, there was no sight of anything that would have been allowed by him anywhere else in the house, where nothing could be found that had not been there for at least fifty years.

To begin with everything, without exception, was new. The china ornaments, the porcelain dogs, the bookends, the flower vases from the General Trading Company, the yellow carpet with the small design of keys on it, everything was new and recently designed, and very pretty, but not at all Tredegar. The sofa which, like the ruffled blind at the window, was Colefax and Fowler chintz, was very feminine, and Ottilie knew after just one glance at it how Philip would hate it.

Constantia moved easily and elegantly across her closely carpeted sitting room talking about her chic ‘other’ life, as she called it, in London, while Ottilie sat down in one of the chintz-covered chairs, a rather small chair more suited to a bedroom, and gazed around her in some interest. She never opened a conversation, force of habit from working in the hotel.

‘I hear,’ Constantia went on, eventually, handing Ottilie a very small iced sherry in a Stuart crystal glass, ‘I hear from everyone that you are executing miracles at the Angel. Very brave of you to take it on, Ot-ti-lie, really, really brave.’

Ottilie smiled. She smiled because it was amusing to think that everyone Constantia knew was talking about Ottilie’s so-called achievement and yet no-one had deigned to come and visit her, and because she knew that by not mentioning it Constantia was also indicating to Ottilie that she knew all about her having been thrown out of the Grand by the Cartarets, and doubtless too about her impoverished sojourn in the unheated basement.

‘I could have,’ Ottilie agreed, ‘but I didn’t fancy being thrown into Truro gaol.’ And then to Constantia’s questioning look she answered, ‘The car was registered in my father’s name. He could easily have come after me.’

‘He could have done, but he would not have. Your father is much too much the gentleman.’ Constantia lit a cigarette and smiled through the smoke at Ottilie. ‘Much too much the gentleman,’ she repeated.

There was something awful about Constantia’s describing the innocent treasured romance of those last two days and the loneliness that followed as ‘terribly sweet’. A dress was ‘terribly sweet’, an invitation to a dinner party could possibly be ‘terribly sweet’, a Shetland pony or even a pet canary, but not someone madly in love. It was so dismissive. Made all the endless pain seem really rather ridiculous, pathetic even.

I am out of place here, Ottilie thought. I am completely out of place here. It’s a wonder she hasn’t commented on how rough my hands are and the fact that there is mud on the edge of my skirt. I should be talking about Courrèges boots and miniskirts and whether or not I like geometric haircuts. I am so provincial, such a country bumpkin, my hair is not cut at Vidal Sassoon, I’m still wearing shirtwaister dresses and flat shoes, and I’ve never even been to a Beatles concert, let alone to an all-white première with Michael Caine and Peter Sellers. Not only that but one of my eyes won’t stop flickering because I have not had more than five hours’ sleep in weeks.

Constantia must have seen or felt something of Ottilie’s impatience at being locked into what seemed now to her to be an unnecessary waste of time, time when she would normally be working, because she returned to the subject of Philip.

‘I expect you saw an officer had been killed in Cyprus?’ she stated, not pausing to have this confirmed. ‘Well I heard this morning from a friend of a friend that the officer killed is – or rather was, poor chap – a great friend of Philip’s and they had been together only the evening before. A sniper, you know? But anyway, this friend, she thinks he’s all right, that Philip is all right, so we can only hope that he will be home soon and then we can all stop worrying.’

Ottilie did not really feel like lunch after such grim news, but since Constantia was indicating for her to follow her to the small informal dining room at the back of the kitchens she did so, passing on the way memories of Philip, of them all playing in the corridors on rainy days like today. Or waiting impatiently at the windows to go outside to go fishing. Now perhaps he really was in danger, not just the pretend danger that they had loved to imagine as children, and there would be no more running around the lake. Indeed so much had Tredegar changed since he left it, by the time Ottilie sat down for lunch she felt that Philip might already be dead, so little of him seemed to have remained in the house.

It was not just that the house now seemed to be filled with the kind of Constance Spry flower arrangements that he always professed to loathe, not just that Sporting Life no longer lay thrown carelessly crumpled across some armchair, or that the house seemed immeasurably hotter with fires still lit even though it was summer, or that his .22 rifle was not sticking out of the landing window on red alert for shooting at marauding magpies intent on stealing the swallows’ eggs. Not just that Ottilie could see from the breakfast room window that there were last year’s leaves on top of the swimming pool cover because only Philip liked to swim at all temperatures and all the year round, or that there were bright orange marigolds in the kitchen garden which he would hate, or that smoked salmon was being served for lunch – Philip always called smoked salmon ‘the bane of the upper class kitchen’ – but the whole of his presence was gone from Tredegar, as if it had never been.

The truth was that until now Ottilie had never realized just how much her enjoyment of Tredegar depended on him. She thought all this over as she ate politely and listened to Constantia talking about ‘the Snowdons’ at ‘KP’ and endless London personalities who all seemed to be from another planet to Ottilie whose whole life centred round her work leaving no time for anything else.

The lunch coming to a close, at last, Ottilie was just rising thankfully to her feet, looking forward to going back to work which now seemed most especially welcoming, most particularly warming, when Constantia said, quite casually, ‘I thought you’d like to know that I’d heard from a friend that Vision Hotels are looking to take over the Clover House Group in the next few weeks. I thought I ought to tell you, because if this is so I would think that putting in too much effort at that funny little place where you’re working, well, it would be really rather a waste of time, wouldn’t it?’

Of course Ottilie herself knew nothing of the sort but what she did suddenly know was that this was the sole reason that Constantia had asked her across to lunch, nothing to do with Philip or his friend who had been killed.

Like the fatal PS in a letter where the sender so often unveiled the real motive for writing to the recipient, Constantia had finally revealed the true reason for asking Ottilie to lunch, and it was to tell her that her days at what she referred to as that ‘funny little place where you’re working’ were numbered.

Back at work, but feeling stunned by the news, Ottilie nevertheless went about her usual duties, smiling at guests, helping in the kitchens, supervising the dining room, yet all the time all she could see was the ‘V’ for Vision sign on everything. For God’s sake it must have been only yesterday that she had been entertaining Sir Harold Ropner and praying for a budget to do the place up, and now it seemed it was only seconds later and everything that she had accomplished would be swept aside and replaced by corner-cutting, profit motives and worst of all, the pride and joy of the Vision group, portion control. She resolved to go to bed purposefully late having tried to overtire herself.

‘It’s one of those things, Ottilie dear, it’s happening everywhere – takeovers, you know. You will have to find somewhere else to devote yourself to, you poor thing, and after all your hard work. Tut, tut. Never mind.’